Marth (SSBB)

Marth (, Marth) is a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. He was confirmed to be a playable character on the Smash Bros. DOJO on February 5, 2008. Despite being a "hidden" character, Marth appears in the game's opening video, standing back to back with . 
Marth is the only Brawl character that only speaks Japanese in all of its regional versions. Hikaru Midorikawa voices him in all regions, using a combination battles grunts and dialogue as in Melee. The voice actor mentioned in his "Target Lockon!!" column in Dengeki Playstation Vol. 414 that he was not actually called back to record new linesDengeki Playstation Vol. 414 (March 28, 2008) page 117: "Target Lockon!!" (); the voice clips used in Brawl are re-purposed from the recording sessions for Melee, combining returning voice clips with previously unused ones. 
Marth ranks 5th on the Brawl tier list, at the very top of the A- tier. This is a marginal drop from his position in Melee where he was ranked 2nd overall. He possesses long-ranged sword attacks that give him among the best reach in Brawl, allowing him to space very effectively, especially against characters with poor range. Marth also possesses attacks that have remarkably quick startup and great ground mobility, additional power when he lands an attack on the tip of his sword (his forward smash and down aerial being notable examples), strong combo abilities at low percents due to his fast attacks, a strong aerial game overall and edgeguarding abilities (with his forward aerial being very powerful at both aspects).
However, Marth has his flaws with one being in his recovery move, Dolphin Slash, provides decent vertical distance, but only average horizontal distance, making his recovery predictable and rather easily edgehogged. Marth has difficulty KOing without edgeguarding if he fails to sweetspot his finishers due to the much weaker knockback delivered, requiring very precise hard reads to be effective. He can have problems getting off the ledge above 100% due to his slower ledge climbing options above 100% being poor, especially when he has RCO lag and especially against characters like . Even then, he has trouble edge guarding due to a number of characters who have better recoveries. His options when directly above the opponent are fairly poor because his down aerial does not protect him very well from opponents that can juggle him. He also can have difficulty approaching due to his lack of a projectile. Regardless, Marth has among the strongest matchup spreads in Brawl and has achieved strong tournament results.
==How to unlock==
Players can unlock Marth by doing one of the methods listed below. With the exception of the third method, Marth must then be defeated on Castle Siege.
*Play 10 VS. matches to completion. If Marth is skipped for fighters with higher VS. match quotas, he will not be accessible until those other fighters are unlocked.
*Complete . If the player fails to defeat Marth, they can re-fight him by completing Classic Mode again. If this method is used and 's Classic Mode condition is met, then he must be unlocked before Marth can be fought.
*Have Marth join the player's party in The Subspace Emissary by clearing The Battlefield Fortress.
==Attributes==
Marth in Brawl is essentially a reprise from Melee. He retains his status as a quick-footed, far ranged lightweight; tall (for his weight class), with stronger aerial attacks. With a great aerial moveset and air defense, Marth is almost unparalleled in the air. Marth also retains certain qualities, such as increased power and hitlag at the tip of his blade, which defines a great part of his playstyle. This tipper mechanic is the basis for Marth's very potent down aerial meteor smash and for his down tilt edgeguard. His attacks, when not tippered, are relatively weak, and hitting with the sweetspot can be difficult (although some attacks are rather easy to sweetspot like his up aerial and down tilt). Most of Marth's attacks have quick startup and good reach, but his attacks can be easily punished if blocked and not spaced well due to often having noticeable ending lag (though his standard special has incredible Shield damage). Marth himself lacks a projectile, but his impressive mobility allows him to avoid opponents' projectiles. Dolphin Slash, which grants Marth invincibility in its first five frames, allows Marth to escape chain grabs and gives him access to a powerful out of shield option that can KO at higher percentages, though it leaves Marth helpless and vulnerable until he lands, making it a high-risk high reward move. As a recovery, the move travels a decent vertical distance, slightly higher than the distance between the main body of and its highest platform. Though it can be aimed to travel farther horizontally, Dolphin Slash only provides average horizontal distance and suffers from the landing lag glitch, though Marth can augment his horizontal recovery by charging Shield Breaker. The latter attack has the most horizontal reach out of Marth's moveset, and true to its name, deals high shield damage. Marth players often follow up a shield break with another fully charged, tippered Shield Breaker for a KO. Dancing Blade does high damage and counts as four attacks in the refresh counter, making it great to refresh his other moves as well as inflict high damage on the opponent, and the last hit tilted upwards can KO at higher percentages. As such, Marth is arguably one of the characters least affected by stale-move negation and it is also a good out-of-shield option as it has almost nonexistent startup lag, though like many of Marth's moves, it is easily punished if shielded. Marth's Counter, the fastest counter in the game, can be used to punish opponent attacks and interrupt combos. Marth has good standing grab reach and a very long reaching pivot grab which is combined with the fact that he can chain grab a number of characters using his forward throw (if only for a couple of throws). He also has a grab release infinite on and (making him a hard counter against those two characters), a chain grab-release to a down air meteor smash (or a slight step followed by a forward smash) on , and grab release to down air, forward air, or Dolphin Slash on (although the latter is still considered a hard matchup for Marth). On the downside, his throws are extremely weak in terms of damage and knockback (usually doing only 4% per throw, with the exception of his down throw, which does 5% and his up throw is the only throw that KOs in Sudden Death), although their weak knockback also means they can link into his other moves fairly reliably for racking damage.
