Tournament
Mountain Mania was an event held in Blowing Rock, NC, and was the largest NC event since Bad Moon Rising 2 in 2017, with over 120 entrants in a single day event in a relatively small venue. Blowing Rock turned out to be a small skiing town that was very obviously centered around a tourist industry, which certainly has downsides, but at the same time it’s obvious why there is tourism: The area was strikingly beautiful. Unfortunately, the extreme mid January cold meant that pretty much everyone stayed indoors the whole time. Indeed, MOF and Joshman told me it was their first time seeing snow. The trip up the mountain could have been perilous in slightly wetter weather, and so I hope future events in the region aren’t in January, but all in all I thought it was a great event and would encourage any readers to check out any future iterations.
As for the event itself, it was a very normal, smoothly run Melee tournament. JGold and company ran brackets pretty close to on time and pretty close to flawlessly. My only critiques for the event were that the venue was a little small for the number of people it had to accommodate (I don’t think they expected to cap it so aggressively and quickly), and I do wish top 8 had started a little earlier. Other than that, I really don’t have much to say, as the event had no major issues. JGold expressed concern to me about it being his first event with “top players”, but in truth I think he was dealt a very lucky hand in that regard. Joshman and Bbatts are as affable as they come. Zasa is local, and Logan is legacy local to the area (I know that sounds different than complimenting them, and they are both cool in general, but nobody is a diva at home). MOF and Panko are completely unpretentious. Colbol is an angel. I have sworn a blood oath to never hassle TOs without extremely good cause and welcome any of them that I am unkind towards to beat me up without retaliation. The only “top players” that I didn’t really know what to expect from before the event started were Eve and Kevin Maples, who I still don’t know (barely talked to them, didn’t get to play sadly), but they seemed great. That is by no means an exhaustive list of all the good players at the event, so please do not hate me if your name was not listed. There are absolutely players in the broader Melee scene that can be a little hard to deal with due to their egos or idiosyncrasies, but none of them were present at Mountain Mania. If some show up next time, I can only offer JGold my time honored advice: burn them at the stake.
In terms of the bracket, the obvious standout is definitely Logan. He blazed a dominant path through loser’s bracket towards second as the 9th seed, losing only to Joshman and 3-0ing all of his opponents besides Colbol, who he got his first victory against 3-1. I was not terribly surprised by this; Logan’s relative inactivity made him very tricky to seed, but his recent results in Philadelphia made it obvious to me he had been playing and likely hadn’t lost a step. Seeing him in action, I think we can all agree the opposite is true. Kevin Maples also had a great run, beating Bbatts and Colbol to make WFs and get 3rd as the 8th seed. Again, given his dominance in his stacked home region, I wasn’t too surprised. I also made 2 upsets en route to 4th place. In terms of unusual placings in the other direction, MOF got upset early in winners by Fox standout JKJ and then ran into an ICs boogeyman in the form of Bbatts in loser’s. JKJ is admittedly a surprising loss for MOF, but part of playing Ice Climbers is that sometimes you will have to play the top 40 Peach for 9th, and so you get 9th. There is no shame in it.
Personal
I came into Mountain Mania with pretty mixed feelings. On one hand, I had done no specific prep for the event, but on the other I was excited to go to an event for the first time a while, and my personal life wasn’t particularly chaotic leading up to it. I was also experimenting playing without headphones for the first time in a long time (I ended up putting them back on later) with a new mental approach to dealing with crowds. Those mental tricks worked great for not getting tilted, but ultimately I think I still got a little distracted at points and will stick with noise canceling as my crowd antidote of choice.
One other thing I will say unrelated to the event and is purely personal to me is that it renewed my commitment to masking at larger events. It was 120 something people in a relatively small space, and so it should not be a surprise to me as someone with a (mildly) weakened immune system that I got sick afterwards. I did not mask because…I didn’t? I honestly don’t even have a reason. I had N95 masks in my bag and just made a bad choice.
As for the actual gameplay…
Doubles was really interesting. I teamed with MOF and while I don’t think we performed terribly well as a team (Marth/ICs is incredibly tricky, and it was our first time running it), it was obvious she was a very solid player in doubles and managed to carry at points. Unfortunately, I just think there are too many team comps that Marth/Climbers just can’t deal well with or at the very least would need a lot of practice and planning to manage. In particular, we repeatedly ran into a situation where I would be stuck behind her shield as the opposing team pressured her. We disagreed on what to do about that (she wanted me to jump in, I did not have an answer but thought jumping in would definitely end poorly), and I did a very bad job of communicating my reasoning/intended course of action. I will work to be better about that in the future, because being a frustrating, uncooperative teammate is the worst thing you can be, much worse than an inadequately skilled one. Regardless, I still very much appreciated the opportunity to team.
I don’t remember any of my singles sets before playing Meat. I played two, and one of them was a Marth ditto. My opponents were lovely individuals but I’m pretty certain I lost 2 stocks collectively in those sets. I do not mean to call those players bad or unworthy of attention, but sickness has cost me a bit of time/memory, and it’s just hard to remember every set after so many.
