Subject: ECC4 Report [LOOOOOOOOONG] Date: 1999/06/01 Author: Ultima Posting History Warning: Serious rambling ensues. I am also using a newsreader I've never used before, so if this comes out looking funny, I apologigze. Alright, let's go: Day 1: ------ My friend Jeff "Oneshot" Wong, who was giving me a ride to ECC4, and I set out from my house at 10:00 am on Saturday morning, hoping to reach the Eight on the Break before 12:00 pm. For some reason there was an ungodly amount of traffic, plus we made a little mistake in following the directions, with the end result being that we took some 2 and a half hours to get there instead of the usual hour and fifteen minutes. Oh well. We arrive there and the place is PACKED. There are four A3 machines, one ST machine, one MvC machine, one HF machine and one 2I machine to start off with. All the A3 machines, the ST machine and especially the MvC machine had heavy comptetition going on. The 2I tourny wasn't until later, so only a few people were checking it out. No one touched HF until very late in the evening, that I noticed. They would eventually be cycling boards in and out for the various tournies. These were just what they had to start. Upon arriving, I immediately saw some net personalities that I regocnized from pictures, like Bob Painter, Tom and Tony Cannon, and Alex Valle. I saw some guys I met (or at least saw) last year, like Sam Kim, Mike Cheng, David Sirlin, David Boudreau, Joel Frank, Nothingness, John Choi, APOC, and the "Throw em" guy. A guy who I had talked to quite a bit, but have never seen a picture of, was good ol' Seth Killian. Talk about being completely different from what I expected. From the way he posted, I half-expected this mean- looking, snobbish character, and he was nothing of the sort: He was tall awith a very friendly face and he smiled a lot. Whoa. The first game I played was against him in ST. My Vega vs. his Chun Li. I won the first round, but he took me down in the next two. I introduced myself after I played him (if I did before I played him, I might not have even won that round ^_^). He talked to me decently enough. Other players I saw/met later on were Viscant (cool fellow who I talked to a lot), David Spence (nice guy who talked to me a lot; has an unusually soft voice), Ric Collins, Jason Cole (who looked to be considerably older than most everyone else there), Jesse Howard, Thoa Duong, John Alegressa (gad, I'm sure I've spelled his name wrong; he surprised me with his A-Zangief) Javi, Jumpsuit Jesse (good GOD, what an offensive Fei Long!) SpiderDan (whom I thought used the word "dude" a little too much :), and Chocobo, who has been downgraded from "asshole" to "just plain ass" :p Seriously, Chocobo is a total dick on the newsgroup, and says almost NOTHING in real life. Very quiet. I tried talking to him (I'm not sure if he knew who I was at the time), but he didn't say much, nbor did he look like he wanted to talk to me. Huh. Oh well. Okay, on to the games. I'll refer to what I saw during the tournament and in casual play under each game: ------- Alpha 3 ------- This was the big one. This was going to be the first tournament and the largest one, so this one had heavy competition going on 4 machines to start with. Lots of talent and skill shown all around. I saw Valle and Choi tag- teaming with V-Zangief, and they racked up something like 12 wins (possibly more) before they gave the game away by losing to Oneshot, after which they switched to V-Sakura and did God knows much more damage. Thoa Duong showed off an amazing A-Charlie, and had a good 14 wins at one time. Chocobo had a *very* nice V-Mika, and I think he was the only one to boot (there were a few A-Mika's though). Eddie Lee showed off his V-Karin and her nasty VCs and later on showed off a superb V-Sodom, and I saw a few V-Akuma, all of whom used (or tried to use) Daigo-s' VC. APOC had a damn good X/A-Balrog. I saw some great V-Dhalsim stuff from Jason Cole and both Cannons (at least I thikn so; I know I saw Tony Cannon in action), with David Spence having a nice A- Dhalsim and David Boudreau sticking to ol' X-Dhalsim. There were a few too many V-Vegas, a couple A/X-Chun Lis, some V- Ryus, one or two Codys, one A-Adon (from Master John), and MANY Zangiefs (all versions). There were surprisingly few Gens (the only Gen I remember seeing were Trien Ho's A-Gen and