I've never played this game before, but I'm joining a tournament being held at my college in less than 8 hours. Give me pointers on how to survive longer than 15 seconds. What is a good character I can use? Combos? Taunts?

Keep refreshing this page and maybe Youtube'll have something for you I guess.
Sorry I couldn't help.

Fine Giant Bomb, throw me out to the wolves and don't help me... I'm so screwed lol.

" choose noel ..hit the drive button a lot "

If you've still got time you could always check out these awesome Bang tutorials on Youtube!
 
Part 1:  

Dood...you're fucked.  BlazBlue ain't no joke! 
 
The best I could tell you is hit up YouTube and loltima was kind enough to post up all of the combo tutorials from the bonus DVD on there.  That helped me get better with Ragna, but other than that, you've just gotta play a lot of the game...much like any other fighting game.  Ragna is basically the Ken of the game, but most people seem to use only one of four characters:  Ragna, Arakune, Jin, or Noel.  I've seen a couple of Tagers and V13s out there online, but mostly, people just pick counters to whatever your gamer profile says you main with.

I wish this game was released in the UK

look at movelist of X character, memorize 2-3 moves that seem useful.
 
Spam them.

" @marioncobretti said:

" choose noel ..hit the drive button a lot "

Ok... what button is that on 360? "

Didn't have time to look at videos. Tournament Sum Up:
Played on a PS2 (WTF? This is really for PS2?) Chose Noel. Opponent chose dude with big hands. Matched against player who has only been playing for a couple weeks. Best of three wins. I won the first round-oops sorry, REBEL. Lost the second, um, rebel? Won the third, then lost the next two.  I mostly spammed Drive and heavy. Couldn't understand a single thing happening. And I still don't know what the hell a rebel is...
 
Anyway, had fun with the tournament as I always like to join tourneys where I don't even know the basics of a game and act like a complete moron. Kind of ticks off the people who take it really seriously.  I saw a vampire umbrella girl (Rachel?) who beat the shit out of everybody. Seriously, almost nobody could touch this guy... Blaz Blue looks like crazy shit and I'm sure it takes a lot of dedication to master even a single character, but hey, at least I can say I went to a Blaz Blue tourney and won a couple REBELS. Thanks for the pointers, everybody.

Awesome, glad to hear your report. Sounds like it was fun. Congrats on your victorious "rebels."
 
I'm still not sure what that means, but it sounds crazy, so I like it.
 
You're sure it was a PS2? It's definitely not officially out on that console, but I have seen it running off an arcade board hooked into a PC before...so maybe somebody did something crazy with a PS2 along those lines? I dunno, that's wild though.

" Awesome, glad to hear your report. Sounds like it was fun. Congrats on your victorious "rebels."  I'm still not sure what that means, but it sounds crazy, so I like it.  You're sure it was a PS2? It's definitely not officially out on that console, but I have seen it running off an arcade board hooked into a PC before...so maybe somebody did something crazy with a PS2 along those lines? I dunno, that's wild though. "

This game seems scary hard. I've had the LE sitting on my desk for months, but I've been too afraid to open it...