Winter Brawl X took place last weekend, and that means I was firmly planted at my computer watching all the greatness. Winter Brawl X is the first Major for the FGC (fighting game community). It is essentially the season opener. It’s not a CPT (Capcom Pro Tour) event, thus players won’t be earning their points for that. However, there is prize money and pride to be won at this event.
Friday night was the customary teams format. I watched the Street Fighter V battles. It was rather interesting to see who teamed up with who. These team formats usually happen at the beginning of the tournaments and is more of a warm up to the actual tournament that starts the next day. There is often a fair amount of joking going on with the commentators, stream setup tweaking, and overall shenanigans happening. It’s entertaining.
When the actual tournament began on Saturday, it was all business. This is where players are working to get into the top slots for the Sunday finals. Just because a player is knocked out of the winner’s bracket, doesn’t mean they are out of the tournament. They drop into the loser’s bracket, where they can then work through that bracket to have a chance at a reset and a possible championship win.
Sunday is really the time most people will be interested in tuning in as this is where the winner of each game at the tournament is crowned. You get to see a variety of games played on one stream. You also get to see just how many different games one player is willing to learn and master.
Now, what were some of my impressions of this event? Well, it was crazy fun. I thought FilipinoChamp would win Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but he lost in the grand finals. He just didn’t seem to be able to read his opponent at the end and took a pretty rough beating.
I don’t follow Killer Instinct as much, but I still watched the finals. I always think I want to try this game after I watch it, but then the interest fades pretty quickly. UA Bass put on a clinic in the finals and walked away the winner.
Guilty Gear Xrd is always an enjoyable watch as it’s just so insane looking. VV BT Marlin Pie looked pretty solid the whole tournament. Thus it really didn’t surprise me that he walked away with the win on this one.
Onto one of my favorite games: Mortal Kombat X. This game is just so much fun to watch. What surprised me the most is that the YOMI guys didn’t place as high as they usually do. I don’t know if they were rusty or what, but they were all out before the semifinals. What is not surprising is that cR SonicFox took the win. This kid has some wicked good skills and it shows every time he plays. You never really know what character he will pick, but man does he know this game so well.
Finally, the game that closed out the tournament was Street Fighter V. If you listened to our Street Fighter V vs Mortal Kombat X podcast, you’ll remember we said that SFV was truly designed with tournaments in mind. Well, that was extremely evident at Winter Brawl X. Matches were fast and full of action. Button checks went a lot fast as most people used the button config screen to verify their sticks/pads were functioning properly.
What caught me by surprise here was to see cR SonicFox had entered the SFV tournament. I could tell he was still learning the fundamentals, but he didn’t do too badly. Sadly, he was knocked out in losers round four. FilipinoChamp had stated he was spending a lot of time with this game. I had expected him to go a bit further than he did. However, he was taken down in losers round six by TA Moons. LI Joe would fight his way out of losers, reset the bracket, and ultimately walk away the winner. He just destroyed in the grand finals.
There were plenty of other games at the even that I didn’t tune in for. Some of them I do go back and try to catch a replay of, some I just don’t enjoy watching streamed. It’s all personal preference. Yes, Smash has a massive showing at these tournaments, so fans of that series have an insane amount of stuff to watch as that is pretty much non-stop. At the end of Sunday, I closed out Twitch.TV and went to bed excited about the upcoming tournaments. Street Fighter V is a lot more fun to watch than Ultra Street Fighter IV was. Mortal Kombat X just had four new characters added and some mechanic changes. It’ll be interesting to see if cR SonicFox keeps his domination in MKX and how he improves in SFV. Exciting times are ahead, that much is for sure!