Tony Lim's X-Gen, in fact) and very few Kens. All in all, there was quite a bit of variety in the play. The tournament proved to be largely the same. A good variety of character use. If only because of that alone, I think A3 is a better game than A2, with it's Big Four + Rolento/Zangief/ Sakura and everyone using the exact same strategy :\. The tournament started at 2:45 pm, a full hour and 45 minutes late, which I expected, since the same thing happened last year. Last year's A2 tourny had 2 machines, 40+ players, started at 3:00 pm and finished around 7:00 pm (plus or minus some 15 minutes) I believe. This year for A3 we had 4 machines, but had a whopping 115 players. Since we started at 2:45 pm, there was no telling when this sucker was going to end. I actually can't remember when it ended, but it ended quite late. So late that it messed up the time table for the other tournies that day (more on this below). When you have that amount of talent in one place, you want to see everything at once, but you can't. So I probably only saw a fraction of the best stuff and can't remember most of what I saw. I think the best matches came from both semi- finals, which were Alex Valle (can't remember who he used; I think V-Akuma) vs. Amir Amirsaleh (can't remember) and Eddie Lee (V-Vega, V-Sodom) vs. Thao Duong (X-Dhalsim), but I can't remember much other than that :( One thing I do remember is Eddie Lee getting a string of unimpresive victories (I think it was before the semi-finals) using Runaway V-Vega, where he literally spent more than half of each round jumping backwards and hitting fierce, sneaking in a VC here and there, and eventually winning by time. I think he pissed off the entire participating West Coast crew with those tactics, but he made up for that with a far more impressive and aggressive V-Sodom. :) The final match between Alex Valle (V-Zangief, V-Akuma?) and Thoa Duong (X-Dhalsim, A-Charlie) was VERY anticlimatic. Valle picked V-Zangief and basically STEAMROLLED over Thao. He had this strange VC use where he would blow through whatever Thoa sticked out and would do splash, low short, roundhouse Double German Suplex (360 + K) for a free 35%. And he did it every time he got over 50% meter. He used that technique and mudhole stomped Thao 3 straight, after which Thoa managed to sneak in a win with X-Dhalsim. After that, I think Valle switched to the Dark Side (aka V-Akuma) to finish Thao off. It wasn't even close. A very dull match-up, compared to the two great ones preceeding it. Valle won some $750 for that one. As for my performance, it was poor, as I expected. I haven't played A3 competitively since last September (not counting the one time I played in Chinatown over Christmas), so I was entering merely for the hell of it. IN fact, I didn't play A3 at all until the actual tourny. I used V-Vega (I normally use A-Vega, but I thought I would have lasted longer with V- ism) and won my first match against some hapless A-Ken. My second match was against a guy named Joey C from Cali. He used Chun Li, who I had almost zero experience against, and got totally destroyed (including one perfect). Ouch. My second match came against some A-Cammy player, another character whom I had little experience against, and that too was a washout. I tried V-Vega and A-Gen, neither of whom I did anything useful with. Now that I think about it, I should have just gone with X-Dhalsim and be done with it. :p Oh well, I gues out in 3 is better than out in 2. ^_^ ----------- Super Turbo ----------- For most of the day, while the A3 tourny was going on, the lone ST machine was dominated by the same 8 - 15 people. Seth Killian, Jumpsuit Jesse, Nothingness, Omni, the "throw em" guy, etc. Seth's Chun Li was awesome, though I think the most amazing thing I saw that day came on ST came from Jumpsuit Jesse's Fei Long, who I played and who stuck me in a corner and refuesd to let me out :p . On that note, Choi also had a NASTY Balrog, who was almost Wolverine-like in his offense. Aside from the two times I played ST, I didn't stick around much. The ST machine was in a poor spot to stick around and watch, plus there were so many other things going on. Somewhere in the final 4 or 5 match-ups of A3, the other two A3 machines where switched with ST boards to start the ST tourny. Some 78 players signed up for this one, and it was so late