It’s surreal that two days have already passed since MLG finished and we’re only a couple of days away from CEO that will also feature the likes of Armada, Mango, Mew2King, and other top players. A random slew of thoughts is what defines this brief article.
Tournament Rules
1. Best of 5s change everything!
Poor aMSa
Ask aMSa. He was ahead 2-0 in 4 of his sets in his round robin pools, yet only had 1 set win to show for it. Someone needs to do a stat check, but aMSa may have the most wins ever for finishing in last for pools. Leffen also showed his amazing adaptation skills by coming from behind against Hax and Westballz. Best of 5s show a whole new layer of gameplay that would not be demonstrated in best of 3s sets. They need to stay.
2. The Championship Pools were amazing for spectators!
It’s amazing that MLG was able to think of a format to create high profile matches throughout the weekend. Instead of showing MarthMaster65 get dumpstered by SheikySheikSheik in Open Winners, we got to see matches such as Hax vs. Leffen or Mango vs. Armada really early. It’s definitely one of MLG’s better ideas.
3. Double Elimination Brackets makes placings somewhat worthless.
Certain players had a gauntlet to conquer in order to qualify. Others had nobody until the very end. There is definitely a disparity in some sections of the bracket, which I guess is expected.
Tournament Organizing
1. Live Registration (for Regionals/Nationals) needs to come to an end
– Brackets take a really long time to make. In addition, it is very easy to slip up, especially with 200+ people. People can go missing. There can be repeats. Mis-seeding players can and will inevitably happen. Closing registration and making the bracket ahead of time will allow people to fine polish the bracket to account for seeding, regional conflicts, and prevent multiple headaches.
2. Communication is Key
– Being transparent about time schedules is really important. Everyone that is involved in the TO staff needs to be on the same page and make clear expectations on what’s expected of the players during a tournament set (Requiring a ref, rules, etc…)
Players
1. Mango has a 5th gear and it’s scary
Watching Mango tear through crews and and day 3 finals reminds the community that he can still be dominant. Before this tournament, Mango looked like he was out of touch with Armada, M2K, and PPMD. It was a sight to behold to see even Armada crumble frequently in bad spots against Mango’s shield pressure.
2. The tiers are changing
After the recent series of tournaments (SKTAR, Super SWEET, Pat’s House, etc…), I will say that the tiers are changing
Tier 1 aka “They can win it all, very frequently”
1. C9.Mango
2. EMP P4K Armada
3. EG.PPMD
Tier 1.5 aka “Great, but somehow struggles when there are more than 2 others”
4. EMP P4K Mew2King
Tier 2 aka “A cut below the other 4, but clearly better than everyone else”
5. Leffen
6. Curse.HungryBox
Tier 2.5 aka “Give anyone a run for their money, but still have much to prove”
7. VGBC Hax
8. Axe
9. Westballz
Tier 3 aka “The mess of players that you need a magic 8 ball to see how they will do at a tournament”
MIOM|PewPewU, MIOM|SFAT, Fly Amanita, LuCKy, Ice, SS|Colbol, Plup, Fiction, s2j, and anyone else in the top 25-30 range
3. VGBC|aMSa needs a plan b
aMSa’s parries and shield-drops are amazing and led to long punishes. However, people adapted to simply not approaching him in certain situations, which caused aMSa to struggle in those long sets. He needs a plan “b” if he wants to thrive against the top 15-20 level players. Fortunately, Evo is all best of 3 until the very end and could give him a little boost.
4.CT| ZeRo is rising fast
ZeRo has been rumored to been practicing over 8 hours a day and it’s definitely showing in his game play, taking games off of Armada and Hungrybox. He’s a monster against most floaties already. Who knows what his ceiling is?
5. Results are variant and the most consistent player (of the day) will win
We take singular tournament results too seriously. I firmly believe that many of these results could have easily swung the other way pending some small mistakes. Sets will go back n forth at all tier levels.
