As the last few months have passed, The Melee Games has soldiered on through its fourth and largest season.

In September there were 179 schools, now with Genesis 3 this weekend there are six teams remaining. These teams are University of Washington, University of California Irvine, University of Arizona, York University, Georgia Tech, and Stony Brook University.

The schedule at Genesis will be:

• UW vs UCI, then UA vs winner – 10a-12p
• GA Tech vs SBU, then winner vs York – 12p-2p
• Grand Finals during the Salty Suite

You may find a list of VODs for all of the teams in this article here.

You can Like or Follow TMG on Facebook and Twitter. For more information on the brackets, see themeleegames.challonge.com

University of Washington is from the PacNW division. This division involved 10 schools from Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. UW won their RR against Central Washington University and Seattle University, in total losing only 9 of their total 40 stocks between those two battles. Vitamin E, a player noticeably absent from their Genesis 3 roster, took all 20 stocks from CWU.

In the PacNW Semi-Finals at Northwest Majors: DropZone they played against Washington State University, wherein Silent Wolf went in second and took 14 stocks to win the match. In PacNW Grand Finals, University of Oregon put up a good fight but UW kept Silent Wolf as anchor and took the victory.

Of the 80 stocks that UW had between their four matches, they lost only 34 stocks combined.

University of California Irvine, heralded as a favorite to win it all for two seasons running, is from the California Division. Last spring saw them lose to UC Berkeley in a 19-20 battle, while this spring they dominated the competition.

SoCal was home to 15 schools this season. UCI took out University of Southern California, Cal State Long Beach, Claremont Colleges, UC San Diego, UCLA, and UC Berkeley to advance. Of the six matches they played, and the 132 stocks they were afforded (USC vs UCI was 8v8), they lost 82 stocks.

UCI is considered a favorite for good reason; just look at their players. Matt, Santiago, CDK, Captain Faceroll, Squid, and Sherigami make up their main lineup. All of these players are SoCal Power Ranked. Of these, Matt stands out to be the MVP having taken 45 total stocks between each season this year participating in only the hardest battles, and holds a high Avg Stocks Taken.

University of Arizona, a school from a state with two schools, had a bit of a lucky break this season. Their neighboring state, New Mexico, forfeit against them and their next round opponents from Texas forfeit as well. Nonetheless, they fought a close battle against Arizona State University with UA’s GG7 edging out ASU’s Tai by 2 stocks.

At G3, as winners of the Southern Conference, they will be playing the winner of UCI and UW.

York University has been a part of TMG for two seasons now, and has advanced to the final four each time. Their lineup in the spring boasted RaynEX and Coffeeblack, and this fall they traded out RaynEX for KirbyKaze.

This season 13 schools participated in the Ontario division. York defeated Queen’s University to advance to play against University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in finals of the Northern Conference. The match was close, with 7ent defeating KirbyKaze, but Coffeeblack as anchor for York had the matchup advantage over UIUC’s Sunny, an Ice Climbers main.

KirbyKaze has competed only in two matches, one in which he took 12 stocks. Coffeeblack has participated in nearly all of York’s matches and has taken a total of 31 stocks from five crew battles.

Stony Brook University has been in the league longest of the schools attending G3, having participated since fall 2014. As such, they’ve had quite a history in the league. In their first season, they lost to Columbia, the eventual winner of that season, although they were missing two of their strongest players. However, in both their second and third season, they have been NYC-Subdivision champions, Tristate division champions, and made their way to national finals. Stony Brook placed just outside of the final four in the spring, losing to York in a 19-20 battle. (Their record against Columbia now stands at 3-1.)

After winning the Tristate division, Stony Brook beat UMass Amherst and then University of Maryland (Spring’s runner-up to UC Berkeley) to advance to Genesis 3.

With 18 crew battles worth of data, Stony Brook looks to be one of the strongest teams in TMG despite not having nationally recognized players. Minty and Equal both have avg stocks/battle of over 6, and Sol averages 7.5. On top of that, four of their players attending Genesis 3 have a Kill/Death ratio greater than 1, with Minty having the highest at 1.97.

SBU lost 103 stocks of the 160 stocks they had this season.

Georgia Tech is in its first TMG season and are in contention with UCI for being the strongest overall team in the league. DruggedFox, KPAN, baka4moe, Austintacious, and Bravo comprise the team. After handily defeating the other teams in Georgia (losing 50 out of 80 stocks), they advanced to play University of Central Florida at Smash The Record, and then Clemson University at Tipped Off 11.

Perhaps what is the most remarkable thing about GA Tech is how well every member of the team performed. Not one of their players attending Genesis 3 has a Kill/Death ratio of below 1, a feat unmatched by any other team.

And, lastly, while it isn’t much (flying 30 players to G3 sapped most of the budget), the winning team gets these to take home! I hope you enjoy Genesis 3 and The Melee Games. Thank you for reading!