We’ve learned a lot about Smash Ultimate lately, quite a lot actually! Last week we saw the final direct which unveiled every character, and following that a number of events have shown what is presumably the final build of the game (in demo form). In this we have seen what exactly changes with the Stage Hazard toggle, and can build off my previous post on stages to form a better stage list.

The Hazard Toggle

The first question is, do we in fact use the Stage Hazard toggle? Looking at the stage list I have found roughly 12 stages we could use with the toggle on (hazards enabled), and 29 stages with the toggle off. While we don’t need this many stages, this opens up too many possibilities for great stages, such as a frozen Pokemon Stadium 2. We need to pick all on or all off for our ruleset, for reasons that I will explain next. I am thus proceeding with the Stage Hazards disabled.

Goals of This Stage List

If we simply wanted legal stages, we find what’s good, and done. This being said, it’s far more complicated than this. The stage list needs to adhere to the following points:

The stage list should remain fair & balanced for competitive play

The stage list should be simple so it may easily be played in tournament

The rules must be simple to prevent mistakes and ease operation

First things first, I mentioned that stage hazards must be globally enabled or disabled. To be honest, I wish we could do a mixture of both. I think a hazards on version of some stages like Fountain of Dreams or Smashville are better than hazards off in some ways, but hazards off provides many more benefits overall. If we were to create a mixture of hazards on and off for stages, our rules would become too cumbersome to strike between, and the number of resets and accidental picks you’ll find in tournament will be far too much. The process to play a tournament set must be quick and easy. You want to set the rules in game once, and keep them that way. Additionally, by mixing hazards on and off, you would be unable to practice on every available stage by just hitting random on the stage select.

We can’t leave all 29 of those mentioned stages on because it is far too many to remember, and there is an imbalanced amount of stages in each archetype, which would be unbalanced for competitive play. Just because there is 5 different “Battlefield” stages doesn’t mean we should use all of them. A perfectly competitive match can take place on any of them, but a full set with bans and counterpicks wouldn’t play out optimally. We need to select a specific set of stages that adheres to this goal, with reasoning behind each choice. My goal for this is to keep the amount of total stages at around 15 or lower for players to potentially remember, practice on, and choose between. I would fall on the larger stage select size than smaller earlier in the game for testing purposes.

Furthermore, we also need to pick which stages are starter, and which are counterpick. Since Brawl we have seen starter list sizes at 3, 5, 7, 9, and even 13! The sweet spot for starter stage lists in reaching a fair game one has typically been 5 or 7. The amount of stages must be odd for a fair striking order.

As for Omega and Battlefield stage forms, we’ll simply leave that feature off. This only creates essentially duplicate stages, and we already have everything we need from normal form stages to accomplish what we want.

Let me start by listing the 29 potentially legal stages I found:

Battlefield

Final Destination

Kongo Jungle

Dream Land

Rainbow Cruise

Brinstar

Yoshi’s Story

Fountain of Dreams

Pokemon Stadium

Wario Ware

Frigate Orpheon

Yoshi’s Island

Halberd

Lylat Cruise

Pokemon Stadium 2

Castle Siege

Smashville

Unova Pokemon League

Prism Tower

Arena Ferox

Skyloft

Kalos Pokemon League

Gamer

Town and City

Wuhu Island

Wily Castle

Midgar

Super Mario Maker

Umbra Clock Tower

Grouping Stage Archetypes

While analyzing these potentially legal stages I saw a common theme, that there were many stages of the same type. There are many Battlefield-esque stages, some FD-esque stages, etc. I wanted to start by categorizing these stages to see what we had to work with. Here are the 9 following archetypes I found.

Tri-Plat Stages

This group contains Battlefield, Dream Land, Yoshi’s Story, Fountain of Dreams, and Midgar. Here is a perfect example of where I wish we could use some hazard on stages, as Fountain would no longer remain in this list, and instead be more unique. However with the platforms frozen in hazards off, it essentially becomes another Battlefield. These stages all functionally act the same in gameplay on the stage, save for a few minor details such as bottom walls, blastzones, etc.

