First Tournament Victory for Baiken

It’s been just a few days since the character joined the playable roster, and players have already shown what Baiken is capable of in the competitive environment.

Bamboo Battles is a series of regular esports events organized by Panda Global. In fact, these online tournaments happen pretty often, and it was 34th for Guilty Gear -Strive-. The fact that the PS4/PS5 winner played a brand new character makes their victory and the whole tourney quite remarkable. Imagine the amount of effort you should put into practicing Baiken to get such an esports win!

Guilty Gear -Strive- Bamboo Battles has two sections: for PC and PlayStation players.

In the PS4/PS5 dimension, the main battle was between Diaphone and ApologyMan. First, they played against each other in the Winners Final, and Baiken of Diaphone got a confident victory over Faust of ApologyMan. The Grand Final was much tougher. Diaphone could win only in the last round.

Playing a new character at such an early stage is both a disadvantage and an advantage. On the one hand, you don’t have too much time for practicing. On the other hand, your opponents don’t have much time to learn this matchup.

Still, the achievement of Diaphone is totally impressive! Previously, we witnessed similar victories by Punk, who won an NLBC SFV event with Luke, and Nephew, who won WNF with Rose.

Meanwhile, Dwarl Warberry won the PC section. The main opponent was Beluga, who fell into Losers after the Winners Final but then managed to reset the Grand Final with confident 3:0. Still, Nagoriyuki of Dwarl Warberry defeated Millia of Beluga.

This tournament was streamed through Panda’s Twitch.

The situation with Baiken at various top-level events might change quickly as more professionals get accustomed to playing her and against her. It would certainly be interesting to follow such tournaments as ARCREVO America (the US West is planned for February 5-6), Damascus’ EMEA Strive Cup, and Combo Breaker.

And the competition of Bamboo Battles also continues! They have regular Smash Ultimate and Guilty Gear -Strive- online tournaments.