Welcome to the first TMG Weekly Recap! I’m Tyrø, and after every weekend I’ll be writing articles recapping the highlights of each region of The Melee Games. We’re here to kick things off for you with recaps (and VOD links) of TMG’s opening matches from the last two weeks. This article also contains a discussion from V$ about the SoCal teams and what’s changed for them, a who/where/when for this weekend’s 17 matches, and a breakdown of all the character data we received at registration!First, on Saturday, September 5th, at Duke University, the five schools of the Carolinas region gathered to begin their round robin tournament.

 

The day kicked off with the home team Duke playing UNC Charlotte. Charlotte’s starting player GCS dominated the game from the get go, taking his first game losing just one stock, converting that into what would become an explosive 9 stock run through half of Duke’s team. As Charlotte pushed their lead throughout the battle, Kaeon, anchor and star player of Duke University team, was left staring down an 11 stock deficit. He was only able to pick up 6, and UNC Charlotte took the first win of The Fall 2015 Melee Games!

Duke then faced a crippled Clemson University team. ESAM, Clemson’s golden ticket, was attending Paragon LA at the time of this match. After two players on each team were eliminated, Clemson had built a two stock lead. This was short lived, as Duke’s Kaeon let loose a performance that would set an early season record, taking 11 stocks from Clemson players Wei, Trix, Alfie, and Perthro. Perthro and his Peach put in work as anchor for Clemson, but taking 8 stocks from Duke’s two remaining Marths proved to be an insurmountable task. Duke won with two stocks left.

In a battle of the UNC’s, Chapel Hill played its first match against Charlotte in a 7 vs 7. Brett3’s Sheik came out strong with a 4-2 lead over Charlotte’s Farm, but was stifled by BLMB’s Falco, who also shut down SamStone’s Luigi. Charlotte was ahead by two halfway through the match, until Weilin’s Peach went on a demolishing 8 stock tear through their team. As the match progressed to two players remaining for each side, Chapel Hill’s Captain Falcon, Nannose, threw on a “FREE” tag expecting an easy match, but Sprankles’ Jigglypuff put up a fight. On Nannose’s last stock he was just barely able to convert on a raw knee to finish off Sprankles and force out Locke’s Ganon. Nannose traded stocks with the Ganon on the way out, and Chapel Hill’s anchor, Sheik main Jwilli, counterpicked him to Final Destination. He abused the matchup to finish with three stocks for Chapel Hill.

UNC Charlotte stayed on to play North Carolina State University in another 7 vs 7, but NCSU, missing its star Ice Climbers player Sharkz, felt the heat. GCS had another tremendous start, taking a clean 8 stocks from NCSU. Yeroc’s Falco put a stop to GCS, but Farm’s counterpick to Fountain of Dreams put the bird down 4-1, and Farm’s Peach traded stocks to go 7-4. The remaining players traded stocks, and UNC Charlotte won it out by 7 stocks.

The featured match of the day was UNC Chapel Hill vs Duke. Two teams with deep ties and a passionate rivalry, KSI and SamStone actually agreed to start for each team so they could play out a grudge match. Chapel Hill took game 1, but Duke evened things up immediately. This became the theme of the match, as Chapel Hill would pull ahead only to be rebuffed by Duke’s counterpick. Down to just the two anchors, Chapel Hill’s Weilin was up only stock and it was anybody’s game. Kaeon came out to an amazing start, taking Duke’s first lead of the match – two stocks to Weilin’s one. Things looked grim for Chapel Hill as Kaeon seemed to be running away with the momentum, but after some amazing smash DI to escape the killing blow of Fox’s upthrow-upair combos Weilin began to turn things around. He punished a hole in Kaeon’s edgeguarding, nailed a strong combo, but missed the edge guard allowing the game to return to neutral for a final moment of truth. Both players were over 120% as Kaeon approached from above with a nair and Weilin threw out a Hail Mary downsmash. The Fox landed just a hair too far behind, hitting the last tick of Peach’s blender, and Chapel Hill came away with the win.

The following weekend on Saturday, September 12th, Columbia College Chicago played the School of the Art Institute of Chicago at their local tournament, Rubicon 2. CCC’s Choi Boi came out to a strong start with his Falco taking 7 stocks before losing his last to Comomomo’s Link. This was for naught as it turned out. After eliminating Comomomo’s Link, SAIC sent in kamSAMneedah. SAM and his Marth cut through four players, including netting the first four stock of this TMG season against Flashburn’s Fox. He ended with a 14 stock run, taking the early season record from Kaeon. Despite being ahead in what would have been the last match of the crew battle aganist CCC’s ZiG, kamSAMneedah SD’d his last stock in order to let SAIC’s DOG+ get a quick game in to close things out. SAIC won the battle with 8 stocks remaining.

Bringing things to the Northeast on Tuesday, September 15th, New England also held their first crew battle with Berklee School of Music facing off against the College of Fenway. Berklee has participated in three TMG seasons, whereas CoF is making their TMG debut. Fenway’s Falco, Free, looked to steal the show right off the bat with two 4-1 games in a row. But the early lead drew out Berklee’s star player, Kazamm, who answered with a quick 2-0 with his Captain Falcon. He got taken down 4-2 by Fenway’s captain Krum, whose Sheik proceeded to go 4-1 and 1-1, taking a total of 9 stocks. Marth player Yasu, not about to be shown up by his teammates, also takes a clean 3 stocks from Berklee to win it for College of Fenway with 12 stocks remaining.

Before we close things out with this weekend’s lineup of matches, we’re going to pass things over to the West Coast where the SoCal and Western Conference Director Victor “V$” Bhattacharyya gives us a preview of what SoCal will be looking like.

 

Friday 9/18:
8pm (EST) Ontario: Sheridan College vs Humber College on www.twitch.tv/sheridansmash

Saturday 9/19:
12p (EST) New England: UMass Amherst vs Quinnipiac University vs Champlain College (RR) on www.twitch.tv/umassbc
2p (EST) New York City: Stevens University vs Hofstra University vs SUNY Purchase (RR) on www.twitch.tv/sigmelee
2:30p (EST) North Carolina: [In Order] North Carolina State University vs Clemson University, Clemson vs UNC Charlotte, NCSU vs UNC Chapel Hill, Duke vs NCSU, UNC Chapel Hill vs Clemson on www.twitch.tv/KneeDeepGaming
5:30p (EST) New Jersey: Ramapo College of New Jersey vs NJIT on www.twitch.tv/sigmelee
7:30p (EST) Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana vs Northwestern University, followed by Northwestern University vs Illinois State University on www.twitch.tv/TheSmashingIllini

Sunday 9/20:
New York Upstate: Clarkson University vs Syracuse University (stream/time TBA)
New Jersey: Montclair State University vs Brookdale Community College (local recording)

Be sure to follow The Melee Games on facebook and twitter to get updates on matches throughout the season. Until smashgg updates with brackets for TMG, check out our brackets at themeleegames.challonge.com

I’ll leave you with the character usage data we received from this season’s players upon registration. See you next week!