No Platform Stages

These are essentially your Final Destination-like stages. Final Destination, Umbra Clock Tower, and Wily Castle.

Stadium Layout Stages

This beautiful layout has been lost in Smash 4, but present in the few iterations of Smash before it. It’s a flat-like stage with two platforms, usually positioned on each side of the stage. Ultimate brings four stages like this now with little difference, and coincidentally enough, all being Pokemon stages.

Smashville Layout Stages

Otherwise seen as, single platform stages. Smashville in Ultimate with hazards off keeps the platform positioned in the center, very similar to Yoshi’s Island and Wuhu Island.

Transforming Stages

Both Halberd and Prism Tower continue to undergo stage transformations, even when hazards are off. Despite this, both stages have been legal previously in Brawl and Smash 3DS, and were relatively well-received stages. Halberd was legalized early in Smash 4, but was removed due to early kills off the top, and the addition of hitbox hazards.

Ladder Stages

This is a unique archetype that I saw a trend in, and it’s a new type of stage that we haven’t had in any Smash game except for Wario Land in Project M. I classify a stage as a ladder stage if it features a platform layout where at least one platform is positioned on top of another one, creating an upward ladder of platforms so to say. This opens up additional movement and placement options to change offense and defense.

Walled Stages

Both of these stages feature a semi-static wall in the stage. In Rainbow it is always present, while in Frigate it is only there while the platform on the right is in the lower section. This can create some positional advantages for defense to tech off said wall, or use it as an opportunity to land stronger combo follow-ups off of. Walls were originally deemed fine in Brawl, though eventually removed (outside of Frigate occasionally) due to combos like King Dedede’s chain grab. Nothing quite like this has been found in Smash 4, and we are unaware of any such thing in Ultimate yet. Until such tactics could be seen as detrimental to the game, these options are totally fine.

Alternate Tri-Plat Stages

The tri-plat stage is a staple of Smash, so much that there are 10 of them listed on this blog alone. What sets the previous list of tri-plats apart from this one however is that all previous tri-plats mentioned in the first section all closely mimic Battlefield, these break that mold. These all have three platforms each, but in different arrangements that can vastly differ the gameplay. This could be due to stage size, distance between platforms, height, and more.

Other Stages

Simply put, these two remaining stages don’t fit with any other group. Castle Siege is essentially an Alternate Two Platform Stage, while Super Mario Maker is an Alternate One Platform Stage.

How Does Mario Maker and Gamer Work?

These rules aren’t final, and the game isn’t even released yet! We’ve learned a lot, but something seems off about Gamer and Mario Maker. Their platform layouts seem arbitrary, and both stages in hazard on mode are known for having a different platform layout every game. It’s quite possible that they will be different every game in hazard off too. The gameplay we’ve seen so far puts them where I put them above, but if they happen to change every game, they wouldn’t be considered. This being said, we don’t need them as it is.

Picking Our Legal Stages

So here we are with 9 different groups of legal stages to create our stage list from. My idea is to create a balanced stage list with representatives from each stage type to create a balanced list. I wish to take one stage from each group to put in the starters, and one stage from each group to become a counterpick. This would leave game one for the players to find the most even archetype between the two players and characters, with subsequent games opening up additional options.

Picking two stages from each archetype gives us 18 stages, but this is more than I am aiming to do. In order to cut down the stage list, I found that transforming stages do not fit one of the goals of this stage list. I classified stages to not have many repeats to create a fair and balanced stage list. This classification is based on archetypes, and it could be seen as these transforming stages using multiple archetypes in the same match, thus creating complications with the counterpick system. With this in mind, I nixed the transforming stages.

This leaves us with 8 archetypes remaining. 16 total? That’s doable, but it would then leave us with an even number of stages for our starter list. Lets remove one additional archetype, and considering we have an other category for stages that don’t fit elsewhere, this is by all means appropriate to leave out. That leaves us with 7 groups left, which will create a 7 stage starter list, and 14 total legal stages… Perfect!

