Hey, dajayeway here, bringing my thoughts on the Registration Phase of the tournament.
I must say, I'm quite surprised that we have a completely filled out tournament; Taiko is not a very popular gamemode amongst the Australian osu! community, so it's rather nice to see people show interest in this tournament. Honestly, I did have to bug some people in order to get them to join, but I hope the experience and tournament fever will help get them into the gamemode. I'm excited! The list of competitors and their skills have quite a large range, I believe the difference in international rank between the highest and lowest ranked competitors is around 34,000! I'm just hoping that all competitors look forward to an interesting tournament. I'm a little nervous running this actually, never done such a thing before, but I believe it'll be a good experience for me as well. I have a great staff team always on standby, so that's reassuring. Looking forward to see people's opinions of the first mappool, I'm worried many will find it too easy; feedback is always appreciated. All registrations/seeding/making groups etc. went smoothly, I hope everyone enjoys what this tournament has to offer.

Hey, dajayeway here, bringing my thoughts on the Group Stage of the tournament.
I was glad to see the majority of the competitors show up, for a moment there I thought we were going to end up with more WBDs than actual matches. It seems the mappool we had selected wasn't actually too bad, had some good songs and witnessed some great competition. My two personal favourite highlights of this round was the double SS tie between playtime881 and delldo89, as well as Gekim's amazing comeback against alodapotato. It was nice to see the tiebreaker played a couple of times, but now the mappool is getting serious (and by serious, I mean we really want to start trolling you players). I look forward to the next round in the competition, though I expect most players to crash under the intense difficulty spike. On bigger news, I'm so proud of all of the staff for being available and helpful over the weekend! We did a fantastic job with the event streaming, commentating and the refereeing for all of the matches. I'm surprised we managed to referee all 48 matches in such a short time span; thank you staff for your ongoing support!

Hi, I'm -[ Dumpling ]- (previously known as "mrdumpling64"). I was invited to participate as a beatmap selector for the ausu!Taiko Tournament.

Overall, I'm pleased with the beatmaps that dajayeway, Pew and myself selected for the first stage (Group Stage) as they cater nicely to the varying skill levels of the contestants. Of course, there were constraints as the overall skill of taiko players is not that high, so the first few stages of the tournament must be easier.

As a beatmap selector, I focused more on introducing less well known but nevertheless well-mapped beatmaps into the mappool. Specifically, my picks were XROSS INFECTION, Omokage Warp, Storm World and Magnolia.

I found it appropriate to choose XROSS as a no-mod pick as it is a challenge, and in a sense distinguishes players who can advance through the tournament to those that will most likely struggle to play beyond a basic stage. Though it is a Muzu, the fast-paced nature of the song can make it easy for players to lose accuracy here and there, and that can really make a difference between winning and losing a stage. Senritsu mapped this difficulty really nicely for such a fast-paced song, and I had no problem suggesting this beatmap to the team.

Omokage Warp is one of my favourites from Ishida, and I chose it as a HR pick. Though it is Futsuu, the >200bpm nature of the song can be challenging to players who struggle to grasp the basics of HR. In my opinion HardRock is a mix between reaction (due to the increased scroll speed), accuracy (due to increased OD) and memorisation (maybe not so much, but it can help as players can prepare to hit certain notes at certain times, thus increasing accuracy and more or less eliminating the reaction part).

Storm World is a great map from Firce. Again I chose it as a HR pick, but due to the reduced bpm of 175 it is more to help a losing player catch up Still, Firce maps Storm World really well, the choice of note positioning and colour really matches the background music and players shouldn't have any problem getting maximum accuracy despite the use of HR.

Finally, Magnolia was the DT suggestion I contributed to the mappool. DoubleTime is risky considering the skill level of most players in Group Stage (ie: no stamina monocolour streams or maps which pretty much require full alternating, since DT can really raise the skill and speed required to play a map. Example: 160bpm with DT is already 240). Regardless, JUDY maps the beats in Magnolia really well, and I had no problem with introducing Futsuu as a suggestion to the other beatmap selectors, since the mapper covers the basic beats really well without overmap, which can cause a problem as a DT pick.

Watching a few of the streams, I can tell that we as beatmap selectors have made a good choice with the mappool, as for the most part the contestants were able to pass/FC the maps easily. I'm excited to see what the harder stages will bring.

Hey, dajayeway here, bringing my thoughts on the Round of 16 of the tournament.
Glad to see that most could handle the mappool, didn't see many people fail any of the maps (which is a good sign I suppose). I was glad to see that the match between Paradoxq13 and delldo89 went to a tiebreaker, I was worried that the tiebreaker map wouldn't be played. Quite honestly, I wish to see it at least once each round. That match was extremely close, and was the highlight of the week in my opinion. Looking forward to seeing how the competitors will handle the Quarter Finals, with no more Muzus and the first Inner Oni of the tournament. I can see a lot of competitors struggling... Good job to all who showed up this week!

Hey, dajayeway here, bringing my thoughts on the Quarter Finals of the tournament.
Sadly, it was not an incredibly exciting week, as almost all matches were a completely one-sided clean sweep. Unfortunately we had to say farewell to Gekim, Paradoxq13, PatTeachesOsu and PotassiumF this week as they were knocked out in the Loser Bracket. Seems the most disliked maps were the HD pick Ende and the HR pick Flower Dance as at least one of them was banned each match. No extraordinary matches this week, the most exciting to watch in my opinion was the Winners Bracket match between SpiritsUnite and mac12321. Was also nice to see that the osu!news recognised us for progression through the tournament. Looking at the skill of the remaining twelve players, I feel that half of them will really struggle; best of luck to everyone.

Hey, dajayeway here, bringing my thoughts on the Semi Finals of the tournament.
As predicted, many players in the Loser Bracket struggled with the pool; the closest match was between delldo89 and ChuChuez. Six players were eliminated this week: those being Cutiepiecat, delldo89, Dohmeh, Synnical, vfdavis and Yayiecaba. Players SpiritsUnite and TitansHD will be advancing to the Winners Bracket final, and 'tis a match not to be missed! Amazing comeback from mac12321 who was down 1 - 4 only to take a victory against Cutiepiecat in a tiebreaker. Outstanding performance from everyone in the Winners Bracket, with some more exciting and close matches. Good luck to the remaining six competitors for next week!