I feel the same way about Primal Rage.
Alright everyone good news. I picked up the tougeki damashii here in Osaka, and the giants are not banned. This was a translation error. It says “non standard” over the giants, not “banned,” and they have a paragraph about them which I could translate sometime later if you guys want. They basically say some stuff about about how it depends a lot on your game plan and that they think PTX is better than lightan, I dunno my japanese is pretty mid-tier.
Whew, awesome. Please do translate why they think PTX is better than lightan. 
hrms i would think lightan’s problem is getting close, and if the opponent keeps running theres nth much lightan can do.
i think PTX has a weaker close game then lightnan but makes up alot for it by being able to get close with ease
tho i think in a PTX vs Lightan match Lightan will win 
Man, Ken is awesome in Japan.
All they say is that they think he seems to have more of a future than Lightan. I think what they mean is he has some more possibilities (low attacks, projectiles, dash attack), that let him open up his game a little more. They don’t go into that really, but they do have an aside about how they love PTX’s missile bbq combos. In any event, it probably won’t be soon, but I might open up a thread for translating some of the info little by little in the tougeki book. There’s a lot of good stuff, and hopefully it’ll generate a little more interest…sigh…
So was FR a Karas/Chun/Ryu festival or what?
I don’t know because the character usage hasn’t been posted, just the results.
Yeah it was mostly Karas. Everyone I fought used Karas, and most of our matches were the first person to get hit loses. When I fought Ilovejoe from NY, it went first match, Joe hits me first and wins. Second match, I hit joe first and win, third match, joe hits me first and wins.
Once you get momentum and meter in this game, it’s over. When I fought demon Hyo, he used a runaway tactic with Ken that I hadn’t seen before, was pretty damn good, I couldn’t catch him, so he won on time out. The lack of Karas mix up and the ability to stay far far away from him made it a good choice when you don’t think you can take karas down.
Granted I could have fullscreen sword spin supered to hit him I think but at the time I was more focused just on trying to catch him. Need more experience vs that match.
But yeah as far as runaway goes, Ken is strong. I won a match running with Batsu as well when I was up on life. So I guess it wasn’t 100% Karas, but he did appear on most teams.
I wonder how the tier list would look like when console characters are added.
PTX is better than lightan because he has ways to guarantee damage, which generally makes his pressure a teeny bit better.
I mean, you can be losing horribly, but if you manage to knock out one opponent, and you have enough red life…and still have your missile (a rather probably situation) then you can hit the switch-in with your unblockable baroqued missile in the corner and then end with 2C and there goes 2/3 of their life.
PTX even has ways to make his otherwise shitty grabs useful in the corner with megacrash. PTX also has projectiles and some form of mixup/lows wheras Lightan ONLY has his techable grab as a mixup (and as no way to guarantee damage from it via megacrash, since teching his grab puts the opponent too high up/too far back.)
Lightan has very few ways to close the holes in his offense outside of baroque, and his attacks have a lot of deadzones.
His mobility is also shit compared to PTX’s. PTX has a lagless jump/landing, and every single one of his aerial moves is TOTALLY SAFE. I can’t stress the importance of this enough. It means PTX can punish opponents by dashing, jumping and using J.C, and be totally safe even if it’s blocked. And PTX’s J.C hurts like hell.
Lightan just doesn’t have anything like that. Even his 2A spam eventually becomes unsafe, and any and all specials you can cancel it into are also unsafe. This is seriously bad news against characters like Karas. Even ending his stuff with a 360 grab is not safe, since most characters will land on the ground and punish him for it, or use an aerial special…and if Lightan uses megacrash? It doesn’t hit them because they’re too far away! Wheras PTX gets combos and hits for using megacrash when the opponent escapes his grab.
PTX can turn the match around even if he gets infinited by Karas, since the infinite builds a lot of red life/meter for PTX. He can megacrash out of it fairly early and go with the missile baroque strategy to try and make a comeback. Lightan has his level 3, which…takes 3 levels. 3 levels you won’t have after megacrash.
Also, PTX beats Lightan too. What can Lightan do to get around C version Chainsaw?
