I feel like yesterday we hit a turning point in the show. You can really feel the tension rising between the players, and see the new layers of strategy evolving. 

Combo Assault was pretty fascinating. Both coaches worked hard all day to find loopholes in the rules they could exploit for the win.  Each of them had tricks up their sleeve, and a lot of it came down to which team would attempt the challenge first.  While combo challenge #1 wasn’t the most exciting, I thought both of the team’s approaches to that challenge were pretty genius. Team Tekken thought for sure that they would take it with the fully charged Balrog turnaround punch, but Team Street Fighter was able to utilize Pandora and the Pandora power up Gem to get a higher damage output.  There was great back and forth between both teams in the subsequent challenges, and in the end it came down to the final challenge, Consistentcy.  200yen, the trial master and our player of the day from Day 2, dropped his trial on the first try. Unfortunately, that mistake lead to a series of events which ended up eliminating him from the competition.

My favorite part of yesterday was the team discussion with Team Street Fighter after they won the challenge. Now that they experienced Pandora elimination for the first time, they had a better understanding of how the rules worked. They knew that if they lost the Elimination Match, then Team Tekken would face Pandora elimination the following day. They realized that it didn’t make sense to target who they felt the weakest player was on Team Tekken, as it would only result in keeping Team Tekken’s strongest players alive in the competition, and they would be forced to eliminate one of their own, most likely their weakest, the following day. This was their chance to get one of the best players of Team Tekken out, and if they failed, the weakest player from Team Tekken would naturally just be eliminated during their Pandora elimination. They decided to go for the throat, and put who they felt their strongest player was, NerdJosh, up against who many believe the strongest player was in this competition, 200yen.  The strategy paid off, and after a great Elimination Match, Team Street Fighter delivered a crushing blow to Team Tekken, and 200yen is now out of the competition. 

It’s these strategic concepts that are the backbone of this competition, and I can promise you, it’s only going to get crazier moving forward, and the tension will rise to new heights.

As for today, we have a VERY exciting day planned. We are bringing in 10 of the best players in the fighting game community to go toe to toe against our contestants. This will be a true test of their skills, and great practice for the challenges to come. We will be doing a round robin tournament against each player, so exciting matches will be on stream all day long, and to cap the day off, we have five great title fights planned courtesy of Twitch TV.  The round robin tournament starts at 1pm today, and just take a look at this star studded line up.

1pm – 1:30pm:                 Rip

1:30pm – 2pm:                 MYK

2pm-2:30pm:                    TS Arturo Sanchez

2:30pm-3pm:                    Combofiend

3pm-3:30pm:                    Filthie Rich

3:30pm-4pm:                    Flash Metroid

4pm-4:30pm:                    EG Ricky Ortiz

4:30pm-5pm:                    LLL|MCZ. Ryan Hart

5-5:30pm:                         FC Jago

5:30pm-6pm:                    CoL.CC Mike Ross

6pm-6:30pm:                    Team Discussion

6:30pm-7:30pm:               Elimination Match / Salt Mines Interview

7:30pm-8pm:                    Dinner

8pm-10pm:                       Twitch TV Top Player Assault

The results of today’s round robin tournament will determine who is sent to the Elimination Match today.  Since Team Street Fighter now has more active players left in the competition, they will face Pandora Elimination now for the second time. 

But the highlight of today is definitely going to be the Twitch TV Top Player Assault. Each of these match ups will be sure to impress, and each will have a prize of 1k to the winner, courtesy of Twitch TV. The action starts at 8pm, so be sure to check it out.  Do you really think you could miss the rematch between Mike Ross and Jago?  The hype from that match alone could potentially explode the universe.  Maybe those Mayans were pretty smart with their 2012 end of the world predictions after all…

CoL.CC Mike Ross vs FC Jago

LLL|MCZ. Ryan Hart vs EG Ricky Ortiz

Filthie Rich vs Flash Metroid

TS Arturo Sanchez vs CoL.CC Combofiend

Rip vs MYK

See you all on the streams at crossassault.ign.com !