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Melee Shakes Up at EVO 2018

Day 2 of Evo has seen many different upsets in all games. Most notably, Daigo Umehara losing to Dominican player Rise CABA in Street Fighter V. In Smash, the top players have always reigned supreme throughout 2017 and 2018. These players include: Team Liquid Hunrgybox, Alliance Armada, C9 Mango, Echo Fox MVG Mew2King, Panda Global Plup, and TSM Leffen. Day 2 of Evo saw Mew2king face off against Armada in the Top 12 loser’s bracket. Mew2king started strong with a dominant performance on Marth against Armada’s Peach finishing with a 2 stock lead. The second game highlighted Armada’s stage control as he clutched out a win on Yoshi’s Story on his last stock. The third game showed why Armada has been blessed by the Melee gods during the runback on Fountain of Dreams. Armada pulled a Stitch, a very powerful version of Peach’s turnip pull with a 1.72% chance of pulling. He managed to almost instakill Mew2king’s 3rd stock and did enough damage on his 4th to finish the win. Mew2king was knocked out at 13th place.

 

Armada moved on to face  world rank 16, Swedish Delight. The first game started very even on Battlefield, but Swedish managed to skillfully edge guard Armada’s Peach with Sheik even with her floating abilities. In game two, it was neck and neck Swedish’s Sheik vs Armada’s Fox. Armada managed to put Swedish down 1-2 stocks, but Swedish’s combo game brought it to a 1-1 stock score with him only having 34%. However, Armada reached into his bag and pulled out another clutch as he was blessed with the mountain stage on Pokemon Stadium. He took advantage of the high elevation and low ceiling to knock Swedish off the top of the map. The match deciding game was played on Yoshi’s Story. It was a close start, but Swedish turned on the gas on the 2-2 stock. He comboed Armada to 129% and edge guarded him to take the lead. Armada quickly brought it back, but once Swedish took stage control, Armada was locked out and defeated.

 

Today showed many signs of life for the Melee community as Swedish was the first player to beat Armada that was not in the top 6 since 2012. Two of the best players were eliminated from the tournament and Evo won’t be seeing the same finals as last year for Melee. Tune in today to watch the conclusion of Evo, you won’t want to miss it.