1. Dual Maining is the way to go

Armada, Mango, PPMD have two competent characters that compete at the top level. It’s no coincidence that they also take the majority of majors. Armada shifted momentum going from a Fox that was 1-4 against Mango to a Peach that swung momentum completely, taking 6 of the next 7 games to win the tournament. This will be more of a trend moving ahead.

2. Final Destination works… sometimes

Common convention indicates that Marth and Peach are strong characters against spacies on FD. However, we saw PewPewU and MacD fail on their coveted counter-pick. Perhaps, this stage isn’t as strong as people make it out to be. The floaties still need to earn a grab and also execute on it. Aside from players such as Mew2King or Axe, no one really has a strong combo game on that stage. This leads me to my next point.

3. The Punish Game

I’m Not Yelling showed the importance of being able to eliminate stocks in as few openings as possible. Armada and Leffen show the prowess of having an amazing punish game against spacies. Furthermore, Kira surprised many by taking a no-nonsense approach to the sheik ditto, chain-grabbing from 0 to 70% every time he found an opening, defeating players such as KirbyKaze and Laudandus. PewPewU and MacD didn’t lose their sets necessarily because of their neutral, but because of their dropped punishes.

4. Mango’s Falco is not done

For a while, people thought that Mango should learn the Fox Ditto (I still think he does) because it appeared that he couldn’t win with Falco against Fox. Overall, he went 7-2 against the Swedish Foxes. He looked fantastic with his use of control, shield pressure, zoning, and punish game. He’ll be fine.

5. Armada’s Peach is still sexy

Watch his singles videos against Mango; You’re in for a treat. Fantastic conversions and great zoning. It’s still a work of art and source of inspiration to floaties everywhere. Please don’t ever leave it.

6. What Happened UCI?

In pre-emptive fashion, UC Irvine bought their tickets to Super Nebulous for the Melee Games finals before the West Coast bracket actually finished. To recap, they would play the winner of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz). UC Berkeley ended up winning against UC Santa Cruz to play UCI in the finals. Here’s their lineups:

UC Berkeley UC Irvine
Ralph
Delphiki
Glitter
Warwick
Nimzo		 Sherigami
Squid
Stab
Santi (Lil Fumi)
Captain Faceroll

On paper, UC Irvine looks like a super team, similar to whatever Kentucky gets every year in Collegiate Basketball, having 4 ranked – borderline ranked players on their line up. Meanwhile, UC Berkeley had 2 decent ranked players, 1 up and comer, and 2 fillers. Yet, somehow UC Berkeley pulled through to win the West Coast Melee Games, probably one of the biggest upsets in melee history. I wonder what’s going to happen to the plane tickets.

7. The Summer of Smash starts early

We are in for a treat with I’m Not Yelling and Sandstorm that features strong high level play from multiple members of the big 6. I’m Not Yelling reached 40,000 concurrent viewers, a rarity for a tourney in the spring season. Now we eagerly await another exciting major that will feature upwards of 5 of the big 6 along with other powerhouses such as Axe and Westballz. It’s a good time to be a Melee fan.