In a little under a week, we’re about to see the second major-level invitational this year – third, if we’re just talking about levels of hype – in the Nounsvitational. Featuring several of the world’s best players, as well as a medley of fan favorites and regional heroes, it’s an event that I’ve personally been anticipating for a long-time.
One of this tournament’s elements that I find so interesting is the structure of it. Heading into the event, all 16 of the players are split into two round-robin pools of eight. Afterward, the top four placers of each pool start in winners bracket of a final top sixteen bracket, while the bottom four placers of each pool start in the losers bracket playing matches for 13th place.
While this isn’t necessarily the greatest format for ensuring a lack of shenanigans, it will give us plenty of sets to evaluate between top level competitors. And as spectators, what more could we ask for? In this column, I’m going to break down all 16 players attending this tournament. I’ll be briefly recapping their years, then breaking down how they stack up within their pool, and after that, I’ll be making my guess as to who will win what’s likely to be the last major invitational of this year.
Agent
I’ll begin with a player that I picked to break out near the start of the year. Since then, Agent’s entered Top 100 consideration territory; the ruler of Capital Region is all but a lock for making the ballot. In fact, for the year, he has wins over Trail, Maher, Inky, POG Epic Gamer, Dawson, and Fro116 – names ranging from likely ballot peers to safe picks for Top 100. The main question surrounding him at the event is if Agent can beat any of the stacked competition here.
There’s no getting around it; somebody has to finish last in these pools, and Agent’s pool is not looking pretty. Zain, Aklo, aMSa, Jmook, and Soonsay are each impervious to Agent’s respective player “type:” a Top 100 borderline Fox. It’s not a knock on Agent – it’s more that Top 10 contending players typically never lose this kind of matchup. Keeping that in mind, I think Agent has a shot against MOF and BING. Although MOF’s results are overall strong in the year, Agent would hardly be her worst loss, and she’s typically up-and-down in her performances regardless of matchups. BING is more of an unknown; from what I’ve gathered about from results, he seems pretty good against Fox and Falco. At the same time, it wasn’t long ago when we saw a Fox player comparable to Agent (E-tie) upset an even better DK player (Junebug). My guess here is that Agent maybe takes a set from MOF and starts the final bracket in losers before exiting the bracket at 13th. But with what we know about him in mind, that one set he could grab in pools is all that he needs to leave the event with a win.
Bekvin
Sitting in the other pool is Bekvin, a player whom most of my readers will know that I enjoy seeing do well. In fact, they were my “safe” pick for No. 100 on this year’s Top 100, and given their presence at this very event, it’s safe to say that Bekvin has a chance to go up even further on the final list itself. Not that they need to; who can forget the epic losers run to ninth place at Wavelength? There, Bekvin defeated a motley of ballot names: Louis, Goosekhan, and Khryke, the headliner win of their performance. With a bit more clutch against Joshman, Bekvin could have even made top eight.
The good news for Bekvin is that they’re going to have another shot, as they’ve been given the same pool as Joshman. Honestly, this pool is relatively good for them. Although Plup, Cody Schwab, and moky seem like nonstarter matchups, if you look at everyone I haven’t mentioned yet in this pool, these are all players you could totally see Bekvin potentially catching off guard. I’m not saying that Bekvin is definitively going to defeat Waddle Wednesday random-character sparring partner Salt, nor is Bekvin a surefire lock to defeat either checked out Mang0 or Junebug in a lopsided matchup. I’m just saying that crazier things have happened. Making it deeper than thirteenth place in the final bracket seems like an unreasonably tall order, but I think Bekvin can win at least one set in pools.
BING
After slaying Cody at GOML in the literal biggest upset of all-time, BING has finally made his way to another major. In the time since his historic achievement, he’s mostly hung around in upstate New York and in Ontario. Though Zanya’s finally gotten BING to wave the white flag on DK (he goes Falco vs. her now; it’s that bad), he’s still won regionals over Top 100 contending players like Maher and even a Top 50 contender in Zuppy. BING also went to Gridiron Gateway, where the potential of a rematch with Cody seemed pretty massive, only for it to get immediately snuffed out at the hands of a strange counterpick war gone wrong vs. Ossify and Free Palestine. The point is: BING’s back on the big stage here.
