Internal Conflict: Fox or Sheik?

This is nothing new for me.

After over a decade of playing Super Smash Bros. Melee casually, I entered the world of competitive play late in 2013, and entered my first tournament in January of 2014. At the time, I was all about Sheik. 

I long prided myself on my spacing and bait-heavy style, as well as utilizing grabs as well as anyone. No matter who I'm using, tech-chasing is a huge strength of mine. Whether it be on flat ground or covering someone's landing on a platform, I'm pretty good at landing another hit on my opponent. 

Naturally, Sheik was a perfect fit. With a low barrier of entry when it comes to technical ability, she was quick to pick up, and I could hang with my superior brother, JKJ, and others, even though they were more experienced. 

It seemed like a perfect match, but it wasn't to last.

I've talked about this before in other posts, but I'm really not about playing lame. Sure, my style is slower paced and more about movement, but I like to be creative. Unless my opponent is playing unbelievably campy, I'm not going to sit back at all times and sit on the ledge, even with Sheik's ledge stall. 

And that's when I came to the realization: while Sheik's moveset and punish game fit my style, her neutral game — at least in the optimal sense — doesn't. 

In spring of 2014, when I began entering tournaments on a more consistent basis, I turned to Fox more and more. I constantly went back and forth between Sheik and Fox throughout the early parts of the summer before Fox became my favorite to play. My Sheik, I felt, was inconsistent. There were highs, to be sure — I once pulled a 3-to-1 stock comeback against a Fox on Yoshi's Story in a crucial game 3 with three consecutive zero-to-death punishes that included the best tech-chasing I've ever pulled off, even to this day. 

My Fox, however, has allowed me to take Soup, an incredibly talented Long Island Marth, to game 3, as well as other strong players in the region. I've moved myself into the category of respectable players, although I am still near the bottom of that tier of player. 

When it comes to matchups, I'm not a fan of Sheik dittos, especially if chain grabs are in play. I feel largely confident with my Fox against Sheiks, having disposed of three in my Apex 2015 pools before losing to Clue's Sheik in a close set to finish 5th. Even with that, I feel confident that a re-do of that set could easily go in my favor.

And that confidence and comfort in matchups extends to basically every character not named Fox, Falco or Marth. Even against characters that Sheik has an advantage against, including Falcon, Peach and Samus, I feel a lot stronger with my Fox against those characters (although I'm getting better against Falcon. Fox is natural choice against Puff as well, even though I'm confident with my Sheik in that matchup, and it just didn't make sense to use my Sheik for literally only three, albeit important, matchups.

Fox got me far Sunday in my Vermont tournament, guiding me to 7th place out of 36 competitors, including Kage and other strong Montreal competition. But Sheik is still my choice in doubles, and I've seen tremendous success against a lot of players whenever I bring her out. I've wanted to leave Sheik behind, as I feel my relative aggressiveness could work against me with that character, but many opponents — especially my brother — have felt my potential lies with Sheik, not Fox. 

I don't foresee myself dropping either character, no matter who I decide to push forward with, but I'm at a point in my competitive Melee career where I think I need to make a decision. It's hard enough to learn the game as one character, and if I'm going to improve, splitting my time evenly between the two seems counter-productive. And the more I listen to top players talk, and the more I examine my own play, my neutral is simply sloppy — no character choice will correct that. But that point also makes the choice more difficult.

So help me smashers: What direction do I go in? Fox or Sheik?

My Queen City Melee VIII recap

Getting to this a bit late, but some crazy travel for the tournament (I don't have a car of my own) and a typical Monday have gotten in the way.

That being said, what a fun tournament! Queen City Melee VIII was my second trip through Burlington to face off against the Vermont crew and the Montreal invaders was terrific. Kage the Warrior and his Ganondorf came through to take our money in both single and doubles, but he was awesome to meet and was great at providing some hype while he was watching the streamed matches. 

From a results standpoint, I was fairly content. Out of field of 36 singles entrants, I came away with a 7th-place finish, ultimately falling to Diego's Falco in a close, yet convincing, 2-0 set. 

My road to that point, however, was pretty successful. I had committed to play Fox exclusively, with the exception of pulling out my Marth for it's tournament debut if the situation presented itself. 

I earned a bye in winners, and took down Lucrid's Falco and Marth in back-to-back 4-stock defeats, 2-0, in my first matchup in Round 2 winners. Chester, the 5th-ranked player on the Montreal Melee Power Rankings and No. 2 seed in bracket, quickly sent me to loser's in a pair of 2-stocks on Dreamland. 

