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Starting off the block with a bang, Lyn is a highly mobile fighter who makes the most of her source material's animations and skills, extrapolating them into a fun air-focused speed demon take on the normal Fire Emblem swordie formula. Aside from thirding the recommendation that she can lose the charge of her Neutral Special somehow to give her more reason to use it/make the buffs less 'always on' and the typos I pointed out in chat, I'm admittedly struggling for suggestions to give. Lyn focuses on her mobile melee-centric playstyle, and underneath the flash of her moving her faster than the eye can see and her single stroke attacks, her set all serves that grounded core concept.
There's plenty to praise, sure enough- Side and Up Specials and Dash Attack are interesting movement options on top of their other uses, and nearly every input has some small amount of movement to it to give her a pseudo-dodge or two built in. Pummel switching her facing to let her throws work optimally without need for crossing up to get the right positioning was already called out as great by Kupa. Forward and Up Smash being potentially deadly but broken into several moves that aren't guaranteed to chain without knowing the right timing/reading the opponent, Down Smash letting her chase opponents into the air with the charge, Neutral Aerial having four possible knockback angles based on how she spaces herself without just going for an all-around hitting move with radial knockback (I have way too many moves I repeat too often the more I look at my sets...) all good stuff.
I feel the potency of the buff is needed for the intended goal, but some of these benefits are pretty scary sounding. Lyn's air game is already top notch and Side Special is particularly scary up there; does she also have to be literally twice as fast as the next fastest air speed (and Captain Falcon's run, for that matter)? Unless the intention was that it was meant to be multiplied by 1.5 (1.27 -> 1.905), instead of 'increased by 1.5' (1.27 -> 2.77), in which case it's scary but much more reasonable.
I would put Down Special at the top of the specials section to immediately note the limit on Kurt Zisa's available moves; it's an important balancing factor and a core part of playing the set, and it's relevant to details in other moves, such as Side Special noting it's good for blocking magical attacks despite being a physical move- if you assume the noted limit from the intro/loose familiarity from the source material, it may raise an eyebrow as to why he cares.
The mechanic is very daring, and it left me trying to think about it to see if I had anything useful to contribute. Kurt having effectively only half his set at a time while also being able to cut down his opponent's set to potentially 5 moves for a period but the latter being able to disable his defenses for some time while he's not able to ever really circumvent his own restriction is some extreme balance and could easily fall into broken or painfully underpowered.
I think overall it comes out a bit hard in KZ's favor in some match-ups for a couple reasons: the opponent has to get to the orb needed to get through his defenses, and while he's always as far from them as possible, it's still possible for foes to be spawned far from the orbs as well. The foe has to take time to retrieve the orb while KZ is able to mount an offensive with Neutral Special and other options, including using his high air speed so that it's not necessarily a footrace he's poorly equipped to win if the opponent isn't a speedy type.
Then the opponent has to trial and error spam their attacks to see which is affected- this part could be alleviated by having a correspondingly colored aura appear around them in the direction of their affected inputs (maybe a white lighter inner layer to the aura for Specials); the color shifting around when in the air or in grab state to show the affected aerial/throw. That still leaves the issue that a character might be left with a mishmash of inputs that aren't necessarily cohesive- a combo-heavy character lacking combos or a 50/50-dependent character lacking half their mix-ups. Kurt has some good reach and even good speed, so he has a hefty advantage in this state, even limited by his set.
This is only relevant to the more extreme characters like Little Mac, but it's worth noting. One fix that would unfortunately drift away from the core conceit is that KZ isn't outright immune, but takes no knockback/flinching and slightly reduced damage, the latter contributing to eventually breaking his barrier. This means his barrier is still incredibly potent, but throws the most extreme match-ups a bone.
That was a lot of words about his mechanic; there's the entire rest of the set, and there's a lot to love here. His Neutral Special has some fun interactions with the rest of his set, and being able to use an input before switching barriers to have the effect kick in after the fact is a wonderful idea. Being able to manifest added hitboxes like that always had that perfect boss fight energy to me, and KZ manages to give off that same imposing aura of power and speed as he did in his source material. I love how on top of his general animation, his moves like Jab/FTilt/UTilt affect the movements of his head which manipulates the beam, and second my appreciation of it kicking in from the blast zone he gets KOed from as a final revenge hitbox- it's a really fun touch.
Silence is another point of concern for me, when Kurt already has the ability to shut down a lot of his opponent's set, being able to cut out their few remaining moves hurts. Again imagining Little Mac having a hodgepodge of inputs across his sections and this potentially leaving him with nothing when KZ spams it- I'd limit Silence to only affecting the most recent move, or having a timer on top of vanishing with a stock loss/barrier break. A counter is much easier to land when the opponent is incredibly limited in their moveset, and it being a reflector besides is icing on the cake. It'd take only four successful counters to effectively end the opponent's stock (or force a self-KO if they don't want you to stall the timer) if they don't have a magic grab. Graviga by comparison raises an eyebrow, but it being timer based prevents it from completely locking a foe down.
The ability to overcharge Up Smash and Down Smash to create lingering traps is really cool, and my only balance concerns about them just go back to the barrier (making it harder to reach orbs and Kurt being able to hide in them against foes deprived of disjoint, especially combined), so overall I say they're handled perfectly well. KZ's moveset does a good job of making the magic and physical attacks have distinct feels that make the 'boss phase shift' feel really shine, and also take care to give you ways to support the other form once you've initiated a change- important, as it encourages you to switch periodically even without the opponent breaking your barrier instead of sitting in the mode that limits as much of their set as possible.
Getting to the grab game, I think the details of how Kurt's barrier works against grabs/pummels/throws should probably be noted with the rest of the barrier info. Stopaga basically having knockback storage but on a foe getting stuck in air is a clever concept, and it's balanced out by it being dependent on enemy percentage anyhow. Curaga worries me a bit by default given it's a heal effect, but it requires landing a grab in a specific mode and, again, is mainly an issue only due to KZ's barrier being so strong. Down Throw... is a cool enough throw with nothing specifically wrong with it, though it does make Forward Throw a filthy, filthy liar for saying it's the only throw in physical form. It's a lot of damage for a throw as stated, but also as stated KZ can't pummel while it's available, so hey. Works out fine.
Overall, this a heck of a set to put out in only three days, and the balance concerns are fixable and a natural consequence of tackling such an ambitious project. It was like taking a step back to an older MYM and enjoying the creativity people displayed back then, but with significantly more thought and polish (a trend I'm seeing more and more in MYM24 and I'm very happy it's here). I really, really like KZ from concept to flash to most of the execution, and feel it just needs a couple of edits to make it a top of the line set. Well done, and thank you once again for starting this jam!
Now this feels like a character pick that's way overdue for how popular the game was, but I guess MYM has a habit of making oddball choices over the more famous characters. Red's pretty solid in the air (we've got a few sets with that this jam, funny enough) and has a unique projectile game combined with a highly aggressive playstyle.
Having a solid set of borbs to choose from as ammo and rotate through is interesting, including the stronger ones being backloaded in the cycle so you have to find a moment to cycle through to get your big guns (even accounting for it be near-instantaneous). I appreciate the effort put in to make sure they're all useful and diverse, and how they mesh with the rest of Red's set, but 8 ammo types are a lot to juggle. The fact they're set to be deployed from the slingshot and are long ranged projectiles with varying qualities and flight paths, and special features that can be activated early by repeating Neutral Special, adds up to enough versatility to ensure they all can fill in suitably well even if a given borb's personal qualities aren't in demand. I mentioned in chat that I love the slingshot as a construct, and I stand by that now.
Side Special I appreciate greatly as a means to better use your borbs in the middle of a hectic exchange, and it serves nicely as a trade off between finesse and reliability while also ensuring that newer players to Red have time to practice his personal set without having to simultaneously learn the particularities of the slingshot controls. Red would have a high skill ceiling, but this simultaneously gives him a low floor and still has its uses at the ceiling.
Jab's applications and the use of moving your singular slingshot around/letting Red launch himself are unique and just plain fun. I'm not quite sure about it replacing tilts entirely, but it functions as needed in a way that substitutes for those inputs, and helps move the focus to Red's air game. I will note that Jab might make Shield Special a bit redundant, since that moves the slingshot to Red as well and he can just presumably tap the input.
The rest of the set feels a bit crazy and odd, drawing upon the diverse appearances Red and the flock have made over the years with bizarre props and tools, but it comes out to have a nice chaotic and kinetic feel- perfect for the poster child character of a brightly colored game that involves the protagonists using themselves as live ammunition to destroy fortifications. The smashes and throws are fairly grounded in effect for their sometimes impressive animations, and that works perfectly well, as they're here to supplement Red's primary strong point: his air game.
Red has great air movement and Jab lets him launch himself into the air just the same as the other flock members to approach at even higher speeds from any number of angles. All the while, he can call upon the flock as reinforcements as he flies. His aerials give him great coverage, and have some interesting utility effects like the ability to manipulate other flock members or his opponent's positioning or create other projectiles to work with (which I felt might be a bit much given his flock, but then I remembered that these spawn with Red and have a distinct niche just from that).
Overall, I really like Red, and it's mostly a question of how much I like him that I'm still trying to pin down. Excellent work! A couple of typos I noticed, while I'm at it: "For the normal throw" mentioned under grab, believe throw is meant to be grab going by the rest of the paragraph. BAir also trails off with "Landing B-air deals 11.2% damage and some mediocre knockback, just enough to" at the end of one paragraph.
I really like the three forms the set can switch between, and in particular I enjoy that Rockerduck's attacks helpfully lead into Jeeves' during the middle phase (provided they haven't desynced, though that leads to its own opening and the Gold Rush status is pretty dang nifty). I'm admittedly at a bit of a loss for gauging the balance between it all given the need to earn the latter phases past the initial one, Jeeves' damage percentage, etc.
I was worried about baby Jeeves being a bit weak compared to the former state, but it IS notably a buff over the original state just due to being (almost as) strong attacks on a relatively faster fighter and something that can be initiated when Jeeves is nearing defeat/danger of being sent over the stage boundary, so it could be taken as a last hurrah that keeps Rockerduck in the fight that little bit longer. As I read further, the inputs that change the most also gives baby Jeeves and Rockerduck needed glue moves to capitalize on that. There's reason to go back to the middle stage too, as it restores some of Jeeves' health and the ability to divide and conquer is nothing to be sneezed at- and even the weakest starting phase has the advantage of hefty weight.
The set's fluff and the characterization are also well executed, showing off Rockerduck's equal eagerness to reap rewards and shirk the work to get them contrasted by Jeeves' blunt straightforwardness. The set's humor is pretty on point, and both came together for me for Grab in particular, with Jeeves completely immobilizing the foe in his iron grip so Rockerduck can engage in '''honorable''' fisticuffs and the cartoonish harm Jeeves casually inflicts on Back Throw. The attack names' jokes and references is just frosting on the cake.
There's a few missing details, though- what happens if Jeeves is knocked off the stage rather than just losing all his stamina (or the final hit that depletes his stamina also drops him off stage)? Is he simply KOed and you're stuck with solo Rockerduck? That'd make the most sense, I feel. Aside from 20% feeling like too much from one throw (to my limited knowledge and especially with it being effectively a combo throw), I also am wondering what happens if a foe slinkies off of a ledge- presumably if they drop a bit they'll break out of the state, but it does bear mentioning to avoid Back Throw being insta-kill within any reasonable distance of the ledge.)
The chain of great results from the Jamcon keep going with this set, and it's good to see you back in the game with this quickie. Can't wait to see Constance finished!
Gareth is the longest set in the Jamcon, and (by no means a small feat) likely one of the more ambitious entries. Gareth makes use of several stackable synergistic buffs and a mechanic that benefits from stringing specific moves together, with a potent finishing move option she can build towards- all disparate and solid in concept, but woven together with impressive care to boot! With some typical heavyweight stats (though taking a page from Bowser and giving her some needed speed) as a base and effects centered around both exploiting the strengths of that and downplaying the weaknesses, she'd be an interesting one to play right from the get-go. It's all ultimately tied toward the youngest member of the round table earning her stripes, building on the potential her senior knights saw in her.
I was happy to see the trend continue past the mechanic and specials- Down Smash is a delayed hitbox, something that always gets love in MYM for how easily different sets can make use of them, but the way it ties into the mechanic by helping keep attack chains going is an extra detail that's clean and clever. I was also a bit concerned with the crit mechanic, and never did like wholly random effects (which is hypocritical given my favorite personal set last contest), but seeing how it's used and knowing that it's something you have a measure of control over helps significantly. Down Smash again makes good use of a mechanic by making the knockback aimed at Gareth, which is incredibly powerful when it works even before accounting for the delay, but a bit of a gamble to prep for unless you've really built up the crit chance. Forward Smash being raw power was highly satisfying, and Up Smash feeding into its own crits and being a more reliable combo starter is pretty neat.
Jab of all moves is a highlight; it automatically gives you an Arts Chain early because it's three attacks, but is a bit slow and doesn't reliably chain together after a point. The first hit has trample priority to tie into Gareth's Side Special buff, while also benefiting indirectly from her Down Special buff. The ability to delay the second and third hits allows for some reads/predictions to compensate for losing the true combo and possibly play off of other things at work like Down Smash's delayed hitbox. All on an input that remains fairly simple and functions just fine on its own.
We'd be here for too long if I went over the specifics, but I appreciate that every move takes a decent few bits of the set's core into account while still being fairly simple moves in practice, specifying about how they (do/don't) flow into each other or what role they fill in relation to each other, and still having a few issues (a decent number of Gareth's moves on what would be bread and butter inputs for most have classic heavyweight frame data with sub-heavyweight reward for landing them without her buffs or mechanics to supplement them). There's not really any notable gaps in that, and the quality continues all the way through to the very last throw (I'm a fan of Up Throw since I'm calling out inputs I like). Good work!
Rounding out the block we have the one and only friend to all children, Gamera! Reminds me that I still need to read up on Shin Godzilla (and most of the sets this MYM for that matter). As was brought up in chat, it might be best to provide a link to or re-state the mechanics borrowed from Shin Godzilla, as this Kaiju archetype is shiny and new, and the time gap means that those who have given it a read through might need a refresher.
Gamera's size, stats, and animations certainly live up to their intended feel, making for a true force of nature that controls large swaths of the stage. Like Kurt Zisa above, the balancing points are fairly extreme- lacking proper jumps and being a gargantuan and fairly slow target under normal conditions, but in exchange being in a weight class all his own, greatly reducing damage taken from behind, and laughing at how adorable Bowser's Tough Guy armor concept is by comparison. It's an interesting dichotomy and to be totally honest I have the itch to try it out myself sometime.
Gamera does also have a few useful tricks to avoid being totally defined by his notable weaknesses, specifically in his Up Special having incredible speed and duration, and his Side Special being a solid command dash besides that can both give Gamera some much needed mobility and allow him to enter the air and use his air game as needed.
I feel that as-is the balance is a bit too feast or famine, with Gamera dominating up to the point its armor fails it, at which point it would be juggled into oblivion. I'd actually buff his Neutral and Forward Aerial a bit, possibly by means of making them a bit faster (letting him escape some juggles, giving players a reason to exploit Side Special (and maybe Up Special if you let Gamera cancel out early in exchange for not entering freefall?) to risky but potentially great effect, and allowing him to mount a last hurrah when at the end of his rope), while slightly toning down his advantage state. His aerials don't feel too bad despite saying so, just slightly less deadly and attached to his poor air handling, but that's a good thing in this case.
Aside from that, my issue with Gamera is that animations and feel aside, his non-special inputs are a bit dull- they get the job done, but there's not much interplay in terms of 50/50s, combos (not that Gamera would need to combo muct at all), interesting plays on the mechanics (though I feel there is some that just doesn't draw attention, like Neutral Aerial and Dash Attack rotating/adjusting Gamera's hurtbox and thus potentially using his shell to partially block a hit that would normally hit him), etc. It feels like playing as Gamera would become a straight slugfest, with opponents at least having a more interesting time in trying to hit and run him/exploit the mentioned blindspots. It feels like there needs to be a bit more to tie it together.
I'm interested in seeing where you go from here, and how the kaiju genre itself evolves. I better get around to reading Shin Godzilla soon. On a closing note: I'm going to second the recommendation in chat that everyone reading Gamera should make sure to read the extras. The Palutena's Guidance brightened up my day.
Having read all the sets, I think I'm going to have to give my nomination to Gareth by FrozenRoy. It's one of the more ambitious entries, and has a very solid execution on top of that.
Okay, so first off, I just wanna say I'm both flattered and happy that my ultra-heavyweight concept, as well as my Shin Godzilla set, gave you some inspiration for this set! Yours is a great candidate for JamCon in an already-great catalog of sets!
