Loki and Berzerk spreading the word at some fighting game event I can’t even remember. (Getting old.)
Now as all puny humans know, Loki is god.
Brendon Watson is the most experienced tournament organiser in Melbourne, and he was the tournament director behind Shadowloo Showdown 2012, a monster of a tournament, and quite frankly, a humongous logistical nightmare!
How was the tournament organised? Brackets? Pool seedings? Staff and game scheduling? How did he get the magic numbers for setups and bracket sizes?
If you wanna get the inside scoop of how the tournament side of Shadowloo Showdown was planned and organised, be sure to check out Loki’s guest article on Ziggy’s Bracketed series:
I’ll be honest. I am a dumb person. I get my tiny brain mixed all up into tangled vermicelli when Loki and Spoony come up to me and say xx number of players with xx number of setups produces xx number of matches which means we need xx number of hours so divide total number of players by xx… So I’m really grateful that Loki wrote down all the math behind everything so a dumb person like me could reread the numbers section four or five times before I finally understood everything.
I have the greatest respect and gratitude for what Loki has done for the Melb FGC, so give his article a read, it will definitely make you smarter.
Ryan is one of the most illustrious fighting game players of all time, and it was pretty cool to see a player of such history come to our shores and compete. Igor couldn’t make it this time, so I got to delve into Mr Hart’s mind, and talk about his extensive history as a pro gamer, his thoughts on Shadowloo Showdown 2012 and the upcoming EVO. Ryan also shares some very honest perspective on the pressures and negatives of being a top player, and talks about the scene in London and Europe in general. He even talks about his first travels to Japan, for the Ehrgeiz world championship!
For some reason this blows my mind.
Our apologies for taking so long to put this out, but there were a few delays in the process. As always, you can listen to the podcast below or read the transcript of the entire thing if you prefer. A big thanks to Rossco aka Zerokill for the sick banner, and also thanks to Ali and the Shadowloo guys for accommodating my interview request on Shadowloo Monday and for creating this event that made all this possible in the first place. Hope you guys like it.
Ryan Hart: Oh it’s been amazing here. I just didn’t expect it to be so nice. I mean, every where’s nice, let me try to break it down a bit better than that. I think Australia surprised me for how chilled out and relaxed it is here. People seemed to be you know, genuinely happy with just being alive, you know? And I don’t always get that feeling about people. And I’ve never had such a friendly, you know, community around me. Like, whenever I’m on the street people just seem to say hi or just… Yeah I dunno, people are just so free here. Even now I’ve got that feeling in Melbourne and in Sydney as well.
M: Even the drunken bums are really cheerful and…
R: Even them!
M: (Laughs.)
R: They’re happy about their extra bottles of beer and it’s cool. Um, but I’ve been…but yeah it’s definitely changed how I think about places I’d like to live and stuff like that. So.
So I’m very happy here.
M: 2) So what do you think of Shadowloo Showdown? How’s your experience been so far?
Aw man. I don’t know why they bothered with that. It was awful.
M: (Laughs.)
R: Nah, Shadowloo Showdown was awesome man. I mean to be able to hold a multi-game tournament with that many top players, that…that just gets a round of applause. It’s not easy. It’s not even easy to organize a bedroom tournament with your local mates let alone have… internationals come from every part of the world, you know?
M: Yeah.
R: Just to be under one roof for a few days. That’s…that’s brilliant.
M: Have you heard much about the Australian scene before Shadowloo Showdown? R: The Australian scene…Well I’ve met the couple that I’ve seen at EVO. Like Heavy Weapons…
M: Like Toxy, Bomb.
R: …I’ve met Toxy. So you know, I knew those guys. And on Facebook we talk sometimes. But yeah, as in the whole scene, didn’t really know much about what went on here. I didn’t know there was a big divide in like the Tekken community and there’s a little bit of beef between Sydney and Melbourne.
M: Yeah Sydney and Melbourne.
R: Stuff like that. Marvel, they had that as well…
M: Yeah yeah.
R: That guy challenging Toxy and stuff.
