Smash Summit 3, which yet again seems to have been hosted in the hallway of the Summit gaming house, is over as of last week. The winner this year? Armada, once more. For the third time. In three years.
In fact, the top bracket of Smash Summit 3 looks awfully familiar to last year. With Armada in first, his grand finals opponent Hungrybox took second. Mew2King, the technical juggernaut who should probably have an honorary doctorate granted for his discoveries in the game, arrived in third place. Mang0, the last of the five gods of Smash to compete in the tournament, came in fourth. This is, for the record, identical placings to Smash Summit 2.
If there’s a story to take away from the tournament, it seems to be that our estimations of the relative skill levels between the gods, Smash‘s four best players in the world, might be inaccurate. By that, I don’t mean that Armada is monumentally better; if anything, they’re closer than ever. If that doesn’t make sense considering the carbon copy repeat of last year, let me explain.
Everyone has beaten everyone this year
While Armada won at Smash Summit 2, he actually lost to Hungrybox on the much larger stage of Evo earlier this year. At the Big House 6 tournament earlier in October, Mang0 beat Armada to come in first. Both of them are capable of taking games off the Summit winner, and this year, Hungrybox nearly did; their last match was a tie-breaker, 2-2. Meanwhile, Mang0’s been kicking Hungrybox’s ass all year since EVO, beating him at both Super Smash Con, and Shine. For him to drop below all three of his rivals at this tournament, either something has changed, or the fluctuations in skill are so minute that there was never a big edge to begin with. In short: everyone has beaten everyone this year, and Smash Summit 3 looked like a continuation of that trend.
What about Mew2King? He played excellently against the god-slayer Leffen, taking all three matches without losing once. He also brought down Mang0, who’s been on an aforementioned hot streak, but ultimately was stopped by Hungrybox. If he had gone up against Armada, though, could he have come out on top?
The next major will be in early December, at the UGC Smash Open. It’s there that we’ll find out whether Armada can hold onto his lead, or if we’ll see another shuffle.
