I did pretty well today. I won 2 sets out of 4.

Set 1: Poken (Silver III 0) 0-2

Yoshi vs Jigglypuff (Lylat Cruise) - L

Yoshi vs Jigglypuff (Smashville) - L

In both games he pretty solidly destroyed me. The eggs were really difficult to get around, and his offstage pressure was phenomenal. Eggs to keep me from getting back on, followed by dair/fair/bair. It was really difficult to ever make it back to stage. The platforms on Lylat were difficult to maneuver properly and made it difficult to get in as well. I was hoping the moving platform on Smashville would make it easier to lay back and get in a little easier. It definitely did help (I took more than one stock), but once again the projectile pressure was difficult to get around.

Set 2: cptnsuave (Bronze II 83) 1-2

Fox (1111) vs Jigglypuff (1111) (Town and City) - L

Fox (213X) vs Jigglypuff (3121) (Town and City) - W

Fox (213X) vs Jigglypuff (3121) (Halberd) - L

This set was much closer. We didn't play with customs at all the first match, hence the default sets for each of us. The first match, I found it pretty easy to get in. The lasers weren't too much of a problem, the platforms were easy to escape to when necessary. Unfortunately, I accidentally buffered a roll on one of the platforms as it was moving off the stage. This gave him a bit of momentum, and I lost my second stock pretty early as a result. His momentum and my SD gave him just the edge he needed to seal the first stock. For the second match, he asked if we could practice our customs, and I agreed. My custom sets were outdated: I would have preferred my 1121 set, but that's all I had. Luckily, Rollout isn't so important, so I got off with a worse custom set. I felt like I could've won on Town and City, so I took him back. The first thing he did was shoot the Impact Blaster, so I found out that one pretty early. During one of his recovery attempts, however, I took quite a bit of damage from Twisting Fox: I wasn't expecting that out of him. For both matches, he used quite a bit of his Fox Illusion for recovery attempts, and nairs and fairs were really solid moves for eating that up. He never once used his Reflector though, so I'm not sure what custom Reflector he used. I'm not so sure why he was able to take the game on Halberd. Several of the hazards attacked me, and one killed me, but I was at pretty high percent anyway. I ran out of jumps a few times as well. One thing that I did notice was that he got much better at sweetspotting the Illusion and adjusting the height, making it a lot more difficult to edgeguard him. I need to watch out for F-Smashes in this matchup, and Twisting Fox if customs are on. Impact Blasters were much less of a problem than I anticipated.

Set 3: OGflo (Unranked) 2-0

Yoshi vs Jigglypuff (Town and City) - W

Yoshi vs Jigglypuff (Smashville) - W

I picked Town and City because I banned Lylat first and then Smashville for my last one: I remembered my set with Poken and didn't want to deal with those stages after he bodybagged me on them earlier. Other than that, I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. He didn't really pressure me with eggs at all like Poken, and instead he focused a lot more on melee attacks. Nonetheless, the first match did go down to last stock high percent. He was still good at pressuring me to go offstage, as his rushdowns were good at that, but his edgeguards were a bit lacking. He ended up pushing me off the ledge over and over again, but was unable to close it out. He ended up killing himself with a misspaced aerial while trying to close out the last stock. After that, I think he went on tilt. He picked Smashville, which I wasn't too happy about, but his pressure was severely lacking afterwards. I was able to get in pretty easily, and won the match without much effort.

Set 4: MXJ220 (Bronze I 11) 2-1

Luigi vs Jigglypuff (Town and City) - W

Luigi vs Jigglypuff (Halberd) - L

Ike vs Jigglypuff (Battlefield) - W

First of all, going back and looking at his profile, I noticed that Ike is actually his main, with Luigi as his secondary, so the Luigi matches must have just been a test run. Now for the matches. For the first match, he didn't go for many grab set ups, and screwed up the few that he attempted. As a result, he didn't rack up nearly enough damage to get the KOs he needed. I feel like it had to do with the platform setup: Battlefield was the first stage he banned, and he had the choice between this and Final Destination for the stage, and he still liked platforms against Jigglypuff. Thus, the platforms would make it easy for me to escape grab setups. Nonetheless, he applied quite a bit of pressure with fireballs and retreating bairs that the match was relatively close. Up Smash is something I need to watch out for: both of my deaths resulted from them. He picked Halberd for his counterpick, and I think he realized it was a good stage for Luigi. On Halberd, I was able to shark him for most of the traveling stage, and he didn't really know what to do to prevent it. Thus, I had a pretty significant percent lead going into the hazard transformation. He felt a lot more comfortable here, getting many conversions off of down throws. The hazards were once again annoying, and I'm thinking I'll shy away from this stage in the future. He got a lot of percent off of grabs, and was successfully able to convert off of the low ceiling with up smash kills. For my stage pick, he banned Delfino, which would have been my go to because the platform layouts are all pretty strange and I could shark for most of the match. Thus, I picked Battlefield because I remembered that was the stage he first banned. It must not be a good stage for Luigi, because that's when he switched to Ike. I applied a lot of aerial pressure, which I know is really hard for heavy characters to deal with. Camping the top platform was also really helpful in the matchup. He got a lot of random heavy hits though, and was a big fan of camping the ledge with Aether. I tried punishing Aether from behind later in the match, but without much success. It ended up being a really close and stressful match, with me throwing out safe aerials, and him trying to land as many tilts and f-airs as he could. In the end I clutched it out though. Random heavy hits are annoying.

Overall, I did better than I was expecting. I haven't played Anther's Ladder in a while now, but playing friends was definitely helpful. The new ranking system also allows me to only find people that are around my skill level, which is nice. I still haven't been ranked myself, I still need to play four more matches, but that's for another time.