So starting off with the Specials, it's interesting how Gamera's Neutral and Down Specials are closely tied to one another like Shin's laser attacks. Speaking of, I love how Down Special is a Counter-Reflect move that's dependant on whether an attack is energy-based or physical. It really goes to show how well you've thought this through. The Up Special turning him into a platform is a fun little detail I considered for Passionlip's Side Smash, but for some reason decided against it. I also love how it differs from Shin Godzilla's own flight, although I feel that it would only resort to Gamera camping near the top of the blast line for most of the match. That's why I decided to implement Steve's building boundaries in Shin Godzilla's Up Special to ensure it's fair.
I also find it funny that Gamera does a better Little Mac than Little Mac considering how huge he is, mainly because the aerials, while bad in comparison to the rest of his kit, are even better. Not only that but considering how big and heavy he is, Gamera's generally more difficult to kill than Little Mac anyway! I love how his F-throw and B-throw are loving shout-outs to the old kaiju movie effects. It really adds to the charm and gives him a unique effect, too!
Although, if I had some low points, it's his weakness to the cold. It fits with the lore and I can see the logic, but with how little ice users are in Smash, exploiting that weakness might be a little...niche, shall we say. Unless that was what you were going for. I can respect your decision, it just felt like a low point to me.
Overall, though, Gamera is a great big love letter to a character I only have some knowledge of and a worthy rival to Shin Godzilla. You did well to craft him, Torgo, nice work!
What If Kyouko Kasudani Was A Knight? (NOMINATION) Gareth by FrozenRoy
And here, we have a hand-related character who's infinitely more approachable than Shigaraki. Let's get this out of the way first: I absolutely love how well you've translated the gameplay system of Fate/Grand Order into this. It really encourages players on which moves they want to prioritize a lot more than Kazuya, mainly because of the effects of if you chain three of the same attack together. I didn't think of categorizing each move under the three card types. I can also appreciate the effort to balance all three types across all inputs as well, not to mention it surprisingly represents Gareth's card set very well here IMO. Secondly, HOLY CRAP, I DIDN'T EXPECT YOU TO PUT IN THAT MUCH EFFORT! Just goes to show much motivation could possibly show up when there's a time deadline and you wanna post for this contest.
So starting with the Specials, I love how you translated some of the Defense mechanics of her Down Special. It arguably seems to make a lot more sense than what I did for Passionlip's Down Special. Meanwhile, her other Specials seem to take some ideas from other characters already in Smash and make them better than where they come from. Like for example, I could already tell more people would love how Crit Stars work than how critical hits work on Hero, mainly because of how much more control you have over them thanks to how Crit Stars accumulate. I'm also a big fan of how Guts works, being a comeback mechanic that encourages survival. Up Special's mechanics also play into a really aggressive gameplan should you choose to go with it thanks to its descent being either automatic or triggered early while also adding to some mind-games, too.
Down Smash is just ridiculous for all the good reasons. Turning this into an attack that is affected by the environment around it very much reminds me of my Side Smash for Lavos, and I could see some ridiculous Villager-Bowling-Ball-style antics at the ledge, too. The potential maximum damage of Side Smash is really crazy as well and seems like a rather large goal for Gareth players to strive for. I also like how all three of her Smashes are divided into the three types of Brave Chain cards for equal opportunities for each move.
The animations really show how hard she's trying as a knight, and she really shows the weight of her strikes as well. The tilts really have some weight to them and show her being a real Rocketeer thanks to that lance of hers, and I like how involved her shield is in most of her moves as opposed to Hero. As for the throws, before I was curious about where the Extra Attack card comes to play, but then I got to Up Throw. I like how it changes in animation based on what chain you're using. It really adds to the utility of her throws and makes it a lot more flexible.
So overall, our second Fate/Grand Order set of this contest is a rousing success and is looking to be my top nomination so far. You did a great job there, Froy!
Damn, this girl is Samurai Movie Incarnate, and she's from, to my knowledge, a kingdom based on Medieval France!
Every move I'm seeing is almost blazingly quick, having some amazing Iaijutsu-style attacks to behold! As for some of the Specials, the way her Side Special works is really fun. There's a lot of mind-games to be had here and basically turns your opponent's interactions into a proverbial coin flip. I like the way Neutral Special works, as well, being a more unique take on Byleth's Failnaught, and since it's storable, like Samus's Charge Shot, it's automatically better, to be honest. I also love how it includes the Pegasi, the mainstay mounts of the Fire Emblem series. It automatically adds appeal to the moveset and the way it works is also really fun, too.
Aside from all that, I don't really have much to say. Animations feel nice, the flavors make me feel more invested in her, and the unique take on the victory theme is also really fun. It just feels like a good set. Absolutely nice job.
Let Me Be "Kurt" About "Zisa" Set Kurt Zisa by Kholdstare
So we have our Kingdom Hearts set this contest, and reading through it all, there are some neat concepts, and is still enjoyable despite its faults.
Let's get into the Specials first: if I'm right in reading this, Kurt Zisa's Neutral Special is basically Kazuya's Devil Blaster with free movement? Sounds like a hefty concept and the fact it ignores grabbed states is pretty cool too, although I'm rather...shall we say, iffy on the balance. Being able to act freely while it builds up is a novel concept that I've dabbled in before, but the way I see it, the fact that you can hurt yourself with it by shielding is rather...shall we say, counterproductive. Also, if I'm reading this correctly, the move is entirely dependent on the head model, meaning if you're attacking using Up Special, you're basically attempting to attack with a beam that you might have a low chance of hitting with.
Speaking of which, the barriers are rather interesting. By "magic attacks", you mean stuff like Lucario's Aura Sphere or Mythra's Ray of Punishment/Chroma Dust? I like how it adds to a layer of survivability to the kit, but having it outright nullify specific attacks is...kind of a stretch, imo. Sure, it's limited and limiting your moveset to attacks in coordinance with the barrier chosen sounds like a good self-imposed challenge, but this on top of completely nullifying specific attacks kind of makes him...well, not as annoying to fight against as Min Min, but it's dangerously close. Up and Side Specials are just fine, though. Giving Up Special immunity is another good bolstering of his survivability and makes him nigh-invulnerable to gimping, so that's a plus.
As said before, limiting half your moveset based on which barrier is up, sounds like a good self-imposed challenge, trying to defeat anyone as Kurt with only physical attacks sounds like a fun time. The balance between the two ensures that you're not entirely helpless in battle, I'll give your gimmick that much. Though I don't think cutting off Pummel if your magic barrier is up is much of a good idea. Sure, you won't have to worry about it when you're using the physical barrier, but pummels, however small they may be, aren't inconsequential in the long run. Though I can understand why you made it so since it deals some ridiculous damage for a pummel.
So with all that said, a valiant effort, though I've made my concerns already.
Okay, lemme just get this out of the way: this has got to be one of the most unique takes on a stance character I think I've ever seen in my life. The ability to swap between a Pyra/Mythra-style character with a Rosalina-Luma-style puppet fighter is an extremely fun, yet complex way to open up quite the arsenal.
The Gold Nugget projectile sounds really fun to use, and as weak as it is, the slap beforehand sounds like it would lead to some hilarious off-stage hijinx. Though, this does make me wonder if Steve could use a gold shard as a substitute when making his gold tools if you face him. Would be a hilarious, yet fun interaction, though I'm not sure if DuckTales gold is the same as Minecraft gold, tbh.
The use of the baby carrier for his Up Special is really creative, too, and the fact that it isn't limited in the slightest when taking the various forms into account means there's always an equal opportunity for good recovery. Though, I dunno if I should be calling whatever Duckberg equivalent of Child Protective Services or not, lol.
The variety of attacks that change based on which stance is being used sounds like a lot to juggle between, but honestly, it's still quite easy for me to decipher and understand. I haven't seen the new DuckTales show, but I can tell that this is practically bursting with charm. From Jeeves's undead nature to Rockerduck's craftiness and manipulation, this is one dynamic duo you don't wanna mess with. He's very versatile and conforms to a lot of playstyles easily. You did a nice job, WCF!
Lemme just say this outright: you should find a way to mod this lady into Lethal League, because as it may have been mentioned multiple times in the Discord, she would most certainly not be out of place there!
The bloody SHENANIGANS to be had with the Doki Ball is nutso. The idea of a Soccer Ball constantly at your beck and call is a really fun idea, and the interactions with stuff like the barrier and the Up Special gives her arguably a better aggressive air-zoning playstyle than my own JamCon set. The idea of turning the Doki Ball into a projectile that replicates the properties of an attack is really cool, in all honesty, thanks to the Attack Data. Picturing it in my head really reminds me of the ricochet mechanics with "Lucky" Louise last contest, but that's okay. It's always nice to make different interpretations of the same idea, after all.
As for the animations, you seem to capture the essence of the soccer player splendidly, and adding your cyberpunk takes to it really adds to the character. Side Smash giving her another projectile that's generally more simple really gives her a less monotonous projectile game while also providing an option that doesn't force Hopper mains to use the Doki Ball. She's really acrobatic and it's really easy to avoid attacks with the way she moves, in all honesty.
As for the character herself, it's a unique backstory and a fun character. The contrasts in her personality really give her a real Je ne sai quoi. Her personality outside the Doki Circuit is just...damn. Your first OC in this fake game and already you've made a candidate for Best Girl lol. In a sense, it reminds me of what Caster Medea is like in Fate/hollow ataraxia or Carnival Phantasm and I just love it. You did splendidly this time, US, good job!
(2 day set, missed the Jamcon deadline so it's not an entry)
A simple, “clean” set, I don’t have much to say or contribute to Hopper: she sets out to do what she was intended with a simple concept in the Doki Ball and the ability to program the knockback of your moves into it. D-Smash not hitting the Doki Ball normally but being monstrous when you get it into position was a particularly nice touch. Funny enough, when you brought up the set’s concept in the chat I thought that Hopper would have the ability to apply the status effects of her moves onto the [construct], which would have fallen in line with what seems to be a very dirty sport. It’s an idea for another set, at least! Maybe even the throws (I found them to be fine, though you said you weren’t too happy with them), like being able to imbue effects onto the Doki Ball: for instance, a homing capability where the ball flies back towards the target if it misses the first time. Grab the foe while holding the Doki Ball, gaining bonuses in exchange for not having the ball to cover you or combo with? Perhaps a Special Throw if you want to add something without overhauling existing throws?
On a different fluff note, I rather loved Hooper’s intro, personality and appearance write-ups - it’s very genre-savvy, and the Re:Creators setting of fictional characters coming to life is always food for thought (especially the part about the protagonists facing off against another protagonist’s enemy opposite to their source material’s genre). I’ll put it here for posterity’s sake in case anyone else is reading this comment, but Hooper’s opposite antagonist would probably be a Western comic book villain who was really dark in their original comic books, being obscure until a popular child-friendly cartoon adaption made them a household name. Opposite to Hooper’s “game” being anime-like. You mentioned them being Shredder-like.
Great work getting your second set this contest! And connected to the Mads no less! I remember you saying you really liked Shin Godzilla, so it makes perfect sense you’d use that set’s giant character concept as a base. I do like the idea of one setmaker taking close inspiration from another person’s set they like, especially in the same contest.
Gamera feels like a more straightforward take on what I’d like to call the “Kaiju genre” (we’ve had a good number of sets for giant characters in the past, but a number of them were 3v1 bosses like Valozarg and Gooper Blooper, and 2 Kaiju in one contest sets the trend). A counter feels very fitting on such a huge target, but Warlock Punch lag in an automatic projectile throw on a counter, let alone on a massive target, feels a bit underwhelming. How about Gamera catches the projectile with no end lag and holds it as a throwing item? Maybe have the option to throw energy projectiles (might be weird flavour-wise, but Gamera already has a lot of weirdness) too by tapping B. The thrown projectile could auto-aim towards the attacker if Gamera throws it in their relative direction, otherwise he could have cases of the projectile flying over their head, like when Giga Bowser throws or uses a shooting item in Melee.
With Up Special, 5 seconds of free flight with an active hitbox next to and below you feels very powerful for edgeguarding - you could just walk off the ledge and deny your opponent’s recovery, especially with a powerful hitbox. It should probably just travel upwards but let Gamera steer it, be more comparable to Bowser’s recovery duration-wise, requiring him to time the move if he wants to edgeguard. Aerial-wise, I do think Gamera should be able to jump, it makes him a sitting duck for grabs and heavily limits his ability to get around traps and projectiles the enemy may have, especially on flat stages like Final Destination.
His aerials should also be genuinely useful for how much effort it takes for Gamera to go airborne/from knockback: N-air could easily be a keep-away hitbox to stop enemies from juggling you, while D-air could threaten opponents beneath you (and make it easier to land), having super armour on the start-up or active frames - maybe even on certain parts of Gamera’s body, like just beneath him. Maybe his B-air could have him fall on his back to crush enemies with his shell, with a bit of slow start-up but a big earth-shaking landing hitbox and massive damage. While optional, I would be perfectly fine with Gamera having big deadly moves that KO before 50%, even an instant kill, as it would sell his sheer strength as a Kaiju and a massive character as a whole. Also, it could be worth mentioning quick moves that Gamera could threaten or combo into from his landing tripping hitbox, maybe his Jab for instance?
While I enjoyed the Mads more for their wackiness and really fun concept in the cholester-do-all, Gamera was good for how quickly he was made - and honestly, giant characters are really tricky to pull off, being relatively unexplored territory where the fighter’s size and coverage of their hitbox matters more than on smaller fighters. For instance, a low attack that covers a 2 grid tall area in front of you could be punished with an aerial, as said attack would not cover the full height of a giant character (assuming they’re over 2 grids tall). Hence where having a threatening anti-aerial option to cover that weakness comes in handy. I’d certainly be interested in seeing others take a crack at it.
In any case, nice job with this set! It was fun to see a ridiculous Kaiju character, and now you’re one step closer to filling out your personal roster.
A return to the Ducktales franchise, Rockerduck is a simple enough puppet fighter for whom the meat lies beyond his Specials. Like Naganadel, it was hard to wrap my head around the main mechanics - the stats section should list Jeeves’ stats exclusively, better emphasizing that he’s the one the player controls, then list Rockerduck’s stats in the Neutral Special. But I did understand it in the end, so it’s not a big deal.
On the note of stats, it might be better to give Rockerduck and Jeeves identical movement so they don’t get separated from each other, or at least while you’re controlling them together in Rockerduck’s youth. A tag team of two characters with different movement speeds is a fun idea, separating the two fighters so they cover more area, just that it would need to be brought up in the attacks themselves to be compelling.
As far as tag team sets go, I do like the little passive armour mechanic on Jeeves: withstand up to 6% so he can ignore quick attacks, making him more deadly when he’s out on his own, but taking 1.25x damage from attacks when Rockerduck is strapped to him effectively nerfs that armour, giving Rockerduck an incentive to untie himself aside from the fun you can have as a puppet fighter. Giving Rockerduck HP that’s still depleted even if he’s tied to Jeeves is also a nice touch. And while it might not be entirely in-character given Rockerduck isn’t a capable fighter, it would be cool if he had high mobility all-around when carrying Baby Jeeves, given he has to relinquish Jeeves as a puppet fighter, Baby Jeeves having nerfed range and his tonics of youth being limited resources. It’s certainly a unique stance switch, though.
While no move sticks out beyond the Specials, it’s fun to see a tag team set where the lightweight can use their quicker hits to lock foes into the heavyweight’s slower attacks. B-throw also has a fun cartoony effect and giving Rockerduck an opening to attack the enemy himself. What if the compressed enemy took a bit more knockback from attacks that hit them before they’re de-compressed, letting Rockerduck’s weaker attacks hit harder? Beyond this, I could see Rockerduck being extra fun if you threw up some tag team combos the duo could perform, like bouncing the foe back and forth or maybe transitioning from puppet Jeeves into baby Jeeves to pursue the foe, but what you’ve got is good for a Jamcom set! And you do like your edits, after all.
On a final note, Rockerduck’s writing and characterisation are very entertaining! Love the bit about him bribing Master Hand to place a panel under the stage, and lines like “For his pummel, he bicycle kicks the opponent with the help of Rockerduck, who threatened to sue this moveset if I referred to him as a father figure again.” It definitely helps with his characterisation, showing that Rockerduck is someone who is willing to throw his money around in the name of underhanded tactics.
Red is a fun set and arguably has the best execution of all your sets this contest, though to be fair a number of those sets tackled wild or ambitious ideas. In fact, this is my favourite set of yours so far, and that’s really impressive when you made it so quickly while having other commitments! The construct is simple, easy to understand, and the smoke trail to indicate the birds’ flight path and whether they’re still onscreen was a neat touch. I could see the blue birds being KILLER against shields if they all hit one close to you at the same time. Recycling the slingshot for Jab was a good touch too: I’m perfectly fine with Red not having a conventional Jab or tilts when it’s such a good tool. Dash Attack also works well in his set in being a really fast move that I could see being useful in conjunction with a landing bird to supplement its bad range.
