Somehow, I got it in my mind to do some writing this morning. Internally, I told myself that I would write this blog post soon after the last one... but a month and some change is still soon for me, right?
I'm about two month distanced from the event, but as you probably can tell from the title, I'll be taking a portion of this time to talk about Climax of Night. Continuing from the end of the last blog post covering CEOtaku, I was in a place where I wasn't sure what my relationship would be with fighting games even as I was returning from a satisfying end of that event.
I wasn't going to many, if any local events in Columbus partially out of my current hesitancy to put myself in crowds more than I had to and also because I wasn't interested in playing anything other than UNI at the time. That said, I was playing online with less frequency than I had in the early part of the fall so I was going into Climax of Night without much more additional practice.
For CoN, I actually overcompensated a bit on my non-tournament experience because the tournament took up such a large part of CEOtaku. I had the money and time to spend 4 days in a hotel room by myself. I'd put the money away for it, but even with a block discount that shit is expensive!! Really makes me appreciate my time with Sugoi Factory from a money perspective...
The new hotel was actually really amazing this time around, though getting food without a car/ubereats was more inconvenient than before. As expected of Shinobi, the place had arranged a space for us to set up and play casuals in the lobby for a set amount of time and it had an arcade room/casuals area available outside of the tournament area. The first night in, I went to dinner with Eva, Sikanto, Bri and one other person whose name I unfortunately didn't remember.
I didn't have to play in an official tournament until Saturday, so this was a really enjoyable time for me. It's unfortunate that I couldn't sleep very well though, lol.
---
On Friday, what I did have was teams tournaments. I entered UNI with Miller2B and God Hunta, MBTL with God Hunta and MBAACC with Hamel and Zepolete. Special thanks to all of you who decided to play with me! The SBO-style of team event was extremely creative and cool. I really liked that we had a full day where this was the focal point of the time. It was truly a main event instead of how teams events can feel tacked on, in regards to the dedication allocated to it.
I just wish that I had won a single game accross all of the team games I'd entered... Thankfully, I had good teammates to carry. Miller and Hunta carried us through round one of our team tournament, as did Hamel and Zepolete... and that was the end of our journeys. We got matched up with JJ and Fendo in MBTL too, lol. After that, I stayed around to watch a little more before getting dinner from Publix with Bryce and Chou, then going back to my room to rest until it was bed time.
There were a lot of strong players there, but for whatever reason I didn't choose to play a whole lot of games. I felt a little bad about it at the time, but in retrospect, I liked just playing a couple of sets and then leaving. I wonder if the Coronavirus pandemic has just changed the amount of time I want to be in crowds now, not that it's over or anything. Nevertheless, I couldn't end up sleeping that well... so I ended up watching dekillsage's stream whenever I couldn't sleep.
---
Saturday, I was actually awake from about 3:30 AM. I'd turned in the previous night around 8:30 or so, so I had gotten adequate sleep... but it was so early that I was up without anything to do. After failing to put myself back to sleep, I went down to the gym and worked out for about an hour. The gym in that hotel was really respectable and somehow or another it ended up envigorating me even though I finished my workout around 5 or something. From there, I did a test stream on the wired connection and went down to eat a light breakfast.
I didn't have to play until the afternoon, so after chopping it up with some of the early risers, I went back to my room and took a 45 min nap. My side of the pool had Guiseppe Byakuya and Liquid Floats Akatsuki before I had to play GreyFaiden. I don't typically like fighting Byakuya or playing the Mirror, but I felt like I was playing pretty well and won two contested sets.
I would go on to have to play Grey to attempt to get to Winner's Top 32. Now, Nanase is a matchup that I have a good amount of comfort in. I think it's a match where Akatsuki controls a lot of the engagement, especially if Nanase decides to play in the air or with certain fireball setups. Watching and playing Grey in the past made me feel like as long as I didn't mess things up too much that I could handle myself.