M: Yeah, salty moneymatches.
R: Yeah, no it’s good. It’s good. I mean, it’s good to have a thriving community that kind of has a bit of pride, you know, that local pride about their scene and they want to be the best in their area or their country, that’s nice.
M: So I mean, since you haven’t heard much about us, what was your primary motivation to come down to Shadowloo Showdown?
R: Um, well I wanted to come to Shadowloo Showdown to…you know, show what Europe has to offer. To show that we have good players in Europe and the U.K. I’ve been travelling everywhere, so. It was nice to come to Australia and just be a part of the event because I couldn’t come to the previous one.
M: Right.
R: Yeah, just a few things…I think the Shadowloo Showdown staff and my sponsor kind of got in communication with it too late and then things couldn’t really get off the ground.
So this time we made sure it happened properly and we were allowed to come down. And um, I always enjoy playing with high level players, no matter where they’re from. And this time I got to play lots of different ones. In and out of tournament. And it’s always a good learning experience for me.
M: Yeah, I saw you playing tons of moneymatches!
R: Yeah, I know right! Heh.
It’s always a big favourite for me. Playing moneymatches.
M: Yeah.
R: That was good fun.
M: So was there anything in particular that you liked about the event or something that you wish we could’ve done better or?
R: Um…let me just think. Let me just think.
It’s sometimes hard to take it all in because when you’re one of the players that plays multiple games you spend most of your time running around, and you’re not really looking around for what could be done better, etc.
Um…I liked the first day, with the VIP day where you have casual setups and an exhibition area that was streamed. That was nice.
Um…I don’t know. It was okay, for me anyway. I mean, other people might have different opinions but for me…it was brilliant. You had space for people to play casuals, you had the tournament area. You had the people that were running their brackets and were clearly marked in their red tops. So everything was amazing.
I mean, the way you guys sorted out our accommodation, so that we had a place to stay. The fact that we all got to stay together was a really big thing for me. That was really nice. That we had like the UK guys like me and F word and the Marvel guys all on the same floor. And Andreas of course as well. And we also had like the Japanese next door and across the hall. You know. And then downstairs we had the Americans…so it was really, really good.
(esp. of a task, process, or journey) Requiring considerable effort and time.
(esp. of speech or writing style) Showing obvious signs of effort and lacking in fluency.
Synonyms:
toilsome – arduous – hard – painful – difficult – heavy
My alarm rings at around six, and we get our bleary-eyed butts down to the venue. We start shuffling things around for an hour until more people show up. Spoony shows up at seven. I think Kevin and Andrew shortly after. Chris also shows up around this time. Apparently, Chris was driving all night, and came back to the venue around 520 AM. Not wanting to wake us early, he decided to take a short nap in his car and message us at six. Now he slightly overslept, but that was basically all the sleep he had that night! I could only shake my head as he told me this. And as it turns out, all of this definitely took its toll on Chris’ body.
Setup goes more smoothly than the day before, and more of our gear turns up- all the individual setups that people were volunteering to bring. Finally as the doors open at nine, we’re mostly done. I asked Spoony if I could go up and sleep for a couple of hours as I have to help him run Soul Calibur in the morning. He says sure, but I somehow get sidetracked and end up playing ST casuals, the first casuals I’ve played all weekend.
I play a couple of games before Yang sits down and bodies me with Boxer, Guile and Chun Li. It’s kind of funny, but the only handful of games I got in all weekend all turned out to be against Yang! Be it ST or Marvel, he bodied the crap out of me in both games. Especially in Marvel I was really dropping everything.