I’m pretty curious to see how he performs in this pool. Obviously, the odds are never great when Zain is there, but technically we do have a data point showcasing that BING can defeat a player practically of Zain’s caliber, even if it’s not the expected result. In similar fashion, I’m not willing to say it’s completely hopeless against someone like Aklo, aMSa, or Soonsay. That said, among those three, Soonsay is the one BING seems most likely to defeat, and Soonsay still beat Junebug earlier this year. MOF seems like a tough out too; I haven’t seen anything from BING’s Falco or Captain Falcon to make me think he’s ready for her caliber of play. My prediction is that BING beats Agent, as projected, but everyone else beats him and he finishes in 13th place.
Junebug
After his third place showing at Supernova, Junebug had the masses considering the possibility of DK winning a major. A subsequent top eight at Eggdog Invitational seemed to indicate the new reality we were now living in. The names on his resume were undeniably impressive in that two tournament stretch: Zamu, Joshman, Axe, moky, Trif, KoDoRiN, and that doesn’t even count his earlier wins in the year over Salt, Krudo, and Colbol. Since then though, Junebug’s had a bit of a return to Earth, with quiet showings at The Function, LMMM, and Don’t Park on the Grass. Which Junebug are we going to see here at the Nounsvitational: the Top 15 major dark horse, or a man cursed to play against Sheik at seemingly every event?
Even though many of Junebug’s pool matches are probably coin-flips by the numbers, I can’t help but feel strangely negative about Junebug’s chances. Is it just bias against mid-tiers? Maybe. Technically speaking, he’s split sets with Salt (2-2) and won each of his last sets versus Joshman and moky. Weirdly enough, if Junebug had a time to finally beat Mang0, it’s also probably now, when he’s not in practice or taking competing seriously. But personally, I’m not counting on it happening at an event with multiple DKs in attendance and no shortage of matchup practice. My guess is that Junebug leaves RR pools with two wins and then probably has to play a difficult opponent (like MOF or Jmook) as his losers bracket match for thirteenth place.
Salt
The story of Salt is the story of someone who’s so consistently proven that she’s above and beyond her peers, yet lacks a real standout win. Nonetheless, despite lacking a win over a Top 5 player yet, she’s still had a very good year. Thirteenth at Don’t Park on the Grass, losing only to Cody and Jmook, is nothing to scoff at, and the same could be said about earlier wins over Trif, Soonsay, and Ossify. In general, she’s had a propensity for defeating mostly fellow Top 25 players.
Sadly, this is not a field of mostly fellow Top 25 players. As a matter of fact, Salt’s very own pool is filled with four different Captain Falcon slayers: Mang0, Plup, Cody Schwab, and moky. To be fair, she has come close to beating some of these players before, but even Junebug, if the 2-2 record shows anything, isn’t an easy out. That leaves Joshman, who’s beaten her twice this year, and Bekvin, the bottom seed of this pool. The nice thing is this could accidentally set her up quite nicely vs. a lower seed of the other pool that she could do well against – like potentially BING or Agent. After that though, she’s probably going to have to defeat someone from group of players she’s historically struggled to upset. Unless we see a new and improved version of her here, this has the makings of a good-not-great ninth place.
Joshman
I recently broke down Joshman’s chances of winning a major and how he could trend in the future. In similar fashion, he seems to perform very well in Fox dittos against the field, but I would say that the biggest change in Joshman’s trajectory in terms of matchups has been against Sheik, as he’s lately taken the 4-3 annual head-to-head lead over Jmook. He’s also been fantastic at regionals, defeating the likes of Aklo and KoDoRiN to win The Function 4.
However, Joshman’s pool is hard. I’m not really sure this event’s field is great for his chances either, even assuming he qualifies for winners bracket. His pool has a bunch of Foxes which seems good for Josh, but this matchup is also inherently volatile and could easily go the other way around too. Then you have Junebug, who Joshman lost to in his most recent set. That’s obviously not proof that Junebug will always win, but at the very least, it’s a “hard” tossup. I feel similarly about Bekvin, who probably should have beaten Josh at Wavelength and could have beaten him were it not for an extremely fortunate set of circumstances on Pokemon Stadium that got in the way. From that point onward, Josh’s matchup spread vs. the top seeds, at least by the numbers, is a bit too reliant on Aklo and Jmook; I think if he plays literally anyone else that could realistically be his opponent in a match for ninth place, he’s going home.
