---
title: GOLDEN Squid Junction 40
date: 2023-03-27
author: 공주 Alice & Chilliboi
---

Squid Junction is a bi-weekly tournament hosted by [Dapple Productions](https://dapple.ink/) on Saturdays 7 pm ET.
For the 40th tournament it turned golden, becoming a major tournament. The participant limit of 64 was reached for the first time after it rose from 32.

Despite it being midnight in Europe, a number of top European teams joined the American titans to compete for the starting prize pool of 200$:

The final winners of the tournament were:
1st: Fiesta
2nd: Crush Soda
3rd: [New Meta](https://sendou.ink/t/new-meta)

[New Meta](https://sendou.ink/t/new-meta) surprised a lot of people by getting 3rd place. They also lived up to their name by using a way different comp than everyone else did: 96 Deco, Tetras, Inkbrush and a Ballpoint Splatling. They beat several higher seeded teams such as [Squidding Good](https://sendou.ink/t/squidding-good) and [Seafoam](https://sendou.ink/t/seafoam) to clutch the bronze.

The top-level pickup Crush Soda, comprised of [Kyo](https://sendou.ink/u/kyochandxd), [Gos](https://sendou.ink/u/300073469503340546), [Thunder](https://sendou.ink/u/thunder) and [Wave](https://sendou.ink/u/199763761026826241), not only won the North American Inkling Open In January 2023, but also qualified for the Nintendo PAX tournament in Boston on the 26th of March 2023. They had a very solid run and rightfully ended up in second place.

Fiesta, the winner of Squid Junction 40, is a Japanese team. It is great to see our tournaments getting worldwide participation so we can see the talent across the globe!

Other highlights of the tournament include the fast rising team [Silly Kitties](https://sendou.ink/t/silly-kitties)! They overcame the pickup Spotlight. with German top-level player [Noctis](https://sendou.ink/u/noctis), that was 9 seeds higher than them. [Seafoam](https://sendou.ink/t/seafoam) also impressed by getting a great win in over [Graveyard Shift](https://sendou.ink/t/graveyard-shift).

With the help of the community the final prizepool was 435$ - thank you so much to everyone that contributed!

The tournament was streamed by Dapple Productions streamer [Nebulaink](https://twitter.com/nebulaink) and commentated by [ACECT](https://twitter.com/ACECTTTT), [weef](https://twitter.com/weefslider), [Geenie7](https://twitter.com/Geenie7_) and [Soavdannom](https://twitter.com/SoavDannom).
