Learning the Ice Climbers Matchup

[InterestingTim]

Hey all. Recently, I went to a local in New England and was blessed with the opportunity of playing InfiniteNumbers (top Melee IC's player in New England) and got destroyed, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. When I played him, I was using Captain Falcon (I'm a dual Falcon/Puff main) and I was doing pretty good against him in neutral and thought I was adapting fairly well. He still 2-0'd me in winners bracket, and I noticed that Falcon probably wasn't the best character of choice, considering I got grabbed once and my Falcon was dead (of course, and I didn't even get wobbled, just chain throw'd). Either way, the next time I played an Ice Climbers that night, I decided to give Jigglypuff a try. I did a lot better with her than I did with Falcon, but I still got rekt.

As I said before, I am a dual Jigglypuff-Captain Falcon main. I use Captain Falcon for some match ups and Jigglypuff for others. With that said, I think it's more beneficial that I learn the Ice Climbers matchup with Jigglypuff. I realize that the matchup has a lot of patience involved, much like most of Jigglypuff's other MU's, and Pound can be a good option of splitting the climbers up. Other than that, is there anything else I should look out for? Any tips? Maybe a matchup thread somebody can redirect me to? Thanks in advance, I appreciate any and all advice.

 

[Hot Toddy]

I'm also from New England and have played BVB a lot recently and have done alright. My strategy is to stay away from them and be really patient while throwing out bairs. The ideal thing is to separate them and kill nana since SoPo is super easy to kill as Puff. After you take one stock you can either camp them out which works very well with Puff, kill Nana and then camp or just repeat how you started. Don't be too aggressive. Remember that spaced bair is super good against ICs. Also remember to be careful of wobbling.

 

[Trezz]

ICs have a pretty hard time against Puff, so going Puff over Falcon is probably the better choice. ICs is another one of Puff's MUs where bair spamming is one of the better options. Her bair outspaces pretty much everything the ICs can do, so just make sure yo space yourself to not get grabbed/wobbled. Camping the top platform is also a viable strategy, since ICs don't really have a good approach option for it. In general you want to focus on separating the ICs to beat them, but it's especially true for Puff. SoPo is god awful against Puff since all he can do is poke damage one hit at a time and his best rest punish is just a charged smash. Not only that, but edeguarding SoPo is basically free since you can just repeatedly bair him out of his side-b recovery.

If you haven't seen it already, I'd highly suggest watching this set between Hbox and InfiniteNumbers. Not only does Hbox play the MU incredibly well, but Wobbles drops a lot of knowledge on both the ICs exploitable weaknesses in the MU and stuff about what they're looking to go for (which you can learn to avoid when you play against them).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3wv9vwz7tc