tofucake Profile Blog Joined October 2009 Hyrule 17807 Posts Last Edited: 2015-01-21 23:35:29 #1

Super Smash Bros. Melee The Melee GamesRecap and Interviews



This fall semester,



New England division

Since the introduction of TMG, the number of New England college players attending local tournaments increased dramatically, and a number of strong up-and-coming players emerged. Though previous champions MIT lost their ace player ycz6, their captain XPilot—who'd transitioned from Falcon to Falco to Marth—remained a strong tournament threat. Season 1 runners-up UMass Boston retained all of their top five players while adding a new freshman Falcon named Klaps, who within his first year was already placing 5th and better at Boston locals. Northeastern's Squible (Jigglypuff), Harvard's Clue (Sheik), and UConn's Barbie (Samus) also proved they could hang with New England's finest. UMass Amherst, Boston College, and Tufts boasted a good number of strong players as well.



The early rounds featured no real upsets, though Clue gave UMass Boston a scare by taking 9 stocks as Harvard's anchor and Tufts was taken to last stock against the University of New Hampshire. In the quarterfinals, UMass Amherst's buhder edged out Northeastern's Inky by stage-spiking Jigglypuff with Falco's up-b recovery, while UConn showed their superior depth against Tufts. In the end, despite valiant efforts by the other schools, the favorites MIT and UMass Boston had little trouble regaining their spots in the New England TMG Grand Finals.





Two words: taunt spike.



New England Regional Finals



UMB vs MIT

The TMG New England finals took place at the Boston University Smash Tournament (BUST) on November 22, 2014. BUST, an Apex qualifier, drew a number of strong out-of-region entrants from NYC (DJ Nintendo and G$) and Georgia (s0ft and Flow). It also featured the return of the two best players to wear the UMB and MIT tags, respectively: UMB | Liquid`KoreanDJ, who'd been nursing a hand injury, made a rare appearance, while MIT | ycz6 flew all the way from Norcal to attend. Though KDJ and ycz were both eligible for TMG—first-year alumni may still enter—both schools elected to play without their potential aces, preferring instead to prove themselves as teams, 7 on 7.



MIT chose to lead off with last semester's starter, Metlwing, who'd since transitioned from Yoshi to Fox. UMB started with Sing, the Samus who took 6 stocks from MIT last year. Metlwing has been attending many local tournaments and smashfests, and he showed some technical Fox play. However, Sing took advantage of Samus's strong crouch-cancel to down-smash Fox's neutral airs at low percents; thanks to these crouch-cancels, bad DI from Metlwing and an unfortunate SD by Metlwing while attempting a ledgedash, Sing emerged with a 2-stock lead after the first game.



MIT responded by sending Rndl, the Falco famous for getting hit by Kaiju's misfire from last semester. Rndl's patient laser play and unexpected forward smashes had taken out Sing at a recent local tournament (Mass Madness). Sing opened the game by convincingly taking Rndl's first stock, but proceeded to miss the Battlefield ledge with his up-b. After Rndl lost his second stock to a missile edgeguard from Sing, he began playing much more safely: instead of approaching with aerials on shield and spamming forward smashes, Rndl opted to stay away and shoot lasers, approaching only with laser -> grab. Eventually, Sing missed his sweetspot grapple, and Rndl closed it out with his beloved f-smash.





This is what Taj would call "playing Flappy Bird."



UMB counterpicked with Saki (Peach) on Dreamland. Falco vs Peach at low and intermediate levels is a relatively difficult matchup for Falco, since the Falco player has to play very precisely and can't extend combos against Peach; UMB was looking to capitalize on the matchup. The first stock featured Rndl again f-smashing all over Dreamland, but Saki failed to punish any smashes on the back of his shield. Still, Saki caught Falco with some stray d-smashes and n-airs, taking the first stock. Rndl responded by taking two stocks in a row, one with b-air edgeguards and one with a f-smash on Peach's slow ledge stand. Saki managed to contain the damage by n-airing out of Falco's attempted combo for the kill.



MIT then made a very interesting decision: they opted to send out their ace, XPilot (Marth), when most of UMB's heavy hitters still remained. In hindsight, perhaps MIT should have sent out one of its Peaches to ditto Saki instead, but XPilot certainly carried his weight as MIT's best player. Saki managed to grind out one of XPilot's stocks before falling. UMB countered with Klaps (Falcon), who would go on to beat XPilot 2-1 in bracket later that day; but in this crucial meeting, XPilot dominated on Klaps' Final Destination counterpick, taking advantage of techs in place and Falcon's poor recovery to get a 4-stocks-for-1 deal.





Try, try again didn't work out this time.



UMB, desperate to take XPilot out, called on Vudoo (Jigglyuff), who consistently manages to take a game from XPilot on Final Destination each time they meet in tournament. Vudoo did his job, yielding only two more stocks and slaying the beast. MIT's Skip (Fox) quickly avenged his fallen captain by upsmashing Vudoo's final two stocks, and MIT now held a strong 4-stock lead.





Hard-reading the tech away.



Next up for UMB was their hype-generating, hard-to-combo Luigi player Kaiju. Kaiju took advantage of some big combos and a failed ledgedash (the second Fox SD for MIT) to defeat Skip with two stocks remaining. He proceeded to take two more stocks off MIT's Rime (Peach) despite an SD at high percentage due to a missed reverse up-b. Since Rime, who often places top 8 at locals, was possibly MIT's second-best player, this was a major blow to MIT.



At this point, MIT was up two stocks, 14-12, and UMB sent in their lone Fox player, Flexed. Last semester, Flexed played terribly in Falco dittos against XPilot, taking only 1 stock; this time he was hungry to prove himself, and it showed. With impressive technical Fox play and solid edgeguarding, including some clutch shine spikes, Flexed plowed his way through Rime's last two stocks, all four of BatSox (Luigi)'s stocks, and all four of Booser (Peach)'s stocks, building up a colossal lead for UMB and swinging the momentum heavily in their favor. For Flexed to lose only a single stock to BatSox, a spacies slayer who had won the last tournament set between them, was particularly impressive.





Shined blind



MIT was down to its last man, the mysterious Falco player Frat Chicken. Though he has no tournament results from the past few years, Frat Chicken performed decently, but not amazingly, in earlier crew battles. Still, MIT held on to hope: he was the true "hidden boss" of their school, one who went even with XPilot and better than even against everyone else in friendlies. Regardless, taking out 9 UMB stocks would be a tall order, especially considering UMB's captain Crow remained.