I do think Neutral Special is too fast for a projectile (6 frames start-up, 11 frames end lag) that can be aimed and has good kill potential. On the opposite end, Side Special feels like way too much lag commitment for a move that has no hitbox and just auto-aims your Neutral Special towards opponents with the reticule. I think Neutral Special and Side Special should have their lag swapped at the very least, and instead of a set scanning time let the player hold B to scan for as long as they like. The lag on Side Special was probably to balance out Up Special teleporting Red to a locked-on opponent - maybe once he teleports that way, the reticule disappears?
I like the casual gamer reference in F-throw, feels right for a popular game, but you should probably mention that F-throw KOs near the ledge at 115%? (move says it KOs at 105%, TL;DR says it’s at 115%. On that note, U-throw shouldn’t KO at 90% (which is really high, and higher on stages with platforms) and does render F-throw’s purpose as a KO throw obsolete. What if you recycled the slingshot aspect and you could choose how far you fire the foe upwards? Pick between low knockback for aerial follow-ups or high base knockback to space for firing or Up Special teleport follow-ups, but nothing that’s going to kill early if at all. Could have it so it doesn’t combo too easily, but has incredible mix-up potential so the foe doesn’t know whether to expect a Jab, U-Smash or a bird projectile. I also like U-throw’s utility as a way to bring the slingshot towards Red without needing to commit to a Shield Special.
Is D-air meant to be comparable to Game and Watch’s F-air, but U-air? Would make more sense since he’s dropping an egg. And B-air is fun for being a way to manipulate the flight path of your bird. Also, taunt 3 is cut off (“A Bad Piggy attempts to sneak up from“) for a hilarious result.
JAMCON NOMINEE
Gareth feels like F/GO Gameplay: The Moveset, managing to juggle the game’s card types, crit stars, skills and Noble Phantasm all in one package! It’s hugely impressive that you were able to juggle all these mechanics in the set, let alone in such a short time span where you have to factor in how a move works combo-wise and with the mechanics, which is all consistent in the set, with U-throw being a fun play on the Command Cards. I wasn’t expecting your take on critical stars to revolve around Hero’s critical hit mechanic, which makes perfect sense. And I don’t remember a set that has made Final Smashes gameplay-relevant outside of Trent in MYM13.
The melee of this set in particular reminded me that a good melee can be more than 50/50s and mix-ups with your attacks, but how well one move can combo into another (Hubert’s U-tilt not being rewarding and that being a way to balance a move also stuck out to me), and other options you have if the foe DIs in response to you starting that combo.
The only thing I’m a bit iffy on is the Ring of Transformation. Flavour aside (I’m not sure how fitting it is for Gareth to grow giant in F/GO, but I’m fine with it), it mostly comes down to still being a regular-sized target outside of grabs while still having added attack range and a few other attack-based perks in some cases, to the point where being giant seems to have little downsides to it. Though it does have a decently long cooldown. I largely think there would be significant implications for Gareth making herself huge and that it would be better as being the main focus of a set, like exploring what kind of blind spots the giant character would have when attacking due to their increased size. Ring of Transformation is acknowledged in some attacks as extending Gareth’s combo potential like F-air though, so the buff is a decent fit in her moveset.
In any case, Gareth is VERY good for a set made in 2 days, the culmination of starting up F/GO again and Gareth recently being released to NA I imagine. I imagine that we all have high expectations of your inspired quickies given B. Pol and Hol Horse from MYM22, but even so Gareth is notably your best set in MYM24 so far, of which I”m sure will fill up when the current Jamcom is finished and a new one commences, which I do hope will be soon.
On a note unrelated to the set, Gareth feels like the kind of character I’d make a set for: clumsy and/or inexperienced/incompetent characters are always fun to work with. Not only do they have fun personality to work with, said ineptitude makes it easier to think of drawbacks to their moveset, letting you balance in some really fun pay-offs if you play around those downsides. Also, your interpretation of Guts healing is interesting (and does make sense as that’s essentially what it does gameplay-wise), as my first thought was that it would protect you from being KO’ed off the top or side blast zones once.
Kurt Russell From Pokemon Gold, Silver and Crystal Written by Kurt Vonnegut Featuring a Soundtrack by Kurt Cobain's Nirvana (Kurt Zisa by Kholdstare
)
Let's get straight to the point: Kurt Zisa instantly opens up with a VERY flashy mechanic, but the mechanic is currently a rather flawed one IMO, it's already bold to have a character who can flatout become immune to so many styles of attack. I think the biggest issue with it is how hard it is for characters to obtain orbs, as they have to deal with a foe who in some cases can become completely invincible, the fact that the attacks are totally random, which means you'll most of the time get discordant attacks and will prevent any attack synergies from popping into place. Does it really matter to Bowser if he can hit Kurt Zisa with just his Dash Attack and Down Aerial? A good Kurt Zisa will shield them up or otherwise dodge a VERY predictable opponent and be nigh impossible to fight.
As-is, I think Kurt Zisa has soooo many 100/0 MUs that it is a very broken character. Your suggestions in chat of making it so orbs give your next attack the change, so its controllable, is a good one but I genuinely wonder if it should be next 2-3 attacks instead. I'd also personally make it so orbs spawn no matter the opponent rather than just on opponents who are limited/nearly limited to one attack. First off, because it would allow interesting gameplay for mixed characters to be able to mix up which is which and buffs on the fly. Secondly, because a lot of characters who are mixed rely on attacks of different types, and how that'd play with Kurt Zisa sounds interesting. Take Mewtwo for example, a very common Mewtwo combo is Grab -> Down Throw -> Forward Aerial, or in other words Magic -> Physical -> Magic, which means it currently never works on Kurt Zisa, but swapping around the Throw (ignore that you can't use it on throws for a second) or Grab + Forward Aerial to all work, but now of course this combo chain is COMPLETELY negated by one form, so there's now some interesting tension of what to do with these! I think this has inherent interest beyond just using it when fighting Marth or Mac, and the set is gonna have the orb mechanic anyway for those situations so it might as well embrace them.
Finally, the mechanic shouldn't affect grab IMO, or make it so grab can be turned. Kurt Zisa being so easily able to become ungrabbable against 90% of the cast, because there are FAR more physical grabs than magic grabs, as basically a passive trait is veeeeeeeeeery strong. It would also, by default, give every character SOMETHING they can do against Kurt Zisa. Make it so the THROWS are affected by the mechanic and the orbs and it works out well, and is very natural. I'll also note I agree with US that Down Special being the first Special introduced might be nice, BUT since it's early in the set I don't think it's necessarily a big deal, and even adds some Junahuian intrigue. The barrier breaking idea proposed is interesting, I will note I think it works fine if Kur Zisa is still invincible, but the damage he WOULD have taken gets reduced from the HP until he needs to put it back up. IE if an attack would deal 20%, Kurt Zisa takes 0%, but the shield goes down as if he'd taken 20%. I like the idea of allowing Kurt Zisa to use both attack types when his shield is down, sacrificing defense for greater offensive power.
The other issue I have with the set is that for how wild the start is, I think it kinda runs out of gas fast, it doesn't quite develop a particularly deep combo game (Given the Metaknight Inspiration), and I don't think the magic debuffs QUITE come together in a totally coherent way, although I do like Up Smash + Down Smash comboing. Back Throw's pretty fun with the animation. I'm not a big fan of Back Aerial, moreso the animation of the status effect than anything, as the foe just using attacks with an invisible hitbox would look and feel incredibly awkward I think. Maybe have the foe un-pancake and re-pancake or extend out the attack required parts cartoonishly if you have to keep it? You can also keep the effect without the pancaking for the most part but I get the impression you'd wanna keep it. There is some fun stuff with Neutral Special and the way Kurt Zisa has head movement attacks but it isn't THAT much AND it's harder to use than it seems because a lot of the head movement attacks are the opposite type to it. A lot of the attacks are not bad, but don't really stick out to me: I feel like making the mechanic more smoothly balanced with the many ideas would allow you to pump more stuff into the attacks, should you desire.
Hopefully I'm not too much of a downer, but while I admire the passion and creativity on display here, there's simply far too many cracks in the armor right now for me to enjoy the set. You've already got edits planned for after Jamcon that'll improve the set quite a good deal, so I'll have to give it re-evaluation then, but for now...yeah.
He'll Save Children (But Not The British Children) (Gamera by Torgo the Bear
)
Another ultra heavyweight is pretty interesting to see, even if I have yet to read Shin Godzilla yet, but sadly I feel like that was about all Gamera had going for him. The ultraheavyweight aspects here themselves are really hit or miss and I quite worry about how it might devolving into either being unable to be flinched and having Gamera just attack through everything given it is totally passive and a very, very large anti-flinch, or if the giant size will be unviable. It's certainly very awkward on stages with small gaps, but the crawl can alleviate that. I do think it is absolutely a mistake to not allow Gamera to jump or air dodge at all, a lot of opponents can probably infinite or true combo to death Gamera from just stuff like Up Tilts as soon as they start flinching if he isn't allowed to even air dodge out of them. Maybe letting Gamera air dodge or jump at the cost of his fire meter?
I, admittedly, struggle to say much about Gamera, as it's a very short and direct set, to the point I'd say it's a bit too much so. There isn't really much that feels like "Gamera" past the Specials, a lot of very one note melee attacks that in my opinion never quite collected together. Not because they lack combos or w/e, I don't really expect combos on Gamera, but they don't seem to work into much for attack coverage or an overall gameplan to me, and they really do kinda feel like "Bigger Bowser" as the Snake Codec would say. I'm not entirely sure of all the options but there had to be some options to add a bit more flair to them, maybe doing more with Gamera's fire storage? I also agree with Kat that the counter throwback is unnecessarily large, especially because the armor means Gamera can attack through projectiles most of the time anyway.
One thing I will praise about this set is the Extras. Codecs and Palutena's Guidance in particular are frequently total flops, but the Guidance got a good chuckle from me and the Codec was solid too.
Hopper reminds me a lot of a Rime + Victoria fusion in terms of gameplay, taking Rime's interactable bomb-ball and combining it with Victoria's ability to infuse a construct with the properties of her hitboxes. That's a pretty good basis, and I would say that the idea is strong enough to carry the set through, this kinda delayed-boomerang customizable projectile adds a lot of potential depth to the set as a core. I do think it being stuck knocked around like Pichu at 0% might not lead to the level of being able to attack it around as the set thinks, I wonder if it should be set higher or be able to increase as it is attacked or something? I do think it NOT being attackable is a good thing for this set, it's a bit too critical to what the set does to be easily batted away by the foe, and I don't think it really adds much of anything to the set's gameplay to be attackable I feel.
There's some other good stuff in here as well, like the net is pretty fun as a reflector and how it wors with Rime's bomb, some of the shenanigans you can do with stuff like Forward Tilt and Down Aerial and I like how moves such as Down Smash or Forward Smash work into her gameplan regardless of the bomb knockback stuff on top of it. It's all pretty solid stuff and the only part of the set I'd say is a true "weak point" is the grab game, which doesn't feel bad and is well defined, but given the potential her ball has out of a throw when placed or whatnot feels kinda just There.
This does lead into one thing I feel about the set which is aside from the animations, which are really good might I add, I don't feel like Hopper has a particularly unique identity to her melee, it feels very "Standard UserShadow Melee". Fortunately, that's a pretty good quality and the set's well thought out such as with how the aerials weaknesses are emphasizes in the forward direction despite the many attacks, but I dunno. It feels like pretty standard 50-50s, fairly safe attacks that don't have TOO many strengths, all around good but not spectacular kind of melee. Given that the ball stores the hitbox data, I feel like going for a set with some more variances in power would have been more interesting, using laggy attacks on the ball being risky but allowing you to get more reward from your quick attacks or whatnot. It isn't BAD, but it definitely felt uninspired to me, which is a notable reason I enjoy Cid more than this (although I think Cid also just had some pretty unique ideas). Overall, a solidly enjoyable JamCon set, and I'd be surprised if it doesn't place somewhere nice enough on the Top 50!
This was a very pleasant read! You've evolved into a very smooth style that's easy to understand and digest information from, while not just cutting all the corners, and that's appealing. Also appealing was Lyn's set, one of the most melee oriented sets around, and yet a very refreshing one. I feel like part of that is that it's pretty unapologetic about being a flashy melee swordie, just like it can feel easy to hold back on heavyweight attacks because their KO percents feel "wrong" for being too early I feel like it's easy to hold back on combo characters thinking it's "too much" compared to Ultimate (or even sometimes Smash 4). I like that Lyn has some real all-in-one combo tools like Neutral Aerial and Down Tilt, not unlike various actual Smash Ultimate characters, and that Neutral Aerial doesn't feel overly gimped. Down Tilt also feels clever in making her starter a non-sword attack so that it can't be a starter at the same range as her other grounded normals.
On top of that, Lyn's an interesting take on the "store a Special charge for buffs" archetype, using it more for utility on attacks like Side Special, Up Special, Forward Tilt, Forward Smash, Up Smash and so on rather than strict "power", with Forward Smash and Up Smash adding follow-up options that require serious timing and knowledge to work well, fitting with the highly technical nature of Lyn's kit. Side Special I think is an especially cool move, offering her a variety of options that require her and her opponent to think on a moment's notice, and the way each option is given a unique and valuable niche is sublime. I particularly like how it works into other moves, such as Side Special Upper -> Down Aerial. I wonder if this set was inspire by ant of our Guilty Gear/BlazBlue matches? The Dash Attack reminds me a lot of a Naoto attack. Down Special feels like the odd man out of Specials here and I wonder if it could be intergated into the set more, such as allowing you to feint an illusion from Forward Smash/Up Smash/Side Special even?? into a Counter to trick opponents who could go for out of shield option or counterattack. It certainly feels like a weak counter right now when opponents can fall out of it. Some people might not enjoy Florina being in the Up Special but I feel like it works nicely and the biggest Assist J. Character critic isn't around regardless.
There's been talk about having some limit on how long Lyn can hold Neutral Special and while I feel a limit would be a good idea, I would caution against making it to long. IMO, Lyn's buffs from Neutral Special feel worse than something like Cloud's, and if it is easier or harder to charge is debatable (it's much faster to charge from full but Cloud's meter builds without ever charging at all), Cloud's lasts for 15 seconds. One idea would be to give Lyn's NSpec a longer timer than usual (30 seconds? More? Am I too optimistic here?) but make it so it goes down when Lyn uses attacks that interact with it, so she can hold back on some attacks to keep a speed buff longer, or she can use plenty of attacks, but she can't just mindlessly spam Forward Tilt. It also goes without saying that US is correct that it needs to say 1.5x air speed and not 1.5 air speed.
I also enjoy how well Lyn is characterized. The nice extras or stuff like Up Special, yes, but the swordplay also feels smooth and very Lyn, both in translationg her animations and natural ones, the entire moveset comes across as exactly what I would expect from a Lyn set and what I bet Lyn fans would be very happy to see. While not related to my previous statement, I was impressed by the grab game being simple yet effective and its pummel mechanic, it feels like it fits fairly well with the other Fire Emblem throws, perhaps that could be room for improvement, but still.
As for criticisms...Down Smash's Reinfleche effect was rather difficult for me to parse as written, possibly the only part in the set where the writing falters, and it feels like the most out of place effect among the group. I feel you could potentially do better. As mentioned, some kind of limit on Neutral Special is probably a good idea, particularly because otherwise she basically has a default projectile on F-Tilt which feels odd for her (I quite like the F-Tilt projectile when it's more temporary however). I question how viably Forward Smash can actually chain into itself even with good timing, although not enough to hold it against the set all that much. Up Tilt, perhaps, could be better as a vertical combo tool compared to what it is right now in the playstyle, although that's fairly minor. Overall, Lyn's good sides definitely outweigh the bad ones, and I'll have to consider moving it up on my rankings if you do some edits like you were considering!
(Also one of us needs to make a Florina set so Lyn can be Very Gay in the story mode)
Red's start is actually very strong and an idea I'd love to see either expanded upon or done again (maybe some kind of engineer) or for this set to be edited up with, because this is a creative take on a Steve-esque construct and some very unique projectiles on top of that. Really exciting stuff frankly.
But it kinda goes downhill from there and there's two prominent and related reasons. The first is Red feels veeeeery underpowered. A little under or overpowered isn't a dealbreaker, but Red feels like they legit have a bunch of 0/100 level matchups, and while you said they're not "Little Mac on the ground" I'd say they're at least as bad if not worse than Mac in the air. The Angry Birds are on a notable cooldown for what they do, which while fair given their power means that a lot of the time Red is a campy character who has no camping tools, and on top of that many of their attacks are while at times cool (Up Smash for example is pretty fun with what it does), underwhelming in power for a character with a very large inherent disadvantage on the ground. It just feels so hard for Red to handle any kind of zoner like Lucina or any kind of rushdown character like Mii Brawler, Roy, or so on.
