@ Naked_Snake: I thought it was you that I played. GGs, your Alex is pretty tricky to deal with. I do have one question for you though: how do you space correctly with Vice and maintain pressure? I have no flippin’ clue. 
I just got back from SCR. I played in the relatively small 3s tournament, and honestly, I’m not upset at how I did or my level of focus throughout, just my exposure to “the bull shit”. I was kicked from winners by a Dudley player who “barely” got away with wins against me (if I played Urien, I think I would have won that), and I was booted from losers by a frame-trap happy Necro player. I gambled and played Ibuki in her double-edged 5/5 match ups, and although my confidence and general play style with Ibuki were fine (I was even complimented by a few folks and asked to go to Super Arcade for WNF), I lost because of match up experience.
You were right Don; I need another 3-4 years of experience under my belt. I genuinely feel like I could have been a threat in that tournament with the extra knowledge to drive my gameplay. Either way, even if I did beat the Dudley player, my next opponent would have been Amir or Mike Z. BTW, Mike Z told me why he uses SA3 Makoto. He utilizes it like a frame trap. He ran a couple of his setups, and each one put his opponent into a situation he could predict out 80% of the time. I like how Amir plays, too. He’ll move in spots and positions that cause throws and normals to whiff awkwardly, and do some of the most extremely meaty setups I think I’ve ever really seen in person. Rom’s Yang was sick, too.
Skullgirls isn’t too bad, but you know something, it didn’t quite have that…“hit” to it, if you get what I mean. It’s a tad slow, strangely, and you can mash a little without much thought (the execution is low, but in a good way). I don’t know, considering I play most of the technical/rushdown fighters, SG seems a bit too forgiving and loose, for me. It feels faster than CvS2, slower than 3rd Strike, and block-stun lasts FOREVER. It’s UMvC minus everything I didn’t like about it, with an extraordinarily tamed Alpha/Darkstalkers feel to it, basically. Properties seem a little wonky to make sense of on punish (air states and OTGs, especially) and throws have terrible range despite the pacing, but it’s not bad. It’s fun, just…I need more time with it to make sense of it.
SFxT was there. No, the SFxT builds at SCR did NOT have gems. The KOF competition, if anything, highlighted the value of that game in the scene. It had the most hype event on day 1, and there were loads of people playing that game in casuals on a pretty serious level.
