On the Thursday before week three of the Summer of Smash, I
actually wasn't sure of which tournament I was even going to for the weekend.
There was one in Davenport, IA that some people from IL were driving to, but I
knew that tournament would be relatively small and still a couple hours away. It
made no sense for me to go to that when a tournament of about the same size was
happening in Chicago that same day anyways. If I were to be traveling this
weekend, I may as well go to Michigan for Rebirth IV which was looking to be
80+ attendants including some of the best players in the region. Since I've
never been to Michigan for a tourney, I really wanted to make it out to
Rebirth, but organizing a carpool was near impossible because everyone just
wanted to go to Davenport for some reason. I asked around and eventually got
Slow Joe and Hoenn in on going to Michigan, and on Friday as a last minute
Razor joined our carpool.
We planned on leaving early morning Saturday and driving the
4.5 hours out to Livonia, MI for this tourney, but then luckily Skiboots
reminded me that time zones are a thing, and that we'd have to leave an
additional hour earlier, and ain't nobody got time for that. Since Slow Joe and
Razor had work on Friday, we ended up loyoing it and leaving at almost 11pm on
Friday night towards Michigan. Random funny story: we stopped in the middle of
nowhere Michigan for gas and this gas station was selling lasagna dinner that
cooks itself. It sounded incredible, so Joe bought one for breakfast the next
day so we could all watch this thing cook itself. Too bad Joe never had it for
breakfast and then almost left it at the venue Saturday so we could never see
it. Oh well. Anyways, we ended up getting a motel somewhere near Ann Arbor just
past 4am and got a little bit of sleep for the tourney the next day.
After a short drive in the morning we got to the venue which
was in the basement of a technology building of some college I had never heard
of. There were a lot of people down there, but most impressively there were a
lot of set ups. I counted 22 as I was setting mine up, which is about ten more
than Dismantle had, and Dismantle had more entrants. This was really cool
because there was a lot of time for friendlies throughout the day. The venue
was also spacious, and there was a nice stream set up. All of that with just a
$5 venue fee and $5 tournament fee. Not bad.
As I was finishing setting up, a Michigan player challenged
me to a money match and of course I accepted so I could see if the Michigan
hype was real or not. It was Ryuga, and Ike player and ranked #7 on Michigan's
PR. I have literally never played a decent Ike before, only For Glory Ikes that
spam counters, so this would be a good learning experience. In this match I
treated Ike like any other big character: be faster than him and don't get hit
by big moves. Ryuga's Ike was so much cleaner than any Ike I had ever seen, and
he was using combos and set ups I had never seen before. I managed to win the
first match, but when he offered a rematch he managed to take it. We traded the
sets and I think both sets went to game three and were pretty close over all. I
was pretty impressed with his Ike, but I felt like if we met in bracket I'd be
able to take the win as long as I didn't fall into his traps.
The first real event of the day (as per usual) was doubles,
and I was teaming with Slow Joe, someone who I have never teamed with. We had
initially planned on practicing a little in the motel last night or in the
morning, but because of how late it was we just slept. I thought we would do
pretty well, he was going to play as Fox as get all the kills and I'd play
support and cover his options and deal damage. Very early in the bracket we met
Coco's team, a team that I knew would be a pretty big challenge already since I
had played Coco at Combo breaker. Quickly into game one of the set, the adaptor
on the set up we were using broke mid game somehow, and made it so that everyone's
controller held down and to the left. This caused Coco to die for no reason,
and so we reset the match with the same stock count on everyone, which was two
across the board. This took away the momentum both teams had and then the reset
felt like the shortest doubles match ever since we all only had two stocks, but
Coco's team ended up winning in a moderately close match. The second game Joe
was doing really really well until he SD'd, and I wasn't doing too much myself
so we ended up getting sent to loser's bracket after only the second round.
In loser's we played a couple quick matches against people
whose names I do not remember at the moment, but me and Joe were both on point.
One set I only lost one stock the entire time and dealt a lot of damage each
game while Joe was consistently getting 4 or more kills. We finally met against
a team consisting of Sparta Kick's Shulk and Stewy's Sheik. Game one was going
decently, except for the fact that we could not land a kill onto Shulk. I think
me and Joe both were on last stock when we finally took his first away from
him, and because of that we lost game one. Second game was just awful for me. I
started by SDing myself at around 70%, then soon I got stage spiked by a Sheik
forward air that was facing the other direction somehow and so I died early
again. It was pretty ugly, and we got eliminated into 9th place in doubles of
36 teams, significantly lower than we had hoped for.
Because of the high number of set ups, as soon as we were
eliminated we were able to find friendlies pretty much immediately. I played a
few more money matches against some good players that were all close, and soon
enough pools began. Since there were 111 singles entrants, they did 16 pools of
about 7 players each and actually did round robin pools instead of bracket
pools. I was seeded first in my pool and cruised by it fairly easily without
dropping a game. There was a pretty decent Pacman player in my pool whose tag I
believe was Nebula, but in our matches he got too impatient for kills which let
me deal a lot of extra credit damage on my first stock both games. After my
pool I got food at Tom + Chee which had godlike grilled cheese sandwiches and
even a grilled cheese made out of donuts which was amazing.
Bracket started pretty late and had 48 people in it, but
with the high number of set ups, it should run pretty quickly. Round one I got
my chance at revenge against Sparta Kick who knocked me out of doubles, but
this time it was just my Diddy vs. his Shulk. I've played this matchup a
million times against my brother, so I was definitely confident going into it
despite my loss in doubles. Once again, SK was able to hold stocks really well,
but in the end Diddy is just too fast for Shulk to handle and I was able to
take the set 2-0, even though each game was close.
