A lot has changed over the course of a year, so it’s time to put some things in perspective.
Tournaments
Last year started off with Valhalla, a new major European tournament in Denmark which had a nice Dutch delegation in attendance. No one really stood out at the tournament, but we did see both Renzo and Happymealz making bracket, upsetting their seed for the first time at an international tournament. 2019 will again start off with Valhalla, which now has over 200 Melee attendees and over 230 entrants for Smash Ultimate.
Meanwhile, the Spice tournament series continued to be at the heart of the Dutch smash scene, beating every month in Utrecht. As we ran from Spice #7 through #18, I think we can say that both Klaas and Seo didn’t miss a beat and I am very thankful for their extreme consistency in hosting both Spice and Arrakis (the smaller, biweekly tournament in Utrecht).
Another tournament series was born in March. Djoekenborg would go on to become the thing of legends, getting PR’d players to travel over 2 and a half hours for a prize pot half that of a regular tournament. The Djoekenborg tournaments in Nijmegen offered a special experience. Finally, there was an outlet for the true degenerates, as well as a tournament series centered in the east of the country. With 6 tournaments this year, the TO’s have definitely showed their support for the Dutch scene and I hope there will be many Djoekenborgs to come.
Besides gaining new tournaments, we also lost some. Supergoomba has been hosting some of the largest Dutch tournaments since Syndicate and Avalon have been discontinued. The Mission Complete series continued to grow and even saw Armada attending and praising the tournament. However, after hosting MC:XL, Supergoomba announced he had no plans to host MC tournaments in the near future, leaving the Dutch community with a lack of large tournaments.
Finally, we saw the return of JMYL to the TO life by hosting 3 Sector Z tournaments in October, November and December. These tournaments drew high attendance numbers and saw some international players as well. Sector Z #2.0 was by far the darkest timeline in The Netherlands since Daumling’s Avalon shenanigans. Fatman.spam took the tournament over Zgetto, who had risen from the dead to defend The Netherlands from the invading Ice Climbers. Jim Morrison, one of the favorites to take the tournament also took 3 of the roughest losses of his career in a single day, but redeemed himself by almost winning 3 money matches during the tournament after hours. Thanks JMYL, for hosting the best tournament series with the most cursed results!
The most important part of Dutch tournament life was the joint effort between the TO’s of Spice, Sector Z and Valhalla to create the first successful Dutch Melee circuit. The Road to Valhalla allowed players to earn points, with varying prizes depending on how well you did. The most coveted prize was a top 3 placing, earning a plane ticket and free entry to Valhalla. Besides that, there were enough prizes for 15 players! I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to JMYL, Seo and Klaas for investing in the community in such an innovative way. A lot of people were motivated to participate and there was an insane burst of tournaments in the last 3 months of 2018. I hope we can see something like this again in the future.
Players
On January 1st, 2018, the Dutch Power Ranking still ranked Zgetto, Jeapie, Adam, Ser, JP and Flippy. Notably, FoutNL was 19th! If I were to make a ranking on the January 1st, 2019, it would look very different.
Except for the OBVIOUS: Amsah has been the reigning Dutch champion since BEFORE BARACK OBAMA WAS PRESIDENT and has now moved on to retain an iron grip on his 1st place in 2018, and 2019 is probably not going to look much different. With Zgetto, Adam and Jeapie retreating from tournament life, the classical threats to Amsah have disappeared. However, the most stunning upset of the year came at Uprise Smash #1 in February 2018, where Nebbii (previously known as Avalancer) took the whole tournament over Jim Morrison, Mahie and Amsah TWICE from losers! While these were the only sets Nebbii won over Amsah the whole year, it showed Amsah was not untouchable.
Nebbii also had a great year of his own, becoming one of the best known Dutch players due to his high caliber wins and by playing a very unique character. This earned him a 2nd place on the Dutch power ranking, a 10th place on HEIR top 50 European rankings and multiple fly-outs, including DPOTG in the USA. I am also 100% sure that he will be featured on the MIOM top 100.
