munkus and anomaly are the main two people in Tuscaloosa that I get a chance to play smash with nowadays. my roomate and my other friends don't like playing with me anymore. I dont know if its because I always win or what. Thief lives in Tuscaloosa right now too, but he's hard to get in touch with, and I think he works a hell of a lot too.
They're decent at the game. I can beat anomaly usually when I put my mind to it, although with some characters he's able to counter me. Munkus usually beats both of us, partially because he plays Mewtwo and Jigglypuff, two unorthodox characters that not many people know how to fight. Munkus is the type of guy that can really capitalize on your mistakes. He makes alot of mistakes himself, but my reflexes are too poor to react in time. Like for example he grabs a whoooooole lot. and he also rolls way too much. But he wins against us at least, so I'll have to learn how to counter it.
Thief is having another tournament on Nov. 10, so I'm excited about this. I always think I'm ready, because I always learn something new everytime I play. I've just got to keep my cool and play smart, and get warmed up. At Smash Aid, I barely warmed up before I played the tournament, and that really hurt me. I'm gonna try to play a lot of friendlies before hand.
Other than that, the tournament forecast for the Southeast looks a little dim. Most of the tournaments happen in Florida right now, that's just too far away. I don't have a car anyway, so I'm forced to see if anomaly will take me to one, or if moogle and the rest of the huntsville crew will pick me up from B'ham.
Hopefully Thief's Tuscaloosa tournaments are plentiful.
Thief's Last Tournament (i.e his third one)
Only around 16 people showed up to Thief's third tournament, mostly because he annouced it like two weeks before. Shai Hulud, 3GOD, and NES N00B showed up. NES N00b is really good; I teamed with him and got third place in teams. Needless to say, he did most of the work, although I did my part I suppose. We won 5 dollars a piece :-D. I beat 3GOD in a set, and I felt proud because that was pretty much the first semi-competent player I've beaten in a set. Shai Hulud beat me later in the tournament (put me in the loser's bracket I believe), but I want to play him again, I might try my Roy against his Fox. His play style is really aggressive and flashy, he doesn't really employ very many tricks or deceptive strategy. He's got near-flawless technical skill, just not the mindgames to supplement it. I think he could be a great player in the future if he keeps at it. I played anomaly in pools and lost. His Sheik had always given me problems, and he beat my marth with his sheik (I think i can handle his sheik now, but too little too late, till next time!)...I counterpicked Mute City, cuz that's my new Sheik counter pick stage, because I lose to Sheiks sometimes because I have trouble keeping them off the edge. So eliminate the edge! Anyway, he switched to marth, and that disoriented me, and I self-destructed twice I think. I'll get him next time :)
His brother Cheap (yeah, him again) beat me with his peach once again. I tried another weird counterpick; taking him to Green Greens and playing Fox, and was doing good when I kept him in the middle of the stage, but eventually he caught on and camped near the edge, and he eventually beat me. So I'm 0-3 against Cheap in Tournaments. He's actually pretty good, he did good in pools (although he didn't get out) at G4S4.
I want to be good with Captain Falcon.
Improvement Thoughts
I'm trying to learn to play all the characters (Except Yoshi, DK, and Kirby), and I notice that I'm really no good with anyone except my mains (Marth, Doc, IC's, andRoy)...at first this didn't make any sense to me, but now I think I know why. Its because I follow Isai's advice (Don't Get Hit) with my mains, and for some reason I dont with everyone else. So I'll try to work on that and report back.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Introduction: How I Stopped Being a Noob
I have been playing Smash Bros. Melee since the game came out, but I've only been aware of the competitive smash scene for a little less than two years. I've always been the type of guy who likes to win. I want to be the best at every competitive event I take part in. I think most people want to win, even if they don't admit it.
MLG
I really don't remember how I discovered competitive smash. I think I may have stumbled upon the wikipedia article for Ken Hoang, who is easily the most important and influential (and even in his retirement one of the best, previously THE hands-down best) smasher of all time. That led me to the MLG Website. There I learned everything. I learnedf what a wavedash was, what SHFFLing was, and all the advanced techniques that 90% of smash bros. owners probably still don't know about.
