SCOTU
Smash Hero
Any reasonable tourney will have the Advanced Slob picks rules for counterpicking characters and stages. When you lose a match, you are given a great opportunity to flaunt your diverse strengths. However, this means that you need to be familiar with a lot of material, and have to be adept at thinking up strength/weakness comparisons on the fly. This can be a tricky challenge for any smash player, seasoned or not. This guide will help get you going in the right direction on what to think about when choosing a stage and character to counterpick.
If you're not familiar with the Advanced Slob Picks, the loser of the previous match picks the stage on which the next game will be played. Then the previous winner gets to select their character. Finally the previous loser gets to select their character.
=====Things to consider when developing counterpicking strategies=======
Be Familiar with all the stages legal at your tournament. Make sure you've played on all of them with a decent amount of playtime. Pay attention to things such as ceiling height, how close the walls are, platform configurations, additional terrain features (i.e. a tree on the fire stage of PStadium), and any other character specific advantageous features (i.e. a walkoff edge for a DDD cg). Make sure you understand how the stage moves if it's a moving stage, and when platforms appear/ disappear. Make sure you know where to be on a stage to have the upper hand. First Priority is to make sure you're comfortable on a stage you're counterpicking.
Take an estimate of whether or not you think your opponent is comfortable on that stage. If they're always CPing neutral stages, they may be caught off guard when you counterpick Yoshi's Pipes. Most good players will be versed on all the legal stages, but some just may not be, so try to gauge your opponents comfortability levels for a stage. It's usually very advantageous to CP a stage that you're familiar with, and your opponent is not.
Pick stages that offer an advantage to a character you want to play. If your character KOs off the top easy, pick a stage with a low ceiling. Find out what platform configurations are best for your characters, and pick stages that go along with that. It makes a ton of sense to pick a stage that's advantageous to who you play as. Conversely, you can pick a stage that has a disadvantage for your opponents, ideally one that weakens their strongest point against you (i.e. pick a small stage against a camper). Using a stage to your advantage or an opponents disadvantage is critical.
One thing to note is that, due to the nature of brawl, most competitive players can play several characters, and are not limited to being stuck with a bad stage. If your opponent is such a player, then you cannot guarantee that they won't switch their character to one who has an advantage on the stage. This however, can be used to bait character switches. If you're losing really hard to one character, you can try picking an extremely disadvantageous thread for that character. Either they're stuck with a terrible stage for their character, or they'll switch characters to take advantage of the stage.
A similar concept, is if you'd prefer to switch into a character with a good matchup, pick a stage that seems reasonable or good for the character they just won as, but switch your character to one who has a matchup advantage over their character.
All of these factors require a lot of thought and preparation. You must figure out what you like for most situations, and learn to be the best you can at abusing that counterpick.
If you're not familiar with the Advanced Slob Picks, the loser of the previous match picks the stage on which the next game will be played. Then the previous winner gets to select their character. Finally the previous loser gets to select their character.
=====Things to consider when developing counterpicking strategies=======
Be Familiar with all the stages legal at your tournament. Make sure you've played on all of them with a decent amount of playtime. Pay attention to things such as ceiling height, how close the walls are, platform configurations, additional terrain features (i.e. a tree on the fire stage of PStadium), and any other character specific advantageous features (i.e. a walkoff edge for a DDD cg). Make sure you understand how the stage moves if it's a moving stage, and when platforms appear/ disappear. Make sure you know where to be on a stage to have the upper hand. First Priority is to make sure you're comfortable on a stage you're counterpicking.
Take an estimate of whether or not you think your opponent is comfortable on that stage. If they're always CPing neutral stages, they may be caught off guard when you counterpick Yoshi's Pipes. Most good players will be versed on all the legal stages, but some just may not be, so try to gauge your opponents comfortability levels for a stage. It's usually very advantageous to CP a stage that you're familiar with, and your opponent is not.
Pick stages that offer an advantage to a character you want to play. If your character KOs off the top easy, pick a stage with a low ceiling. Find out what platform configurations are best for your characters, and pick stages that go along with that. It makes a ton of sense to pick a stage that's advantageous to who you play as. Conversely, you can pick a stage that has a disadvantage for your opponents, ideally one that weakens their strongest point against you (i.e. pick a small stage against a camper). Using a stage to your advantage or an opponents disadvantage is critical.
One thing to note is that, due to the nature of brawl, most competitive players can play several characters, and are not limited to being stuck with a bad stage. If your opponent is such a player, then you cannot guarantee that they won't switch their character to one who has an advantage on the stage. This however, can be used to bait character switches. If you're losing really hard to one character, you can try picking an extremely disadvantageous thread for that character. Either they're stuck with a terrible stage for their character, or they'll switch characters to take advantage of the stage.
A similar concept, is if you'd prefer to switch into a character with a good matchup, pick a stage that seems reasonable or good for the character they just won as, but switch your character to one who has a matchup advantage over their character.
All of these factors require a lot of thought and preparation. You must figure out what you like for most situations, and learn to be the best you can at abusing that counterpick.
