Going to Mars: Salt the Roads 2025

Another tournament write-up by mars!

I know it has been a while, but I’m doing another bracket writeup! 

I’m writing this on March 3rd, the day after the Syracuse regional Salt The Roads. I certainly have some thoughts as a player, a TO, and a bit of a stats nerd, so I figured I’d talk about them here!

My Bracket 

To recap the day, Cakebutts and I hit the road to Syracuse around 9am. Fairly smooth sailing all the way to Cuse, a little under 2.5 hours each way.  

The event was running somewhat behind, and doubles had not yet started when we got to the venue a few minutes after 11. I thought “well, more time for me to go eat” and went off with KYOU and OCULUS to go get some food. After a bit of a side quest, seeming to only find places that were closed or did not even serve, like, a proper meal – we made a stop at The Whiskey Coop.

Thankfully nicklebackair, the lead TO of the event and Syracuse University’s Esports Program Manager, let us know that dubs was going a little slow so that singles wouldn’t start until 1pm.

After scarfing down lunch, I sit down for my first match against the S-Tier peach player Venus. 

I could tell right off the bat that Venus had been prepping for Marth, and she was playing the matchup pretty well. I think my experience from years of playing vs Clay, pho shiz, maddy, and others, andmy patience during our games 2 and 3 on dreamland, was able to give me the edge. Very well played by her though, and I’m excited to see her continue to improve in the future. 3-0 in my first round, and now I wait for the winner of SwebBy and itsronde.

The problem now, is that SwebBy and his teammate ayeGiohh are making a MONSTER run through the doubles bracket. 

After a game 5 win over CR’s codeman and Kogs, the pair fell to OG Kid and Zanya game 5 in winners quarters. Seeing as they are newly christened top 100 players, with OG Kid achieving rank 97 and Zanya rank 54, that is a very respectable loss.

In losers bracket, Gio and Sweb really turned on the jets, taking out Jboss and rainy 3-0, Blooky and Legion 3-0, Avie and Bing (Rank 36) 3-1, Agent (Rank 53)  and Pig 3-0, winning the runback with OG Kid and Zanya 3-1, before falling to Holiday (Rank 100) and Boyd (Rank 78 in ‘19). Truly an incredible run. A problem for me though because through all of this intense doubles action – I have to sit and wait for SwebBy to be free to play his set against me. 

After what felt like 3 hours of waiting (who knows, maybe it was? I’d have to cross reference the vod) I am finally able to play my second set vs SwebBy.

Truthfully, this is not a matchup I prep for. There are no Ice Climbers players in the Capital Region, and there haven’t been for several years. As I walk back to the venue from the restroom before going to play my set, I see Maher and ask “Maher, what do you do against Ice Climbers?” he responds “I down tilt a lot and camp the fuck out of the platform.” 

With that sage advice in tow, I sit down for my set. I remember being fairly shaky since I hadn’t been keeping too warm in the hours between my last set and this one, in addition to beinguncomfortable vs ice climbers. Too many times I’d throw a smash attack at Nana only to eat one from Popo who was behind me, I’d flub edgeguards because squall hammer is just such a strange move sometimes. Overall it was not great. I think if I wanted to even think about taking it to SwebBy next time I would need to put serious effort into learning the matchup and preparing better. Alas, I’m dropped into losers. Since the rest of the people still in the pool have been waiting on SwebBy, all of my matches were essentially lined up for me.

My first losers match is against the Rochester falco player Salad, who just upset fellow Rochesterian Amethyst 3-2. After a first game 4 stock in my favor, Salad started to get his footing. I was subjected to some infamous Jboss cheering, but I was able to prevail 3-0 and move on to my next set against the formidable Syracuse fox player StoobyGacks.

This set was a barnburner. After a bit of a steamroll in games 1 and 2, Stooby took me to Yoshi’s Story for game 3. Needing to make a reverse 3-0 to win the set, Stooby was able to gain some momentum and win the third game, Now it was 2-1 with two FD games to come. First of the two FD games Stooby comes out swinging, and after some very poor decisions from myself I drop game 4 and have to make the decision: do I go FD again, or do I switch it up? I recalled the game that I just lost and the very risky and flashy moves I was trying to go for, and decided I should just knuckle down and play the stage properly. I was able to get a good lead with some chaingrabs and early kills, and while Stooby was keeping up better than the first half of the set, the superpowered punish game for marth was able to give me the edge and prevent the reverse 3-0 at the last possible moment. 3-2 in my favor. 

And if I thought this was a tough set, my next was an even more difficult matchup for me. Another hometown player, MonkHB’s Samus. With a lifetime record of 0-3 vs Monk, I had my work cut out for me.