that by the time we got passed the first round, it was close to midnight (or was it one o'clock? Dammit, I hate not having a watch anymore) and the arcade was going to close. It was decided that we could continue the tounry the next day (of course the 2I tounry, which was also got bumped to then as well). When the arcade closed, we all had to get the hell out. This was a bit of a problem for me, since I had no where to stay. In true hardcore fashion, I actually spend the night sleeping on the steps of the train station across the road. I only got 3 and a half hours of sleep, and I was cold-no- ass, but I did get through the night. ----- DAY 2 ----- Ugh. I got up at 6:00 am (having finally managed to fall asleep somewhere around 2:30 am) and went searching for something to eat. I managed to find a 24-hour mart that charged me $3.10 for a ham sandwhich. It was a good sandwhich, but wasn't worth $3.10. Bah. I went and actually slept sitting down on the pavement across the road from the arcade. Once it started getting warm, I moved to the shade of a nearby bank, hoping to catch some more hours of sleep before the arcade would open at noon. I only partially succeeded. But eventually, the arcade finally re-opened. We started back up on ST almost imediately, using the 4 previous A3 machines (now all ST), and while I was waiting my turn (I got a bye in the first round, so I hadn't played as yet), I tried my hand at MvC against SpiderDan, who was currently destroying people with a double Venom team. By this time, I was already very tired, and the tourny was proving to be more of a drain on my finances than I thought it would be, and I I hadn't won a single match at MvC, which was the one tourny I was actually looking to do some serious damage in. I wanted a win, dammit, so I played counter character by picking Gold War Machine (who beats Hyper Venom). I won that match, albeit by the skin of my teeth, and followed that up with a 6 win streak. NOt a bad way to start the day. That would prove to be the only time I played against SpiderDan, BTW. Anyway, back to the ST tourny. There were a lot of decent matches and a few upsets, like David Spence beating Jason Cole and some guy whose name I don't know beating John Choi's Ryu with his OG Ryu. There was a point when Henry Cen's T.Hawk came *this* close to beating Alex Valle's Ryu. Henry used Hawk's Condor Dive to get into close range and would then pull off Hawk's super before you could blink, and a couple times he grabbed Valle even though Valle hit him. Henry got Valle done to zero energy like that, but didn't manage to hit him again before Valle managed to sneak in the two hits he needed to finish Henry off. Too bad for Henry, but some really great stuff. The final 3 or 4 matches were also *really* exciting, with Gary "East Coast Gief" Vialdo (who won the winnder bracket) carrying the hopes of the East Coast against John Choi. Gary tried his best, using Bison and OG Ken, but he couldn't stop Choi, who won both sets using Ryu, and OG "missile barrage" Sagat. As for me, the last time I played ST was at the last ECC, so this too I wasn't expecting to do anything special in. Furthermore, it had become all to apparent that I lacked the necessary experience (like what to do against a ticking Balrog) to compete at a high level at this game. There's not much I can do about that, since ST was almost nowhere to be found in my country and when I played the game it was only against the CPU :( I tried my best, but in my first match I lost to a Zangief. I tried Bison, whom I read it was best to use standing forward and roundhouse against Zangief with. Of course, there's quite a difference between reading something and knowing how to use it effectively, so that didn't work to well. In my second match I tried Vega, who's really the only character in ST I play, but I lost with him as well (yeah, I suck). However, while I lost once, I was never called out for my second match. I had somehow slipped through the cracks. So I decided to get a refund for registering, whom Tony Cannon kindly provided. That actually turned out to be the best thing, since I was going to be far FAR more broke following this event than I thought I would be (I have a grand total of $37 right now, to last me for God knows how long). ------------- Second Impact ------------- At some point on Sunday, during the