AEX Ranbat Milano #2.5 weekend

So here we are again. Last friday there was a nice session of various games at Makhbeth's, but I was unable to attend. Too bad, but whatever. The following day after travelling all the morning it was ranbat time. This time I wanted to focus on 3rd Strike and I surely did. After sign-ups and setting up the brackets I completely avoided SFIV all day long, and a big thanks goes to the guys that ran that tounament. Rushing Monkey in particular, who even won it.
Anyway, I managed to get a better 3s warm up than usual, and then my group ended up being quite easy, so I was ready for some knockout action. My part of the bracket had Biollo (UR, #2.4 finalist), SpinalBlood (KE) and Rushing Monkey (GO/MA, season 1 3s winner, now fully focused on SFIV) as major threats. I got to play Biollo in the second turn and last time agains him in the group didn't end well, so I was a bit worried. But I knew how to beat him, and this time I just did what I had to in order to win. Not easily, but it was a 2-0 afterall. He's a very good player overall but he still does some stuff that I can easily punish with Chun and he has some bad habits. Always good to play him though (he's very, very good at Super Turbo, btw).
In the meanwhile Spinal randomized out Rushing! That was really unexpected, lol. But Spinal can be very solid too. He just put too much random in it this time... Just too much!
So I was in semifinal against him. And it wasn't so hard, since recently even though he's always doing good, he's not able to beat me. I don't know why precisely, he surely could do some harm to me as well.
So my first ranbat final was against fran, of course. LEVA and Mitsu weren't there, by the way. Since he's almost sure (we should do some math, but whatever) about winning this season he was using Hugo and Yang in tournament along with Yun. With me he started with Hugo, and he lost in a close match. I was relaxed because I didn't expect to win, and that was GREAT. But my stick started doing crazy stuff, like pause the game and other random inputs. It's not a new thing too... And what did I do? I didn't change it for game 2. I lost it against Yang and only after that one I changed it with another one that I didn't like much, so whatever. Next time I'll try to be smarter... But anyway, I was happy enough for my first RB final, so for this time it's ok.
For full results just remember to check AEX in a few days, as usual.

After that, we also had the time (and the will) to have a 3s team tournament. It's always great to teamplay in this game. Honestly I think that it's the best format too...
I asked EXG (aka gogu, YU) to team up because I feel we really think the same about the game and we both are in a good moment. I was right, we ended up with a close, very close second place. In the final fran killed both EXG and me with a clutch Gigas in round 3. Full bracket for 3s teamplay here: challonge bracket.
After that we also had tons of freeplay... I particularly enjoyed a little session with Rushing. There is always something to learn from him.

So what do I think about 3s in Milan now? First of all, it's the only place in Italy where the game gets some real love. Second thing is: we already have some very good players and that is not news. Last thing: some other players in the background are actually improving and are slowly becoming a threat: me, EXG, BlueDragon (his execution is awesome, but his style is wild, lol), Biollo, Spinal and so on. We also have new players (CFC) and other dedicated heads that will do good (Togo, Jck). We have to keep playing no matter what. No matter what.

The day ended chilling out a bit with fran, LEVA, Togo and EXG. The latter also gave me a place to sleep, so we ended the night-chat talking about... 3s all the time. There is no game like this, definitely. Sunday I just went home, so that's it.

Random note of interest (?): I just bought a HTC Tattoo. It's an awesome smartphone that will allow me to do some wonders like twittering live from events and also stream some stuff... Hopefully it will be useful for my thesis at uni too, but that's another story.
3s wise, something cool might be happening soon in Milan... So let's see what happens.