So I was looking at Unova and wondering if it really is as redundant as people make it out to be. Personally I think the platform position is quite different to PS2 (and Kalos), with them reaching almost all the way to the edges. I also think the double-platform layout is probably the least polarising layout out there and it's not as big of a deal as say, having multiple tri-plats.

The stage itself is also quite smaller than both PS2 and Kalos, both in terms of the main ground and the blastzones. I managed to get in contact with Kurogane Hammer, who provided the blastzone measurements for PS2 & Kalos, as well as BF and FD:

BF: -250, 250, 192, -138
FD: -240, 240, 180, -125
PS2: -250, 250, 180, -125
Kalos: -245, 245, 192, -118

I did some testing myself comparing Unova to BF and FD on 3DS, and if I had to make a guess:

Unova: -220, 220, 170?, ???

It's definitely noticeably smaller both horizontally and vertically (didn't test the bottom blastzone), although definitely not too small either.

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With that in mind, I made a list using the same usual starter-counterpick ruleset:

-Starters
BF
FD
PS2
SV
YIB
LYLAT
UNOVA
KALOS*
FEROX*

-Counterpicks
WARIOWARE**
FRIGATE
(CASTLE SEIGE?)
(GAMER?)
(MUSHROOM KINGDOM U?)

* Kalos and Ferox can be moved to CP, giving us 7 starters
** WW as a CP is due to the very small blastzones (-180, 180) which a few people have brought up as a pretty serious issue

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I know some people are gonna call some of the inclusions redundant, but if we decide that it's actually not that big of a deal, I think this works pretty well. Again, I also think the double-platform layout is just generally very suitable as a starter.

Regarding the problems with starter-counterpick dichotomy, I think that if we don't have too many CPs, and they're not too weird or polarising, people will be willing to hang on to them long-term. How often they'll get picked is another issue though. Also having just one large stage list severely limits the exact amount we can have, unless we want to use RNG (that's also another reason why counterpicks exist).