On Saturday March 18th I attended Short Hop Lazer 13 in Knoxville, TN. It was fun to see many of my local friends, and I did end up winning the tournament. However, it was an event not without issues. For monthly & smaller regional events, I always try to be especially patient and kind to TOs for two reasons: They are usually very much soft-committed volunteers who can easily take their ball and go home. Also, they are often my friends. With this in mind, there are two critiques I would humbly offer for the event for the future: Single DQs to loser’s bracket are unfair to other attendees, and there should always be a degree of priority placed on finishing events. As for the single DQs, they mattered less in the context of this small bracket, but it isn’t fair to the people who show up on time to potentially go 0-2 because some high seeds apparently can’t read the start times on start.gg. As for finishing events, I believe it is just better for everyone. It enables attendees to focus on one event at a time, and for people in fewer events to leave earlier if they wish, and it only delays the event under very specific circumstances. In particular, PM doubles was held for at least 3 hours to let singles run. Was PM doubles a terribly competitive bracket anyone placed a lot of importance on? No, but it still caused at least one attendee to have to stick around considerably longer, and pulled at least two other competitors out of focusing on their singles brackets while very deep into them. Otherwise, I think the event was run well and at a reasonable pace. There was adequate space and reasonably accessible bracket/TO staff. It was pretty cold early on in the venue (more on that later), but that was out of the TOs hands and I’m not about to fault anyone for that at a board game shop monthly
As for the bracket itself, it was one of the craziest in TN history. A small part of this can be attributed to the decision to single DQ Den and Geegog into loser’s rather than double, but really there was just a rash of upsets unlike anything we had ever seen. Mewwy, the ~12 seed, made it all the way to winner’s finals, upsetting Unoriginal (8 seed, who should have been higher), myself (1 seed) and beating local friend/rival 12YOWeaboo, who had upset both sinkingwithseals and 4 seed (who should have probably been 2 seed) Majersk to make it into WS. On the other side of bracket, East TN newcomer KittieSE upset Rooster in WR2, Signify upset Moist, and Mr. Brandondorf made it all the way to WS on the back of the Den single DQ, while also upsetting the red hot Signify, notably taking a game with his debuting Fox. The only high seed that performed as expected was Cantus, who made it to winner’s side grand finals, only dropping 2 games total, one each to KittieSE and Mewwy. In loser’s, Rooster upset Majersk, causing the player who I thought should have been seeded second to get ninth. That was the end of the madness, however, and for the rest of the bracket a sense of normalcy returned. Den beat Moist (albeit comically early in loser’s), sinkingwithseals ran it all back to LS after the WR2 loss, and I won the tournament without dropping another game. In truth, I think there are a couple of things that contributed to the early bracket craziness, but the biggest one was the temperature of the venue. I did not have access to a thermometer, but I would guess that the room with most of the Melee setups and the stream was somewhere in the 40s. For my part, before a couple of my sets my hands were shaking and my teeth were chattering. It did warm up throughout the day, and I think this heavily contributed to the comparative lack of strange results later in the tourney.
Personal
Let’s get it out of the way: I lost insanely early this tournament. Mewwy is good and she beat me in WQs. I was extremely displeased about it. I do blame the cold for my poor play to a large degree, but I think I vindicated myself by running it all the way back without dropping a game. Still, there are things I can learn from this. I deal with the cold/warm up my hands MUCH better when I’ve eaten. I need to insist on doing so before playing in bracket in the future, even if it means getting something delivered or buying something relatively pricey, even if it will be difficult to convince my miserly brain of. It will be a good investment for both my financial and mental health. Another significant personal event was a magnet mount falling out of my controller in the middle of a doubles set, and while we did go on to win anyway, it continues the saga of my controller woes. Luckily, the controller behaved well otherwise, I just need to spend more time getting used to the newer stick feel. I’d also like to give a shoutout to AWOL (my GOAT) for giving me the mid-set pit stop that I needed to keep going in the tourney.
At this event I did entered not only Melee singles but also the aforementioned doubles, as well as PM singles/doubles, where I got 3rd/2nd respectively. I normally focus hard on Melee for these but because Knoxville adores PM/P+ I can include a little blurb about it. I really just better player’d the crap out of everyone I played in P+ until I played Rooster in WS, winning 3-1. I played the MU vs his MetaKnight much better than last time during the first game, but I fell back into some old, less MU appropriate patterns as the set progressed. Fortunately for me, he SD’d game four and I was able to mount a comeback to take the set. WFs vs Xtreme’s ROB was probably the best I’ve ever played in P+ (this was near the end of the day where it was warmer and I had eaten), but it still wasn’t enough to pull through. I will maintain that Marth/ROB is an absolutely TERRIBLE MU for Marth, and I was unable to span that gap. I was pretty mad about it, and am still on the fence about playing Marth into ROB in the future. I don’t think he’s in the Zard/DDD unwinnable MU tier, but the gap in punish, survivability, and edgeguarding is brutal. In loser’s I lost to Dank’s Snake, which was unsurprising since I haven’t thought about Snake in probably over a year. It’s a pretty specific MU that requires a lot of little nuances that I just wasn’t prepared for, and I will maintain that Snake’s sticky explosive is one of the worst mechanics in any platform fighter.
