Rules

All ranked matches are best-of-3. Stage hazards off. Standard stock/time settings.

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

Two counterpick stages are added — Smashville and Town and City — for seven total. The winner of the previous game strikes 2, 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 is always 1122 — set every room to this. Standardizing it means nobody has to communicate a password separately from the room code.

Both players report the winner after the set. Matching reports confirm the result immediately. If reports disagree, the match is flagged as disputed for a mod to resolve.

If only one player reports and the other never responds, the lone report is accepted automatically after 24 hours, and the non-reporting player is charged a no-show. If neither player reports within 24 hours, the match closes with no rating impact for either side.

Use the cancel button for legitimate reasons — the opponent disappeared, a real emergency came up, or the connection made the set unplayable. Canceling to dodge a bad matchup, a rating gap, or an inconvenient character isn't a legitimate reason, and a pattern of it is reportable. Canceled matches carry no rating impact but are logged against the canceling player's 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-confirmed report moves an account toward restriction — accumulating 3 confirmed reports suspends an account, and 5 bans it. Suspension blocks free battle and filing new reports (so a suspended player can't retaliate) but ranked play stays open. 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, and a match distance — Same region only, Nearby (~2,000 km), Extended (~5,000 km, the default), Long-range (~10,000 km), 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). Both the distance and rating-gap settings 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 setting still won't match you with someone who chose Same region only or a Strict rating gap. Wired-connection status is self-declared too and shown on profiles, though it isn't part of matching.

Joining the ranked lobby queues you for up to 10 minutes before the entry expires. You can join at most 5 times per minute.

Free battle posts are unrated, first-come-claimed, and expire after 24 hours — good for practice or friendlies 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.