EVENT
Collision 2023 was an interesting event from a players’ perspective. It had a lot of upsides: A very cool bracket people will be talking about for a long time, impeccable day-of TOing, and the all Bo5 format people have been clamoring for since I started playing the game. But it also had its share of downsides: Significant space/crowding issues (and related temperature), frustrating scheduling, and a painfully isolated/unwalkable location. I think on the balance these issues were significant enough that I would hesitate to return to Collision if it were to be held in the same space in the future, but I left with a positive enough impression of the Collision team that I’d be more than happy to give it a shot in a new location.
To elaborate on the positives: Ryobeat is a GOAT, and knows exactly who to deputize to make things run smoothly. In spite of what all the naysayers may claim about Bo5 and scheduling issues, I didn’t witness a single pool run over its allotted time over the weekend. I think this can be attributed to two things: a competent and strict TO staff when it came to DQs, and all Bo5s simply not being what most players/organizers think it is. When FGC/Ultimate organizers hear “all bo5”, they have nightmares about high level Peach/Samus sets going to game 5 and taking half an hour, or two teenagers in Ultimate needing 50 neutral wins per game. In Melee pools, 98% of the time it’s going to be a lopsided 2-0 or 3-0 that ends quickly regardless of the characters on the screen, because one player will outclass the other in neutral and/or punish pretty badly. For the two percent of sets in which that does not occur, we can more than make up the time difference by burning entitled top players ali- I mean, actually enforcing DQ policies. Furthermore, if people are really that worried about it, I would advocate for the flex Bo5 format run by Kill Roy last weekend. I think it’s a fantastic middle ground that removes from people most of the heartache and “what if?” that comes with bo3 while also keeping pools largely expedited, and at least pays lip service to the concerns of outside TOs.
As for the negatives, the two most glaring were the amount of space and location. I’ve been to house tournaments less crowded than Ballroom B during Saturday pools. During wave two it was so hot in that room that many of the competitors were visibly sweating, and it wasn’t because the games were so intense. It did not make me feel optimistic as a more disease-conscious community member, and it highlighted the fact that this event capped early in a negative way. I also question how far over the cap the event was when you factor in spectators and also potentially random people who did not pay, as I was able to enter despite forgetting my badge multiple times. As for the location, the hotel was very pretty, had nice rooms, and great customer service. It was honestly the best hotel experience I’ve had at a major. It just also had the unfortunate quality of being in the middle of nowhere. If you flew to Collision, you either bummed a ride or used a rideshare/delivery app every time you wanted to eat something besides overpriced hotel food. You could not even get to a pharmacy/gas station safely without a ride. This is a big deal for a major trying to attract out of region talent, as it creates both financial strain and inconvenience for all non-local attendees, and takes time away from grinding the game and/or bonding with friends.
Lastly, I have to lambaste the schedule a little bit. People loved Aklo’s tweet making fun of Fiction’s hyperbolic language about the schedule, but in the end, Fiction was right: the scheduling for this event (and Riptide last year) was downright bad. No one should have to play what was often a less than one hour pool at 11am and then have a break all the way til 7pm, and things like my pool at 3 and then r2 at 7 create awkward gaps that are too long to spend warming up but also not long enough to get food in such an isolated location and still have enough warm up time. Much like I shilled flex bo5 as a solution to time concerns, I’d like to highlight Shine 2022’s rolling waves as a potential solution to mid-size major scheduling woes. Having two simple back to back blocks was just immensely less stressful as a competitor, and I don’t think it’s prohibitively difficult to run from a TO perspective. Even if you thought it was, events like Genesis/Big House doing better with almost triple the entrant numbers highlight that just doing the “normal” way can be less painful with better planning.