Meat was the last set to make it out of pools for me. He is a Marth main I have known for some time but hadn’t played in a tournament either ever or in >4 years, I’m not sure. Regardless, this was a pretty standard Marth ditto set, but upon reviewing the VOD I do think I could stand to do less walling aerials in the ditto. It’s a pretty default pattern I take when playing someone I think I’m just a little higher level than, and it typically works in that situation, but for the ditto in particular I should be more disciplined about mitigating risk and playing to my win conditions regardless of who I’m facing. This propensity would come back to haunt me later in my set with Logan. Otherwise, I think I mostly was just a step ahead in this set, particularly with regards to speed and positioning. I could have done a better job at calling out double jump to ledge, but was content to let my higher number of openings and better control of center carry the day.
My next set was with SDeems, and one that I was very much anticipating. I think SDeems is really good at Melee, and honestly just a few big travel wins away from a breakout, but unfortunately I don’t think his Marth matchup was on point that Saturday. It felt like he froze a little bit in the repeated crossup/shield/grab/spotdodge game, to the point that I even began seeking that situation despite typically avoiding it vs Sheik. He also floundered against crossup in general, employing neither than uptilts nor the nairs I typically would expect to counter it. Besides that, I did a good job of hitting very hard in the first game (we struck to Yoshi’s which facilitated this. I believe that this is an error for Sheik and that they should go FoD), and kind of hit a blow out game two, just winning neutral repeatedly and juggling for massive damage (port 4 helped significantly with this, and this was the only port 4 I would win all day). Most of all, I was proud of my edgeguards in this set, not because they were anywhere near ideal, but because I actually went for them against a legitimately threatening Sheik in tournament, and they did pay off. I unfortunately did do the thing where I let my foot off the gas after getting a lead in game three, but ultimately I was still able to take it.
My next set was against Colbol. This was the third set I’ve played with him, and the third set in a row I have lost game five last stock. I think my biggest shortcoming in this set came down to edgeguarding. I dropped some crucial, theoretically guaranteed edgeguards that definitely could have won it for me. I also did a very bad job of circumventing early waveshine->upsmash, hitting the tech in place only once and then missing the grab afterwards. He should not be able to do that so much without being punished. I also dropped more techchases than I would have liked, but Colbol was not perfect in this regard either and I think we both played a little below our par in that area. Still, I am happy that I had the confidence to go for them when I thought it right, and just wish I had managed to stay composed and execute offstage. Other than that, I will say that this set happened at the same time as MOF/Zasa, and the NC crowd was belligerent for that one, in the way only a local crowd pretending to get excited for Puff/ICs can be. I don’t typically mind adjacent cheering from strangers (my friends’ voices get to me a 1000x more), especially since it wasn’t directly behind me, but 30+ people barking at the top of their lungs is bound to distract anyone. I am not johning about the result of the set; it undoubtedly affected Colbol as well, and I actually did a really good job of not getting tilted. However, given the volume and size of the venue space, I thought it bordered on disrespect to all the other competitors in the venue, not just me. I bring that up, frankly, to express a bit of frustration, but also to explain that this was the point I decided to go back to using headphones.
Next, I played Syched, a strong NC Marth who is very much on the come up, having beaten Colbol at Big House recently and being one of the few players in NC that doesn’t represent an automatic bye for Zasa. I knew I was in for a battle, despite everyone mostly expecting me to win. I remember less specifics about this set than some of my others, but the standout to me was Syched’s commitment to techchasing rather than uthrowing, even with port 4 and at very juicy percents. I really disagree with this. Even though it paid off with a big three stock in his favor game three, he played almost perfectly that game, and won essentially every 50/50. But the thing is, even Logan, the godfather of techchase Marth, is an up thrower in the ditto. I truly believe the reward is just better in a great number of situations. I am not saying there isn’t a place for techchasing in the ditto (at certain percents/positions, there absolutely is) but what is the point of picking FD twice if the goal is to ground wobble anyway? It didn’t make sense to me, and I managed to escape by sliding off to the ledge repeatedly. I also felt I had a bit of an edge in the recovery department for this set, being a little more comfortable going for the low/far sweetspot and a little more consistent with the wall tech->aerial. Unfortunately, I was unable to push that advantage because my edgeguarding was atrocious, letting him back for free repeatedly. I would simply watch him up b and not press dtilt. It was weird, and I have no excuse for it.