This plays directly into reason #2, which is that Red doesn't have tilts but instead a 360 Jab, which while the core idea of the set really hampers it, nothing in the set takes advantage of the 360 Jab's nature and it means on the ground Red is stuck with: A 360 Jab that forces him to move, a neutral reset Dash Attack with pathetic range (with how Red is running on limited inputs this could stand to be much stronger), a somewhat laggy F-Smash that's enough to be fairly reactable to, an Up Smash with committal range and a laggy bury Down Smash. 3/5ths of Red's ground game is laggy (all of the Smashes are reactable tho Up Smash just barely), Jab forces Red to launch himself, Dash Attack is a subpar move in general. You CAN use grab too, so you're going to be stuck with grab and Jab as your neutral, which is so ridiculously predictable and simply cannot get around so many tactics opponents employ that Red loses almost every neutral matchup.
I know you mention the 360 Jab can "do anything a tilt can without conformity", but that isn't really true, because Tilts are about far more than just direction. Different timings, hitbox placements, knockback and more helps provide a multitude of options for characters to build around, can provide redundancy for a playstyle to emphasize it (such as multiple aerial launchers with different hitboxes to catch people or different strengths to emphasize an aerial character), and Red has no access to this. Sure, he can launch himself at different directions, but he can never do anything different about it except light upwards knockback, it won't be able to do more damage or set up any different moves, it can't be used stationary and so must commit, a character like Marth can always Forward Aerial it, he DOES have the ability to cancel into aerials but that doesn't really provide enough when the rest of the set is kind of anemic in this area (when your opponent only has at most 5 ground moves you're going to just focus on anti-airing them to begin with).
On top of that while Red has interesting aerials, many of them are unorthodox in hitbox and so present issue with Red fighting aerially, especially with the minimal ground game to support it, so Red isn't even actually THAT strong in the air imo. It's a testament to how strong the core ideas are that I think this could in theory be edited to votability, but they'd need to be some pretty chunky edits and given the 360 Jab is a core to the experience you'd need to think of how to work around that. Maybe you could take Diagonal Smashes from Kazuya and use those to add more ground inputs while keeping Jab the "only one" of its type? Give Jab different hitbox properties based on charge power, make it so instead of canceling air moves you can go into unique attacks out of Jab through the air to give psuedo-tilts? Other options I haven't considered? There's a lot of options.
For some other complaints, Side Special being unable to be turned off AND affecting Jab feels like it is a strict downside, it should be optional on Jab or SSpec, and the grab game descends into feeling quite rushed and could absolutely use some expansion, although I like the throw where Red puts the foe in a slingshot. I wonder if Forward Smash SHOULD create items ala Wario's bike, to a limit? While it couldn't be the only solution, adding in items to Red's attack options would help with his issues.
Dio Brando and Jonathan Joestar (Rockerduck and Jeeves WeirdChillFever
)
Of all the concepts I praised in this comment block for being inventive and fun, I would say that Rockerduck and Jeeves' might be my favorite, as the idea of not only allowing a Banjo & Kazooie character to unstick to become a duo set but then ALSO become a Kazooie & Banjo is very cool. Both Rockerduck and Jeeves are very simple sets, perhaps at times too simple, but the fact they can play off of each other in three different combinations means every move has a multitude of varied uses to them, meaning even some of the very (intentionally) lame Rockerduck moves gain interesting uses. I'm actually not sure what Kat was talking about when it comes to Rockerduck/Jeeves' different movement speeds: Jeeves is AI controlled and will naturally disengage from Rockerduck when Rockerduck is Young to begin with, while in all other forms they are forced togethe as one character like Banjo-Kazooie, so them having different movement speeds should be 0 issue?
And the set does take advantage of it in some fairly clever ways, the Gold Rush ability and how it works is pretty golden (ahem) with the set, I like stuff like the Jab, the Up Smash's horizontal knockback in set contexts, Down Tilt, the cartoon pancake (ahem, slinky) throw works better here than Kurt Zisa's pancake status effect I feel because here it's basically just fancy hitstun and doesn't try to make Byleth use his Side Special while a pancake. The moveset gets some good mileage out of Rockerduck not being a very competent fighter to make light attacks to go with Jeeves' heavier ones for when they're a duo, while allowing Jeeves some solo opportunities when alone. I do think one thing this set perhaps could have stood to do, though, would be to add a BIT more spice to Rockerduck, as the set is maybe a bit overly direct given the demands of the mechanic, and the way Rockerduck has an all-in-one-button-remote made me think maybe he'd have a gadget or two which could work into a Smash attack. I also think Jeeves could stand to have a bit more, maybe a spring-loaded punch that makes him travel forward as a psuedo-way to move him during Gold Rush movement? I'd also say in general the aerials felt like pretty meh inputs (rushed, perhaps?) and would be improvable.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this set's very good writing style, which gave me a LOT of laughs and was probably the most I enjoyed a set's writing style this block alongside Lyn. The tongue-in-cheek style is definitely very WeirdChillFever-y on these kind of sets, but it really hit the spot with these two. One thing this set falters in is that the quickness of making it lead to some stuff being missing, such as the damage percents for Baby Jeeves' rapid jab and Dash Attack, fortunately these aren't major moves but obviously missing damage percents are an issue.
Overall, though? I felt impressed and this feels like a rock solid entry onto my rankings, and while you're focusing on more sets for now (which I'm excited for moreso than edits!) if you decided to come back and edit this up I think it could be a reasonably competitive moveset, at the least getting in those high 20s/low 10s, but even right now this looks like a set that'll really soak up RVs/WVs. Great job!
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JamsCon Voting:
1. Lyn by Slavic - JamsCon Nominee
2. Rockerduck and Jeeves by WeirdChillFever
3. Hopper by UserShadow7989
4. Red by GolisoPower
5. Kurt Zisa by Khold
6. Gamera by Torgo the Bear
Good luck to all participants and thanks for those enjoyable sets! Hopefully the next JamsCon is a success, too~
It’s Gamera! Get the camera! This set goes by so fast you’d better get a picture of it before he soars back to his home planet. I actually have a soft spot for Gamera by Torgo the Bear
for a very silly reason: my old MYM16 Magcargo set also lacked the ability to jump, and I am currently working on a fairly giant set myself. Seeing this from the other perspective is nostalgic for me, in a sense. First, props for squeezing this all under 5K words and still having the character work. This feels not only like a giant turtle but someone in a giant turtle costume. Down Throw gave me a good laugh as well.
In terms of moveset quality, a lot of the attacks are very simple in explanation and application, something basically mandatory for a set this short. Gamera’s not really missing anything concrete, but his set feels extremely limiting to play. Right now his options are long range fire breath to rack damage, fish for matchup dependent counters to recharge his projectile, FThrow or BThrow into Dash, and UTilt juggle. The lack of consistent Aerials is a huge problem for Gamera’s overall game compared to other characters, and giving him some more extreme ground options to compensate could help (though it did not help Little Mac).
Giant characters are always going to be hard to balance, and this set references Shin Godzilla from earlier this contest which I have not read yet. Giving a tip from a current set I’m working on, it might be best to go all in on defenses for our turtley friend but give him some Achilles heel that can cripple him, requiring foes to dart in and out on him while Gamera can stay mostly stationary. Ultimately, Gamera’s actual mechanical set ends up feeling like a worse Giga Bowser, and Giga Bowser is already not that good (outside of World of Light). I still stand by enjoying the tongue-in-cheek characterization for Gamera and I’m glad you made this set, it just is a fighter who would really struggle to operate in Smash it feels like.
Kurt Zisa by Kholdstare
advertises itself as a polarizing set, and it certainly is! Conceptually, Kurt acts as a direct translation of his fight and Kingdom Hearts magic in general, leading to some unique effects. The biggest of these is Kurt’s Magic and Physical Barrier, combined with the orbs the foe can collect (I thought Kurt was from Kingdom Hearts 1, not 2). Others (mostly Froy) have discussed this mechanic on end, and I do think that in a normal fight this can be way too extreme. Kurt Zisa’s gameplan is now opening one of his magic Smashes over an orb against a physical-only fighter and just playing king of the hill with it.
There’s a handful of ideas I had while reading regarding this mechanic. One, orbs could be automatically dropped onto foes every x seconds, which puts a lot more pressure on Kurt Zisa to not just stall out foes. This would work best for how the orbs are integrated now, going on a case-by-case basis for matchups. Another idea is that Kurt Zisa could have a timer on himself where he automatically switches his barrier. I know you have edits planned for Kurt Zisa so I’ll have to wait and see how they affect this mechanic, but for a 1v1 fight it seems really unbalanced.
The last idea would be to counter Kurt Zisa guarding orbs and remaining invincible: just have Kurt’s invulnerability not apply to knockback and hitstun. If his Physical Barrier is up and Bowser hits him with an FSmash, maybe Kurt takes some reduced knockback but no damage. With this implementation, Kurt would probably need a passive Tough Guy mechanic on top of his myriad other mechanics, but could be an organic change to keep the current mechanics of the set.
I also mirror what Froy said about Kurt gaining his whole moveset when his Barrier is finally broken. It gives a cool dynamic after Kurt’s defenses have been wiped away and could even encourage playing with the less effective Barrier to speed the route to full moveset up. I do like how the split moveset was handled for the most part. Having most of the physical attacks act as built-in combo moves to make up for lacking consistent combo tools is clever, and the magical side of the moveset gains all the powerful traps and effects.
BAir is a bizarre move, speaking of the Physical Barrier attacks. The effect works, much more interesting than the expected spike hitbox, but it is very jarring to give the foe an invisible model for performing attacks. Unfortunately, I don’t have any actionable advice for this, it’s just very strange but I see why it came out that way. BThrow, on the other hand, is very neat, though I think hindered by Kurt having to switch over his Barrier for his better combo attacks. Also, ‘Kurt can only silence one’ is tacked onto the end of DTilt. It’s obvious it means only one attack can be silenced but an easy enough sentence to finish on edit.
Kurt Zisa is a set that I respect for going all out with bringing the character to Smash but in his current state the Heartless is wildly unbalanced for a standard 1v1 set. Having said that, I feel like the current set would be excellent as a 3v1 boss set where the opponents are all going in to fight the same Kurt Zisa together. We can see this in the classic mode, one of the cooler ones conceptually I’ve seen because of the gameplay ramifications. Either way, good work and I am excited to give the set a second look-over after edits.
I really didn’t know what to expect going into Red by GolisoPower
besides the one thing I’m familiar with him doing from Angry Birds. And I’m pleasantly surprised! I won’t say this set is mind-blowing, as the time limit’s effect on word count keeps a lot of the ideas from being completely realized, but the set is definitely experimental and I can appreciate that. The set’s ‘big’ move details all the different effects of the Angry Birds Flock, revealing early on that this set is (almost) all projectiles and range.
Because I have the most to say about it and it’s hard to come up with other commentary while I’m thinking about it, I want to discuss the 360 Jab a bit. As Froy has pointed out, Red has a near unplayable ground game against most fighters. I actually think the 360 Jab is salvageable, though! Instead of launching Red in any direction the attack would always launch forward, and the direction you input after the jab determines how he flies.
For instance, using the Back variation could have pull back on his range when flying and give him a stronger bounce away from the opponent. This makes the attack much safer, particularly landing on shield, but can make follow-ups harder. Meanwhile, the Forward variation could make this move more committal but higher damage. The huge deal here would be the foe not knowing which direction Red’s going to choose, making this move a huge mixup tool. I still think having Tilts would generally be a solid idea here too, and I don’t think you’d have to give up the Jab’s core concept to add them in. Given how many Angry Birds games there are, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for Red to, say, pull out a lightsaber for a tilt. They don’t have to be strong but should just give Red something to do once he’s actually approached.
Having so many projectiles on the aerials might make Red unorthodox in the air, but without access to his two big ranged moves it does feel like he needs something for the air. I think making FAir stronger and better for combos into itself would help give Red a little something extra he could use. Right now he has some really strong approach tools but nothing to do close up. NAir having a gimping windbox is probably too strong and easy to ruin a foe’s recovery with. Keep the animation the same but turning it to a combo tool, perhaps with an upward angle, would allow FAir and NAir form the crux of Red’s combo game once he closes the distance on the foe. I think the other aerials are fine, Game & Watch has a great aerial game and his moves are bizarre and unorthodox, but Red definitely needs some stronger moves to sell that.
Beyond that, I think this set is all fine and good, especially considering how fast the set was made. As an offhand final suggestion, I think that Red’s Slingshot DThrow should be expanded on. Having some direct control over a throw’s launch angle would allow for some pretty wild aerial confirms. All said, I appreciate doing something risky and wild for the JamCon and I don’t think it would be too hard to edit in improvements to Red.
Now this is an ambitious concept for a set, especially for a JamCon! Rockerduck by WeirdChillFever
is a set that utilizes cyclic phases of fighting, something not in Smash nor really in MYM. The closest we tend to get are TOP mechanics, but those aren’t really multiphase nor are they player controlled. Giving Rockerduck the ability to change his and Jeeves’ age at will but with a hefty limit on the Youth Potion gives this set a fun dynamic that requires the player to know exactly what points in the match to switch sets. Four phases for a 72 hour moveset? Insane!
If there’s one big criticism I would say, it would be detailing. Most of Baby Jeeves’ moves are more or less footnotes at the bottom of the rest of the moves, making it a bit harder to picture that final phase as well. There’s undoubtedly a lot of crazy setups that Rockerduck could pull off and just going through the set a second time during edits and beefing up some of the moves and their interactions / combos would give a huge boost to the set.
That’s not to say I don’t like this set, because I definitely do! Gold Rush is a great way to tie a lot of the moveset together, threatening foes with a scary approaching goliath but also with the ability to manipulate Jeeves’ destination defensively. Rockerduck can prevent this by having Jeeves attack, but in turn this leaves both of them vulnerable. I actually don’t have much concrete advice or criticism on this set, it’s a very fun core idea that the set does well with. I just want more of the set, but this is definitely commendable for a JamCom set.
Just dropping a quick note here: the winner of the first JamCon is FrozenRoy with Gareth of the Beautiful Hands! Congrats Froy for winning the first JamCon! Next month (Midnight on Friday, August 13th - Midnight on Tuesday, August 17th) will be a 4 day JamCon so the last day will fall on FA's anniversary, so when that comes around you will be able to pick the theme for that one. Thank you everyone who posted sets and comments, you're all great!
Constance reminds me a lot of Aki with a mechanic and construct that lets you switch between two sets, but not having two full movesets and not able to instantly switch to one moveset if you leave/enter the construct. But that doesn’t mean this set is low on quality! In fact, I liked Constance a good deal more than Cuttlefish! I enjoyed the detailed attack animations on moves like Down Special, and the different layers of Constance’s character and the different means she resorts to throughout the set. Magic, swordplay, punching, even using servants, nothing is beyond Constance!
The Smashes were a definite highlight of the set and made good use of your more MYM’ian style. The ability to freeze your Nimbus as a platform in exchange for losing interactions and easy switching was great fun, an interesting twist on platform-creation moves, and the fact that you lose it if you use your Up Special. D-Smash is an interesting “investment” move where you have to give up your cloud to make some of your sword attacks more powerful, and I would honestly be fine with Constance not needing to hit with the D-Smash to get the power-up. Actually, it would be cool if the power-up was applied to D-Smash as well, maybe turn it into a heavy-hitting smash attack, as there’s not too much going on for D-Smash as a melee attack aside from speed. Also, can you use your Up Special when you have the sword power-up? If not, it’s fine as I could see Constance just spamming a few sword attacks off-stage to get her recovery back.
Finally, F-Smash has a neat power-up method that takes advantage of shade vs sun. I did find it confusing though: it’s sort of implied that Constance can get the higher levels by charging the move like any other Smash attack. Constance being able to run with the fireball or have the Sun Nimbus trail along also implies that F-Smash has extremely low end lag and/or travels very slowly. It does seem like a very effective move for covering Constance’s approach, and would really warrant having very high start-up in this case. Maybe you can hold A when releasing the fireball to have your Nimbus hover over the fireball until you let go of A? You could do fun things here, like use a shady cloud on Final Destination to give the fireball the shade necessary to travel far, then let go of A to have the fireball build up heat on a short notice.
The melee is particularly fun on the Standards section, most notably the F-tilt and D-tilt mix-up in tandem with shade vs sunny and the movement letting you transition between the two mental states for trickery. I particularly like D-tilt being conscious of how the knockback works well with the stats of the different mental states. U-tilt is also good with the attack range being reversed between the two mental states, though I will note that you can’t use an U-tilt out-of-shield, only U-Smash and Up Special. You do have Aerials for out-of-shield and U-tilt would still be a useful anti-air in neutral, so it’s no big deal. Finishing the Standards is Dash Attack with its unexpected and fun warp mix-up when applied to a Nimbus. While it’s clear that you can’t throw the Nosferatu projectile off-stage, what if you could throw it off the U-Smash platform? If the low upwards knockback was small, it could lead into a combo by popping foes up to Constance’s level. As for the Aerials, B-air is great with how it works with Constance’s stats by being a short or long-duration attack, and I enjoy the nod to Down Special in its application as an edgeguarding tool, and how B-air can interact with the Nimbus.