Air super off anything PTX tries to do? :3
Oh and i think ken will see alot more play. If u look at the japanese vids there are surprisingly little karas but ken is all over the place :3
top 5 were 2 karas/ryu 1 ken/karas 1 karas/chun and one batsu/chun there was grego karas/rockman this tekkaman/karas player/ lots of doronjos one polymor/casseren
its like mag trying to catch storm/sent when you close that space safely dont let him go stay on top of him and kill him. joe from ny played against hyo’s ken/karas. when joe put ken in block stun he kept him there. so dont let him breath or your just chasing him down the whole time. he has to come down some time just like storm and sent they have to come down some time. when they do let them have it. hyo’s got a good ken tho and he hit villinous with a combo and ran away from him the whole match and won.
Lightan’s air super isn’t instant. He still needs time to jump. Chainsaw C also gets everywhere on the screen at once since Lightan is so huge, so he can’t really use it safely if PTX is baroquing properly.
Besides, it takes 3 meters to do anything really worthwhile with that move. Chainsaw C takes nothing.
Lightan kicks are good against PTX and im pretty sure u wont have time to barouqe and do Chainsaw C off reaction to Lightan doing air ulti
Lightan’s kicks don’t have as much range as PTX’s chainsaw. Also, lightan takes forever to actually jump, and is not invulnerable during his air super. PTX’s chainsaw C stays out for a long time and has many active frames. PTX just needs to make sure not to use it when lightan is in the air.
me and my roommate made a tier list, we’ve played tvc a ton and we think we have a decent idea of the tiers
Top Tier:
Karas
Upper Tier:
Rock
Chun
Ken
Ryu
Polymar
Souki
Mid Tier:
Jun
Yatterman
Ippatsuman
Batsu
Morrigan
Doronjo
Tekkaman
Casshern
Saki
Low Tier:
Roll
Alex
Bottom:
Daimao
giants not included cuz we dont know shit about them
I think Polymar and Tekkaman need to swap places on that list. Also, Saki should swap places with Souki.
You’ve got a pretty good list except for a few little errors (in my eyes).
- polymar+souki should be lower
- Batsu, Tekkaman, Saki should be higher.
The rest are ok, I won’t nitpick.
Speaking of which, with SBO qualifiers on now, I’ve seen lots more TvC action and the one character that’s been dominating a surprising amount is Batsu. There’s a couple people I’ve seen that go absolutely wild with j.B crossups and really smart tardy countering. I saw one guy who was really dominating a couple good Karas/Ryu teams with pretty much just his Batsu, because his Ryu wasn’t really the best.
Batsu huh? He’s one of the characters I just haven’t really given much play. I should look into him more, since he seems like a pretty interesting character all around.
chillindude: Concerning your list…
-Although Polymar may seem pretty strong with the resets and all, he suffers against characters that have an easy time controlling the play field (Doronjo always comes in to mind). When Polymar is in your face, he does have a 50/50 mixup game with 6C and 2C. Polymar has an easier time depending on your assist; Ippatsuman is my favorite assist because it comes out quite fast, covers a good portion of space, and creates a diversion racking up emblems as well as advancing toward your opponent. Lastly, Ippatsuman assist allows me to do my signature corner combo that I use all the time now.
-Souki has no mixup potential whatsoever, but he can punish mistakes quite well. The range and speed of 5A and anti-air in 5C seem to compensate, but Souki can easily be outmaneuvered with air dash shenanigans and character specific mobility (Polymar 6B [I dodge Souki 5C in the last match of my last tourney], Ken teleport, Ippatsuman charge back,forward+C [while Souki is in Onimush mode]) by much of the cast. Against Oni. Souki, counter supers and most characters’ lvl.3 should do fine [due to their invincibilty], but all command grabs and a few other attacks (Casshern j.236C, Tekkaman Space Lariat, Karas 63214A/B/B] give some characters more options [that may make Oni. Souki combo’able!!!] than to just super jump and use your air dashes.
-I agree with Tekkaman’s placement on that list. Slow and has no mixups, yet powerful with minimal effort, has good jumping attacks and a great assist that normally catches people off guard.
Just like yourmother said, Batsu’s j.B has mad crossup potential (think Dee Jay/Abel j.short). It doesn’t really surprise me that Batsu is that good.
On a side note, I’m also glad that there has been more TvC action around. I’m not preparing for SBO since I won’t be around stateside in time for any of the qualifiers in TX or NY, but rather I’m still going for EVO by running bi-weeklies at Denjin Arcade.