My conservative start saw me down 0-1, 0-1 though like when I played Duesta at Frosty Faustings before I committed to my reads and pushed the tempo. I had some sequences I liked, a hard call out here and there and I surived 2-1 to finish my Saturday early.
Much like the previous day, I stuck around for a little before heading back to my room to chill and watch the festivities on the stream. Tabby asked me to commentate EC vs WC's 10v10 later that night, so I needed to save as much energy as possible. That night was extremely fun, getting to commentate with Tabby, Cyn (foxof's wife) and Casey for a fantastic UNI demonstration. I ended it off with some shots of Blue Flame alongside NEFB+family and went to bed.
---
A foolish mistake because the alcohol dehydrated me and didn't let me sleep that well. I grabbed breakfast in the morning with foxof and cyn in the lobby and vibed for a bit before I was set to go down and play in Top 32. My opponent was PapaPesto, fresh off of a fantastic run at CEOtaku. Now, Carmine vs Akatsuki is not a good matchup for Carmine at all. Pesto also has experience with Salty and Silent near Texas, so I thought that I would have to work pretty hard for it. I think that my passive play was my downfall in this set here. Pesto did a fantastic job taking initiative even in spots where I thought he would wait. I never was able to get started and he won 2-0.
In loser's side, I had to wait a little bit until I would find out who my opponent was. Unfortunately for me, it would be TrockDemon. Trock and his Yuzuriha dumpstered me pretty badly in my trip up to New York for Crossover Arc 2022... but through talking to Ruric and a bit more practice, I had a little more confidence this time around. I didn't think it would be enough to win, but games still had to be played. I thought also that I had been doing well in my casual matches with Yuzu up to that point, too.
Yuzuriha vs Akatsuki is a terribly difficult match in the neutral phases because of her mobility and ability to set the pace. It requires a lot of patience to pick your spots while not giving up big hits. I think Trock was playing a bit nervously as well, which allowed me to storm off to a game one lead. Trock pulled it back in game two, baiting my antsy decisions to anti air before storming off into a commanding lead in game 3 as well. The ending of that match speaks for itself though...
Finally, my last tournament set of the tournament would match me up against Masoma. I lost to him at Frosty Faustings in Winner's Side Top 16 on his Seth and unfortunately, it happened again. Much like vs PapaPesto, I started slow and he took initiative from me pretty heavily. Some very unfortunate anti-air timings slammed the door on my runback and I lost 1-2 to finish at 13th place.
Everything equal, I thought I played well enough to give myself opportunities to get to Top 8 that weekend, even though I fell 2 spots short. I don't think anything in particulary clicked for me and it didn't feel like I elevated my quality of my play much either, so I'm not sure what I wanted to take from the weekend. That said, it was definitely the most enjoyable experience I had at a tournament outside of Combo Breaker and a good way to end my major run for 2022.
---
And so, here's what my major campaign looked like in 2022:
Frosty Faustings XV: 7th/162
Combo Breaker 2022: 25th/190
CEOtaku 2022: 17th/116
Climax of Night Season 5 [arising!]: 13th/199
I'm honestly happy that I was able to improve my placings at larger tournaments as I went along, especially with everything that went on in my life this year. I was also able to take a Tension Shift and MI Mixup #1 over strong Midwest competition to end the year. This year, I also did updates to the 17 Bible which is my Combo Document and also the #CLR_17_Trial advanced Akatsuki combo trials. If they're interesting to you, please play around with them as much as you'd like.
2023 comes with it a lot of uncertainty for me. I'm attempting to send myself to EVO Japan, where there isn't an official UNI tournament but I'll get to test myself against Japanese players.
If I can do that, I won't be at a major in the US until potentially Combo Breaker 2023. Otherwise, I'll try to make Crossover Arc and maybe even Slashback if EVOJ is a no-go. I'm still enjoying the journey. Thank you all for reading up to this point and also for spending any time you have with me this year, I can't believe it's been 5 years of blog posts already!
As always, if like what I do or you'd like to support me you can find me here:
Twitch
Twitter
YouTube
Ko-Fi
See you next time!
