This year Norcal Regionals will not be officially holding a Soul Calibur 5 Tournament. There was a voting contest between SC5, DOA, and VF for which game would be put into NCR. DOA happened to win, so we decided to plan a side tournament in one of the bigger hotel rooms for Soul Calibur and VF.

We will have a dedicated stream station, commentators, the whole nine. This side tournament will be in the same hotel as NCR for your convenience also.

Strings, or preset series of attacks, can be effective initially. Often, when blocking a string, you don’t know when the string will end, and take action at the wrong time. Some strings are also completely safe on block, which can lead to their abuse. With study, however, these strings become a liability, or a mixup of “will I or won’t I” at best. Opponents who do not realize this and use entire strings every time should be punished to the fullest extent.

How fitting that we should talk about some Leixia right after a Leixia player wins a major. Coincidence? Not really. For this episode, ZeroEffect was kind enough to come on and share a lot of his Leixia knowledge. He also has some supplementary stuff that you can dig into if you're looking to keep learning about Leixia. In other words, we gots lots of stuff for you!

Also, I forgot to ask him for a goofy title for this episode, so since the balance patches ruffled a lot of feathers with Leixia players, and the fact that we discuss the patch and those nerfs, it felt like a good title.

After an abnormally long wait, here is SCTier with the post-Winter Brawl podcast! This time we have the top three from the event, or in other words, kAb, IRM, and MTFighter.

Guard Impact is a classic gameplay feature in the Soul series, going all the way back to the first Soul Edge. When GI was changed in Soul Calibur V, a lot of players dismissed it, citing the changed command and meter cost. This is a shame, as GI can be a powerful technique; arguably, more powerful than its previous iterations.

A lot of people have been asking to see videos from World Game Cup 2013, which took place this past weekend in Cannes, France. If you happen to miss the Soulcalibur V action, you can now watch the direct feed matches from top 8 singles courtesy of WorstGiefEVER, as well as off-stream matches from various uploaders, and now the videos from top 4 of the 3 on 3 tournament and the 5 on 5 World Team Cup tournament.

If you have yet to register online for the hypest tournament in the world, then you still have a few days left to register for Final Round XVI which ends in 7 days. Online registration is still available. After the deadline, you will have to use the emergency registration on Thursday evening on March 28 or Friday morning on March 29.

There’s also still rooms left at the venue for those who have yet to book a room for Final Round. Don’t wait until the last minute to get your plans in order for Final Round which takes place on March 29-31 in Atlanta, Georgia.