Smash Attack #5 is in 8 days! I'll be away for Spring Break while this happens, unfortunately, but you'll have the amazing Max Ketchum as your head TO next Sunday. Team Sp00ky will, of course, be on the 1s and 2s bringing you an awesome stream.
We'll be doing both customs 1v1 and no-customs 1v1 events - same schedule and everything as last weekend. We'll be changing this format likely after this event - at the very least, we want to give the two 1v1 events format a solid second try, hopefully with more people.
Either way, I just wanted to comment on the three new counterpick stages we'll be implementing at the event: Pyrosphere, Norfair, and Pokemon Stadium 2. Just to try the stages out, they will be remaining counterpicks for now (though very obviously PS2 could work as a neutral). Thanks to 8-player Smash, these stages have increased competitive viability.
Here's the procedure for how things will go down if you do decide to pick one of these stages:
1) Select 8-Player Smash
2) Set rules to 3 stocks, 6 minutes.
3) Enable handicap
4) Select characters for two human players and three level 1 CPUs. You can replace any of these CPUs with human controllers if preferred/available.
5) Set CPUs (if any) to 300% handicap. Keep participating players at 0%.
6) Select stage
7) Kill non-participating CPUs/human players.
8) Have each participating player SD once.
9) Begin match at 5:00.
We'll be keeping it at 2 stage bans for games 2 and beyond, though.
If you want to leave any questions, comments, concerns, etc., please do so at your convenience. Though it is a bit clunky because there really is no way otherwise to directly make these stages not full of hazards, we believe its a quick, simple way to add to the number of potentially usable neutrals and counterpicks. For example, this could work towards a good 5-stage starter list of FD, BF, Smashville, Town & City, and Pokemon Stadium 2. Meanwhile, Norfair and Pyro could join or replace counterpicks like Castle and Lylat (two stages I wouldn't mind not seeing on stage lists tbh).
Ofc, if a bunch of people do not like this and want to see it gone from Smash Attack, please let us know at the event after you give it a try. If a majority of people seem to be against it, then we'll reconsider things. However, we do think there is value in making these stages usable and it's really not at all that unreasonable to do this process for only three stages out of the entire stagelist. We want to now see what you all think.
