General Reference Guide

If you are reading this for the first time, then congratulations on your decision to deepen and expand your
competitive Melee ability! As you may know, there is an absurd amount of knowledge required to play this
game at an expert level. This guide is merely an attempt to simplify the goals of the game into concepts
that even a novel player can understand. Specific gameplay strategies that help achieve these goals will
be covered during playtime, so feel free use this paper as a point of reference at beginning and
intermediate levels of play.

Remember, Melee is not an easy game, and developing a high level of proficiency is a task that requires
hundreds, if not thousands of hours. This is not an exaggeration. While I can guide you in the proper
direction and save you a good deal of time in your learning process, there is ultimately no escape from the
fact that you will need to put in the work. Only you can play for you. The required work for improvement
includes putting in necessary tech skill practice, playing frequently with other competitive players, and
mindfully analyzing recorded matches.

You should pay dutiful attention during every single game that you play. Treat every friendly as an
opportunity to learn - regardless of your opponent’s skill level. If you haven’t already, make it a habit to be
as consciously aware as possible when you play. This is not initially easy, but developing this crucial skill
will allow you to quickly recognize your opponent’s habits, your own habits, and any previously unknown
strategies. However, be wary; overthinking is a common problem. Your goal is to already be so well-
prepared that you can simply let go and play while focusing on your opponent. You don’t want to have to
worry about remembering details when it’s last stock, last hit!

Of course, the fundamental purpose of Melee is to knock your opponent off the screen and not let them
back. However, this is clearly more complex than it appears. Therefore, in order to simplify this game for
you (for now), these are the only things you need to consider while playing:
1. Stage positioning
2. Percentage
3. Your character’s (and your opponent’s character’s) ability at any given point in time; this is based
on your set of moves vs theirs
4. Past habits displayed by you and your opponent

That’s it! If you keep these 4 factors in mind during your matches, the game will become clear to you in far
less time than the average beginner. This is because the average beginner tends to aimlessly play;
instead of thinking about the game strategically, they test out various basic strategies and stick with the
ones that net them success from time to time. If you truly keep these in the forefront of your brain as you
play, you’ll be able to recognize when something is a “bad” option - even if it sometimes works!

There are different schools of thought regarding what is the “best” way to play melee. There are players
who like to focus on playing vs. their opponent, and there are players who like to abuse the game
mechanics as much as possible. Personally, I believe that the best way to play is a combination of both!
There is no game mechanic that is so abuseable that you can rely solely on the mechanic and still win. At
some point, you are still going to have to interact in a “neutral game” situation with another thinking human
being. Even wobblers often need to land a hard read in neutral to get their wobble!
A great example of the success of this style of play is Armada, as even a casual viewing of Armada’s play
clearly demonstrates the extent to which he adapts to his opponent. But if you pay close attention, there
are actually numerous situations where he abuses the mechanics of the game to his favor. For example,
when he reaches high percentages vs Fox as Peach, he tends to sit in his shield. This is because this
option negates any of Fox’s simple kill setups (upsmash, waveshines, aerials) and forces him to go for a
grab – and when Fox grabs Peach, all Peach has to do is DI full behind and Fox loses his guaranteed
upthrow-upair conversion (granted, being above Fox is still not a great position, but this is often better
than guaranteed death). It is my belief that Armada’s consistency is a testament to the efficiency of this
style of play, but the way you decide to play is ultimately up to you!
And yes, there is far more to Melee than the 4 factors previously mentioned, but everything can more or
less be boiled down to them. The purpose of our lessons is to fill in the gaps; I want to give you the “tools”
you need to win neutral exchanges and punish as hard as possible, and focusing on these components
will help you achieve this as quickly as possible! So, if you’re ever at a loss… remember:
1. Stage positioning – is my position advantageous? Generally, you want to keep the advantageous
spot on stage as much as possible, and this is typically in the middle and below your opponent. Of
course, this can change situationally (based on characters or other considerations, i.e. Fox on a
ledge, etc.), and sometimes you have to sacrifice your position to take a risk. The important thing
to consider here is that the risk should be a calculated risk, and the risk-reward should be in your
favor as often as possible.
2. Percentage – do I have a percent advantage? This includes many considerations: crouch
cancelling, who will win a potential trade, whether you will die or eat a punish if you miss your
approach at a given percent, etc. In general, this can fall under the category of “abusing” game
mechanics, but the percent war also factors into how your opponent is going to play – and this will
in turn affect how you will need to predict or react to them. Very generally, it can be said that the
person with a percent and/or stock lead can play safe, whereas a person with a percent and/or
stock deficit needs to take some sort of risk.
3. Your character’s (and your opponent’s character’s) ability at any given point in time – will your
downtilt out-space their bair? How many recovery options can my opponent cover based on their
current position? This factor of play is very straightforward and intuitive.
4. Past habits displayed by you and your opponent – what options has my opponent typically been
selecting? In what situations? What options are they aware of? Have I been sufficiently mixing up
my option selections? This is perhaps the component most determined by natural talent, and it is
also perhaps the most important. After all, your goal at the end of the day is to defeat another
human being, and none of the other considerations really matter much if you can accurately read
what your opponent is going to do 100% of the time. However, if you find yourself not having
much success in this area at first, don’t stress! Often times, a player has to become more
comfortable with the incredibly difficult technical skill of the game before they can really begin to
focus on the mental aspect.

All in all, getting good at Melee is a labor of love. It’s a lot of real work, and we’ve just barely scratched the
surface here in terms of how much there is to learn. When you consider that there are 26 characters, 6
competitive stages, thousands of different players, crucial in-game interactions that last 1/60th of a
second, and the difficulty of performing what you know under the intense stress of tournament pressure, it
can easily seem intimidating – if not downright impossible. However, just remember… every top player is
merely the result of years of dedicated practice… and they were once in your shoes too!

Good luck!