I didn’t notice anything on that day, because maybe I was too out of it, but I really noticed a difference a few days after SS, when I was back at work and finally got a good eight hours of sleep and showed up to Bluehouse again. I noticed I could anti-air and do combos again and whiff punish. The level of my play was at sludge level all weekend and I basically only noticed on the Tuesday after what a big difference sleep makes. I think next time I volunteer for TO duties, I should probably not enter anything as I’m gonna do horrible anyway. I suppose it is not too much of a sacrifice to make as I am not a top player anyway, and would probably lose early on even if I was well-rested. But for guys like Burnout, who is an actual top player in Marvel, I think the lack of sleep and running around really affected his play and his execution and that’s a shame because I personally wanted to see him do well and rep Melbourne. That’s also why, even though I asked them to run brackets at BAM the year before, I did not ask Shadowfox and Antman to help with brackets because I consider them top players now and defenders of Melbourne’s honour. But Shadowfox especially ended up doing a ton of crap over the weekend, driving non-stop and being a stream runner etc. I’m not sure how well he did in tournament. But I’m glad I didn’t ask Antman because he went on to upset Tokido!
Talk about a Murderface…
So I was there playing ST casuals with Yang. After a while, I went back to the SC stations, wondering why Spoony hadn’t called me. Apparently he thought I had gone off to sleep and given my bracket clipboard to Borgie, even though I was just a few metres away at the casual stations. (In hindsight, I should probably have taken that nap after all.) Borgie seemed happy to run my bracket, so I let him do that, and only helped out with SC later in the brackets.
While running SC I saw a couple of hype matches like Tokido and Runis’ matches…I watched Spoony beat Eita 😛 And boy is Eita a funny dude. Giggling and doing funny shit his whole match.
I can’t remember who eliminated me, but I remember who I lost to first.
So Spoony comes up to me and says, if you win your first match, you get to play Justin Wong next.
I’m thinking in my head, cool. I haven’t played an international all weekend.
Spoony; you’re playing Robdawg.
Consternation immediately enters my mind.
Spoony tells me; don’t worry. Just mash BB over and over again and you will beat Robdawg.
First round, Robdawg perfects me with his Xiba. I watch him just mashing away on his buttons and just feeling so depressed and resigned that I don’t know how to deal with that at all.
Second round, hilariously, I decide to heed Spoony’s advice and mash on BB and I actually perfect him back. Continue reading →
This is some of the best and most insightful writing I’ve ever read about Marvel 3. But I kind of expect that from Viscant. I wish I could think about the game or write like that.
I get up around nine in the morning, rubbing grit out of my eye. SS is finally here. Time to do work.
I pack my stuff up and make my way to the venue. I get to CQ around eleven thirty to check in early. First people I see are Bugs and Rossco, busy unloading their stuff from the car. Bugs motions for me to come and help, but I tell them to let me dump my stuff in the room first and then I’ll come and help them. I quickly check in, go upstairs and dump my stuff, but by the time I come down, they’re already gone. Later I discover that Bugs would be making several trips from his/Ali’s place to CQ. Ah, the life of a Shadowloo driver…
I head to the function room, and find the main door locked. Since we’ve run several majors at the CQ already I simply go back down to the car park and navigate my way through the back corridors, which always look like they’re straight out of a Saw movie, to the freight elevator, finally coming up into the function room from the side.
There’s a pile of stuff on the ground that presumably Bugs and Rossco left behind, but otherwise the venue is empty. I walk around for a bit, this is the first time that I’ve seen the extra two rooms that Shadowloo booked for this year. SS1 was held in the Rydges where there was ample space in a plush, classy interior, but the attendance that year wasn’t that good and the bill astronomical. SS2 was held in the CQ, and while the bill was more reasonable the attendance was astronomical, and it was quite stuffy and packed in there last year. I think it’s alright for a BAM, but for the five hundred man plus crowd we had for SS2 and expect more for SS3, I think it was a great decision to book the other rooms.
I was expecting just two small extensions but I was blown away. The other room is much bigger than I expected, it’s almost like the hall we had for SS2 last year is the side room, and this extra room is the main room! A vast floor space with ample room for rows and rows of spectator chairs, at least three times as much spectator space as SS2. Floor to ceiling windows lining one wall of the room, offering a beautiful view of the street, the room feels expansive and much more open than the narrower hallway we had last year…this is awesome.
The bar area is closed off for the moment and we’re only going to get access to it after 8PM, but I estimate we’re at the very least doubling the amount of space for this year’s SS. I stand around for a bit, letting all that empty space sink in for a bit.
