It's actually been a little while since Climax of Night now, I've put it off for a while, right? Let's just say for a while that I've been [working on it] and I hope you let me off with just this.
On the front end, I'll say that I definitely enjoyed the event. It was nice to see so many people that I hadn't seen in a while, as well as meet new people for the first time. I'd been in an advisory role of sorts for Climax of Night too, so even though I wasn't one of the main components of creating the experience (I think), I was lucky enough to still be able to see behind the scenes all of the effort that brought this amazing event to fruition.
I can't speak enough about the efforts, expertise and creativity of the Climax of Night team. This dedicated group of people are some of the best in class and I find myself very fortunate to be able to work with and watch them at work. A lot of other gushing I could do about the event has been said by many others, so I guess I'll call this section here (lol).
--- Before Pools ---
As far as my player experience was, I felt like I had a strange sort of mood going into the event. It was my first real major post EVO (went to RBC Philly however) and while I felt like I was still growing, I don't think I had any particular goals going in. I more or less expected to get out of pools, maybe play a match or two in losers and then scratch out. I was pretty okay with that, actually...
Then I saw who my opponent was supposed to be in pools: Silent is a player that I respect, playing a character that I thought I generally had an expectation of being able to handle. When we played at EVO though, I ended up coming away from playing him (and Boogie/MateoKK) with more questions than answers. Looking back at the EVO videos, the matches were a bit closer than I thought, but I had gotten handled pretty thoroughly.
I think I'm a rather vengeful person--- in game of course, so I naturally wanted to avenge my loss to him. In that, I found my goal for the weekend. "I want to beat Silent and get out of pools in Winner's Side," was basically what I told myself. So, I stacked some of the earlier work I did for anti-Phonon with some theory crafting, some studying of common strings that I saw he liked to do and a small bit of watching/giving advice for when Squish played against Clim the week before.
--- Saturday Pools (UNI) ---
Mentally, I traced my way through the brackets. I had to play Melonade's Gordeau, AC's Hilda, SmartSteer's Orie before fighting silent. I think that I ended up starting pretty slow against Melonade, her neutral was pretty good, but it didn't seem like she was that confident on offense, so I was able to slowly pick my way in after getting her Gordeau to the corner and work my mixup from there. After that, I played AC in a pretty basic way, I think. I tried to keep my pressure relatively safe against VO and tried to mix up my throw timing without committing too much on offense.
After that, I had to wait a little bit before I was able to play Smart Steer. I knew going in that I usually do pretty well against him, but the Orie MU is such that could easily go wrong if you get too complacent. Thankfully, I took the first game pretty cleanly. The second game got pretty slopping with a few drops and honestly some lax judgment calls, but I ended up winning that set.
At this point, I had accomplished my base goal. I got safely to Winner's Finals and I was guaranteed out of pools. I wanted to beat Silent and get out in Winner's but the main portion had been done. So, when we met up, I was pretty relaxed. I knew what I had to do and I had practiced it coming up to the event. And actually he showed me one of the tricks I had practiced the first thing into the set, 66b (1) 22a 236b. You can actually stand parry every part of that, but if you parry the 22A, it ended up locking out the cancel (on the dummy). If you parry the 236b, there's nothing that phonon can do and you get a guaranteed 5a or 5b punish which I did at the round start. I could have done a better combo, but I thought that showing him I had an immediate answer was probably better than attempting something harder.
Looking at it now though, I think both Silent and I ended up playing really nervously and sloppily lol. There were a lot of drops on both sides and surprisingly, especially in the last games, he let a LOT of jumps through that were really risky. Eventually it seemed like he got worn down and I won the set 2-0. I hope that I get to see Silent again soon and we can play another set, lol.
But nonetheless, I got out of pools in Winner's Side with my opponent being burgertime. The last time I saw her, we played at Combo Breaker where I lost a FT7 6-7. I had some ideas of what I wanted to do, but I didn't have to play again until 11am on Sunday so I figured that it would be fine to worry about it later lol. I still had Melty Blood to do and the Teams Exhibition that I ended up running.
--- Saturday Pools (Melty, UNI Teams) ---
Melty went about as well as expected. Because Paragon Dissonance wasn't there, I got a bye (woo) before losing on stream. I got the first game against the Ryougi I played, but once the switch to Tohno was made, it was basically a wrap lol. I lost to (nycz)brandon's Ryougi off stream to go 1-2, about as well as I expected to do.
Later that night, DataFGC's KARA and I would end up running teams together. I'll say on the front end that I'm really thankful for Kara and she was an extremely important part of getting the event to run. With it being pretty late in the night, a lot of the players had already played and wanted to do other things. Additionally, Melty pools were going strong and we had a mix of player and volunteers who were held by it and the other tournaments going on. Thus, we had a lot of drops and difficulties wrangling everyone. I was also playing in the event, which did not make things any easier lol
That couldn't be helped, but Kara was absolutely fantastic. Once everything finally got running, I'd say that it went as smoothly as it could have. As far as my performance went, I was on Team Nebraska (and Co[lumbus]). We played against Team Canada with Psykotik, Rikir, Smartsteer and Chunk Brinkston. I ended up squaring off against Psykotik who I managed to beat, though we ended up tying 2-2 to force a tiebreaker. I believe that Bearzerg and Smartsteer had to face off, with BearZerg ending up as the winner, so we moved on to face the New York team... Which we were swept by lol.