I watched videos of MLG events, of pros like Ken and Isai, and marvelled at how much control and style they had with their characters. I picked up my game and tried to duplicate, but I could not.
My downfall has always been my lack of patience with things like that. When I HAVE to be patient, I'm very patient, one of the most you'll ever find. But with something like a video game, I rarely put in the time.
Thief
What was it about this game then? I think it was because I was already addicted to it. I didn't mind playing it for hours at a time. But no matter how many hours I put in, I still couldn't do those wavedashes or L-cancels. I could only short hop around fifty percent of the time.
One day I noticed a flyer for a smash bros. tournament on the bulletin board at my dorm. I've been to smash bros. tournaments before, but none with actually GOOD players. I figured there couldn't be anyone that good in little old Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but when I checked out the rules for the tournament, I noticed they were identical to the rules for MLG tournaments. It's very unlikely that a noob tournament would do things such as turn off items or refer to things like the Ice Climbers Freeze Glitch. I researched, Chris, host of the tournament, and found out that he went by Thief in the smash community. I searched for him on youtube, and sure enough i found a set of him versus GA Wes in a Southern tournament. And I was amazed because these guys seemed to move with the same control and speed as Ken and Isai and all those pros.
I had to work so I missed signups for the tournament, but I caught some of the matches and played a few friendlies. Thief won the tournament pretty easily, but I played a few people who could do all the advanced techniques that I just couldn't master, and got my ass whipped.
Smashboards
Sometime after this I joined smashboards.
I'd heard of smashboards, but I never bothered to join. I think I figured everything I needed to know was pasted to MLG anyway. But I was very wrong. It's not really that smashboards contains better information, its that EVERYONE who is good at the game posts on smashboards. I could talk to Ken or Isai THEMSELVES if I wanted to.
The real reason that smashboards helped me though is the Regional Forums.
They have forums for every region where you can find people in your area who play the game. I figured Alabama wouldn't be too active, but I might as well try. Sure enough there was a thread in the Atlantic South forum called "Alabama Thread". It was started by a guy named Moogle, and it already had around 20 pages. I posted in it and introduced myself. Turns out most of the active Alabama smashers live in Huntsville which is about two hours away from Birmingham, and 3 from Tuscaloosa.
Thief held a second tournament, and this time Moogle showed up. He brought another smasher from Huntsville, Sensai. There were less people at this tournament but more good people total. I teamed with my roomate and we had to fight, among other people, ragnarock and Mr. P, two really really good players from Mobile. I remember a guy asked me before the tournament, "Are you on smashboards?" I said yeah and he was like "So you know about wavedashing and stuff right?" I said yes. I could wavedash about 80 percent of the time by then, but during the heat of the battle I rarely even thought about pulling it off.
In singles, we did a double elimination tourney, and I had to fight Thief first round, and he four-stocked me, then three-stocked me. (We start off with four lives (stock)...four stocked means he still had all four of his left at the end of the match). He moved so quickly, I really did not know what to do. The second round I played a guy named Cheap who played Peach. His peach was not as fast as Thief's Fox, so I thought I may have had a chance, but he beat me pretty soundly. And just like that I was out.
Come to find out, Moogle and Sensai took first and second in that tournament. They beat Thief! At the time this was crazy to me, that there were actually many great players in this area.
I wanted to be that good. So I began to practice like crazy. For a long time I played only Marth, but I noticed that at time he was hard for me to control at that time. He was sort of floaty, so sometimes I would be in the air longer than I wanted to sometimes. So I started playing Roy, who by that time I noticed that the majority of the smash community considered a very bad character. But I'm not one to go along with the crowd just because they say something, so I picked up Roy as my new main, and I liked it. So I practiced with Roy. Eventually I got wavedashing and L-Cancelling down to about 90 percent accuracy. I could shield grab and crouch cancel and SHFFL, I thought I was ready. There's no way my friends could beat me now right? Wrong. I played against my friends who had no idea about advanced techniques, and the results were about the same as they were before. Sometimes I'd win, sometimes they'd win. Imagine how frustrating that was for me. There was something I was missing. Maybe it was this mysterious thing people always talked about on smashboards, "Mindgames".
mslano
The beginning of my new birth as a smasher began that fateful day when I went to the Alabama thread as usual and saw a post by a guy I'd never seen post before; Michael, or as he's known inthe smash community mslano. He said he lived in Hoover and was looking for folks to play with. Hoover is like twenty minutes from my house in Birmingham! I contacted him and we set up a day to play. As I expected he was a lot better than me, another good smasher! And he played Roy! I thought this was excellent, he could give me tips, and that he did.