I get a text message from Loki saying he’ll be there at twelve thirty and I open the door for Gabneto to come in through the bar entrance. We get cornered by the CQ staff who start asking us tons of questions which we have to helplessly decline and ask them to wait for Loki to show up. A lady asks me if I want linen on the tables, and I helplessly shrug. I ask them if there’s any additional charge, and they say nope and that she’s just worried about having enough linen. I say go for it, and she smoothes over the cloth over the table with one quick hand saying; “I just think it looks just that much better. For photographs and everything. I don’t know, that’s what I think, at least. A woman’s touch.”
I nod and wholeheartedly agree.
White linen! For Street Fighter? Who’d have thought.
The CQ staff start bustling around and I get to know the lady in charge a bit more. She’s really nice and helpful, she’s a real peach, she’s an absolute doll.
Though I think Street Pussy later comes up to me and says that he sees a little bit of strength in her jaw-line, that she’d have a certain ball-busting take no prisoners flavour to her strong womanliness. Gab sagely nods and says to me, but that’s what you like, isn’t it Muttons?
We go down and spot the elitist metal hipster himself, Andrew aka Vitriol on the bench outside. We talk a bit with him and some of the WA dudes who show up like Valk, Mr Chowda, Guillotine Fist and crew, and even Spoony who shows up abruptly until Loki arrives with his car and I grab the Melbourne dudes with me to go start hauling Loki’s stuff up to the venue. Continue reading →
I wake up at 645 AM to catch the Skybus to the airport. I heard from Sol the night before that the first wave of guests arrive at 840AM. I listen to the episode of the Dr. Sub Zero show with Pyrolee, which is a hoot, on my way over to keep from falling asleep.
I get there and the first person I see is Pyro. Apparently he got there two hours before everybody else and he’s toting a nice hand drawn Jay Jay sign on him. Poor Pyro, he got a lot of teasing from everybody. Soon, Igor, Toxy, Carnage, Ramee Ali and Shadowfox show up. Ali asks me “what are you doing here?” and I instantly feel a pall of uselessness seethe through me. I have no car, and thus, have no utility in life.
The guests take very long to come out of the gates, but the first two are Knives and Jay Jay. Jay Jay is cheerful and bubbly as I expected, and we leave her and Pyro to their own devices. I walk up and shake Knives hand. He seems really nice on first impression, and we talk to him a little bit about things.
The next people out are Filipino Champ and DJHuoshen. I’ve met DJHuoshen before when he last came down to Melbourne, and my introduction to him was when I was fiddling around with KOF in the corner at SNL. He came by and actually sat down and immediately tried to teach me the game. DJ is a swell guy, and I was really glad to see him. I also think he looks like a young Christian Bale from American Psycho.
You!…yeah I got this.
Champ had that trademark smirk on his face. He pumps his head as he shakes your hand and looks away quickly. He seems to have a lot of energy for a dude off a long flight. His strong personality definitely comes through in his body language. Continue reading →
I will probably do a longer post later. Hopefully my memory holds up enough for a recap.
Anyway here we go.
Firstly, thank you so much to my Marvel staff, I did we did a alright job.
Gabneto, Fish, James, Kenny, Vin, Juan, Cyrus. Thank you guys so much.
Special shoutouts to James, who worked so hard he blew out his voice, got a fever and headache and was too sick to make it back for Finals day on Sunday. That really really sucks, I’m so sorry man. SS is a lot to handle for first-timers, I know. That’s why on Saturday I ran brackets with the clipboard in one hand and my 2 litre water bottle in my other.
Special shoutouts to Spoony as well. He finished his responsibilities with Soul Calibur already and could’ve fucked off and you know, actually gone and enjoyed himself.
But instead he hung around and did all the extracurricular stuff that I would’ve had a hard time doing while running brackets. Speakers not working? Get Spoony to fix them. Marvel discs missing? Get Spoony to find them while I holler for check-ins. Thanks so much man you were a incredible lifesaver.