We sit down to play, and after offering to go battlefield, Monk prefers to strike, so I give him first ban. He bans battlefield. I take Dreamland and Fountain of Dreams off the board, and he takes us to Final Destination. I think this stage is a bit of a double edged sword for Marth, as the juggle potential is great but the lack of platforms makes maneuvering around Samus’ various projectiles a very difficult and delicate process. I lose the game but bring it very close, keeping a level head going in to game 2. I pick Yoshi’s Story, as I really want to delete Samus stocks as fast as possible. I do an excellent job of closing the gap as the stage is small enough to prevent Samus from retreating as far as she could on larger stages, and take game 2. 

The inevitable happens in game 3, the dreaded Dreamland game. This stage is massive. The width of the stage, the height of the platforms, the length of the platforms, and most relevant to this matchup, the outer blastzones. They are so far away. So when I end up down 3 stocks to 1 in game 3, I think to myself: “Well, at least losing here means I don’t have to play on Dreamland again!” Gotta try to see the bright side of things I suppose.

After a lot of intricate dancing, playing close enough to score hits and avoid Samus projectiles and her counterattacks, I manage to take the stock with a down air from ledge onto the recovering bounty hunter. I think “wow, not every day I get to spike Samus, especially on Dreamland.” I continue to play incredibly safe, just doing my best to not trade as I have nothing to give anymore. I manage to take Monk’s third stock, and now I’m thinking “damn, I might just win this. Just have to stay composed.” 

I was able to push Monk into the corner with some forward airs and nairs, and was able to close out game 3 with a Ken combo. Surprised that I was even able to make the comeback, I asked for a minute to breathe before game 4, just to relieve some of the excitement I was feeling before we launch back into it. I look around, no one was watching.

I think “did no one just see that? damn I wish someone saw that” but in hindsight I understand not wanting to watch Marth Samus. Monk runs it right back to Dreamland and this game felt completely different. I was taking percent and backing off before I ran into his counter-hit options, staying safe and just pushing him around enough to set up for kills, and I was able to do it. I was able to beat Samus twice on her best stage, something that often feels impossible to do. 

I fistbumped, walked away, and popped the fuck off. I made top 16! That was awesome! After letting the excitement wash over me, I decided to check who I’m playing in top 16. No one yet, I’ve got 2 pools matches to wait on. Clay vs Squeegee, and the winner vs DarkGenex. It’s either Peach, Samus, or Ice Climbers. No matter what, it’s a character I’ve already played in the bracket. I thought that was really funny. Clay beats Squeegee 3-1, and DarkGenex pulls out the fox to avoid the misery of Peach Icies to take out Clay.

I really can’t say much about my set with DarkGenex, because I was just exhausted. Second Icies set of the day and I was just running at him, kind of just wanting to be out of bracket. We had a nice conversation catching up afterwards, and I’m really happy he was able to make it out to the event. Always someone I enjoy seeing. 

Really can’t complain about 13th as the 22 seed! I’m incredibly happy with my play in this bracket. So many of these matchups were patience testing, and some of them were very draining, but despite that I was able to make an upset against a player I respect very deeply. I will certainly joke about the “nightmare bracket” that included 2 Icies, a Peach, and a Samus, but that’s all just a testament to how we need to prepare for more matchups than just the spacies and marth. Good games all around to everyone I played, and win or lose, we go next.

Event thoughts

This event had a slew of top 100 talent and a lot of upstate’s best. There were a lot of notable results and some unexpected appearances from players who haven’t played in quite some time, or don’t often get the chance to travel. I already mentioned SwebBy and ayeGiohh’s incredible run to 2nd in doubles as the 7 seed of the event, but Singles had its fair share of upsets.

Some notable upsets from pools: 

Squeegee #39 3-2 Olive (33rd)
DPD #17 3-1 Spades #16
ayeGiohh #10 3-2 DarkGenex #7 !
Kogs #26 3-1 PSI $wagnet #23 (25th)
Den #25 3-0 Flow #24 (25th)
mars #22 3-1 MonkHB #14 (17th) !
Poseidon #20 3-1 Alright #12 (17th) !

And in top 16:

Pig #13 3-1 rainy #9 (13th) !
OG Kid #6 3-2 agent #3 !
Agent #3 3-0 Zanya #2 (3rd)

Notable non-upset results:

StoobyGacks 3-2 NotChrisFarley
Pig 3-2 Poseidon
Poseidon 3-2 Birdie
Agent 3-2 Maher

Since I just mentioned him above, I wanted to point out that Pig hasn’t been to a melee tournament in about 10 months. He only came because Agent convinced him to come out last second. It was crazy to see him come back and play, and then run it to 9th! Clearly he’s still got the stuff. 