Grab was unexpected, and I enjoy how it shows this extra side of Constance actually having some authority and willing to let others do the fighting for her. The throws were surprisingly complex, introducing new concepts, but they seem disconnected from the rest of the set, and miss opportunities for ways in which Constance could further interact with her cloud or sword attacks for great reward. She could have a throw with a long animation that gives her time to position her cloud freely - and maybe a throw where she slashes the foe up to 3 times, each slash using up one count of D-Smash’s buff but being really strong if she hasn’t used it up yet. Even some throws that reward her for knocking the foe into the nimbus, like applying elemental magic to the foe and having it pass onto the nimbus if they’re knocked into it. Even something as simple as a spacing throw that gives her the range and positioning necessary to use her projectile attacks like Side Special or F-Smash. Heck, she could have a throw that causes her to move up off the ground (maybe ride the Nimbus?), being a good set-up for Side Special’s falling sweetspot because she doesn’t seem to have too many ways to set up for that outside of using an U-Smash cloud platform to increase how high she can jump. You could definitely keep the servants for grab and pummel animations and the like, as they add a lot of flavour to the set.
Regardless, Constance is a great set, and I definitely think the time and effort sunk into her paid off! I’m sure others will agree, and I could see Constance achieving the lofty heights of high a MYM placing that both she and you eagerly strive for. Well done on this one, WCF!
While I was deciding to wake up or go back to bed a while ago I got to reading Rychu's Trafalgar Law set and I gotta say it really impressed me! I wasn't expecting to have a comment on it out fast, but the set really got my brain going enough I ended up typing this all up! Room is a very interesting as a central mechanic and I feel like this is the first Rychu set that truly builds a deep melee game: I remember your old sets tended to ride either on characterization or a wild central concept to make up for sometimes lacking meat and potatoes, Law feels like he has all three in combination. The consideration of attack angles with Room's nature is well thought out and he feels like he has a "lightweight heavyweight" feel very much like Sephiroth with a clear and defined playstyle.
This set also feels very Katapultar-esque with things like the item swapping and way the stalactites and heart-shaped box work, it's understated but a nice undercurrent throughout the moveset that adds additional depth to the set in sometimes subtle ways. Room's high power is balanced out by its restrictions such that Law has to really take advantage of when he gets a good one off and thus plan ahead in a way very character fitting by all accounts. I'd also like to take a moment to say that compared to some of your previous sets which could have a sleepy writing style this one felt stronger, I think because you clearly like Law a lot as a character so it helped you add a lot of flair to animations in addition to generally having a more energetic style.
For some other notes or downsides...
- Forward Smash describes its KO power as only okay for the first hit but it kills like a Ganondorf Smash Attack, you should just change it to say it has strong kill power. I do agree with Kupa that it feels overtuned inside of Room. I would lower the damage and knockback of the 2nd hit so that it can function as a potential combo attack if you end it there while lowering the overall damage output of landing all three. It would give more reason to stop on hit 2.
- Also Forward Smash suggests using his teleport in-between hits but as I understand it you can't teleport then cancel to a sword move, so I don't know how this works.
- Back Aerial also seems a bit overtuned inside of Room, I might make it a touch slower (even if this makes another move faster).
- While it's really obvious from context Forward Throw should say the foes limbs get put back on and that the set isn't turbo-Medic just in case. In general, the grab game felt like the weaker part of the set but was very functional and still glued his set together so I enjoyed it.
- Standout Moves: Dash Attack (The Room use is soooo coool), Forward Tilt (this is just a very well designed simple move for this set that slots in perfectly), all of the Specials, Jab (I like the foresight to make this NOT work with Room), Neutral Aerial, Forward Aerial, Forward Smash.
- Dash Attack feels particularly Katapultar-esque in how it works with the heart and I think it's a very cool aesthetic which also neatly makes it not feel tacky.
- I do agree the rocks might be a bit hard to use for their effect, BUT the attack itself is so useful I feel like they'll be created "incidentally" (in the sense of using it to attack, then just grabbing setup while you're there) that it works out well. This is also a form of Dragon Pin that, honestly, I'm surprised I can't recall anything else being like.
- Law's sheathing mechanic is a cool one and I like how it even works with stuff like Up Special for unexpected combo finishers (Up Special is honestly a neat twist on Spin Attack in feel even if it's not that "new"), and feels like a suggestion you've grown as a setmaker in how you were able to make this into a melee mechanic with some tradeoffs and ideas in how to weave it together rather than just generic "Use with a move!".
This is definitely the best Rychu set and I would say that it isn't even close, so I'm pulling for it to manage to outplace Weird Rider now! Given I know some of your future plans, I'm definitely excited to see what you come out with next, and if you can keep up some nice quality as you go! But even if your next set isn't as strong, this is still a rock solid set, great to see ya around!
The Monthly MYM 72 Hour JamCon (SPECIAL 96 HOUR EDITION)
JamCon, or Jam Contest, will be a mini-contest I'll hold each month. Each JamCon will take place over 72 hours (3 days) where a theme will be posted at midnight of the start of the JamCon and contestants will have 72 hours to write and post a moveset for that theme. The theme can be taken as literally as you want, but it needs to obviously be related to the theme. The theme can be related to the character or the playstyle, or both.
This month, however, we're going to be having a special extension to 96 Hours to allow us to both get it in on the ever-spooky Friday the 13th AND the ForwardArrow anniversary on the 17th in at the same time! Please be away that entries are allowed until midnight, PST, the end of August 17th (so you get all of the 17th to do things).
In order to participate, simply write a moveset once the JamCon has started and when you post it note that it's for JamCon. In Google Docs, you can also put JamCon in the title of the document. Anyone is free to participate, and joint sets are allowed. Once posting has closed, everyone (even if you didn't participate in the JamCon) can vote on their favorite. Voting will be open two weeks after the JamCon posting period ends. To vote, post a comment in the thread like you would comment a regular moveset (something substantial, nothing one-line) and clearly mark that you're voting for it as the winner of the JamCon. Results on how many votes each moveset got will be posted 24 hours after that, and the winner will be determined, with a tiebreaker vote being instigated if necessary.
The winner of the JamCon will be able to choose the next month's JamCon's theme. Good luck everyone, and have fun with it!
Once a JamCon entry has been posted, major edits won't be allowed until the winner has been cast. Minor edits, like spelling, grammar, formatting, number crunching, and etc. are allowed. Basically no major changes to the playstyle.
No matter what gimmick you're using, it still has to fit the requiresments of being able to be voted on for the Top 50.
You can still edit your moveset after the JamCon is over if you're not satisfied with how it will do for the Top 50.
More notes will go here if someone has a question.
August's JamCon theme is... Chance Time!
You're free to be as literal or liberal as you want with this, as long as it is within a even slight reason (you can't just say your set has 50/50s, therefor luck!). The character could have a mechanic or move related to luck, for example Hero's crits or Mr. Game & Watch's Judgement (or various attacks and mechanics from MYM23's "Lucky" Louise). Note, however, that it doesn't ONLY have to include gameplay! It could be that the character simply has luck-based powers regardless of if the moveset has any chance-related elements, such as Jinx from Teen Titans or Vriska Serket from Homestuck. The character could come from a series where luck and chance is a big factor, for example any character from Kaiji or a Mario Party exclusive character. Luck could simply be an associated part of the character regardless of any Luck-related mechanics, for example Kira Yoshikage in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is said to have incredible luck, while Cu Chulainn is so frequently unlucky in appearances that it has become a meme in the Fate franchise. The game could have a superficial "Luck" stat, even if it doesn't do anything, that the character excels or unexcels in, such as Lakshmi's E- rank luck in Fate/Grand Order.
Some examples:
Hero's critical hits and Down Special Menu, Mr and Game & Watch's Side Special's in Smash are in-Smash examples of chance-y mechanics. "Lucky" Louse, winner of MYM23, qualifies both through her luck-based mechanics AND the fact that she comes from a Mario Party style game. Yoshikage Kira talks about his luck / has it referenced to a notable degree, and meets a very "unlucky" end. Washizu Iwao comes from a series with prominent gambling, to the point of betting blood in Mahjong, plus Mahjong having elements of chance. Jason Voorhees comes from the Friday the 13th film series, which is named after the unlucky day this JamCon has started! That counts, even. (Thematic ties to 777 or other numbers etc considered very lucky or unlucky also work, not just Friday the 13th!). To give an idea, something as simple as being a member of Organization XIII could count for this.
Voting period will last two weeks and entries will end at midnight, PST, the end of August 17th (so you get all of the 17th to do things)
Asagao took three more steps before falling on her rear from exhaustion, her back against a large tree.
Ever since she had met those two weird people and ate them out of house and home, Asagao had been on her lonesome, tired of searching for her squadmates and tired of just walking in general.
"Ugh..." she lamented, "this is taking forever...I'm sick of this. I don't wanna do this anymore..."
She sighed as she curled into a fetal position, despairing about her current state of circumstances.
"...child..."
Asagao tilted her head up as she looked around, a new voice piercing the air. It sounded mature and regal, as though the very heavens were speaking to her.
"Follow my voice, child..."
She walked through the forest once more until she saw an unusual sight:
It was a large marble statue of a four-armed man with the head of an elephant sitting in an opening in the trees, the sun shining on it and giving a sense of divinity. Asagao stared at it with awe.
"Heed my words," the voice rang, "I see for who you are. A slothful person who shuns the very concept of effort. One who wishes nothing more than to shirk her position onto others while pursuing your own selfish pleasures."
Asagao jolted a bit, a sting of pain shooting through her heart for a moment as she started to become even more depressed.
"Such traits...are why I find a kindred spirit in you, child."
The gluttonous kunoichi threw her head upwards as she stared in disbelief at the statue, who was somehow...smiling warmly.
"We share the same pursuits for happiness, make it our quest to do as little work as possible, and live the lives we wish to live. Become my priest and grant me your favor, and we shall forge an altruistic bond that we may relish in together."
Asagao began to tear up happily as she struggled to hold in her overwhelming joy. She then prostrated herself before the statue, a big beaming smile gracing her face.
"I knew there was someone who shared my passions," screamed Asagao. "Yes, o most gracious God, I will follow your will and grant us the life we deserve!"
"Very well...from here on in, thou art a servant, nay, a partner of the deity known as Ganesha-"
Suddenly, a large spear of sand shot from the side and crunched into the head, giving shock to the kunoichi. She whirled her head around and saw a blonde-haired, brown-skinned woman with a strange creature that looked like a large tube of snake scales made of sand that stood about a head taller than her. She glared at the statue as she fired two more sand spikes at the statue before she heard something snap open and a new figure fell out, her body splayed along the ground beneath her.
She was a chubby young woman with messy brown hip-length hair and a pair of glasses over her brown eyes. On top of her head was what appeared to be a hot-pink hat modeled after an elephant, but with one of its tusks broken. Her body was bedecked in a white tube-top, a yellow coat with baggy sleeves, and a pair of blue baggy leggings held to her waist by a red tiger-pattern ribbon.
The girl adjusted her glasses before she turned to see a bewildered Asagao shifting her look between her, this new arrival, and the statue she was bowing to moments before. She stared at the kunoichi for a moment before clearing her throat and throwing herself onto her feet, clearly sweating from this rather awkward turn of events.
Fairy Knight Tristan is a character from Fate/Grand Order, a gacha game in the labyrinthine, confusing and fanservice laden Fate franchise that has somehow had a resurgence this contest. All jokes aside, Tristan here is a major player in the latest storyline, Avalon le Fae, taking place in an alternate timeline where humanity basically exists as a slave species to the whimsically awful fairies. Tristan is one such fairy, and "whimsically awful" is a great way to describe her, actually. Her opening appearance has her force several fae to dance off a cliff to their deaths at her entrance, and the ones she spares to sing her praises. As the heir to Morgan le Fae, the ruler of Fairy Britain, Tristan is her adopted daughter and happily abuses this power for all its worth. Notably, she collects a lot of fancy shoes, shown behind her in her character art, her genuine passion for that and fashion slightly undercut by the fact that she keeps the severed feet of some of the fairies she kills taking their shoes. This has gained her a reputation of being the most reviled of the three Fairy Knights of Morgan, known for having "the best looks and the worst personality."
Her true nature is that of a Scottish fairy known as Baobhan Sith, a blood drinking fairy with some light succubus-esque tendencies, which... fortunately aren't really a big part of her character aside from a couple dialogue lines and Fate/Grand Order's regrettable fashion choices for its characters. Among her powers, this gives her some amount of manipulation over blood, as well as curses, her adapting particularly well to the curse known as Fetch taught to her by Beryl Gut. She's developed a bit of an obsessive crush on the guy for being arguably even more murder happy than she is, telling him she doesn't even care if he manipulates her and that she'd happily follow him into hell. Beryl, despite being a monster in his own right, is genuinely kinda freaked out by this, but he'll work with her when it suits his goals. She's also given the same weapon as the original(and obviously inferior) Camelot knight Tristan, the bow Failnaught, which doubles as a harp that she plays like an instrument to perform energy attacks. She serves a major menace throughout the Lostbelt and one of Morgan le Fae's most dangerous minions, and in Smash she happily will weaponize the toys Morgan and Beryl gave her, as well as her own sadism, against her opponents.
Here's a video you can reference for some of her attack animation designs, as well as her second and third ascension designs that we'll get to modifying to be more suitable to Smash in the extras.
Tristan is actually a much, much more pitiable character than she seems at first glance, which given what I've said thus far in the intro is probably a hard thing to believe. But the truth behind her behavior isn't some inherent sadism she just indulged for kicks because she got a royal position. For a long time, she wasn't like that at all, before her service to Morgan le Fae she was actually known for being a sweet and generous fae who did things without expecting much in return. The problem with that is that fairies are creatures of instinct, seeking only their own pleasure and are what drove Fairy Britain to become the horrific place to live it turned out to be. So Tristan would try to be kind to them, seeing if that could earn their approval, only to get her limbs ripped off and tossed to the side over and over because of some fairy's sadistic whims. The pitiful state she was left in was one Morgan saw a few times over her life, and the sight of her desperately trying to move like that burned a fear of wriggling things into her mother figure's mind, leading to her developing an awful fear of caterpillars and other similar bugs.
Eventually, while she could come back from this state many times, she effectively ran out of chances to revive herself, stuck with one last chance at life. Morgan, at this point a jaded shell of her former self from her own traumatic experiences with the fairies, took Tristan in, and basically told her that trying to be kind to the fairies was worthless. Rather, she should make the most of her last life, and be cruel and treacherous to the fairies who treated her that way. Wanting to at least make someone in her life happy and not exactly having access to a therapist or even a reasonable moral figure to tell her "this is a bad idea", Tristan took to treating the fairies just as they treated her in the past. This was likely only exacerbated by meeting Beryl, an absolutely malevolent sadist entirely of his own accord who she fell for.
And ultimately, her listening to Beryl and learning the powers of the Fetch curse turned out to be a horrible, horrible mistake. Fetch rots away at the user's soul, and by the end of her time in Avalon le Fae she finds herself utterly crippled by it. And with that, she's taken hostage by the leader of the Earth Clan, Spriggan, who in a plot with Wind Clan leader Aurora once again left Tristan to bleed out limbless as they brought her as bait for Morgan. Using her as a hostage, they were able to prevent Morgan from fighting back as Aurora called upon a mob to brutally beat Tristan's beloved mother to death in front of her, before they threw her almost dead body into the pit known for housing a calamity causing monstrosity to dispose of her. In a weird way, despite fully engaging in her sadism, the same kind of unconditional love that got her killed in her past lives once again came back to take her last one, as Beryl was all too happy to use and discard her and instead pursue his creepy obsession with Mash.
Fortunately, at least, everyone involved in this whole plot ended up with their choices coming back to bite them. As Tristan was tossed into the pit, she prayed to the god that laid in it, and it responded as the world began to fall into an apocalypse without Morgan to keep the fairies even slightly under control, however terrible her methods seemed. That god, Cernunnos, came forth from the earth and with his arrival resulted in the deaths of Spriggan and Aurora, while Beryl made several poor choices that led to him getting cursed to a miserable, pathetic end.
Tristan's third ascension as a playable character also shows the other side of her more, albeit in a truly broken state. Perhaps due to the kindness of the people around her or perhaps due to pushing her power to greater extremes, Tristan finds herself unable to maintain appearences and goes into a state of almost madness. She's still got her violent tendancies, but now they're overlaid with a strong feeling of regret towards them, and a desire to just have someone love her. Whether its her mother, her master, or even the fairies back in the village she grew up in, her whole act fades away as it becomes clear the only thing she wants is to make someone happy. It gets to the point that her line about what she'd do with any wish if it was given to her was to ask the Grail for money so that she could bring it back to her home village, and maybe they'd like her again. Its mixed in with a good deal of violent hatred however, and her dialogue in this state is often a bit cryptic, but its still ultimately revealing of her true, far less malicious nature.
