Potentially Legal Stages in Smash Ultimate

Creating rulesets for Smash titles has never been fun. Ultimate is bringing us a plethora of options, which is amazing, yet frightening for tournament organizers. Now that we have every stage revealed for Ultimate, tournament organizers are preparing to conceptualize some rulesets. Not only do we have 103 stages, but we also have options such as Omega Forms, Battlefield Forms, Stage Morphs, and Stage Hazards Toggle. I’ve been hard at work figuring out what to do and talking to others in preparation for SMASHADELPHIA Ultimate, a big tournament I’m hosting only TWO DAYS after the release of the game. Help! lol

There’s a lot of stages now

In this post I’m going to go over all stages I think can be legal in the game, with explanations for some.

The Stage Hazard Toggle

To start, I’m suggesting that Stage Hazards be toggled off for every game. Going over every legal stage, even those that would be legal even with Stage Hazards enabled, we don’t really gain anything by keeping them on. Perhaps the Smashville balloon will no longer appear with Hazards off or Randall on Yoshi’s Story is gone. That’s fine, we don’t need them. Those things aren’t why we pick and play the stages. We want to keep the in-game rules consistent so they can be set (and now saved in Ultimate!). The more you go into menus and change settings, the more likely you’ll have a setting wrong in future matches and create another 0.9 debacle.

Battlefield, Midgar, and BF Forms

This stage is obvious, it’s a clear staple of Smash! However now, it seems that Midgar with hazards off will essentially be Battlefield, and we also have Battlefield forms for every stage in the game. I suggest in the meantime we do a simple Battlefield for Game 1 (since this stage will certainly be a starter), but in the counterpick process you’re able to substitute it with Midgar or any other stage in Battlefield form.

Final Destination, Wily Castle, and Omegas

This is the exact same situation as above. Final Destination is a staple, and will likely be a starter. That being said, it appears that Wily Castle without hazards will just be like FD with walls, and we have all of the Omega stages in the game. During stage striking treat FD on its own, but afterwards you can combine Wily Castle and Omegas as an FD replacement.

Combining Stages

Currently in Smash 4, Battlefield and Dream Land are often coupled together as the tri-plats. In Melee, the tri-plats (Yoshi’s Story, Battlefield, and Dream Land) are not paired together. They were only combined in Smash 4 due to some potential issues with the counterpick system and characters that favor them more. I’d say it’s safe to say that we should not combine any stages in the game until we learn all intricacies of the blast zones and exact stage layouts, except for the ones mentioned above (barring testing). The Omega and Battlefield forms are obvious pairings, and Midgar and Wily Castle are special cases for the stage being homogenized after hazards being removed. We’ll see for sure to determine if they need to be separate or combined, but my money is on combined.

Also to note, in the future it may be simpler to just remove all the combined alternates and only legalize both Battlefield and Final Destination. Until then though, we’ll need to see data on the various BF and FD stages, along with how players treat the counterpick phase.

What is a stage hazard?

Until we can get our hands on every stage, we don’t know for sure. There are a lot of maybes and some assumptions in this article to determine this, and it can affect stage legality. Pokemon Stadium is a great example. The stage transforms many times, but none of the transformations hurt you. Would the hazard toggle remove all transformations? Only some of them? None of them? We’ll see.

These Stages are Fine

There are a number of stages in the game that appear to be completely fine (with hazards off). We can safely assume how they will work, and generally provide differences from other stages. These stages are:

• Battlefield — Discussed above.
• Final Destination — Discussed above.
• Dream Land — This has been legal in every game it’s appeared in.
• Yoshi’s Story — This is legal worthy as seen in Melee.
• Fountain of Dreams — This is legal worthy as seen in Melee.
• Frigate Orpheon — This was previously legal in Brawl, and will be again soon. Players did not enjoy the lack of a ledge on the right, but that has been added to the stage, along with the removal of the stage flip.
• Yoshi’s Island — This is a legal worthy stage as seen in Brawl and 3DS.
• Halberd — This was a legal stage in both 4 and Brawl, but later removed. With a different cast of characters and at least the ship hazards being removed, it’s worth to try again.
• Lylat Cruise — This stage is (unfortunately) legal in both Brawl and 4, though now supposedly does not tilt with hazards off. This should help it function better as a stage and be the best iteration yet.
• Smashville — This is arguably the most neutral stage in all of Smash.
• Prism Tower — This stage has been legal throughout the history of 3DS, and poses no real issues.
• Town and City — This is a legal worthy stage as seen in 4.
• Brinstar — It’s safe to say that the stage will have no lava. If the membrane and hitboxes remain on the stage with the splitting, that’s not all bad. The stage has been used previously in both Melee and Brawl for a while, though eventually removed after years of use. With a more tame version of the stage, it’s worth using once more.
• Pokemon Stadium — See below

