By Ben “Bacorn” Corn, Jamie “JAMJAR” Jacobs, and Jason “Nardwell” Mani

WTFox 2: Who The Fox Running This Thing?

Welcome to TOing 101, everybody.

Today, we will be looking at WTFox 2, a Midwest regional held in Tennessee, and what you can learn from the mistakes made by this tournament when you host a Smash 64 event in the future. Only the fortitude of the Smash 64 community was able to salvage a good time from a tournament mired in issues from the beginning which we will break down into three pillars.

First up is scheduling.

There were a few things that made scheduling problematic for WTFox:

Registration did not close when it was originally listed as closing on smash.gg. This caused delays in seeding and final schedules for all events. It’s hard to schedule and seed when you aren’t sure how many players will be in each event or even how many good players will be in each event. Smash 64’s schedule was originally listed as being on Saturday July 2, but then was changed on July 1 to be on Sunday, July 3. This meant that people who were there for 64 had to stay an extra day at their housing arrangements. Leading to extra costs in the form of an extended hotel stay and unexpected additional meals. This made it more expensive and set a tone of inconvenience for people to participate.

These scheduling issues helped contribute to the large number of DQs during bracket (15 to be exact).

The second thing we need to talk about is setups.

The 64 players were told that the venue would have plenty of setups, so many people did not bring consoles or CRTs. However, there were only two consoles until Sunday when Zantetsu had to argue with the provider of consoles that it was not possible to run a 25-man bracket in three hours with two setups. Eventually, there were five setups, which proved to be enough.

Lastly let’s look at seeding.

Because most of the attendees of 64 at WTFox 2 were relatively unknown locals, it would have been best if local TOs had helped to seed the event. Instead, the seeding was done through an automated generator until Zantetsu and I helped the day of the event. This caused the bracket to have some matchups earlier than expected and gave entrants, especially moogle, unnecessarily tough paths.

All of these issues become clear when one looks at the bracket and sees 15 DQs. In many cases, both players in a match weren’t present, so the high seed moved on by default because every match needs a winner.

The best lesson you can come away with from WTFox 2, though, is that Smash 64 players will find a way to have fun and make the most out of events.

Despite the seeding and DQ issues, the top 5 seeds stayed mostly true, only with a couple changes. Also, communication was key as many people offered to help me locate people who needed to play their matches or needed to get ready to play their matches. Zantetsu came through in the clutch, too, by helping to secure the proper setups that made the tournament even possible.

The bracket pretty much went how everyone would have expected. The best moment was when Wizzrobe and Amida played in Winner’s Semi-Finals. After a close game one win, Wizzrobe decided to hook up his headphones with his patented splitter. That was when Wizzy decided to take the Kirby main seriously and send him to the losers’ bracket. Wizzrobe did not drop a game on his way to the championship.

News

Super Smash Con Fund Update

The Super Smash Con International Player Fund has been underway for some time now. Since our last update on the effort to bring top talent to America, the fund hit its first two goals. The first goal, at 600 dollars, was to obtain visas for some of the top talent in Peru, so they can travel here both for SSC and future events. The second goal, at 2900 dollars, was to pay for round trips for those same Peruvian players and Chile’s Shalaka, who has been acting as their guide in planning this trip to America. Now the fund is nearing its third goal at 4900 dollars. This goal would ensure two players would travel from Japan, finally bringing Japan and Peru to the same tournament. With recent large donations by TekStaff in Canada and ENKKO, the fund has made large strides to make SSC the most stacked event our scene has ever seen. To help support the cause, please visit funding.onlinessb.com to donate.

The Rest

Nebulous Prime 64 #5

Five weeks ago the New York Smash 64 crew at Nebulous Prime switched their weekly day from Friday to Wednesday. This move has proven to be a huge success as each week has seen attendance at 14 or greater. This week’s event netted a total of 18 competitors. The excitment all started in Winners Quarterfinals where JimmyJoe met Firo. This match resulted in a big upset as JimmyJoe’s Pikachu shocked Firo’s imposing Link in 3-0 sweep. After sending Firo to losers JimmyJoe looked to keep his momentum against Zeppelin in Winners Finals. After JimmyJoe took game one, the two players split games 2 and 3. JimmyJoe’s Pikachu had Zeppelin’s Falcon on the ropes for game four. In a last stock edgeguard situation Zeppelin mistakenly fast fell to his doom, sending JimmyJoe on a trip to Grand Finals. Losers Finals saw Firo choose Fox against Zeppelin’s Captain Falcon. Firo took the first two games with solid edgeguarding and excellent DI. This forced Zeppelin to switch to Pikachu against Firo’s Fox. The myriad of edgeguard options afforded by Pikachu allowed Zeppelin to take the next two games forcing a decisive game five. Unfortunately for Zeppelin, Firo solved the puzzle, taking game five with a two stock. This made Grand Finals a rematch between JimmyJoe and Firo. Firo was able to take the first two games but JimmyJoe came back to win game three. Game four saw Firo hold his ground in a last stock situation forcing a bracket reset. Firo came into the second set with momentum in his favor, however, JimmyJoe came out victorious. JimmyJoe clutched his first Nebulous win in a long time following a satisfying three-game sweep in Grand Finals Set 2. The full bracket can be found on Challonge and replays are available on the Nebulous YouTube channel.

Event Player Media Nebulous Smash 64 Full Bracket 1st JimmyJoe Hitbox.tv 2nd Firo YouTube 3rd Zeppelin 4th th3kuzinator SFS #24 Full Bracket 1st Banze Twitch 2nd HeroPie 3rd Janitor 4th Eggmode Baltimore 12 Character Tournament(MD) Full Bracket 1st Yobolight Twitch 2nd Darkhorse 3rd Shears 4th Daniel SONA 12 (OH) Full Bracket 1st Dogs_Johnson 2nd Pugs 3rd B33F 4th LLC Stoism Grid Games Weekly 64 (CT) Full Bracket 1st Fireblaster Hitbox.tv 2nd Shears YouTube 3rd Spongy 4th Sun Vulcan