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How to deal with a Marth?

ChuDat your my hero

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 5, 2007
Messages
2
I am constantly matched up with Marth users in tournaments, my Ice Climber ability is above average, and yet I have tons of trouble, mostly due to Marth's reach and priority with his sword and his ability to easily seperate the two. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions of how to deal with Marths.
 

Aaron_Sketch

Smash Cadet
Joined
Nov 30, 2006
Messages
69
Location
Waterloo
Three words:
1-Mindgames
2-Projectiles
3-Shield Grab

1-K, I'll explain. Mindgames so that if you're fighting a Fsmasher, you can wavedash forward, have him do his fsmash, then wavedash back so he'll miss, then wavedash forward again so that you can hit him with a Dsmash before his lag is over.

2- Projectiles. Guess what? Marth can't throw his sword. Use his lack of projectiles to you advantage, If it's a big stage spam projectiles (Desynced of course) so that when he jumps over your ice blocks you can meet up with him using your desynced IC and shieldgrab/smash him.

3- Desync. Just because when one IC is busy defending Marth, the other one can come in and kill.
 

Buddha

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 12, 2005
Messages
189
Location
MD
1. WD from shield.
2. Uair.
3. dair-chain.
4. reverse dair.
5. for the love of god, learn the difference between your and you're.
 

Wobbles

Desert ******
BRoomer
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
2,881
Location
Gilbert, AZ
There really aren't any tricks to this matchup. The only way to get the Marth to lose is to trick him into spacing his moves incorrectly.

Dash-dancing, waveshielding, rolling, even walking. Any motion you make is another thing the Marth has to consider when placing his attacks. His biggest threats against you are forward-air and down-tilt, since those have very little lag and a lot of knockback on your shield. Unless you can wavedash in and throw your shield up at the exact moment, he will tip your shield with his sword and force you away.

You can very easily punish forward smash with a wavedash out of shield as long as he doesn't tip your shield. Otherwise there is simply too much stun to follow up.

You will spend almost the entirety of your match against a good Marth punishing the lag on his attacks. You have to make him miss by a millimeter and run in to grab him, trick him into approaching too far against your shield so you can shieldgrab, or hit Nana with a laggy attack while missing you.

Never miss tech-chases and never screw up edgeguards.

I hope that helps; I know I sound pretty bleak, but it's a **** tough matchup.
 

AzN_Lep

Smash Champion
Joined
May 25, 2005
Messages
2,096
Location
San Diego, CA
I love it when people answer with just "mindgames."

Buddha: You can't chain throw Marth >.< He doesn't even need to DI most the time, just jump. But that doesn't mean that you can't dish out some mean grab combos. After I got frustrated with trying to chainthrow Marth, I simply learned to abuse his DI. Grab -> blizzard -> d-throw -> reverse d-air -> f-smash behind Popo.

Wobbles has the right idea, I'll just add in a little bit. As said, WD outta shield is THE technique to win this match. While Marth has crazy range and what nots, his only real finisher is his foward smash. This also happens to be his laggiest move. If you get tipped in your shield you can usually get away with a WD -> jab -> grab. Since Wobbles pretty much covered the defensive game into approaches, I'll just elaborate on the "what to do" after you get in.

Well alot of people seem to know what's up when they get a grab with Nana around, so I'll shed to light what to do when you get a grab with just Popo. After Nana gets killed off (which can happen stupidly fast in the match up) Popo can still be a force to be reckoned with. At lower percentages, Marth has 2 immediate actions he can do after getting grabbed: He can either DI away or not DI at all. When he DI's away the best option is to follow with a shffld n-air and try to chain grab, or try a dash attack and pop him up for some u-air -> u/b-air. If he doesn't DI the solution is just as simple, u-tilt or u-smash and follow with u-airs to u/b-airs again. Likewise, anytime you get Marth in the air your going to want to avoid charging in with b/f-airs and utilize your u-airs. The exception to this is when you manage to grab Marth at high percentages. In this case d-throw -> back is your best KO option.

