Lock in. | Set Point! November 13, 2024
Round 1
Hey everybody! After downbacking for a week I am back to give you another Set Point! your weekly FGC round up. The biggest stories this week were again for Street Fighter 6. While Street Fighter League Japan took a bit of a break, we had SFLUS Week 4, and SFLEU announced their teams. Down in the Dominican Republic, Blink Respawn happened this week as the second to last offline Premier for Capcom Cup XI.
Let’s Rock
Replay Review
I did have to miss last week’s post due working the US elections, but the biggest news from last week were the Japan Super Premier for Street Fighter 6, and Stormy Night 2nFes, an Arc World Tour qualifier for Under Night In-Birth II.
You can check out Brian_F’s excellent recap of the Japan Super Premier.
Top 8 VOD for Stormy Night
A Meeting of the Prodigies — Blink Respawn 2024
Locked in, NoahTheProdigy won his first major and qualified for Capcom Cup IX. Noah has had an amazing year so far in Season 2 of Street Fighter 6 getting 2nd at Dreamhack Atlanta and 2nd at The MIXUP to qualify for the Esports World Cup where he got 9th place. The bracket was considerably smaller compared to other Premiers, but Noah still had to beat CrossoverRD, GranTODAKAI.EX, Craime, JAK, and Dual Kevin.
For the rest of top 8 we had:
2nd: Dual Kevin
3rd: JAK
4th: Craime
5th: Nain Jr.
5th: CrossoverRD
7th: MenaRD
7th: Blaz
Dual Kevin has also had an incredible year so far, qualifying for Esports World Cup through the Last Chance Qaulifier, getting 2nd at Cream City Convergence, 1st at F2CON, 3rd at Dreamhack Atlanta, 3rd at East Coast Throwdown, and is the highest ranked player in the US Midwest World Warrior region. While Dual Kevin will most likely qualify for Capcom Cup through World Warrior, he expressed his disappointment in the lack of impact his offline performances have had on his CPT qualification.
JAK aka Justakid, has been on the grind frequently getting top 8s this year, but not yet having the same success as his Street Fighter V days. He looks to be the favorite to win the US Midwest World Warrior if Dual Kevin qualifies through points, but he’s still got a way to go.
Nain Jr is a Luke player from Honduras and represented his country well. He was able to eliminate MenaRD on steam for the upset. Nain Jr has been consistently getting top 8 in World Warriors since Street Fighter V.
The “boomer” of top 8 at age 35 was CrossoverRD. Crossover is a top player from the Dominican Republic who qualified for Capcom Cup in 2018 and 2023 as well. During his run, he was able to eliminate Tachikawa and Caba.
I can’t go without mentioning the two breakout offline performances from Craime and Balz, South America’s two prodigies. Blaz is 15 years old and absolutely wiped the floor in the South America East Super Region. He won four out of the five events with his Ryu and Ed. Blaz in his run beat Uriel Velorio, Paladin, and Mexico’s KUSANAGI. He got sent to losers by Nain Jr. and eliminated by CrossoerRD. Craime, is only 13 years old and has been going toe to toe with Blaz frequently in World Warrior and other South American events. Craime’s Ken was able to beat out LuiMan20, Paladin, Nain Jr., and CrossoverRD. In a final game, final round set, NoahTheProdigy sent him to losers, and he lost 1–3 to Dual Kevin. We’ll definitely see more Blaz in Capcom Cup, but it would be awesome to see more Craime as well if he can win his World Warrior Regional Finals.
Street Fighter League US Week 4
Team Fighting Spirit 40 — Shopify Rebellion 0
Team Fighting Spirit started things out strong getting their first 40 bomb of the season against Shopify Rebellion. Dual Kevin was almost able to tie the match up against NL’s Akuma, but in the last moments Dual Kevin let out Rashid’s ysaar and NL snuck a crouching medium punch, confirming it into level 2 to avoid the tornado and win the set. With the win, Fighting Spirit is now a full 60 points ahead of Shopify. There’s still a lot of season left, but Shopify Rebellion is not in a good spot.