As for the bracket itself, the undeniable star had to be Zuppy. Making winner’s side top 8 and reverse 3-0ing amsa, as well as beating Moky and Llod, was an incredible performance people will be talking about for a long time. If you see him in the coming days, be sure to reach out and congratulate him for the stellar run. I will also highlight the brothers Rishi/Llod showing us that they haven’t lost a single step, putting on great performances both in singles and doubles, with Rishi beating Kodorin and Llod making his way to 5th beating amsa and avenging his brother against Aklo. Khryke relatively quietly made a strong run as well, beating me and then 3-0ing the newly sponsored Magi to get 17th, only losing to Jmook and Kodorin. As for underperformance, the newly CLG Magi as mentioned did a bit worse than expected, but I (and most other solid players) have such a high opinion of her in the more common MUs I’m 100% confident in her ability to bounce back comfortably. Amsa continued his skid too, getting 13th after entering the year as the unanimous one seed for majors. I would need to actually watch his sets to comment more comfortably on his trajectory, but it is certainly noteworthy. I also feel like mentioning the borderline terror I felt watching the top 3 at this tournament. I saw a clear gap between Jmook/Zain/Cody and the field, and it felt like everyone else at the tournament honestly showed up just trying to make top 8. I’m sure Hbox and amsa can continue to make a splash at the very top level, and Moky (and maybe Zuppy?) is/are getting there, but for this weekend those three felt like professionals competing against amateurs.
PERSONAL
I find myself back in a familiar place. Exhausted and defeated, waxing poetic about my experience, much to the chagrin of weird twitter goblins. Unfortunately, much like the last one of these writeups I did, my tournament was heavily influenced by controller issues. I got to NJ using a Phob that I believe had a short of some kind with the Z button, which caused it to behave unusually. It would often cause me to simply miss JC grab, but other times it would behave…weirdly. If I tried holding the z button, it would sometimes lightshield normally, but sometimes mash grab, and other times simply do nothing at all, to give an idea of the strangeness. Luckily for me, Tezlik (my GOAT) had offered to meet me at the venue Friday and supply me with a new Phob board and put my current buttons/triggers on it. After doing that, I played two games with the new Phob, only to have one of the magnets fall out on the third. I quickly DM’d Paladin (also my GOAT) who was at CVS, and he managed to procure some superglue, which Tezlik then used to fix the offending magnet into place. I then returned to the venue floor, only to find that the Y axis had been inverted. I spent a good deal of time trying to calibrate on a setup blindly, but found I was only able to make things worse. Luckily, I eventually found that the modders at the No Jons Mods booth had smash scope set up, and they graciously helped me recalibrate it into working condition near the end of the evening (more GOATs). I guess this is where I’ll put my Johns: Night before/morning of a tournament is nowhere near enough time to get used to new sticks/calibration, especially under tournament pressure. I continued to miss dashes and fastfalls constantly throughout the weekend, and it made even just playing the game a lot less enjoyable, let alone the relatively weak bracket results it contributed to. The litany of issues before fixing it did nothing for my confidence either. I don’t say any of this to blame anyone; Tezlik is absolutely my GOAT for making things happen for me, and it is on me to have a working backup for times like this. However, at this point I honestly wish I had dropped out of the bracket, as I was unable to move at a level even close to what I know myself to be capable of. I am going to continue this writeup and review my bracket sets as though I was not having controller issues, however, as my opponents deserve that level of respect and I still want to glean whatever I can from the experience.
At the prelocal, zombie Dillon made an appearance on God knows how few hours of sleep and a day of travel. I remember very little outside Inky destroying me with the power of roll in grab, getting totally owned game 2 by Krudo, and beating Bbatts without deserving to in the slightest thanks to his SD. I’d love to give a more detailed account of thee local, but I legitimately do not recall what happened beyond what I listed and being mad about my controller/that I had to play so many Sheiks with so little brain power available.
At the real Collision bracket, my first set was against a Fox who didn’t know how stage striking worked. He then proceeded to drill waveshine upsmash me reliably. This post-Slipp world remains wild. Luckily for me, there were enough holes in his neutral and a big enough gap in punish games that it was still a pretty simple affair to win, but I couldn’t help but be a little shook at how different R1s are these days. My second set went somewhat similarly, this time against a Luigi player who actually brought me to last stock game two. I quit autopiloting and almost 4 stocked him game three, but I was impressed with the level of play he brought forth to the bracket, and with his composure facing a rough matchup and a much higher rated player.
My set to make it out of R1 was against Lynxwynx, a fellow Melee Stats Extended Universe Marth player who was actually pretty solid, beating 10QuidShoes 3-0 to make it to round two and then continuing a couple of spots deeper. Unfortunately for her, this set was the best I played in bracket this tournament, and I won the RPS for port 4. I won every game comfortably, and was able to execute my gameplan relatively cleanly. This also marked set (seemingly) # 4000000 where the lower ranked Marth took me to YS and did much worse for it. I’ve come to be very comfortable on that stage, and don’t find it to be nearly as chaotic in the ditto as popular perception would suggest. If you want to GAMBLE in the ditto (or just specifically counterpick a stage I’m bad on), I would humbly recommend FoD.
