The only time you are able to pick a stage unrestricted is in a first to three set, since no stages are banned for games two through five. The unfortunate truth of competitive Melee’s strike and counter pick system is that you may never get to play on your best stages in a tournament set. With that out of the way, let’s dive into some tips. For more information on the history of stage striking you can check out this video. It gives them an opportunity to switch character if the stage selected is not great for their character either rather than being locked into their character like traditional fighting games. As for how we arrived at stage striking and counter picking, the system ensures that neither player ends up on a stage that is overly favorable for them for game one the counter pick system gives a slight advantage to the loser of the first game by letting them pick the stage that gets played on and see the opponent’s character choice, but it also gives the winning player an option to ban a stage that is not favorable to them before the losing player picks a stage. no major stage hazards) and are relatively balanced for all characters to play on. So how did we land on these stages and this system? The community landed on this particular stage list due to these stages being the least intrusive for competitive play (ie. All stages in red are banned from tournament play. The stage highlighted yellow is a counter pick stage and can't be played on the first game. In green are starter stages, these can be played on any game in a set. Below is a diagram of Melee's stage select. If there is a third game, repeat that process. Then the winning player will pick their character, and then the losing player will choose their character. After the first game, the player that won the match will ban a stage they don’t want to play on the losing player will select a stage from the remaining five. Player one will strike one stage, player two will strike two stages, and then player one will pick which of the two remaining starter stages game one will be played on. For the first game, each player reveals what character they will play and then determine strike order. Tournaments have six legal stages, five starters, and one counter pick. What is Stage Striking and Counterpicking?įor players new to the Melee scene, I’ll give you a quick rundown on how a typical tournament set goes for everyone that understands stage striking, feel free to skip on down to the next section. While I agree with that sentiment most of the time, I also think there is a lot of information to be gleaned by going through the striking process, such as learning your opponent’s stage preference and knowledge of match-ups, so today I want to talk about how I reach my conclusions when deciding what stages to strike. Anyone that has been a part of the Melee community for a reasonable amount of time is familiar with the statement, “Do you just want to go to Battlefield” as a means to skip past the time it takes to strike stages for game one and just get right into the action as Battlefield is believed to be the most neutral stage.
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