By Max Connell
During 2019 our goal as a Smash scene has been to travel more often to other parts of the state/country. Our scene, while dedicated, is reasonably small and exposure to more play styles is a key factor in improvement. Over the first half of the year this has meant trips to Hobart for Cooldown eSports tournaments, Tassie Fighter Con, our state’s major FGC event, and most recently travelling to Melbourne for Battle Arena Melbourne 11.
The trip started with an early flight and a slow day on Friday before we made it through the line to get our passes. Once inside, we were all astounded at how massive the space was and how many setups there were, creating a feeling of excitement for the weekend to come. Competing from Launceston we had LargeMarge (Cloud), Gerald (Incineroar), RNGeoff (Daisy) and MaxKiNG (Palutena). While none of us made it out of pools everyone played well and leveled up their game. We poured the rest of our support into Hobart’s own Luma, who defied a lot of mainlanders expectations and proved how good we know him to be. Besides Smash, the game we all had in common, the group participated in other events including Pokken Tournament, Rivals of Aether and Dragonball FighterZ.
The weekend overall was quite successful for our scene. We didn’t win or place highly in any events but everyone got a lot out of their matches, exceeded their own individual expectations and cheered very loudly for our fellow Tasmanian’s Luma and Tezz who placed highly in their games of choice (Super Smash Bros Melee/Ultimate and BlazBlue Cross Tag respectively). The experiences we had were amazing and the people we shared them with were even more so. Now we return to our weeklies in Launceston, but we are all hyped to return next year to BAM12!
“I should have bought 4 bananas so I can have one in each pocket,” - Ben “LargeMarge” Gamble