Jmook
It may surprise to see someone with multiple wins over Zain this year mentioned so relatively early, let alone Jmook, whose greatness goes beyond one matchup. We’ve seen glimpses of potential greatness from him this year in other ways too, whether it was almost 6-0’ing Cody at Warehouse War or even his monstrous run to first place at the SoCal Star League Championships, where he beat aMSa twice after being sent to losers bracket outside of top eight. Though he’s struggled with consistency against Fox, on any given day, the chance of a Jmook return to glory remains alive.
Sadly, I am mentioning him this early because in addition to his pool being quite difficult (leading to an increased chance of being in losers bracket), this is a really brutal field of competitors specifically for him. While I have no illusions of a Donkey Kong defeating Jmook, his pool is basically Zain, two Fox players (Aklo and Soonsay) who have started looking quite difficult for Jmook to beat, and MOF, who thrashed Jmook in their last set a year ago. And while Jmook seems favored against aMSa nowadays, I am not quite sure he will beat aMSa and beat a majority of these players I just mentioned. Meanwhile, his most likely opponent from the other pool come final bracket has a high chance of being either Plup or Joshman or moky – all players that have given Jmook headaches. My pessimist call here: an inglorious ninth place.
Aklo
Aklo is the easy pick for “next up” – as I covered last week. Beating Zain multiple times by itself would make Aklo an instant dark horse to win a major, but it’s the fact that he’s able to do this in conjunction with turning the corner on Jmook, improving vs. the field, and demonstrating an ability to take multiple sets from Hungrybox that makes it a reality. There’s a very real possibility that Aklo ends this year as the fifth best player in the world.
However, that possibility comes in a universe where he carries his hot streak into this event. Although I think it’s significantly likelier that this happens than a total flame out, I’m erring more toward pumping the brakes than I am pressing the gas pedal. It does seem like the Link is here to stay and consistently challenge Zain, but in recent memory, aMSa and Cody Schwab are the only players in the last year or so who have consistently beaten Zain multiple consecutive times; I just think it’s a lot to ask for Aklo. He seems like a great bet to beat Jmook again; I can’t say the same though for him against aMSa. I do think he’ll probably make it out in the top four and start in winners bracket, but he’ll probably have to play a Fox or Mang0, and if he loses that, he’ll have pretty tough opponents for ninth place matches. The final verdict: Aklo is our last ninth place finisher.
Soonsay
I wrote about Soonsay’s year and his chances for potentially winning a major last week. Essentially, he’s had a year of very strong Fox ditto wins, including having sets over Cody and moky, and up-and-down performances against everyone else. His path toward winning your typical majors seems very clear in that he’s able to keep up with other elite players, but he’s typically struggled with blowing by the field and Hungrybox. Zain’s been a problem too, but unlike his peers, Soonsay at least technically has shown the ability to beat him.
With that said though, Soonsay has a very good pool for himself at this tournament, and this is a good field of competitors for him too. While he does draw Zain early, it’s better to play him in RR Pools than in the final bracket, where Zain would likely be on the other side. Meanwhile, Soonsay’s other opponents in the pool are Aklo, Jmook, aMSa, and the three lower seeds (MOF, BING, Agent). Of the higher seeds, Soonsay has defeated two of them (Aklo and Jmook) in each of his previous sets. This isn’t to say that he’s necessarily favored – and I don’t think he’s a surefire lock to defeat MOF or BING among the lower seeds – but it does point to a strong possibility that Soonsay could make the winners bracket with four or five wins here. From that point onward, he could have a run of Fox dittos (Cody, moky, Joshman, Plup, and Aklo in some order possibly) or broadly favorable matchups that could lead to a deep run. I’ll take a guess and say seventh place.
aMSa
It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t count – it was extremely exciting to see aMSa finally defeat Cody at LACS. If aMSa can gradually turn around his losing H2Hs, that would do wonders for his chances of not just winning majors, but potentially entering next year’s race for #1 as a leading contender.
