Game comes out and while I had played Pikachu in like one Brawl event, I had started the game way too late to really get into events. So I was hoping Pikachu would be similar and a lot of fun. He was, but so was Captain Falcon, Sheik, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Link. I played those for a while, and at some point settled on Falcon and Sheik on the 3DS, but on the Wii U, results came easiest with Sheik (I had figured Sheik and Falcon were high-tier, overshadowed by Diddy, and Pika was mid... not that I was right, but I wasn't following tiers for the game between patches and wanting to let the meta settle down).
After a few months with the Wii U version out, playing mostly Sheik with a backup Falcon, I wanted to make a change. I figured I shouldn't main Sheik necessarily, since she was starting to be a little less fun (salt from others wasn't really helping, although that was hardly the reason I switched). I figured Pikachu would be mid-high or mid-tier, since he was high-tier in Brawl and from what I saw, basically just lost QAC, which I was (at the time) incompetent at best with. So I figured sliding down the tier list would make the game more interesting/fun and I'd learn more instead of fairing and needling my way through people (notably, I disliked Sonic, but threw needles like crazy to deal with Spin Dash, and it mostly worked). So I switched.
Fast-forward a month and I realized I had moved from one top tier to another [which amused me more than anything]. However, I still found Pikachu tons of fun, and Sheik started being more fun again [maybe it's just that I was starting to get better results with both due to improvement]. Given that I main Link in Melee (<_<), I figured I might as well main clear top tiers in at least one game, so I've played Pikachu/Sheik for most MUs, with the Falcon and Link lingering in no-mans' land as "better than others, but worse than my mains".
This past year, the only person at school I could practice with for a while was a Ganondorf/Pac-Man [I know that's weird] and they were way worse than me. I started playing Fox a little because it made it more interesting, and suddenly I found I really enjoyed the character, but I didn't know what to do with that, given that my two mains already have fantastic MU spreads. I struggled somewhat with Fox players I had faced, but I Fox-ditto'd SlowJoe [a Chicago Fox] and almost won a set 2-1 after losing game 1 pretty handily (I was up all of game 2 and 3, but game 3 he did a fast-fall fair gimp I'd never really seen when I was up almost 100%, both on last stock). After that, I wondered if I would just Fox ditto people, and I learned that our top player actually strongly dislikes fighting Fox (he's a Sheik main), and after beating MN's best Fox in the ditto, I can state Fox is a co-main/backup that I pull out mostly for Fox dittos, friendlies, and as an anti-Sheik character (he offers a different angle from Pikachu and Sheik dittoing, although I work on the MU with all of them). My Fox is definitely weaker at random MUs [Shulk, Bowser Junior, Pit, whatever), but he's catching up.
The problem with all 3 of these is that they're very light and don't kill well (Fox sort of does, the others don't), so I tended to either carry in doubles or be carried hard, with little in the middle. When Cloud came out, I tried him, extremely excited (weren't we all?) and wondered if I'd have a 4th main. However, given his weight and KO power, it occurred to me I should try him in doubles. At a teams event in MN, I teamed with a Wisconsin PR Lucario with the tag Z2G, and I decided after winning our first round 2-1 using Cloud game 3 (game 2 my teammate had a really silly SD) that I should try Cloud against our next opponents, a PR Sonic and PR Kirby. He agreed, and also picked Cloud, who he had been developing for fun and as a potential backup. We proceeded (to our own surprise) to 2-0 them [neither of us had ever beaten the Kirby in a singles set]. The even bigger surprise was when we played the hands-down top team in the state, The Ones (they took 4th at Smash 'n Splash, and the Ganondorf player broke GGA Dan's shield on stream). We beat them 2-1, which I chalk up to some extremely well-timed Finishing Touches. Although we lost WF 3-0 and LF 3-1 to The Ones (they used backups game 3, and after beating us, beat the team in Grands twice to win it all), it cemented for me both that I could use Cloud in doubles more effectively than my other characters, and that I could use Cloud in serious sets and see good results.
As a result, I'm now a Pikachu/Sheik/Fox/Cloud player, with Cloud being my primary teams character.
: "I'm finished..." He uses this quote in the same way during Uprising, by the way.