The huntsville smashers mentioned that they played together twice a week, but I never was assertive enough to actually go. Mslano however was already cool with the huntsville guys, so he had no problem going. I tagged along with him, and got to see moogle again as well as other Huntsville smashers such as coach, mackendra, munkus, and jwt. They all destroyed me. I believe I won 1 match against jwt during the end when he was getting sleepy and that's all. These guys were good.
I went to huntsville a few more times and met some other smashers. There were actually some that I could beat, and that made me happy that I wasn't the worst competitive smasher in Alabama, because for a while it just seemed like everyone was just on another level than I was. At one of the smash fests moogle showed me the tentative Mid-South Power Rankings, which is a list of what a panel of 8 respective smashers think are the best 20 smashers in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Moogle, Thief, and mslano were all on the list. The list just made me want to get better even more.
More Than Just Smash
Somehow, mslano convinced some Tennessee players to crash one of the Hunstville smashfests. Chad, Iori, and ihavespaceballs, to be exact. All of whom were on the Power Rankings list. (Chad and Iori were and still are number 1 and 2 respectively) I remember asking mslano, "Would you say that Chad is better than moogle". He immediately said "yes" with no hesitation. Better than moogle! Geez!
I didn't get a chance to play Chad that day, but I played Iori and Spaceballs and boy did I get whipped. Especially by Iori. I had never gotten my ass whooped in any game that bad before. Iori just seemed to know exactly where I was going to move at all times. Plus he could play with like every character in the game. I don't think he did anything less than 3 stock me all night. Spaceballs destroyed me too. After playing all night, someone wanted to get food, and we went on a legendary trip to the Grocery store, and this is the first time I noticed that the smash community isn't all about smash. Its about hanging out, having fun, telling jokes. Playing the game itself is almost sort of a formality. Just a really fun formality.
After all this playing, I got a lot better, but I still couldn't defeat any of these guys. So I went back and tried against my casual-playing friends. I did better, but they still beat me sometimes. I just didn't get it. I play with people like Chad and moogle, I should be winning, right? I guess I just needed to practice and play more. and that I did. By now I could wavedash and L-cancel pretty much at will. We found a few more Birmingham area smashers, many of whom went to thief's tournaments a few months earlier, including Cheap (the peach that beat me). I still lost to Cheap, even now. Although I could beat some of the guys that raped me back then.
Smash Aid
Then there was Smash Aid V. My first "REAL" tournament. Maybe the biggest Georgia tournament series, hosted by GAWes, who I've heard of, due to those videos I watched of him and Thief, so i knew he was good. Chad, Iori, spaceballs, moogle, mslano, thief and coach all went. This tournament like nearly every tournament had pools and then a bracket. You had to have a good pool's record to make to bracket. I lost all of my pools sets. I won one round against this guy named Boxr, but that was it. My pool was Boxr, Carter, Desu, Laijin, Drumma Boi, Reflex and a Sheik player whose name i can't remember. The only people I recognized were Laijin and Drumma Boi because I'd seen them post on smashboards before. I also recognized Reflex, because he was also on the mid-south Power Rankings. He played Bowser, and he was ridiculously good with Bowser, who is generally percieved as a bad character. It seemed like EVERYONE was good at this tournament. Almost NO ONE was a noob, everyone had some grasp of competitive play. it was amazing. Moogle and Thief got third place in teams, and I was proud because I was rooting for my Alabama brethren.
Just like in Huntsville this was a lot of fun beyond just playing smash, people hung out, told jokes, got food, it was a great experience. It was worth the entry fee even though I had no chance of getting any prize money.
