This is my third tourney write-up, and I have to say it will be the most mixed yet. I’m aware that is also the tourney I performed worst at of those three, and so may be biased, but I will endeavor to keep my personal disappointment from having any influence on this on my overview of the tournament itself.
EVENT
PROS
Riptide had an abundance of setups, and even during bracket Saturday, it was never a struggle to find a setup to warm up on/play friendlies. This has been the trend at both majors I’ve attended this year, and while I have some concerns that this may indicate a degree of flagging attendance, I have to say that for the average attendee, it frankly rules. As I have said in the past, we go to Melee tournaments to play Melee, and it feels great to be able to do so. The TOing was also very well done. I don’t think there was a single instance on the melee side of people not knowing where to be or being unfairly DQ’d, and the tournament ran according to schedule very smoothly. Additionally, the TOs quickly and decisively dealt with the bizarre NoFluxes racism incident, which I applaud even if I must say I found the resulting discourse a little tedious by days two and three of the event. For those out there who take things a little less seriously, I also must say that the Kalahari did indeed bang, and if the idea of a fun waterpark tourney appeals to you, that part is by all accounts excellent. I am relying on secondhand info about the waterpark, since I was there pretty purely as a competitor, but I heard nothing negative all weekend about it or the venue other than typical (albeit fair) complaints about exorbitant resort pricing.
CONS
I am not the first, second, third, or fifteenth person to comment on this, but I have to say: The Riptide schedule was awful. I have never been to a larger tournament where I disagreed with the scheduling as hard as I did for Riptide. For anyone unfamiliar, pools ran in rolling waves (Wave A R1 at 12:00, Wave A R2 and Wave B R1 at 2:00, etc.), which I think is a fine format, but the execution here was…not good. There was a wave of pools beginning at 6pm, which meant their R2 ended at 10pm. Top 32 started the next day at 10am. This is not acceptable, and should never have made it past the planning phase. I honestly have no idea what anyone in charge was thinking with this. Starting Sunday at 10am was also wholly unnecessary. There was a large break between top 32 and top 8, and it resulted in some players having to play for entirely too long. Jmook for instance had to play me at 10am sharp and then played Hbox in loser’s finals well after 8pm. That represented almost 11 hours of being prepared to play at a high level, and while many of the players in top 8 handled it with aplomb, they shouldn’t have had to. Furthermore, there were several accessible solutions to this issue: A singles wave could have run on Friday. Singles could have run to a smaller top cut on Saturday (there were plenty of setups/time). Singles could even have started later on Sunday and things would have been fine. Regardless, both my opinion and the apparent consensus hold that the scheduling was the single biggest flaw with Riptide, but would be easily fixable for future iterations.
Next, I’m not sure why the culture seems to be centered around pretending as though we don’t care/notice, but having unfrozen stadium at this event was simply a hard negative. While I myself only played one tourney game on it, and even ended up benefitting from the shenanigans, several pretty high profile sets were influenced by random, uncompetitive stadium transformations. Zuppy in particular was robbed by an infinite in the pit last stock game 5 vs Axe, and it was really sad to see that and similar situations happen all weekend. I do not agree with the prevailing idea of giving tournaments a pass because they are partnered with Panda/SWT or whatever circuit that is currently cowering in fear of Nintendo. I think those circuits are a net good for the scene, particularly for viewers, but in truth the number of PLAYERS they benefit is vanishingly small. SWT for example may have a very large pot, but let’s be honest: The pool of players that stand to actually rake in a significant, yearly-income-influencing amount from it includes maybe Zain, Mango, Hbox, Jmook, ibdw, Leffen, Wizzy, and a few others. For the rest of us, I think we’re better off prioritizing events that put player experience first. I realize that this may represent a bit of a bind for TOs, but I also think I have to invoke “not my problem” on that one. Everyone will go to Genesis and Big House regardless, but if we have the choice to travel to one of two lower-mid size majors, and one is running unfrozen, I think it’s simply logical for that to factor into a player’s decision.
Lastly, I think there was some questionable seeding in places for the event at Riptide. Or rather, I think the seeding just didn’t run deep enough. Among all of the higher seeds I think things were done pretty fairly/intelligently, but there were simply too many good players going unseeded in their pools. Some, like my friend phx, I understand; that kid hasn’t been to anything, nobody knows that he’s good. But too often I saw players PR’d in their region seeded to go 0-2/1-2 because the seeding didn’t run deep enough. Almost as often, I also saw these players either have their day ruined or ruin somebody else’s day.
BRACKET
Surprisingly little to say about this one! I like to highlight cinderella runs and players below the very top level here, so Plup being in winner’s side grands post-hiatus, Zain getting reverse 3-0’d by S2J, etc. are all very cool, but they’ve already been discussed to death. For the most part, people in the top 32 or so seeds only got upset by people very close to them in terms of skill/seed. Magi over Axe, Pleeba over Wally, and Justus over Abu are all a bit notable, but hardly outlandish given the character MUs and skill of the players involved. Other than that, the real story was the unseeded killers I mentioned above, which would take a whole other essay to go over.
