This article is part of our Dragon Ball FighterZ series.
Day one (well technically two if you count Media Day) has come and gone at the Summit of Power and the action has been as great as promised. We've had some silly 3v3 Team show matches, some upsets in the Singles Bracket, and the best Mafia games you'll ever see.
Who knew that 3v3 Party Battles could be so fun?
A little known mode of Dragon Ball FighterZ (even some of the commentators didn't know that it's been in the game since launch) is 3v3 Party Battle, which pits six players against each other with each player controlling a single character. Trust me, it's as wacky as it sounds. It definitely led to some of the funniest moments of the day, though, as players pulled off some crazy comebacks with very odd team compositions and great team names. The players held a random draft on Friday night and the teams shook out like this:
RO-N-GE
- Osaka Ryo "Dogura" Nozaki (Kid Buu)
- Dawn "Yohosie" Hosie (Gotenks)
- Luis "Rynge" Avila (Cell)
Cell's DayCare
- Dominique "SonicFox" McLean (Cell)
- Naoki "moke" Nakayama (Kid Buu)
- Christopher "Hellpockets" Fields (Kid Buu)
Double Diccolo
- Vineeth "ApologyMan" Meka (Piccolo)
- Eduardo "HookGangGod" Hook (Piccolo)
- Derek "Nakkiel" Bruscas (Super Saiyan Goku)
Nihongo OK
- Ryota "Kazunoko" Inoue (Adult Gohan)
- Steve "LordKnight" Barthelemy (Kid Buu)
- Sho "Fenritti" Shoji (Cell)
Whens Marvel
- Jonathan "Cloud805" Morales (Kid Buu)
- Christopher "ChrisG" Gonzalez (Super Saiyan Vegeta)
- Michael "IFC Yipes" Mendoza (Cell)
Los Leffos
- William "Leffen" Hjelte (Android 21)
- Reynald "Reynald" Tacsuan (Android 16)
- Jose "MrBiscuits" Lopez (Cell)
Outsiders
- Jon "Dekillsage" Coello (Android 16, Adult Gohan)
- Goichi "Go1" Kishida (Bardock, Cell)
- Christian "Matrix" Ellis (Teen Gohan, Goku Black)
While some of the matches were pretty close, there were two teams that stood above the rest through the first half of the double elimination bracket. Double Diccolo and Los Leffos won both of their matches and will face off in the winners' final on Saturday. The former overwhelmed their opponents with a double dose of Piccolo (hence the name) from the best Piccolo players in the world in the form of ApologyMan and HookGangGod. The latter rode the Biggest of Leffs and his Android 21 to pick a pair of 2-0 sweeps on their way to the winners' final.
The Outsiders, however, faced a rough fate on the first day of the tournament, losing both matches and being the only team eliminated. I'm sure that Goichi doesn't really mind, though, since his main focus is, of course, the single bracket (not to mention the fact that ChrisMatrix got absolutely bodied in every game). Speaking of which….
Everyone got bodied in the singles tournament
While the games were no doubt fun to watch, buss ass was on full display all throughout this single round-robin on Friday. The vast majority of these matches were either 3-0s or 3-1s. In fact, there was only a single 3-2 that moke narrowly took over Nakkiel. Not only was it the closest match, but it probably had the best finish of any game all day.
Yeah, moke actually came back in a 1-vs-2 with a literal pixel of health. The patience that has to take actually blows my mind. Nakkiel will have some time to bounce back, though, as that was his only game until Saturday, giving him some time to recover.
While many of the games saw someone get absolutely bodied, that doesn't mean that everything went according to plan. There were a couple matches in there that were a bit surprising.
Right off the bat, Fenritti took a convincing 3-1 win over Dogura in the second match of the day. While Fenritti is certainly no slouch, Dogura is widely considered one of the very best in the game. He's the only person other than SonicFox to win a set against Goichi, as the two Cyclops players are always fighting neck and neck. Fenritti simply isn't at that level, or so we thought. He showed up in this match, using his Bardock, Cell, and Vegeta to put in work against the Cell, Kid Buu, and Android 16 of Dogura. Fenritti then followed this up with a win later in the day against Reynald to secure his spot on the winners' side of the bracket this Sunday.
Speaking of Reynald, he took part in one of the other biggest upsets of the day. Going up against Big Leff, Reynald was playing against the odds given that Leffen has got a fairly solid track record. That being said, Leffen's Android 21 is looking a bit worse for wear, as Reynald exploited the character to come up with a dominating 3-0 victory. It certainly didn't help that Reynald told Leffen after the game that he needs to drop 21 in favor of Kid Buu. Will Leffen be able to play through what is basically a handicap and make a run on Saturday and Sunday?
Kazunoko managed to show up fairly well, too, as he picked up a pair of 3-0 sweeps against North American darlings Dekillsage and ChrisG to also secure his spot on the winners' side of the final bracket.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, SonicFox and Goichi also won both of their matches on Friday to end up on the winners' side. Goichi beat both Yohosie and moke 3-0, while SonicFox took down Cloud805 3-0 and ApologyMan 3-1. In case you thought that either of these guys were going to fall off after Combo Breaker, they definitely showed that they are here to stay with strong performances on Friday.
Here are the final standings for each group after the first day of competition:
Group A:
- SonicFox: 2-0
- Fenritti: 2-0
- Reynald: 1-1
- ApologyMan: 1-1
- LordKnight: 0-1
- Leffen: 0-1
- Dogura: 0-1
- Cloud805: 0-1
Group B:
- Goichi: 2-0
- Kazunoko: 2-0
- ChrisG: 1-1
- moke: 1-1
- Nakkiel: 0-1
- Dekillsage: 0-1
- Yohosie: 0-1
- HookGangGod: 0-1
Things will get underway at 12 p.m. PT on Saturday with the conclusion of the 3v3 Team Tournament and the remaining group stage matches in the singles tournament.
