After Bowser was removed from the Exion amiibo metagame last December, amiibo trainers worldwide collectively sighed in relief; no longer were tournaments dominated by a single character. But now, it’s February, and tournaments are dominated by (arguably) an even stronger character: Incineroar. Due to reasons we’re about to discuss, Incineroar is officially banned from the Exion amiibo metagame.

• Incineroar is one of the heaviest characters in the game, making him resilient and difficult to KO
• While Incineroar’s recovery is not great, it has a chance of taking the opponent down as well (as Cross Chop meteor smashes its victims)
• Incineroar has several powerful kill moves, including forward smash, up smash, and especially down smash (at the ledge)
• Its side special, Alolan Whip, is incredibly strong; Incineroar’s AI always times the lariat perfectly and opposing amiibo often make no attempt to dodge the move
• While Incineroar does have soft counters (Mii Gunner and Ridley among the few that can contend), none of them are surefire wins

In explaining Incineroar’s ban, we would like to place a special emphasis on its side special, Alolan Whip. The best Incineroar amiibo only use Alolan Whip (with a bit of down smash sprinkled in), making the fighter rather easy to train. Furthermore, Incineroar has dominated recent tournaments, and has shown stronger results than any other amiibo character in history (and this includes records from Smash 4). Please note that Incineroar is now banned from the Exion amiibo metagame. This means that our Discord server will disallow Incineroar, but tournaments that are not affiliated with Exion may still allow the character.

P.S. The amiibo tier list has been updated alongside the release of this post to reflect Incineroar’s explusion. You can check that out here. Thanks for reading, and happy training!