As obvious as it should seem, a huge mistake a lot of IC players make is improperly edge guarding Marth. When he's off the ledge, don't just stand by idly. Go ahead and fire some desynch'd ice blocks, anything that might impede his ability to get back on the stage. If you happen to have Nana alive, fast falling a b-air shouldn't be over looked. You can score a quick kill with this and still make it back with a hammer squall. Another thing to keep in mind: Never get so distracted by your pretty desynch'd edge guards to overlook the obvious. If you've been firing iceblocks and Marth is getting really close to the stage, grab the ledge. At this point he has no option but to over shoot the ledge or die (assuming he has used his second jump). Perserve your invincibility and WD from the ledge and grab or d-smash him when he gets back on the ledge.

Oh, and make sure you use lots of mindgames. Haha, I'm funny.
 

chu12ch

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 10, 2006
Messages
377
Location
Norwalk, CA
My brother plays a decent marth, he may not do all this pivoting business but his spacing is godly... On to my point...

Everything here has been said before (because it works), wd out of shield is pretty much one of your few approaches through the ground, chaingrabbing is almost out of the question (i usually go for uair juggles out of a u-throw)... So yeah, spacing is the primary problem, i just try to move so much til he whiffs a fsmash... Shooting iceblocks to approach doesn't work for me, (he just ftilts them) but it might work for you...

However, if he's approaching you with fairs... I cant help much, those **** me so hard, the only thing i can do against it is launch nana and hope something good happens...

For me, games vs marth depend on how fast they gimp off nana... (or how fast i can get that grab in...)
 

Buddha

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 12, 2005
Messages
189
Location
MD
I love it when people answer with just "mindgames."

Buddha: You can't chain throw Marth >.< He doesn't even need to DI most the time, just jump. But that doesn't mean that you can't dish out some mean grab combos. After I got frustrated with trying to chainthrow Marth, I simply learned to abuse his DI. Grab -> blizzard -> d-throw -> reverse d-air -> f-smash behind Popo.
hot tips Azn. but im a strong advocate that you CAN chain throw marth, and even peach. sure its not 0-death 100% guaranteed (actually far from it), but that doesnt mean its still not very much possible and achievable in actual gameplay if you can "mindgame" your way to some bad DI (horrible use of the word i kno). and one should not be deterred from doing so. dair or reverse-dair chain is a very legitimate part of an IC vs Marth and even Peach matchup. certainly its not something you should be basing your whole game upon, but still something worth using. like im sure we've all seen chu reverse-dairing and dair-chaining ken from OC2 and even walk's ICs dair-chaining kizzo's marth. obviously, ken knows how to DI correctly to escape, but no one plays perfect 100% of the time, so why not capitalize on your opponents mistakes? taking advantage of openings is what matchups are all about, and chain grabs should be no exception.
 

AzN_Lep

Smash Champion
Joined
May 25, 2005
Messages
2,096
Location
San Diego, CA
It's actually much easier to to reverse d-air chain Peach than it is Marth. If you set Peach up right she HAS to DI up and away to escape, but no matter how you set up up Marth he can just DI up and jump. Not to say that you can't get in some "mock" chain grabs from his poor DI. Like you've said, I've been next to Chu when he 0 to death'd Ken from craziness (reverse d-throw d-air included) But on the other hand, I've seen Ken escape his reverse d-air chain, or any chainthrow for that matter at any percent. I guess what I'm trying to say is, "yes you can chain throw if he messes up" but "no, I wouldn't suggest it as "to do" vs Marth type technique."
 

Buddha

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 12, 2005
Messages
189
Location
MD
i honestly view the reverse-dair as even semi-reliable vs marth. on average you can get at least one off every game, but if you're opponent is smart and knows how to DI correctly (up/away) you can abuse this with dthrow>upsmash and hopefully get an early KO off the top. then he'll start double-guessing his DI the next time you grab. either way i see it as a win-win situation.

what i find to be a pain in the *** for some reason is properly edgeguarding marth. sure, you can try to time a crouch-canceled dsmash but thats easily missed. i mostly play it on the ledge as if im edgeguarding sheik and have him land on stage. then punish accordingly. this is where its a ***** cus his up-b usually hits nana away you only have a few options here. you cant ledgehop>wavesmash because you'll lose your invincibility frames or you can roll/press up but its usually just another f/bthrow off the stage if you cant wavesmash fast enough before he sheilds. then hes almost guaranteed to come back since your f/bthrow has hardly any knockback. or do the whole light-shield thing. still... theres gotta be a better way to gimp him...
 
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