With one of the largest Project M tournaments of all time coming up this weekend, the Project M community has been more active than ever. But what makes this tournament so important to the Project M community? To answer that question, we have NorCal Project M player Ryan "Sabre" Weinberg, known for working on this year's PM Rank top 50, with us today.
What Bigger Balc means to the Project M Community
If you’re connected to the Project M scene these days, it’s difficult to escape the hype that is building for The Bigger Balc, a SoCal tournament coming up this weekend that’s shaping up to be one of the most historic Project M events ever. For many unfamiliar with Project M in its current state, it’s easy to think that Bigger Balc is just another tournament. But Bigger Balc represents the strength of the Project M scene in its purest form.
Two years ago, PM players felt as if the game and its competitive community wouldn’t last much longer. Project M had been dropped from major tournaments like CEO, streamers on Twitch were being made to choose between streaming Project M and having a subscriber button, and what felt to many as if it would be the final blow came in December of 2015, when the PMDT disbanded.
Many players questioned if Project M would ever again reach the heights it did in 2014 and early 2015, when we were featured along the other smash titles and pulled in hundreds of entrants at national tournaments. Despite the best efforts of the circuit, no tournament in 2016 reached enough entrants to break into the top 5 largest Project M tournaments of all time, all of which had taken place in 2014 or 2015 and reached over 250 entrants.
Enter Bigger Balc: 372 entrants for Project M singles with thirty of the top fifty players in the world in attendance. Bigger Balc will be the third largest tournament in Project M history, despite the setbacks the community has faced by not being on Twitch or featured at international smash majors. The way that the community has come together leading up to this event, funding players to compete, supporting the TOs, and throwing themselves into their local scenes, has been nothing short of incredible to watch.
If you want to learn more about Project M, this weekend is the time to tune in on the newly christened Smashcast.tv. Among hype Super Smash Bros. Melee, Rivals of Aether and Brawlout brackets, The Bigger Balc will be a Project M tournament for the ages, featuring four of the strongest players in today’s scene:
Xayya Thomas “ThundeRzReiGN” Thammavongsa : The champion of the 2016 circuit finale and undisputably first seed going into Bigger Balc, ThundeRz is notorious for his punish game on the entire cast, taking DK almost single-handedly from bottom 5 on the official 2015 tier list to mid-tier or higher on most tier lists today. The hero of NorCal has yet to drop a set at a major tournament since January.
Jonathan “Sosa” Sosa: The other titan of California, Sosa’s Wario has dominated SoCal as the best in the region for over a year and a half. With a string of victories including Evo 2016 and Clutch City Clash, he secured his place at #3 on 2016’s PMRank and is looking to rise from there with strong placings in 2017 thus far, including a victory at the first ever Philadelphia Championships over Switch and Malachi.
Malachi “Malachi” Covington: The top-ranked player in New York, Malachi’s patient neutral and intense punish game have taken him to great heights, recently taking home the gold at The Flex Zone 2 and making him one of the most consistent top threats in the game. Ranked 4th on the 2016 rankings at the top of a region with more top 25 players than any other, Malachi has a lot to prove coming into Bigger Balc, especially having never met ThundeRz in bracket before, and this could be his weekend to stake a claim to dominance over not only the east coast but the world.
Kyle “Switch” Carlon: Even to players who followed 2016’s circuit, Switch’s rise has been meteoric in recent months. The first player to truly challenge Malachi for #1 in his region for some time, Switch has had a recent string of first-place finishes including No Fun Allowed, Shuffle: Battle of the Midwest and Don’t Sleep!, in addition to the Balcony’s Shark Tank event leading up to Bigger Balc.
The feeling of anticipation throughout the entire scene has grown and grown over the last few months as this weekend has drawn closer, and I hope that whether you’re attending in person or tuning in from home, you can be a part of this truly historic event. To members of the greater smash community who maybe don’t follow Project M that much, now is the time to start if you’ve ever been interested in our game. If you do, I look forward to having you be a part of the experience that will be The Bigger Balc.
Follow The Bigger Balc’s bracket’s here, and tune in starting on Friday on the Balc’s stream here.
You can also follow the Balcony's Twitter here for updates
Don't forget to follow Sabre here as well, for writing such an amazing article!