As for my Melee bracket
I beat Georgia’s C$ round 2 after a round 1 bye, brutalizing the Falcon game one and then having a much closer one with the Fox game two. I honestly wonder why he bothered with the Falcon at all, as the Fox just seemed to be both hotter and better in general. Regardless, this was the set that tipped me off to how rough the event was going to be, as I was already freezing and struggling to move much.
My next round was being upset by Mewwy. I actually don’t think she played very well this set either (she missed a bunch of CC dash up punishes that I know her for, as well as at least one meaningful handoff), but in a MU of Marth vs a slidey smash attacker that thrives on chaos, unclean play does tend to benefit one party more. I lost a close game 3 in an extremely sloppy set, and I’m not really sure what else to say about it.
Next I played the two seed in Den for 9th. I do not exaggerate when I say that it was the worst set we have ever played. I think in the first 15 seconds we both missed multiple L cancels and Den blatantly missed a side b to ledge, not even in the same zip code as the grab box. that This mistake set the tone for the rest of the set. Luckily for me, when the set is a little bit scuffed it tends to benefit Fox, but when the set is this massively scuffed it becomes an 8-2 MU for Marth. He really just handed me enough flub induced openings/botched recoveries that I was able to comfortably take it 2-0, but it didn’t really feel earned beyond one dope reverse bair combo I got.
The set after that was vs Rooster, who had just upset Majersk. I got rested relatively early game one and then proceeded to make a ton of movement flubs that ended up making game one a pretty close affair, but as the set progressed I finally started to warm up a bit. I still stuck with the stiff, too safe playstyle I criticized myself for having vs Dawson last week, but at least I started being able to move, and I did end up taking it 3-0.
Next I played Mr. Brandandorf. I’ll be honest with everyone here: I think Ganon is really bad. I believe he is the most overrated character in the game, and that even characters like Link, DK, and the Marios are actually much better against the top tiers in Melee. I won game one by abusing the fact that Ganon is in fact quite bad and not giving him free openings. Lower level players tend to think Ganon is not that bad for two reasons: they give him free openings, and he needs relatively few openings to kill at low level compared to other characters. The thing is though: you don’t have to give Ganon any freebies if you don’t mess up, and at a high level Ganon’s punish game is actually pretty lackluster. Getting grabbed by Marth or Sheik at 10% carries a very real threat of death when they’re piloted by Zain or Jmook. Getting grabbed by Ganon at 10% is 1-2 aerials if God himself is on the sticks, discounting roulette wheel hard reads. I played just clean enough to deny free openings (yes, that is always easier said than done) and won game one very dominantly, after which he switched to Fox. The Fox was impressively technical, but it didn’t really seem to have a handle on the Marth MU and was also defeated summarily to close a 3-0.
After that I played sinkingwithseals, a very strong ICs out of Chattanooga that I’ve known for quite a while. Game 1 was relatively close, but I was able to close it and then stayed comfortably in the lead for the rest of the set to finish 3-0. This set was also notable in that he was able to get the CC dash up punishes on fair that Mewwy was missing in WQs. which reminded me that I need to build better habits in those situations vs. Climbers, whether that be to dair instead, empty land, buffer roll, or up b like Mai advocates when top platform is available. I need to play against ICs more and target this situation mindfully or else it will continue to bite me, as Mewwy was also hitting those in the next set.
In the rematch with Mewwy, I think she actually played cleaner this set despite the loss, both in terms of neutral and punish execution, albeit with some unfortunate SDs (I think at least one per game) that really influenced the flow of the game. For my part, I moved immensely better than I had in WQs, and did enough to once again get the 3-0.
Lastly, I played my good friend Cantus in grand finals. The first game was pretty close, with both of us having some nervous flubs on FoD. However, I managed to hit my reactive edgeguards enough to close it out. From there, Cantus had a very unfortunate game two on YS that allowed me to really get my feet underneath me and dictate the rest of the set(s). I started to move better, hit my techchases, punishes, edgeguards, etc. For the second set he tried Falco game two on YS and I think this was a pretty bad decision, as I felt like on a different day I could have lost to the Fox. Conversely, if we had played 50 sets of Marth/Falco in tournament, it felt like I would have won all of them. Cantus is an extremely good player, and if he reads this I would implore him not to get discouraged and believe in himself and his Fox, because it really can do it.
My takeaways for this event were really mostly about out of game prep and some specific situations vs Ice Climbers. I already knew Ganon was Ganon, Den played at his true floor, and my takeaways vs. Puff were the same as last week. Perhaps this was not the most efficient tournament in terms of specific Melee improvement, but not without fruit. Ultimately, it is always nice to be among friends.