There are two aspects to the stage to watch out for. During the part of the stage where the background is moving plays entirely differently than the stage when it is static on the ship.
I’ll begin by discussing the moving part of the stage. There are no stage obstacles to prevent CGs once they get started. However, the trade off is that we become susceptible to sharking. However, the only character where this is a significant issue is really metaknight.
Because of the orientation of the stage ramps, what one can do from a desynced stand point is to load the center part of the bottom platform with ice blocks. At which point, most characters don’t have enough jumps or uair disjoint to not be put in a huge risk of getting grabbed if they come back through the platform, making them have to retreat to the main ledges, assuming you are zoning properly. At this point, the only thing that makes sharking disadvantageous to us is if they play metaknight, or if they are trying to stall us out. The sharking ability gives us another recovery option we usually don’t have by squalling up from underneath the level.
In regard to ramp play, you can also abuse the ramps in order to stall the progress of Ice Blocks, extending the time window of a frame trap, assuming they are trying to zone you out of your uair game by staying off the top platform. However, this can also be used against us, because it takes much longer for a frame trap to travel in terms of spacing, thus it makes us more susceptible to a PS > Grab counter to that specific frame trap. This IB trick with the ramps is also fairly useful to help zone against all approaches, because sitting in shield becomes super safe since it essentially makes the entire bottom part of the stage a giant frame trap. That being said, if you stay inside the ramps, you can stay fairly safe. It's hard for super campy characters to get in there and many of their most powerful camping tools are less effective. If you go up the ramps, you are going towards your doom. At which point you better have both a hard read for a grab AND a frame trap to cover your approach.
When the stage switches to play on the ship, the stage loses the ramps, but also loses the chances of us getting sharked. The obstacles however can interrupt chain grabs. If you are CGing in the very center of the stage, you are at risk of losing your CG when the stage moves, because the small drop forces an auto grab break. In order to prevent this, walk your CGs to outside of the platforms on the area above the ramps when the next stage transformation comes. The low ceiling allows you to CG about 15% less than you needed to normally to get a kill, but this is a bad trade in my opinion.
The stage is horizontally larger, so there is more room to run for our opponents in this part of the stage. I like the large platform and how it shields from most aerial based characters, who lose some matchup advantage because they can no longer shark.
For the most part though, this stage is like a time to get timed out trap if everyone plays safe. It’s certainly playable and would definitely not warrant a ban, but there are very few to no characters that I can think of that I would counterpick here.
Matchup affects by Character (remember these numbers indicate how much the stage affects the matchup number imo) (If they aren't listed, assume it's a 0):
+2 - None
+ 1 -
-1 -
-2 - None
0 is no affect on matchup ratio. +/- 1 is possible counter pick. +/- 2 is a candidate for a ban.