Building our Starters and Counterpicks

So now we pick out the two best stages from each archetype that differs from each other and provides something unique, and use our knowledge of past rulesets to designate one as the starter. This is what I came up with:

Tri-Plats: Battlefield (Starter) / Yoshi’s Story (Counterpick)

Battlefield is a staple to Smash while Yoshi’s Story provides this layout with walls added down the sides.

No Platforms: Final Destination (Starter) / Wily Castle (Counterpick)

Essentially the same reasoning as above, FD is our staple while Wily Castle provides the same stage but with walls down the side.

Stadium Layout: Pokemon Stadium 2 (Starter) / Kalos Pokemon League (Counterpick)

PS and PS2 are essentially the same, except with ledges that are traditionally more user friendly on PS2. The biggest change apart from PS2 would be Kalos, which positions the platforms more over the ledges to provide more ledge support rather than stage support, along with lower walls.

Smashville Layout: Smashville (Starter) / Yoshi’s Island (Counterpick)

Yoshi’s lower walls brings a similar situation with lower walls (see a trend yet?) to compliment the tried and true Smashville stage.

Ladder Stages: Wario Ware (Starter) / Arena Ferox (Counterpick)

Wario Ware offers a mirrored stage that will be balanced on both sides to create an easy example of the ladder concept. Arena Ferox further mixes this up with a fresh spin to offer a similar idea, but across a larger play field.

Walled Stages: Frigate Orpehon (Starter) / Rainbow Cruise (Counterpick)

Yes, it sounds insane to list Frigate Orpheon as a starter, but it fits too well here with the entire concept. The reason why I chose it over Rainbow is because the wall isn’t always there, so it can be utilized, but not over-centralizing for a game one.

Alt Tri-Plats: Town and City (Starter) / Skyloft (Counterpick)

This more came down to eliminating stages until two were remaining, since they really aren’t all bad choices. If we ever wished to ditch a different archetype like walled stages, I could there being a total of four alt tri-plats in the future.

Here is some easy data at a glance to show how I helped reach my conclusion.

Stage Bans

The final part of the stage list is how many bans do we use? The answer here is three stage bans per player. This fits with the two per stage archetype idea by allowing a player to completely remove an archetype from counterpicking, and additionally remove one further stage to control their opponent’s options. If we allow say four stage bans per player, letting someone remove two entire archetypes would start to be too limiting and unfair to the counterpicker, while still letting the person who is banning a stage remove the one type their character may not be suited best for. If a player goes with removing one archetype and one stage of another, they’ll likely have to end up playing on the one remaining stage of that half banned archtype, but then ensure that a player will need to win games on two of the seven archetypes to win a set — a feat surely worthy of showing the winner of a set.

Conclusion

Starters: Battlefield, Final Destination, Pokemon Stadium 2, Smashville, Wario Ware, Frigate Orpheon, Town and City

Counterpicks: Yoshi’s Story, Wily Castle, Kalos Pokemon League, Yoshi’s Island, Arena Ferox, Rainbow Cruise, Skyloft

Stage Hazards Off, 3 Stage Bans per player, and you can not pick a stage you already won on

I would like to hear your thoughts with this approach to a stage list. This method targets the potentially legal stages, and uses a methodical approach to picking a balanced representation of them for a balanced set across such a large cast. This is by no means set in stone, but is one strong way we can build our starting stage list.

Your feedback and collaboration between tournament organizers to help lead for the healthiest start to this game. This stage list was made with assistance in conjunction with fellow SMASHADELPHIA Ultimate Tournament Organizers @FinallyRJ and @Shug_SSB. See early rules like this in play at large starting events such as SMASHADELPHIA Ultimate on December 9th — just two days after the game comes out! Registration is live here: http://smash.gg/sdaUltimate