The first quarter of 2024 is about to end, and I won’t lie: the top brass results have been fairly predictable. Cody Schwab won Genesis and slightly underperformed at Collision; Zain won Collision and Full Bloom. Anyone and their grandmother could have predicted both of these players to win. Although maybe not myself, if history’s any indication.
Look beneath the winners, however, and you’ll find some fairly interesting developments across the rest of the top echelon. More or less, each of moky, Hungrybox, Mango, and Jmook have been the most present challengers to the top two, and these players all have their own separate storylines to make them compelling. After them come two unpredictable wild cards in aMSa and Leffen. Now, the good news is that all of them are going to be present this very weekend at Battle of BC 6.
I’ve recapped the history of Battle of BC before – its inspiring rise from a college-campus-held regional to prime major has essentially marked a new era for both the Pacific Northwest and West Coast Canada. Although I will not be attending this year’s Battle of BC, I can personally attest to Vancouver being an amazing location. Through consistently bringing attendees and top-level representation, this series has more than earned its spot in the community. After Genesis, The Big House, Super Smash Con, and GOML, Battle of BC is right there as far as “majors” are concerned.
For today’s Monday Morning Marth, I’m going to jump right into the top eight seeds of this tournament. In addition to recapping each of their individual years, I’ll be comparing it to what happened last year around this time – or, if applicable, at Battle of BC 5. After that, I will break down their brackets at Battle of BC 6, briefly talk about their chances, and broadly explain what’s on the line for this upcoming weekend.
Brief Summary
If you want to read my Genesis X simulation project, you can check it out here. For the most part, I kept the methodology similar, but pushed it downward downward. Instead of picking 32 players to assess for the event, I chose 16; unsurprisingly the top 16 projected seeds at Battle of BC 6. I have little reason to believe this group of players will change, so I’m fairly confident that they will be present in some fashion. DQs could mess this up, but for the purpose of this column, I’m primarily interested in assessing the top eight seeds.
Once again, in similar fashion to my previous major simulation, I’m floating “losers” of Top 16 in the winners side to respective spots in the Top 16 in the losers side due to time constraints. I then slightly adjusted my head-to-heads and estimated ‘win-rates’ from Genesis X onward manually. One example of a categorical change I made was giving more favorable win-probabilities for the top eight seeds against everyone else. To measure win probabilities, I attempted to take a more dynamic approach; assessing how each of the top eight seeds performed against the ‘groups’ of players beneath them attending this event and within the Top 30 of 2023 SSBMRank, and then manually adjusting the win-rates as necessary, with very few examples of “coin flips” (such as Soonsay vs. Leffen) existing between seeding underdogs and technical favorites with a history of having lost to the underdog.
The last thing I’ll mention here is that I once again created a rough “double elimination” bracket structure within Google Sheets, with random integers measured against win-probabilities to determine who would advance in a bracket. However, while I was not able to save the specific matches that occurred in each bracket, I saved every single “Top 16” that happened, and from what I can tell, Top 16 was late enough in the bracket to where “double jeopardy” (two players competing in significant subsequent fashion) was not a significant concern. Maybe it will be for a future column.
Mango
Mango fans might be disappointed in his lackluster results” ninth place at Genesis, fifth place at Full Bloom, and fifth place at Collision. In fact, he’s made it clear that he’s not only annoyed with his performances; he somehow thinks the seeding for Battle of BC is horrible. But in all seriousness, it’s not for a lack of effort. He’s thinking about the game every day, grinding practice, making content out of his thoughts on the game, and by all means is fairly dialed in.
Encouragingly, this is a huge step from last year. Back then, Mango was totally checked out from competing and absent from the broader scene, even as a streamer. After his return at Battle of BC 5, in which Jmook beat him and then an inexplicable Mango Marth appearance led to S2J beating him for ninth place, Mango stock was perhaps as low as it had ever been. Although the results don’t show it yet, I do think that Mango is probably in a better spot with competing.