Thanks so much Loki. I cannot express how happy and thankful I am that you stepped up to be tournament director this year from the get-go, to provide a steady helm and to run shit when Ali was busy running around doing his driving stuff. All this with a gall bladder operation on the Monday before, you are the man. Sorry I kept asking you stupid questions!
Chris Ho. You are the robot. The cybernetic organism sent from the future to help run Shadowloo Showdown. You work way too hard man. I fear for your burnout. You worked so hard you got too fucked up to make it out of bed on Sunday until late in the day on Sunday. I know how much you love the top 8s, so that must’ve really sucked. You are the motherfucking man as well. Small Chris story that says it all; me and Loki got up at 630AM on Saturday to go down and setup the venue around 7AM, and Chris was supposed to be there but only got in later. Turned up he showed up at the venue at 520AM, decided not to wake us up and message us later and take a small nap, and crashed for the only sleep of the night in his car for two hours. What a soldier.
Shadowfox. You got that asian work ethic and the TO hollering voice. Good shit this weekend man, it’s people like you that make car-less people like me feel like totally useless pieces of shit.
Bugs and Louis, you guys are champions. You should not have to run around for matches while doing the stream Bugs, I also fear for your burnout. Great job guys, and it was real nice to finally meet you in person Louis.
All the rest of the SS staff, Andrew, Dna, Kevin, Penh, Dave, Igor, Rossco, Dna, Juan, Fayd, Rame, Huy, Daniel, Godly Effect, James, Alex, Chris and Apple, thank you so much guys.
Special thanks to Invader Felix who showed up on Friday noon to help set up. Volunteering for the shit work coming from interstate? Thank you sir, and we’ll be happy to have you here down in Melbourne.
Dave, Pyro, Sol. You guys did so much. And Pyro looks so fucking sharp in that suit…Thank you for this event…and get some sleep guys!
Lastly, Ali.
Man. We’re argued and talked and had meetings that went on for ages, and we’ve commiserated…but in the end the job gets done. You drive me crazy Ali, but I love you too bro.
Apologies for the 3 out of 5 snafu with Marvel. I had a conversation about it with Filipino Champ on Thursday and I believe Ali did as well, and I went on to have a conversation with Loki later in the weekend. I should’ve communicated the result of that conversation with Loki earlier on in the day to Champ and avoided the conflict later on, so I’m sorry it is totally my fault. But in the end, I think the Marvel finals were extremely hype, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I think it was for the best.
I’m sorry if I forgot anybody but thanks again everybody, you guys are awesome.
Igor and I have wanted to do this interview for a very long time, and we just missed out on snagging Ziggy at OHNX. (The TO’s eternal curse: a severe shortage of free time.) We have wanted to pick his brain about his decade’s experience as Sydney’s primary tournament organiser for quite a while now. We talk about the history of the Sydney scene, the emergence of the OHN series, the founding of Ozhadou, the rise of the new Ozhadou, the OG players, York Street Battle, his tournament organisation article series Bracketed, BAM, Shadowloo Showdown, Daigo and Justin Wong, SFxTekken, esports and much, much more
So I made my way down to Geelong to Studio 69, otherwise known as Igor’s house, and we did the interview over Skype. Ziggy didn’t disappoint, providing a very comprehensive history and breakdown on the tournament scene in Sydney and Australia since the inception of Ozhadou with Final Atomic Buster. He was very open in our conversation, and it was clear to me that a lot of what drives Ziggy is the pain of seeing his mistakes repeated unnecessarily in the actions of others as they go down the same path he has.
I’ve personally learnt so much about the history of the Sydney and Australian fighting game community from this interview and we thank Ziggy very much for taking the time to sit down with us.
And be sure to check out his series of blog articles on tournament organisation:
Big thanks to Hebretto aka Yang for directing me to his marvelous archive of pictures, which I drew upon extensively for this article. If you click on any of the pictures you will be directed to his archive. It was quite amazing going through the annals of history and seeing shocking things like Young Johnny and Teenage Toxy!
