As the nineteenth installment of DFW’s Melee monthly, Waterless Fishie’s D.I.M.E. 19 turned out to a modest number of attendees, but quite strong competition! While Wobbles himself wasn’t in attendance, many of DFW’s other heavy hitters made an appearance (SWG’s Banana’s and Mouf, FX’s Albert and Hamyojo, SFOP, and Boomstick), and there were no shortage of out-of-city players either, with Mojo, JF, Chandy and Roboticphish making the cut into bracket as well.
The upsets started early on in the event when Hamyojo lost a surprising set to Dallas local Peach player Mijo, leaving Hamyojo with the second place in his pool under Austin’s Roboticphish. “I didn't go into the set with the mindset of ‘I have to play well’”, says Hamyojo, “And it showed.”
This upset was actually rather important, as Hamyojo getting second in his pool left him with a lower seed than you might expect from a player of his caliber, and left him squaring off against the first seed of the tournament, SU | Mojo, in round two of bracket. To many it was a foregone conclusion that Mojo would take the set, but once again going against the grain, Hamyojo came out with the upset and won out in the set, putting the first seed into loser’s bracket very early on!
Above is the final bracket, cut down to 16 players after preliminary pools.
In another round two winner’s match, up and coming Dallas Ice Climber main SWG | Bananas faced off against long-time Smash veteran UL | JF, and once again, the Dallas local came out ahead in the competition.
Having both won an upset against higher seeded players, Hamyojo and Bananas faced off against each other in Winner’s Semifinals. Despite generally placing above him, and having a higher seed and power-ranking than Bananas, the Ice Climbers has been something of a personal demon for Hamyojo. The character match-up certainly isn’t a good one - there are some top Ice Climber players who have basically never lost in it. Hamyojo had been working on some secondaries for the match-up, but his Fox and Marth weren’t quite up to snuff, and Bananas once again took the set with a clean 2-0 victory.
On the other side of Semis, FX | Albert and SWG | Mouf faced off, having beaten Roboticphish and Boomstick on their way there, respectively. It had been some time since these two have had to play each other - Mouf consistently shows up to DFW’s weekly Monday Night Melee, but Albert’s schedule prevents him from doing so. Though Mouf has improved recently, the set was still a 2-0 in Albert’s favor, winning through with some efficient play and brutal KOs despite losing the lead early on in game two due to a self destruct.
Fun fact of the day; DFW has a surprisingly large number of Ice Climber players. At Monday Night Melee 63, four out of the top eight players were IC mains! (Wobbles, Bananas, Tuesday, and SquidKid)
In Winner’s Finals, Albert and Bananas squared off. Despite Albert taking game one and getting the counter-pick advantage for the third game in the set, Bananas once again came through with the upset, winning an extremely close game two and closing it out with two victories on Yoshi’s Story to win, 3-1!
Meanwhile, in Loser’s Bracket, SU | Mojo was on a tear, taking out Chandy, JF, Mouf, and then finally getting his run-back versus Hamyojo. Our Dallas local kept the games close, but this time Mojo came out ahead, redeeming his earlier loss with a strong 3-0 victory. His Loser’s Bracket run was finally cut short, however, in Loser’s Finals, where Albert took the victory over him 3-1 in some very intense games.
Loser's Finals - SU | Mojo vs FX | Albert
Albert clearly came into Winner’s Finals with some adjustments in mind. The first set was a very strong 3-0 victory in his favor, resetting the bracket. Bananas took the first game in the second set, opting to not strike to Dreamland like the previous sets, where Albert had an incredible win rate, but afterwards Albert once again took momentum, winning the next two games in a row. In game four, despite an excellent showing from Bananas’ SoPo, Albert was able to come back from a stock deficit and clutch out the game and take home the tournament!
Grand Finals - FX | Albert vs SWG | Bananas
DIME was an excellent gauge for some of DFW’s new players; facing off against Mojo, JF, Albert and others gives a good showing for what they’re doing well, and (hopefully) aspects of their game that they need to work on. Hamyojo had some excellent sets, but lacked some consistency. Bananas had an excellent run over all, and has now added wins over players like JF and Albert, in addition to his victories over local players and his win over Jake13 at the last TLOC Melee 1k. In the end, however, it’s clear that FX | Albert is still one of the top of the local DFW food chain, and a serious threat to other heavy hitters in the region!