Month: July 2017

Acting as the final Smash 4 major before Evo, players of all stripes descended on Esports Arena for 2GGC: ARMS Saga last weekend. Hosting events for both Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and ARMS, the tournament was the place to put the finishing touches on any potential strategies and size up opponents before meeting them in the Evo bracket. It was the turn of world’s best Rosalina and number four on the PGR to take the gold at this Saga, with RNG|Dabuz claiming the belt after a grueling two-set Grand Finals against TSM|ZeRo.

It wasn’t an easy path to victory for Dabuz, with a fair share of his sets going to game five. His first roadblock was against Locus, who was working on a clean 3-0 for the first half of the set. Dabuz was able to steel his nerves though, with a ridiculously early Luma kill in game four giving him the momentum to finish the set 3-2. Ranai was next, with Dabuz managing to avenge his 3-0 loss at CEO with a 3-1 victory. Dabuz never let Ranai set up his projectile wall, harassing him in the air at every opportunity and forcing him to play on the back foot.

His next opponent in Winners’ Top 8 was Ranai’s static doubles partner and Cloud user 2GG|komorikiri. The Rosalina/Cloud match-up is notoriously bad for Rosalina, yet Dabuz managed to make the match-up even. Similar to his match versus Ranai, Dabuz pursued komorikiri relentlessly off-stage, forcing the Cloud to either burn his Limit or fall to his doom. Komorikiri did answer back to bring the match to game five, but the stars were clearly aligned for Dabuz.

The next three sets saw Dabuz doing battle against ZeRo, with Dabuz triumphing 3-1 in Winners’ Finals. The first set of Grands saw ZeRo switching from Diddy to Cloud, hoping to capitalize on the match-up advantage and succeeding where komorikiri failed. The switch worked, with ZeRo forcing a bracket reset with a 3-2 victory. The success was short-lived though, as Dabuz fired back with a 3-0 over ZeRo’s Cloud to win the entire tournament. It looks like Dabuz has really cracked the Cloud match-up, so players can no longer rely on a pocket Soldier 1st Class to beat his Rosalina.

The other notable performance of ARMS Saga has to be from SoCal native Charliedaking, who managed to make Winners’ Side of Top 8 ahead of players like CLG|VoiD, Ranai and even fellow Fox main MSF|Larry Lurr. After an astonishing 2-0 victory over LG|Abadango in pools, Charliedaking took out CLG|Nakat 3-2 and then DNG|Kameme 3-0 to qualify for Top 8. Not only that, but he managed to take ZeRo to game 5 in his first match of Top 8. Keep in mind that Charlie did not make the PGR–something that will no doubt be rectified when PGR v4 comes out. He was eventually eliminated by KEN’s Sonic, but a fifth place finish at the last major ahead of Evo is a good omen indeed.

Speaking of KEN, he is getting ever closer to finally winning an American major. The Japanese number 1 took out players like NAKAT, Kameme, VoiD, Larry Lurr, P1|Tweek and Eim during his tournament run, and he took ZeRo all the way to game five in their Losers’ Finals set. Based on bracket projections, KEN is scheduled to fight both VoiD and ZeRo back to back at Evo and with it being best of three, KEN might be causing quite a few upsets in Las Vegas.

Elsewhere in bracket, Vinnie turned a few heads by defeating StDx|Falln and Locus, while Cosmos made quite the return to offline competition by winning against NCJacobT, BSD|Aardvark and Vinnie. His Corrin still looks as deadly as ever, and a ninth place finish ahead of Evo certainly bodes well for the future. As for the Little Macs invited to ARMS Saga, Noble|Sol and BL|Lazyboredom managed to make top 64, with Sol actually taking the ARMS event. It seems mastery of the sweet science does translate across games.

With over half of the 2GG Championship Series now complete, ZeRo is currently at the top of the 2GGC leaderboard, with Dabuz in second and komorikiri in third. There is quite the points gulf between Dabuz and komorikiri, so there is still time to win a place at the Championship.

You’ll no doubt be looking forward to Evo after watching ARMS Saga, so make sure to check your favorite player’s path to Top 8 over on the Evo smash.gg page. If you need some ideas for your Evo fantasy team, make sure to check out our Smash 4 Evo preview for a list of eight players that could make some waves this coming weekend.

RESULTS:

1. RNG|Dabuz (Rosalina and Luma/USA)
2. TSM|ZeRo (Diddy Kong, Cloud/USA)
3. KEN (Sonic/Japan)
4. CLG|VoiD (Sheik, Fox/USA)
5. LH|Charliedaking (Fox/USA)
5. 2GG|komorikiri (Cloud, Sonic/Japan)
7. tsu (Lucario, Ryu/Japan)
7. P1|Tweek (Cloud, DK/USA)

Sources: 2GGaming; smash.gg