General Observations

In total, we have 261 logged games in the dataset with Marth winning 54.41% of the logged matches. Some sets are missing stage data because they did not have any logged data on Smash.gg or VODs online. This data is further broken down in Appendix 1.

Final Destination has always been seen in Marth’s favor with his powerful chain grabs that can zero to death Fox. Even when you take Mew2King’s data out of the sample, Marth still has a 68.4% win rate with a 13-6 game advantage. Mew2King has a strong combo game on Final Destination, but even then he doesn’t fully optimize the chain grab at all percentages, frequently up-tilting instead of pivot-grabbing a Fox at lower percentages. The Moon and PewPewU tend to pick other stages instead because of their inconsistency on chain grabs and followups.Though Marth has a strong advantage on Final Destination right now, this advantage could grow even larger if they continually improve off the grab.

On the other side, the primary counter-pick for Fox may become interesting in future months. Dreamland has been long touted as the best stage for Fox because of its large space that allows Fox to pick his engages carefully. The large stage also makes it difficult for Marth to find early kills. The higher side platforms prevent Marth from confirming tippers off of tech-chases. If Marth can’t confirm a Ken combo or a tipper, then the Fox players can easily live to 150 to 200 percent. Even with these perceived weaknesses, Marth players have done decently well on Dreamland with a 55% win rate. The stage may not necessarily be the best for Marth, but Marth players may be experiencing “Mango phenomena” with Dreamland, where they do well on the stage because everyone counterpicks them to it all of the time.

The correct counterpick may shift temporarily to Fountain of Dreams against certain Marth players that struggle to combo and kill quickly. Players commonly perceive that Fountain of Dreams’ platforms may ruin Fox’s movement, but this may be a non-factor as Fox players continue to improve. If anything, the platform heights disrupt Marth’s options more than Fox’s. The trade-off on Fountain is the confined space and the higher ceiling, but living longer against Marth’s combos could outweigh these factors until Marth’s figure out how to correctly combo Fox’s into guaranteed kills.

Another tidbit to note is that Marth’s have done well on Battlefield in 2017. This seems to be the comfort pick especially for The Moon and PewPewU, who have a great understanding of how to maneuver the stage and follow up on the side platforms into long combos. Even Mew2King has seen success on the stage, going undefeated in the logged sample set. This should demonstrate that there is no reason for Mew2King to start Sheik on Battlefield anymore. It’s a stage that could go either way and it’s no longer accurate to say this is a bad stage for Marth.

Pokemon Stadium is a double edge sword in the match-up. On one hand, Pokemon Stadium can be seen as “Final Destination with tipper platforms” that greatly favor Marth’s dash dance, grab combos, and platform setups. However, Fox equally benefits on the stage with the space to maneuver, transformations that greatly favor him, and a low ceiling that allows for early up-smash kills.

Yoshi’s Story is an interesting pick for both players. Marth players often complain that it’s tough to reset the neutral game if Fox gains an advantage, but the same could also be seen with Fox if he gets caught under Marth’s pressure. Both characters have obscene tools on this stage. Fox can use his ledge-dash invulnerability to maneuver over half the stage and Marth can combo Fox in so many ways on the side platforms that lead into an early tipper or a combo setup that eventually leads into a down-air or an edgeguard.

If we were to extrapolate the 2017 data into Ikneeddata.com’s match up calculator, then we get the following results in the graphic below.