Red Rooster 20 — Cloud9 25
Red Rooster had their best performance yet getting 20 points on Cloud9, but were unable to win the tiebreaker for the extra five points. Uriel has been a strong asset to the team, beating out NoahTheProdigy in the first set. Noah has yet to win on SFL, even though he definitely gets his camera time. JB also had an amzing performance against Red Rooster’s Brutus winning 3–0. The Zangief/Rashid matchup is favorable to Zangief, but JB was able to guess just right enough each match to dominate the set. Red Rooster is still in dead last with no wins. It seems each week they are learning to leverage Uriel, Brutus, and Mono as their playstyles with Ken, Zangief, and AKI are some of the most volatile in the current meta.
Flyquest 10 — Bandits 30
Psycho took a break from being on point this week and Flyquest put in ChrisCCH up against Caba winning 2–1. Luiman tied the match up beating Psycho to leave the tiebreaker up to Captains Punk and MenaRD. This is the contemporary Street Fighter classic as the two have met in EVO and other majors. Mena grabbed Punk just enough to win 3–2 and bring it home for Bandits.
SFLUS Current Standings
1. Bandits 105
2. Flyquest 105
3. Cloud9 105
4. Fighting Spriit 100
5. Shopify Rebellion 40
6. Red Rooster 40
Street Fighter League EU Team Announcements
Mouz, Guild Esports, and Wolves are the three teams coming back this year. Ninjas in Pyjamas, Reason Gaming, and Aegis are this year’s newcomers. Let’s get into their teams!
Team Captain, Mister Crimson from France, was arguably the best Street Fighter V player at the end of its mainstream life. He’s won Redbull Kumite London, and won last year’s Ulimate Fighting Arena. He is a Dhalsim main. It’s cool to see that each league has a sim player. Kilzyou in an esports competitor from France who competes in both Konami’s eFootball and Street Fighter. Kilzyou has multiple championships in eFootball and has qualified for Capcom Cup previously. His main is Cammy, but also dabbles in other characters including Rashid, Juri, and Manon. Hopefully we see some of these counterpicks from him this season. Kusanagi started competing in Street Fighter IV at ten years old and is now a well known shoto player from France. He recently won Ultimate Fighting Arena to qualify for Capcom Cup XI with his Ryu. Rounding out the team is Belgium’s Takamura. Takamura has qualified for Capcom Cup five times and currently mains Ken.
This will be the league’s team to beat this season. Sweden’s Ninjas in Pajamas team includes Evo Champion Angry Bird, Evo Runner-up Big Bird, last year’s top SFLEU player Phenom as Team Captain, and Veggey. Veggey is a Norwegian Zangief player who began playing Street Fighter since SFIV. He only played three matches last season, but Veggey will definitely be this team’s wild card.
Captaining the team this year is Boltstrike, currently one of the world’s best Jamie players. JokerJokez and his Cammy are making their SFL premier. Shivs and Xerna are returning with their Juris. This mostly British team will sure be doing a lot of dive kick’s this season!
With Mouz this year we have Valmaster, Juicy Joe, EndingWalker, and Problem X. Valmaster is a French Chun-li player that’s been active in the European scene since Street Fighter IV. His only major win is VSFighting in 2014, but frequently gets top 8s at events in the area. Juicyjoe got second in his World Warrior Region next to Phenom and is the favorite to win the finals. Evo champion Problem X is team captain and you can’t forget his mentee, EVO 3rd place and UFA champion EndingWalker.
Akainu, Alphen, Garnet, and Shakz make up Wolves this year. Shakz is a Cammy main and helped lead his team to win SFLEU in its very first season. He is returning as Wolves’ Team Captain. Akainu comes back this year with his Guile, while newcomers Garnet and Akainu are bringing their Dahlsim and Cammy respectively. Garnet is the sole Italian rep for SFLEU.
Guild is Guil-ing with their Guiles! Both team captain Rainpro and Imstilldaddy are rocking the Guile. We have Samoel representing Spain with their Cammy and Gamein99 and their Akuma.
