Another year, another one of these huh

here's to a hopefully long journey through Bracket 5. c:

Round 1 - Avallonis (AAA)

15-minute kill. ngl it looked a fair amount harder in preview (as always), happy to start off with the right foot. 1st (MA: 6th/9)

Other files in the round:
B1: Baby (AAA)
B2: Dan Dan Hayaku Naru (AAA)
B3: Spoken Story (AAA)
B4: 11th dimension (AAA)
B6: Eureka (BOOFLAG)
B7: Akazu (20-1-5-4)
E1: A Mechanical Receptacle, Fifty Shards of a Glowing Heart (AAA)

yay i have a file in the game now ^^

Round 2 - Rite on Time (AAA)

two attempts yay. I was a tiny bit afraid that it would be really sucky to kill, since it's a pretty janky file, but thankfully the newfound minijack consistency came through on the runback. 1st (MA: 4th/9)

Other files in the round:
B1: When Sandwiches Come A Knockin' (AAA)
B2: Caramel Pain (AAA)
B3: Empire of Light (AAA)
B4: Goddess Gagged (AAA)
B6: Mezzotinto (7-0-1-1)
B7: ETERNAL DRAIN v2 (UNPLAYED)

eternal drain is unplayable lmao, but generally good files this round. love Caramel Pain, such a neat file for a 48

Round 3 - Metamorphose (AAA)

glad that two hours was enough to AAA. i was much more confident after my sightread and within two full plays I had a blackflag, so it was just a question of playing it out and not tilting. file fits my skillset very well and is really fun. 1st (MA: 2nd/4)

Other files in the round:
B1: wWwWwWwWwWwWwWwWwWwWwWwWwWwWwWw (AAA)
B2: Run (AAA)
B3: Polynomial (AAA)
B4: Pastel Express (AAA)
B6: silly-willy-nilly (24-0-2-5)
B7: BIBBIDIBA (DARKZTAR WHY)

pretty tricky files this round on all groups gl everyone. silly-willy-nilly was pretty fun wish i had grinded it more

Round 4 - Touk Touk (5-0-0-3)

damn they really went there, made the most mindblockable file in the universe, then decided it should be impossible to mirror too. it's commendable really. I could tell myself that I could have done better on this but at the end of the day it is what it is. 4th

Other files in the round:
B1: Longing for Earth (Yukitsuki-yashou arrange ver) (AAA)
B2: MIRROR (AAA)
B3: Wicked Nasty! (AAA)
B4: Sweet and Fruitful (AAA)
B6: Clex3 (FUCK NO)
B7: Kyuukou (?????)

sweet and fruitful is hard goddamnit, overall a suite of pretty tough files this round

Round 5 - Gaviscon (8-0-0-6)

i really do feel like i'm THIS close to the physicality needed to get a monster score on this file but oh well. i'll have to hope this 12.8 ends up being enoug-- YEEEEES SDG FINALLY HOLY SHIT
3rd

Other files in the round:
B1: Dynamite (AAA)
B2: The Tower (AAA)
B3: Oberbayerrrrn (AAA)
B4: Lanadyne Interface (AAA)
B6: Yuushitessen (nahhh)
B7: Shinchoku Yaba-Zaemon uwu (nope)

lanadyne is genuinely one of the most upsetting files ever LOL, my heart out for B4. it's not at all a bad or unenjoyable file, but chokes happen in the most frustrating ways possible.

Round 5 - endleSSStation (Frums Shuuden Bootleg) (79-6-36-5)

hard. physical improvement isn't something that I can pull off like that, and getting hit with 260 JS after getting here by playing tech files gives the whole thing a faint sting of pointlessness; yet I play because what else would I do. congrats to everyone that got top 5 with me, you're all really good at this game and I'm glad to have gotten to R6 amidst such a stacked field. it also helps that in the end i guess i'm okay with the score i got

Other files in the round:
B1: 2 (AAA)
B2: Sesquifractal (AAA)
B3: Cub Cub Lion Heart (AAA)
B4: SHA (1-0-0-1)
B6: Diabolic Enemy (uh huh sure)
B7: Cortex Charger (i'm good thanks)

gaaaaaah i really wanted to AAA sha for the B4 sweep but that file will have to wait. it's just a bit too finicky for me yet. i like the B4+ R6 songs, they feel quite climatic.

Yep, it's more or less what it sounds like. On January 5th, I created a personal Skill Rating leaderboard that I would use to track my AAAs only:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BTqzbsbacrCDEhMHS7otLXPB3e0KfZF9c3JIwD84Fz0/edit?sharingaction=ownershiptransfer&gid=0#gid=0

I don't know when I decided that I wanted to go for D6 with only AAAs. The version history on the spreadsheet says it's at least since July 7th. I feel like it may have been earlier, maybe even as soon as I got D6.

It was maybe a little silly of me - not to mention a bit too early - to want to go for something like that. I'd soon learn that the 81-83 AAAs I'd need to get in order to clinch this achievement were actually no joke, and getting my level above the arbitrary magic number didn't make them any easier. I slowly chipped away at it for a good while, but the math would be as brutal as the one to get to D6 itself.