My next set was against Bbatts, who needs no introduction. The first game went very smoothly, with an immediate Ken combo and disastrous overextension offstage from Bbatts sealing the game for me. However, the second stock Bbatts lived to well over 200%, and I think the way I approached that situation revealed probably my biggest flaw in the MU. I generally play the “vs immortal Peach” situation somewhat poorly, and am more reticent to grab shielding Peach than I should be, particularly in center stage. At high percents, a grab is an instant corner/ledge situation, and I should be more comfortable letting the kill come to me in that position rather than trying to force it on all interactions. I instead get too antsy fishing for side B setups, and Bbatts in particular is someone I find very consistently strong at CCing them/avoiding confirms. I think that vs Peach in particular, using side b to look for kills as much as I do is a bad look, and I need to work on that. The other major issue I had in this set was getting hit by roll in downsmash, which I will say is not one I typically struggle with, but it happened a lot. I kept seeing it coming and trying to dash away too late. I need to be either faster or accept that I’m eating a mixup and throw up my shield at times. It wouldn’t have been that bad to shield; I’m pretty consistent at shield SDI and punishing it. I could have also done a better job of ledge trapping this set, and it showed that I had not been practicing it. On the flip side, I think I played my throw options well off my grabs, CC’d better than the vast majority of players vs Peach, and applied great pressure when he was on the platforms or in the corner. Turnips came up less in this set than most sets vs top Peaches, but I don’t think that should surprise anyone. Bbatts isn’t particularly averse to pulling them when he has space, but neither of us were that interested in being that far away from one another. Still, I know that is a relative weakness of mine in the MU and I should work on it, and it is one that has appeared consistently over time unlike the getting hit by roll in downsmash bit. One more thing that I don’t know if people heard was that after I took the first stock very quickly in game one, Logan exclaims “Grab said FUCK GAY PEOPLE”, and I will admit that I struggled a little bit to stay composed and not laugh. The comedic timing was just really good.
My next set was against Panko. 24%. LOL. LOL. LOL. …Okay I’ll be for real. After I lost to Panko at WWIII last year, I did a lesson with Mai on Marth/Puff. I was very frustrated with my record against top 100 puffs (literally had never won a set before this win on Panko), despite performing consistently pretty well in friendlies. She helped me with a good number of things, especially correcting my thinking on a key area, and I did see improvements against Puff after that lesson. However, my set with Dawson at Santa Paws the month prior had me down about how I perform against Puff in tournament once again, having played some of the sloppiest, nerviest Melee of my life. What good was improvement if I just played Like That when it matters? If I felt pressure in any of my sets at Mountain Mania, it was this one, mostly in that I desperately wanted to play solidly, win or lose. I think I mostly achieved that in regards to my gameplan and what I attempted to do, but could definitely work on my execution. I missed my only grab pivot tipper confirm of the set, was sloppy with my wavelands on the platforms multiple times, and misspaced dair techchase when I had the correct read repeatedly. My strength in the MU was in using dtilt and occasionally spaced nair/fsmash to deny Panko access to the ground game, and a variety of tricks (especially in game two) to deny him the ability to chill on side platforms. I think that if I could mesh these strengths with cleaner movement and some earlier kills (without forcing them!), I’ll really have something in the matchup. Indeed, I didn’t really have to make any real gameplan adjustments after game one, just change the fact that I got owned and outplayed incredibly hard in the player to player reads around Puff drill at low/mid percent.
My final set was against Logan, and although I got 3-0’d, I think I’ve learned more from reviewing the VOD on this one and contemplating Marth dittos in general than I have from a loss in a good while, so I’m glad it happened. In general, I had 2-3 main gameplay issues in this set, and then out of game issues for game three. My first major issue was not accepting that I lost the RPS for port four, and repeatedly trying to true combo Logan out of uthrow. I should not expect to get that every time. Logan is a very good player. He knows the Marth ditto and how to buffer jump out. I however did not adapt to this and chase the juggle at any point, and went for upthrow into immediate fair/uair every time. This was a pretty obvious big deal because when I did manage to catch his jump in similar situations or get a juicy launcher in this set, I was able to take it pretty far consistently. My other major issue was getting hit by fsmash when Logan was in the corner. Going into the set, the only real read I had from playing him a while ago was that he liked to force the fsmash vs grab 50/50 while you’re in the corner because the reward is so strong. It turns out that the reward for tipper fsmash on your opponent is strong regardless of where on the stage you get it (especially on dashback DI), and I was not prepared. He found this probably 4 times throughout the set, and it mattered hugely each one. Typically when I corner enemy Marth, I’m very careful to play around immediate ledgedash options, fair from ledge, dash attack, and occasionally jump out. I’m also pretty aware of the trick where you NIL/barely waveland on and then fsmash, since I do it a good deal myself. Logan would instead take the space I gave him in respect for/expecting those other options, and then come a small way onto stage and then tipper me, often taking my stock. The other thing that jumped out to me in this set is that Logan would occasionally miss the DI on f throw near center, and I did not punish it as hard as I could have. It’s not something I ever want to depend on people missing, but on the occasion that they do you can take it very far if you’re ready for it, and I was not. Otherwise, the set was more or less what I was expecting, with Logan playing a slightly swingier neutral than mine and being very strong off the hit. I also edgeguarded pretty poorly in this set, but seeing as this is the third Marth ditto I’ve written about in this piece, I won’t go into it here. Sadly, I finally did get a little tilted with the crowd by the end of this set, and fell to pieces mentally near the beginning of game three. This is on me, and I will do my best to keep improving in this regard in the future.
Overall, despite getting a couple of upsets, I think this was a very “par” tournament for me in terms of my play. I certainly didn’t execute up to an unusually high standard, and I think the improvements demonstrated in the Puff MU were ones that I had mastered in friendlies months ago finally coming to fruition in bracket. Still, I was grateful for the opportunity to compete, and have almost exclusively positive things to say about the event and NC Melee.