Pioneers (2001 - 2010)
Ice Climbers (“ICs”) were initially thought of as an unwieldy mid-tier at best. They had strong smash attacks but lacked movement options, bread and butter combos, and reliable offensive tools. ChuDat’s rise as an early top player was a result of massive innovation of the character, as he was the first to unlock their devastating grab game in conjunction with basic desyncs and tricky ground movement.
Chu was ICs’ only top player representative until the appearance of Wobbles the Phoenix. Wobbles made Smash headlines when he upset numerous ranked West Coast players en route to 9th place at NCT2, a 2006 NorCal regional, in part due to his use of “wobbling” (coined by Ken after this tournament). Despite the namesake, the technique was first demonstrated by the Japanese player Tetsuya. Wobbles was the first player to use it during a notable tournament run.
2007 arguably marked ICs’ peak when Chu won Pound 2, which was the only national tournament win for an ICs in Melee’s history. Brawl was released less than a year later, causing Chu to take a step back from Melee. Wobbles largely took Chu’s spot as the premier ICs player, outplacing him at the few tournaments they both attended. It was during this time that another iconic ICs main emerged: Fly Amanita. Wobbles and Fly would go on to lead a renaissance for the character.
The Renaissance (2011 - 2016)
Fly’s rise was in-part due to his mastery of handoffs. Wobbles pioneered this technique in response to wobbling being widely banned and players’ rising proficiency at escaping chaingrabs. Fly and Wobbles scored a string of notable performances, including Fly’s breakout at Genesis 2, where he defeated PPMD en route to a top-16 finish. Despite Fly breaking out in the scene, ICs wouldn’t achieve another historical peak until Wobbles’ run at Evo 2013.
Evo 2013 was a turning point not only for Melee, but also for ICs, as it marked the first time that wobbling was unbanned at a tournament of that significance since Major League Gaming. Wobbles took full advantage of this and put together one of the greatest runs of all time, defeating Mang0, PPMD, and Hungrybox on his way to Grand Finals, where he then fell to Mang0 and claimed 2nd place. Wobbles, ranked #8 on the 2013 debut of SSBMRank, would fail to appear in another national top 8 for years. Now it was Fly’s turn in the spotlight. Following memorable performances including a top-8 appearance at Evo 2014, Fly ended the year ranked #1 in the heavily stacked SoCal region and #11 on SSBMRank 2014. Interestingly, he achieved all of this with minimal use of wobbling. Despite Fly being an advocate for the technique, he was notoriously bad at executing it in tournament.
Outside of Wobbles’ Evo run, the legalization of wobbling did not have much of an impact on the metagame until the rise of this article’s author, Nintendude. Making his breakout in 2013 with 5th place at The Big House 3, where wobbling remained banned, Nintendude effectively combined wobbling with strong fundamental ICs play to score a series of top-8s in 2015 and 2016. He became the top-ranked ICs player in both 2015 and 2016, when he was ranked #25 and #17 respectively. Wobbling’s impact on the ICs meta became fully realized during the ascension of dizzkidboogie, a player who proudly optimized his gameplay around wobbling. Despite failing to achieve a true breakout performance, he amassed a series of top player wins and strong regional performances to become a solid top-30 player whom nobody wanted to encounter in their bracket.
Rounding out the Renaissance of ICs were two surprising re-appearances by ChuDat at Evo 2015 and Wobbles at the Battle of the Five Gods invitational in 2016. In the former, a “washed up” Chu miraculously made top 8 after upsetting a plethora of top-20 players. In the latter, Wobbles used a stunning combination of both flashy handoffs and wobbling to defeat Silent Wolf, Westballz, Plup, PPMD, and Mew2King on his way to 4th place. The mythical “peak Wobbles” had graced the Melee community once again.
