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Definitely sending some feedback on these pools because there's some pools that are incredibly stacked while other pools being very light.

For example, at the time I'm writing this pool I29 has Sange Tencho vs Mr.KoF in round one of the pool.

Ah sorry my bad I should have double checked the results. Misterio should definitely get a higher seed spot with those tourney results.

Also, here's a list of the international players heading to Evo this year.

http://team0z.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/evo14%E6%B5%B7%E5%A4%96%E3%81%AE%E3%83%97%E3%83%AC%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A4%E3%83%BC%E5%87%BA%E5%B8%AD%E3%80%82evo14-international-roster-attendance/

It's not a complete list by any means but now we can get a better idea of who's attending and which players should be getting seeds.

Honestly, we should first take a look at major tournament results of 2014 and then give priority seeding to the players who made top 3 because they earned them. After wards, we can go over who should be seeded based on how the community feels their skill level is. Based on what I've read from FB/Twitter Reynald, Romance, Fox, Koopa and Bala won't be attending Evo this year so I'll be excluding them from this list.

1) Tokido - Should be given the best seed because he's the most consistent tournament player this year. He's recently won KoF at  IGT2014, NWM6, and SEAM2014.

2) Luis Cha - Outside of Reynald, he's probably the 2nd most consistent tournament player this year. 1st at Japanawa 2014, 1st at Stunfest 2014, 2nd at CEO2014, 4th at SCR2014

Besides these two I'm not sure about the order of seeding the following players.

Violent Kain - 2nd place at Japonawa2014 and 9th at SCR2014. Probably the most consistent player with the EX Iori rekka loops
Khannibalito - 1st at SCR2014, 2nd at Hyper Battle
Woo - 2nd at Evo2013.
MadKoF - 1st at Evo2012, 3rd at Evo2013
Verna - 2 time top 8 placement at Evo
ET - 2nd at IGT2014

The above would be my top 8 seeds based on tournament track record for the year as well as past Evo performances. I would also seed the following players.

Toshi
Javier
Huevo
Pako
Mr.KoF
Ricky Diaz
Chris KoF
Lacid
Ren
Xian
Frionel
KouKou
M'
Dune
Sange Tenchou
Haregoro
Gutts
Misterio

EX/Iori's normals are amazing as well and I feel he embodies KoF fundamentals because all of his normals have a specific range and purpose that they should be in.

He's just as much as a bully as the other two, imo, and has similar mix up games. His oki is definitely better than the other two and rekkas lead into safe jump set ups or other kof related options.

Seriously? No discussion on top 8 for Japonawa 2014?

http://www.twitch.tv/teamlago/b/532154077

The level of play in top 8 was insane and it sounded like the pools were stacked. Does anybody know if there was a challonge bracket for this event? I heard Koopa was in attendance and he didn't make top 8 so just interested in who peaced him out. My thoughts on top 8.

So we all know that the best team in KoFXIII is EX Iori, Mr. Karate, and Kim. There were also a lot of debates on which of these characters is the best in the game and it was usually a back and forth between Karate and Kim. After watching Japonawa top 8, I've got no doubt in my mind that EX Iori is the best character in the game but only if the player is capable of doing consistent rekka loops. EX Iori is a top tier character without them but the majority of the players in top 8 could do a few reps of the rekka loops with Violent Kain being the most consistent at doing the actual infinite. Being able to turn stray hits from CH j.CD, anti-air rekkas, or anti-air DPs into the rekka loops is insane and gives huge damage output, corner carry, meter and drive gain. Its also one of the most execution demanding infinite I've seen. I've seen some people complain about the infinite and while I can understand why, I can also respect the skill it takes to perform it.

I was really impressed with Violent Kain's play regardless of his execution consistency. His fundamental play and his hit confirms off of stray hits was ridiculous. He was making short work of strong players like Huevo who's a consistently amazing player in Mexico. I was shocked to see Violent Kain OCV Huevo multiple times.

To top this off the grand finals match between Violent Kain and Luis Char was a treat. Luis Cha is one of my favorite players since he's a fundamentals type of player. He's not an execution monster like Kain or Ren, he doesn't make over the top reads like Bala, he's just a solid fundamentals player and to see him win a tournament is really encouraging. He's a player that proves that you can win against other beasts with fundamentals. I've always questioned his team order since the optimal order should be EX Iori, Shen, and Kim but he definitely made this order work out for the best.

I think the only disappointing thing was that BALA wasn't in attendance since he won last years Japonawa beating Koopa in an extremely close set. I like watching BALA play because he's probably got the best reads but he also uses a ton of characters at such a high level. He's similar to Luis Cha in that he doesn't always use top tier but if he does it's usually in an order that you don't expect.

