Well that’s because Dic has the highest “unknown” variable in his matchup, alongside Hawk. One good knockdown into ambiguous cross-up will win the round and/or the game for him. Something that is very powerful in this single elim format, even in team settings.
Kurahashi has been pretty strong lately and consistently showing up to weeklies. Hakase is long considered to be one, if not THE, strongest sim in Japan currently, and Noguchi has always been an extremely strong and aggressive Fei player. Not to mention their team combination seems to cover each other’s bad matchups very well. In a tourney setting like this, I’d have to give the nod to teams that have the best combination of characters, which is this team imo.
But a WHOLE lot of strong teams and players on that x-mania list. It should be extremely fun and exciting to watch.
My bet is definitely on Kurahashi’s team if Noguchi goes with Claw. The MAO team is bonkers too, and more than a handful of other teams are filled with absolute killers. How many more teams will there be, bunch of top active players still absent. I see Aniken and Otochun on XBL almost every morning wondering if they will show up. Also, possible Komoda team?
The team that won this (shinshin boxer, hanma s ken, souzou fei long) doesn’t appear on the xmania list but there’s no reason to not see them participate. They did very well and they will be strong contenders.
The craziest thing for me was clearly babynine OCV’ing kurahashi, noguchi and hakase ! One of the absolute strongest teams wiped out by a honda a player, that’s truly amazing. Shame we only got to see the last match against hakase on the stream.
wow mikado didn’t record any of the matches and archive them. I don’t think it’s worth the trouble to release a dvd and try to sell it. there’s just not enough people buying it to worth their while.