latter half of the ST tounry, two 2I boards were installed towards the back. I dind't stick around for this one too much either, though I did see both Henry Cen and some Philly guy do some awesome stuff with Urien: It involved pressure, throws, and using the Aegis Reflector. They would knock their opponent down, throw out a close reflector, jump over and low short their opponent into the Reflector. The Philly guy (sorry, don't know his name :( ) would even threw out a second Reflector from the other side and would jam his foe between the two Reflectors, who either didn't know which way to block or couldn't block it. The Philly guy even beat Alex VAlle's Deijin Ryu like that in casual play. The tourny itself started before the ST tourny had finished. The Cannon Bros. had taken over the handling of the ST tourny, while Todd and Master John went to work on 2I. This is what they should have done on Saturday (i.e. running two tournies at once, which is what I thought they were going to do), and the result was that we managed to get through all 6 advertised tournies, with one sacrifice (which shall be mentioned later). Anyway, this tourny was okay, though of course it was all parries, jabs, shorts and universal overheads. The most exciting match-up came from the final, with Eddie Lee vs. Alex Valle. As with all other big East Coast/West Coast match-ups, this one had a little extra importance to it, though this one was of paritular significance since it was was the best in the west vs. the best in the east. Eddie had won the losers bracket, so he had to win 2 sets to win it all. So odds were not in his favour. Even so, Eddie and Alex had a tremendous match-up. Eddie used nothing but his trademark Extremely Evil Ibuki (tm me :) and Hashin Sho. Alex used the Dark Side (aka Akuma) with Messatsu Go Hadou (which I personally thought was stange, since virtually every other Akuma I knew used Messatsu Gorasen, but Alex knew what the was doing) for the first few matches, switched to Deijin Ryu, got annihilated (or as close to it as he was going to get), and then switched back to Messatsu Go Hadou Akuma. Eddie actually forced Alex to turtle towards the end, making him throw air Fbs and teleporting away whenever Eddie got close. This went a full 7 matches and nearly every match went a full 3 rounds, but in the end, Eddie's Ibuki jumped towards a jumping back Akuma, who blasted Ibuki with the air super FB. Great finish for an incrdible match-up. I know the preceeding Juan Gonzales vs. Mike Zavar was also a great match, but unfortunately I didn't see it :( As for me, I didn't enter 2I. I hadn't played 2I since last June, where Chinatown's endless parade of jabs, shorts, and universal overheads got me so sick of the game I decided to not play it again (save sporadically). ------- Alpha 2 ------- During 2I and after ST, they converted all of the ST machines into A2 ones. I'll be honest with you: A2 was the game I was the least interested in, having been thoroughly disgusted by last year's display of AC/CC abuse. Comments about A2 between Ric Collins and David Spence (who was wondering whether or not to compete in A2): D. Spence: You entering A2, Ric? R.Collins: HELL NO! I thought it was quite funny, the way Ric said it ^_^ Thus, I didn't even so much as give a passing glance in A2's direction while it was going on. I saw Valle's nasty Rolento in action, but nothing too much of note besides that. The last match I personally saw was David Sirlin's Rose vs. Mike Cheng's Chun Li. I didn't stick around to see the outcome. Apparently David won, and apparently the finals were David Sirlin vs. Thaod Duong, which David won to retain his A2 crown. -------------- Hyper Fighting -------------- Thanks to the overall lateness of the tournies, as well as this one having the smallest sign up (48 players, compared to the 60 and 70+ for the others), the HF tourny would prove to be the sacrificial lamb that would result in the entire event being finished before some ungodly hour of the morning (since the arcade was going to be closed on Monday, and even if it was going to be open, many players were leaving on Monday morning). How did they sacrifice it? They made it single elimination, which seriously skewed the results. To tell you how skewed they were, I tied for fifth (though I only won two matches). Yeah, you heard me. I used mainly Bison (and Vega in my final battle), whom I used to get past some guy's Ken and Omni's Balrog. I lost to Jesse Howard's Ryu. John Choi would take this one with little fanfare and few spectators (every one else was either involved with the now ongoing MvC tounry or had gone home) --- MvC --- As much as I didn't care for it, the MvC tournament was the one I had the most stake in, since MvC was the only game I had played competitively in the arcades at since going to college in upstate New York last September, and hence was the tourny I was looking to place the highest in. This one had intense, never ending competition from the first word go, maybe because there was only one MvC machine for the majority of the weekend. I saw a million Strider/ Wolverines, all of whom played almost exactly alike some surprisingly good Spideys and Gambits, very few Chun Lis (thank GOD) and of course SpiderDan's Venom/Hyper Venom. A truly evil bastard, that Hyper Venom, though of course since I play Hyper Venom (but didn't use him), I knew that already :) Viscant used Wolverine/Zangief, testing out his Triple OPtion, but to be honest he didn't do so hot in casual play. He had a one or two streaks, but nothing special. He would prove to do far better in the tourny. That happened with me as well, as didn't do so well with my Strider/Zangief in casual play, but I did a lot better in the tournament. The biggest surprise of the MvC tourny, and the one which will probably be the defining aspect of the tourney, was the proliferation of War Machines/Gold WMs. There were a LOT of War Machines, and he turned out to be the tourny-breaking character. It seems that few people had experience with dealing with the bastard at a really high level, including me, and didn't have an answer for him. That was the main reason why Alex VAlle placed as high as he did. He used Strider/WM, and while his Strider wasn't any better than anyone elses (hell, no better than mine), his WM was a MAJOR pain in the ass. He was basically "air Wolverine", who used endless knee dives and flying around all over the place throwwing out a million smart bombs, and of course breaking out the Team Cheating whenever possible. I knew from the instand that I saw him play, the key to beating Valle was to take out his War Machine. Unfortunately, it seems that no one could do it until near the end, where he lost to Eddie Lee's own Strider/War Machine, and again to Rob Aponte's double War machine team.IMO, Valle didn't deserve to place that high, as I thought there were numerous other better players (at MvC) there. Oh well... I saw a lot of amazing things at ECC4, but THE most amazing thing I saw all weekend came in MvC: It was a Megaman combo done by a guy named Derek, where he basically threw everything and the kicthen sink at his opponent. It went something like this: He charged up the Mega Buster for a long time (not sure how long), and did this to his opponent in the corner: low short, low forward, low roundhouse, release buster. He activates Leaf Shielf, starts charging up another buster, does a dashing combo, releases the leaf shielf, releases the buster, activates another shielf, charges up another buster, does another dashing combo into leaf shielf, does another buster, does another dashing combo ending in standing roundhouse (launcher), air combo ending with an air throw, and comboed into Beat PLane. The air throw didn't count as part of the combo, but even before that he got some 54 hits. o_O My jaw hit the floor with that thing, as did everyone who watched it I imagine. The hits just would not stop. On a side note, that guy also did a 77 combo using Megaman's quasi-infinite (launcher in the corner, air combo ending with air throw, repeat - it all connected), but I didn't see it personally :( Some of the ugliest battles also occured in MvC: Eddie Lee did this to some guy, the same hapless A-Ken I beat in the A3 tourny: Eddie caught him in Gambits infinite (jab -> short, repeat), which he got 40+ hits out of before the combo meter somehow reset, but the infinite kept on going (maybe his opponent wasn't paying attention). After it reset, he got another 53 hits, and followed it up with a launcher into tag super for 70+ hits and 100% damage total. Ugly. Dan also beat a bunch of people using Hyper Venom cheese, which involved a lot of low fierces, throw into supers (out in the