I’m going to sound like a broken record here, and I’ve certainly fallen for this trap before, but Mango has a really great path from Top 16 onward at this event. Assuming the seeding stays constant and that nobody suffers an upset, he currently has Axe and Cody Schwab to get into the winners side of top eight. From that point onward, Mango would have the projected winner of aMSa vs. moky into a winner’s finals appearance vs. any of Leffen, Zain, Hungrybox, and Jmook. At the very least, I think it is somewhat possible that Mango’s Falco plays on fire throughout the weekend and defeats a slew of Fox players to win Battle of BC 6. The irony of his “bad” seeding is that it gave him, in all likelihood and relatively speaking, a strong path.
Leffen
Leffen’s 2024 obviously has more to do with what’s happened off-screen. Although Leffen still had a strong fifth place showing at Genesis X – where he literally only lost to the two best players in the world – he suddenly announced after the event that he was retiring. Now, maybe I’m wrong here, and I mean this with respect, but I feel like everyone involved in Smash figured this was already the case. Nonetheless, Leffen recently said he was coming back to Battle of BC 6 to conclude his Melee career on a less sudden note.
In similar fashion, we were wondering how much of Leffen we’d even get to see around this time last year, as he had only attended Genesis 9. He’d go on to finish a modest fifth at Battle of BC 5 before then winning LACS 5 and, as most of you know, proceed to take the rest of the year off and functionally retire. As for everyone else, we’ve currently lived in the era of Cody/Zain, as no one else has won a major since last July. Is this really Leffen’s goodbye tournament? What does a goodbye tournament really mean nowadays? I don’t really know the answer to these questions. It’s clear that, at the very least, we can take this as Leffen telling people that Melee is not a priority for him any more.
Leffen’s lack of applicable data made this a difficult tournament to evaluate. But given what we have from last year, as well as what we know about Cody’s and moky’s performances vs. the field, I have to imagine that for this particular event, he is probably marginally comparable to moky in terms of his win probabilities vs. Mango (strongly disadvantaged, though not hopeless) and non-top eight seeds (strongly advantaged) and comparable to Jmook as far as similar chances vs. Zain (coin flip). I don’t really know how he’s expected to perform vs. aMSa and Jmook, so I treated those as slightly disfavorable (40 percent win probability). We’ve seen three years or so of Leffen having Hungrybox’s number (75 percent win probability); I see no reason to view him as anything other than a favorite there. And if Leffen could somehow win this iteration of Battle of BC, it would be a historic ending to one of the greatest careers ever.
Jmook
Let’s not mince words: Jmook’s last nine months of results have been pretty underwhelming for the standards he has for himself, with his recent Collision showing leading Jmook to finish out of the top eight. While it hasn’t all been bad (see his runner up performance at Full Bloom), it’s a far cry from where he seemed to be trending last year.
What was happening at this point in the season last year looked historic. Jmook had not only broken the solo Sheik major win curse; he had won two majors. He was on the verge of becoming the first player to win three consecutive majors to start any SSBMRank season. Even his modest Battle of BC 5 fourth place came with a win over Leffen. He overwhelmingly looked like the favorite to close out the year.
The big problem is obviously Hungrybox, who Jmook is projected to play in the winners quarterfinals. But even beyond that, I don’t think Jmook has very good matchups within the top eight seeds. If you try to imagine what a Jmook major win looks like, it probably involves some combination of moky, Mango, Leffen, and Zain. Two of those head-to-heads are currently in the other direction. Combined with each of aMSa, Hungrybox, and Cody being historically difficult opponents, this tournament looks unusually difficult for Jmook’s chances of winning. If Jmook pulled it off though, it would be an unusually strong victory for him, and especially satisfying from a narrative standpoint. Imagine Jmook breaking his major slump by defeating practically everyone he struggles against.
aMSa
Here, we have an interesting player in aMSa. This tournament marks his return to the big stage after his excellent third place at Genesis. It’s especially fitting too – I love the storyline of aMSa returning to Vancouver after a bit of break. This was the same place where he lived at the peak of activity within the scene. We’ve been spoiled by aMSa’s consistent activity in the scene for most of the last two years; it’s easy to forget that the current state of affairs, where him being in Japan keeps him relatively far from top level practice, has been the majority of his career.
