Team Draft Guide
This guide is for coaches, Team Captains and players in Smash Ultimate Team Solos competitions that use Team Draft. It walks through a match from Ready Up to the final score. The order of picks and strikes comes from your league's rulebook; this guide shows where each step happens on the match page.
Related guides: Match Week Guide for the rest of the week, and Managed Member Guide if you draft for students without accounts. The Rules button in the Team Draft panel opens your rulebook's Team Solos section.
1. What Team Draft Does
Team Draft replaces the picks and strikes you used to type into Match Chat. On a match that uses it, the match page shows a Team Draft panel under the scoreboard. Both teams ready up there, confirm a lineup of three players, then take turns naming the player for each set, picking characters and striking stages. Each game's winner is reported in the panel by both sides, a finished set becomes one game on the match card, and the match result files itself when enough sets are won. Report Scores stays hidden while the draft runs.
The panel carries a Beta chip. If something looks wrong, select Get Help at the bottom of the left navigation and tell us what you saw.
2. Who Can Act
Coaches and Team Captains on the entry can make every pick for their team.
Draft Captains are extra people a coach names for one match, from the Draft Captains button next to Match Options. Use it to let a substitute or an assistant run the draft.
The player in a set always acts for their own set: their character and their stage strikes and picks.
Everyone else on the roster watches. League staff can see the draft and step in, but staff who coach either team do not see the other side's blind picks.
3. Before the Match
3.1 Ready Up
Ready Up opens 30 minutes before the match time in most leagues. Select it once your team is at its stations. Nothing starts, and nobody is on the clock, until both sides are ready.
3.2 Confirm Your Lineup
Each team confirms three players from its entry roster. This is the lineup for the whole match: it locks when Set 1 starts, and no substitute can come in afterwards, so choose carefully and check that all three are present before you confirm. The lineup shows in the match log, so the other team can see who you fielded.
4. Each Set
A set is one player against one player, best of three games. The panel asks each team to name its player:
Set 1 is blind. Both teams pick at the same time and the panel reveals both at once.
From Set 2 on, the team that won the previous set names its player first, and the other team counterpicks.
Each of your three players plays one of Sets 1 to 3. Any lineup player may play Set 4, and the Set 5 player must not have played Set 4. The panel only offers the players who are allowed.
The set history above the panel shows each set as its two players with the winner's side as a chip, for example Home 2-0.
5. Each Game
5.1 Characters
Game 1 of a set is a blind pick: each player chooses, and the panel reveals both together.
From Game 2 on, the winner of the previous game picks their character first and the loser picks second, before any stage is chosen.
A Mii Fighter asks for its four-digit move set code (each digit 1, 2 or 3, for example 1231) when you pick it.
5.2 Stages
Game 1 uses the Starter stages. Home strikes 1, Away strikes 2, and Home picks one of the two stages left.
From Game 2 on, the Starter and Counterpick stages are all offered. The winner of the previous game strikes 2, and the loser picks from what is left. The winner may also strike, for free, any stage the loser has already won on in that set. A free strike left unused keeps that stage pickable.
The On the Clock chip shows whose turn it is and how long they have taken. It is a reminder, not a timer: nothing happens when it runs long, but a league official can see who is holding up the match.
5.3 Play the game
Set up the lobby with your rulebook's settings, play the game, then come back to the panel.
6. Reporting Each Game
After every game, both sides answer Who won Game N? in the panel. When the two answers match, the game is recorded and the panel moves on. When they differ, both answers are cleared and the panel asks again; settle it in Match Chat with your screenshots before answering a second time. If you still disagree, use Flag Admin.
A finished set becomes one game on the match card, and the match ends on its own when one team has won enough sets. There is nothing to submit with Report Scores, and the other team has nothing to confirm afterwards.
7. Match Options and Problems
Match Options, next to the Team Draft heading, holds two actions. Each one is a request: your team asks, and the other team has to agree before anything changes.
Reset Current Game throws away the current game's picks and strikes and starts that game again. Use it after a wrong click or a lobby that had to be remade with different settings.
Switch to Manual Reporting turns Team Draft off for this match. The panel reads Team Draft Is Off for This Match, everything already recorded stays, and from then on you pick players, characters and stages in Match Chat and report with Report Scores, as before.
Two buttons outside the panel still work during a draft:
Forfeit Match (coach or Team Captain) concedes the match with a reason.
Flag Admin sends the match to a league official. Use it for an opponent who stops responding mid-draft, a disputed game, or anything the panel cannot settle.
If a player disconnects mid-game, follow your rulebook's disconnection rule for the title, then report the game in the panel as it finished.
8. Managed Members
A Managed Member has no login, so the coach makes every pick for them: the character, the strikes and the stage. Keep the student next to you during their set so the picks are theirs.
9. For Players
You only act during your own set. When it is your turn, the panel on the match page lights up for you: pick your character, strike or pick stages when asked, play the game, then answer Who won Game N?. Your coach or captain handles everything else, including naming you for a set. If the panel does not respond to you, you are not in the lineup for this match, or it is not your set yet.