This Week in Smash #1
This segment exists to show DHS Press readers the best of each week’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament play!
Smash Ultimate is hot off the press, and it’s competitive scene is heating up fast. Every week at venues throughout Virginia, up and down the east coast, and across the country, Smash Bros. weeklies (weekly tournaments) and majors are showing us the best of what Ultimate has to offer.
Put simply, there’s no shortage of popoffs, JV3’s (perfect matches without losing a life or “Stock”), and hype plays to watch and be floored by.
So, to start things off big, the debut of This Week in Smash will feature the best sets (Best of 3 or Bo5 “sets” of matches) from brackets starting the week before Winter Break, through the past week. That’s two and a half weeks worth of jaw-dropping competitive play, all in this one New Year’s special feature!
“Ally” (Snake) vs. “Smokk” (Ganondorf) @ SmashLoft Weekly #1, Grand Finals; 12/14/18: https://youtu.be/nxHNFXx-waE – ! Must-Watch Set !
This set sees high-profile former Smash 4 Mario player “Ally” showing off his skills with Solid Snake, a character back in Ultimate for the first time since 2008. Snake’s crafty nature in his home franchise, “Metal Gear Solid,” translates to Smash in his lethal use of precise projectiles like timed grenades and C4 ready to detonate at the Snake player’s leisure. The use of Snake’s brutal yet difficult-to-land F-air (community jargon for a “forward air” attack) to spike (send an opponent plummeting downward offstage) Smokk repeatedly near the beginning of this set is pure hype material.
“6WX” (Sonic/Incineroar) vs. Jet (Incineroar) @ Codename: B-Airs Weekly #166, Losers Semis; 12/14/18:
Formerly a Sonic main in Smash 4, now a Sonic main in Ultimate, “6WX” goes head-to-head with Jet’s Incineroar. Taken off guard by how hard Jet’s Incineroar swung back whenever he was in disadvantage state, 6WX turns it into an Incineroar ditto, (a match where both players play the same character,) making things all the more interesting. The first match starts off with Jet getting pineapple’d, (a community term for bonking your head on the underside of a stage and losing a stock because of it,) and then shortly after, clapping back with a WWE-style lariat to take 6WX’s first stock; this Bo3 set starts entertaining, and never drops the ball.
“Fable” (Donkey Kong) vs. “Dimension” (Chrom) @ Smash at the Laboratory (S@LT) #168, Grand Finals; 12/27/18:
This is just a great set from two really solid Pennsylvania Smash players, both with histories in Smash Melee for the GameCube as well. The Grand Finals set watches like Melee too, as Donkey Kong threatens with grab shenanigans and big, swinging attacks, and Dimension as Chrom even gets a classic maneuver off from past Smash games. Dimension uses a sword character from the “Fire Emblem” series, and their Down-B move, a counterattack, to ricochet an opponent off the side of the stage for an easy kill. This was a mainstay technique among Marth (another Fire Emblem swordsman) players in Melee, and Smash 4.
“Fatality” (Capt. Falcon) vs. “Frosty” (Richter) @ Tripoint Smash #41, Winners Quarters; 12/28/18:
This set is nuts. The best Captain Falcon player out there, Fatality, going up against a super-precise Richter, one of the most hyped newcomers in the new game. There’s a DBZ (two opponents hit each other and fly in opposite directions) moment in game two, and all kinds of projectile snipes and well-spaced whip cracks from Richter throughout the set. As usual, Fatality’s Falcon is brutal and oppressive, if only ever-so-slightly unoptimized, due to minor nuances that changed between Smash 4 and Ultimate. This is a textbook “unstoppable force, immovable object” situation; spectator gold.
“Awestin” (Ness) vs. PG l “MVD” (Snake) @ Ultimate Shockwave Weekly #4, Grand Finals; 01/03/18:
https://youtu.be/jfUDvtTfNbQ – ! Must-Watch Set !
MVD, a player (as of today) formerly sponsored by “Panda Global” Gaming, the group who organizes and calculates the official international competitive rankings for Smash, goes for a runback from his losers side disadvantage, to make this tense set an even 0 – 0 Grand Finals. MVD was a Snake main in Smash Bros. Brawl, and since Snake’s reintroduction into Ultimate, he’s served as a pillar example of high-level Snake play. However, in spite of the crafty plays we’re used to from MVD’s Snake, hometown hero Awestin’s Ness proved disgustingly good. His brilliant use of Ness’s Down-B move “PSI Magnet,” allowed him to maneuver excellently, using its momentum-carrying properties to glide in strange angles, or lessen his fall speed. Between that movement tech (short for “technique”) and his brutal combo game, Awestin proves a formidable foe for MVD in this nail-biter of a set.
I hope you enjoyed this debut series of sets, and be sure to tune back in to DHSpress.com each week going forward for more This Week in Smash!
