So I played a few friendlies against my opponent today, and we went 50-50 in games. Not too worried about showing my cards. I tried out a few things I learned here, but I still had issues dealing with UpB OOS. How should GnW deal with another GnW using that to escape punishes? Respect it and pursue into the air with my own UpB? or possibly just use bacon to cover where ever he might land?
Dealing with Up-B OoS is a matter of knowing how much space you and your opponent can actually control.
G&W is deceptively vulnerable while above a
grounded opponent, and this is a position that's made even worse for him whenever he uses Up-B OoS.
Using Up-B immediately puts G&W in fastfall and removes his ability to airdodge until he gets hit or ends his air state. This means that his options for returning to the ground are pretty much limited to pulling out an aerial to protect himself on his way down or to aim for a platform beforehand to restore his options as soon as possible. If you make a point of
staying directly below him for the entire duration of his air state then he will be limited to just ONE option upon landing: D-Air.
If you do manage to keep yourself
directly below him, G&W will start trying to use his remaining mobility options to get himself to a position where he can escape being
directly above you. He can use his double jump and bucket stall to end his fastfall to give himself more time, but both of these are single-use and can be baited out simply by chasing him from the ground to keep yourself
directly below him.
This keeps your zone of control in the one space where G&W has no choice but to enter. A smart G&W will use B-Reverse Chef to mix up his movement while in the air to make it hard for you to keep your zone of control in the right spot, but if you can keep up with him then he will eventually have no option but to try to land directly on top of you with a D-Air. Since you already know that he'll be using D-Air you can easily dash out of the way and punish him just after he lands to avoid the landing hitbox. This is part of the reason why characters with high ground speeds are exceptionally difficult for G&W to deal with.
Respect his F-Air. I stress the word "directly" so much because if you stray too far from being
directly below him during his air state then he will pull out a F-Air and fade back with it in an attempt to clip you with the flub hitbox. If it connects then it's a fairly safe and rewarding option since it covers a huge amount of space and can usually lead to a deadly D-Tilt followup. However, if it doesn't hit then he's going to be stuck in punishable landing lag that you should be capitalizing on. Simply staying just outside the range of his F-Air once he pulls it out (it'll usually be telegraphed since he needs to pull it out ahead of time to get the flub hitbox) will leave him open to being punished.
Furthermore, since you're also playing G&W
you can greatly lengthen your zone of control by using the bacon from an up-angled Chef. This is great for punishing an opposing G&W that's trying to get back to the stage from above since G&W has no fast aerials to swat them away with. The trajectories that come out of an up-angled Chef will keep the projectile lingering in one place for quite a while around the point when it reaches its apex, so it can continue to limit options in a given space even after the opposing G&W manages to maneuver around it.
Bait out his D-Air and challenge it. This move takes a long time to execute once it's brought out, so G&W will be locked into that animation for pretty much the rest of his air state. This is often accompanied with a fastfall since it can give him some protection while he returns to the stage. However, his hurtboxes are still left completely open during this time. His foot hangs down all the way to the end of the handle, so this means that you can use Up-Air and have just enough range and disjoint to reach him. Your hurtboxes during Up-Air are dispersed in a way that makes it so your head is placed behind you, keeping you well away from the key as you start to get closer to it. Here's a picture showing how the two moves interact:
This picture shows two G&W's that are facing the same direction. When they are facing opposite directions the spacing is slightly different, but you can use your imagination and see that it's still enough range to hit him safely.
Well placed bacon will often
force a D-Air from G&W when he tries to swat it away. Use this knowledge to your advantage.
