At UCC after my first few matches the parh was pretty much set for me to make it to winners finals of the tourney only for me to start drinking and lose to two player who have never beaten me in a tourney…smh
I find drinking helps with Blanka. It helps ease the pain of everything being punishable on hit.
3rd place at a local tournament
lost to the first (cammy) and the second (seth)
competition wasn’t that good though
You guys still playing regularly? Hard to tell since the forum is so inactive. I find myself playing once every few weeks. I go to this forum more frequently than I play. I am looking forward to USF4 Hyper Turbo Edition though. Airborne cl.mk will be fun to destroy crouch techers, but that one frame link to non-plinkable lp (assuming no mods) makes it tough to combo off of giving you less reward for your risk.
I check this forum daily, but haven’t played AE for months now.
Still, I’m looking forward to USFIV
(and I still watch tournaments on stream whenever I can… this past weekend we got Sako and Ryan Hart for a tournament here in Brazil)
Nice - I saw those replays too. Sako is a damn scary machine. There is this youtube channel I found - KarinUSF4. Pretty amazing channel - guy uploads basically every stream for SF4 around the world. Reminds me of LordAborigine’s old channel. Hope the guy keeps it up, as he doesn’t have too many views. I recommend it though.
So do you guys use custom layouts or an 8 button layout? I use an 8 button layout with MP and 3P and sometimes think to myself, if I travel to a Japanese arcade (or even a US one), I would be limited in my performance. For console, it also makes it tough to switch to other characters besides blanka or honda since I like the 3P and 3K buttons in general. I end up using a standard 6 button layout for non blanka/honda, but will sometimes throw out a super, when I want ultra, and then look at my lack of 3P/K button 
It does seem like most of the top Japanese players are plinking lp with the customized button setup for a back button. Since they play arcade though, I imagine it must be weird having to switch back and forth…
My opinion on the subject is ratter controversial and the last time I brought it up it did not end well… 
But I started using MP on the 4th top button so I can slide for HP Elec and I also use 3P on the bottom, for plinking 3P~HK
That’s my exact setup - is that controversial? Seems like the ultimate Blanka layout to me. I’ve been using that setup for a long time now.
Other great thing about that setup is you can just slide across the top 4 down to 3P for a super ez EX elec.
That’s not the controversial part…
If it was up to me, tournaments would use a fixed arcade stick on the stations with only 6 buttons, like on the old days of the arcade or some japanese console tournaments. No button mappings, no pads or customized controllers… to ensure a more even playfield.
sometimes I forget how much I hate netplay.
Also I don’t have an extra button on top but I do use a PPP button for ultra plinks
My ideal layout would be a custom stick with this layout
OOOOX
xOOOO
back for plinking jabs, and short being still on the arc to slide to jab. maybe someday!
i use only 6 buttons lp,mp,hp
lk,mk,hk
only plink 3p button with lk when i have full super
anyway have 2 questions how you guys deal with seth divekick it beats almost every aa
and is select plinking for you unfair? i think so and i hope it gets patched
Props to ChocoBlanka making top 8 in what was pretty much a Japanese Major - Capcom Cup qualifier. I haven’t seen the brackets, but I imagine she lucked out to make it out of her bracket while Kyabetsu and Daigo did not…Only vid I saw of her was against a Guy player. I know Kyabetsu beat Daigo - maybe the Guy player beat Kyabetsu and Choco beat the guy player? Anyhow, Blanka represent.
she beat kyabetsu. but yeah single elim and only 64 players. Getting top 8 was winning 4 games in a row.
I was watching the stream until I realized it was a bullshit single-elim tournament… lol
Choco Blanka’s bracket:
She won against a Sakura player (PitchLo) off stream, then that Guy player (Akuesu) in a very awful match to watch with lots of random crap going on
Kyabetsu (Cabbage) defeated Daigo (2x0, winning all 4 rounds straight) on stream with random Viper bullshit (altough he’s a very good player since vanilla)
Choco Blanka then proceed to elimate Kyabetsu in a off stream match, 2x1 making top 8 (with 3 wins, not 4), then she lost to Haitani’s Makoto, who proceeded to take the tournament… but by then I was sleeping, after the hype-as-hell match between Daigo and Infiltration on friday this tournament was a completely disappointment for me.
Pretty impressive that Choco beat Cabbage, Kyabetsu, even if it was just best of 3, as I consider her level way under the top Japanese players.
Not sure if anyone else saw that Topanga qualifier stream yesterday. Mizoteru and Nishikin both made it out of groups, but Mizoteru lost to Yossan (juri) in the bracket after, while Nishikin beat Yossan, but lost in the finals to Dashio (seth). Nishikin was on point with baiting Dashio’s dhalsim limb HP, and sweeping on reaction. That top tier Japanese connection is almost like playing offline.
If we’re lucky, someone might have filmed the match between Choco and Kyabetsu… I really wanted to see how she got the best of him.
Remember that she once defeated Mago’s Sagat back on Vanilla, maybe she’s getting used to win against better players.
According to this:
Dashio (Seth), Sasaki (Cody) and NISHIKIN (Blanka) qualified
Nice - hope Nishikin does well. I still feel like Taku when he played regularly was a little better, but maybe that’s just my perception since he seemed so mythical (crazy BP and win percentage, and we almost never got to see him play). He was crazy with his cr. lk combos into ultra though.
I’ve noticed that Eita switched to Ryu lately - very interesting as Eita was quoted before as saying that he was too lazy to learn new matchups and would probably quit this game if Akuma got nerfed. I suppose Ryu isn’t that different from Akuma though.
taku was definitely better, too bad he’s in semi-retired mode for the last year and some change