Rules

All ranked matches are best-of-5. Stage hazards off. Standard stock/time settings.

The top 3 finishers on the leaderboard when the season ends split a $300 USD prize pool: 1st gets $150, 2nd $100, and 3rd $50. You need 5+ sets played to appear on the leaderboard at all.

The current preseason is a fixed 2-month trial run, expected to end around September 25, 2026. Ending a season resets everyone's rating for the next one.

Game 1 draws from five stages: Battlefield, Small Battlefield, Pokémon Stadium 2, Smashville, and Town and City. A randomly chosen player strikes 1, their opponent strikes 2, and the first striker picks the stage from the two that remain.

Three counterpick stages are added — Final Destination, Hollow Bastion, and Kalos Pokémon League — for eight total. The winner of the previous game strikes 3, and the loser picks the stage from what remains.

One player sets the room code per match; it locks to them once set so it can't be silently changed out from under the other player mid-setup.

The in-game room password defaults to 1122for everyone — standardizing it means nobody has to communicate a password separately from the room code. If you stream, you can set your own in Settings so it isn't the one password guaranteed to be public; your opponent's lobby card always shows whichever password is actually in effect for the host.

Both players report the winner after the set. Matching reports confirm the result immediately. If reports on a single game disagree, that game is flagged as disputed — the rest of the set isn't blocked while it waits. Either player can then agree with their opponent on who actually won straight from the Lobby, which resolves it immediately without a mod; if you still don't agree, it stays queued for one to rule on.

If only one player reports and the other never responds, the lone report is accepted automatically after 3 hours, and the non-reporting player is charged a no-show — you'll get a Discord reminder as soon as your opponent reports, so you know the clock has started. If you're already ahead (1-0 or 2-0) and your opponent goes fully silent — not even locking in a character for the next game — the set is awarded to you once the 3 hours run out, same as if they'd shown up and lost. If neither player has any confirmed game wins yet, the match closes with no rating impact for either side instead — if that leaves you stuck after a set you actually won, message a mod and they can close it out manually from the Live matches page. A no-show (whether from a stale report, never locking in a character, or a set closed out this way) also locks you out of queueing again for a bit — 5 minutes the first time, escalating by 5 more minutes each time it happens again without a clean 30-day stretch in between.

Reported the wrong winner? Either player can request a correction from their own profile page, from the "Wrong result?" link under their most recent match. Matching corrections apply immediately and re-run the rating math; a mismatch goes to a mod instead. Only available while it's still both players' most recent confirmed match and the season hasn't ended since.

The cancel button is free — no rating impact — but only while your opponent genuinely hasn't shown up yet (no chat message, no character locked in, no stage strike, no room code entered). The moment they've done any of that, the same button becomes Surrenderinstead: backing out from then on counts as an actual loss and moves your rating exactly like losing the set would. This is deliberate — it's what stops canceling from being a free way to dodge a bad matchup, a rating gap, or an opponent you'd rather not play, while still leaving a real, no-cost way out of a match where the other side never showed up at all. The page always tells you which one you're about to click.

A free cancel (opponent hasn't shown up) is still logged against the canceling player's account. A high enough cancel rate triggers an automatic Discord warning, and canceling well beyond that suspends the account for 24 hours — ranked play still works while suspended, but posting on Friendlies and filing new conduct reports don't. Surrendering doesn't count toward this — it already costs rating, so there's no separate penalty on top.

Cancelling a lot also affects a self-declared wired connectionbadge specifically, at a lower bar than the warning/suspend thresholds above: once your cancels make up more than a quarter of your combined cancels-and-games-played (and you've cancelled at least 3 times), the badge is cleared automatically and you can't re-declare it until that ratio drops back down. The reasoning is that too many cancels make a "my connection is stable" claim unreliable, not that cancelling itself is being punished twice — this is separate from, and on top of, the warning/suspend system above. The same thing happens if enough opponents file a connection report against you, independent of your own cancel history.