Overall, Marth is a fast character whose attack range gives him very potent offensive and defensive options, especially in the air. Thanks to the safety of his moves and their ability to aggressively pressure opponents, he is one of the best offensive characters in the game. His strengths are tempered by his lack of a projectile and his light weight relative to his height, though he is heavy enough to make him vulnerable to 's down throw chaingrab. Marth also has difficulty KOing the heavier characters, especially those with good momentum canceling, due to his tipped attacks having high base knockback but low knockback scaling, which forces him to rely on edgeguarding to KO. While he has great options below 100% (best regular ledge climb in the game and a ledge jump which gives him up to +10 invincibility, allowing him to ledge jump into invincible any aerial), those options are replaced with laggy ledge get-ups above 100% (with ledge jump no longer providing invincible aerials) which can be abused by several characters, especially when he has RCO lag. On the upper side, Marth himself has excellent options both juggling and racking damage on opponents who are trying to climb from the ledge thanks to his quick and safe zoning tools.
==Changes from Super Smash Bros. Melee==
While he was considered a top-tier in Melee, Marth has received a mix of buffs and nerfs in transition to Brawl, but the changes have neither impacted him in certain ways as he was somewhat objectively nerfed overall. Marth's incredible ground movement is less effective than in Melee, due to the weakening of dash dancing and the removal of wavedashing. Additionally, Marth's grab range is also much shorter, making it harder to set-up follow-ups out of his throws. Thus, Marth's neutral game as a whole is weaker, due to less safe movement, and Brawl's more defensive minded metagame, hindering his approach. Additionally, Marth's large combo potential and phenomenal edgeguarding ability were also toned down, as he can no longer create extended, near zero-to-death juggles with the aid of platforms and can also no longer close out stocks consistently when edgeguarding due to the loss of consistency in his down aerial as well as the altered physics of Brawl.
Despite this, his nerfed combo and edgeguarding prowess still remains among the best relative to the cast, and the new mechanics of Brawl help alleviate one of his critical flaws in his poor recovery. Contrary to popular belief, Marth's overall range was increased relative to the cast, combined with the universal nerf of mobility options, this helps Marth zone out his opponents somewhat better than before. The removal of crouch cancelling also removes one of his weaknesses in Melee, where many of his non-tipper moves were crouch-cancelable at low percents. His moves are also relatively stronger when tippered, giving him more KO potential.
As such, while Marth has more potential KO options at high percents, he can only secure such KOs by fishing for them in neutral, which requires incredible reads and thus cannot be done consistently at high level play. Despite this, Marth is still a very favorable character at high level play, and, like Fox and Falco, has fared much better in the transition from Melee to Brawl than other top-tier veterans, such as and .
===Aesthetics===
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===Attributes===
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===Ground attacks===
*Neutral attack:
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*Forward tilt:
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*Up tilt:
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*Down tilt:
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*Dash attack:
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*Forward smash:
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*Up smash:
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*Down smash:
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===Aerial attacks===
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*Neutral aerial:
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*Forward aerial:
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*Back aerial:
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*Up aerial:
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*Down aerial:
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===Throws/other attacks===
*Grabs:
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*Pummel:
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*Forward throw:
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*Back throw:
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*Up throw:
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*Down throw:
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===Special moves===
*Shield Breaker:
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*Dancing Blade:
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*Hit 2:
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*Hit 3:
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*Hit 4:
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*Dolphin Slash:
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*Counter:
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*Critical Hit:
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==Moveset==
For a gallery of Marth's hitboxes, see here.
For simplicity, if, for example, Marth's blade does 4% damage while the tip does 6%, and the attack has no other hitboxes, it is written as 4%/6%.
Dancing Blade
Hit 	Damage 	Description
First Hit (Neutral) 	3%/4% 	Does a vertical slash, has little knockback: incapable of KOing.
Second Hit (Up) 	3%/4% 	Does an upwards slash. Deals slightly more knockback than the upper slash.
Second Hit (Neutral)	3%/4% 	Does a stab, has a little more knockback than the first slash.
Third Hit (Up) 	4%/5% 	Does a weak vertical slash.
Third Hit (Neutral) 	4%/5% 	Does a fairly powerful horizontal slash. KOs at around 120%.
