DOA6 Jager Retains Winter Brawl: 3D Edition Crown

Jager was able to secure his second Winter Brawl tournament win in a row at the 3D Edition of this staple Dead or Alive major. He took most of his opponents on a wild ride through the "Rig Cyclone" that is nearly impossible to escape at his level of play. This list of opponents included major players such as Lord Xavier, a fighter that has been on a rabid war path, fresh off his win at NEC 20 with Hitomi. Feel free to pursue our report here at FSD and check out the bracket at Smash.GG to complete your experience with this event. VOD Replay coming soon!

Highlights from Pools

Brackets C1 & C2 play out while Dead or Alive spectators at Kombat Network wait for the Mortal Kombat 11 tournament to conclude. Jager, the current champion of Winter Brawl, appears to be solidifying his dominance at this tournament once more leading with an undefeated streak in his bracket. Sly Bass returns to the scene in C2 and like Jager is obliterating many players in his path - his Brad Wong is not only manipulative in combat, but is a true joy to spectate in serious high level play. Dragon Ninja & Big Dame are also on the war path with plenty of pool appearances before the start of the stream.

Bboy Dragon invaded the DOA community with his army of lolis specifically: Honoka & NiCO. He puts on a great performance in pools with his plethora of well-timed close hits and he consistently switches up his gameplay from pressure-based to a more methodical form complete with zoning and footsie strategies. This tournament hasn't been BBoy's best demonstration, but he stays alive with his expert adaptability and overall game knowledge.

FSD's Nichol showcased some awesome Mila gameplay; particularly in his set with Admiral Dumbass. For being a dumb ass, the admiral of them played fantastically with Hayabusa against Mila's insane ground game and quick-damaging combos. Their set ended in last round, and Nichol played perhaps the best he ever has offline at this Winter Brawl with incredible pace, environment awareness & beautiful ground control for a well-deserved win over Admiral Dumbass.

Lord X plowed through his opponents with grace and relative ease in pools until he was matched against Ninja Guy's elegant Helena. While Ninja Guy made great use of the Bokuho stance and followed up with stuns & bounds after demonstrating evasiveness, he couldn't get past Hitomi's wall stunts, close hits and the character combo knowledge of Lord X.

X-Button proved to be a formidable opponent in his journey with Tina to Top 8 and it showed in his impressively strong gameplay throughout pools at WB3D. Between X-Button, Scarlet Hurricane & KPT all using Tina and all using the Nova Sci-Fi Bodysuits it was hard to keep up with the amount of quality Tina play and all of these Tina players presented a strong performance in pools. To mix things up, Scarlet Hurricane eventually changed to Tina's beautiful and recent Alluring Mandarin DLC dress in his set against the equally impressive SS89.

Winter Brawl's pool stream closed with some amazing sets! Nichol vs The X-Button was one of the best matches streamed for pools with great patience and an exciting Tina x Mila matchup to boot. Scarlet Hurricane vs Ninja Guy was also a back & forth smash by the end of it Tina was able to outperform Helena to conclude the Kombat Network stream of pools! These fighters showed a lot of heart, and without a shadow of a doubt, the community can expect an epic clash in Top 8 tomorrow for the first place prize!

After some awesome performances and sets in pools congratulate your top 8 and cheer them on for Sunday's battle: Jager, BBoy Dragon, Lord X, Sly Bass, Dragon Ninja, The X-Button, Scarlet Hurricane & King!

Top 8 Highlights

This Top 8 was a dream for the UGS team as four of them are in Top 8, but the dream soon turned to sorrow as the first two matches were oddly one sided sets. Lord X was quickly able to dispose of Sly Bass in the early going and Jager sent BBoy Dragon to the loser bracket with him. These could have been classic matches, but with Lord X's emerging confidence and Jager's Winter Brawl title on the line, maybe it shouldn't come off as much a surprise this time.

:mai: Dragon Ninja vs The X-Button :tina:

These two had some great fights in their first to three set and most of the levels were set to Random's favorite stage: 'A.P.O.'. Dragon Ninja surprised all of the spectators with his Mai selection and that he was able to wear X-Button's Tina down without much struggle. They both implemented some great defensive strategies and had some entertaining fights over Danger Zones superiority, but at no point was Dragon Ninja not the clear winner of this set despite temporarily putting Hayabusa on the shelf for a set in Top 8.

:rachel: King vs Scarlet :tina:

Scarlet is the next fighter from the Tina army to fight, and he's going up against Rachel at 'Muscle' that starts this set with an early Tina advantage. We see Crucifix Power-Bombs, insane wall-spots and a general dominant fight in Scarlet's favor until King switches to Jann Lee for the rest of this FT3 and shows better defense with this character. Unfortunately Jann Lee missed out with some frame advantage and throw punish opportunities and Scarlet took advantage of King's inexperience to move forward quickly with this set.

:kokoro: Sly Bass vs Dragon Ninja :hayabusa:

Sly keeps himself mysterious and strategical using characters nobody else in the scene will pickup like Brad Wong & Kokoro, and usually this works out for him in pools, but not always in a Top 8 set. Kokoro was a close bet for him in his fight against Dragon Ninja because Sly was playing a spectacular stun game to contest with Hayabusa's damage, but ultimately Dragon Ninja's incredible environment play and decision making won Hayabusa this set.

