Smash Summit 14 is fast approaching. It’s set up to be a climatic tournament for Melee, coming after one of the game’s most exciting few months in quite a while. The tournament, hosted by Beyond the Summit, will be kicking off over November 3-6th.
With a prize pool over $30,000 on offer, this event is one of Melee’s bigger events, following up huge tournaments like the Ludwig Invitational, and upsets like the first Yoshi major win.
Beyond the Summit will feature some of the top Smash Bros players. The event is sponsored by Papa Johns, Coinbase, and Red bull, which should avoid at least one of the problems from the Ludwig tournament.
Smash Summit 14 packs a solid roster
Smash Summit 14 is going to have a fairly long format, with multiple rounds just for the players to fight against each other again in the bracket at the end. This will give plenty of chances to see different match-ups between these invited players. The tournament is just singles for Melee, with three stages to the event.
As usual, players kick off with a group stage. Here 4 teams of 4 players face each other in a round-robin format. All players from this stage move through to the next, but some will skip to the last stage. Some players move directly to the final bracket, with 1st place in this stage moving to the winners’ round.
Gauntlet Stage sees players shuffled back into new groups, this time in pools of 3. Players get 1 or 2 sets against each other to filter through. Just like with the last round, 1st place moves directly through to the winners’ bracket. In the final bracket, we get double elimination. Seeding in the winners or losers bracket is determined by how players sat in the earlier rounds.
Players at Summit 14 and narratives to watch for
Smash Summit 14 is an invitational so it’s sporting one of the more stacked rosters for the game. All of the major players are attending, but there are some specific players and matchups to watch out for.
Zain is probably the favourite heading into the event. He’s been on a crazy run this year, really only beaten by what MKLeo is doing in Ultimate. He’s taken 1st at the Ludwig Invitational, Shine 2022, Pound, Genesis 8, and more. While he’s dropped to second a few times in the interim, he looks like he’s back on top so it’ll be interesting to see how he takes the invitational.
Hungrybox and Leffen attending will also be worth watching if they face each other. Leffen’s loss to Hungrybox at the Ludwig Invitational lead to a lot of drama, after he reacted in the way he typically does. It’ll be worth watching to see if he can win back against Hungrybox, or if he’ll continue to dominate the controversial player with his Jigglypuff skills.
Also invited are iBDW, and aMSa who is still on a hot streak playing Yoshi. Each of these has a recent history which gives fans something to watch at the tournament. These are all of the invited players at Melee:
Invited Players
Zain
Hungrybox
aMSa
Leffen
Wizzrobe
iBDW
Mango
Jmook
Plup
Pipsqueak
Crowdfunded Players
Jflex
Axe
KoDoRiN
Ralph
Qualified from TBH 10
Soonsay
Qualified from DH Rotterdam 2022
Professor Pro
Beyond the Summit after Smash Summit 14
It’s recently been announced that Beyond the Summit are cancelling some DOTA operations, specifically, not hosting DPC next year. Beyond that, they’re likely to shut down their DOTA operations altogether.
Smash and other events wont end anytime soon thouh. In fact, it looks like they’ll be switching their focus entirely over to the remaining titles, which could mean more events packed closer together, and a pretty healthy approach for the game in the long run! Dota’s crisis and loss from Beyond the Summit, might be Smash’ gain.