Mind Games and the Forward Smash

So it's been a while since I've posted anything substantial on these boards and I feel as though it is time for me to contribute a little something to the communal pool of knowledge that is the Snake section of these forums.

That having been said, I have recently been playing copious amounts of Brawl online at gamebattles.com and have stumbled upon some fun little mind games and techniques for psyching out your opponent and I will try to share my favorite of these with you now.

Pretty much since the beginning of the formation of the Snake metagame, the forward smash has been regarded as a mostly useless and ridiculously slow smash attack that is the hallmark killing move of an extremely poor Snake user or simply another pro who is goofing around in a match that doesn't matter. It is my assertion that, against many players and many characters, the forward smash does have a very important place in your repertoire of moves.

Allow me to elaborate. The forward smash's drawbacks are that it is incredibly slow and difficult to execute, and that it's hitbox (unlike Lucas's up smash) does not protect the Snake user from the due retaliation from using such an audacious move. However, the trade off for these problems is incredible killing power as well as the fear factor which naturally accompanies this brute force. For example, even at the pro levels of Brawl playing, a person facing a Snake player who is charging his forward smash will almost always choose either to wait it out or to spam a projectile if they have one. It is infrequent that the player will attempt to jump over the Snake user to attack from the rear, and it is also uncommon for the player to attempt to mount and aerial assault on Snake. This is the first rule of using the forward smash attack:


This should underscore the second rule of using the forward smash:


So the question that you should now be asking is "When should I pull out this most deadly of moves so as not to allow my opponent to break his foot off in my camo-clad hindquarters?" The answer to this is complex, but it revolves around a simple concept:

BREAK UP YOUR OPPONENTS RHYTHM​

The premise behind this is that you must change the flow of the game completely. Most frequently, you will be slowing the tempo of the match down so that you opponent runs thoughtlessly into your forward smash in their rush to keep up with your previously blinding onslaught of attacks and explosions. Imagine for example, a fight in which you and an evenly matched opponent (say a Fox player) are trading rapid blows with each other. You down throw him into a tech chased f-tilt, he immediately zips through your head with a fox illusion in the air and then drops to the ground for a forward smash of his own. You then recover, mortar slide towards him (which he dodges) turn around and immediately execute a forward smash. Because of the back and forth nature of this fast paced match, you have come to a complete stop while he is undoubtedly running towards you after dodging your mortar slide in the hopes that he can get in some damage and continue the back and forth nature of the match. I cannot tell you the frequency with which this type of a maneuver works against skilled and unskilled opponents alike. The best think about this type of trick is that the position which I just described places Fox a good distance in front of you so that you will not be punished with anything more than a couple blaster bolts or perhaps an illusion (if he's feeling lucky) should he recognize your maneuver before it's too late.

The reason that I used Fox in the above example is due largely to his speed and my success with this tactic against Fox players. This notion of your opponent's speed lends itself to the third rule (and its corresponding corollary) of the forward smash:


This technique also works if your opponent is airborne, as long as you apply the same basic rules and guidelines as you had on the ground. The one difference with using this in the air is that you must understand the inclinations of your foe when he is airborne. Firstly, understand that at a certain height, your opponent's reactions will slow down and the tempo of the match will be too slow for this move to really work. Fortunately, at this point your opponent should be damaged enough that you can kill him other ways. the optimal height for this to work is when you have just knocked your foe above you (with about a standing Snake's height between the top of your head and them) and slightly in front of or behind you. At this point you should realize that your opponent will do one of two things: he will either DI away from you putting both himself and you at little risk, or he will aerial recover (exit that spinning fall animation) and try to punish you from the air. He will almost certainly not try to DI over your head and to your opposite side because of the range of your up smash and your up tilt. Thus, should your foe DI towards you, the forward smash you began to charge as soon as they peaked their trajectory will hit them squarely in the face for 23 damage and a very likely KO.

The most important thing to realize about this is that it will not work if the tempo of the match is not drastically different from what you slow it down to. If you and your opponent are far away from each other and he is spamming Wolf's blaster and you are throwing grenades, suddenly stopping and charging a forward smash in anticipation of him giving up his spam and rushing you will NEVER work. Always go from fast to slow tempo to exploit your foe's instinctual need to rush at you in the middle of a hectic fight.

Finally, the only disclaimer that I can give for this is that it is a mind game, and as such it will not work for all of you reading this and it will not work against all of your opponents. Still, when I have used it and it has failed, I can say that I have never lost a stock as a direct result of it. At most I have suffered 20'ish damage points and been knocked off the stage and had to recover. I suppose that the final rule with regards to this move is:

first

so what's the general consensus on using this for edgeguarding?

wazgood said:

first

so what's the general consensus on using this for edgeguarding?

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Personally, I'm not a huge fan of doing this since it requires a fair amount of luck and very good timing to get the smash off before the auto-sweetspotting feature for the ledges gives your foe invincibility frames. Still, against the Spacies, Zelda and Sheik (if you are good at predicting where they will reappear), and a few others, it does have it place among the situational means of edgeguarding. Personally, I prefer to use a grenade dropped at the edge with a couple mortars and perhaps a nikita in the mix.

Once again T*H*O*R well written post to make Snake users aware of the fsmash's prowess. I have landed many an fsmash KO usually anticipating a failed aerial or aerial recovery coming from offstage. Either they miss the aerial or they airdodge at the wrong time and land right smack into the fsmash.

One thing I noticed that helped is doing fsmash from under a platform with the tip of the fsmash just poking out on the side where your opponent is recovering. The platform prevents the opponent from attempting an aerial from above, or getting behind you, and proper spacing under it can make them miss their attempted aerial, and by then the fsmash you timed properly ahead of time hits them the instant they miss.

hey, that was a nice reading. and it sounds like a really good mindgame. congratulations!

usually using this (no matter when or what) from rules of your guide it just gives my opponent to come in from above because they see me in the lag of the move. And they can still dodge and utilt or the mortar because they know its coming and get behnid me :/

I sometimes use Fsmash after Dthrow or something similiar. To techchase.

For example: I'm fighting Ike on Castle Siege. It's the second part of the stage, I get a grab near the KO boundary, I Fthrow him towards the boundary, I know he's not going to roll towards the boundary so after he touches ground, I use Fsmash as he rolls to me. KO.

-NaPPy said:

usually using this (no matter when or what) from rules of your guide it just gives my opponent to come in from above because they see me in the lag of the move. And they can still dodge and utilt or the mortar because they know its coming and get behnid me :/

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Yea that's often why I use it with aid of a platform above me. And if I do, it's rarely.

The Fsmash is just a bonus for me. I hardly use it at all. It needlessly slows me down most of the time when I could be doing other things, and it's snake's riskiest move.

I only use it sometimes as an edge guard for people who like to jump of the ledge and try to attack with an aerial. I also use it on people whos jumps don't always sweetspot the ledge right away like Lucas's/ Ness's second jump.