At a glance, his pool at Nounsvitational seems amazing. Along with Zain, who aMSa has farmed, there’s the three lower seeds in MOF, BING, and Agent, all who seem very unlikely to defeat aMSa. Even were aMSa to lose to two players of Aklo, Jmook, and Soonsay, the odds are heavily stacked in his favor for exiting RR pools in the winners bracket. Here’s the problem: if the seeding goes as projected, it probably means aMSa will have to play one of Mang0, Cody, Plup, or moky. Now, we just saw aMSa beat Cody at an event with lesser stakes, and in fairness, he did beat moky in their last matchup, but given how hopeless his head-to-heads against them looked until quite recently, I’m hesitant to believe that these are the expected long-term results. My prediction for aMSa is an anticlimactic seventh place where he leaves the event with incredible head-to-heads from his RR pools showing, and then is somewhat screwed by a bad draw in the last bracket.
Mang0
It is very funny that the community – myself included, in a sense – has seemingly already entered “Mang0 is washed” mode only a few months after he won two back-to-back majors. All it takes is a vibe shift more than anything else for Melee fans to suddenly grow very confident in our predictions about how he’ll perform. To the average Melee fan, it’s almost practically irrelevant whether he beats Zain and Cody or loses to Lucky and Equilateral; it’s more about Mang0’s general attitude toward competing and the things we can’t really capture in the set count that determine whether or not he will win (or flame out) at any given moment.
I’m now going to say something that’s a joke, so nobody reading this is allowed to be offended. This is such a hand-crafted, totally rigged pool to float Mang0 to the winners side of bracket. Three Fox players, and a Captain Falcon in the same pool? I’m sorry, but clearly the tournament organizers of this event knew Mang0 was coming, and, as such, nicely presented a sweet platter of fast-faller fodder to him. Remember that in this format, it’s okay if Mang0 mails it in vs. Plup, Bekvin, and maybe even Junebug – as long as he beats all the fast-fallers, he will make it to winners bracket. Jokes aside, it’s really tough to predict what happens after that. You know what; let’s go with fifth place. My gut tells me he’ll exit his pool as the second or third seed and then play one of aMSa or Jmook in winners bracket before getting sent to losers, beating some fast-fallers and then running out of gas.
moky
moky’s sitting cozy right now. After years of being so close yet seeming so far, he finally came out on top of his decade-long quest to win a major, doing so in one of the most insane outcomes of Melee history in this year’s Don’t Park on the Grass. But while this specific way of achieving his dream was pretty unpredictable, the prospect of a moky win was a long-time coming: he had defeated Aklo, Cody and Hungrybox before, and gradually shown improved consistency against the field versus in years past. While he’s yet to take a set over Zain, it seems bound to eventually happen, and earlier this year, moky overcame previously large roadblocks vs. each of Mang0 and Jmook.
Speaking of which, moky’s set for quite a few rematches this event. We’ll start with rematch with Mang0 (from Collision) in pools, and I have no idea which direction that’s going to go in, given Mang0’s current “I hate Melee” phase and moky coming fresh off his first major win. That’s not the only rematch either – moky has another potential coin flip matchup against Plup, as well as yet another hard matchup in Junebug and a high octane Fox ditto against matchup specialist Joshman. It’s not that moky’s necessarily disfavored in any of these head-to-heads, but these all seem like tossups, and cumulatively, that’s just never great for his odds. If he can make it to winners bracket he’ll have more favorable draws on the other side of the aisle, but based on his pool, it does look pretty tough. I’ll say he starts in losers bracket, makes a huge run through it, but then falls at fifth place to my breakout pick.
MOF
MOF is a huge wild card at every event she enters. She’s had notable lows earlier this year that were a mix of the natural volatility you come to expect from even strong Ice Climbers mains as well as her own health issues, but more often than not, she’s a reliable bet to do pretty well. While she had a weak showing at LMMM (losing to Ben and Wevans), she also had a strong Riptide where she beat Ossify and took Zain to the brink of defeat. Her Tipped Off run, which came with wins over moky, Drephen and Chickenman400, remains her best performance of the year.