Frat Chicken held the advantage for most of Flexed's final stock, but a too-low forward-b recovery meant he headed into his next match against UMB | Memory (Jigglypuff) with just three stocks. Against Memory, Frat Chicken showed how patient his Falco could be: he stayed back and pinned the Jigglypuff down with lasers, striking only when he saw a spacing mistake. Despite Frat Chicken's dominance of the neutral game, Memory found ways to land stray hits and convert them to a kill. But then, down to his last stock against Frat Chicken's two, Memory struck what was probably the death blow to MIT: he back-aired Falco's short-hop laser attempt, back-aired the resulting tech in place and blocked the panicked Falco forward-b with a forward-air, a kill sequence that began with Falco at only 44%.



UMB's final boss and captain, the Ganon player Crow, tagged in with only one goal: to take Falco's last stock. Frat Chicken played the matchup perfectly for the first minute, taking only 13% while pelting Crow with lasers and d-airs and shines. Crow valiantly lived to 219% thanks to Dreamland's huge blast zone distance and good DI, but just couldn't get a hit off. Still, he knew that it takes only a few hits for Ganon to kill Falco, and sure enough, he punished a technical flub by Frat Chicken—an aerial shine on Ganon's shield—and followed it up with an excellent series of reads to edgeguard Falco and take the stock, the game, and the match.





Perfect conversion by Crow.







Tri-State division

Though the Tri-State Melee Games were new going into the fall semester, the newcomers actually outstripped their New England counterparts in the number of schools registered. Since Tri-State is so geographically dispersed, the 30-school bracket was divided into quarters by region: Upstate New York, New York City, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.



Cornell, led by the solid Fox main Icer, was the favorite in Upstate New York. Cornell's captain and starter Lu, Justin (Fox) demonstrated one of the first true slaughters of TMG, taking an eye-popping 21 stocks against a crew of mostly newer players from SUNY Cortland. He followed with modest 3 and 5-stock performances against Oneonta and the Rochester Institute of Technology, but strong play from the rest of their crew, especially Icer, gave Cornell two come-from-behind victories against those opponents to advance into the New York finals.



In New York City's first round, Stony Brook University (SBU)'s Falcon player Equal scored the first and only all-kill of TMG, running through St. John's University's first four players while only losing a single stock and cleaning up the last player while losing only two more; a week later, Columbia's Matt (Fox) and ZeroOmega (Falco) tore through the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), leaving MSM ace DizzKidBoogie (Ice Climbers) with an insurmountable 1 stock to 12 differential. Columbia, led by ZeroOmega and Cheezpuff (Jigglypuff), and SBU, led by Minty (Samus) and Venti (Falco), would go on to handily defeat NYU and Manhattan. Columbia went on to demonstrate the strength and depth of its lineup with its 20-15 stock victory over SBU.





Poor | Falco



Abate, one of the top Luigi players in the world and





The usually-unflappable Borp gets surprised.



New Jersey was a similar story as Pennsylvania: Rutgers was probably the strongest New Jersey crew even without their Sheik ace Swedish Delight (



In their next match, Rutgers proved they had greater depth than Pitt, preserving 9 of their stocks going into Pitt's final boss Abate. The top Luigi player proved clutch for Pitt, entering his showdown against Swedish Delight down only a single stock. Swedish, however, had other ideas, and Rutgers took down Pitt with 3 stocks still intact.





Swedish extending a combo well beyond its lifetime.



Tri-State Regional Finals



Rutgers vs Columbia

TMG Tri-State coordinator HectoHertz hosts a New York City weekly series called Nebulous, so it was only natural that the New York and Tri-State TMG finals be held at one of these. Super Nebulous attracted 76 entrants, including NYC's top 4 (Hax, The Moon, DJ Nintendo, and G$), Connecticut's Swiftbass, Georgia's s0ft, DC's DoH, and Puerto-Rican-but-now-CT-resident Lord HDL. In the mid-afternoon, HectoHertz started the first of the two TMG crew battles, Columbia vs Cornell. Rutgers, the favorites from New Jersey, awaited the winner in the Tri-State finals.



In the New York finals, Columbia's solid lineup had little trouble dispatching Cornell in a 5v5 crew battle. Columbia's Zero Omega (Falco) and Fiya (Fox) built up a 3-stock lead, which Columbia captain Cheezpuff (Jigglypuff) preserved by taking 3 stocks from Cornell ace Icer. Columbia's FLOTUS (Peach) then converted that lead into a convincing 5-stock victory, setting his team up to face off against Rutgers.



Each team sent its usual lead-off man: Zero Omega (Falco) for Columbia and Overflow (Fox) for Rutgers. Both of these starters were used to success, having taken at least 5 stocks in every previous crew battle. Zero Omega's patient lasers in neutral and extended techchases when punishing gradually built up a 2-stock high-percent to 1-stock high-percent lead for the Columbia Falco, but a crucial missed edgeguard meant he finished with only 1 stock remaining.





Ftilt: not very flashy, but pretty damn effective.



Neither of the Columbia and Rutgers crews entered the match at full strength; each team was missing one of their top 5 players and had to sub in a less experienced (for Columbia) or less in-practice (for Rutgers) player instead. Rutgers elected to use their old-school player, Cheezit, to counter Falco with Peach. Zero Omega, however, repeatedly outspaced Cheezit's Peach with backairs and other safe moves. A few strong Falco punish strings, many backairs, and a low-percent SD by Cheezit later, Rutgers suddenly found itself at a full 4-stock deficit.





You thought you recovered?



Though Rutgers' counterpick had backfired, they still had three strong players remaining. Internet Explorer, one of the world's top Link mains (and a programmer who's worked on Project M, the 20XX hack pack, and more) was sent to stop the Zero Omega menace, but the resilient Falco stubbornly ground out his 9th enemy stock before falling to Link's forward-tilt edgeguard.



FLOTUS (Peach), another player who'd never gone negative in a TMG crew battle, was Columbia's next contestant. FLOTUS counterpicked to Battlefield, the smallest stage available in TMG, hoping to mitigate the advantage Link's projectiles have over the slow-moving Peach. Internet Explorer ground out a slight lead despite FLOTUS's effective use of turnips, but threw away his second-last stock at 50% by overextending on an edgeguard attempt. Another traded stock later, Columbia had built for themselves a steep 6-stock lead.