Getting a bit more into theory territory, though there is evidence to support it, there's speculation that Tristan might be the reincarnation of Cernunnos' priest. Before he became a horrifying curse possessed corpse, Cernunnos actually tried to make friends with the fae even after they failed their duty to the world, only to be tricked and poisoned to death. Accompanying him was a human priestess, who translated his words for him and was ultimately torn apart to make the humans that the fae would go on to use as a food source. Cernunnos showed the fae the same kind of unconditional love Tristan did, and there's some other curious connections, such as the fact that Cernunnos' boss theme is a remix of his and they both have strong curse-based connections. They even both have a bit of deer theming, Tristan in her hooved feet that are covered by her fancy shoes, and Cernunnos with his antlers. I could go on about the connections a bit more but this intro is already getting very long. I mostly feel it does a good job of explaining her un-fairylike behavior of actually caring about others to the point of hurting herself over and over again, as its fitting for Cernunnos and a follower of his.
Suffice to say she winds up coming across as a very sad, pitiful person who... certainly has done her fair share of awful things, but its really hard to see her taking much of a different path despite her initial kindhearted nature. I can't say I'd expect everyone to agree with this take on her, but I guess personally, I've always wanted to believe that she maybe could make a path to redemption for herself from her return to her past nature, even if there's a lot of madness and hatred she'll have to work through to get there. I guess I'm more of a sucker for the tragic types than I let onto.
Stats
Tristan is actually one of the taller female servants in her home series at 170cm, and that's before you consider those ridiculous platform heels she's wearing that actually bolster her height a bit beyond that. So in Smash, she's a tiny bit taller than Ike's height once you factor in those shoes she's so fond of. Tristan floats rather than dashes using cursed dark energy for her dash animation, though her walk she just uses her feet as the impracticality of her shoes isn't as big of a deal when going for a more casual stroll. That said, neither movement option is fast, Tristan's dash speed of 1.49 slotting right between the unsightly heavyweights King K. Rool and Dedede. Rounding out the trio of Tristan's "the greatest looks and the worst stats" you have her weight, an abysmal 78 that ties her with Sheik. This is a pretty terrible set of disadvantages to be saddled with, but at least things pick up from there. Her air speed is in 9th place in the game, outclassing Zero Suit Samus by a smidge at 1.262, and her fairly slow fall speed tying Lucas at 1.37 means she'll be able to stick in the air longer than some to take advantage of it. Her jumps are also actually pretty good, Tristan hopping off the ground gracefully for a very high first jump followed by a solid second jump boosting herself up further with dark magic pulses from her legs and wrists.
All this is to say that Tristan plays pretty well in the air and this is not nearly enough to make up for how fragile she is and how slow her movement is. But of course, that's just a sign that her kit will be good enough to make up for it, I can already tell you she's got some tricks to make her survivability way more impressive than that 78 weight might make you think. And there's another thing up her sleeve that your average character does not have access to...
Noble Phantasm
Fetch Failnaught - Lamentasia of Fantation
Like her fellow, inferior servant Gareth, Tristan can use her Final Smash even in matches that don't allow for it normally. Right under Tristan's character portrait is a meter that charges from 0% to 100%, filling up gradually with a golden colored bar. When it hits 100%, Tristan lets out a sinister giggle as she gains access to her Final Smash! The meter fills a bit like Little Mac's meter except very, very slowly. Tristan would need to take a total of 450% or dish out 385% to fill the meter to full, and given it resets on her death, that's not exactly realistic in a regular match. That said, if you're familiar with Ugly Old Man Nort, or Make Your Move in general, you're probably aware there's a twist coming.
Fetch Failnaught charges much faster when you trade blows with an opponent who is, by any means in her moveset, cursed. Curses are a bunch of status effects Tristan can apply through her Specials and Grab Game, with two available on her specials and one available at a time through her throws. When a foe is cursed, hitting them gives 5x as much meter, so Tristan only needs to deal 77% to a cursed foe to access her Final Smash, though the foe hitting Tristan only gives her 3x as much meter as it usually would, so she'd need to take 150% from a cursed foe to get full meter. Stacking 2 curses charges your Noble Phantasm even faster, giving 7x the normal meter from damaging a foe and 5x the normal meter from taking damage. Stacking 3 curses on the foe, the maximum amount, causes Tristan to gain 10x the normal meter from damaging a foe and 9x as much meter from taking damage, so you'll need to deal less than 40% to access it if you have a full three curses on the foe, and damaging Tristan will rack up her Final Smash meter very quickly! That said, landing 2 specific specials and a grab on the foe to get 3 overlapping debuffs is absolutely not easy by any means, and Tristan's final smash is not nearly as powerful as most to make up for its ease of access relatively speaking.
So what is her Final Smash? Well upon activation, an pink aura with some magical roses forms around Tristan before she conjures a small doll of the nearest opponent in her hand. During the doll conjuring, Tristan CAN be attacked and knocked out of her Final Smash, but once its conjured, it goes into the cinematic. That said, this is a 28 frame start up, so unlike most Final Smashes it actually comes with a degree of punishability. Once the doll is conjured, the screen darkens as Tristan produces a little hammer and a long nail, before hammering it into the doll of the opponent. The opponent's body becomes blackened out so the children don't to see what happens as giant spikes are shown ripping out of their body, covering an area about twice Bowser's size around them. This deals the foe 40% and knockback that KOs at 100%, and the spikes deal 25% and knockback that KOs at 80% to any outsiders, so while the damage is pretty great the KO power is not really what you'd expect out of a super move like this. Still, that's made up for by this move's range, which is a circular area a bit larger than the size of the entirety of Battlefield, so as long as you've got an opponent on stage with you you'll probably hit with this. If the opponent puts up shield this will deal heavy shield damage, but not enough to kill it in one shot. That said, keeping in line with this attack ignoring evasion in its home series, you can't dodge this, as it prevents evasion, so it will hit through dodges and rolls, as well as MYM attacks where the foe ducks into the background/foreground for part of them. If this move does whiff, Tristan will stare in disbelief as no doll appears in her hand, wondering how her attack even failed.
This move has a lot of disadvantages compared to a traditional Final Smash with its lackluster power and the fact that its not that hard to interrupt, but the good news is, it comes with advantages as well. The first of which is that it applies its own curse on the opponent, Evil Curse, lasting 10 seconds and inflicting the opponent with 2.5% every 2.5 seconds to add an additional 10% onto this attack's damage, pink flames burning the foe's body with a slight telegraphing of them sparking up at those intervals. That said, Evil Curse gets a lot scarier if the foe is afflicted by other curses, increasing its damage per hit by 2.5% per curse on the opponent except for itself. This means Evil Curse can net you a nice 40% on top of the Final Smash's base damage... provided you have 3 debuffs layered on the opponent the whole time. Again, not exactly the easiest thing in the world.
Evil Curse has some additional effects on top of that, the first of which being that every curse layered on the opponent on top of it gets buffed as well. The changes are unique to each curse and we'll go over them as they're introduced. The other thing that will come up is if you're got Evil Curse and a full stack of 3 curses on the opponent, the telegraph on the pink flames on the opponent becomes something to look out for. Why? Because if the opponent doesn't shield or dodge that hit(which does nullify Evil Curses damage), instead of just taking the damage without flinching, they'll take minor inward knockback towards Tristan. This can open up some pretty absurd combos and gives Tristan an obscene amount of pressure, especially when the foe is dealing with everything else the curses do at the same time, a suitable reward for landing a triple curse Final Smash for as long as all three curses remain on the foe. One thing to keep in mind though is Evil Curse does not count towards your other curses building up a Final Smash.
Tristan has one other trick up her sleeve with her Final Smash, which is that with her Shield Special, she can store it away. By pressing Shield Special, Tristan's Final Smash aura is deactivated and she can actually continue charging her Final Smash past 100%! Charging from 100%-200% is about 1.2x harder as the meter fills up with glowing pink energy, but once you do get to 200% Tristan gets the Final Smash aura again, and this time, the results are much more devastating. The opponent's body gets outright ripped apart by the spikes ripping out of them, killing them from anywhere on the stage at any percent, no curses, no further nonsense, just death. Considering this move's range, that's obscenely powerful and very much worth the buildup. You can also use Shield Special to reactivate your Final Smash aura, Tristan briefly floating in the air as the aura surrounds her over 20 frames of start lag, so its not unpunishable to store your Final Smash. That said, it can make for some decent mindgames to store it, and the reward for getting off a 200% Final Smash is about as strong as it gets. Especially considering the only way to avoid it is shielding or being out of range, although it will inflict a shield break so Tristan might just get to go for the kill anyway at that point.
Except actually no, we're not done! It gets worse! If you're the kind of sadist who really wants to drive home a point, which if you're getting into character you probably are, you can go for Tristan's 300% Final Smash by storing the 200% variant. Charging from 200%-300% is another 1.25x harder than charging from 100%-200%, and while the attack is the same as the 200% version, you get an extra side effect if you land it. Massive amounts of the opponent's blood will fly towards Tristan after they die (its always blood instead of oil or whatever, because in Fate/Grand Order Tristan causes things like doors to bleed), and she'll absorb it into herself to gain an additional stock. If its a time match, she gets an extra point on top of the one she'd usually get for killing the foe, and if its a stamina match, Tristan gains additional stamina equal to her starting stamina. Oh yeah, if the foe shields this version, by the way? They'll still take 50% in addition to the shield break and still shed tons of blood, enough for Tristan to absorb and still get the extra stock. Charging Tristan's Final Smash to 300% is so obscenely difficult you probably should just win the match if you get it, and this should do it, because this will break the opponent's spirit in addition to their body.
For the record, if you're wondering how this whole mechanic interacts with Smash Balls and Final Smash meter, Final Smash meters being active just causes Tristan's Final Smash to charge 33% faster, rather than gaining a second meter unnecessarily. If Tristan gets the Smash Ball, it adds 100% to her Final Smash's charge, so if you decide to horde Smash Balls like Tristan does shoes, you can stack up that 300% Final Smash that way instead.
All in all, Fetch Failnaught is a powerful reward for stacking Tristan's curses on the opponent, ranging from a long range KO move to an incredibly powerful debuff to an absolutely horrific supermove if she overcharges it. It forces the opponent to be quite cautious if they've got a curse on them, especially if they have multiple, and Tristan is well equipped to toy with a fearful and cursed opponent.
Specials
Neutral Special - Grimalkin
A spike of red energy forms over Tristan's hand as some pink energy rose petals fly off her, before she rushes forward and stabs the spike out, dealing 13% and set medium knockback. This attack comes out on Frame 18, so its a bit hard to combo into, though the end lag isn't particularly bad. The range is... fine, Tristan moving forward with the attack helps the fact that its not a particularly long spike, but its not awe-inspiring either. If the spike connects however, the foe's blood will spiral along it into Tristan's body, providing her with a pair of buffs. The first of which is a lag cut on her Standards and Aerials, depending from move to move but generally increasing Tristan's combo potential and improving her neutral game quite a good deal for the next 5 seconds. The fact that the foe takes that set knockback means she can rush in right afterwards to pay this off, and her Forward Tilt can even true combo off this! That said, it won't be guarunteed into any further follow ups without predictions or 50/50's after that, so its not always the best option, but it is a functional default payoff for landing this move. This buff is indicated by a pink energy flames around Tristan, which fade after 5 seconds ends.
That said, one of the reasons you might want to go for another payoff is that if you're aiming for something higher risk, higher reward, Grimalkin takes out the "risk" part of that. Specifically, after landing Grimalkin, Tristan becomes invincible for 1.5 seconds, indicated by an faint golden outline of Avalon over her body in addition to the aura. This blessing from Morgan le Fae, praise be to her name, is a massive boon to Tristan if she wants to go for her Hail Morgan options, because the opponent can't punish her for them, they have to go defensive after Grimalkin lands. Of course, faster opponents can try to run away and the buff is so short that relying on your shields and dodges can get you through it, but not being able to retaliate for that period makes Grimalkin an immensely powerful offensive pressure tool when you land it. Just keep in mind its not exactly a fast move by Smash Ultimate standards and it lacks the kind of raw damage/knockback payoff a lot of moves with this kind of lag have.
Subsequent Grimalkin hits within 5 seconds will add 5 seconds of duration to the attack speed buff, but will not refresh the invulnerability, that will only come back if you've waited 5 seconds or more between uses. This is mostly to keep players from looping the invincibility bonus too many times, but looping back into this attack in your combos is still a good idea to keep the attack speed buff going.
Grimalkin can also store curses, by tapping or holding B again when you hit the opponent with this move. This will take the opponent's oldest curse and store it away for later as a little red orb is left next to Morgan's icon, right above her meter. The blood siphoned out of the foe is glowing to indicate you used this effect. Holding B while using this move will put that curse back on the opponent with its duration refreshed. That said, while this usually stores the oldest curse, it will always prioritize Evil Curse, as the hardest to access curse in her set. Holding B during the startup of this move will inject the oldest stored curse back into the opponent. Grimalkin can only store one type of Grab inflicted curse at a time, and if she gives a Grab inflicted curse to the opponent via Grimalkin, it will replace whichever one they currently have. Storing Evil Curse with this is particularly potent as due to the damage requirements to use Fetch Failnaught in the first place, it will often only be stuck on the foe when they're at death's door anyway, so keeping it to pile on damage at an opportune point in the next stock can often be a better idea.
All in all, Grimalkin may lack the raw power payoff of a lot of other laggier moves in Smash, but when you factor in its curse-related utility, as well as the insanely potent buffs it gives you, it becomes a move that Tristan both wants to use quite a lot, and a move the opponents will fear. That said, Smash is a game where spamming one laggy move over and over again is an objectively terrible strategy no matter how good that move is otherwise, so you're going to have to make a point to either set this up well or trick out your opponent into landing it. That said, if the opponent is constantly fearing or anticipating you using this, it can make pulling out a Smash with different timing on them easier, and vice versa.
Side Special - Fae Vampirism
Slamming her hand into the ground, Tristan looks forward with a grin on her face, her fangs quite visible if you look with the camera although at the distance Smash usually takes place at, its not particularly noticeable. Runes appear along the ground before spikes erupt out over the course of 24 frames, a fairly telegraphed attack that is helped by the fact that it has a full battlefield platform length worth of range along the ground. In the air, instead a wide arc of runes appears in front of her as she bares her fangs with her hands pointed forward, before the same spikes appear out of the arc, losing a lot of the horizontal range and gaining a small blindspot in front of Tristan, but having an obscene amount of vertical coverage at nearly 1.7x perennial loser Ganondorf's height centered on Tristan's body. The spikes deal 16% and diagonal but mostly vertical knockback that KOs at 130% on the ground and 15% and mostly horizontal knockback that KOs at 150% in the air. That said, this move has some hefty end lag as well, making it a very risky move to just throw out, but it is a KO move with huge range and that's not something to underestimate,. Grimalkin definitely makes it easier to pull off when you don't have to worry about foes punishing the start or end lag, and there are other tricks in Tristan's set to make this move easier to use.
Upon the spikes hitting the foe, they start leaking a bloody red mist, which will continue leaking out of their body for the next 12 seconds, as this move actually has some pretty sizeable additional upside on top of its raw power and range. Its one of your options to curse the opponent, leaving a blood mist leaking out of the foe that is knocked out of them whenever Tristan deals damage to them during that time frame. It collects in a little red orb that floats just above the ground behind her feet, growing in size from that of a pokeball to that disgusting pink blob Kirby's size depending on how much damage you deal. It reaches max size at 60% damage dealt, and the initial hit of this move will actually give her 10% worth of blood drain to work with. Damage accumulated for this attack even includes damage dealt by Evil Curse and other curses.
So what does this blood orb do? Well, it gives this move a much larger number of options to play with by expending it. Lets start with the obvious thing you'd think of with vampirism. If you tilt backwards, Tristan will have some of the blood flow into herself, absorbing 20% worth of damage dealt to heal herself by 5%, effectively allowing her to heal for .25x what her attacks deal. The tilt backwards option is useful if you want to conserve some of the blood, but as it takes 15 frames of start lag to do this, you can just rely on the smash backwards option for an additional 5 frames of lag to absorb it all in one go with her doing a slightly dramatic twirl as the blood all flows into her body at once. If Tristan has less than 20% worth of blood stored up, she'll absorb what remains regardless of what version of the input you use to heal .25x as much damage as she dealt to gain the blood. Given Tristan's combination of low weight and tall hurtbox, this extra survivability is actually very helpful for her, combining with Grimalkin and a good recovery to give her durability comparable to a middle or even heavyweight provided she's able to land those moves semi-frequently.
