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We got a big tournament coming up on November 17 -- EFL Presents: The King of Iron Fresh Tournament
Venue is the City Hall bar in downtown Denver. In addition to KoF there will also be P4A, Marvel, AE, and TTT2.

I feel having great online would help this game a good bit in my state. We have a strong and consistent group of 8-10 local players for this game, but every time we try to get more people into it they always say something like "the online is so bad I can't practice" or "i'm already playing too many games." We have weekly casual gatherings for this game too, but it's almost always the same people because either 1) the other people live far away, or don't have a car in the first place, and 2) they feel intimidated since most of us are pretty damn good at this game so they're somewhat afraid of getting trounced. #2 is unfortunate because I'll admit I'm at the very bottom of the skill level within our KoF group, yet I still make it out often. I think if this game had better online, then the interested people would be able to "get better" on their own time instead of showing up to our gatherings and expect to get trashed.

It's a cancel. One of his trials has that sequence. You just have to hit f. b. f. AC pretty fast.

Yeah so I doubt there are many CO people on this forum, but I wanted to make a thread for the state anyway.

The main site we use to put together gatherings is extrafresh.net.

The majority of our current KoF players live in and around Denver, though there are a couple people in the north that come down to tournaments from time to time. Colorado Springs is pretty active too, but more for Marvel and not so much for KoF. As for tournaments: we have about 8 people including myself that show up regularly for KoF.

Leading up to EVO 2012, we had been holding weekly casual gatherings at a person's house to level each other up, and those went over really well so I think we'll be continuing that in the future. As for our skill level: 4 of our players went to EVO 2012 and 3 of them made it out of pools. We have some seriously strong talent here, despite having a pretty small player base - we're small but devoted! Hopefully we can get some more local people here interested, and I'll try to keep stuff here updated with tournaments and whatnot.

I'm having trouble practicing hit-confirms. In other fighting games I would go to training mode and set the dummy to Random Guard, and practice hit-confirms that way. But in this game it seems the dummy won't block high unless they're standing, and won't block low unless they're crouching (when set to Random Guard anyway). So this means I can't practice doing high-low mix-up strings with short hops and jumps and stuff like that (at least in Training Mode). How do other people practice this?

Conversely, one of Kula's more common blockstrings is actually not a blockstring at all.  When she does stand C (x2)/f+A, qcb+B~f+B, there's a gap after the Ray Spin hits you and before the projectile comes out.  She's instant grabbable at that point.  If you can pull that off you'll take away one of her blockstrings because she'll be afraid to use it.

I managed to figure this out after some time in training which helps a lot with fighting Kula in general.

Kula will want to take away your projectile game but you can punish her for that.  Counter Shells are baitable at a certain distance.  If you're confident she'll try to reflect, super jump into her as soon as your projectile is out and punish her for trying.  I'm not sure how easy this is on Athena because of her slow floaty jump, but at least try to see what distances her Counter Shell can be baited/punished.  It'll make her afraid to use it and allow you to use your tools again.

This is gonna be pretty hard to manage I think, since like you said Athena has a slow jump. If I can get this down then it would be a good way to bait uppercuts form Kula though, since Athena's jump is so specific. I can also imagine getting hit by Kula's reflector on purpose a few times just to make them not expect something like this.

You can also set up command grabs off properly spaced teleports.  She has two distances with hers so with enough practice you should be able to see your openings to position yourself for a grab.

I think this is primarily what I want to try, since Kula doesn't seem to have the greatest answers to command grabs.

I find I can do this more consistently when I start with a jump-in than if I do just s.C, f. B. Does that mean I'm not starting the charge fast enough from the f. B?

PSN: NineInchSamurai
Location: USA, Denver, Colorado

4/Blue Bars
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3/Green Bars
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2/Yellow Bars
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Most Played Characters: Andy, Takuma, Ryo, King, Robert

So I now we've all seen the tutorial video about the Rule of 2 (I've rewatched it several times), but I'm still having problems actually using that information. By far my biggest weakness right now is aggressive rushdown - I'll offer Kula and EX Iori as specific examples. That video talks about how to counter hops, normal jumps, and low block strings. I understand the kinds of normal and specials that will beat these tactics, but I just can't execute it during real matches. Whenever I do, it feels like I'm just guessing (and a 1/3 chance is not good) so odds are I'll throw out some pre-emptive lows and they'll hop or jump instead.

Does it really come down to reactions?  Because it doesn't seem like a standing A could beat a hop C from EX Iori if I throw it out at after they do - feels like I need to do it preemptively. I've gotten much better at doing reaction reversals, so I'm wondering if this is just an extension of that and I need to improve my reaction with normals in order to counter this stuff. And this isn't a problem that's particular to me being in the corner, because I get hit with crossups all the time since I'm just not thinking about stopping it and only really focused on blocking. I could start using more Guard Cancel stuff, but that doesn't feel like it would actually help my overall problem and it's something I would rather save for when they do really strong blockstrings that are almost impossible to counter normally (or maybe really strong hop CD pressure).

Andy doesn't have anything special to open people up with in the corner, so I end up doing basically the same thing as midscreen pressure except now they don't have as many options. I like doing quick spurts of rushdown with hops/lows and then after getting a knockdown back up a bit and throw out his cr. D to catch wake-up reversals.

I'm really hating his fireball the more I use him. The recovery on it is really god-awful, so it seems like the only time to use it is for drive-canceling to the corner.

I'm having a really hard time against Kula using Athena. Kula essentially negates Athena's neutral game, and her pokes seem to out range everything I have with Athena as well. I basically can't figure out how to beat her pressure OR how to get in on her with Athena.

So I've been wondering, is there a consensus as to the learning difficulty of Robert. I know he has been considered a top tier character but not many people play with him.  I'm not giving up on him I definitely want to learn him but the biggest thing that frustrates me about him is a lot of his drive cancels.

I recently picked him up and I definitely agree that his drive cancels are kinda tough; the timing on his qcb. K after doing a dp. C is pretty strict in order to get it to hit, but you only really need to hit that cancel once and the rest are from his dp. A (in the corner anyway).

"Robert is a gimmicky character hes only top tier because you can throw shit out and it will be safe like the fireball to charge kick you see many do etc but if youre planning on tier whoring go with someone that has more tools and is more ample like Hwa Saiki or Chin you can never go wrong with them"

I don't think that's completely fair. Robert has his share of great normals, a command grab, and a taco kick so it's not all just "gimmicky stuff."

I've been using Takuma since I started playing the game and I really like playing as him, but I just recently bought the DLC characters and since everyone agrees Mr. Karate is top tier in this game, I decided to try him out and replace Takuma. I found that I don't really like playing Mr. Karate as much, and his combo execution is just harder for me in general. So lately I've been struggling between keeping at it with Mr. Karate or going back to Takuma, and you know conventional wisdom tells me to keep with Mr. Karate since he really does have so many more options and can deal with a lot more stuff. However, I can recognize a few advantages that Takuma has over Mr. Karate and it just seems like Takuma's play style fits my mindset more. I dunno, it's a little hard to tell since I still have such little experience playing with Mr. Karate; the demanding execution of Mr. Karate is definitely a drawback at this point though.

Location: Colorado

Games Played
KoF XIII
MotW (sometimes)
KoF2k2 (I'm mostly terrible but I like it a lot)

Network/ID
PSN: NineInchSamurai
GGPO: 9inchsamurai


I already know Ryyudo (up there ^) from the Colorado scene, but there aren't a lot of PS3 users playing this game around here.