FLOTUS, master of catching and throwing items.



Rutgers' other Fox, Takoyaki, entered the match determined to mount a comeback. On the other hand, his choice of counterpick, Final Destination, was somewhat puzzling: Peach has a chaingrab against Fox on that stage. After trading one stock apiece, FLOTUS took full advantage of this chaingrab to take Takoyaki's second stock before being eliminated.



Now it was Columbia's turn to use their newer player, Whiskers (Yoshi). Takoyaki fully abused Fox's greater mobility to run circles around his opponent, punishing whiffs and rolls to take two stocks before Whiskers could snag a nice forward-air edgeguard. The next two stocks were more of the same; Takoyaki's superior understanding of the neutral game gave him plenty of openings to rack up damage and finish Yoshi off.





Takoyaki doesn't give Whiskers any room to breathe.



Columbia, still sitting on a 3-stock lead, counterpicked with Cheezpuff's Jigglypuff. Cheezpuff opened the game by flubbing two excellent opportunities to gimp Fox at low percent, and Takoyaki was able to eke out an upsmash kill before dying.



Swedish Delight (Sheik), the final boss of Rutgers, now bore a three-stock deficit on his shoulders. He counterpicked Dreamland and immediately built a percent lead, but Cheezpuff got Sheik off-stage, grabbed the ledge, and rested the laggy on-stage up-b. The second stock again saw Swedish take the lead, but Cheezpuff again rested Sheik's recovery. Swedish finally finished his opponent off, but the damage had been done.





This is what happens if Puff catches Sheik's doublejump.



Columbia anchor Fiya (Fox) only needed to finish off two last Sheik stocks to win. Afraid of Swedish's famous tech-chasing skills, Fiya eschewed Final Destination, usually considered a great Fox vs Sheik stage, for Battlefield. His fears proved justified as Swedish techchases inflicted 60% before Fiya was able to get his first hit in. Both players dodged edgeguard attempts at mid-percent, but Swedish drew first blood with a shorthop back forward-air. Fiya quickly answered by up-tilt up-airing Swedish's over-ambitious attempt to drop on a 0% Fox with down-air, putting Swedish at last stock.



Swedish again managed to score big damage off grabs and techchases to take Fiya's second stock. Fiya, however, leveraged his invincibility to gain center stage, punishing Swedish's attempt to get around him with a nearly fatal combo. Then, he wisely waited beneath the side platform for Sheik to land, back-aired the landing to send Sheik offstage, and grabbed the ledge. Swedish up-b'd to the ledge, hoping Fiya would let go, but he guessed wrong, and Columbia emerged with a 2-stock victory.





How to use your respawn invincibility.







The Melee Games Grand Finals



Having won their respective regions, UMB and Columbia will compete for the championship at what will be the biggest Melee Tournament of all time,