I was also very happy that Kogs could make it out, because he is typically not one to travel to regionals. Always great to see CR show up and kick ass!

Speaking of kicking ass, STR played host to a 28-entrant amateur bracket, which was itself a murderer’s row of some of Upstate’s best up-and-comers.

In a barnburner of a game 14 winners and grand finals between Rochester’s Jboss and CR’s wcbq, Jboss was able to take it after falling in winners finals with set counts of 1-3, 3-2, 3-2.

Truly incredible adaptation from the Roc fox.

wcbq was on a run of her own in this bracket, notching wins over Olive, firestarW, succulent, the 1 seed NotChrisFarley, before her showdown with Jboss.

Hopes for next time

Now, for the not so fun part. My thoughts as a TO. I want to preface this by saying I appreciate the TOs so much for putting this on and dealing with the hardships that they encountered, y’all really put on a fantastic event. That being said I had a couple of issues, one of which I discussed above.

Sometimes brackets start late. It happens. People can’t make it on time, extra setups can’t make it on time, equipment malfunctions, whatever. I don’t disagree with the decision to push back doubles and I think it certainly made the bracket a lot better than if there were mass DQs, but I think if I were in the shoes of the TOs here I would probably try to push singles even further back.

I think it could be argued that having an 11AM doubles bracket into a 12PM first wave of singles was a very optimistic timeline and was going to cause conflicts, but I digress.

Clearly I had firsthand experience with it this bracket, but making people wait so long while the rest of bracket is happening really sucks, and I think it would have probably been better to push singles back further as to allow doubles to get closer to wrapping up and to not cause people such a long wait.

I was warm for my match with Venus, but I was far less warm for my match with SwebBy. Not saying I win those if I play SwebBy at a more normal time after our first sets, but it would be nice for the timing to be consistent with how a singles bracket usually runs. 

At the end of the day, trying to manage doubles and singles running even a little bit concurrently sucks and I do not envy those who have to figure out that scheduling nightmare. I can only give my thoughts as to what I might do.

This second point is a lot less important of an issue, but I wanted to point it out because I pointed it out at the event and while I do admit it was a nitpick, I’m just trying to help things look nice. Overlays for doubles can be tough, but I really think having one player in the sponsor text section and the other in the tag section looked really janky and in some instances it didn’t even line up with the players respective ports. For an example, here’s a screenshot from winners finals.

One player’s text is just smaller than the other’s, and if you look here and try to read it from left to right (e.g. player in grey is in the port furthest to the left) while the red team looks fine (Zanya on the left in port 2 and OG Kid on the right in port 3), it looks as if Boyd is P1 and Holiday is P4, when in reality Boyd is the Icies and Holiday is the Sheik.

What I personally do for doubles is a very simple “Teammate1 / Teammate2” with no sponsor tags or anything. It looks pretty clean and is legible, and if you run into a scenario where you have multiple players playing the same character or just want to make it abundantly clear, you could do “Teammate1 [P1] / Teammate 2 [P2]” 

So in this case it would be:

Zanya [P2] / OG Kid [P3]                                                                          Holiday [P1] / Boyd [P4]

Clarity of information can get tough with doubles due to the extra information that a lot of scoreboard software is not built specifically for, but it can definitely be adapted to work for that purpose.

Other than that one rather glaring issue and one small nitpicky issue, I think the rest of the “problems” I had with the event were entirely out of the TOs hands. 

No slippi replays is always unfortunate, but the venue change made that not possible to do. Monitors is unfortunate, but they felt fine enough and it was done entirely out of necessity so I understand.

I do appreciate the splitters being available for use but I really hope if we ever transition to monitors that we get something uniform and have a consistent way to accomodate for speakers and audio setup users. 

CRTs are easy because the speakers are built in and the RCA piggyback cables employed by audio setup users are unobtrusive and let audio pass through to the TV speakers. 

I think overall monitors require a lot more logistical work and planning to get right, because Melee players know what they like and what they need. While most Ultimate setups get away without sound because they don’t really care about sound cues, melee players will notice and they will get annoyed when playing without sound. I know I sure would. 

Overall this event was excellent and ran fairly well, with grand finals for both singles and amateur bracket wrapping up at around 8:30pm. 

Thank you to Swoggles and Nikitabair for organizing such a great event, and all of the community members who stepped up to help run brackets and stream. Thanks as well to ArStar for debuting their new IRL stream setup, which worked wonders and captured many great sets that would otherwise be lost to time. I hope to see the setup come back for offstream sets at majors.

At the end of the day it’s tournaments like this that remind me why I play melee. It’s not just about the glory of winning or the satisfaction of improvement, but also just getting to see my friends. The sense of community I feel within the upstate scene is truly something special, and I am so lucky to call myself a member of Upstate Melee.

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