The free cancel stops working the moment a game has a decided winner or either side has reported one — at that point backing out always means Surrender, from either side, for the rest of the set. If your opponent goes quiet mid-set instead of surrendering yourself, you generally don't need to do anything: if they stall their stage strikes or final pick, that turn is resolved for them after a few minutes — on game 1 with a random stage from what's left, and from game 2 onwards by continuing on the stage the previous game was played on, so the set runs it back without erasing anything already decided. Character picks work in two phases. Game 1's blind pick runs on one countdown both players share: if it runs out with only one side locked in, the whole set is forfeited to whoever locked in, not just the game they were on. From game 2 onwards a missed pick never ends the set — whoever stalled falls back to the character they played in the previous game, on that game's stage, while a pick their opponent already made stands. So you carry on playing rather than winning or losing to a clock. If you'd rather not wait, or you and your opponent both want to call the whole set off instead, either of you can request a mutual cancel from the match screen; once the other side agrees, it cancels immediately with no rating impact for either player, no matter how far the set got.

Check "Practicing" when you join the queue to keep the set off your main ladder rating entirely — wins and losses go to a separate practice rating instead, and your regular rating and sets-played don't move. Practice rating starts at the same 1500 baseline and uses the same math, but it's a fully independent track.

Practicing is set per player, not per match — you can queue as practicing against someone who isn't, and vice versa. If you'd rather not face practicing opponents at all, turn on "Don't match me with opponents who are practicing" in Settings.

You may not use your main character while practicing. Since practicing shields your own rating from any risk, doing this against an opponent who isn't practicing puts all the risk on them with none on you — that's not a legitimate use of the mode. This isn't enforced automatically; report it like any other conduct issue and a mod will review and can suspend the account.

After a match, your opponent can optionally report which character you played. This feeds the character leaderboard — there's no self-vote, since a reported character from the person you just played is harder to game than a self-declared main.

Report a match if your opponent no-showed, stalled, disconnected intentionally, or was abusive. Reports are reviewed by mods — filing one doesn't do anything by itself, and reporting in bad faith is itself reportable. You can file up to 5 reports per hour.

Only a mod acting on a report moves an account toward restriction — filing one is never enough by itself. A single report is enough for a mod to suspend or ban if it warrants it (a mod can also act directly with no report at all). Suspension blocks posting on Friendlies and filing new reports (so a suspended player can't retaliate) but ranked play stays open, and can be timed (auto-lifts) or indefinite. A ban blocks everything. See the Q&A page for how appeals work.

Matchmaking is open worldwide. Set a match region on the Lobby page for the closest connection — pick whichever region is physically nearest to you, not necessarily your own country. US and Canada can be set down to the state/province level; the broader regions (some shown with a reference city) still work too, and everyone else gets a broader region — and a match distance — Same region only, Nearby (~1,250 mi), Extended (~3,100 mi, the default), Long-range (~6,200 mi), or Worldwide. You can also set a rating gap — Strict (within 50), Close (within 100), Moderate (within 150), Wide (within 300), or Any rating (the default) — and a rematch cooldown — Wait 24, 12, 6, 3, or 1 hour(s), or Anytime (the default). Distance, rating-gap, and rematch-cooldown settings all require BOTH players' choice to cover the actual difference — widening yours doesn't override the other side's narrower one, so a Worldwide/Any rating/Anytime setting still won't match you with someone who chose Same region only, a Strict rating gap, or a 24-hour cooldown. Wired-connection status is self-declared and shown on profiles. There's also an opt-in "only match with wired opponents" toggle — like the others, it's checked per side: if you turn it on, opponents without wired toggled on are excluded, and the same applies if an opponent has it on and you don't.

Joining the ranked lobby queues you until you're matched or you leave — your spot stays alive as long as you keep the site open, and only lapses after 10 minutes with no activity. You can join at most 5 times per minute.

Friendlies posts are unrated, first-come-claimed, and expire after 24 hours — good for practice or casual games without touching your rating. Community tournaments are run on start.gg; sign-ups happen here, but bracket rules and disputes for a given tournament are set by that tournament's host.

Getting a real wired connection (for the badge above) usually means a USB-C-to-Ethernet adapter if you're playing undocked, or just an Ethernet cable into the dock. A GameCube controller is the other common upgrade competitive players make.

• USB-C to Ethernet adapter (for wired play undocked)
• GameCube controller
• GameCube controller adapter

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