The Melee Games (TMG) was conceived by MattDotZeb in the student-rich city of Boston, Massachusetts at the beginning of 2014 in response to a massive influx of university-age players into the competitive Melee scene. Reminiscent of the Collegiate Starleague TMG Season 1 rallied Melee players to join their school "crew," to practice together, and to travel to tournaments to face off against rival crews in a single-elimination bracket of all-kill style matches called " crew battles ."This fall semester, TMG Season 2 grew to include not only New England universities, but also schools from the "Tri-State" (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) area. MattDotZeb was joined by Tri-State coordinator HectoHertz to oversee this expansion. 20 New England schools and 30 Tri-State schools competed this season, and after a semester of competition, only one school remains in each region.Since the introduction of TMG, the number of New England college players attending local tournaments increased dramatically, and a number of strong up-and-coming players emerged. Though previous champions MIT lost their ace player ycz6, their captain XPilot—who'd transitioned from Falcon to Falco to Marth—remained a strong tournament threat. Season 1 runners-up UMass Boston retained all of their top five players while adding a new freshman Falcon named Klaps, who within his first year was already placing 5th and better at Boston locals. Northeastern's Squible (Jigglypuff), Harvard's Clue (Sheik), and UConn's Barbie (Samus) also proved they could hang with New England's finest. UMass Amherst, Boston College, and Tufts boasted a good number of strong players as well.The early rounds featured no real upsets, though Clue gave UMass Boston a scare by taking 9 stocks as Harvard's anchor and Tufts was taken to last stock against the University of New Hampshire. In the quarterfinals, UMass Amherst's buhder edged out Northeastern's Inky by stage-spiking Jigglypuff with Falco's up-b recovery, while UConn showed their superior depth against Tufts. In the end, despite valiant efforts by the other schools, the favorites MIT and UMass Boston had little trouble regaining their spots in the New England TMG Grand Finals.The TMG New England finals took place at the Boston University Smash Tournament (BUST) on November 22, 2014. BUST, an Apex qualifier, drew a number of strong out-of-region entrants from NYC (DJ Nintendo and G$) and Georgia (s0ft and Flow). It also featured the return of the two best players to wear the UMB and MIT tags, respectively: UMB | Liquid`KoreanDJ, who'd been nursing a hand injury, made a rare appearance, while MIT | ycz6 flew all the way from Norcal to attend. Though KDJ and ycz were both eligible for TMG—first-year alumni may still enter—both schools elected to play without their potential aces, preferring instead to prove themselves as teams, 7 on 7.MIT chose to lead off with last semester's starter, Metlwing, who'd since transitioned from Yoshi to Fox. UMB started with Sing, the Samus who took 6 stocks from MIT last year. Metlwing has been attending many local tournaments and smashfests, and he showed some technical Fox play. However, Sing took advantage of Samus's strong crouch-cancel to down-smash Fox's neutral airs at low percents; thanks to these crouch-cancels, bad DI from Metlwing and an unfortunate SD by Metlwing while attempting a ledgedash, Sing emerged with a 2-stock lead after the first game.MIT responded by sending Rndl, the Falco famous for getting hit by Kaiju's misfire from last semester. Rndl's patient laser play and unexpected forward smashes had taken out Sing at a recent local tournament (Mass Madness). Sing opened the game by convincingly taking Rndl's first stock, but proceeded to miss the Battlefield ledge with his up-b. After Rndl lost his second stock to a missile edgeguard from Sing, he began playing much more safely: instead of approaching with aerials on shield and spamming forward smashes, Rndl opted to stay away and shoot lasers, approaching only with laser -> grab. Eventually, Sing missed his sweetspot grapple, and Rndl closed it out with his beloved f-smash.UMB counterpicked with Saki (Peach) on Dreamland. Falco vs Peach at low and intermediate levels is a relatively difficult matchup for Falco, since the Falco player has to play very precisely and can't extend combos against Peach; UMB was looking to capitalize on the matchup. The first stock featured Rndl again f-smashing all over Dreamland, but Saki failed to punish any smashes on the back of his shield. Still, Saki caught Falco with some stray d-smashes and n-airs, taking the first stock. Rndl responded by taking two stocks in a row, one with b-air edgeguards and one with a f-smash on Peach's slow ledge stand. Saki managed to contain the damage by n-airing out of Falco's attempted combo for the kill.MIT then made a very interesting decision: they opted to send out their ace, XPilot (Marth), when most of UMB's heavy hitters still remained. In hindsight, perhaps MIT should have sent out one of its Peaches to ditto Saki instead, but XPilot certainly carried his weight as MIT's best player. Saki managed to grind out one of XPilot's stocks before falling. UMB countered with Klaps (Falcon), who would go on to beat XPilot 2-1 in bracket later that day; but in this crucial meeting, XPilot dominated on Klaps' Final Destination counterpick, taking advantage of techs in place and Falcon's poor recovery to get a 4-stocks-for-1 deal.UMB, desperate to take XPilot out, called on Vudoo (Jigglyuff), who consistently manages to take a game from XPilot on Final Destination each time they meet in tournament. Vudoo did his job, yielding only two more stocks and slaying the beast. MIT's Skip (Fox) quickly avenged his fallen captain by upsmashing Vudoo's final two stocks, and MIT now held a strong 4-stock lead.Next up for UMB was their hype-generating, hard-to-combo Luigi player Kaiju. Kaiju took advantage of some big combos and a failed ledgedash (the second Fox SD for MIT) to defeat Skip with two stocks remaining. He proceeded to take two more stocks off MIT's Rime (Peach) despite an SD at high percentage due to a missed reverse up-b. Since Rime, who often places top 8 at locals, was possibly MIT's second-best player, this was a major blow to MIT.At this point, MIT was up two stocks, 14-12, and UMB sent in their lone Fox player, Flexed. Last semester, Flexed played terribly in Falco dittos against XPilot, taking only 1 stock; this time he was hungry to prove himself, and it showed. With impressive technical Fox play and solid edgeguarding, including some clutch shine spikes, Flexed plowed his way through Rime's last two stocks, all four of BatSox (Luigi)'s stocks, and all four of Booser (Peach)'s stocks, building up a colossal lead for UMB and swinging the momentum heavily in their favor. For Flexed to lose only a single stock to BatSox, a spacies slayer who had won the last tournament set between them, was particularly impressive.MIT was down to its last man, the mysterious Falco player Frat Chicken. Though he has no tournament results from the past few years, Frat Chicken performed decently, but not amazingly, in earlier crew battles. Still, MIT held on to hope: he was the true "hidden boss" of their school, one who went even with XPilot and better than even against everyone else in friendlies. Regardless, taking out 9 UMB stocks would be a tall order, especially considering UMB's captain Crow remained.Frat Chicken held the advantage for most of Flexed's final stock, but a too-low forward-b recovery meant he headed into his next match against UMB | Memory (Jigglypuff) with just three stocks. Against Memory, Frat Chicken showed how patient his Falco could be: he stayed back and pinned the Jigglypuff down with lasers, striking only when he saw a spacing mistake. Despite Frat Chicken's dominance of the neutral game, Memory found ways to land stray hits and convert them to a kill. But then, down to his last stock against Frat Chicken's two, Memory struck what was probably the death blow to MIT: he back-aired Falco's short-hop laser attempt, back-aired the resulting tech in place and blocked the panicked Falco forward-b with a forward-air, a kill sequence that began with Falco at only 44%.UMB's final boss and captain, the Ganon player Crow, tagged in with only one goal: to take Falco's last stock. Frat Chicken played the matchup perfectly for the first minute, taking only 13% while pelting Crow with lasers and d-airs and shines. Crow valiantly lived to 219% thanks to Dreamland's huge blast zone distance and good DI, but just couldn't get a hit off. Still, he knew that it takes only a few hits for Ganon to kill Falco, and sure enough, he punished a technical flub by Frat Chicken—an aerial shine on Ganon's shield—and followed it up with an excellent series of reads to edgeguard Falco and take the stock, the game, and the match.Though the Tri-State Melee Games were new going into the fall semester, the newcomers actually outstripped their New England