The regular version of Side Special is now relegated to just if you tilt the move forward. If you input Side Special as a smash, a large runic glyph will appear in front of Tristan, some of the blood jumping into it as it fires a pointy tipped spiralling crimson beam forward. Tristan is taking personal inspiration from Morgan's signature attack, making an imitation of Rhongomyniad! This move's power ranges based on how much blood was spent to cast it, and it will not cast and you'll just use the regular Side Special if you have less than 30% worth of blood drained. At 30% the beam is actually pretty thin, hardly a proper imitation, and deals 12% and diagonal knockback that kills at 165%, but does have a range of 3/5ths of Final Destination and comes out on Frame 16, much faster than the regular Side Special while having such gigantic range. At 60% worth of blood drained, however, it deals a much more formidable 22% and knockback that KOs at 85%, is almost as tall of a beam as Tristan and reaching the entire length of Final Destination, which is insane for a move with only 16 frames of start lag! Admittedly, even at full power, its only a mere shadow of Morgan's glorious Rhongomyniad, but you can't expect to match someone as great as her so easily. Regardless of how blood is put into this attack, the beam extends out a bit faster than Falco's laser, and Tristan suffers moderately high end lag that makes it punishable on a whiff. Though considering the range, punishing this might be difficult if used at greater distances. Curiously, this beam is treated as a disjointed hitbox rather than a projectile, unable to be reflected or absorbed.
While this is a pretty conditional move to even use considering the build up required, Pseudo-Rhongomyniad has absolutely insane range, exceptionally good at sniping foes off stage to finish them off and forcing them to recover above or below it. It also plays well with Tristan's projectile options that we'll show off later, puts huge pressure on foes trying to run away from her to run out the clock on their status effects, and can mess with approaches big time as they have to account for the presence of a giant death beam, forcing the foe into more predictable paths. This is why you might want to conserve your blood supply instead of just absorbing it all in one go, as the threat of the giant death beam can often be more valuable than the extra survivability if you've got the opponent cornered, giving you a surefire means to finish them off. Any blood you get from this move is kept even after the curse leaves the foe, so don't worry about just losing it when 12 seconds runs out, though you obviously do not get to keep it between stocks.
Evil Curse not only gives you passive damage that fuels your blood supply at a decent rate, it also adds some extra perks to this curse. For one, its a little more efficient at gathering blood, taking 50% to get the orb of blood to max size rather than 60%, meaning you're healing .3x the damage you deal and charging Pseudo-Rhongomyniad just a little bit faster. The other benefit is it adds another layer to the healing this attack provides, healing Tristan by 1% for every hit she inflicts on the opponent. This doesn't count curse-based hits of damage unlike the regular version of this move, but its not an insignificant amount of added healing when you factor in that some of Tristan's attacks can inflict quite a large number of hits.
And you can still use the regular Side Special by tilting forward of course, and it'll refresh the timer on the bloody mist if you land it, while also giving 10% extra worth of blood on top of that given it would usually give you 10% worth of started blood if you used it on an uncursed foe. Of Tristan's non-Evil Curse options, this is the hardest one to land, but gives the flashiest payoff of a combination death laser and health pack. While the spikes coming out of the stage won't 2-frame foes at the ledge, using this to ledgeguard is a perfectly viable strategy to catch out foe's landings on the stage with its huge range, or using the giant arc of the aerial version to try to block the ledge off. If you can get into a strong advantage state during Grimalkin's invulnerability too, that's an excellent time to fire this off, as the worst that will happen is it will miss and the foe won't actually be able to punish your miss, maybe even chipping away at their dodge duration or shield health for pressure with the faster and more reliable tilts and aerials instead.
Down Special - Soul Burn
Spreading her arms out, Tristan releases a wave of dark red energy from her body, expanding out in a circular area around her with moderate range that can outrange a good percentage of unarmed melee strikes, but won't get around sword attacks or exceptionally long range melee like Bowser's fair. Coming out on Frame 7, the energy wave deals 4% and moderate upward knockback that scales poorly, making it a not particularly great move to link into aerials, though especially with Grimalkin up you can at least pull some 50/50's and juggles off. Its at least not heavily punishable with its rather low end lag, which is particularly nice because this move does apply a curse to the opponent on hit! Leaving lingering black smoke on the opponent's body, this deals 1% per second for 5 seconds, which is an underwhelming and short duration side effect, but its not necessarily useless. The simple fact its a curse benefits her ability to charge up her Noble Phantasm as long as its active. Its a lot more reliable than Side Special or Grab for the purpose of "just get a curse on the foe", and it can help prepare for a Grimalkin mechanic we'll be introducing in the Smashes as well.
That said, you can probably guess that a DoT that deals a total of 5% isn't all there is to this move's curse. Any non-DoT hits the opponent takes during the curse will extend its duration by 1 second, including individual hits of multi-hit moves. Tristan doesn't have the kind of rapid jab you could just use to casually extend this to a massive duration, but she does have multihit moves that can make the effect last quite long if she pulls them off. Getting this curse to a long duration is beneficial for a lot of reasons, although it may be hard to make the most of because if you land enough hits to get this to a high duration the opponent will probably be at death's door anyway. That's where storing this move with Grimalkin becomes extra useful, as if you store this curse with over max duration with Grimalkin, reapplying it will put it back on the foe at the duration you left at. Well, in theory it could, anyway, but while its stored with Grimalkin it will lose 1 second of duration every 3 seconds until its back to its original max duration, to prevent too hard of a snowball with this curse being stored with Grimalkin. That said, being able to store this away for the foe's next stock can be incredibly useful for racking up lots of Noble Phantasm gain, with a very long duration curse that can be extended even further just by hitting the foe. If you use Grimalkin to give the foe a stored version of this curse while they already have one applied, the larger duration curse will win out.
There is another mechanic to this move which activates if you use Down Special while the opponent is already cursed. Tristan will smirk a little and snap her fingers as the opponent's body fully ignites in black flames, the flame eruption more violent looking and growing in size the longer its been on the opponent. If she uses it when the foe has only taken 1-3% the flame burst will be the size of those worthless insects known as Pikmin, while if the foe is taking over 20% it will be a fire as big as that embarrassment of a villain Bowser. The knockback similarly scales, going from a mere flinch up until this deals the foe 5% to a potent KO move with upward knockback that kills at 100% when it deals the foe 20%. It will even scale past that indefinitely if the curse is kept on the foe longer. The damage of this flame burst is the same as the total damage dealt to the foe by the curse thus far, although it is a bit telegraphed with 20 frames of start lag. The funny thing is, you can actually 50/50 this with your Noble Phantasm to mess with the opponent's attempts to dodge that, which is a very scary option to keep in mind, although Tristan cannot set this off from as far of a range, only within 1.5 battlefield platforms of the cursed opponent. This will use up the curse even if you miss with it, so make it count.
If you hold Down B instead of tap it, Tristan will instead have a series of small bursts of flame rupture out of the foe's body, dealing them the move's damage divided up over multi-hits of 3%(with the last hit dealing on 1% or 2% if you can't evenly divide the damage by 3), changing this move from a kill move into a stun that sets up combos and Smashes exceptionally well. This can be the better choice to go for if you haven't built up as much damage on the opponent, especially given Tristan's got quite the variety of long range options, but it does come at a cost. If the first hit doesn't connect with the foe, the latter hits will fizzle out as well, so dodging this will work fine despite what you'd expect to be a longer duration. In fact, shielding it becomes really potent as it will stop after the first hit of 3%, which is why it can sometimes be better to just go for the other version if you don't have a plan to threaten the opponent's shield during or afterward. Other opponents have to be basically overlapping the one taking the multi-hit to take damage in matches with more than 2 players, as an aside, whereas the bigger blast from the more knockback inclined explosion can serve better to hit multiple opponents at once.
Obviously, this last big hit is your reward for keeping the curse on the opponent for a long time, and its quite potent due to the range and power it can build up, plus the fact that it doubles the damage this curse deals which can already be a lot for a move that comes out this fast. The downside of this is you don't get access to the Down Special's original version while the curse is out, but its honestly a pretty mediocre move that you won't miss too much. Even getting the combo variant off at say, 9% or 12% can lead into Grimalkin pretty nicely, and having a second "detonation" hitbox to worry about while Tristan has her Noble Phantasm can be downright terrifying.
Speaking of her Noble Phantasm, Evil Curse adds a second effect to this curse while they both are stacked together. It causes the foe's shield to take 1.25x as much damage and deplete over time twice as fast while held out, which is a generally handy effect to keep on the opponent for a long time as it'll force them to resort more to dodges and stale them while their shield is left more vulnerable. It also means that 50/50ing with the actual detonation on this move becomes a lot better when the foe is forced to rely less on their shield to avoid it, and while its unlikely you have another Noble Phantasm lined up to do that, you can certainly mix it up with Pseudo Rhongomyniad or your Smashes. When you factor all that in, Tristan really can apply a shocking amount of ranged pressure to make up for her lackluster movement, even if she lacks the more spammy projectile options of a character like one of the little brat versions of Link.
Up Special - Dance of the Fae
Raising her hands up above her head, Tristan does an elegant little rising twirl, reminiscent of her extra attack animation from Fate/Grand Order. I guess you could also compare it to that disgusting dirtbag Wario's Up Special, but come on, that's just insulting. Compared to that move, Tristan doesn't go quite as high, but she has vastly more horizontal control, able to steer herself up to 1.8 battlefield platforms horizontally during this move at a speed about 1.5x faster than her dash. The twirl comes out on Frame 12, dealing a multi-hit of 10 hits that add up to 13%, but it doesn't drag foes around all that efficiently which makes it very easy to DI out of, and the move's high end lag on the ground and helpless state in the air means you'll usually end up at a bit of a frame disadvantage even if you do land this move's final hit of weak mostly vertical knockback that kills at 250%. If you use this move on the ground, you can choose whether you want to go up or not, the spin initially going along the ground but you can steer it up and she'll travel upwards at the same pace she would in the air while you do.
This is a good recovery move that's a little predictable, and a very lackluster attacking move that comes with exactly one major purpose. This is Tristan's most efficient way to rack up a large count of hits, by far. 10 hits off a Frame 12 attack is really, really nice when those 10 hits are either giving you 10% healing or extending the duration of the Soul Burn by a full 10 seconds, and the foe isn't exactly going to be at enough of a frame advantage off the final hit even at low percents that they'll punish you when you factor in the knockback. Of course, it can be hard to hit foes with all the hits unless you follow their DI a bit with your movement, and the twirl's rather short melee reach makes it easy to beat out with a lot of other melee attacks, so its not mindless to pull off, but considering Tristan's lack of a proper rapid jab you'll still be thankful for this as an option to rack up a large number of hits. She has a few more of those that have higher reward ceilings, but are a bit trickier to pull off.
To help with matching a foe's DI, you can actually steer Tristan down during her Up Special, during which time she'll lower herself towards the ground at about a third the rate she'd go upwards usually. This can allow the move to end just above the ground to get a very short helpless state, or to move to a ledge, both of which can put you at less of a disadvantage state than just ending this move on the ground. Keep in mind that the controls for steering this movement are a little slippery, intentionally so so that Tristan has a limited selection of angles she can take to end at a more optimized position, but it is a handy trick to have.
The last useful property of this move is the fact that it actually reflects projectiles at 1.1x speed and power away from Tristan... after the first 5 frames of the spin, and given it comes out on Frame 17 its not a perfect counter to projectile characters. That said, with this combined with its good movement speed, this move becomes a better approach option against projectile characters than it otherwise would be, especially with the ability to weave up and down during the spin, the angle the projectile is reflected in being the direction Tristan was moving in. Aside from reflecting opponents projectiles, Tristan can actually reflect some of her own that we'll get to later, and this move provides a wide variety of angles to reflect them on. Using a projectile before your approach and then reflecting it around while certainly telegraph your approach attempt more, but having a projectile bouncing around at an angle you even have a decent bit of control over in addition to Tristan's own dangerous approach can actually be rather scary for opponent's to deal with.
Grab Game
Grab - Possessive Princess
Tristan grasps forward in a... somewhat regal-looking manner, though its clear she's trying to imitate someone far better at the whole "tyrant bringing down their grasp on a feeble peasant" approach rather than having mastered it herself. When she does grab the opponent, she pins her boots against their feet to help hold them in place while tightly gripping the opponent in her hand, her expression curiously pondering what to do with them.
Now that we're finally here, it should be mentioned that all of Tristan's throws apply a curse to the opponent. You can only apply one curse from Tristan's grab game at a time, any subsequent throws will switch which curse the opponent is afflicted by. Dealing with up to 3 debuffs at a time is, frankly, enough. With that said, opening up a selection of four curses on your grab is a pretty powerful thing to do when literally just having a curse on the foe vastly accelerates your Noble Phantasm gain, and the curses and throws put together are good enough on their own that it makes grab something Tristan will definitely want to fish for. That said, your grab reach is a little on the lower side, and while Tristan's dashing and pivot grabs are better in that regard, they're also a bit on the slow side for a grab, so she's dealing with a below average grab in one way or another at all times.
Pummel - Curse Needle
In an exceptionally slow pummel, Tristan conjures up a little needle of black energy and jams it into the opponent, dealing 1.6%. This is pretty lackluster at building up hit count for the effect of Soul Burn, but on the plus side, as soon as you apply a curse to the opponent, these cursed needles will turn into black energy and fuel the curse, adding 2 seconds of duration to that curse for each needle embedded in the foe. The obvious place to use this benefit is on the grab curses, where their duration will be extended automatically by throwing the foe. That said, if you're feeling like you want that duration boost on Soul Burn or Fae Vampirism, you can go for it by just letting the foe break out of your grab and hoping you land those moves. The needles will stay embedded in the foe for 5 seconds, so you need to make use of this while you can. You can grab the foe again with needles already embedded to go for more for a really long throw curse as well. Both of these options only really make sense if you've already got a grab curse on the foe though, its not particularly worth it though. Aside from Soul Burn, storing a curse via Grimalkin with extended duration and then giving it back will not result in the reapplied curse having its full extended duration again, rather just the full base duration.
If you press B instead of A to use Tristan's pummel while she has a curse stocked up with Grimalkin, she can actually expend it to quickly spawn and embed 3 black needles in the foe in one go, dealing a multi-hit of 3 hits of 1.6% in a genuinely fast pummel. At a cost, you use up the curse you had stored with the lowest duration, though Evil Curse is counted as having twice as much duration due to being much more powerful. This basically trades off the possibility of reapplying that stored curse with Grimalkin later for a much longer duration grab curse, which can be pretty potent considering a lot of Tristan's curses ramp up in effectiveness the longer they're on the opponent. You can even burn through multiple stored Grimalkin curses to give the opponent a really long duration curse, but this is, suffice to say, very expensive and hard to pull off. It also racks up hits real fast to extend Soul Burn's duration, which is worth considering if you want to get the absolute maximum value out of this tradeoff.
Down Throw - Collector's Desire
Binding the foe briefly with dark magic, Tristan crouches down to look at their feet, examining them. Her expression lights up a bit as red talons form over her hands and she slashes at the foe's ankles, attempting to take their feet/shoes for herself! Honestly, she's really here for the shoes, but if worst comes to worst something like Kirby or Pikachu's weird looking feet could serve as inspiration for new designs. At least she's not trying to take them for disgusting reasons like edgy movie man Quentin Tarantino. This doesn't actually cut their feet off though, Smash characters are made of sturdier stuff than that, but it does send the opponent away with 8% and low diagonal knockback that KOs at 230%. Its not really the most powerful kill move or a great combo tool, but it serves as a fine spacer and while it won't hard confirm into a Pseudo Rhongomyniad, it absolutely is something the opponent will have to fear if she has it up.
Tristan's slash did do more than just some good spacing knockback though, it wounded the foe and left a bleeding wound with a glow on the scars around their feet/feet equivalent. This will come up as the foe moves around, causing them to take 1% for every battlefield platform of distance they move. That can be upwards via jumping, forward or backward moving along the ground, even rolls will contribute to building damage on the opponent, as will knockback. Not only that, the bleeding gets worse the more they move, every 4 battlefield platforms of distance increasing the damage per platform moved by 1%. As Tristan's got quite a few big hitboxes foe the opponent to weave around, she can definitely scare the opponent into running all over the stage, try to force their approach, or even weave around the opponent with properly angled Up Specials to make it a pain to actually chase her down, all building up damage on the opponent as they try to keep up with her. Of course, it is just damage, but its damage that exponentially increases with movement, and any big hits of knockback will also put the numbers up quite a bit. This can build up particularly dramatic damage on an opponent Tristan is ledgeguarding, which makes the threat of Pseudo Rhongomyniad in combination with this throw all the more devastating. Hell, if you still have the Fae Vampirism curse up itself, it'll help you charge more Pseudo Rhongomyniads to help the ledgeguard in a devastating loop.
This lasts for 7 seconds, which is not a particularly long duration status effect, but at around 30% when you can start landing needles on the foe which will mean it'll last for 9, and at around 70% it'll last for 11. Given the exponential nature of the damage this status effect can do, its an excellent choice to invest a stored Grimalkin curse into black needles for. With all that said, all it does is damage and a curse effect and has no other benefits, so if you want more than just that you'll have to look elsewhere. And if the opponent can hold down the fort and mostly stay still, you won't get much damage out of this... though if they're staying still, that can put Tristan in a much better position to go for stuff like Grimalkin plays or other flashy tricks.