Don't Get Hit
The next tournament I went to, Get Four Stocked IV or G4S4, was a turning point for me. It was my "Aha" moment as a competitive smasher. It happened like halfway though the tournament. This was also the first time I got to play Chad, and as expected he destroyed me with ease. I played some other friendly matches and was actually playing pretty well. I was going toe to toe with Daniel Zaman, who is a pretty good georgia smasher. Then the tournament started. Again, I lost all of my pool matches. I had my epiphany during my last pool match. It was against a guy who's name i think was Korg. He played Marth and so did I. I began the match doing well and got an early lead. Then he gained up on me and eventually won the round. I was trying to figure out why I'd lost it. He was hitting me with random f-smashes and I was wondering how I kept being open for that. Early in the next match, I realized it.
You see a long time ago, back in the MLG Forum days, I'd heard this legendary quote from pro smasher Isai. Whenever someone'd ask him for smash advice, he'd say "Don't Get Hit." and that would be all. Back then I figured he was just trying to be funny and just didn't feel like giving a real response. But now I realize that "Don't get hit" is one of the best pieces of advce you can give an up and coming smasher. This is why Korg was getting those hits on me, I wasn't following Isai's advice. I was throwing out attacks and hoping they connected, I wasn't playing smart. All he had to do was wait for me to miss and counter attack. I was asking to get hit. By then it was too late and he won the set, but I felt like I learned something important, and my friendlys for the remainder of the night confirmed it. I was performing a hell of a lot better than before.
Now my friends don't beat me anymore 1 on 1. That's how drastically this one tip helped me. While people like moogle and thief still beat me, they don't 3 stock me all the time anymore.
And here I am. No longer a noob. Not a pro by any means, but I'm ready to head that way. And hopefully you will read along as I make the transition, I'll share all of my reflections and epiphanies along the way.
MLG
I really don't remember how I discovered competitive smash. I think I may have stumbled upon the wikipedia article for Ken Hoang, who is easily the most important and influential (and even in his retirement one of the best, previously THE hands-down best) smasher of all time. That led me to the MLG Website. There I learned everything. I learnedf what a wavedash was, what SHFFLing was, and all the advanced techniques that 90% of smash bros. owners probably still don't know about.
I watched videos of MLG events, of pros like Ken and Isai, and marvelled at how much control and style they had with their characters. I picked up my game and tried to duplicate, but I could not.
My downfall has always been my lack of patience with things like that. When I HAVE to be patient, I'm very patient, one of the most you'll ever find. But with something like a video game, I rarely put in the time.
Thief
What was it about this game then? I think it was because I was already addicted to it. I didn't mind playing it for hours at a time. But no matter how many hours I put in, I still couldn't do those wavedashes or L-cancels. I could only short hop around fifty percent of the time.
One day I noticed a flyer for a smash bros. tournament on the bulletin board at my dorm. I've been to smash bros. tournaments before, but none with actually GOOD players. I figured there couldn't be anyone that good in little old Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but when I checked out the rules for the tournament, I noticed they were identical to the rules for MLG tournaments. It's very unlikely that a noob tournament would do things such as turn off items or refer to things like the Ice Climbers Freeze Glitch. I researched, Chris, host of the tournament, and found out that he went by Thief in the smash community. I searched for him on youtube, and sure enough i found a set of him versus GA Wes in a Southern tournament. And I was amazed because these guys seemed to move with the same control and speed as Ken and Isai and all those pros.
I had to work so I missed signups for the tournament, but I caught some of the matches and played a few friendlies. Thief won the tournament pretty easily, but I played a few people who could do all the advanced techniques that I just couldn't master, and got my ass whipped.
Smashboards
Sometime after this I joined smashboards.
I'd heard of smashboards, but I never bothered to join. I think I figured everything I needed to know was pasted to MLG anyway. But I was very wrong. It's not really that smashboards contains better information, its that EVERYONE who is good at the game posts on smashboards. I could talk to Ken or Isai THEMSELVES if I wanted to.
The real reason that smashboards helped me though is the Regional Forums.
