So with Gencon in the books and no more major tournies to look forward to in North America, i felt it would be good to try to sum up the past year in the world of UFS. This year's season followed many storylines, one of which was the meteoric rise and fall of the latest version of Chun-Li. Now as a person who played chun-li from the moment she was released i will be the first to admiit that she was a character who altered the meta like very few others before her. Chun-li made more appearances in the top 8 of regional tourements than any other character this year and became the one of the most widely hated characters in the games history. Because of Chun-li many other air characters, such as Mignon and Felicia, saw more play as players tried to avoid diversity through what we commonly refer to as "sand-bagging". Chun-li players found a great amount of success this year and one, mr. Mike Lowe, ended up taking home a national title. But like many characters before her, Chun-li found herself on the wrong end of the ban hammer come the end of Origins 2009.
Another plot to this year's competative season was the emergence of team UFS house as one of the best three-man groups to ever play the game. Herr, Kohls, and Bittner had been pursueing aa team title for a while and this year that goal was finally realized; not only at U.S. nationals but once again at the recent world championships. Lets not forget that another member of UFS house had his own goal that he was hoping to reach. Paul Bittner who had top 8'd so many times in the past finally won his own character card, completely the trifecta of character cards that Team UFS house has accumulated. Congratulations to Paul for his big win and playing one of the best Zi Mei decks most ppl have ever seen.
The most recent piece of big news came during Steve's state of the game anouncement during UFs worlds singles, the sudden move to Block 4 starting on monday. Now while many people were thrilled with the move you have to know that just as many people will be upset andenraged by the decision. Now my own relationship with block 3 was that of the love/hate variety. Many of the best becks personified aggresiveness, Chun-Li and Zi Mei, were prime examples. On the other side of things, decks like Sakura, Zangief, and Gill relied on hard-nosed control to achieve success. The two things that make me the most excited about block 4 are: the non-exsistence of life gain and CC hax, and the fact that Tekken 6 is set to rock the UFS arena.
So thats it for me, feel free to add anything above and i hope to see all of you next year.
-Alex Marco