February 11, 2020
Tom Anderson
Couch Warriors / BAM Path To EVO
This month’s CouchWarriors QLD Ranbat of 2020 was held on Saturday the 1st of February at George St Brisbane. Here’s a summary of the results in every game and how the top matches played out. A complete listing of match results and brackets for each game can be viewed on Smash.gg here.
Results for SFV, MK11, Tekken 7, and Smash U count towards the standings for the BAM Path To EVO series for that game, which can be viewed here.
Jason “SLD|Xiah” Nguyen shook things up this month by making 3rd place, while Dale Roy and Ervin-Jason “pahnda” Garanovic enjoyed another close dual for supremacy.
Top 3 For Street Fighter V at the #CWQLD February Ranking Battle!
? Dale
? @superpahnda
? Xiah#CWRanbat pic.twitter.com/Z7lQgFaXwZ— CouchWarriors (@CouchWarriors) February 4, 2020
Chang Seop “Rest” Park was back to claim his crown again as ruler of QLD Tekken. His road was not flawless however, suffering a shock 0-2 loss to George Knightley in the upper bracket before bouncing back. Knightley eventually finished 4th.
It was a big day of showing up for Alexander Bayusuto “Captain_Clueless” Wanengkirtyo, who minted his first podium finish in DBFZ with a complete run of the losers bracket! Getting knocked down immediately by Steven “Stev” Holley to start the day, Captain_Clueless strung together 5 winning sets to make Grand Finals, but couldn’t stop Mustella from returning to the top of the ranbat field after 2 months away.
All credit to Andrew “Shadrew” Isokangas – it’s not easy to consistently hold the top spot in such a contested game. But the hot story of this month was Trung-Duong “DJ|Kwaksy” N., who raised his standings in the QLD scene with an impressive 2nd place finish. His bracket was a killers row of the state’s very best, but he ran through Shadrew, Ben “411|Ben Gold” Gold and Ariel “QLD|Ari” Hemat-Siraky like a man possessed. Despite falling to Shadrew at the finish line it was a truly memorable tournament for a player trying to break into the QLD top 10.
Both players had to feel out the uncommon Ness/Ken matchup and associated weirdness like this sequence.
After missing out on doubles 1st place for the first time since September last month, Big Ben Gold came roaring back alongside schooner to scoop up another win. This return to form was made easier by not having to go through the team of Shadrew and Negima, who were upset in their first match by Harry “BaM|Python” Chiem and Lachlan “Loki” McKay!
The first Melee Doubles results out of a QLD ranbat in a while were interesting to see. On the one hand, Sam “Auro” White and Gerard “smopup” Salonen are among the state’s top Melee players and exactly who you’d expect to take this tournament. But playing against them in Grand Finals were DBFZ phenomenon Mustella and James “JediLink” Lyons – neither of whom even entered the Melee Singles event. To see them beat Marv & XP2000 in back-to-back sets was certainly eye-opening.
Top 2 for Ultra Street Fighter IV at the #CWQLD February Ranking Battle!
? @superpahnda
? ShroomyD#CWRanbat pic.twitter.com/KmLEfbyEdK— CouchWarriors (@CouchWarriors) February 4, 2020
Top 3 For Fantasy Strike at the #CWQLD February Ranking Battle
? @isKaiDASH
? @BattleDolphin
? @jwai7#CWRanbat pic.twitter.com/DO9NgNRi52— CouchWarriors (@CouchWarriors) February 4, 2020
Not sure whether this is a Rook clap or just an attempt to steal KaiDASH’s hair and Samson-like power.
Congratulations to all of our top-placed competitors from February! You can find details of future ranbat events on the CouchWarriors Facebook page. And of course, if you have any great anecdotes or images from CouchWarriors tournaments, send them to me on Twitter or email to get them included in the writeup!