The Pokemon Stadium Issue

Pokemon Stadium presents a unique issue. Both Stadium 1 and 2 are in the game. I’ve heard preliminary reports that hazards off removes all transformations from Stadium 2, but have yet to see this personally. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not sure if removing hazards will disable transformations on Stadium 1. If it does remove all transformations on both stages, then we should either just allow one of them like Pokemon Stadium 2, or simply combine them similarly to Battlefield and Midgar. If hazards toggle does not remove the transformations on Stadium 1 (but does on 2), then we could theoretically keep both stages and treat them differently, but lets face it, the reason why we’ve kept PS1 legal in Melee is not because of the transformations, but the base stage itself and the layouts. Given the choice, I’m sure everyone would much prefer the frozen variant of the stage. If transformations are not removed on either of them, then we keep 1 legal and ban 2.

These Stages Might Be Fine

Until we can see the exact state of a stage with hazards off, it’ll be tough to determine the legality of these stages at this time. These are stages that I believe may be fine, though might have some issues in tournament. Reasoning and outlook is provided with each stage.

• Kalos Pokemon League — This stage has both transformations and hazards. If the hazards toggle removes only the hazards but not the transformations, I say we don’t use it. If the stage remains static and never transforms, this stage would be great.
• Jungle Japes — I’d say it’s safe to say that the Klaptrap will be removed with the hazard toggle, but I’m unsure about water. If the water below the stage is also removed, I would say this stage is fine to add.
• Delfino Plaza — This depends on if (and which ones if not all) transformations are removed. If the stage remains the same, we should not use it. We’ve seen in numerous titles that have allowed the stage for a long period of time that the stage will always become unfavorable to use. If we get a nice platform layout though on a transparent stage for the entire stage, I think that would be great.
• Wario Ware — This all comes down to if all of the minigames are removed. If they are, great! If they only remove ones that hurt you though while keeping others, we’ll need to ditch the stage.
• Castle Siege — This all depends if the stage is changed or not with hazards off. If the stage never transforms, it could work out fine. If it remains the same as previous iterations, I say removed it. We’ve seen enough of it in Brawl and Smash 4 and players have shown there is clearly no desire to play on it.
• Green Greens — Explosive apples are gone, sure — but what about the blocks? If the blocks are gone too, I think this stage should be fine and opts for another stage similar to Jungle Japes but with differing blastzones that could work well together in tandem.

Results

Not counting Midgar, Wily Castle, Omegas, or Battlefields, this leaves a potential 21 stages. This leads to an issue of there being too many stages. I believe the largest Brawl ruleset had 13 stages, and it led to many issues in counterpicking. The only way we could get away with so many stages is if there was some sort of easy stage striking option built into the game (which wouldn’t surprise me in all honesty), though otherwise, we’ll need to look into alternatives of how to handle this.

I’ll be looking into that in a future blog post. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you all if you think one of these 21 stages should not be used, or if a stage not mentioned here should be used. Drop a comment here on Medium, or tweet me @CT_Chibo. Shoot me some comments even if you completely agree with everything here! I’m excited to continue to work on this ruleset in preparation for @Smashadelphia Ultimate, a huge launch weekend tournament I’ll be hosting on December 9th. We’ll get to see a lot of these rules in place there for testing, and kick off competitive Ultimate! Registration is live now on smashgg at http://smash.gg/sdaUltimate.

Be sure to share the article and provide your own findings to me as well. I’m excited to work together with all of the other tournament organizers that are preparing for Ultimate!