Capcom Cup XII (2025–26) Updates
Yes you read that right. Capcom tweeted out on their eSports account an update for the next Capcom Cup. With it, the winner of this year’s Capcom Cup XI as well as the team that wins the SFL World Championship will all automatically qualify for Capcom Cup XII. Players are critiquing the announcement, specifically the SFL qualification because SFL Japan is finishing up, and we are about halfway through SFLUS. I’m sure if the teams knew this going into the SFL season, it would have had an impact on their SFL team selection. Other folks in the community are pointing out that the SFL auto-qualification will add stakes to the World Championship that were not there before.
Guilty Gear -STRIVE- Update Update
On Halloween Guilty Gear -STRIVE- season 4 released along with Dizzy and while some changes to characters were controversial, there were a considerable amount of game breaking bugs found by the community. Guilty Gear Official acknowledged some of the issues in a blog post and will be announcing when the patch will come out exactly around November 15. The team did say the fixes will come out past November 18.
The second 3v3 mode beta for Guilty Gear -STRIVE- also happened this week and has now ended. There is no official release date yet for the mode.
In Other News
Here’s what didn’t fit into an archetype this week.
Sega officially unveiled a new Virtua Fighter Game is on it’s way. This is after Sega announced it was going to revive some of it’s older franchises from the Dreamcast era and a cryptic tweet featuring a 6 in it. Right now Tekken 8 is the only AAA 3D fighter since Dead or Alive 6 in 2019, and with our current golden age of fighting games, VF is sure to find an audience.
Bandai Namco Esports announced the regional qualified players for the Tekken World Tour Finals. You can find the list of players here:
Texas Showdown hotel blocks are up and can be found via this link. Texas Showdown is a North American Major happeningg March 28–30, 2025
Multi-time SNK Champion and Esports World Cup Winner, Xiaohai qualified for Capcom Cup XI in the China Super Region. It’s his 4th qualification, but first time Capcom Cup in six years.
SNK has added a $2000 pot bonus to the King of Fighters XV bracket at CEOtaku this year. This is a qualifying event for the SNK World Championship in 2025 and second to last before Frosty Faustings at the end of January.
Lastly, 2XKO fans finally got another tidbit of news with a short gameplay trailer for Jinx. There’s still no official release date yet for 2XKO, but it will likely be sometime next year.
Tetris Forever released Tuesday, November 12 and it features a new classic Tetris versus mode. This is a big release for the Tetris community as it features many non-guideline games and gives hope for new types of Tetris games going forward.
Rage of the Dragons NEO, a remaster of the 2002 Neo Geo title releases today! If you’re a fan of SNK style fighters, but with a 2v2 flair, this is a game to check out!
Here Comes a New Challenger!
This week’s upcoming events and News
Street Fighter League US Week 5 November 13
Street Fighter League Europe Season 3 Begins November 15
Street Fighter League Japan Division F Week 9 November 15
Street Fighter League Japan Division S Week 10 November 19
Astral Finish in Mexico and Battle Coliseum in Brazil will both be happening this weekend November 16–17.
Both Events are Arc World Tour Gold events for Guilty Gear and SNK World Championship Qaulifiers for King of Fighters XV. Battle Coliseum is a Platinum event for Granblue Fantasy Versus : Rising while for Astral Finish it is a Gold event.
The next European Tekken Cup qualifier will be happening at Across the North in Oslo November 16
Ghostface calls up Mortal Kombat 1 for Early Access November 19
A few of World Warrior Regional Finals coming up. Here they are:
US/Canada East (STACKED) November 14
South America East November 16
Central America East November 16
Central America West November 16
And Japan is having their World Warrior #4 November 17
You Win!
Thanks as always for checking out the blog. I just recently upgraded my PC storage so I plan on recording a video version of the blog on my YouTube channel. It’ll come out alongside the blog.
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ggs
BONUS STAGE
I have recently been learning Tekken and found this video series by PhiDX. It was really eye opening for me and I recommend it to anyone learning or wanting to get better at Tekken!