Third Hit (Down) 	4%/5% 	Stabs at the ground. Can meteor smash airborne opponents.
Fourth Hit (Up) 	6%/8% 	Does a very powerful upper slash. KOs at around 100%
Fourth Hit (Neutral)	6%/8% 	Does a very powerful vertical slash. KOs at around 100%
Fourth Hit (Down) 	2% (hit 1-4), 3%/5% (hit 5)	Does a flurry of lower stabs. Hits 5 times.
===Stats===
===Announcer call===
Marth English Announcer SSBB.wav|English/Japanese
Marth French Announcer SSBU.wav|French
Marth French EU Announcer SSBU.wav|French (PAL)
===Wii Remote selection sound===
===On-screen appearance===
===Taunts===
===Idle poses===
===Crowd cheer===
 	Cheer (English) 	Cheer (Japanese) 	Cheer (German) 	Cheer (Korean)
Cheer 	 	 	 	
Description	Marth - Marth - Marth! 	Mar - th! 	Marth! 	
 	Cheer (French) 	Cheer (Italian) 	Cheer (Spanish) 	
Cheer 	 	 	 	
Description	Marth ! Marth ! Marth !	Marth! Marth! Marth!	Marth! Marth! Marth!	Marth! - Marth!
===Victory poses===
==In competitive play==
===Notable players===
:See also: :Category:Marth players (SSBB)
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* - Known for his extremely aggressive playstyle. 22nd on 2014 SSBBRank.
* - A consistent player during 2008-2014 and arguably the best Marth player in the United States. Formerly ranked 46th on the 2014 SSBBRank.
* - Formerly the best Marth player in the world. Ranked 10th on the 2014 SSBBRank.
* - One of Europe's best players. 15th at 2014 SSBBRank.
* - Known for his calculated and patient playstyle. 96th on 2014 SSBBRank.
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===Tier placement and history===
Similarly to , Marth has remained a top tier character even after his transition from Melee. Throughout Brawl's history, Marth has always hovered around the 5th to 7th place positions due to his positive traits as well as his strong representation in tournaments. When and the began to rise, Marth's position slipped back to 7th place, with some thinking he would fall further as professionals of characters below him, such as , would discover new innovations in their metagames, while Marth's would remain mostly stagnant due to his simplistic playstyle. However, Marth still did rise back to 5th place for the current Brawl tier list. There are smashers who dispute this placement, stating that Marth is placed far too high; some (such as and ) claim that Marth's nerfs going into Brawl overwhelmed his buffs, and that because his combo ability was completely compromised in the transition, he was a bad character in theory and should be ideally placed around middle tier. Due to these factors, Marth's tier placement is debated and some argue that characters, such as Snake, should be placed higher than him. However, strong tournament results from Marth professionals such as and in high-level tournaments such as Apex 2013 have influenced the Brawl Back Room to place Marth at 5th above and .
==In Solo Modes==
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In Classic Mode, Marth can appear as an opponent or ally in Stage 4 if he has been unlocked along with , , and on Castle Siege or New Pork City. Marth can also appear as an opponent in Stage 11, but only if he hasn't appeared in Stage 4.
===All-Star Mode===
In All-Star Mode, Marth is fought in Stage 11 alongside on Castle Siege.
===Event Matches===
====Solo Events====
*Event 31: The Ultimate Bodyguard: Marth must defend and defeat two s on Castle Siege. Zelda remains in her crouching position until the third background change, where she'll transform into and assist Marth.
*Event 34: All-Star Battle Melee: Marth is one of the opponents fought in this event. All opponents are newcomers from Super Smash Bros. Melee.
====Co-Op Events====
*Co-Op Event 11: The Great Remodeling Battle: and must fight Marth and and collect 300 coins without destroying any of the breakable pillars on Luigi's Mansion.
*Co-Op Event 13: Blades of the Quick and Mighty: Marth and must defeat , , and on Temple.
*Co-Op Event 21: The True All-Star Battle: Both players select a character and take on the entire roster on .
===Congratulations Screens===
Marth Congratulations Screen Classic Mode Brawl.png|Classic Mode
Marth Congratulations Screen All-Star Brawl.png|All-Star Mode
==Role in The Subspace Emissary==
thumb|250px|Marth in SSE.
Two R.O.B.s activate a Subspace Bomb in a barren battlefield. Marth is seen atop his castle watching helplessly as the robots detonate the bomb. He stands and shines Falchion, prepared to fend off the hundreds of Primids advancing toward the castle. Marth confronts the Primids, descending through the building until he reaches the grounds. There he is ambushed by . During the duel (in the same video sequence), they are attacked from behind by a group of Primids, at which point they simultaneously jump into the air, slicing the Primids in two with their swords. Realizing that they share a common enemy, they join forces to defeat the Primids. After fighting against the Primids, both Meta Knight and Marth aim their attacks at the Ancient Minister, who is carrying another Subspace Bomb. Marth misses with Dolphin Slash, while Meta Knight's wing is ignited by a laser shot from the fleeing Ancient Minister. then shows up and dismantles the Ancient Minister's Subspace Bomb with his trusted Aether move. With the Subspace Bomb destroyed, the trio storm the castle once more.