As always, you can listen to the podcast below or read the transcript of the entire thing if you prefer. We hope you enjoy the interview guys, we certainly enjoyed doing it.
1- Spidercarnage: What were we talking about…Yeah. The current [Australian tournament schedule].
Ziggy: Ah yeah yeah, so. I think it’s much better this year than what it was last year by far, hands down. Everybody’s not on top of each other. Everyone’s talking, everyone’s sort of planning. There’s still a little bit of um, SS (Shadowloo Showdown) being the monster that it is, it kinda had to whack its flag into the ground and say; this is where we are. And everybody else could build around it. But there’s nothing wrong with that I mean. That’s a perfectly sensible way of doing things.
And it worked out well because the timing of EVO this year- if we had gone with our original plans to be post-SS, the EVO tie-ins would’ve fallen to pieces. So by having to pull back to the summer it actually worked out better for EVO tie-backs.
We don’t really know what’s happening in the later part of the year. We know roughly when BAM is gonna be.
M: Around the same time in October…
Z: We still don’t know what Queensland’s doing, we don’t quite know what ACL is doing this year but they’ve got plans on the table. But it’s way better this year.
If there are any concerns about certain people not turning up at SS, I wouldn’t put it down to the timing. In terms of relative closeness of tournaments. It’d be other factors, like external things getting in the way and stuff like that? Stuff that’s out of everybody’s control, pretty much.
M: Well to clarify, because we left out the start of the question, I was asking Ziggy if he was coming down to SS, and he said that he’s not coming down to SS and a bunch of other people aren’t coming down. And I was asking whether that had anything to do with…even though we’ve kind of spread these events a bit more this year, but it kind of feels that even two or three months isn’t enough time for people to kinda recover financially…
S: Mm.
M: And kind of from the work that they put into their events. But I guess you feel that isn’t a factor.
Z: No, not especially.
Like I mean, myself I was pretty dead after OHN as you would expect. But now…it takes about a month for me to kind of get over it and feel like I wanna do stuff again. Having said that, I’ve got nothing on the cards at the moment so I’m kind of climbing the walls with not much to do, but that’s alright.
The…I think the thing is more now; I don’t know what the hype factor is towards even like EVO. I’m not feeling…a lot of hype at the moment. I think it’s just a function of the games that are out at the moment. And where people are with relation to the games.
I mean, ultimately the scene is a function of the games. So if the games aren’t popping, then the scene’s not popping sort of thing.
I feel like SFxTekken has landed with a whimper rather than a crash. And with Street Fighter 4 kind of petering out and Marvel sort of sitting in the middle, in limbo at the moment. It’s popped a bit but it’s not, if you know what I mean?
M: Yes I do.
And over here in Victoria for our events, our xTekken registration for tournaments have kind of…dropped a cliff kind of, recently. So what’s it like in Sydney for you guys? Continue reading →
Great to see all the work that the CW guys like Loki, Spoony, Berzerk, Ali, Chris Ho and Andrew put into the CW Fighters Festival event result in something great like this.
For you guys that don’t know, we ran a CW ranbat which had a SCV qualifier, and the two winners got to play on stage with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at a event hosted by Will Wheaton.
Congratulations to Woody and Ben, and although I couldn’t be there at the actual event (no discount for CW staff :() , I still think it’s pretty damn cool.
Edit Edit: C31’s Maha’s Alternate Reality did a nice long piece on the CW Fighter’s Festival, the SCV qualifier we did in Moonee Ponds for the Soul Symphony event. Check it out:
I have been playing my team for a while now, and there’s something I’ve been thinking about for more than a month now.
My specific issue with my team is that when I do my basic Doom full screen wall carry combo, (basically double footdive, land, tridash H OTG x3), it does around 750k. And when I DHC into Spencer, I get about 950k plus with the OTG grapple after bionic maneuvers and down zip armour piercer extender.
Which is quite good because the combo builds about 1.6-1.7 bars of meter, so when I get the first hit into the game I can TOD that annoying motherfucker Wolverine.