They have forums for every region where you can find people in your area who play the game. I figured Alabama wouldn't be too active, but I might as well try. Sure enough there was a thread in the Atlantic South forum called "Alabama Thread". It was started by a guy named Moogle, and it already had around 20 pages. I posted in it and introduced myself. Turns out most of the active Alabama smashers live in Huntsville which is about two hours away from Birmingham, and 3 from Tuscaloosa.
Thief held a second tournament, and this time Moogle showed up. He brought another smasher from Huntsville, Sensai. There were less people at this tournament but more good people total. I teamed with my roomate and we had to fight, among other people, ragnarock and Mr. P, two really really good players from Mobile. I remember a guy asked me before the tournament, "Are you on smashboards?" I said yeah and he was like "So you know about wavedashing and stuff right?" I said yes. I could wavedash about 80 percent of the time by then, but during the heat of the battle I rarely even thought about pulling it off.
In singles, we did a double elimination tourney, and I had to fight Thief first round, and he four-stocked me, then three-stocked me. (We start off with four lives (stock)...four stocked means he still had all four of his left at the end of the match). He moved so quickly, I really did not know what to do. The second round I played a guy named Cheap who played Peach. His peach was not as fast as Thief's Fox, so I thought I may have had a chance, but he beat me pretty soundly. And just like that I was out.
Come to find out, Moogle and Sensai took first and second in that tournament. They beat Thief! At the time this was crazy to me, that there were actually many great players in this area.
I wanted to be that good. So I began to practice like crazy. For a long time I played only Marth, but I noticed that at time he was hard for me to control at that time. He was sort of floaty, so sometimes I would be in the air longer than I wanted to sometimes. So I started playing Roy, who by that time I noticed that the majority of the smash community considered a very bad character. But I'm not one to go along with the crowd just because they say something, so I picked up Roy as my new main, and I liked it. So I practiced with Roy. Eventually I got wavedashing and L-Cancelling down to about 90 percent accuracy. I could shield grab and crouch cancel and SHFFL, I thought I was ready. There's no way my friends could beat me now right? Wrong. I played against my friends who had no idea about advanced techniques, and the results were about the same as they were before. Sometimes I'd win, sometimes they'd win. Imagine how frustrating that was for me. There was something I was missing. Maybe it was this mysterious thing people always talked about on smashboards, "Mindgames".
mslano
The beginning of my new birth as a smasher began that fateful day when I went to the Alabama thread as usual and saw a post by a guy I'd never seen post before; Michael, or as he's known inthe smash community mslano. He said he lived in Hoover and was looking for folks to play with. Hoover is like twenty minutes from my house in Birmingham! I contacted him and we set up a day to play. As I expected he was a lot better than me, another good smasher! And he played Roy! I thought this was excellent, he could give me tips, and that he did.
The huntsville smashers mentioned that they played together twice a week, but I never was assertive enough to actually go. Mslano however was already cool with the huntsville guys, so he had no problem going. I tagged along with him, and got to see moogle again as well as other Huntsville smashers such as coach, mackendra, munkus, and jwt. They all destroyed me. I believe I won 1 match against jwt during the end when he was getting sleepy and that's all. These guys were good.
I went to huntsville a few more times and met some other smashers. There were actually some that I could beat, and that made me happy that I wasn't the worst competitive smasher in Alabama, because for a while it just seemed like everyone was just on another level than I was. At one of the smash fests moogle showed me the tentative Mid-South Power Rankings, which is a list of what a panel of 8 respective smashers think are the best 20 smashers in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Moogle, Thief, and mslano were all on the list. The list just made me want to get better even more.
More Than Just Smash
Somehow, mslano convinced some Tennessee players to crash one of the Hunstville smashfests. Chad, Iori, and ihavespaceballs, to be exact. All of whom were on the Power Rankings list. (Chad and Iori were and still are number 1 and 2 respectively) I remember asking mslano, "Would you say that Chad is better than moogle". He immediately said "yes" with no hesitation. Better than moogle! Geez!