I actually like MOF’s pool quite a bit for the Nounsvitational. While Agent’s no slouch, BING’s been pretty vulnerable in the Ice Climbers matchup. If she can win at least one of these, MOF has a semi-realistic shot at beating any of Zain, Aklo, Jmook, and Soonsay – and were she to win multiple of these sets, she would have a great chance at making it out in winners. aMSa is the toughest opponent, but the magic number here, broadly speaking, is four. MOF’s most likely path to leaving pools in winners is probably beating Jmook, both of the lower seeds, and making an upset over one of the top seeds. Because we’re having fun here, I’m going to take the presumptive “over” on her performance: I think MOF becomes the underdog run of the tournament by not only making winners bracket – she’s then going to nab another win or two in the final bracket and get her first top four at a major ever.
Plup
Unless Plup suddenly decides to go to Platfight, I believe this will be his last event of the year, which means that he officially won’t qualify for SSBMRank. It’s a shame; his year’s actually been quite strong by the results, even with a major where he chose to go Samus for fun and casually whooped Jmook. With only losses to Hungrybox, Spark, Cody, and Zain on the year, he also has wins over the likes of Salt, Soonsay, Joshman, moky, Trif, and aMSa. This is a player who, with enough attendance, could have probably been in contention for top five. At the same time, it’s probably the right call to not consider him active, for what it’s worth.
Plup’s pool is interesting. First off, there’s Cody, who has won more than ten consecutive sets against him, so we have a good idea of what the expected result there is going to be. Meanwhile, Mang0 and moky seem like coin flip matches. Joshman’s a weird player for me to evaluate in terms of a matchup against Plup – on one hand, the Joshman we see today, fresh off beating Jmook multiple times and Hungrybox seems fundamentally different than the one shaking his head after losing to the Samus on FD, but it’s also still Plup. If I had to guess, I think Plup gets run over by Cody, defeats two of the spacies, and cleans up the lower seeds before having a pretty quiet run to third place.
Zain
We then get into the all-but-confirmed No. 1 of 2024 in Zain. Basically nothing is on the line for him here in terms of end-of-year consequences; with six major wins and the closest contender to him having only three major wins, it’s practically guaranteed that Zain will finish the year atop the rankings again. Everything from here on out will be related to his long-term legacy and goal of essentially entering Melee’s Mount Rushmore: Mang0, Armada, Hungrybox, and, if he succeeds enough times over the next year, Zain himself.
With that in mind, boy, this event looks tough. Between Jmook’s Sheik, aMSa’s Yoshi, Aklo’s Link, MOF’s Ice Climbers, and BING’s DK, Zain’s pool at the Nounsvitational is the type of group that would make an average Marth main potentially cry. There is a real possibility that Zain loses at least three of these sets. But the important thing is that he makes it into winners bracket. Thankfully for him, the format of the tournament may actually work out in his favor via getting his hardest matchups out of the way and doing ‘enough’ to start in winners, with these aforementioned unholy Marth-main-slaying characters on the other side of the bracket. From there, maybe Zain can enter more familiar territory – beating the top spacies the world en route to a first place finish and a seventh major for this year. For a reason I’m about to get into though, I think he falls just short here.
Cody Schwab
Cody’s basically locked the No. 2 spot up for the 2024 rankings. All considered, he was the closest to dethroning Zain, and his head-to-heads against the top echelon are not that far away, but in terms of major victories, he had half of Zain’s wins. In similar fashion to Zain, Cody’s basically playing for stakes beyond short-term results; with another major win, he would have his 12th major, just one short of Leffen and furthering the gap between himself and Mew2King (9) for seventh most majors ever.
In general, Cody tends to do really well in these type of marathon formats. I wrote about this earlier in the year when I correctly picked him to win the Eggdog Invitational, and think it’s because his strengths as a competitor lend themselves quite nicely to a format where early losses are not so punishing, and where you can get your respective ‘toughest’ matchups out of the way as long as you win ‘enough’ times to qualify for winners bracket and play your respective ‘favorable’ matchups. This might sound a little abstract, so I’ll put it into a specific prediction format.
I think Cody is going to struggle in pools. He will lose to Mang0, get made fun of on the mic afterward, and then probably drop a set to moky or Josh, but barely hold on to defeat everyone else and make the final bracket in winners. From there on out, it’s go time: Cody will suddenly look like the best player in the world after being given a bracket of players he routinely dominates. Zain might scare him briefly in grands – and it’s absolutely possible by the numbers that Zain will win the event anyway. But my heart tells me Cody does enough to win the Nounsvitational.