At this time last year, aMSa was actually off one of his worst tournament showings ever at Collision 2023, where he got 13th place (which followed up his disappointing ninth place at Genesis 9). And yet aMSa would immediately look like the best player in the world at Battle of BC 5 for most of the tournament – only to have his heart broken by one of his two biggest demons. He’d go on to have great performances for the rest of the year, but he’d fall short of winning a major.
In a similar fashion to Jmook, aMSa’s bracket is extremely difficult. Facing moky before top eight is basically a death knell for his chances, and if he wins that, it’s still somewhat likely that aMSa will have to play Cody. But having a strong matchup vs. Zain is an undeniable boost to his chances. And if he can avoid the two Fox players – which isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility – aMSa’s return to Vancouver has a decent shot at being a glorious comeback from last year’s heartbreak.
moky
In the process of writing this column, I had the idea of “moky Claus” – basically just moky but dressed up like Santa Claus, checking a list of all the players he needed to beat. This year, so far, has been him doing that, most notably with Jmook and Mango. AWhile his placements look fairly similar to last year, advancements he’s made in these head-to-heads have been a big step forward for his chances of winning majors.
With that said, it is funny that I mention that, because last year, he was my pick to win Battle of BC 5. In typical Monday Morning Marth Curse fashion, he ended up losing to Soonsay and Leffen for ninth. Around this time of year, however, he was slowly becoming more of a major contender, though it ended up with moky reaching a stunning No. 4 spot on SSBMRank. Naturally, you’d think the next step for him would be winning a major.
I was fairly low on moky’s chances of winning Genesis X because of his difficult bracket. In a sense, I think this tournament is the opposite: he has a favorable shot of winning because of having aMSa as his projected WQF match. Among the top seeds, only Zain currently looks like a long-term obstacle, and we’ve seen moky just recently overcome two of those for himself. But with that in mind, I do think that a slight “nerf” to his chances comes from when he’s likely to play aMSa – before he plays Zain. If he played someone else, and if aMSa was on Zain’s side of the bracket, there’s a chance that moky’s chances would improve. All signs point to him needing to defeat Zain (or hope that Leffen, someone who’s lately been a challenge himself for moky, or Hungrybox make it there instead). That still puts his chances in underdog territory.
Hungrybox
Are we seeing the return of Clutchbox? If the results and game tape from last Collision show anything, it’s that this is very much a possibility. Apparently boosted by Mew2King coaching, he not only defeated moky; he double eliminated Cody Schwab and took Zain fairly close in grand finals. Yes, it was technically his 12th consecutive loss, and yet at this point, even the near-wins are steps forward from boring beat-downs.
On that note, a boring beatdown is exactly what happened to Hungrybox last year at Battle of BC 5 match, where Zain beat him in the winners bracket. Sure, Hungrybox kept the major top eight streak alive, right before Leffen clutched out a game five win. If you want to note what was happening to Hungrybox specifically in March 2023, the truth is, he wasn’t really in too different of a spot. His Genesis performance in January 2023 was a solid fifth place where he beat Leffen (and lost to moky and Plup), he had uncharacteristically split sets with KoDoRiN, struggled with aMSa, but was still making top eights.