counterparts in the number of schools registered. Since Tri-State is so geographically dispersed, the 30-school bracket was divided into quarters by region: Upstate New York, New York City, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.Cornell, led by the solid Fox main Icer, was the favorite in Upstate New York. Cornell's captain and starter Lu, Justin (Fox) demonstrated one of the first true slaughters of TMG, taking an eye-popping 21 stocks against a crew of mostly newer players from SUNY Cortland. He followed with modest 3 and 5-stock performances against Oneonta and the Rochester Institute of Technology, but strong play from the rest of their crew, especially Icer, gave Cornell two come-from-behind victories against those opponents to advance into the New York finals.In New York City's first round, Stony Brook University (SBU)'s Falcon player Equal scored the first and only all-kill of TMG, running through St. John's University's first four players while only losing a single stock and cleaning up the last player while losing only two more; a week later, Columbia's Matt (Fox) and ZeroOmega (Falco) tore through the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), leaving MSM ace DizzKidBoogie (Ice Climbers) with an insurmountable 1 stock to 12 differential. Columbia, led by ZeroOmega and Cheezpuff (Jigglypuff), and SBU, led by Minty (Samus) and Venti (Falco), would go on to handily defeat NYU and Manhattan. Columbia went on to demonstrate the strength and depth of its lineup with its 20-15 stock victory over SBU.Abate, one of the top Luigi players in the world and #34 on the 2014 MIOM ranking , goes to Pitt, so they naturally became the frontrunner in the Pennsylvania bracket. They faced Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Reddit's favorite non-technical Sheik player, Borp, in the first round, but Abate saw through all of Borp's tricks en route to demolishing CMU's last 10 stocks with two of his own left. Pitt didn't even need Abate to finish off Penn State, so they met UPenn in the Pennsylvania finals. Though UPenn had survived a heroic 14-stock effort from Temple's Smokey (Fox) to make it to Pitt, they also lost their last 6 stocks to Abate, yielding the Pennsylvania championship to Pitt.New Jersey was a similar story as Pennsylvania: Rutgers was probably the strongest New Jersey crew even without their Sheik ace Swedish Delight ( #56 on the 2014 MIOM ranking) , but his inclusion ensured that Rutgers had an easy ride out of their state. Their New Jersey finals opponent was the New Jersey Institute of Technology, whose ace Qerb—a Game & Watch player ranked #13 in Tri-State —had taken 17 stocks from Ramapo University. Unfortunately for Qerb, Sheik annihilates low-tiers; Swedish dropped only 1 stock to the Game & Watch en route to a 7-stock win for Rutgers.In their next match, Rutgers proved they had greater depth than Pitt, preserving 9 of their stocks going into Pitt's final boss Abate. The top Luigi player proved clutch for Pitt, entering his showdown against Swedish Delight down only a single stock. Swedish, however, had other ideas, and Rutgers took down Pitt with 3 stocks still intact.TMG Tri-State coordinator HectoHertz hosts a New York City weekly series called Nebulous, so it was only natural that the New York and Tri-State TMG finals be held at one of these. Super Nebulous attracted 76 entrants, including NYC's top 4 (Hax, The Moon, DJ Nintendo, and G$), Connecticut's Swiftbass, Georgia's s0ft, DC's DoH, and Puerto-Rican-but-now-CT-resident Lord HDL. In the mid-afternoon, HectoHertz started the first of the two TMG crew battles, Columbia vs Cornell. Rutgers, the favorites from New Jersey, awaited the winner in the Tri-State finals.In the New York finals, Columbia's solid lineup had little trouble dispatching Cornell in a 5v5 crew battle. Columbia's Zero Omega (Falco) and Fiya (Fox) built up a 3-stock lead, which Columbia captain Cheezpuff (Jigglypuff) preserved by taking 3 stocks from Cornell ace Icer. Columbia's FLOTUS (Peach) then converted that lead into a convincing 5-stock victory, setting his team up to face off against Rutgers.Each team sent its usual lead-off man: Zero Omega (Falco) for Columbia and Overflow (Fox) for Rutgers. Both of these starters were used to success, having taken at least 5 stocks in every previous crew battle. Zero Omega's patient lasers in neutral and extended techchases when punishing gradually built up a 2-stock high-percent to 1-stock high-percent lead for the Columbia Falco, but a crucial missed edgeguard meant he finished with only 1 stock remaining.Neither of the Columbia and Rutgers crews entered the match at full strength; each team was missing one of their top 5 players and had to sub in a less experienced (for Columbia) or less in-practice (for Rutgers) player instead. Rutgers elected to use their old-school player, Cheezit, to counter Falco with Peach. Zero Omega, however, repeatedly outspaced Cheezit's Peach with backairs and other safe moves. A few strong Falco punish strings, many backairs, and a low-percent SD by Cheezit later, Rutgers suddenly found itself at a full 4-stock deficit.Though Rutgers' counterpick had backfired, they still had three strong players remaining. Internet Explorer, one of the world's top Link mains (and a programmer who's worked on Project M, the 20XX hack pack, and more) was sent to stop the Zero Omega menace, but the resilient Falco stubbornly ground out his 9th enemy stock before falling to Link's forward-tilt edgeguard.FLOTUS (Peach), another player who'd never gone negative in a TMG crew battle, was Columbia's next contestant. FLOTUS counterpicked to Battlefield, the smallest stage available in TMG, hoping to mitigate the advantage Link's projectiles have over the slow-moving Peach. Internet Explorer ground out a slight lead despite FLOTUS's effective use of turnips, but threw away his second-last stock at 50% by overextending on an edgeguard attempt. Another traded stock later, Columbia had built for themselves a steep 6-stock lead.Rutgers' other Fox, Takoyaki, entered the match determined to mount a comeback. On the other hand, his choice of counterpick, Final Destination, was somewhat puzzling: Peach has a chaingrab against Fox on that stage. After trading one stock apiece, FLOTUS took full advantage of this chaingrab to take Takoyaki's second stock before being eliminated.Now it was Columbia's turn to use their newer player, Whiskers (Yoshi). Takoyaki fully abused Fox's greater mobility to run circles around his opponent, punishing whiffs and rolls to take two stocks before Whiskers could snag a nice forward-air edgeguard. The next two stocks were more of the same; Takoyaki's superior understanding of the neutral game gave him plenty of openings to rack up damage and finish Yoshi off.Columbia, still sitting on a 3-stock lead, counterpicked with Cheezpuff's Jigglypuff. Cheezpuff opened the game by flubbing two excellent opportunities to gimp Fox at low percent, and Takoyaki was able to eke out an upsmash kill before dying.Swedish Delight (Sheik), the final boss of Rutgers, now bore a three-stock deficit on his shoulders. He counterpicked Dreamland and immediately built a percent lead, but Cheezpuff got Sheik off-stage, grabbed the ledge, and rested the laggy on-stage up-b. The second stock again saw Swedish take the lead, but Cheezpuff again rested Sheik's recovery. Swedish finally finished his opponent off, but the damage had been done.Columbia anchor Fiya (Fox) only needed to finish off two last Sheik stocks to win. Afraid of Swedish's famous tech-chasing skills, Fiya eschewed Final Destination, usually considered a great Fox vs Sheik stage, for Battlefield. His fears proved justified as Swedish techchases inflicted 60% before Fiya was able to get his first hit in. Both players dodged edgeguard attempts at mid-percent, but Swedish drew first blood with a shorthop back forward-air. Fiya quickly answered by up-tilt up-airing Swedish's over-ambitious attempt to drop on a 0% Fox with down-air, putting Swedish at last stock.Swedish again managed to score big damage off grabs and techchases to take Fiya's second stock. Fiya, however, leveraged his invincibility to gain center stage, punishing Swedish's attempt to get around him with a nearly fatal combo. Then, he wisely waited beneath the side platform for Sheik to land, back-aired the landing to send Sheik offstage, and grabbed the ledge. Swedish up-b'd to the ledge, hoping Fiya would let go, but he guessed wrong, and Columbia emerged with a 2-stock victory.Having won their respective regions, UMB and Columbia will compete for the championship at what will be the biggest Melee Tournament of all time, APEX 2015 . Though the lineups have not yet been confirmed, it seems like each school will send their top 5 players to vie for the title of "The Melee Games Second Semester Champion." I had the opportunity to interview the two finalist teams shortly after their regional victories; look out for them on stream at the end of January!





