LiteralGrill
Smokin' Hot~
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Hi all, we’re back with another Mind Over Meta. This week, I want to talk about a part of the Project M environment that so strongly defines the competitive game that Project M is often associated closely with it. The way this piece of gameplay shapes the tournament setting is how Project M differentiates itself strongly from its older brother, Melee, and therefore deserves a fair share of discussion. With 41 mostly viable characters, all with unique traits and quirks, the chance of seeing Fox vs. Marth in a tournament is not that far from the chance of seeing Olimar vs. Snake or Link vs. Zero Suit Samus. In fact, over 800 combinations of character vs. character are possible (and hopefully more along the way!), and that doesn’t even count doubles.
So let’s delay no further! This week, we want to talk about matchups.
Mano A Mano
The characters chosen in a competitive match obviously make a huge difference in the gameplay and outcome of the match.
To get our definitions straight, the matchup between any two characters refers to a theoretical model of how a standard match between those two characters would go down, assuming players that are consistent and competent, usually at an advanced level.
This model accounts for factors like standard combos, general strong and weak points, and attack strength of each character, as well as nuanced factors that occur in the specific context of these matchups, such as recovery and edgeguarding tactics, dash dance and danger zones affecting what moves are viable for each character, how neutral game plays out, the specific roles of projectiles and powershields, character-specific techniques, and numerous other details. Matchup knowledge even can be the sole determinant of a match’s outcome!
However, this definition doesn’t quite do justice to the wide array of the types of matchups that exist in Project M. So let’s try and talk about some general classes of matchups here!
By The Book
In a lot of cases, matchups are straightforward and well-explored. Marth vs. Fox is an example of a well-studied matchup in both Melee and Project M. Fox combos hard, get a lot out of waveshines, has powerful aggression and defense in the form of lasers from a distance and powerful grab->uair and upsmash finishers up close, as well as sneaky shine gimps. Marth, by contrast, has an amazing neutral game withimposing dash dances, great sword range, chain throws and amazing follow ups, and of course asuperb edgeguard game ith back-air, forward-air, and the trademark down-air spike.
The up-side to matchups that are well-defined and thoroughly studied like these is that any player in this situation can draw on a wealth of knowledge and database. The downside is that the other player can draw from the same database. In that way, much of the matchup becomes rote; you combo this way, throw off the stage, edgeguard in this fashion, and you’re done. You avoid this move, DI this way, and that’s the proper procedure, don’t deviate.
Even so, thousands watch these well-studied matchups anyway; why aren’t they boring? The answer is that there still is a lot of room for creativity, even at the utmost of levels. And low tier matchups in Melee are similarly exciting, because there is still more unexplored territory in these matchups. Although in Project M tiers are not so well defined, rare matchups still draw lots of attention because the room for creativity and exploration is even wider.
The Full 960
Bobby Fischer lamented the modern state of chess toward the end of his career. In an interview, he remarked: "Now [chess] is completely dead, it’s a joke. It’s all just memorization and pre-arrangement. It’s a terrible game now… very uncreative game."
Fischer believed that the metagame of chess focused on openings and rote patterns to the extreme, to the point where creativity no longer mattered, and instead it was pattern recognition and mechanical outputs from databases. In response, he invented Chess960, where the board’s initial position is randomized, in order to test adaptation and creativity rather than metagame knowledge. In the Smash community, our hypothetical dead-end metagame is dubbed “20XX,” where everything is optimized by experience and deep pre-memorization, and outcomes are based on minute details.
Luckily, in Project M, that isn’t happening anytime soon. Strange or uncommon matchups are paradoxically common, just look at Low Tier City 2’s results from last year and the diversity of characters. DK, Ness, Charizard, even Olimar in top ten?! This is the realm of matchup pioneers, discovering new ideas and techniques in uncharted territory, much like Chess960. And in Project M, the number of viable matchups means that these types of matches define the meta, perhaps moreso than the tried-and-true Falcon v. Sheik matchup, or Lucas v. Falco, or Metaknight v. Mewtwo matchups.
The flip side of this, however, is that resources and databanks are slim. As a testament, the subreddit’s weekly Matchup Wednesday thead often goes bare for particular odd matchups (like Charizard vs. Yoshi). This means that should some poor Charizard find himself pitted against a Yoshi, he will likely need to improvise a lot and learn on-the-fly how to deal with double-jump aerials, egg pressure, and long grab combos while figuring out how to use tech chases, Heat Wave reads, and nair approaches to his advantage.
In these types of matches, the result often draws more on abusing a character’s abilities to take advantage of an opponent’s inexperience, to put it bluntly. I know I have beaten much better players by spamming Squirtle’s Withdraw in tournaments during PM3.0, and I also lost to matchups I’d never played against Dedede by getting edgeguarded in cheeky ways repeatedly. On one hand, you do what it takes to win. But on the other, if you become complaisant in relying on your character to win games by being alien, as soon as people learn how to deal with the character your strategies are shot.
In the long run, then, the best strategy for dealing with these situations is to stick with 2 key points:
- build strong fundamentals. Fundamentals in Smash is a broad topic and deserves its own discussion, but there are a variety of resources online to help build this as a skillset. At the core, the better player is generally the one with stronger fundamentals, and this player generally wins out in the end.
- be adaptable. Adaptation is hard, and although last week we drew up some advice on the subject, learning to be flexible is a skill that comes with experience and comfort, and helps immensely in catching onto unfamiliar matchups in real time.