open), and throw into infinite (in corner). The player most disgusted by that treatment was probably Chocobo, who definitely didn't know WTF to do (few people did, in fact) and walked away from the machine before he was fully dead. :\ So on to the tourny. There were about 18 Conneticuit players involved in this thing, and were quite obnoxious while cheering on their fellow CT players. I started off against a CT player named Ty. I was armed with my Strider/Zangief, while he had the ubiquitous Striderine. I fear no Striderine, and I won the first match. He and his cohorts seemd realy surprised at that (maybe bcause I had barely played MvC much all weekend and lost most of the time I did). He then switched to Strider/Gold WM. Fuck. I knew how to play with GWM, but I really hadn't much experience against him. I knew CapCom was a counter character for GWM, but I decided to go with Zangief. My hope was to do as much damage to his GWM as possible, have my Strider finish him off, and then use what energy I had left to finish his Strider off. I was confident since I only needed a strong throw with Zangief to remove 80% of his energy. Unfortunately, I got caught in a Team Cheating and lost Zangief too early, and my Strider didn't have enough energy to take out both his characters. Damn. That's one loss. IN my second match, I played against a Chun Li/Shadow Chun Li player. While I hate Chun Li with a passion, I don't fear her (anymore :), and I used the Triple Option to victory. I lost my second match though, as the double Chuns air-mash kicked my Z to death (I forget what happened to Strider). IN my thrid match, my Z again got taken down early, but my Strider sliced and diced both CHuns. Alright. My thrid match came against Tom Cannon, I think. Tom used Hyper Venom/somebody else. Like with SpiderDan, the instant I saw Hyper Venom I went straight for Gold Warmachine. GWM just traded hits on everything H. Venom did, and chip damaged whoever else he used. The second match was more of the same, with me finishing off Tom with a Team Cheating. He let out a "Bah" with that one, and I can't say I blame him. MvC IS trash, after all.. ^_^ Fourth (may have been my fifth) match came against one of the CT players. They were all rallying for him, but I wasn't having any of it. He won the first match (Striderine I think) rather easily. But I came back and destroyed his ass, silencing the CT crowd. They were none too pleased at that. :p My fifth (may have been my fourth) match came against a Spiderman/Chun Li guy who looked like a zombie. No really, he looked like he was dead. There were two of them (brothers no doubt), and he was one of them. Spiderman was no match for Zangief, and his Chun couldn't over come both my characters. Not to tough, that one. My sixth and what would be my final match came against "Big Head" Ed Espino, the local Eight on the Break MvC champ. Ed had a ferocious Striderine team, but as I said before, I don't fear Striderine. As with the CT guy, I lost my first match badly, but rallied back. In my second match, it was down to his Wolverine against my Zangief. He had some 35%, while I had about 10%. He started running away to try and charge up (this was the first time I had seen Ed run away all weekend) and whittle me down with Wolvie's Berserker Rage or maybe with block damage. I eventually did what I wanted: I grabbed him, did my air combo, followed up with the knee, rang for super... and my elbow drop came out. FUCK. That was Zangief's die button, and on cue, Wolvie did low strong, low fierce. Game. Un-fucking-believable. If I had gotten my super instead of the die button, I would have won the match, and I'm sure I could have taken Ed in the next battle too (unless he picked Warmachine, but of course I'll never know). Dammit all. My final placing was tied for 13th, which meant a lot more than my 5th place in HF since I beat more opponents. Still, I'm pissed, since I could have placed higher.... Grrrrr.... Oh well. As for the rest of the tourny, the usual suspects (SpiderDan, Viscant, Eddie Lee, etc) all won their first severla rounds with no problem. Viscant started having trouble at some point, going up against some stiff compeition. IN his last 3 matches (before his last one) I though for sure Viscant was going to lose, but somehow pulled a win out of his ass. :p The ultimate example of this came in