Interview with

TMG New England champions University of Massachusetts Boston





How does it feel to have won your region?



Michael "Crow" Henderson: It's truly amazing! This victory makes up for our close loss in the previous Melee Games and solidifies the University of Massachusetts Boston as one tough competitor.



Jermaine "Kaiju" Henderson: It feels great to be honest. We came so close last year after putting in so much effort but lost in the end so I'm glad we were able to come out on top this year.



David "Vudoo" Vu: Honestly, it feels really amazing. It was a hard fought battle on both sides, and it was going to be tough making a comeback when down so many stocks against MIT. But when Stanley "Flexed" Gong started taking stock after stock after stock, our camaraderie and will to win just kept us going.





What was your toughest match?



Crow: The toughest match was definitely MIT as they had defeated us before and had the skills to do it again.



Kaiju: They gave us trouble last semester and did so again this time around. If it wasn't for our combined efforts as well as our MVP Flexed we probably would have lost again.





Harvard | Clue and MIT | XPilot took a lot of stocks (9 and 8 stocks, respectively) from you guys. What were your strategies for taking them out?



Crow: Well for Harvard, we decided to stop thinking we had an easy ride to grand finals and get out of autopilot. From there, we just played like we usually did and won the battle. MIT on the other hand was a much greater beast than we imagined when they sent out XPilot. We knew we needed to take him out immediately without using too many of our good players. So we sent in players we thought would take him down without losing stocks. While we [lost] a few of our players, we still took him down with most of our core players intact.



Vudoo: We knew going in Clue was a good player who places high at Game Over [E/N: a Boston-area weekly hosted by MattDotZeb and Vudoo] consistently. Kaiju was sent in to take him down, but he gave charity stocks, which we were not happy about. But the point was that he took a stock. Then Memory went in and didn't do much damage. Finally, with one stock [left for Clue], we sent in Crow to take him down for good. The problem was, Clue [plays] Sheik, [who has] a heavy advantage over Ganondorf. We were worried about it going to last stock if Sheik managed to stay out of range. Thankfully, Crow managed to win without losing a stock.



XPilot, a high level Marth, was a [very] hard matchup overall. Going into the match, we knew what we wanted to do. As soon as he was sent out, we would counter pick with [my Jigglypuff]. In every set I have fought against XPilot in bracket, it's always gone to game 3, with a victory [for me] on Final Destination. But KDJ wanted to send in Klaps, so we reluctantly sent him in. All I needed was for Klaps to take one stock, because I knew I could handle a 2 stock Marth, and trade 2 for 2. This happened exactly as I planned, but I was close to losing another stock. Thankfully, my DI saved me many times against XPilot.





How active are your players in local tournaments? How do they do?



Kaiju: Many of our players participate in local tournaments when they have the time and usually place pretty high.



Vudoo: I am the most active player as I am also a TO [E/N Tournament Organizer]. Normally, I place 17th or 13th, and occasionally 9th, but I have never cracked top 8 at Game Over [E/N Game Over usually has 30-60 entrants]. Klaps goes to Game Over infrequently, but when he does, he consistently takes top 5. On more than one occasion, Klaps has taken 2nd or 3rd, but has yet to win a tournament. Jellyfish is the only other player who frequents Game Over, but he never makes it far in bracket, despite being a solid player.





Which high-level players, if any, help out your crew the most?



Crow: I'd say we owe a great deal to Daniel "Liquid`KoreanDJ" Jung as he gave us advice on how to take down our opponents along with practice matches against matchups we didn't feel comfortable with. We also can thank other players like James "Mafia" Lauerman for giving advice to one of our players and giving us an idea of how difficult Tristate truly is.



Vudoo: KDJ without a doubt gives the crew the most help. Since we all go to UMB with KDJ, it is crucial for us to get his advice for certain matchups. But he is infrequently around. When at a tournament, Mafia has become one of the go-to guys for advice and he has essentially become one of the Boyz. He is such a great guy, super nice, and always happy to give advice and pointers.





How does your team practice? Do you have a school-sanctioned club? Do you all know each other well, or do you play each other in fragmented sub-groups?



Crow: We all have different practice regimens; some hit the lab every day while others, like me, just play and test out new techniques.



Kaiju: We usually just play 1 vs 1 all day in our school's game room. They can either be one game or two out of three based on the number of people. Since our school doesn't have a Smash club and we all know each other really well, we just meet up at school and just play Smash.



Vudoo: Since [the game room] is open to only UMB students, and it is locked up after a certain time, we elect to leave a full setup in the game room, and we choose to play whenever we feel like. We [don't] see any need for [a club] because the Game Room is always available to us and no one else will play.





Who on your team...

is the biggest "hidden boss"?



Crow: That would be Stanley "Flexed" Gong as his incredible skills can decimate players when he's playing at his best.



Kaiju: Normally when you see [Flexed] play he is quite skilled but makes a few mistakes here and there. However, when he is playing seriously he can be a real threat. That can perfectly be seen in how he took 11 stocks from MIT on his own, guaranteeing our victory.



Vudoo: Kaiju is probably a hidden boss in the sense that Luigi is a very difficult character to edgeguard [and has] janky movement options. [He also uses] the randomness of the mis-fire, usually at the most crucial moments. Mike "Raiko" Marcus is another hidden boss because [although] he has a very technical Yoshi, he doesn't enter tournaments and was unable to play in any crew battles this semester. Last semester, he was only able to play once, against UMA, but he will be available at Apex against Columbia.



is the best under pressure?



Crow: That honor goes to my brother Jermaine "Kaiju" Henderson as he almost consistently gets our crew out of a pinch no matter the opponent and tips the scales back onto our side. He also makes for some of the most hypest moments in our crew battles.



Vudoo: Crow is probably best under pressure, simply because he is our best player, and almost always our anchor. It is his job to close out for the crew and win it for us.



is the strategical mastermind?