Now that I was eliminated, it was easier to focus on finishing out the event. By about 11pm, I was done and starving so we went out to get some food and that ended my night.
--- Sunday (Top 48) ---
After grabbing some delicious breakfast at ATL's breakfast club with a lot of the NE UNI gang, I went back and prepared a little for Top 48 (functionally Top 24 for me, as I was in Winners). Unfortunately, I didn't get much practice against Merkava... but I thought that my gameplan was probably fine. A little before I talk about the match, I was asked if burgertime and I planned on matching colors with the stage by both Brett and Tari, but we ended up getting Amber Streetlamps on Random... and I chose to play the color I did as a shoutout to ITTN.EXE and because the Browns were playing later that day. So it ended up being a huge coincidence.
As far as the gameplay went... I really just didn't feel like I could start well against her. In retrospect, I don't think how I wanted to play it was wrong per se, but it didn't end up working out that well. I had a few drops like the kill confirm in round 1 game 1 or on some missed conversions, but Sylvie had controlled the pace of the match throughout and won in straight games. There are some decisions that I'd want back, but them's the breaks, right?
I left the ballroom for a bit to use the bathroom and gather myself before I went to play against Psykotik to get into Top 16. This potential matchup was one that I had actually looked forward to, since I had also lost what I thought was a pretty close 3-1 at EVO on my recording, which was his revenge for our MM back at Combo Breaker that I won 5-0.
As I think the nature of our games are now, Psykotik and my match was a pretty grueling affair with slow pacing, timeouts and clutch moments galore. One of the key decisions that I think truly dictated the match was Joe's refusal to make a big commitment at round start. I would take space and jump or try to shoot a fireball round start and he had the 214x series ready. So, on about 5/9 round starts, I think that I lost the first interaction.
Our first round ended with a double down draw on a tatsu vs thrust interaction that turned into a timeout win to put him up 1-0. I followed that with two time out rounds in a 3 round game to take game 2 ,before we had a back and forth three rounds in the last game that he got the better of after catching my backdash with forward movement. The things that I remember sticking out were that he teched I think all but two or so throws, so it was very difficult to open him up.
Psykotik ended up popping off after the win, which I was really happy about, honestly. I didn't feel too beaten up about losing to Joe and Sylvie (though I'm obviously a little salty about it now--- I wish I won lol) and it's honestly really cool to know that I was pushing someone that much to want to beat me.
Psykotik has been one of the players I respect the most and one of the players I've wanted to beat throughout the version. I had lost to him in New York back in 2018 when we played and I worked really hard to improve on my matchup against Orie. Every time that we had ended up playing up until this year, I felt like I was always behind. But when I saw him at CB, I had basically been beating him throughout the entire weekend before our MM. That was pretty important to me, because I had thought that only I had thought of him to be a rival of mine lol.
To see the work that he put in every other time I'd played him (from CB to EVO to CoN) was pretty inspiring. I felt like I had to be on my toes every time and I was always refining my game to be able to do well. Thus, even though I lost and it's likely the last time that I'll be able to play him in this version, I'm pretty happy to see that someone was looking at me that seriously as a player.
But that ended my tournament run, just shy of Top 16. T-17th/237 is a placing that I'm pretty content with. I think I'll do a shorter blog post later recapping my thoughts about the year, but I think that by the end of the version I've truly put myself in the high level of this game. I don't think that I'm a top player... but I know that I'm a high level one at the very least.
--- Sunday (Post Brackets) ---
After I was done playing in tournament, I felt pretty listless, so I hung around watching the rest of Top 48->16 then got some lunch and took a nap before I came down to watch Melty prior to Top 16. I was actually zoning out as they started to do the transition to it and Shinobi came up on the mic. Not really focusing in on what he was saying, I happened to look up and I saw Miller and Dante just looking at me. I kinda blinked my eyes and while Shinobi was still talking, they were like "We already know that they're talking about you. Go up there!"
So that's the story about me realizing that I was being recognized for my efforts in the community, lol. Even thinking about it now as I type this with this neat trophy next to me, it feels kinda surreal. I recognize that I do a lot for the scene and I know that my (relatively) large following is partially before that, but it's still wild to actually be acknowledge for stuff that I do. It's so natural to just do what I end up doing that I don't even really think about it... but I really appreciate the award and everyone that worked on putting it together.
I'm extremely thankful for everyone that I've gotten to meet, play with, and interact with because of this game. Playing UNI has lead to some of the coolest experiences in my short 28-year-old life. As we finish out the year and move towards the next version in 2020, I hope that the community will be able to continue along this path that I'm so proud to be able to take. I also want to thank #blackexcellence for doing the damn thing, DATAFGC and funkyp's team for the event as well as all of the Climax of Night staff, artists, volunteers and more that make events like this special. I'm extremely honored to have been able to work with you all for this event. Melo and Chaesu, thank you so much for the gifts again, they have made me so happy.
Normally, I would do a long extended shoutout section at the end of something like this... but I think that I'll just end it about here. It's been a pleasure being a part of this wonderful community. Please look forward to my personal 2019 reflection and the Year-End-Review which is to come before the end of the year!
