User:Toomai/SSBM Cards draft

Super Smash Bros. Melee Battle Cards is a card game released as a free bonus of the September 2005 release of Official Nintendo Magazine UK, based on Super Smash Bros. Melee. The card deck contains 52 cards: one for each playable character, and another 26 for stages.

The card game was first revealed on page 112 in the August 2005 issue of the magazine. The official rules were published two issues later on page 23 of the October 2005 release.

The rules for the game are simplistic. Players get five random characters, hidden from other players. Each turn, players select a character to use, followed by selecting and revealing a random stage, and finally noting which of their character's three moves they intend to use. Characters are given their side, up, and down special moves in a random order (with side being listed as "left/right"), with each type of move forming a rock-paper-scissors relationship: up beats down, down beats left/right, and left/right beats up. Whichever character beats the other in this way wins the round and collects the cards; in case of a tie, the reward is added to the next round. However, if the stage that is revealed matches one of the players' characters, that character automatically wins. Each stage gives "home advantage" to a specific character, which does not strictly follow any in-game justification. The winner is whoever has won more cards after five rounds.

Stages that do not appear

 * Big Blue
 * Brinstar Depths
 * Yoshi's Island N64

Trivia

 * The descriptions are each based on the character's corresponding Classic Mode trophy.
 * The description for Marth is inaccurate; it is based on the sentence "the kingdom of Dolua invaded Altea", but using "was invaded by" results in the nations' roles being reversed.
 * Several of the stages have different names than they do in-game:
 * Icicle Mountain is called "Infinite Glacier".
 * Temple is called "Hyrule Temple", a common nickname for it.
 * Kongo Jungle 64 is called "Kongo Jungle 2", which is strange as it is actually the original version of Kongo Jungle.