Crow: I'd say Matt "Memory" Ng as he has created hypothetical situations for us to design our lineups around along with any counter picks that would keep the odds in our favor.



Kaiju: For me that comes down to our two teammates Memory and Jellyfish. Both are really good at providing tips and hypothetical scenarios for any of our matches as well as what we should do.





What member of the Columbia crew are you most afraid of?



Kaiju: To be honest I'm afraid of each and every one of the top 5. After witnessing what they could do [and] how they were able to beat Rutgers to win the Tri-State bracket, I worry that if even one of us does not bring our best we could easily lose.



Vudoo: It seems that their Falco player, Zero Omega, has been doing a ton of work in crew battles. [He took] 9 stocks against the favorite to win, Rutgers, leaving Swedish Delight, Tri-state's best [college] player, little room to work with.





How does your team's character selection match up to your finals opponents'?



Crow: Since we have a wide variety of characters on our crew such as Yoshi, Peach, Marth, Luigi, and more, we have the advantage of counter picks on our side to make up for the difference in skill.



Kaiju: Our team, having characters such as Ganondorf and Luigi, has more variety [than theirs]. This [gives us] more freedom in terms of how we tackle each matchup.



Vudoo: Columbia has a lot of good players, with a few space animals, a Jigglypuff, and a Peach. By comparison, UMB has a very diverse lineup, and I believe the most diverse lineup in New England. [We have] Fox/Falco (Flexed/Tenshi), Ganondorf (Crow), Luigi (Kaiju), C. Falcon (Klaps), Samus (Sing), Jigglypuff (Memory/Vudoo), Sheik (Refresh), Peach (Saki), Yoshi (Raiko), and Marth (Jellyfish/Enigma). Overall, we have a large mix of high and mid-tier characters to utilize, even within the top 6 (Flexed, Crow, Kaiju, Klaps, Sing, and Memory).





What do you think your chances of winning are? What does your crew need to do to ensure victory?



Crow: Best case scenario? We have a 50/50 shot of beating Columbia as we don't know who they'll send against us and they have the added benefit of being from a stronger region. However, so long as we play at our absolute best and use whatever knowledge we have at our disposal, we should be able to obtain victory and set the tone for New England to become a stronger region.



Kaiju: To me our chances of winning are 50/50. If we want to win we have to bring our best and make every stock count for if we don't our defeat is guaranteed.



Vudoo: We believe we have a chance to win, but our chances are lessened due to not having KDJ on the crew. The reason for this is because we want to prove how good we are without him, which is what we [have been doing] the entire semester so far. If we elect to use him, it shows that we are weak without him. But the only thing we can do is do our best. Even if we don't win, we will be happy. We will ensure [...] a hype crew battle, and there will be plenty of chants for Boyz, especially on a stream at Apex!! We will look at performances and stats for Columbia's best players and allow KDJ and Memory to analyze and form some sort of strategy against them in what is sure to be an exciting match.









Interview with

TMG Tri-State champions Columbia University





How does it feel to have won your region?



Alexander "Cheezpuff" Tong (Captain): Fuckin' amazing, but not surprising, given our team's coverage and strength.



Calvin "ZeroOmega" Zoo: Pretty good; looking forward to repping our crew at Apex 2015 - we're not done yet!





What was your toughest match?



Cheezpuff: Rutgers - [they were] the favorite to win [and] the closest of our matches, and it could definitely have gone the other way if an extra stock was taken here or there.



ZeroOmega: Probably Swedish and his minions; the average level of the players at Rutgers was definitely the highest, though because we expected a hard match, I think we all prepared more for the match than for any other crew battle. The stock count at the end speaks for itself.





You played some teams with really strong players. Manhattan School of Music had Dizzkidboogie (#11 in NYC according to the most recent Power Ranking), Manhattan had Captain Smuckers (#9), Stony Brook had Minty (#14) and Bubbaking (#17), Cornell had Icer, and Rutgers had Swedish Delight (probably #1 in NJ) and a bunch of other good players. How did you approach and win these match-ups?



Cheezpuff: A lot of the power ranking stuff has to do with activity, and we're just not all that active. Our top 4 can trade [with] or beat most anyone in TMG (the only times we went negative were me vs Icer (3-4) and me vs Swedish (2-3), and those were only -1, and against the team's "boss"). We put extensive thought into who we will send first and who to counterpick who with.



ZeroOmega: We do some strategizing before each match to figure out the most likely way each team would send out their players, and the best way to set up our crew to counter it ([it's] almost always [gone] the way we planned it). We luckily have strong players on high-tier mains (Fox/Falco/Puff/Peach/Marth) and could handily counter any picks other teams sent out AND put them in a tough position to counterpick.





How active are your players in local tournaments? How do they do?



Cheezpuff: Columbia's a hard university. [We don't have] a lot of free time, but we try and go regularly to Nebulous (the local), and definitely to the larger ones (the biggest Columbia turnout recently was to a regional, Justice 4, where we had like 8). We place pretty decently, and due to our time spent playing together we tend to do very well in doubles 'cuz of team synergy.



ZeroOmega: We are less active than we may optimally want to be; speaking for myself, it's somewhat difficult remaining active after graduating this past summer and starting medical school, due to workload and lack of an immediately accessible training partner (no one at med school plays Melee!). However, our top 5 players still place decently in locals (especially Fiya, who has close sets with some of NY's finest, and has even taken some smaller locals, e.g. @ Beast Mode). Our teams game is fairly solid (probably because we played so many in the past few years due to lack of setups!); Cheezpuff has taken 1st at Nebulous teams with both Fiya and I, while Fiya and I at our best have gone toe-to-toe with some of NY's top teams.





Which high-level players, if any, help out your crew the most? [E/N: Columbia interpreted "help out your crew the most" as "play the best for your crew."]



Cheezpuff: We're not a 1-boss team like most schools, which is why we won Tri-state TMG. Our core 4 (myself, Calvin "ZeroOmega" Zoo, Richard "Fiya" Hue, Harry "FLOTUS" Parmenter) are rock-solid and we have a good spread of characters (Puff, Falco, Fox, Peach, respectively). We have flexibility and top-tierness. Jonathan "JLo" Lo (Marth) is going to join us at Apex for TMG grand finals, so we have our optimal 5. We're basically perfect. No player helps more than the other; we're a team of equals.



