Statistical Way of Looking At The Situation
(Everything below when comparing to other regions is assuming their best possible roster, as I'm not sure who exactly is coming or not)
The leaders isn't too important of a decision atm, we could decide that the day of if we wanted to and even have like 5+ people. You can never not have enough knowledgeable people offering their insight. Multiple opinions is good and a single person will not notice every single detail.
The main thing we gotta do is find a way to decide who will be in the crew.
I would say it's obviously obvious to have these players:
Ally (Snake)
Atomsk (Dedede/Meta Knight/Ice Climbers)
ksizzle (Meta Knight/Lucario)
ADHD (Diddy Kong)
Anti (Meta Knight/Snake)
NEO (Marth)
From there we have 4 more spots open where we can pretty much pick from the following pool of players:
Fatal (Snake)
Candy (Snake)
ChuDat (Kirby)
Boss (Luigi)
Pyronic~Star (Olimar)
Shadow (Meta Knight)
Out of that list two need to get the boot.
Now if we can somehow use 10 people and 2 alternates (but didn't they say it was just 10 people?) then we're golden, I would suggest not touching it and using those 12 people. Tbh all standard happenings of regional crews (minus mini crews at Apex) I've known of have always been 10 person teams with 2 alts on each side. We should try to convince Plank to make it happen.
Lets look at our character coverage from the six players I have listed first compared to the top half of the Brawl roster as seen in the tier list with their disadvantaged matchups. For the sake of this I will be using rough match up ratings from the SBR.
S Tier (We will come in contact with these characters the most)
Meta Knight - (Even with) Snake, ICs, Diddy, MK(lol)
Snake - DDD
Wario - DDD, Marth, Peach, MK
Falco - Pikachu, ICs, MK
Diddy Kong - Luigi, Peach
King Dedede - Olimar, ICs, Pikachu, MK, Falco
A Tier (There is a good chance many crews will make use of these characters)
Marth - MK
Mr. Game & Watch - Toon Link, Olimar, Marth, Diddy, Falco, Snake, MK
Pikachu - Olimar, GaW, Marth, Diddy, Wario, MK
Olimar - Peach, ICs, Luigi, Marth, Wario, MK
Ice Climbers - Wario, Snake
R.O.B. - ZSS, GaW, DDD, Falco, Wario, MK
Kirby - ZSS, ROB, ICs, Olimar, GaW, Marth, Diddy, Wario, Snake, MK
B Tier (There are plenty of great players who main these characters that crews will probably use as surprise hits)
Lucario - Olimar, GaW, Marth, DDD, Diddy, Snake, MK
Zero Suit Samus - Marth, Diddy, Falco, Snake, MK
Toon Link - Olimar, Marth, Falco, Snake, MK
Pit - ICs, GaW, Marth, Falco, Snake, MK
Donkey Kong - Peach, Pit, Toon Link, ZSS, ROB, ICs, Olimar, Pikachu, DDD, Diddy, Falco, Wario, Snake, MK
From the second six we have the following characters:
Snake
Kirby
Luigi
Olimar
MK
Each of those characters net us the following number of advantaged matchups (including even with MK but not counting other dittos):
Snake - 9
Kirby - 0
Luigi - 2
Olimar - 7
MK - 15
Notes:
-We already have two Meta Knights (not counting Atomsk as we will really need his DDD or ICs)
-Our Kirby and Luigi candidates, ChuDat and Boss respectively, have rarely been seen outside of our region and every other region extremely lacks matchup experience versus these two characters
-Without Boss, we lack a solid Diddy counter
From the first six we have the following characters:
Snake x2
DDD x1
ICs x1
MK x2
Lucario x0
Diddy x1
Marth x1
Note: Ksizzles Lucario and Atomsk's MK are removed as per the lower notes
Each of those characters net us the following number of advantaged matchups (including even with MK but not counting other dittos):
Snake - 9
DDD - 5
ICs - 7
MK - 15
Lucario - 0
Diddy - 7
Marth - 9
Notes:
-Even though DDD only has 5 advantaged matchups here, he is the only one with a advantaged matchup on Snake which is very important
-Due to Lucarios lack of advantages, it is safe to say we will only use Ksizzle for MK
-The majority of DDDs bad matchups are covered with ICs making it very hard to counterpick Atomsk
The top 6 players net us the following advantages (including even with MK but not counting other dittos):
MK x5
Snake x1
Wario x4
Falco x3
Diddy x0
DDD x3
Marth x2
GaW x6
Pikachu x4
Olimar x4
ICs x2
ROB x3
Kirby x7
Lucario x7
ZSS x6
Toon Link x5
Pit x6
DK x7
Ok naturally we got more advantaged matchups as we went down the list as our top 6 is primarily consisted of top tier characters and as we go down the list the characters get worse and worse. Things to note though is that we need to be stronger near the top of the list. We are really lacking in the Snake and Diddy department. There are always even matchups, but that is really a lot to consider right now, and if we play the cards right with advantaged matchups then we will lose less stocks and accumulate a better lead faster.
Furthermore, we have to know who we are up against. There are Diddys out there we have to be weary about loosing a lot of stocks to such as Gnes, AlphaZealot, and more. In terms of Snake we need to be weary of players like Ultimate Razer. While we do have some counters for them, we also need to keep an eye on players such as Lain's ICs, Anther's Pikachu, CO18's DDD, and Larry's Falco. We also may not be able to rely on Ally too often mainly in the battle against Midwest so we can save him for M2K.
Who to choose:
I think Boss will be a good asset to the crew considering everything said so far. I originally probably wouldn't have chosen him, but it makes sense to have a solid Diddy counter (who has taken out ADHD in tournament previously), a character that practically no one outside of Atl North truly knows how to play against, and another solid Olimar counter who can help with the likes of Wereuop, Rich Brown, etc. Especially in terms of alternates, thats where Boss will really shine since in a battle he will either be extremely helpful, or somewhat mediocre to our other players with better mains.
Pyronic~Star will be important as he helps us gain a better upper hand on characters like DDD and Pikachu. Furthermore, for our important battle against Midwest (probably going to be our toughest match) he can play on their lack of a great Olimar in their region. Olimar is also generally a good character to use against Snake when needed (since we need more players against Snake) while its a somewhat even matchup, and if anyone recalls just how close P~S got to beating Ally in both singles and teams at BR2.
MK is broken. We only really have 2 MKs out of our roster of 10. We need to choose our next best MK. If that MK is Shadow, then by all means Shadow should be on there.
The 3 remaining choices are 2 Snakes and a Kirby. As much of a surprise hit Chu could be, the character Kirby really doesn't help us that much, especially compared to a Snake being able to potentially take down MKs (helping us against West Coast), and having a plethora of important even matchups and advantages on the rest of the cast. Whoever the better Snake between Candy and Fatal should get to nod, and while I'm not 100% sure on this, I'm going to personally say Fatal.
Considering all of this, I recommend that the crew roster should be:
Ally (Snake)
Atomsk (Dedede/Ice Climbers)
ksizzle (Meta Knight)
ADHD (Diddy Kong)
Anti (Meta Knight/Snake)
NEO (Marth)
Fatal (Snake)
Boss (Luigi)
Pyronic~Star (Olimar)
Shadow (Meta Knight)