In any case, Violent Kain is looking like a contender to winning Evo this year if he can keep this level of play up. I'd also like to see more of the stronger Mexican players show up for Evo this year. Koopa and Huevo couldn't attend last year and I always thought they could have made top 8. Seriously, my dream top 8 for KoFXIII would be Koopa, Bala, MadKOF, Tokido, Violent Kain, Toshi, Reynald, Luis Cha, and a toss up between M'/Romance/Lacid/Pako/Javier.

2 FT10's between Luis Cha and Koopa during Japonawa 2014. A ton of high level play in these sets and a lot of reverse OCV's going on.

JAPONAWA 2014 KOF13 FT10: MCZ | TC | LDA Luis Cha (MEX/SoCal) vs. XTR | ST | Koopa (TJ, MEX)

TC Pako vs Luis Cha FT10 at SCR2014.

http://youtu.be/fuiTI5_kdAU

KoF top 8 is  going to be at 2am on Sunday for me.

I don't completely agree with your statement. When you rate a character you have to take into consideration every aspect of the game and the characters into consideration. Duo Lon is a great point character but he has multiple weaknesses and isn't very versatile in team positioning so he should be ranked lower than Mr.Karate who is also an amazing point character with very strong tools, less weaknesses, and is good in any team position.

The top tiers being dominant in this game is a combination of their good tool sets, few weaknesses, high damage for little resources, and versatility in team order. They generally have favourable match ups against the majority of the cast and require less time to learn and be effective with than other characters in the game.

This being said, I strongly believe that KoF's 3v3 system and overall game mechanics help mitigate tier disparities to a certain extent. Top tier characters will always be commonly played at high level in any game but KoF is one of the rare games where you can see low tier characters do well in tournaments.

Toshi winning that Peruvian tournament and going even against Bala with EX Iori/Athena/Kensou and TC| Pako getting 3rd at SCR with Duo Lon/Elisabeth/Mai are some of the best examples of this.

So if KoFXIII didn't make it to Evo would in the KoF Community would step up and organize a side tournament? or would it have been a collective effort between the various communities around the world like Orochinagi and Dream Cancel?

I'm just kind of wondering about what the reaction from the KoF community would have been if KoFXIII didn't make it to Evo. I would hope that the community as a whole would step up and organize a side tournament at Evo instead of kicking and screaming like the Tekken and Smash communities have been doing.

Hell, the Skullgirls community stepped their shit up and got their donations going and did their own side tournament for the last 2 years. The community over at Dustloop always set up a Guilty Gear side tourney every year. People run 3S, CVS2, and MvC2 side tourneys as well. I don't really understand why the other communities need to make a big fuss over their game not making it in. I understand it's disappointing but if the community is there then there's nothing stopping them from setting up their own side tourney at Evo. 

Gogsgarden, specifically Kazunoko (aka Inoue) did a stream for KOFXIII. They had Dune and Ichimu show up as guests where they played some matches against each other and talk about the KoF scene in general (both nationally and internationally).

This was a 4 part video uploaded by ImbuedGold so you can check out his channel which has other KoF vids: http://www.youtube.com/ImbuedGold

I haven't seen all of the parts and just going through part 4 at the moment but it's interesting to here these guys talk about the international KoF scene.

KoF XIII : Kao TV! (Guests : Dune & Ichimu) [Part 4]

My Japanese isn't perfect but they go over things about Evo, the mexican scene, BALA, etc...

Pretty hilarious part where Dune is doing a Vice HD combo on Ichimu's Claw Iori and you can see in between the reps Ichimu is inputting EX Command Grab in case Dune drops the combo. On the killing blow Dune drops the combo and he gets command grabbed into an HD combo and dies. The reaction from Dune on the command grab was hilarious.

Anyone know about this little trick?
RDP OS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAuh3oUQftY

There's a twitter account that mentioned this before but I think this is the first time someone made a video to demonstrate the concept.

That Kim hit confirm into HD by M' was ridic.

The whiff timing is still tricky but you can still time it too early and hit them too high for the second dp+a to connect. Some players such as Bala and Pako like to use a micro dash to help with the timing from time-to-time. You can play around with these techniques but do what's most comfortable for you.

Speaking of Pako, he did a bunch of sets last night (Friday, Jan 03) so there's a lot of good Elisabeth footage here.

http://www.twitch.tv/layex/b/492441922

I also want to note that he has a sick side swap combo off of her EX command grab.

EX Command grab, qcf+K, EX Etincelle

I haven't played around with the combo yet but he does the qcf+K to side swap and then quickly cancels into EX Etincelle. I'm going to assume you'll need to input the EX Etincelle in the opposite direction that you're facing. So it should be a smooth qcf+K, qcb+PP motion. I'll post it up on the wiki once I've got it down as well as the stun and damage calculations.

Kusanagi from Mexico also plays a really good Regular Kyo and K'.