Adam “Armada” Lindgren, after some sub-par showings in September and October, has dominated the month of November. Armada secured his second consecutive major tournament win over Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma at Dreamhack Winter in his home country of Sweden this past weekend.
Armada, since the famous 3-2, 3-2 loss in Grand Finals at Evo 2016, has been able to fend off Hungrybox in two of the highest paying tournaments in Smash. He’s faced him four separate times in the last month, but has won the overall game count 14-9 and the overall set count at 3-1. The biggest hurdle for Armada throughout 2016 has been Hungrybox’s Jigglypuff, but Armada’s starting to execute more efficiently in the last month.
Dreamhack is one of the only chances for Europe to challenge some of the worlds best players. It also gives top players an incentive to show up with a $30,000 prize pool. Unfortunately for Europe, outside of Team Heir’s own Trif beating McCain “MacD” LaVelle in Peach dittos, there were zero upsets from players outside the top 100.
The story, as it has been throughout 2016, was Armada vs. Hungrybox. Almost a month after their epic grand finals at Smash Summit 3, we got a rematch at Dreamhack. The road to grand finals was simple enough, Armada only dropped one game before the finals to Hungrybox’s own training partner and coach, Luis “Crunch” Rosias. Hungrybox had little trouble too as he swept Joseph “Mango” Marquez in Winners semis.
Hungrybox and Armada were clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the field. Mango played Falco almost exclusively and struggled in the Jigglypuff matchup and against William “Leffen” Hjelte, who swept him 3-0. Leffen, who’s only making his third appearance since he announced he’s back playing Melee full-time was the only one outside of Armada to push Hungrybox to a game 5.
Hungrybox matched up against Spacie mains (Fox and Falco) all afternoon. He played six consecutive matches against Fox or Falco. Even with all that matchup experience, Armada was still landing a majority of his up-throw to up-air kills against Hungrybox’s Jigglypuff, giving him the edge.
The same stages Hungrybox had success with against Leffen and Mango weren’t working against Armada. Armada went 3-1 on Battlefield and 2-1 on Dreamland in the Fox-Puff matchup. Up until his match against Armada, he was unbeaten on both of those stages. Armada’s platform and runaway game on larger stages proved to be the difference.
The win for Armada makes it his third super major win in 2016 including the recent Smash Summit 3 and Genesis 3. His recent winning streak will make it extremely difficult to choose between the current top three at the end of the year (Armada, Mango, and Hungrybox). I’ll have an update
