The melee action continues in NorCal with Do You Fox With It. As an Apex Qualifier, there will be a $1000 pot bonus and the winner will get his or her airplane/hotel compensated at Apex 2015. With players coming from across the world, this regional will be sure to deliver on never before seen matches, exhibitions, and moments. Let’s look at how you can tune into the action

Stream:

ShowdownSmash

The group that routinely streams “The Foundry” tournaments on Tuesday nights will be the premier streamer for Do You Fox With It.

Twitch Link: http://www.twitch.tv/showdownsmash
Secondary stream http://www.twitch.tv/showdowngg

Schedule (All times PST)

Day 1: November 15, Saturday

10AM to 5 PM – Melee Singles Pools R1
5PM to 8 PM – Melee Doubles
7PM to 10 PM – Exhibition: Fox Round Robin

Day 2: November 16, Sunday

2 PM to 5 PM – Melee Singles Pools R2
4 PM to 6 PM – Melee Doubles Top 8
6 PM to 10 PM – Melee Singles Top 32

Attendees

Arguably the best player from Japan, Flash makes his first appearance at a US Regional. Earlier this week, he finished 3rd at The Foundry, losing twice to Shroomed, but also beat Toph, Laudandus and other Norcal locals. He has a strong punishment game on space animals, but struggled against floatier characters. Nonetheless, this tournament has several top Fox mains from across the US, so it’ll be interesting to see how he fares against them.

From the East Coast, Hax, Colbol, and DoH make an appearance. Wanting to redeem himself after The Next Episode, Hax comes in hungrier than ever to avenge his early exit. Thanks to a generous Norcal Good Player Fund, Colbol will also be coming from Florida. His doubles partner, DoH will be making his first Norcal Regional. Silent Wolf, a semi-regular at the recent Foundry tournaments, will be flying out from Washington.

Along with the out of region players, a slew of players from across California will be coming in full force. Socal’s heavy hitters Mew2King, LuCKy, Fly Amanita, Westballz, s2j, and others will be making the trek across the state to compete.

With a bunch of top players coming in, will Norcal be able to defend its throne this time? The power trio, PewPewU, SFAT, and Shroomed, will be making a best effort to show that norcal is not to be fox’d with. Along with them, players such as Laudandus, HomeMadeWaffles, SilentSpectre, and Alan have been making great progress and hope to make some noise at the tournament.

Fox Round Robin Exhibition

At the end of day 1, several of the world’s best Fox Mains will be duking it out in a Fox-Only exhibition. The participants are:

LuCKy and Fiction from Socal,
Colbol from Florida,
Hax from Tri-State,
SFAT from Norcal,
Silent Wolf form Washington.

Let the 20xx melee jokes begin! Who do you think will win?

Tafo’s Predictions

With that being said, here are my predictions:

1. Mew2King
2. Lucky
3. Hax
4. Colbol
5. Westballz
5. Silent Wolf
7. Shroomed
7. S2j

With Mango not in attendance, Mew2King is a strong favorite to take this one unscathed. It’s not to say that he’s 100% guaranteed to finish first, but it’s hard for me to imagine losing two sets, given the player pool. The rest of the placings is a crapshoot based on how the brackets play out. Hax is a strong candidate to place far, but his lack of sleep issues may cost him and it seems like there are too many “conditions” that he needs to be playing “well”. Lucky has been playing phenomenally with consistent Top 2 performances at Super Smash Weekends and a Top 8 finish at The Big House 4. He has favorable matchups against most of the other heavy hitters and has, arguably, the strongest Fox vs. Fox matchup skills out of everyone.

Florida’s pride and joy, Colbol, has shown to be adept at every matchup. It’ll be interesting to see him play against several of California’s top players. Overall, I don’t see him as a strong favorite against the top players, but he doesn’t really have any terrible matchups either, which is equally as important. Westballz and Silent Wolf are wild cards and can go higher (or slightly lower) based on how good they are playing. Shroomed and S2j round out my top 8 predictions. Shroomed is a regionals/nationals monster and rarely performs poorly. S2j has been monstrous at locals but he does have some troublesome matchups against Colbol, Zhu and westballz

Notably, I do not place Fly Amanita, who won The Next Episode, in the top 8. His string of recent performances have been disappointing and I’m not sure if he has what it takes to win against the other top players later in the bracket. Granted, this is probably a controversial opinion, but his placings have been subpar. Strangely enough, Fly’s performances right before the last Norcal Regional were poor, but he managed to turn things around at The Next Episode. Maybe we’ll see that again.