I’ll write more about STLBarWarz in a future post as I talk about my road to fighting game growth, but some thoughts about tonight’s outing, which was my third trip to the St. Louis FGC (bi-)weekly:

After some work the last two weeks and my session last week where I learned that I’m functionally horrible at the game, I’d hoped that I’d get a first round match-up where I could try to get some work in, maybe win a round or two, and see if I could push into another round.

Well…

German Luger is a name that I knew even before I started trying to engage with the StL scene, and I’d watched his Vega play in SFIV. I knew I was in for a match I was probably not prepared for both because:

• I hadn’t played against German Luger before, and
• I don’t see too many Vega players online, so the tendencies aren’t in my brain very well yet.

This match was also on stream, and I’ll try to grab a highlight of that once it’s up on YouTube and critique my own performance. I have already taken a look at the video and I can see quite a bit I did poorly. I did not control any space at all in the first game and was pretty soundly roughed up.

For the second game, I had more success with pushing into my opponent’s space, but I did poorly on some of my reactions (I dropped at least three possible combo opportunities, and failed to connect some cr.MK > MK tatsu combos). A lot of this was just nerves, which is something I’ll need to work on as I try to play more in-person matches.

I also made the mistake of not paying attention to my opponent’s V-gauge, and one round that I lost was due to my getting whiff punished by a Claw V-Trigger. I use st.HK to try to control a lot of space as Ken, and I completely forgot that a single whiff would mean I’d die to V-Trigger followed by Critical Art.

Such is life.

This sent me to losers, where for once I did not lose to the same player:

First, I want to point out that I won my first game ever at the weekly, which I’m taking as a sign of growth and really all I wanted out of the night.

Second, I would have taken the set if I’d played more calmly. The first game was mine, with decent space control and some good interrupts. (Omi was playing as Karin.) The second game I bombed because I got too excited and got a touch too aggressive. And the third game was just me making all the wrong guesses pretty much everywhere.

This match was not on stream, but I feel like it was among my better efforts to date. I’m slowly learning to play the person on the other side and not the matchup specifically.