But unfortunately the combo falls 50k short of killing public enemy number one: Wesker. Quite often I find myself hitting Wesker to start the game and immediately feel depressed about it, because I know my combo is going to fall just short of killing him. And I cannot begin to count the number of times that extra 50k has come back to haunt me as that Wesker escapes, and comes back to Dark Wesker me later.
So I’ve become obsessed with hitting that one million mark recently. I’ve been trying to optimise my combo to get closer to that mark, but with little success. I can get 770k, 780k, by really squeezing in a few hits here and there, but that still falls short of the million mark when I DHC.
Midscreen onwards and closer to the corner, it’s no problem hitting that mark, I can get 800k plus with Doom easily, and when I DHC into Spencer I get the one million. But ideally I want to TOD Wesker from anywhere on the screen. (I know, I know. Eventually I will learn the Mariodyne variants that do 1 mill in the corner solo, and 900k midscreen. Eventually.)
So imagine my joy when Fiddlestix posted on SRK, a viable way to get an up grapple after bionic maneuvers!
Now as most people know, Spencer’s up grapple does unscaled 80k damage, and is the key to his incredible damage.
Take my basic corner combo (which is basically lifted from Stark’s godlike Spencer combo thread in SRK:
cL cM H S, sj M dfZip delayed H land up grapple, Bionic bomber M H S up grapple, dash back tkM grapple S forward zip df zip land up grapple, call doom hidden missiles assist to OTG, up grapple, S up grapple, Bionic maneuvers, OTG H grapple.
That does near 1.1 million for just one bar. And if you do the math: (5 x 80k), 400k of the damage comes from the up grapples alone.
So Fiddlestix’s method of getting the up grapple after the Bionic maneuvers: OTG H grapple, df zip, bf zip, up grapple, adds that all-important unscaled 80k hit to my combo, and kicks it definitively over 1 million! Yesss. Death to Wesker.
So when that came out last week, I was so happy, and I was immediately trying to do it at Couchwarriors. It’s relatively simple as well, and even though I only spent 20 minutes on it in training room before Couchwarriors, I was able to get it most of the time.
Then I went back and starting thinking. Since the grapple places them back in the corner, can’t I use my Doom missiles to extend the combo with two more up grapples? Wouldn’t that make a simple DHC from a throw or a shitty damage Ammy counter combo do insane damage?
So I tested it out. And Fiddlestix released another video above that elaborates on this very concept.
So here’s some math:
Off a very common opener, Doom forward throw to start the round, dash up tri dash OTG M S, double foot divex3 does 615k.
After I add the Spencer DHC, and the triple up grapples extender, I get 1100k, sans the last OTG grapple or one more Bionic Maneuvers. 1100k for two bars off a throw! (throws normally severely scale the combo, yay for unscaled 80ks.)
My normal wall to wall combo with Doom does 770k. Plus Bionic Maneuvers and triple up grapples I get 1237k for two bars.
Or off a corner normal throw with Spencer, doing something like OTG H grapple, S, armour piercer, bionic maneuvers does 441k. If you do OTG H grapple into Fiddlestix’s up grapple extender, and call Doom for two more up grapples into maneuvers you get 640k.
So the math is 1237k -750k= 487k from the Spencer section alone which is Bionic Maneuvers, OTG H grapple, dfzip, bf zip up grapple, call hidden missiles, Up grapple, S up grapple. Finish with OTG H grapple or another bionic maneuvers if you desire.
The triple up grapples themselves already do 240k by themselves.
That basically means DHCing into Spencer is like hitting your opponent with a level 3’s worth of damage…for one bar.
The caveat is that to get triple up grapples, it has to be done on a character that hidden missiles OTGs, so it won’t work on some small characters. But that’s fine, most small characters generally have lower life, so it wouldn’t matter for them anyway. And the single up grapple extender works on everybody!
So you’re playing low damage characters like Trish or Ammy? Doing less than 600k with your shitty combos or off air throws? No problem…just add Spencer!
All you need to do is hit around 520-530k plus, just DHC into Spencer, and you can TOD Wesker too!
Being a Scrub 