ZeroOmega: Our crew has no weak players! While Fiya has a history of being our top player, I don't doubt that any of our top 5 could beat any of the others depending on who's playing well one particular day, or with small fluctuations in the amount each trains. Proof of point: at Nebulous 21 I outplaced Fiya at 2nd (having close sets with a rusty Vanz); at Super Nebulous (Nebulous 22) Fiya outplaced both Cheezpuff and I at 13th (having a close set with The Moon and beating Cheezpuff); at Nebulous 23 Cheezpuff outplaced Fiya at 4th (having a close set with OTG [#6 on the NYC Power Rankings] and beating Ryan K [#10] and Fiya).





How does your team practice? Do you have a school-sanctioned club? Do you all know each other well, or do you play each other in fragmented sub-groups?



Cheezpuff: The school club, started last year by ZeroOmega and me, has done wonders for our scene. We have weekly smashfests where we all can meet up, and sometimes even non-CU people show up (shoutouts to dizzkidboogie). We continually see new faces and always are looking out for collabs with other organizations ('cause who doesn't like Smash?) to branch out and grow.



ZeroOmega: Fiya, Cheezpuff, Jlo, and I used to play regularly during the 2013-14 school year, while Fiya and I were training partners for our 4 years of college. After Fiya and I graduated this past summer, our team had less time to practice together, but with the recent addition of FLOTUS (who has trained with s0ft), the team members at the CU campus still have good practice between CU players. I have been training at Jesse "HectoHertz" Hertz's weekly smashfests, while Fiya has returned to training by himself, after finally getting a CRT he can play on laglessly. The Columbia Super Smash Bros club is a great venue for players near Morningside Heights, both CU and non-CU, to play solid players and train up.





Who on your team...

is the biggest "hidden boss"?



Cheezpuff: Richard "Fiya" Hue.



ZeroOmega: Cheezpuff. Fiya's already well-known in the local scene for being a high-level player, but Cheezpuff has yet to have been recognized for his high level puff play (probably best in NY).



Bob "Bob" Lou: Have to chime in here. It is Cheezpuff. First of all it is Jigglypuff, so in the warm up stages, you cannot see any crazy tech that would hint that he is going to rest you 4 times. Secondly, I agree with ZeroOmega's answer that his local scene activity is low compared to his skill level. It was only a few years ago that we were playing free for all with items, and the occasional spike was the coolest thing ever. He has gotten really good, really fast.



Cheezpuff: I guess I'm actually the hidden boss. It's me.



is the best under pressure?



ZeroOmega: Fiya. See his stock trades against Swedish in our battle against Rutgers!



Cheezpuff: Richard "Fiya" Hue.



is the strategical mastermind?



Cheezpuff: Calvin "ZeroOmega" Zoo.



ZeroOmega: Myself, being the player with the most experience and matchup knowledge in our group.





What member of the UMass Boston crew are you most afraid of?



Cheezpuff: I've only seen the UMB vs MIT match of this year. If I had to choose I guess I'd have to say Crow (Ganon) since he's their best, but that said, no player is looking too scary—definitely not compared to who we've already played. Sure, their Fox took a load of stocks, but those were against floaties who definitely didn't know how to face a Fox like that (we do know).



ZeroOmega: Though Crow is supposedly their best player, from what I've seen, their players seem relatively close in terms of skill (though I haven't seen enough videos to be confident in my view of their relative skill), in which case it boils down to their characters; I'll be keeping an eye on their Fox, since it is by far their highest-tier (and most volatile, going both ways) character.





How does your team's character selection match up to your finals opponents'?



Cheezpuff: Fox, Falco, Puff, Peach, Marth vs. Ganon, Fox, Luigi, Falcon, Samus. Purely by character, we have amazing variety and are top-tier. Sure, their characters do have matchup coverage on ours (e.g. Luigi/Samus vs spacies) but definitely our flexibility wins out.



ZeroOmega: Their Luigi and Samus will be viable picks only against our spacies; their Ganon will have a hard time against our entire lineup; their Falcon may be viable against our floaties, though none of us are particularly scared of that character (read: Falcon kinda sucks!); and Fox is Fox (we all know that matchup). Our character selection, being comprised of high-tiers, is overall more solid than our opponent's.





What do you think your chances of winning are? What does your crew need to do to ensure victory?



Cheezpuff: With our top five on the team, its 110-0. Jokes aside, this is looking pretty free. As long as we're all not playing terribly (which won't happen). The major strategy we've employed is to always be in control, which means take game 1 and keep the lead so we're always on the winning side when we counterpick. We've taken game 1 every match we've played (and statistics shows that whoever takes game 1 generally takes the whole thing). I know UMB thinks the same (from a quote in MDZ's blogpost "The DotBlog: Battle in the Big Apple" - there's more on the stats of winning game 1 there too), but I'd like to see them try to take game 1 from us.



ZeroOmega: Our crew has proven itself by beating the TMG favorites this year, Rutgers, without even having JLo, a member of our top 5 (and subbing in Whiskers, a journeyman yoshi who shows a lot of promise, but is still at the inception of his growth as a melee player). Considering our crew will be complete at Apex, and we all are driven to improve our game to place well in singles (and doubles), I expect that we will win handily. We can ensure our victory simply by continuing what we have been doing: improving as Melee players.





Anything else?



ZeroOmega: BIG shoutouts to Matt, Bob and Jaime ("Whiskers") for being a part of the CU crew and filling in for Fiya/JLo - big shoes to fill but you all did splendidly. Shoutouts to the rest of the CU players, many who are quite promising, and who I expect will keep CU crew a top college Melee team even after Fiya, JLo and I are gone next year (keep an eye out for Soke - his improvement rate is almost as impressive as that of his brother Cheezpuff). Shoutouts to MDZ and HectoHertz for organizing TMG this year. Finally, shoutouts to the NYC Melee scene for whipping us (especially Fiya and I) into shape; NYC is the best, and we aim to prove this in the grand finals of TMG 2014!



Matt "Matt" Kim: Shoutout to William Chen for organizing Smash tournaments before the club was created and introducing a bunch of us to the competitive aspects of the game.



Michael "Soke" Tong: Thanks to the Columbia gods for carrying us. We (next year’s team) will make sure to carry the torch well when we take over.



Cheezpuff: Shoutouts to the guys who helped make TMG happen, MattDotZeb and HectoHertz, and to the Columbia Crew that will take the reins after us next year.







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