Report on a big brawl tournament yesterday

Classic Fighting Games Super Smash Brothers Brawl
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This is the tournament’s results page on Smashboards, and you can find some vids there . It was in Virginia at C3, the home tournament for a lot of the best Smash players in the country. I didn’t enter (didn’t want to bet $12 that I would do well yet), but I did play a lot of casuals and watch a lot of the tournament. Some thoughts!

-Awesomely varied character selection. The only characters I didn’t see were Jiggly, Sheik (Zelda, though), Mario, and Yoshi, although that doesn’t necessarily mean that nobody was playing them. The characters I saw the most of were MetaKnight, Marth, Toon Link, Snake, Dedede, Diddy, and Pit, mostly in that order. The top 5 placers in singles used Lucario, Fox, Dedede, MetaKnight, Bowser, Snake, and Olimar.

-No items, few stages. These are some of the best and most influential players in the Smashboards scene, so this was to be expected in the tournament. I thought they might at least mess around with items in casuals just to test them out, but no, no items/few stages there either. I played casuals with a few guys who reluctantly turned some items on after my fellow SRKers and I hounded them, and the winners/losers were mostly the same as when items were off. For most of the Smash guys I talked to, the justifications for banning items were either because items were broken or because that was how they were used to playing. I got into a discussion with one dude about how strategically interesting some items can be, but he didn’t seem to get what I was talking about.

-Very few people play a good spacing game. The top players do, obviously, but the vast majority of the 71 people who showed up depend almost exclusively on mixups. There were guessing games like run-hit/run-shield/run-grab, dodge/shield/hit/grab when the opponent runs at you, etc, and people pretty much just ran at each other and played up close. I asked a guy I was playing why nobody tries to space themselves right, and he didn’t know what I meant, so I explained. He said something like, “Oh, camping? I hate campers, I would never do that.”

-Lots of SRKers were able to go even with or beat lots of Smash players. I’m not sure how many of us entered the tournament, a couple names in the results list be misheard SRKer names, but I know that Steve Harrison entered and I’m pretty sure that’s him at #33, meaning he had a couple wins (using DK). But in casuals we did pretty well. Epsilon_ (Pit) and I (ROB/Bowser) beat a guy who got so pissed (because he knew we were SRK and had just picked the game up) that he threw his controller on the ground in disgust. My friend Pete (BigAzn) who had played the original 64 game beat a bunch of dudes with Kirby, SLogan did well with Ganondorf (after I gave him a literally 30-second-long explanation of Ganon’s moves etc), USMC Jaguar did well with Ike, and so on. We identified high-priority moves, spammed them, played spacing games, and won, just like we’ve done in every fighting game ever.

-This one 11-year-old kid was ripping people up with multiple characters. It was sick, the people he beat laughed the first time he beat them and got super pissed the second time. Really impressive.

-High-level Brawl is really interesting to watch. The loser’s finals and grand finals had great spacing, good mixups, excellent stage and ledge control, and great usage and knowledge of the characters’ moves.

-Way smaller tournament than I expected. Most estimates for how many people would show up were looking at 100 people, and some said 150, but only 71 actually came. The speculation I heard as to why was that a lot of Melee players just don’t like Brawl as much. I didn’t find out why.

Also, I hung out with a lot of SRKers who went to Final Round and are friends with Justin Wong, and according to them Justin either thinks Smash is a kid’s game or that Smash players are sucky kids (they weren’t 100% clear on this). Apparently before playing in FR he’d watched 2 YouTube videos and played Diddy for about 20 minutes, and that was his whole experience with Smash. He noticed the same thing I did about most Smash players, that for most of them the game is entirely about mixups, like whether you’ll run and hit or run and shield, and he didn’t find it terribly hard to beat most of them. He placed 2nd using Diddy and ROB, if you hadn’t heard.

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Nevermind, I see that you didn’t enter now, see any Pikachus?

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I saw a few Pikachus, yeah. One dude seemed to be really good with him. I watched him play a team match, he seemed to be on point and stuff. Actually, I just checked that results page again, here’s a [media=youtube]frRfoHhNeRc"[/media] of a Pika player in a team match. Could be the same guy I saw playing.

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any videos?

edit. nvm. Found some on youtube. Mostly team videos though. Search for C3 Brawl.

The Diddy one is pretty cool.

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LOL the majority of those players must have sucked if they didn’t know brawl is all about spacing, spamming, and priority.

I think Justin Wong doesn’t have any real knowledge at the mechanics and intricacies, it’s just his overall natural beastliness at all fighting games allowed him to do well, kinda like how when daigo beat sirlin.

I wish I could’ve been there i’d love to see how my MK would stack up against the country’s best.

BTW since does smashboards know SRK?:confused: :rofl:

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interesting. wouldve gone but im over here in california, heh. Damn, justin got 2nd place and he’s only watched 2 youtube videos of diddy and that was the only experience he had?

… Wow

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as much as i would love to take this chance to bash brawl into the ground.

and although i could be wrong about this info.

I dont think Jwong actually played anybody from the smash community until he got to the winners finals.