However, some insane AAAs near the tail end of the year gave me a BIG push towards this objective. All the 88+ AAAs ended up being a huge shortcut amd allowed me to secure D6 without even grinding out the #40-#50 range. These are genuinely some of my best scores and they made me feel like this was, more than anything, earned.

Right now, it's 5 AM. I'm hungry and sleepy. But before getting to that, I'm scrolling down the list and wow holy shit so many of these were hard and annoying. I can recall the grind for almost all of them. It does make me realize how much I've enjoyed accuracy play and grinding for these AAAs on FFR - something I've really enjoyed, but put aside in the past in favor of pushing and chasing milestones. It's been nice to do my own thing here.

Time to see how long it will take for D7 with AAAs. Never? Probably. who knows though

Guess i'll do one of those and edit it as we go

R1: Playing God (BLACKFLAG)

between gross keyboard issues that plagued me the entire month before the tournament and the general rustiness that resulted, I ended up not starting off with a AAA, but I also didn't need one and will focus on pushing ahead if I can. 19th

R2: Sajtban (3-0-0-0)

very inconsistent chart with heinous bursts. quite annoying to optimize. my previous scores more than cleared me for the round, but it still felt reasonable to optimize a bit. 9th

R3: Dedaism (AAA)

hey layla i told you i love this kind of file c:
day 1 AAA, def feels good. 1st (with best MA!!)

R4: 1nput This 2 Y0ur Spine (7-0-0-0)

actually disgusting chart. one billion chokable patterns, a bullshit JS burst, and it was 3:40 which heavily limited grinding potential (it mostly made it a chore to reset). still made it through in quite decent form. 4th

R5: Diabolic Swing (5-0-2-3)

there's something about sitting in front of your computer every day and failing at the same thing for hours that makes you feel very incompetent. 9th

================================

the end.
thanks for everyone that cheered me on. i'm a bit disheartened by the results, but I'm glad there were people that believed in me. i hope I didn't disappoint any of you.

i'll try to ghost the lower bracket for a chance at a token, but I'm not really putting my heart into it. don't expect me to log it on here.

see you all next event ^^

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

This concludes my thoughts on achieving D6.

Figured I'd make one of these fancy retrospectives people do for tournaments now that it's nearing the end.

== Phase 1 ==

R1: Rationalist v2 (AAA)
after resetting for this approximately 12 billion times (my honest lower bound estimate is ~900 retries) thank god i found the AAA. I didn't need this at all to pass to the next phase but it gave me a lot of confidence, so I don't regret the time I spent at all. 5th (worst MA of all AAAs)

R2: Paradoxical time leap trial (6-0-0-0)
chart is a literal slot machine, get lucky on all the BS bursts and don't mindblock the beginning. looking back i'm honestly surprised i even had ONE run this good. 8th

R3: PUPTHEBAND Inc. Is Filing For Bankruptcy (AAA)
this was an MA round, so the AAA is basically a gimme. I tried putting on a good ratio but lots of people were better than me, did my best still. 10th

Overall: 6th Place (Average 7.66)
I got through "phase 1" as the overall 6th, which was way above cutoff but was significant to my potential objective of getting a top 8. I did decently in all rounds and was ready for the next charts

== Phase 2 ==

R4: PYROMANIA (5-0-0-1)
holy shit i did REALLY good at this chart. I've always felt pretty good about this kind of chart and performing well on this was great and put me on a really high note for the rest of the phase. 1st

R5: No Ordinary Love x1.5 (7-0-0-2)
got this before i inevitably mindblocked the bullshit stream burst about 2/3rds into the chart. the score i *did* punch in was pretty nifty, though. good for 3rd

R6: Public Enemy (AAA)
another MA round, another lower-end performance from me; though this time the competition was thinned out since some people that had surpassed me on MA back on R3 not being able to AAA, not needing to, or simply not participating. 5th (out of 6 AAAs)

Overall: 1st Place (Average 3.00)
not gonna lie, this made me REALLY happy. only at this point i started genuinely believing in top 3. i put some work into this round and felt very rewarded, and went into r7 with a lot of confidence

== Final Rounds ==

Round 7: Tuberculosis x1.15 (18-1-0-4)
when I first did this score, I think I was 2nd out of 2. I tried improving it a few times to no avail, and I was honestly just waiting to be knocked out of top 3... and then I wasn't. ngl it was a bit terrifying seeing that literally nobody else could play the chart at all

ended up getting top 3 as 2nd place

Round 8: The Bird's Poisoned Bathwater x1.2 (41-0-3-4)

here we are. it's less than 4 hours until the end of the tournament and i have NO SHOT at improving this. congratulations to AAAorQUIT and InstaKill195 for the great R8 showing! i still feel kinda like i overperformed but I'm glad with how things went. It's been a while since I've had much to be proud about honestly. ggs and time to grind for OT17