My next set was against Dawson, who 3-0’d me. This was frustrating for a lot of reasons, but mostly for the complete lack of confidence I played with. I reverted to a very scared, low movement, walling-only gameplan, which is not at all how you should be playing against good Puffs. I played almost without grabbing too, and had Puff living to 150 most stocks. I also insisted on pressuring his side platform position very poorly, and I do not know why, especially since that one had absolutely nothing to do with controller issues. For his part, I don’t think Dawson did anything particularly new or novel in this set (if anything, there was a relative lack of the excellent ground movement & shield counterplay I know him for), and he mostly just took the rope I gave him and hung me with it. But that too is part of being a good player, and recognizing what you are being given can oftentimes be a smoother path to victory than trying to impose your will via overwhelming superiority. All of that aside, I think the most important takeaway here for me was that the set continued my trend of reverting back to older, worse gameplans vs Puff in tournament, and I don’t know why it’s such a more pronounced problem vs her in particular. I think I need to go through a long grind vs Puff, because ultimately how I feel about my knowledge of the MU and how I perform in friendlies don’t matter if I can’t do it when it counts. If the answer is to get so far ahead that “reverting” takes me back to where I am now in friendlies, then so be it, but I have to do something.
My two sets after that were against boxx players, first against Falco/YL Hollowy. Hollowy wasn’t someone I was familiar with, and in retrospect I’m glad that I didn’t notice they had beaten the good Marth Tazio the round before. I’m going to be blunt here: I utterly sleepwalked through this set and really only ever woke up to clutch game one. This was without a doubt my worst play of the tournament, and I dropped almost everything there was to drop, especially that first game. I do not really remember any of the specifics from this set other than clutching game one, being annoyed at YL game three, and laughing at the speed being on boxx afforded them relative to other Falcos at this level. I don’t think I’d rewatch this set even if given the opportunity.
Next up was CupofWater, who I beat 3-1. This set was a lot more sleepwalking, but not as bad as the previous set. This was disappointing because I think cupofwater is actually pretty good and just played quite poorly this set too. My punish game carried me here, but I need to remember to edgeguard like my opponent is a top Fox even when they aren’t quite playing at that level. Lazily staying on stage for edgeguards is a key difference in my gameplay vs Fox in tournament vs friendlies, and I need to get better in that regard.
My last set was against Khryke, who beat me 3-1. Khryke is a friend I have played with a good deal, but this was actually our first LAN set. I definitely played better here than in my previous loser’s sets, but obviously it was not enough. The things that Khryke did in this set that jumped out to me were his willingness to mash out things like downsmash in scrambles, and in his excellent use of up b throughout the set, particularly the first two games. I was a big fan of the latter, but I still don’t know if the former has good/risk reward, and if you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick I would still answer “no”. He also has extremely clean ledgedashes for a Marth, as well as excellent usage of his respawn invincibility. Those two were areas where I knew I would be at a disadvantage going in, and I think I did a good job of mitigating the ledgedash gap, but I still suffered from the respawn disparity. I should have recognized that going FD was the move after game one instead of game two, because losing platform interactions and my relative lack of clean/confident movement were definitely the areas I was struggling the most in. This was especially costly because Khryke knows how much I hate FoD in the ditto, and so had a very powerful counterpick available after going up 2-0. My takeaways from this set are to keep talking with Khryke about better play vs respawn/using my own respawn, and to lab better answers to his anti-side plat play. He was doing relatively simple stuff with utilt catching my wavedash/shield drop out consistently, and I need to figure out risk/reward calculations short hopping above that utilt, going top plat and then making my way down, or just shielding/lightshielding and waiting another beat. A part of me is glad to have lost this set, because Khryke would then go on to beat Magi 3-0, something I would have been completely unable to do with my controller issues (Falco with controller problems is easily the scariest MU, and Magi is insanely good at Melee and could 3-0 me a lot of days even without them), and I was very happy for him.
In closing, I had a really hard time in-game over the weekend, but still think I managed to find some valuable takeaways. I will also have TWO (2) working, quality controllers by the time my next out of state event rolls around, or I will not attend.