:honoka: :nico: Bboy Dragon vs Scarlet Hurricane :tina:

These two had a very flashy and back & forth FT3 with all characters sporting their Nova Bodysuits in this extremely tight battle. Things started off looking bad for Bboy, and it took a few Shining Wizards to his head for the birthday boy to make a more serious change to NiCO. Bboy Dragon turned on the awareness in the final going to get a big win over Scarlet Hurricane.

:rig: Jager vs Lord X :hitomi:

This was a dream match for this tournament: a crowd favorite vs last year's Winter Brawl: 3D champion. Lord X had solid fundamentals and great reactions, but Jager played a stronger and more aggressive pressure to secure all three games in this FT3. They both seemed to exude the most skill in this tournament, and that's why most players expected this winner's match to transition later on into the grand final set.

:nico: Bboy Dragon vs Dragon Ninja :hayabusa:

Bboy played against Hayabusa with the intention of stunning & holding him to death, and it worked in the first game even after Dragon Ninja played a solid zoning game and used his best ranged moves to keep away from the electrifying NiCO! Bboy kept the momentum going for two games before Dragon Ninja came out with a big win at 'A.P.O.' and not because of the stage surprisingly, but because of his tricky ground game and tactics with Hayabusa post Version 1.19.

As the set continues at 'Seaside Eden' Dragon Ninja struggles to find an advantage in the open space, but instead of coming up with huge combos, he continues to use knockdowns into 1P & 2P ground options that don't end up pulling him more damage than a raging Izuna Drop would have. Despite have a game-plan, Bboy Dragon was able to defeat him with crazy close hits and holds.

:nico: Bboy Dragon vs Lord X :hitomi:

The first match in the set took place at 'Throw-Down' and it was back and forth complete with insane crowd assist combos and wall-splats from Hitomi, and NiCO responds with intense combos of her own and Bboy continues his trend of electric CHs as his raw combo ender. Lord X makes the best of Hitomi's wall damage to win this close opening match to their FT3.

These two friends continued this type of spectacle for the entirety of their set and almost every game went into last round with Lord X eventually getting the upper hand with superior wall combos and environmental awareness.

Grand Final


:rig: Jager vs Lord X :hitomi:

Despite how good Lord X is he was largely unable to escape Jager's near-unstoppable Rig cyclone. While Hitomi is one of the best pressure based characters in the game, Rig clearly has the upper hand with faster moves, a larger array of confusing mix-ups and a forward throw that busts foes through danger zones allowing Rig's momentum to continue.

While Lord X didn't get the reset he'd hoped for he was able to improve his game over Jager in this set scoring a victory on the board. He is great at utilizing Hitomi's reset throw, and he knows how to revert to this character as a grappler. Of course, Hitomi is not a grappler, but you wouldn't know it through his gameplay in this grand final. Getting throws on Rig is no easy task, and these moves ended up being one of his most damaging aspects of combat in this set.

As Matt Ponton put clearly on commentary: If Jager gets the initial stun, it's going to end badly for Lord X, and he was on-point with this statement as Rig is one of the toughest characters to escape if he's settled in your head. Jager's immaculate combos and usage of space stopped the reset from happening, but you can see the strategist and adaptability of Lord X begin to gradually pop towards the end of the event despite several controller issues. Winner of Winter Brawl: 3D Edition 2020: Jager
 
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Mortal Kombat 11 is finishing up grand finals. Dead or Alive 6 will be streamed afterwards. Please join the community to see instant classic matches featuring professionals: Dragon Ninja, Lord X, Sly Bass, Big Dame & Winter Brawl Champion Jager.
 
Damn, if I was facing Jager I'd probably be slamming 6H like mad out of desperation, lol. Good to see Tina was repped well, even if she couldn't make it to the top this time. Serious LoL though (Lack of Lisa). Also, someone really has to request TN to put in a pause disable option though. I can't be the only one who cringed at that.
 
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Congratulations to my team UGS playing out of their minds! Especially my buddy Jager for taking Winter Brawl 3x in a row! (He won the one where Emery back flipped on Ichiron in DOA 5 LR) and is the best aggressive Rig around.

Really enjoyed this event and look forward to more like CT GamerCon & April Annihilation coming up. I'll be in attendance!

Unfortunately I went out to the start button but I'll remember forever now to double check before a set so my momentum doesn't die again.

OSU!!!
 
Damn, if I was facing Jager I'd probably be slamming 6H like mad out of desperation, lol. Good to see Tina was repped well, even if she couldn't make it to the top this time. Serious LoL though (Lack of Lisa). Also, someone really has to request TN to put in a pause disable option though. I can't be the only one who cringed at that.

There is one. It got turned on once for scarlethurricane when his occured, then they forgot to turn it on again when they switched out the pc. It's done by turning on "event mode" and just like any other tournament mode, it requires a 3 sec hold start to pause.
 
There is one. It got turned on once for scarlethurricane when his occured, then they forgot to turn it on again when they switched out the pc. It's done by turning on "event mode" and just like any other tournament mode, it requires a 3 sec hold start to pause.

Yeah, I thought that might be the case. Still, there ought to be a separate and specfic option for just turning pause off or making it delayed. Just have to set it once in options and not worry about it.
 
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