Brackets: http://kumiteintn.challonge.com/KIT16_KI_Top8
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/pandaxgaming
See you all in chat!
Rebroadcast is up! It’s split between two parts.
Part 1 - http://www.twitch.tv/pandaxgaming/v/36043828?t=39m08s
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Watching now. Thanks!
Great stuff by Thompxson, he could have won if he had known the Aria match up better, he let sleep get away with stuff that Aria can’t actually get away with.
Great tourney! Sooo many good matches n comebacks!!!
Rebroadcasts are added to the OP!
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Oh good. Something to watch during the dull moments at work.
I have to say, the comments I made recently about the Jago players? I humbly eat my words. JagoBlake is now fearlessly peppering his neutral game with raw wind kicks, and both players are regularly extending their combos beyond one-chance launcher sweep. It’s clearly paying off, too – did you see how much some of their opponents were holding downback at midscreen? ~80% of the time, as they damn well should. 
I think the main change I’d still like to see is more laser sword, but I’d have to look at the replays more closely to make better sense of their pressure decision-making. Also at this point I might be backseat driving too much.
Jagoblake was funny to watch, but pretty immature.
Thompson was better. Sleep is still the king he’ll probably win KI world Cup. Or maybe Paul B
My bet is still on Rico Suave. But its maybe because he is my favorite KI Player beside LCD and PaulB
I think their pressure options were chosen largely to avoid being shadow countered. If you notice, Blake and Thompson almost never did normal->special, except on hit. Raw overhead, pause. Low forward, pause. Frame MK’s. Very few double roundhouses. Their offense was pretty insistent, but largely not shadow counterable. I was actually really impressed by both of their play.
Totally forgot about Rico. He is ofcourse a very good pick to take the WC
Again, I’d have to watch the replay again and think about it.
I think it’s pretty hard to shadow counter a lot of Jago’s pressure, double roundhouse and special cancels aside. A lot of Jago’s buttons, e.g. clMK, any light button, recover so quickly that he can block or even stuff most shadow counters. The timing of a shadow counter also matters, and varying your strings makes it hard to place a successful shadow counter on prediction – and if it fails, they’re down a bar of meter and probably getting opened up.
I mean, yes you need to break up your pressure for baits, but my concern is that half of Jago’s gameplan is about staying at frame advantage in his opponent’s face forever. If you can’t do that, shouldn’t you pick a character who can similarly do a few frame traps here and there, but can also pull out some more potent mixups?
My gut is saying that it’s a situation not entirely unlike that of breakable combos: yes a longer combo exposes you to the risk of getting blown up, but combo breakers are hard, and the reward for lockouts and counter-breakers and even baseline longer combos that the opponent didn’t risk a break on outweighs the times you get broken. SImilarly, longer pressure strings risk being blown up by shadow counters and reversals, but both of those things are hard, one costs meter and the other rarely leads to much, and being able to prolong your strings gives you a greater chance of landing your mixups and punishing attempts to escape for which the rewards generally outweigh the risks.
But iuno, I can comment on the combo system with some modicum of authority since it’s so easy to model. Pressure is a little harder.
This was a fantastic tournament! Top notch play all the way through and some great back and forths throughout the top 8.
I too was very happy to see top players finally starting to use more counter-breakers and longer combos in their game play. Things that they always have seemed to shy away from, probably because of the risks involved. But the rewards in those things can greatly outweigh the risks. Especially when you feel you have a good read on your opponent in the heat of battle.
Exciting stuff, start to finish.
I missed pool play, but Top 8 was great! I was pulling for the Jago’s all the way.
Blake did very well, but honestly I felt like the pressure got to him. When he fought Bass, at the start I though he’d run him over, but he wasn’t playing as confidently as I’ve seen him play before. Towards the end of that match I really could see him falling a part. It was sort of sad to watch, but then he sort of made up for it wen he took out Nicky (great match btw).
In the Sleep vs. Blake matchup, that was heart pounding-ly hype! I was pulling for Blake all the way (again), but yeah, Sleep IS Kan-ra…so that win wasn’t surprising, though it is interesting that Blake made Sleep switch off ARIA to Ra, but Sleep stuck with ARIA for GF’s. Hmmm…
Thompson played great! I thought he had the tournament in the bag after he styled on both Bass and Sleep. I think Thompson shot himself in the foot though, as you could see in his face that he wasn’t to serious as he was smiling and bouncing in his chair at the beginning of GF’s. Sleep was stone faced and determined, and as the fight dragged on, the happy-go-lucky attitude that Thompson had just melted away. The more and more the match played out, the more and more evident it was that Sleep wasn’t going to be stopped. Sleep is a determined man, and deserved that win.
All in all, I loved watching KIT this year. Really looking forward to KI WC at the end of the month, and I hope that Blake and Thompson are ready. I want so bad for a Jago to take this tourney…
is there anybody that could post this to youtube? twitch is running like garbage for me
PandaxGaming just posted the playlist a few mins ago. Here it is…
dude thanks so much!
Cheezit Crescents is Sleep terrifying to watch.
I feel like every time he chooses a new character he completely changes the way I look at it (he was my first introduction to Rushdown Kan Ra at Frosty Faustings… Back when people were worried Kan was too weak)
That being said a lot of his combos got pretty samey after a while. Which means either he’s pretty much got ARIA optimized, or someone with the right frame of mind could start consistently breaking him…
…
If they can get in.
Imo the reason he kept doing the same combo is because Thompxson wasn’t willing to take a guess break on the ambiguous grenade arcs. This pretty much just let Sleep think “hey, if he’s not gonna try and break it this is just free damage for me.” I think only once near the end did he try and break it and at that point it was more of a “i’m gonna lose anyway so might as well” type thing.