Team:SLAPAHO

SLAPAHO was an Iowa City based crew, research team, tournament host, and Smash film-making organization.

Former members

• Aaron "Foghorn" Kirschner
• Alex "Ax" Schumacher
• "Palm Tree" Palmer
• Dustin "Callista" Quam
• Nick "The Crazy Walrus" Cramer

History

SLAPAHO was founded in the fall of 2007 by Foghorn and Ax. It was originally formed simply as a crew that focused primarily on doubles play, but quickly evolved into other roles.

They were mostly known for their research and tournament organizing. They sponsored and played in a number of tournaments in the Iowa City area, generally posting good results. They hosted the first large tournament in the central Iowa area with the Last Hurrah Doubles tournament, which exceeded 40 participants and nearly as many observers.

They planned to continue their active role in the Smash community by encouraging the burgeoning tournament field in Iowa and researching in-depth all facets of Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

They were sanctioned as a student organization by the University of Iowa.

SLAPAHO has been largely inactive since 2008.

Tournaments

For complete information, see UISCS

SLAPAHO was dedicated to increasing the amount of tournaments in Iowa. They started with small tournaments at the University of Iowa, but eventually spread to larger tournaments. Their most recent tournament was the Last Hurrah Doubles Tournament. Foghorn was usually the head organizer of the tournaments and officiates, while other members were known to compete.

They also competed in tournaments in Iowa City, with Foghorn and Palmer closing out finals in their debut singles tournament. The team of Ax and Palmer placed third in the Last Hurrah Doubles Tournament.

SLAPAHO planned a series of Brawl tournaments in Iowa City called the University of Iowa Smash Championship Series (UISCS). This series consisted of two preliminary tournaments (each player could only enter one of these).

SLAPAHO eventually expanded, hoping for an Iowa Smash bi-weekly tournaments.

Play philosophy

While their focuses expanded, SLAPAHO was dedicated to the enjoyment of Super Smash Bros. As such, they tended to develop their own metagame, which was often quite different from the rest of the Smash community. They also aimed to develop the metagame of bottom tier characters. Almost all tactics used by the crew were developed through trial and error in intra-crew play. This led to them being rather unpredictable in tournament play, as their maverick style often went against what players expected. The crew utilized many advanced edgeguarding techniques, including the turnip glitch.

The crew also stressed the importance of knowing how to play multiple characters. Entrance into the crew required a display of proficiency with at least five non-clone characters (i.e. Fox and Falco counted as one character in this test). At least one of these characters had to be a bottom tier character and another could not be a top or high tier character. In 2008, all members of SLAPAHO were proficient with at least 10 distinct characters.

SLAPAHO has also been credited in developing the metagame of Charizard.

SLAPAHO epics

The SLAPAHO crew filmed a series of short smash movies. These films were comedy bouts of Smash, sometimes with commentary provided by Foghorn and Ax. All of these can be found on YouTube.

• SLAPAHO Epic #1: Every Character gets Eaten by the Fish
• SLAPAHO Epic #2: How OGs do it: A Tribute to 187 Ride or Die
• SLAPAHO Epic #3: Raise the Roof featuring R.O.B

SLAPAHO also released some material from their filming sessions. Consisting of behind the scenes looks at the making of a SLAPAHO Epic, outtakes from epics, or failed projects.

• Giant Bowser v. Giant DK

Trivia

• Their name was taken from an opponents' flag football team.