Ultimate Insight 7 : BattleDolphin

1) You're quickly becoming known as the main TO in QLD. How did your TOing journey begin and where would you like it to take you?

> Honestly my memory is a little hazy with this even though it was only like 2.5 years ago. Good start right? Anyway it was earlyish 2017, I had been in the scene for a year and has established myself as a solid mid level player (has anything changed 🤔) and there was a reasonable lack of monthlies in Brisbane at the time. There was also a circuit that just finished in WA (I can't remember what it was called eek) that raised funds to fly the top player down to a major on the east coast. This is the hazy part but somehow Flex, Ben, Danzah and I (we were all friends at the time already) got together to make a tournament series, with inspiration from the WA circuit, called Fight For Flight. We raised money each tournament to send our top 8 players down to BAM the next year. It was honestly a huge success, we had plenty of money leftover and we actually managed to send like 15 people down, it was great. After the circuit was done we've just kept running tournaments as a group since.

Where do I want my TOing journey to take me? Hmm that's a toughie, TOing is probably one of the only things I'm pretty passionate about lately, so I guess in an ideal world I would like to be able to turn it into a career of sorts, but that's pretty unrealistic, especially here in AUS. Not that I'm going to stop anytime soon, but I'm quite content knowing that we've already ran the biggest (and best? 🤔) major QLD has ever had so I'm not even sure where there is to go from there.



2) Presently no QLD TOs get any monetary reimbursement for running events. A month ago I ran a Twitter poll asking if the TO of an event should get a small cut of the pot with 80% of the 154 votes saying that they should. As a TO yourself how do you feel about this?

> Ohhh boy, many of you have probably heard me complain about being poor at one point so my standpoint probably isn't gonna be shocking. I'm all for it, if I was getting paid even just a little, tournaments would be much less stressful leading up to them and I basically wouldn't have to worry about not me not being able to sustain going to and running events. Fuel is expensive ya know. It's pretty unrealistic at the moment though unfortunately. I know most of the other TOs are sort of on the fence due to the potential community outrage and backlash we could receive, especially because a lot of us are around from smash 4 when our major community members were super against TOs being paid. Also CouchWarriors is a non-for-profit so there's totally no way we'd be getting paid while being still under them anytime soon.



3) You're also one of the main contributors behind the QLD40. What prompted you to bring back this concept and do you feel like it's achieved it's goal so far?

> Honestly, it was all Ben's idea to bring it back. A super good idea at that. But he knows he can't do it by himself, so he hit me up. I was a little hesitant at first as this was just after an Ultimate PR (the second one?) and I was pretty burned out on rankings after that debacle, but I am so insanely glad I decided to hop on and do it with him. I imagine the reasons for bringing it back were the same reasons for having it in smash 4, so that we could showcase all of our nutty players, and so that the mid level had something to strive for, goals to reach, as sometimes PR seems nigh impossible. And yeah I think it's totally hit the mark on all that so far. It gives the people just under PR a place to see how they have been improving, same for the general mid level, and it even really helps the low level set goals also, I know plenty of players who get super excited after getting just one top 40 win, it's great!



4) You're currently ranked 18th on the current QLD40 and have one of the highest attendance rates in the state. What do you think you need to get to the next level?

> Ah, this is the easiest question for me so far, it's mostly passion I'm lacking. Currently (and for the past couple months) in this game I don't really have the drive to grind out friendlies and lab combos, or even really practice by myself *at all*. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE going to tournaments and competing and all that but idk when I'm by myself the passion to do things smash related just isn't really there. I also probably need a better character that I also enjoy just as much as Jigglypuff. Ness is cool and all and so is Mii Sword but none of them quite do it for me like Jigglypuff. I couldn't even tell you why. I do think I can still put a big dent in QLD with Jigglypuff and her new buffs/the knowledge I've gained from playing other characters though, I just need the passion like I did in smash 4. Idk why but in that game I actually put heaps of effort into Jigglypuff and learning all her techniques and how everything works, the passion was there. I remember labbing down air combos and learning how to drift them correctly for hours. In this game I still haven't labbed her new down air combos since the buffs. I'm also probably the only Aus smasher to have never actually watched a poppt video despite them being amazingly useful. We shall see I suppose.



5) Do you see any gaps in QLD Smash as a whole that you'd like to see others rise up and fill?

> Honestly at the moment I love our scene, and this question is kind of stumping me. We have plenty of reasonably good TOs, we work well together as a TO body, so I think the state is in good hands atm. I guess I would like to see more content creation from the QLD smash guys, until now with these Ultimate Insights and the Tournameta Podcast we didn't really have any at all in our scene specifically. Maybe some guides on stuff from our top players? More QLD players streaming? Doesn't even have to be smash at that point of course. I'm pretty content with anything I can get though tbh. Also I suppose I'd always appreciate some extra people helping me out at tournaments 😇 probably more specifically if someone/couple of people could step up and be a pool captain at ranbats or something that would be greatly appreciated c: But it's fine if not. :3

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If you'd like to hear more from BattleDolphin then check out his episode of the Tournameta Podcast which ended up being really fun. You can also find BD hard at work at the next Ranbat on January 4th. Also keep January 18th open as there is a big announcement for a new event dropping soon...