Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Episode 8: A Certain GODSGARDEN Event








     I'm sure you guys know by now the people behind GODSGARDEN6 will be hosting MBAACC as it's featured game. I'm sure you also know from SRK or MBread that Donjon Network's own Silent Shinobi will be restreaming the event along with hosting a little hotel party / tournament for the occasion. What you may or may not know, depending on if you follow me on twitter or not is that I'm in the process of going to Japan specifically for this event. Now I know what you're thinking..."Brandino I thought you said you was done with MB when you played Skullgirls?" and you know what you'd be 100% right if they never announced this event. I was more or less ready to move onto another game unless a big MB event was announced, in the US or otherwise and it just so happens that GODSGARDEN6 is that event. I really didn't have interest in going to GG6 until Shinobi and I were talking about potentially restreaming the event. I just figured if I have opportunity to fly to Alabama and help him restream what is exactly stopping me from going to Japan? So after talking to my older cousin who lives there and agreed to house me during my time there I made a much bigger effort to try and go.

     This particular tournament is sort of weird for me because not only is it my first time playing in Japan, but I really don't have a way to effectively train for me. Generally in US events I have a very good idea on what to expect from my competition from consistently playing them throughout the years, but this time I'm not only going to be in a new environment, but I'm also going to be playing against players I've never played before and who are most likely better than me. I'm not really accepting the advice of just cracking out in training mode because I'm at the point now where training mode isn't really helping my weaker areas outside of keeping my execution up to par. I don't have access to strong, dedicated MB players within respectable distances so I can't even grind match-ups properly.Now you may be wondering why don't I just watch match videos of my competition and to be honest I really don't like watching matches that don't have my character because I don't feel like I'm learning anything from it. The neutral game is play out differently from character to character so what benefit would I get watching a Warc vs. Satsuki matchup? Now this also serves another problem that no one really plays F-Ciel, much less the way I play her so watching match videos, while an option, isn't really a strong one for me. So with that said...how am I going to train up for this event? The answer is simple: not to psyche myself out and just enjoy the experience. I've always had that problem a month or so before a major where I get very, VERY anxious and to be honest I'm still a bit anxious, but it's less about how well I'm going to do and more so just me preparing for the event. I'm essentially in the worst conditions to be training for a major for this game, especially one of this caliber. The best solution I've come up for it is just to treat this tournament as a once in a lifetime experience. Naturally I'm going to aim to do my best, but given the competition I'd be happy to not go 0-2 at this point. I'm just going to play as much as possible when I get there and just not get star-struck when I find myself playing a well known JP player. Not that I've had problem with this playing Garu in the past, but going up against the likes of GO1, Leo, Hare (insert any top JP player here) would be daunting for anyone, but at the end of the day they're players just like anyone else and they'll be prone to make mistakes so I'll just go in and give it my best. Yeah it sort of sucks that I don't have an elaborate training regime for this event, but when the preparation is more mental than actually training what can you expect?

     Now does this mean I'm done with Skullgirls? No. Does this mean I'm putting Skullgirls on the backburner? Yes I am.

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