Stage striking
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Stage striking is a common procedure seen in most tournaments the various games of the Super Smash Bros. series. Stage striking involves all players in the match taking turns on deciding which stages will not be played on for the first match of a set. Players often alternate between each other to eventually decide on one stage that they will start their set on.
The process for stage striking starts off with players deciding who strikes the first stage, often via a game with a random outcome, such as a coin flip or by playing rock-paper-scissors. All tournaments for most of the games generally feature five legal, starting stages, with the winner of this random game being able to strike one legal stage of their choice. After this, the loser of the random game is allowed to strike two stages, and the winner then strikes one last stage. The one remaining stage is then used as the first stage for the set.
If a tournament ruleset features more than five stages, then the player who initially won the game of chance selects two stages after the losing player selects their two, and the procedure continues with each player only selecting one stage until only one stage is left. If a ruleset features fewer than five stages, either the losing player makes the final decision with their strikes, or they only strike one stage and the winning player strikes one more stage.
Stage striking is not performed for successive matches in the set; instead, the winner of the previous match selects their character, the loser selects their character in response, and the loser is then able to pick any legal or counterpick stage, provided any variants of Dave's Stupid Rule allow for the selection. Stage striking can also be skipped by invoking the Gentleman's Clause, provided the tournament has such a ruling.
As only one stage is legal in Smash 64 tournaments, Dream Land, stage striking is no longer a common practice at Smash 64 tournaments, though it was previously featured in older, less restrictive rulesets for the game.
Example of stage striking
The above is the most common starter stagelist for Project M tournaments.
The Marth player strikes Delfino's Secret first, as its large size accentuates Link's projectile game and downplays Marth's ability to control space.
The Link player can now strike two stages, electing to strike Battlefield and Green Hill Zone, owing to their relatively small sizes that poorly complement Link's projectile game and allow Marth to control space.
The Marth player gets to strike one more stage, selecting Pokémon Stadium 2 due to its slightly larger size compared to Smashville. Smashville is the last remaining stage, and so, it will be used as the first stage in this set.