Second round I was called to play on stream vs. Ryuga, the
Ike player I had money matched earlier. Game one went pretty much like all of
our previous games, very close in the end but he managed to clutch it out with
a ledge trump back-air when he had 150% rage. I knew I was playing pretty
solidly and just had to be more careful not to get hit when I was offstage the
second game, so I took him to Final Destination and won another extremely close
game. The third and final game of the set did not start off so well for me, as
he had a string of great reads that led into me getting hit by a charged forward
smash and dying very early in the game. He was only at 17% when I died, and so
I'd have to bring back an entire stock deficit in a two stock rule set. His
strong reads continued until he got me to 97% on my last stock while he was
sitting comfortably on his first stock. A lot of players would get flustered in
this situation and start playing worse, but I feel like one of my strengths as
a player is that no matter how far behind I am I always am able to keep my
composure. I think he began to feel a little too comfortable with his lead, and
started making a lot more mistakes and I was capitalizing. Between his mistakes
and a few solid reads of mine, I somehow managed to take his stock and then
bring his damage all the way up to 107% without taking any more damage myself,
which put me in a slight percentage lead. At this point I tried to run away
from him and pluck a banana while on the ground, but I accidently pressed side
B instead of down B, which caused me to monkey flip into a terrible position
off stage. In this spot he found a forward tilt and killed me off the side and
ended my hopes at a comeback. I lost the set, but I knew that if I kept playing
like I did on that last stock (minus the one missed input) that I would be able
to go far in loser's bracket.
Oh, by the way, check out http://www.jjrockets.com/p/videos.html
for videos of this match and all the rest of my matches from this tournament!
My next stream match in the loser's bracket was when I
played Hyper Crasher's Luigi. Last weekend I proved my proficiency in this
matchup when I forced False to switch off of Luigi and beat Shel. This time was
no different. Game one went exactly according to plan, and I managed to grab
combo for an early lead and then wall out and punish all of his attempts at
approaching me and I took the game with a two stock victory. Second game I
slipped up pretty bad, though. He took first stock on me, and then shortly
after put me in a bad situation off stage and managed to hit me with his down
air to take away my double jump so that I fell helplessly to my death at a very
low percent, getting two stocked myself. Game three I managed to get back on
track and do what I needed to do and took it with one stock low percent.
Immediately afterwards, I was to play Smasher1001 on stream
without any breaks. Smasher is a Mario main, a matchup I also know pretty well
from playing Bo in Illinois tournaments. However, Smasher's Mario plays a lot
differently than Bo does. Smasher plays very aggressively and tries to keep
pressure on his opponents at all times to force them into bad situations where
he can find reads with his smashes. This style threw me off at first, and I
dropped my first stock pretty quickly. On my second stock I was able to adapt
to this aggressive Mario and punish some of his reckless aggression. On my last
stock I ran up to him and held shield to bait him to throw out the cape to
attempt to reverse my thrown banana, but instead of throwing my banana I simply
waited and punished the cool down of his cape with a classic banana to forward
smash combo. For game two I banned Battlefield and Castle Siege, and Smasher
took me to Duck Hunt. Early in the match some shenanigans happened that almost
resulted in an early kill off the top for one of us, but we both managed to get
down safely and reset the situation. This game, I managed to carry my momentum
from the end of game one into it, and got the early percent lead. This was
taken away though when he read my monkey flip kick and reversed me with his
cape to my death offstage. I didn't let this effect me though because I knew I
was still putting out more damage than I was taking during the set, and that I
could bring it back. In the end he recovered unsafely with a down air when I
was spaced back too far and I tripped him with banana to forward smash again to
take the set 2-0.
Once again I immediately was told to play my next match on
stream vs. Ksev, a Fox player I had heard a lot about. This is a matchup that I
am somewhat less familiar with, though I had grinded a lot of matches the day
before against DOM on wifi and learned a few things. Ksev's Fox, however, is on
a different level than DOM's. In the first game I felt like there was nothing I
could do as Ksev was reading all of my movements. He punished all my ledge get
ups, and managed to take my stocks by reading rolls from the ledge and up
smashing. The second game went slightly better when I took him to Halberd, a
stage that benefits us both. It allows him to kill earlier, but he still needs
to get a read to land a kill. For Diddy, I now have an easy kill set up with up
throw to up air around 80%, so I think it benefits my character significantly
more. I played pretty well my first stock and actually had somewhat of a lead
for a while, but once he was on his last stock he was playing on point again. I
miraculously won through that up throw to up air combo when I had a lot of rage
on my last stock. Game three Ksev proved that the stage choice was the reason
that he lost the second game, and this time on a neutral stage he was able to
punish all of my moves again. I lost to him in game three, and learned a lot
about the Fox matchup in doing so.
Overall I ended up placing 7th of 111 entrants at Rebirth
IV, which was for sure lower than I had wanted, but for playing in a new region
with this many good players I could be happy with some of my wins and this
placing. It made me more motivated to reach Michigan's level because I now know
that MI is a lot stronger then IL as a whole. I will definitely be back to
Michigan sometime this summer for a second shot at them, but for now I will be
focusing on my next few big tournaments. Playing in a stronger region has made
me a better player, and I know that if I can apply what I've learned I can
place very high at Smash n Splash next weekend. As the third multi-day event of
the summer, it should be a blast!
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