his second to last match, where his Zangief with about 5% energy had to go against a GWM/WM, both of whom were still alive (albiet with 10/25% energy). By all rights, Viscant should have lost, but SOMEHOW he won. Even he admits he should have lost, though the guy who was playing the double WM team (Altoro?) said he doesn't play MvC. Even so, Viscant definitely pulled that win out of his ass. Viscant would go and place fifth. SpiderDan, however, lost relatively early with his Double Venom team. I think he too lost to a Double WM team (Rob Aponte's double WM team I believe). It's odd, since he probably could have won if he picked CapCom and H.Venom (since, as SpiderDan showed earlier, CapCom has protection against WM/GWM's Team Cheating - One Captain Sword will eat up ALL the missiles and slam into both of those bastards). He picked CapCom/ Hyper Venom in a previous match-up and won, but for some reason he didn't in his final match. In the end, it all boiled down to Eddie Lee vs. Rob Aponte. Rob APonte had used nothing but double WM and hadn't lost a match yet. Eddie tried double WM, Strider/WM, Strider/ Gambit, but couldn't get the job done. Rob won the first set 4-1 with relatively little trouble, with the CT crowd raising hell with their cheers. In the second set, Eddie lost the first match (he used Strider/Gambit I think), then switched back to double WM. He won the third match, after which Rob mysteriously switched to Chunli/Shadow Chun Li. He quickly lost with that team, and then switched back to double WM as well. The final bouts were all double WM, with Eddie Lee proving victorious by basically "out-Warmachining" Rob. It was exiciting, but also quite disgusting, as the prevalent strategy was simply super jump, throw smart bombs, charge up, break out the Team Beating, repeat, a tactic which proved to have no practical effective counter. It was so bad, that not even Eddie Lee could stop it and had to use the same technique to win. Bleah. The East Coast retains their dubious reputation as being the best MvC players. By this time it's about 2:45 am. Immediately after the final match, Todd thanked us for coming, told us good night, and basically told us to get the hell out ^_^ There were 45 or so players left at this point. We all went out on the street and mingled for a while, since this would probably be the last time we would be seeing each other for a while, if ever again. MOst of the the West Coast crew were mostly concerned with how the hell they were going to get to JFK in time to catch their 7:00 am plane. I hope they made it. The last train had left long ago, so me, Eddie Lee and the six remaining NY players (one of whom, a guy named Josh, was the forth place finisher, and another was the Chun Li/Shadow Chun Li guy I beat) all went to the train station to wait for the next train, which wasn't coming until 6:11 am. So we went, waited, talked a whole bunch of stuff about what happened and other various tactics. I got a Jin infinite from one of them to try out, or at least have my friend the Jin player try it: For those of you who are interested it's: (Corner only): s.strong (launcher), then QUICKLY do sj.jab, sj short, sj short (the first three hits must be done while they're still on fire from the s.strong), sj strong, sj forward, sj roundhouse, s.strong (re-launch), repeat. It sounds rather suspicious to me, but I don't play Jin, so what do I know? :) Anyway, it took a while, and most of us were cold-no-ass all the while, but the train finally came. Eddie and Altoro split off and went their way at Newwark, while the rest of use went on to Penn Station in Manhatten. There I bid the others farewell and bounded another train for Hempstead Long island. I finally reached home at 10:45 am, by which time I was not only beyond tired but my body - mainly my right ankle - was wracked with pain. I had never stood up for 30 hours before this weekend. It took some 19 hours of sleep, but I'm okay now ^_^. I hope the others made it home safely. *Whew* That about covers it all. I hope this damn thing gets through to the newsgroup, as I have spent the last 5 hours typing it. ECC4 was fun, despite the pain it left me in (both physically and financially). I hope to be back next year, and hopefully I'll a) do better and b) won't have to sleep on concret steps again. :) That's all for now. -- Jamie "Ultima" Stoute