Again, i could be wrong about that. >.>

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Am i the only one that thinks people that play with items off are lame?

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lol the Justin Wong vs. Smash kids stuff was hillarious. The guys from my area that went were saying the smash kids were standing around saying like “man that guy sucks, all he does it run away and block” and yet he’d beat their asses. Justin understands spacing and can spot gimmicks and people’s mistakes and tendencies REALLY fast. I played him in a game he’d only been playing for 2 days and he was already on level with the best players in the state. Fought him in the finals of an arcana heart tournament too, shit wasn’t fun. So yeah, I imagine smash was easy for him.

On average, a lot of the smash players ARE stupid kids, but hey, I like that. More free money at the tournaments. Just as long as they don’t talk to me, lol.

Metaknight was the most used though? Sigh. Why’s my character that I picked after seeing the first smash preview have to be a bandwagon character T_T

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What were there more of…meta Knights, marths, or Toon Links? And how many Ikes?

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I don’t know exactly, but if I had to guess, I would say MetaKnight was the most popular character, followed by Marth. After that it’s some combination of the characters I mentioned. As for Ikes, I didn’t see that many. Actually, offhand the only Ike I can remember was my friend Jaguar’s. I’m sure he wasn’t the only guy using Ike there, I just don’t remember seeing any other Ikes.

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i don’t see justin wong’s name on the tourney results from the link you gave us.
nor do i see any alias that played diddy/rob.

am i looking at the wrong results posting?

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Justin played at Final Round, he didn’t come to C3. Ding!

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okay thanks for the clarification.

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JUUUUUUUUSSTTINNNNNNNN WOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNGGGG!
haha anyways…

most people rely on mixups in brawl because they dont understand how to space themselves. hell I wouldn’t doubt that most of them aren’t even aware of what a mixup is. they like to call everything “mindgames” which can mean a lot of things…haha

if you are to judge anything in smash or argue any point about it, you should argue about it with people that know what they are talking about and doing…so namely good people. most of the people that show up to tourneys are total scrubs that just go watch videos on their characters and copy everything they see the good people doing in hopes of it working.

honestly if I were to ask of the about 40 people I expect to show at the tourney im hosting this saturday as to why they think items should be off, I wouldnt doubt all except me, 2 other good players, and maybe 3-4 after that as to why they should be off. the rest would say shit like “they’re cheap” or “I dont like them”.

so yeah, dont waste your time arguing with people who suck, because honestly I’d equate the majority of smashers to button mashers in any fighting game. lucky for them, they chose one of the few 2 button fighters out there…hahaha

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eh every smash player thinks they are good. The easy to pickup hard to master type gameplay promotes that. Some of the best strats are deceptively simple, making people think its just luck or camping.

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I entered Smash at FRXI, and watched Justin play for the majority of the tournament. I talked to him about it and he thought it was hilarious that even got into winner’s finals at one point (let alone getting second later on).

He thinks the game’s a walk in the park really, close enough to being somewhat of a joke.

I was laughing the entire fucking time, because the people watching were either astounded, disgusted (because Justin played really smart, but they clearly didn’t like his style), or even angry.

There was one match where he played a Pitt on Luigi’s mansion, with Pitt on the second floor and Justin’s Rob on the first. For a good thirty seconds all Justin was doing was going back and forth and trying to u-tilt the guy, following him like a reflection. Fucking funny as hell.

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I haven’t been able to find any vids. I’d REALLY like to see how Justin played the game, rather than just get a general description.

I’d also like to see Wong start dominating the scene. That would be the most hype ever!

It would also have been nice if Wong was at the C3 tourney, since Azen is like the Wong of the Smash community. The guy can use any character well, and plays a very campy style in general.

Also some interesting names showing up in the results of FRXI, especially Buktooth.

Hey UltraDavid seeing few stages in an East Coast tournament doesn’t surprise me. In Melee it was usually East Coast = FD, Midwest = as many stages as possible, and West Coast = somewhere in between. Japan only played FD and Dreamland 64.

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justin wong probably got second because there was no one good at that tourney. mike g beat him and mike g is a great player. it has nothing to do with smashers being stupid or whatever you’re subtly suggesting.

azen isn’t really campy at all. he just has amazing spacing…

srkers seem to have very limited smash knowledge.

why is there a brawl forum but no melee forum? melee is a way better game and much better suited to the competitive nature of this community.

don’t ride justin wong’s dick. it’s extremely easy to beat bad players at smash bros. and the majority of tourney goers suck

only smashers that complain about campy styles are scrubs. Drephen has probably had to deal with these feelings more than most smashers in the community. look up vids of his sheik. he has beat some of the best players with a simple looking style but it’s deceptively complicated.

please don’t think you’re better than the smash community because we don’t use the same termanology ie mixups.

most of you probably suck at this game. don’t fool yourselves. it’s a wack game to begin with. play melee.

why srk feels important enough to make their own ruleset is beyond me. last year the mention of smashbros on these forums would bring gails of laughter. one year of poorly run melee tourneys and a new installment later, and now srk actually thinks they are good at this game.

stream of consciousness post over.

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Yeah… I’m not convinced it had ever started.