Meta-Thoughts
1. 20xx is delayed
– Although Mango won primarily with Fox, we saw 9 different characters played in the final top 8. Fox may be a favorite of many top players, but many other characters can thrive as well
2. Dropping Combos is painful
– Many players at the tip-top were executing 0 to death combos very frequently. With the punish game being as severe as it is, dropping combos will put you at too far a deficit to come back. Also, characters that don’t have long punishes will fall out of favor in the 2014 meta
Other-Thoughts
1. 3-day tournaments are exhausting
– Three long days of Smash and walking around with little sleep are too much for this 26-year-old body. I’m going to take the PPMD approach and sleep or else suffer the consequences
2. Pizza Hut is amazing (no, not really…)
3. Wearing Mango’s Beanie messed up my hair
– Yes it felt great catching the beanie. =D
MIOM|Tafokints
Could you clarify number 3 of the Tournament Rules section? Are you referring to the open bracket? What might be a better system?
There was very little seeding done for the bracket. Any double elimination bracket that features above 64 players will have high-variance placements. If it were possible, better seeding with bracket pools could reduce this significantly. For example, look at Ken’s bracket vs Colbol’s.
eh I don’t think Ken had an easy bracket. But illustrating your point, it seems like Okami had a really favorable one.
i dont think putting m2k not in the first tier is justified. you described it as “struggles when more than 2 others are present” while he got 2nd at apex, 2nd at sktar and 3rd at mlg outplacing at least 1 of the players a tier higher than him every time.
dont see how that makes sense
Perhaps I didn’t communicate as clearly as I would like, but can you name the last time Mew2King has won a tourney with 2 or more other Big 5 Players present? This was my rational for putting M2K slightly below the other 3
big house 3
By your logic no players who won’t get 1st are worth ranking whatsoever? So why do we rank lets say sfat or pewpewu if we know he won’t get 1st in the tourney. That kind of thought says it’s either 1st place or it doesn’t matter in the slightest bit. Why would you even do rankings for tourneys? What would it be?
1st: PPMD. losers:dragonslayer69, c9mang0, jakeiscool2001, armada, shroomed, pewpewu, footballguy99.
You serious dude? Lol the funny part is that miom did the 2013 power rankings when you don’t even care about ranking anyone that won’t get first, basically makes your 10-100 power rankings completely and udderly useless. I love you Tafo but I really expected better.
I believe you are definitely straw-manning my argument here. I have stated that my personal definition of Tier 1 is a player that has a reasonably strong chance of winning a national with everyone there, which is why PPMD, Armada, and Mango are there and M2K is not. This does not mean that I view everyone else but the winner as irrelevant. Hence, this is why there is still a separation between anyone that is below my “tier 1”. Using your case, I’d have made Tier 1 Mango/ppmd/armada and Tier 2 everyone else, but this is clearly not the case.
When you can reply without misrepresenting my initial argument, then I’ll reply further.
I still want to be a Tafo fan so relax, I don’t really give a fuck about this argument so don’t say shit like your last stanza acting like someone’s words aren’t worth your oh so valuable time because you don’t agree with them and you are your words are those of golden that they don’t deserve to read, I wanna keep loving Tafo4lyfe so I’m willing to drop the argument, you can be right and I can still get to love you, sound good? No hard feelings? I’m coming to WC some day and you’re getting the biggest hug of your life. #Tafoislove
thinking about it, the last and only time all 3 placed higher than him in the last 2 years was evo
When was the last time Mew2King won a national though with at least 2/3 (Mango, Armada, PP)? He did it once at BH3, but his nationals count is definitely lower than the other 3 I placed in the list.
And I guess my last rational is this, do I think Mew2King or the other 3 are more likely to win Evo? I had a hard time separating them initially, but upon asking myself that question, it was easy for me to separate Mew2King from everyone else. At the end of the day, it’s simply my opinion and we can agree to disagree.
I typed out a big response, submitted it, and received a message: “This comment could not be posted.” . . . Thanx.
Weird. What was the error? Regardless I’m excited to meet you in the future 🙂
That was the error. It just told me that my comment could not be posted. No error codes. No details.
The TLDR version: I don’t feel that sets of 5 resulting in lots of comebacks justifies their existence. (In fact, I’d say it gives the comeback player an unfair opportunity. Why not extend the sets to 7 to give the player who won the first 2 matches a chance to counter-adjust?)
I completely agree with tafo’s rankings. They are logical, well thought out, and well rationalized. Well done.
tafo pls go