RNTS-BBCTB-3 Tournament Results

Thursday, July 12th marked the 3rd tournament for THE REAPER NIGHTMARE TOURNAMENT SERIES | 死神の悪夢トーナメントシリーズ for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle!  21 entrants battled it out to become our champion!

This marked our third entry into this series for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, 21 people showed up and put on a damn good show!  Though, it was somewhat chaotic at the beginning of the tournament; I managed to wake up right on time because I forgot that it started 8PM EST instead of 8PM CST, leading me to fall behind.  Thankfully, Riot_Z32 was able to provide commentary and update the brackets while I ran to get the double pepperoni pizza I ordered.  Also, Flexikan was not here to give his witty commentary as he did not get off until 9PM EST, after arriving home and grabbing tacos he was back in the mix to give his wise rebuttals as per usual.  Unfortunately RaS (Riot) had to depart at the start of Top 8, but we managed to keep everything together up until that point.

• Match 1 — 0:00
• Match 2 — 7:33
• Match 3 — 19:37
• Match 4 — 27:25
• Match 5 — 37:36
• Match 6 — 54:04
• Match 7 — 1:07:21
• Winner’s Finals — 1:16:25
• Loser’s Finals — 1:26:26
• Grand Finals — 1:35:47
• Champion’s Interview — 2:00:23

• 1st place — DJTMIT
• 2nd place — BananaMontanaX
• 3rd place —RedScratch
• 4th place — LoliPenetrator_
• 5th place tie — ALoserNamedTama, Rennikz
• 7th place tie — IzzyXBL, Shokame88
• 9th place tie — tuleymeister, Yasuraiyo, Soapbaraa, Aeonbage9
• 13th place tie — NinjaDuce, P_Is_Me22, Phoenix351, PolloSucio
• 17th place tie — Chuckmac94, killaboss2025, sameo15, mlito22885, Tikhaos

  IMPRESSIONS  — The tournament progressed pretty smoothly, though I feel like this time around there were less nail biters but better performances from those in the top spots.  To be honest, I saw a lot more hit conforms and a lot more tactical play, but less overall combos due to the neutral play being a bigger factor amongst the characters.  Honestly, I think that came down to the character choice amongst our entrants, you have to be cautious against certain characters just because of the way that they play compared to others.  To be honest, it was a good tournament and I know we are going to have some fierce competitors when it comes to RNTS-BBCTB-4, hell, I might even get in on the action myself!

 HIGHLIGHTS 

• IzzyXBL, our returning champion (and 2nd place finisher in the very first tournament), managed to be eliminated after making it to Top 8 on Loser’s side and finished in a tie for 7th place with Shokame88.  His first defeat was 3-1 to Champion DJTMIT (who he happened to beat to become champion of the 2nd tournament), and he was put out 3-1 by ALoserNamedTama.
• ALoserNamedTama made his debut to the RNTS in epic fashion; sporting a good show against our returning champion with his team of Yu Narumaki/Jubei, making him the very first Jubei user this tournament series has seen.  However, he was taken out the very next match by LoliPenetrator_ with a score of 3-2.
• BananaMontanaX made it all the way to 2nd place only losing to our Champion DJTMIT; the first time by a score of 3-0 in Winner’s Finals and then 3-2 in Grand Finals when narrowly missing the opportunity to reset the bracket.  Definitely the most improved coming from his score of 0-6 in this tournament series first appearance and had the hypest match with his defeat of LoliPenetrator_ to start off our Top 8.  However, he still needs to learn to combo without burning all of his meter and also effectively learn to punish reversal actions.  Also, his Noel could utilize more mix-ups and damage options.
• DJTMIT is our RNTS-BBCTB-3 winner!  The RNTS-BBCTB-2 he came in second and only lost to Champion Izzy, first in 3rd round of Winner’s by a score of 0-3 and then Grand Finals by 1-3.  Making a switch to a Blake/Waldstein team instead of the Hyde/Ruby or Noel/Jin team we saw in the 2nd tournament seemed to pay dividends with good pokes and space control.  However, he seemed to have made many mistakes during his Cross Combo mix-ups, but it was not taken advantage of by any competitor probably do to Waldstein and Blake’s enormous reach.
• PolloSucio has finished in 3rd place in both the first and second tournament, having repeat performances where he would lose in both Winner’s and Loser’s finals.  However, this time he was eliminated before he even managed to make it to Top 8 in two matches that were played offstream.  His first lost came to Yasuraiyo 3-0 in the very first round and then 3-2 to RedScratch in his very next match.