PERSONAL
Let me get this out of the way: I played some of the worst Melee of my life on Sunday at Riptide. I think there were a lot of people who saw my set with Jmook and said “Oh well it’s Jmook” in regards to the fashion in which I got bodied, but let me tell you: that’s not what was going on there. I am very glad I only had to play Jmook and Zuppy Sunday, because I would absolutely have lost to someone significantly worse than either of them. I thought I prepared as responsibly as I could. I went to bed early, got plenty of sleep, and was the first one in the venue grinding by 8am. Still, when it came time to perform in tourney sets, my hands were so cold I flinched when pressing them to my face, and played terribly. I think my big mistake here was not eating before coming to the venue. My reasoning at the time was that I didn’t want to upset my stomach (I have a very nervous stomach before tournaments usually). Upon further thought though, that really wasn’t the move. I typically play a little bit of Melee during my lunch break, sometimes before eating, and often have similar issues with cold hands in that setting. I don’t know scientifically if being fasted/having lower blood sugar would result in poor peripheral circulation, but I do recognize a pattern. Other people also seem to notice it and have commented on “lunch break Grab” as a joke about how much worse I am in that setting. I also think I will experiment with some external hand warmers before sets for the morning ones in the future, as unfortunately I don’t think 10am bracket is going away forever, especially with Big House coming up.
For doubles, Riptide was probably the single worst performance of my career. Den and I were seeded to get 13th, and we went 1-2. 1-2. That is not a typo. If you hear anything reading that, it is the astral projection of my screams embedded into the webpage. We even almost went 0-2, going down a game to a double Puff team with OG Kid, which is a team that Marth/Fox should frankly have a field day with. I have absolutely no idea what happened. Every single thing that could have gone wrong went wrong in every set. I think I get raw upsmashed about as many times in a year as Hexjo/Cardd did to me in our first set of the day. During the set with PGH Carroll and Genghis Connor, Den’s hurtbox seemed to be magnetically and magically drawn to the opponent, as I’m pretty sure he spent the entirety of that set in hitstun. It was maddening, and I am going to start having someone record my doubles sets to study, because this is unacceptable. Additionally, this pushed me even more towards developing a doubles Fox. Marth being almost completely unable to force the issue in teams is immensely frustrating, especially when you are the stronger singles player on a team as I almost always am when teaming within my region.
As an aside for doubles, I have to comment that I was not pleased when Carroll punched my hand upon winning. I don’t mind being popped off on (I consider it an honor), and I’ve spent enough time punching things that I’m not worried about a round of bloody knuckles, but the borderline physical aggression of it does not sit well with me. Please, anyone that beats me (or loses to me, I’ve had the reverse happen as well) in the future, do not do this. I don’t harbor any resentment for Carroll over it but we should make it clear as a community that this isn’t how we want to act.
For singles, I’m going to be completely honest: it’s been a week, and I don’t remember anything about my first set at all. I couldn’t tell you the characters (A Falco? Maybe?) but it was a pretty typical “good player r1” and I didn’t draw an unseeded monster.
For my second set, I played TN native Wohlgey, who I actually had never played in tourney before. I was impressed by his speed and techskill, and I think even lost the first stock, but ultimately I think my neutral/punish were just a little too much and I ended up winning very dominantly. I had expected to play Trix at this point in the bracket, and ended up playing unusually well/loose for this early in the bracket because I was so pleased to not have to play against a good pikachu for my winner’s r2.
For my last set in R1 pools, I played the upcoming Sheik player Meep, who had upset Holiday to get there. Immediately, I was rather nervous: I feel fairly good against Sheik, but Sheik early in the bracket before I’ve had my big adrenaline dump is probably the scariest MU to get, as it’s easily Marth’s most execution intensive of the popular high tiers. Furthermore, I knew Meep was pretty good, and was playing well enough to score an upset. I hope no one noticed, but my teeth were literally chattering at a couple of points before and during the set. Predictably, my play suffered, and I made tons of flubs and questionable neutral decisions. I ended up winning game one very narrowly, in part I think thanks to an SD on Meep’s part, and proceeded to tighten things up significantly in game two, actually edgeguarding a couple of times and even managing to juggle Sheik correctly once or twice instead of panicking. Unfortunately, this all went south when Meep brought me from being up three to one down to two to one, where I promptly forgot how to play the game again. This culminated in me getting stage spiked by a fair at about 25 because I sat on the ledge like a moron instead of doing a normal getup like I was supposed to and losing the game. Game 3 was pretty close throughout, and Meep had some nervous drops here that he hadn’t in the rest of the set, for which I was grateful, because God knows how much I was missing. I end up being gifted a very cheesy, stadium-transformation-assisted combo to close Meep’s third stock that allowed me to hang on for the win. I sat there shaking my head for a good minute after the set, and I really hope Meep and his friends weren’t offended. I was upset with myself and Pokemon Stadium, not my opponent or anything else. I want to be clear through all this that I think Meep is a good player. He’s someone on the rise to watch, and has already beaten other good players. However, I have to be honest here as well. Meep performing excellently was not why this set was so close. Losing my mind due to nerves was the biggest deal here, and I have to do something about it. R1 pools are only getting harder and harder, and not every tourney format will give me as long to get in the groove.
