Which Characters Are: Meta, Anti-Meta, & Rogue

[EddyBearr]

In trading card games, decks/strategies are usually labeled as meta, anti-meta, or rogue. Meta is metagame defining or just plain good strategies, anti-meta attempts to hard counter the metagame or aspects of it, and rogue is just a decent, but very quirky, strategy that most people are not prepared for.

I was wondering what all of you would think the labels would be for Smash?

This would be my take

Meta:
Fox (undeniable)
Falco (undeniable due to Fox)
Peach (I can't think of her hard countering anything like anti-meta would; she's just good.)
Captain Falcon (undeniable due to spacies)
Doctor Mario (Just plain good)
Pikachu (similarities with fox)
Ganondorf (similarities to C. Falcon)
Mario (Doc)
Sheik (hard counters a lot, somewhat defensive/anti-aggression, stalling, punishes, etc; possibly also anti-meta?)

Anti-Meta:
Sheik (hard counters a lot, somewhat defensive/anti-aggression, stalling, punishes, etc; possibly also meta?)
Marth (somewhat a hard counter to spacies, anti-aggression, defensive. This game is pretty aggressive, so Marth contradicts it)
Jigglypuff (undeniable)
Luigi (fast faller combos, nair, overall quirkiness; probably both anti-meta and rogue)

Rogue:
Ice Climbers (Just plain good; wobbling is not anti-meta. You have to be prepared for it.)
Samus (not sure; maybe rogue?)
Luigi (fast faller combos, nair, overall quirkiness; probably both anti-meta and rogue)


Lower tiers: (less effort, no explanations)
Meta:
Young Link
Link
DK
Roy
Mewtwo
Mr. G&W
Ness
Pichu

Anti-Meta:
Zelda
Kirby (crouching)

Rogue:
Yoshi
Bowser

 

[Kadano]

I agree with your list, but I don't see the point in categorizing characters like this.

 

[1MachGO]

I personally disagree with the list.

Assuming meta, anti-meta, and rogue are relative, then any character that is common in competitive play is meta (most mid tiers and up). Any character below that threshold is "rogue".

Some exceptions to this generalization would be Ice Climbers (who I agree are rogue for obvious reasons) and Jigglypuff (who is easily the only anti-meta character in the game since she breaks rules common among other characters such as aerial commitment and gimpable recovery)

 

[BTmoney]

There is no real anti-meta for Fox and Falco (this game is relative to Fox and Falco really), they're just blatantly the best 2 characters in the game.

It kind of goes
Meta:
Fox, Falco

(Anti-meta but doesn't really exist:
maybeeeeee you can include Marth then maybe Peach Sheik and maybeeee Samus)

Rouge:
Everyone else

I think this gets more interesting if you ignore those two characters
I don't really agree with your list either, your meta includes too many bad/not that great characters

 

[Lukingordex]

So you think Marth is anti-meta because: "somewhat a hard counter to spacies, anti-aggression, defensive. This game is pretty aggressive, so Marth contradicts it"

You're funny

 

[Massive]

Fox/Falco have so many options at any given time, they would be both "meta" and "anti-meta" based on your playstyle.

Considering the sheer number of style variations available for most characters, I don't think this is a valid way to categorize melee.

 

[mimgrim]

Meta would be Fox and possibly Falco

Anti-meta would be Sheik and Marth on FD.

Rouge is everyone else, basically.

It's quite common for the top 8 characters on the tier list to get called the meta. But I have to disagree with that. Fox is by far the most used and most popular character in Melee, to the point where everyone basically knows the match-up and learned all the CGs that can be done. Falco can be argued to be meta, but he isn't as high as Fox in terms of usage. So any character that can go even with Fox would be the anti-meta character. Sheik and Marth on FD are the foremost to come to mind.