Now, this is a situation I've been in plenty of times, having competed in tournaments for about a year now. I've proven to be good enough to advance a round of two on the winner's side of most locals before giving way to a more established player. In turn, I'm no stranger to fighting my way through the often-perilous world of the loser's bracket.

Meep was my first opponent, someone I hadn't yet faced before. His skill level was hard to judge going in, given that I had watched him sent to loser's earlier in the day by Kage. In turn, I was not about to underestimate him.

I swiftly beat his Marth on Battlefield with two stocks remaining before he pulled out his Luigi — the character I had seen him take two stocks from Kage's Ganondorf on stream — for the second game. My Fox is made for taking out mid/low-tier characters, and I 3-stocked him to emerge victorious on Dreamland.

Next was ; (pronounced "semicolon"), who I had played in friendlies earlier, routinely two- and three-stocking with all of my characters. Audibly making it known that he had little confidence entering the set, I made fairly quick work of him to advance.

At this point, I'm in Round 5 of the loser's bracket, meaning a loss now would tie me for 9th on the day, and I was pitted against Slots, considered one of the top Vermont Fox players, alongside players such as BStuk. 

I'll detail the stage striking because I feel like stage striking in the ditto can be fairly interesting given that it is all based on personal preference. For me, I prefer to use as much space as possible to help establish my footing, as more pressure-oriented players can be slowed when not able to effectively play straight rushdown. 

Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled when Slots began by striking Dreamland, my favorite stage. I struck both Yoshi's Story and Fountain of Dreams, and I just assumed we would go to Battlefield. While top players such as Leffen and Armada enjoy the punish-heavy nature of Fox dittos on Final Destination, I was under the impression that the less-experienced Slots would opt for the standard neutral stage in Battlefield.

I was wrong.

I consider myself pretty strong in Fox dittos, especially in the punish game (although my chain-grabs are lacking), so my confidence was fairly high. Slots was an immensely worthy competitor, baiting out some poorly-spaced n-air and d-air approaches on my point. Our first game went down to the wire, with me clutching it out with some solid ledge-hop b-air edgeguarding that ended with a charged up-smash as he Fire-Foxed onto the stage.

Without hesitation, Slots chose to return to FD for the second game, and I almost considered going Marth because that close game had left my confidence a bit shaken. I was glad I stuck it out with Fox, opening a wide 3-to-1 stock advantage, using some solid punished off of grabs along the way. A 2-stock win gave me the 2-0 nod as I pushed into the top 8.

Loser's quarters would be the end of my journey, as I was matched up against Diego, a very good Montreal Falco player who had 2-1'd my Sheik at QCM6 a couple of months prior. I was determined to stay Fox, and I had a strong showing. Some dropped edgeguards in the first game allowed him to clutch out a last-stock, last-hit situation to go ahead 1-0, and he 2-stocked me in the second game, giving him the 2-0 in the Battlefield-only set.

I was disappointed, as I came in knowing Diego was the player for me to beat if I wanted a top-4 finish. That said, I was mostly satisfied with how I played, and I know that I need to drastically improve my punish game off of grabs against Falco, something my brother JKJ can help me with this summer. 

The doubles bracket went much better, with Bstuk and I notching a 3rd place, getting double-eliminated by Diego and Ministry. For first-time teammates, our synergy was acceptable enough to beat some solid teams, including Mokle-Roshi (Pikachu-Jigglypuff) and Drek-Cookie (Puff-Peach). My Sheik provided some nice support for BStuk's Fox, saving him a fair number of times from hard punishes and potentially-fatal edgeguards. Our double-Fox team against the floaty combination of Drek and Cookie proved to be the right choice, 3-0'ing them rather convincingly.

My success for the day culminated in a 5-character "Iron Man" against WyzDm. My opening strategy of Sheik turned out to be quite excellent, 4-stocking his Falcon and wiping out his Mario and taking his Fox down to a single stock before turning in for the night. If you're counting at home, that's a hefty 11 stocks my Sheik took against her 4. My Marth-FD counterpick finished his Fox without incident, and his DK — a good counterpick, I might add — could only muster a pair of stocks off my Marth. His main, Falco, finally made its appearance, losing just a stock while taking the remaining two from my Marth. I then went with my Falco to close it out, leaving my Fox and Captain Falcon just spectators in my victory. 

I had a ton of fun in my farewell (for now) to the Vermont scene, with my college graduation coming well before their next monthly tournament. It was a great tournament experience, and I look forward to my summer back on Long Island, as I plan to level up my singles play and forge a dominant team with my brother. Look out for that Sheik-Falco!