In the desert, they see a vehicle driving off in the distance. Ike immediately jumps off the cliff to pursue it, followed by Meta Knight. Marth merely scratches the back of his head in disbelief before following them. When they find the vehicle, it transforms into Galleom, and the three fight it. The defeated Galleom falls through unstable ground, where it encounters and in the Ruined Hall. Now severely weakened after being fought again, it grabs Lucas and the Trainer in an attempt to detonate an emergency Subspace Bomb, but Lucas manages to free himself and Pokémon Trainer from Galleom using PK Thunder, commencing a headfirst freefall. Meta Knight catches Lucas and the unconscious Trainer right before they hit the ground and meets them up with Marth and Ike. When the Halberd crashes the Great Fox into a mountain, Marth is unable to catch up with Meta Knight, who is climbing the mountain. Later, the fall down and befriend Marth, Ike, Lucas, and Pokémon Trainer, only to be rained on by Shadow Bugs from the Halberd above. , , , and come to aid them in fighting off the Primids that were dropped. After the battle, the Halberd (now under control of Meta Knight, , , , , , , and ) and the Falcon Flyer (carrying , , , , , and ) land to pick them up.
Marth and friends destroy the Subspace Gunship (though the Halberd was downed in the process). They enter Subspace and encounter Tabuu, who turns them all into trophies. Fortunately he, and some of the others, are revived by , , and , while the rest are revived by Kirby. Marth helps the heroes in the showdown against Tabuu.
===Playable appearances===
*The Battlefield Fortress
*The Wilds (Part I)
*Entrance to Subspace
*The Great Maze - if he's rescued in Subspace (Part I)
===Exclusive stickers===
The following stickers can only be used by Marth or Ike:
*Ninian: [Arm, Leg] Attack +6
*Lilina: [Leg] Attack +5
*Mist: [Slash] Attack +8
*Deke: [Slash] Attack +9
*Eirika: [Slash] Attack +17
*Ike (Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn): [Slash] Attack +27
*Rutoga: [Slash] Resistance +12
*Ashnard: [Slash] Resistance +34
*Shiida: [Specials: Direct] Attack +7
*Greil: [Throwing] Power +14
*Marth: [Weapon] Attack +19
*Micaiah: [Weapon] Attack +21
*Ike:(Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance) [Weapon] Attack +23
*Eliwood: Flame Resistance +33
==Trophies==
Marth's main and Final Smash trophies can be obtained by clearing and All-Star mode respectively with Marth.
==Alternate costumes==
					
					
==Gallery==
Marth SSBB.png|Official Artwork.
SSBBDojoMarth1.jpg|Idling on Castle Siege.
MarthForwardSmashSSBB.jpg|Using his forward smash on on Castle Siege.
Marth and Ike SSBB.jpg|Next to on Castle Siege.
Fire-emblem.jpg|Next to in the beginning of Castle Siege.
SSBBDojoMarth4.jpg|Taunting on Bridge of Eldin.
Countermarth.jpg|Marth's Counter in Brawl.
Shield Breaker.jpg|Marth's Shield Breaker in Brawl.
Marth Dolphin Slash.jpg|thumb|Marth's Dolphin Slash in Brawl
Dancingblade.jpg|thumb|Dancing Blade in Brawl.
Dancing Blade.png|The first strike of Dancing Blade in Brawl.
Criticalhit.jpg|Critical Hit in Brawl.
==Trivia==
*Marth's back air turns his whole body around to face the other way; it is the only aerial in the game to do this.
*Marth is the first unlockable character to join the player's party in The Subspace Emissary, though he is not the first to be played, as Ness is temporarily available in a previous stage.
*While it can only happen on a custom stage, Marth's sword trail animations on his aerial attacks will only play if done at the peak or near the peak of his jump and midair jump, when attacking after or before the peak of a jump Marth's sword will simply glow and leave no trail, except on his up aerial. This also happens to .
*Marth, , , and can all perform the floor glitch.
*Brawl is the only game where Marth cannot use his default costume in Team Battles.
*Marth, alongside Bowser, are the only 2 characters to have a Melee song for their Character Roll Call theme. In Marth's case, his theme is .
==References==
==External links==
*Marth's Smash DOJO!! page
*Marth Character Guides on SmashBoards
*Marth's hitbox size of each of his moves
*Marth's Moves - History Behind Super Smash Bros. Brawl, by CrappyCaptureDevice
 
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