FoutNL is another player who has had a stellar 2018, climbing from 19th to 7th in The Netherlands in a period of 6 months. In 2018 he has wins over some of his biggest demons, including Nebbi, Stijn and myself, and very few losses, setting him up for a nice spot in the upcoming 2019 Winter PR. By attending a large number of international tournament he has also gained some European-wide fame. You go girl, keep up the grind.
We also saw the return of some old-school players, with Zgetto, JMYL and JP coming back for some tournaments in the Fall of 2018. Epikfaal, while never really gone, has picked up his A-game again and took some big wins and was in the running for the Road to Valhalla until the very end. We also saw some players becoming inactive, such as Pasi, Atlas and Vliegende Snor. Two risers to keep an eye out for are Nuckels and Skullbro, both having good wins and bad losses each. They have improved significantly since the start of 2018 and it will be interesting to see if their growth will continue at such a pace in 2019. Finally, my dark horse for the newcomers in 2019 is Quasi. Catch him on the 2020 PR, mark my words.
The attendance awards go to Happymealz, FoutNL, Zeventien and myself, all having attended over 30 PR-eligible events this year.
Community
The Dutch community has not changed much through 2018. If anything, we have been quite stagnant. Internationally, no one has really broken through, the scene didn’t grow much, no new large tournaments were established. It’s important to understand you can’t always be growing, but I hope we can again grow in 2019. I feel there has been an active core of Melee players of roughly 50 players, who attend most tournaments, with many people coming and going throughout the year. I’m happy that the core has been consistently active and I am very proud of the large number of tournaments throughout the year (I estimate about 40 in The Netherlands). I was also especially proud of The Netherlands sending 64!!! people to Heir 5, making up 8% of the total attendees.
Personally, I think the Melee community is not properly leveraging the release of Smash Ultimate. Last Spice I saw 10 people I didn’t know, who joined because they had just seen the release of Ultimate and wanted to try Melee. I come from Brawl myself, so I think it is absolutely vital to also encourage people who start with Ultimate to try Melee (some might find themselves liking it more). I think the best way to attract these players is by hosting combined tournaments, and I think it is in the interest of both communities to host combined tournaments again, which hasn’t happened on a large scale since Syndicate 2017. I will reach out to a few guys from the Ultimate community to see whether they are interested in this.
The mode of communication has changed a bit without many people talking about it. While previously Facebook was the hub of the community, I have noticed a large drop-off in the amount I use it myself, as well as how effective communication across the platform is. I personally hate Facebook so the sooner we get rid of it the better, but we still have a Facebook group with over 1000 people for both Smash games and new people asking to join the group every day. The Dutch Whatsapp group has also lost some of its activity from last year. This is mostly due to people moving to the Discord platform to communicate. I do like Discord myself, as it allows for channels and announcements, is a bit more open than a Whatsapp group (though not by much) and is less intrusive. I still think we can do a better job of getting more people to join, as it is a nice central hub to communicate tournaments or certain vital information. Seo has also created a great hub for tournament info and data: https://www.smashcalendar.nl/. I recommend everyone to bookmark this and check it out.
I want to end the year by thanking everyone in the Dutch community for keeping my favorite hobby alive. The TO’s for the most tangible contribution, the tournaments that I love so very much. The high ranked players for pushing myself, the unranked players for their continued enjoyment of a game they love and growth of the community. Those who spam a lot in the Discord for keeping the community alive and kicking. Those who travel internationally for keeping The Netherlands on the map. Those on Twitter for using the most enjoyable platform to communicate. Thanks for giving me something to enjoy while I was finishing up my Master’s degree and now that I’m an unemployed bum. A special thanks goes out to the Rotterdam degens and the attached crew.
See you all in 2019 and let’s keep Melee in The Netherlands alive and kicking for as long as we are around.
Jim Morrison's Melee Tidbits 