Header art by Gareth Damian Martin.
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Justin Groot:
MY MAN DID IT! Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman of Cinnaminson Township, New Jersey, just won a National Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament with not one but TWO additional Gods in attendance. Yes, SFAT took out both HungryBox and Mango, the two foes most likely to end The King’s run. But that doesn’t make the W any less sweet.
In other news: Jeffrey “Axe” Williamson is an obscenely fast player. You can actually see his dash dances burning little holes in the spacetime continuum. And while his Falco and Marth displays this weekend might have lacked polish, they simply screamed potential. Axe with Pikachu plus a polished secondary would definitely be Godslayer material.
For your viewing pleasure, I have assembled the following catalogue of Twitch Clips from this most illustrious of Smash Bros. tourneys:
Mew2King Special
The Joseph Marquez Commemorative Combo Catalogue
(Mango didn’t win this tournament, but he definitely won my heart. Wish he’d stop losing to SFAT, though.)
Very excellent and good combo to eliminate Plup
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Dan Fries:
If you’ve been reading The Meta for some time, you know that shuffle season in the professional Dota 2 scene is my favorite time of the year, and if this week is anything to go by, I’m far from the only one. Evil Geniuses’s longtime carry player Fear laconically teased his followers on Wednesday (this is a joke teammate and protege Sumail is not particularly fond of) and more recently, in the face of some wild and unexpected roster changes, EG captain ppd tweeted merely “yikes.”
Last week, I mentioned that Sumail wanted to play with Zai and didn’t expect to leave EG. This week, Fear and Zai were released from the team, and Sumail left of his own accord. Sumail also tweeted “ZuMaYL,” which is adorable and I’m stealing it. OTP.
Fear may in fact be retiring: he’s has taken breaks at many points in his competitive career to nurse an arm injury and was wearing a brace at TI6. Even so, there’s some speculation that larger changes within the Evil Geniuses organization might mean these roster changes are not actually representative of how things are shaking out.
In 2014, Twitch bought GoodGame Agency, which owns Evil Geniuses and Alliance. [Disclosure: Will Partin, editor of The Meta, priorly coordinated social media for GoodGame Agency and its teams.] According to Colin DeShong, former GGA COO and now Director of Creative for Twitch Esports, “most [GGA] staff are now integrated into Twitch more fully,” which sounds like a euphemism for a change in management and the end of GGA. It’s possible that the EG organization is experiencing some brief turbulence and that the roster you know and love will return relatively unchanged, but it’s also possible that changes at EG headquarters have wrought unforeseen consequences, and ZuMaYL will be playing with Kaipi. Or something. Who knows anymore. The drop period doesn’t end for another week, so it benefits players and teams to keep quiet about who they want to snatch up and what they want their teams to look like—if they even know at this point. If you’re speculating with as much reckless abandon as I am, former EG manager Charlie Yang has some choice advice: “maybe just fucking wait.”
At the beginning of this season of Dota 2, I don’t know if anyone would have said that OG, Liquid, and Secret were going to trade majors until TI. OG and Secret have both dropped three players, and Secret have already announced a new roster featuring MidOne (formerly of fnatic), and MP and Forev (formerly of MVP Phoenix). If these roster changes at EG are permanent, that’s three top tier teams who will be barely recognizable when the Fall Major rolls around.