Hungrybox appears to have a great bracket before the top eight, as he has KoDoRiN into Jmook. Then, his chances take a nosedive, with his next projected opponent being Zain or Leffen. This is the type of bracket where Hungrybox has a lot of “deep run” potential and a high floor, but because he has to most likely defeat Zain to win the tournament, he’s basically relegated to being an outside contender. I’m not even going to talk about his other head-to-heads here, because in the last twelve sets he’s played vs. Zain, he’s lost all of them. It has a great argument to be the single worst head-to-head among the top eight seeds, and quite possibly the worst matchup within major contenders since the days of Mango vs. Wizzrobe. Unfortunately, you basically need to defeat (or dodge) Zain in order to showcase that you can win a major. In this case, even if he dodges Zain, Hungrybox will still have to overcome Leffen, who has won five of their last seven sets.
Cody Schwab
After taking the first month off to fool around with Falco and then winning Genesis X in January, Cody entered Collision 2024 and had a truly horrible performance…third place, where Hungrybox double eliminated him. “Horrible.” All jokes aside, he’s clearly still a huge favorite to win this tournament, if not still the best player in the world. One event doesn’t change what happened at the previous five, which is why Cody is the first seed here (though not my pick to win the event).
Around this time last year, Cody was fairly close to winning majors, finishing second and third at each of Genesis and Collision. He’d later win Major Upset and Battle of BC 5, and those wins would play a role in effectively tying him and Zain for the No. 1 spot of the year. Everyone in Smash knows what happened after that: the two went on to settle it in an unprecedented first-to-ten where Cody came out on top and secured the official highest rank in the world.
I’m going to take a detour here for a bit – if only because Cody’s head-to-heads speak for themselves: he’s basically a coin flip or strongly favored vs. everyone. In a way, I basically feel like his “bracket” is practically irrelevant. Instead, I want to zoom out for a bit and note some bigger stakes. As it stands, Cody has nine major victories: the seventh most of all-time, tied with Mew2King, and right behind each of Leffen, Ken, Zain, Armada, Mango, and Hungrybox. A victory for Cody here would give him the edge over Mew2King and place him only three behind Leffen.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I will say that I am only using the term “major” in a technical sense through adhering to Liquipedia criteria. Looking briefly through the Liquipedia database, I noticed that some events like Evo West 2007 and Evo East 2007 are curiously not included as majors, among other smaller tournaments that Mew2King won over Top 5 players, such as different iterations of the C3 series. In a future column, I may analyze the merits of Liquipedia’s major classification system and see if there are any alternative ways to determine major status for events. As far as each of Mango and Zain are concerned, I have included notable online events that each of them won during the rollback/pandemic period of events (roughly LACS 2 to LACS 4) and I ultimately decided to count individual seasons of SCL as the broad equivalent of majors rather than individual weeks, due to the unusual single elimination format of the series.
Zain
Now we get into Zain, the champion of Collision 2024, Full Bloom 2024, and, all things considered, the most successful player of the year so far. While he and Cody haven’t played yet – and aMSa did double eliminate Zain from Genesis – he’s currently positive vs. everyone else he’s shown up against in any kind of serious capacity. And by that, I mean any tournament where he isn’t throwing games to Maelstrom or Juicebox.
Around this point of 2023, Zain was the defending world No. 1 and he was suffering heartbreak. His second place at Collision and distant fifth place at Genesis were far cries from his peaks in 2022, and it would continue at Battle of BC 5, where aMSa and Cody sent him out of the tournament at third place. It didn’t stop him from dominating the middle of the year, where he won four majors, but it ended up being the difference between The Match happening and Zain locking up number one.
Now, unlike Cody, I do think Zain’s bracket path here is especially favorable to his chances, and unusually so. Granted, he still has to get through Leffen, which I’d consider his second toughest opponent here (aMSa being first), but if he can do this, he’ll be rewarded with a showdown vs. Hungrybox, who has statistically been a dormant for Zain in recent memory, or Jmook, who’s much harder but who Zain just won a tournament over. Cody and him haven’t actually played in a long time; I see no reason to consider that anything other than a tossup, and Zain is heavily favored vs. anyone I haven’t already mentioned here. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to choose Zain as my pick to win Battle of BC 6.
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