Wood, Iron, and Putter
A friend of mine, whose background started in Brawl, once criticized Melee as being one dimensional. To paraphrase, "In Melee and PM, all the matchups are basically the same, so it’s easier. In Brawl, every matchups has to be played really differently so you need to know everything about the matchups and how to play them. But in Melee, you just do mostly the same things for every matchup."
He’s right to a large extent; many characters have got swiss-knife tools which work in many situations for many matchups; Marth’s ken combos and Falco’s shine-grab and Lucas’s deep pressure all are pretty global in application scope. However, I disagree with the sentiment in a broader sense; in a lot of situations in PM (and Melee), tools change or are even nullified altogether; for example, Lucas’s upthrow kills at varying percents based on the opponent’s percents. Jigglypuff’s throw to rest at low percents only works on a limited portion of the cast, because throw distances can change drastically.
Adapting to matchups means recognizing what tools still work and which don’t. For some characters, this could be a relatively conservative change, like noting which of Captain Falcon’s throws will combo better, and what moves will have the knockback you want to do your air-wobble-to-rest combos. In other cases, the viable toolset shifts drastically according to the matchup. Take Oro’s commentary on 3.0 ZSS. Although ZSS has been altered between 3.0 and now, the same struggles apply; opposing characters define how ZSS tackles the neutral game; paralyzer lasers simply are not good for certain characters. "...She doesn’t have anything that gives her the world… You’re not going to be able to laser every character, you’re not gonna be able to do everything you want." While ZSS is a somewhat extreme case of this, the same principles apply elsewhere.
In Melee and PM, Luigi is often lambasted as a weird, anti-meta character, on account of his weird combo weight and quick combo-ruining nair. As a result, Fox players and others have to really adapt to Luigi’s weird playstyle, trade advantage, and control over getting comboed, forcing players to approach aggression very differently than normal. Squirtle and Bowser are considered similarly, defining matchups insane movement plus aerial prowess, and an armored and defensive toolkit respectively. Since these are regularly popular characters in Project M, it is wise to start learning these matchups.
Stagelist is another important factor, obviously. While it’s hard to say a lot now, know that understanding your character’s advantages and choosing stages that play to those strengths while minimizing your opponents’ is also a big factor in matchups, as they control what tactics are better or worse for each character; for example, Jigglypuff is much stronger against Fox on Dreamland than on Warioware, but may have a much tougher time against Mewtwo on the same stage because of shared advantages on the stage. Suffice it to say for now that you want to really look hard at stage advantages and disadvantages when thinking about the matchups.
Choosing your tools correctly and then applying them is hugely important and requires both experience and improvisation to figure out. And sometimes, your character may simply not be experienced enough to cope.
The Ol’ Switcheroo
Often, a matchup forces you to entirely rethink your character choice. Some matchups feel so skewed one way or the other that they are considered almost unwinnable. In these cases, it may be savvy to switch characters, counterpicking to someone with a better or even advantageous shot at victory.
The primary conflict in these scenarios is of comfort vs. counterpick. Typically secondary characters are less polished and therefore less comfortable. We have discussed secondaries before, so if you are looking for resources on picking secondaries, you might look at that article as well as other resources. However, advice on secondaries is very case by case.
Sometimes shouldering an uphill matchup turns out rewarding. Take the example of JZ’s Ivysaur gritting through Axe’s Marth and Falco, matchups that are notoriously difficult for the green grass-type. It is indeed possible to win against difficult matchups; the matchup is only a theoretical model, and it is especially unrepresentative if either player uses unusual or unorthodox tactics. Other times, your chances may be greatly improved if you make a smart decision to swap characters, especially if you are on tilt, or your current character seems to just not be working out that day. While Oracle still struggles in the third game of this match, switching from ROB to Charizard helps reset his mentality and gain some confidence against Lucky after being overwhelmed.
The decision to switch characters in tournament sets is not one that’s often lightly made, and requires you to have competent secondary characters in which you have a lot of confidence. Matchup theory is irrelevant if you can’t apply the theory; facing that Peach with a half-hearted Fox will not be pretty if you can’t nail those upsmashes, upthrow-upaires, and waveshine bread’n’butter combos that define the matchup.
However, if you feel assured and you have a plan going into the switch, it may well pay off. If you think that, despite a rough hill, you can adapt your main character’s style to earn the win, you should stick to that. Whatever decisions you make, though, I believe that the best advice I can give on these situations comes from Peppy Hare.
Head to Head
Matchups are dynamic, varied, and challenging in Super Smash Brothers. In Project M, this fact is exacerbated by a huge viable character list compared to Melee, Brawl, Smash 4 and 64, but the principles of character selection and matchups are the same in all these games. Part theory, part skill, part experience, and part improvisation, matchups are what make the game exciting, even down to ditto matchups. And if you aren’t able to keep up with a new matchup, or a different spin on a familiar one, you are bound to struggle.
The breadth of the types of matchups call for a variety of different playstyles and strategies for success, so I cannot cover any of them with any depth, but I hope that this article helps orient you to be able to deal with whatever may come your way so you can maximize tournament success by becoming aware of the importance and breadth of matchups you’ll encounter.
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SmashCapps hoped this was as enjoyable to read for others as it was for him and that it will help players improve their game. To keep up with his own writing adventures follow him on Twitter.