For my last set of Saturday, I had Q the Doc player, who is certainly the strongest active Doc on the EC, and probably the second strongest globally after Franz. He also had just narrowly upset my MS teammate Sharp to make it to this round. I had actually randomly played friendlies with a Doc earlier in the day, which was nice, because it allowed me to refresh my mental notes for dealing with Doc. I mostly kept to my gameplan for this set (spamming spaced fair until Doc gets off the screen and I can play vs other characters), but I do agree with Crimson Blur’s criticism that I was sometimes tempted to go in with other options out of greed/impatience. Too many nairs in particular that granted Q opportunities for no reason, but other than that I was reasonably pleased with my play for the set. I also discovered during Game 1 just how much difficulty Doc has in challenging the top platform, and how much easier it is for Marth to get down vs Doc than it would be vs even the floaty top tiers. To Q: I’m sorry for abusing that during the set. I don’t like top platform camping people, and I don’t even think it’s that valuable of a thing in theory vs Doc, but in reality when I needed a mental reset, it came in clutch. Other than that, the story of the set was me getting 3 “monster tippers” in game two to win by a blowout, but they were all pretty cleanly part of a combo/pure neutral win and not random up fsmashes that couldn’t be replicated, so I was fine with that. I also applaud Q’s discipline not to constantly roll in even after being punished during this set, and I think he’s actually the first Doc I’ve played that doesn’t include “roll in and pray” as a central part of his gameplan. In terms of other things I can do better, I can be a little more aggressive with my fair placement, as I let Doc set up pills a little too freely.
My first match on Sunday was against Jmook, and while I already talked about my level of play Sunday, let me be clear: Jmook would have beaten me regardless of how I was playing. He was playing in that set arguably even better than he was at Shine, and I SD’d every game. It is actually astounding to me sometimes how low the error rates of players like him are. Even still, I felt like my gameplan really wasn’t the problem in this set, and instead my issues were execution, getting outplayed, and the aforementioned killing myself. When you aren’t executing, kill yourself, and get outplayed, you get 3-0’d, and that’s exactly what happened during this set. Not a whole lot else to say other than breaking down interactions, which goes beyond the scope of these pieces.
My final match of the tournament was against Zuppy, who also pretty swiftly 3-0’d me. Some people already know that I am pretty much the hater in chief when it comes to digital to analog conversion in controllers, but I want to be as final as possible in saying that Zuppy being on a rectangle had nothing to do with the outcome of this set. I pride myself on being a reasonable, evidence-based hater, and boxx shenanigans in this set were not the problem. Game one was primarily Zuppy punishing very well and shine spiking me at mid percents, and was probably the best anyone has ever punished my side b on recovery in tournament. It showed me that I need to side b much earlier (if at all) against Fox, and that my recovery in the MU was far too exploitable. I also adapted far too late to his tendency to play heavily toward dash dance drill in neutral, and ran my “default vs Fox neutral game” way too long. For the next two games, which were on FD, the story was more just about my drops. The fact of the matter is that you cannot expect to beat Foxes of Zuppy’s caliber when doing an average of about 15% off of a grab on FD. I think some onlookers might have thought it was nerves, but I actually kept my emotions pretty well in check during the set, just had icicle hands and couldn’t do things. This also manifested in goofy low execution edguards like nairing him back and forth across the stage at 170 against his firefox, which is something you should never see at high level. I SD’d my final stock of the set which made me mad and left a bad taste in my mouth, but it didn’t really matter; I was getting 3-1’d at best playing like that, and instead got 3-0’d. Funny thing is, both of those get you the same place in bracket.
I did also get to play a few money matches on Sunday, funnily enough all against rectangle Fox players. I played vs Quiggles and Free Balloon Day, the former of which I beat and the latter of which I traded sets with, first losing and then winning a double or nothing run back, in which I told him to keep his money because I think double or nothing is silly. During all of these sets, I spent far too much mental energy being mad about my opponent’s controller and not enough actually playing the game. I may have kept a lid on it well during the Zuppy set but I was a poor competitor during these, and I need to get better at pressing the mute button on my personal feelings when it’s time to perform. Yes, I think it’s wildly unfair, but in the moment I have to adapt and overcome. Silent internal whining helps no one. Against both I just kind of won once I accepted that the threat range on short hop drill was going to feel unnatural and decided to shut up and hit my punishes.
In conclusion, my short tweet summary holds up well: I feel good about myself as a player for this event, but not good about my play in bracket. I only really had one shaky set Saturday, but Sunday when it counted I didn’t show up. It is up to me to adapt and do better in morning brackets in the future. I’m up for work every day at those hours, but morning standup meeting and bo5 with Jmook are in no universe even vaguely comparable in terms of mental/physical requirements.
THINGS TO WORK ON
- Recognizing Fox patterns faster
- Recovery vs intelligent/reactive Fox
- Out of game prep issues I discussed
- A broad pattern for the weekend was the value of crouch techchase and I will continue to grind it