Resurgence and Decline (2017 - 2018)
ICs in the metagame can be characterized by a passing of the torch; unlike most other high tiers in Melee, it seemed like only one ICs player at a time could be a top-8 national threat. The torch was passed from Chu to Wobbles, to Fly, and to Nintendude. It came full circle in 2017 when Chu had yet another resurgence. In the span of a few months, Chu managed to defeat Mang0 and Mew2King several times each and even became one of the few non-gods to win a tournament over a god at Battle of BC 2. Ranked #7 in Summer 2017, the highest rank achieved by an ICs player since the inception of SSBMRank, Chu was poised to reclaim his former glory as a top player. This momentum fizzled out by the end of the year, and he ended 2017 ranked a respectable #11.
Whenever one ICs player claims the spotlight, the others seemingly take a step back. 2017 was no exception: Fly was virtually retired by this point, citing his lack of interest in competing. Wobbles, frustrated with the modern counterplay against ICs, decided to stop playing ICs altogether in favor of Falco. He would later announce his retirement from competition in January 2018. Nintendude had a solid but unremarkable year compared to his former accomplishments, and dizz frequently expressed his preference for teams over singles.
2018 marks the first departure from this trend in Melee’s history. Not only has Chu failed to replicate his early 2017 success, but no ICs player has risen to the occasion. Nintendude has also departed from the character in favor of Marth, and dizz has still yet to have a true breakout national performance. For the first time in almost 15 years, ICs have no star representative.
Counterplay
While former high tiers Dr. Mario and Ganondorf have largely faded out of the meta, ICs have managed to achieve longevity. This can be attributed to ICs players continuously adapting to counterplay. When players learned how to SDI out of chaingrabs, Wobbles and Fly innovated handoffs. When players developed more refined punish flowcharts, Nintendude and dizz kept up with more intricate setups for wobbling.
Modern counterplay against ICs is based around out-zoning the character, KOing Nana at the first opportunity, relentless edgeguards and juggles, and forcing poor risk-reward situations. ICs players have yet to come up with reliable answers to these developments, and that is leading to a continued decline. Here’s an overview of their toughest matchups:
Peach - the historical counter. ICs have difficulty challenging her float positioning, and she has remarkable efficacy at killing Nana and edgeguarding. ICs need a lot of neutral game wins, typically only resulting in stray hits, and cannot hold positional advantages.
Marth - arguably as bad or worse than Peach for ICs. Half of ICs’ moves lose to his down-tilt and the other half lose to his forward-air. Marth rarely has to put himself in a position where he is at high risk for getting grabbed. ICs lack an answer to his devastating juggle game, and recovering is near impossible.
Fox - losing hard to Fox in a Fox-heavy meta is not a good look. Drillshine splits ICs and typically results in a shinespiked Nana. ICs’ small, short-duration hitboxes make Fox’s ground game particularly hard to challenge. His running shine and down-tilt neutralize ICs ground game. ICs’ saving grace is the threat of dash attack into wobble, but Fox’s full hop aerials keep this threat in check.
Jigglypuff - a truly degenerate matchup. Neither character is good at approaching, so it’s often determined by who gets the first sizable lead. If Puff plays for a timeout, the game is over. She can do this on equal stocks by killing Nana and building damage on Popo. ICs can also time out Puff, but the positional battle is much harder to hold since Nana is a liability.
Yoshi - it’s not just that aMSa is amazing. This is a really tough matchup due to his tools for dealing with Nana. ICs can’t go for non-guaranteed grabs or else they are parry neutral-aired to down-smash. Yoshi’s down-tilt’s set knockback combined with Nana’s inability to tech makes it an amazing Nana killer. Nana also doesn’t wiggle out of Neutral-B, making it a notable neutral game tool.
With Wobbles, Fly, and Nintendude no longer advancing the ICs metagame, the character has arrived at a crossroads in 2018. The community looks to veterans Chu and dizz and a pack of younger talent, led by ARMY, to advance the character’s meta. The new generation has been building on ideas first conceptualized by Wobbles, such as pivot desyncs and new ways to edgeguard. We’ve yet to see if these hold the answers the character is looking for, or if ICs will go the way of Dr. Mario.
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