I didn't get a chance to play Chad that day, but I played Iori and Spaceballs and boy did I get whipped. Especially by Iori. I had never gotten my ass whooped in any game that bad before. Iori just seemed to know exactly where I was going to move at all times. Plus he could play with like every character in the game. I don't think he did anything less than 3 stock me all night. Spaceballs destroyed me too. After playing all night, someone wanted to get food, and we went on a legendary trip to the Grocery store, and this is the first time I noticed that the smash community isn't all about smash. Its about hanging out, having fun, telling jokes. Playing the game itself is almost sort of a formality. Just a really fun formality.
After all this playing, I got a lot better, but I still couldn't defeat any of these guys. So I went back and tried against my casual-playing friends. I did better, but they still beat me sometimes. I just didn't get it. I play with people like Chad and moogle, I should be winning, right? I guess I just needed to practice and play more. and that I did. By now I could wavedash and L-cancel pretty much at will. We found a few more Birmingham area smashers, many of whom went to thief's tournaments a few months earlier, including Cheap (the peach that beat me). I still lost to Cheap, even now. Although I could beat some of the guys that raped me back then.
Smash Aid
Then there was Smash Aid V. My first "REAL" tournament. Maybe the biggest Georgia tournament series, hosted by GAWes, who I've heard of, due to those videos I watched of him and Thief, so i knew he was good. Chad, Iori, spaceballs, moogle, mslano, thief and coach all went. This tournament like nearly every tournament had pools and then a bracket. You had to have a good pool's record to make to bracket. I lost all of my pools sets. I won one round against this guy named Boxr, but that was it. My pool was Boxr, Carter, Desu, Laijin, Drumma Boi, Reflex and a Sheik player whose name i can't remember. The only people I recognized were Laijin and Drumma Boi because I'd seen them post on smashboards before. I also recognized Reflex, because he was also on the mid-south Power Rankings. He played Bowser, and he was ridiculously good with Bowser, who is generally percieved as a bad character. It seemed like EVERYONE was good at this tournament. Almost NO ONE was a noob, everyone had some grasp of competitive play. it was amazing. Moogle and Thief got third place in teams, and I was proud because I was rooting for my Alabama brethren.
Just like in Huntsville this was a lot of fun beyond just playing smash, people hung out, told jokes, got food, it was a great experience. It was worth the entry fee even though I had no chance of getting any prize money.
Don't Get Hit
The next tournament I went to, Get Four Stocked IV or G4S4, was a turning point for me. It was my "Aha" moment as a competitive smasher. It happened like halfway though the tournament. This was also the first time I got to play Chad, and as expected he destroyed me with ease. I played some other friendly matches and was actually playing pretty well. I was going toe to toe with Daniel Zaman, who is a pretty good georgia smasher. Then the tournament started. Again, I lost all of my pool matches. I had my epiphany during my last pool match. It was against a guy who's name i think was Korg. He played Marth and so did I. I began the match doing well and got an early lead. Then he gained up on me and eventually won the round. I was trying to figure out why I'd lost it. He was hitting me with random f-smashes and I was wondering how I kept being open for that. Early in the next match, I realized it.
You see a long time ago, back in the MLG Forum days, I'd heard this legendary quote from pro smasher Isai. Whenever someone'd ask him for smash advice, he'd say "Don't Get Hit." and that would be all. Back then I figured he was just trying to be funny and just didn't feel like giving a real response. But now I realize that "Don't get hit" is one of the best pieces of advce you can give an up and coming smasher. This is why Korg was getting those hits on me, I wasn't following Isai's advice. I was throwing out attacks and hoping they connected, I wasn't playing smart. All he had to do was wait for me to miss and counter attack. I was asking to get hit. By then it was too late and he won the set, but I felt like I learned something important, and my friendlys for the remainder of the night confirmed it. I was performing a hell of a lot better than before.
Now my friends don't beat me anymore 1 on 1. That's how drastically this one tip helped me. While people like moogle and thief still beat me, they don't 3 stock me all the time anymore.
And here I am. No longer a noob. Not a pro by any means, but I'm ready to head that way. And hopefully you will read along as I make the transition, I'll share all of my reflections and epiphanies along the way.
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