EVENT

PROS: We Need Some Space remains my favorite MW tournament series, almost certainly the most well TO’d, and my pick to take up Full Bloom’s mantle. Mason (Acid) is an amazing TO and Blitz is a perfect choice for a right hand man for the series. In terms of organizing, I have virtually nothing negative to say about the event. Super stacked event relative to the number of entrants, and the entrant numbers (137) weren’t even low! Overall I can’t imagine it being anything but a very positive experience whether you were a casual attendee, a serious competitor, or (from what little I’ve caught of the stream) a spectator. MeleeEveryday remains one of the most underappreciated streams in the game. Both pools and bracket ran in a smooth and timely manner; no long waits between sets but also no pressuring competitors to rush. The invited/flown in players were absolute gentlemen and excellent choices to have. If anyone wants to invite an MPGR top 50 player out to their tournament, Salt, Jflex, and Fiction are choices that will be well liked by all in attendance, and are fun players to watch for the stream to boot. I feel as though too many TOs just throw darts at a board of names when selecting who to bring out, and that was not the case here. Furthermore, amateur bracket was treated with an appropriate mix of levity and respect, which is a balance I think most TOs struggle with as well.

CONS: There could have been more setups, and a few were running old versions of UCF. Not a big deal, and it’s impossible to police all community setups, but if the event is looking for anything to improve on for next year, that’s really all I’ve got as far as attendee experience. At no point was there anything I’d call an actual shortage of setups though. My one major critique of decisions made by the organizers was allowing HPR to substitute in for Voorheese. This was not fair to anyone in HPR’s bracket path. I consider Voorheese a friend, and I don’t know HPR at all, but I find the idea that they would have been interchangeable in seed/skill to be…extremely dubious, at best. HPR tore up the bracket a bit and that didn’t surprise me a bit. I know there is pressure to let the homies enter, but I wish organizers had stood firm on this bit. Lowercasehero in particular is a player with potential T100 ballot potential (IMO) that got screwed over by this.

BRACKET

What a bracket! In an event with this much talent density, it’s all but impossible for everything to go according to seed, and predictably, it did not here. The single standout runs of the bracket are almost certainly Q? and JustJoe. Neither were seeded to make top 13, and both got 5th with Q? Picking up wins over Ben, Reeve, and Killablue, only falling to two old school Sheiks, who I imagine have to be some of the toughest draws possible for a doc. JustJoe notably upset Ben, who had a rough tournament. Driving nine hours solo (I think) almost certainly had something to do with that. I talked to Ben after the tournament and he expressed doubt he’d make that drive again, and I don’t blame him. JustJoe also notably went up 2-0 on Fiction before suffering a heartbreaking reverse 3-0, falling to loser’s where he would go up 2-0 on me…only to suffer a heartbreaking reverse 3-0 again. Ouch. Regardless, it was a good tourney for him and I think his star is bright. Probably the next biggest upset was Coffee over Essy, who had a relatively rough performance as well, falling to Shabo for 13th as the fifth seed. I am of the opinion however that Shabo is in contention for most underrated player in the world, so I would certainly still consider Essy stock to be very high value at the moment. For more local results to the event, Blue 3-0’d Rik in very impressive fashion, which I know was a significant thing for him and represented a true old guard vs new guard meeting. For my part, I also made a decent run, beating Ober in winners and then going through a gauntlet of Shabo, Drephen, JustJoe, and Jflex before falling to Salt for 3rd, who had also put me in loser’s.

PERSONAL

Driving up the night before was a good decision given that doubles started at 9am my time and it was an almost 4hr drive. Staying at the motel 6 was NOT, however, and was a mistake I will not make again. Definitely the oddest thing from a competition standpoint was Essy teaching me a little meditation before the doubles bracket, which was…interesting. I definitely felt that I was almost too relaxed during the doubles sets, but it was a nice change of pace from always being too intense. Definitely reminded me to continue searching for ways to modulate my level of autonomic arousal during competition, as it is habitually extremely high. Both of the doubles sets Essy and I lost were uniquely frustrating, because they both looked like lopsided 3-0s on stream but felt imminently winnable while playing them. It was as though every possible way the ball could have bounced poorly for us, it did. I didn’t feel like Essy or I played egregiously poorly or that we had a bunch of major drops. I suppose these things just happen sometimes.

For singles, I was proud of my mental composure and preparation, for the most part. I only got tilted a little bit at GIOGOAT’s cheering during my set with Drephen (his cheering was in relation to an unrelated set), and I think it might have costed me game 3. I need to purchase more isolating headphones, or at least turn the volume up. I handled in game adversity very well, but reverted back to some lazy/nervous habits on FD in my set with JustJoe. I’ve gotten to the point in friendlies where I can punish monster 99% of Foxes on that level even without a good neutral read, but I am not yet capable of the same in tournament. My set with Ober was a classic example of me letting my foot off the gas when I got too comfortable, and I should be better. I let game one be close for basically no reason but getting lazy once I was up 3 to 1. Game 3 I also started slow and was too pleased with myself for a dominant game two. My set with Ferocitii was reasonably well played, but did have a shaky game one before I found my groove.. My set with Shabo was disappointing in a way, because I think friendly session Shabo handily beats the version of me from that set, but I did manage to clutch out a tight game two to enable the 3-0. Definitely a set where both players played as lesser versions of themselves. My Salt sets were probably the most interesting, and our winner’s set was probably the most back and forth set I’ve ever played. I believe I got jv 4 stocked game two and then 4 stocked Salt the next game. Absolute bloodbath of MU, both character and player wise. My biggest takeaway from that set was that I need a better plan for DL. I struggled mightily to close out stocks, and I was a bit lost when it came to challenging the top platform. When I went down 0-2 in LFs, I knew I was in for a hard time. It might have been fine if not for DL, but the MU just isn’t doable when Falcon lives to 200 and gets a free safespot. These are me problems, not necessarily MU problems, and I’ll work on them. My only real “regret” play wise from that set was that I got absolutely blown up at the start of game five in winner’s quarter’s, in a way that was completely avoidable and I believe should not have happened. Otherwise, Salt outplayed me enough that I would have had to drop basically nothing to win the games I lost, which just isn’t a reasonable expectation. The only solution is to get better. Sometimes the problem really is that you just played bad, but that wasn’t the case here. I need to improve my gameplan, not just my gameplay. As for my set with Jflex, game two was monumentally sloppy on both ends, and I would have had no chance in that game if it weren’t for it being on FD, since that’s just the way Marth/Sheik goes. Flex even talked with me for a moment after game two after the set, said it felt like he had won it, and honestly I found it hard to disagree. Game 4 of that set was rough, as Jflex played at his absolute floor. Not how I wanted that one to end, but I’ll take it. I also attempted the Reeve pivot downsmash setup once, but missed the spacing. It was working well in friendlies and I’m a believer in it though, so I will continue to grind it. My set with JustJoe was…strange. He had an extremely unusual cadence and gameplan. Very, very focused on cc dash up punish, and incorporated tons of unusual pauses into his neutral. Once I adapted to this, I think I was able to take control reasonably comfortably, but it took me entirely too long. I also got caught with the same uthrow->wavedash utilt setup WAY too many times on FD, which is definitely a mixup at best and not at all real.

Takeaways/what to practice

  • Challenging the top plat and closing out stocks on DL vs Falcon
  • Zain ledgecancel fair edgeguard vs Falcon
  • Pivot downsmash edgeguard setup vs Sheik a la Reeve