The buff applied to this move by Evil Curse is just a numerical buff, increasing the rate at which the damage increases to a 1% increase every 2.5 battlefield platforms of movement. Especially if you have a longer duration version of this move on the foe, this can pile on some pretty disgusting damage, mostly just further exaggerating what this move is already good at: making every movement the opponent makes cost them.
Forward Throw - Killer's Mark
Leaning close to the foe, Tristan lets her vampiric side take over and digs her fangs into the opponent, a bit of an unsettling crunch being heard before the foe is launched at a high diagonal angle with 10% and knockback that KOs at 300%. Tristan is left with a bit of blood on her face for a few seconds afterwards, although if Tristan triggers her idle animation during this time she'll wipe it off, not wanting to look improper. Your Fair both comes out too slowly and at too awkward an angle to combo off this most of the time, so the most obvious combo option is out, but it sets up for Nair and Uair rather well, and with Grimalkin active it will actually true combo into Nair and can actually go into Fair situationally, which is very potent when it works. The foe is left with a glowing red pair of fang marks over their model, which will linger there for 6 seconds at minimum, though it can obviously be made longer with the pummel.
This curse does nothing on its own, and is one of the shorter duration curses so its not really worth it to apply if you're just using it to build up Noble Phantasm and nothing else. If you want to get a reward out of this, you're going to need to deal 45% before the fang markers vanish from the opponent's model. Dealing 45% in 6 seconds is obviously very difficult, especially considering it won't count the damage of the throw itself, but it at least gets easier if you were able to pull off a single pummel considering it will last for 8 seconds instead. That said, 8 seconds is still a fairly hard time frame to deal the kind of damage you'd need multiple combos or a particularly complex string requiring setup to pull off. If you're picking this curse, either you have a setup to make it work out easier, or you just want the actual throw hitbox over the other options, and for what its worth, its a decent if imperfect combo starter.
So what do you get if you deal the required damage? The fang markers will glow much brighter and spread wider apart, and Tristan will instantly gain 30% of her Noble Phantasm meter. The next attack dealing 12% or more Tristan performs on that foe will cause the energy fangs to clamp down, increasing that attack's damage by 10% and multiplying the knockback by 1.1x on top of that. If the attack was a multi-hit, the damage boost is applied to the final hit. The nice thing about the 30% meter gain on this attack is that it stays constant even if Tristan is building past 100% and even past 200%, making it helpful on your path to getting the higher level Noble Phantasms if you want to go for those. Obviously, that's pretty contextual in terms of how useful it is, but it is worth it if you're feeling ambitious, and the power buff on your next heavy hit and easy buildup for a regular Noble Phantasm is much less difficult to utilize.
If you're trying to make it easier to get the required 45% in 6/8 seconds, having prior setup on the foe will go a long way. The utility of Soul Burn is obvious, its an extra bit of chip damage on the opponent and the hitbox Tristan can detonate on their body goes a long way towards making it viable to actually hit that threshold of damage. Fae Vampirism is also excellent in combination with this move simply because of the sheer power and range of Pseudo Rhongomyniad. The threat of it makes getting the 45% that much easier, as it can pile on another 12%-22% from an insane distance from the foe. But also, if you want to save it for when power buff is ready, an extra 10% and bonus knockback turns it into an absolutely monstrous long range kill move. Frankly, even the threat of Pseudo Rhongomyniad will make landing other attacks easier if you can exploit the foe's fear of it, and then go for it as a monstrous kill move once the effect is activated. Grimalkin allowing for stronger combos and safer setups also makes pulling off a sudden 45% on the foe easier, as is storing curses to unleash powered up Smashes or vastly extend the duration of this debuff. In short, Tristan has a lot of extra variables that make a sudden pileup of damage on the foe to activate this move much easier, and if you can get 2 or more going at once this becomes a particularly tempting curse to lay on the opponent to secure both NP meter and a kill.
If you want to get really flashy with this move, consider layering it with Evil Curse. If you trigger the amplified damage attack while the opponent is afflicted with Evil Curse, it will actually reactivate the original effect at the same duration as when it was originally applied. If the foe was KO'd by the attack that got powered up by this, the curse will instead get reapplied once the foe respawns, and after respawn invincibility wears off. Given that being a curse, it already helps immensely in gaining your Noble Phantasm and it gives an extra 30% push, this gives a potent secondary function to this move, Noble Phantasm looping. The reapplication of this curse as long as Evil Curse is on the foe and the extra buildup to your Noble Phantasm means building up to a second, fast Noble Phantasm is possible and that will add up to an obscene amount of damage on the opponent, possibly burning through their stocks in rapid succession... provided Tristan keeps up the pressure well. If the opponent takes back an advantage state, shields your Noble Phantasm, or just manages to stall out and not take the 45% even one time, the whole loop gets dropped, but this is a very potent way to build up your Noble Phantasm while also scoring some massively boosted hits on the foe in the process.
If you really want to commit to Noble Phantasm looping, you can blow several stored Grimalkin curses on the pummel before this move to give it an absurd duration like 24-30 seconds. This is a lot of setup, sure, but it makes it downright casual to get the power and Noble Phantasm bonus from this move, and if the Noble Phantasm or a stored Evil Curse are applied at the right time, you can repeat it stock after stock to make it much more worth it than just a long term bleed effect would be, as that will at most assure the foe a rapid and painful escalation in damage on their current stock. The ceiling on what you can do with this curse is enormous, and as heir to the throne showing the ambition to use it well is how you crush a foe before they get to turn the tides on you.
Up Throw - Priestess' Grasp
Grabbing the opponent by their throat, Tristan's fingers extend into black claws as she lifts them up above her 2 starting hits of 2% and 3%, followed by blasting them up at with dark flames for an additional 5%. The upward knockback on this starts out moderately strong, but scales poorly as the foe's percent increases so it won't kill until 240%, and its not going to combo into anything. That said, its a three hit throw which gives it its own perk over the other options, and it works well with Up Smash even if its not a true combo into it. Also on tri-platform stages like battlefield, this move shouldn't be completely neglected as a KO option. On the top platform of battlefield it kills at 145% due to a sizeable portion of the knockback coming from its base value, and while I wouldn't say Tristan is lacking in power, her KO potential can be a bit conditional. Having a backup KO throw like this comes in handy in those situations. And worst comes to worst, getting the vertical space certainly isn't bad.
After stabbing her hands into the foe, lingering, shadowy hands will follow them around, either traveling through their shadow on the floor or floating around them in the air. Most of the time, they're rather faint, but its still easy to tell they're there. 3 seconds after the throw however, and again on every 5 second interval after that, the hands will solidify, their black fingers and red claws looking rather menacing as they close in slightly on the opponent. This will last for a second before they fade away again, more threatening to grab the opponent than actually going for it, at first glance. This curse has a default duration of 10 seconds and gains the usual 2 seconds of duration per pin, making it pretty long lasting for a curse, before the hands fade away entirely. The hands appear more solid for a period of exactly one second, meaning you'll get 2 instances of them being a threat off 0 or 1 pummels, and 3 instances with 2 pummels.
So what does the hands solidifying actually do? Well, if you hit an opponent during that interval, the hands will do one of two things, depending on how strong the attack was. If it dealt 12% or less, the hands will grab the opponent, holding them still for 25 frames in a brief stun. If it dealt 13% or more, the hands will instead slash the opponent, adding 3% worth of damage to the attack and a 1.05x knockback increase, much weaker than the bonus given by Forward Throw but still adding that little bit of extra potency to powerful KO moves like Pseudo Rhongomyniad or Up Smash. Note that if the attack is a multi-hit, the total damage is used to calculate which effect is applied. The real reward here is the bonus to weaker hits however, because it lets you true combo them into Fae Vampirism or Grimalkin!
Being able to true combo into these moves is absolutely huge for Tristan, and puts the pressure on the opponent to not get hit by attacks that would usually lead to a much less impressive advantage state during that brief window. This is actually a great use of weaker Soul Burns, as using one up to guarantee Grimalkin or Fae Vampirism when its a much easier curse to land, or you can combo it into Pseudo Rhongomyniad. This is also very nice with Up Special as it can make guaranteeing the full combo of hits with it much easier or make grazing the foe at the end of the move actually lead into a good few combo options and make it a more threatening approach. Obviously, this is a bit of a predictable window for the opponent to avoid your attacks during, but you get two shots at it, or three at higher percents, and sometimes even more with the special version of the pummel, and you know when its coming too so you can go out of your way to prepare for it or use it to scare the opponent into being predictably defensive.
The hands won't react at all to Tristan grabbing, pummeling, or throwing the opponent. If the foe is afflicted by Evil Curse, the hands will instead solidify for 2.5 seconds at a time, giving Tristan a much longer window to abuse this attack. Keep in mind you still only get one proc of this boost to your attacks per 5 second window, but it makes it much, much easier to get that while Evil Curse is up. As a final note, kind of like your Noble Phantasm looping with Forward Throw, you can use this to do a smaller but still scary prospect of looping Grimalkin, by using the fact that your attacks will still be sped up by the time the hands come back for a second or third round means landing the right, needling hit to go into ANOTHER Grimalkin is that much easier. And every period of invincibility is another chance for Tristan to pull off a much flashier, bolder stunt than you'd usually be safe performing.
Back Throw - Vampire's Clamp
Tossing the opponent behind her briefly, Tristan summons up a trio of winding spikes that burrow into the opponent while she boots them away with her heel, dealing 9% and diagonal knockback behind her that KOs at 200%. This is your best KO throw which... really isn't saying much, but if you can build some heavy damage on the foe via damage over time curses but are struggling to land your kill moves, this can do the job at around 150%-160%. Before that, its not the best at setting up an immediate follow up with the knockback being somewhat high and on a diagonal behind you, but your Bair is pretty good at walling opponents out, especially if you weave the faster Nair in with it. Like with your other throws, this comes with a curse on top of its base hit so being a bit underwhelming of a KO move is at least made up for in other ways.
Specifically, once the foe's knockback ends, the spikes wrap around the opponent's torso and constrict them. At the center of the spikes wrapped around the foe's torso, there's a little crystalline heart formed in the middle, to make this move that little bit more humiliating. This deals a rapid 4 hits per second of 1.25%, making it the most potent DoT in your set barring a push of the Down Throw's effect to some truly comical extremes. And not only does it to do 5% per second, this curse actually lasts a solid 8 seconds, plus 2 per pummel on the foe, meaning it can deal 40% + 10% per pummel, which is an absolutely absurd amount of damage to the foe... so obviously, there's a catch. The clamp can be broken off the foe like a Pikmin clinging to the foe with Side Special, with basically any attack hitting it and it only having a fragile 15 stamina. The spikes will crumble away and the heart will shatter into tiny crystals when the foe does this, so realistically the foe just flailing around with 1 or 2 attacks will end this effect and you'll only get like 2.5%-3.75% out of this DoT in total.
Except, see, the crystalline bits of the heart will remain floating around the foe, and after 4 seconds, will reform back into the heart, attaching to the foe and sprouting the spikes around them again to continue the effect. This means this throw acts kind of like an automated Pikmin toss at the opponent once every 4 seconds, which might not sound like much but considering the whole time the foe is treated as having a curse applied and the damage adds up fast, this is an amazing Noble Phantasm builder and damage racker if the opponent doesn't take care of it. And its not hard to take care of with the fragile stamina of the clamp, sure, but it is going to mean the foe has to attack in some form. If the opponent wants to multi-task with destroying the clamp and fighting Tristan at the same time, they're going to have to go aggressive. If the foe wants to play ultra-defensive and fish for a window to hit Tristan, they'll have to deal with the high damage this racks through dodges and the fact that while it does get blocked by shields, it deals double damage to them, whittling down the foe's defenses quickly.
So what does Tristan get out of a foe being overaggressive? Well, there's a few perks, but the most obvious one is the foe whiffing an attack is a great window to punish with the powerful Grimalkin and Fae Vampirism. Comboing into this move's aggressively is difficult but possible, but sometimes its easier to just walk the opponent into those mistakes, and its not like the foe choosing not to go aggressive is a great solution. This builds damage very fast, after all, so if it doesn't force the foe into a much more frantic and punishable neutral game either they're timing their hits obscenely well or you're getting a big damage and Noble Phantasm meter advantage out of this anyway. Also, if you end up straight up invincible via Grimalkin, attacking becomes entirely counterproductive to the opponent during that window especially with Tristan's increased attack speed for stronger punishes. This is a great curse to re-inject into the foe via Grimalkin because it will basically guarantee the first 1.75 seconds worth of duration damage the opponent unless they're opening themselves up to something even worse.
Evil Curse makes the clamp's anti-defensive properties all the more devastating, as the foe's shield regeneration is totally cancelled while the clamp is active, and their dodges stale by the equivalent of one use every 3 increments of damage the clamp deals. For obvious reasons, this makes the push towards aggressive actions even more necessary when the defensive ones are getting rapidly worn away at, and on top of that the clamp is boosted to 20 stamina. This is only slightly more work to get rid of, sure, but when its that much more dangerous for the foe to leave around the little bit of extra stamina can go a long way in making this curse a nightmare to deal with while both this and Evil Curse are layered on the opponent.
Smashes
Forward Smash - Blood Bullet
Spinning her arm in a circle as a spiral of red and black energy collects in a single extended finger, Tristan points forward before firing a shot of black and red energy forward, similar in size to Wolf's Blaster Shot. It admittedly travels slower than the the Buster attack animation its based off, going at a speed that's just a bit slower than Tristan travels using her Up Special to traverse the stage. This magic shot deals 15%-21% on contact and KOs at 140%-110%, which is pretty potent for a projectile, and it also travels about 2/3rds the length of Final Destination which gives it some very formidable range. It can be angled up or down(going at a pretty shallow angle so it'll only hit the floor about a third of the way through its travel) and will bounce off solid platforms, though not dropthrough platforms like on battlefield which it will simply pass through. This attack has 32 frames of start lag, which means it takes a while to come out, but the end lag is short enough to make it so Tristan can abuse the long duration this projectile will stay out for her own benefit. Its not slow enough for her to catch up to with her dash, which does limit her options on how much she can abuse it, but there are a few ways to do so.
The obvious one is to use Up Special alongside this move, which can allow Tristan to reflect the projectile off her body as she's moving, and between the control she has over Side Special and the ability to angle this move, you can reflect this at the foe from all manner of angles. This, combined with the threat provided by Up Special itself of racking up many hits for the status effects it benefits and potentially trapping the foe to be hit by the projectile in the multi-hit, makes Up Special into a much more formidable approaching tool if you fire this off first. Of course, that is a pretty predictable approach to setup, but considering you can send it back at the foe at any angle and even potentially bounce it off the floor multiple times, its not like every pattern the foe is going to have to avoid from the combination of Up Special and Forward Smash will be the same. You could even not reflect it at all, and just use it to cover Up Special's approach and wear down shields and dodges.
The other way to abuse having this projectile out is the simple fact that you can also threaten foes with Pseudo Rhongomyniad at the same time. Since that move can cover the entire stage in a flash, you can use it in combination with Forward Smash to leave the opponent on an impressively withered shield, cover a greater amount of vertical space, and even potentially combo Forward Smash into it if the foe gets struck by the move outright. Tristan can also make it awkward for opponents to roll through the projectile by punishing with her melee, and if they try to go over it, her Up Smash has the potential to make life REALLY difficult. Shielding it in place is probably the safest way to deal with it, but given the move's short end lag that puts Tristan at an advantage state she can use anyway, even if the shield stun here is low enough it won't exactly be a huge frame advantage or anything.
Now the fun part is that during the start lag of this move, you can press B to expend a stored Grimalkin curse to instantly fully charge this Smash Attack. Which curse is used up operates on the same order it would for pummel, and this remains true for all the other smashes. Why is that relevant, besides a basic power boost? Well, the magic shot will pulse with energy as it flies if its been fully charged, which adds another interaction that comes up whenever the move is reflected off a surface or a reflector like Up Special. The projectile will split off a smaller, fainter magic shot that will fly off at the opposite reflection angle. So if, say, the magic shot was coming up towards a spinning Tristan from below, the original shot will get reflected back at a higher angle as it continues traveling up, which a new shot will be spawned traveling back down toward the floor, creating a sideways V shape. These extra shots travel at 2/3rds the speed of the original, only go a little over a battlefield platform in distance, and deal 6% and a flinch on contact.
This is actually really potent for creating straight up bullet hell for the opponent to deal with if Tristan takes some very particular angles with her Up Special, as if you travel up and then down and repeatedly bounce an FSmash off the floor, you can create quite a large number of weaker lingering projectiles. Hell, if you manage to bump back into them by curving the move properly, you can further control these shots and use them to hit a dodging foe or rip through shields, and if a bunch of these projectiles all connect with a foe Tristan will be left at a pretty big frame advantage even out of Up Special. Aside from just adding up to a lot of damage, it can also add up to a lot of hits for Soul Burn, and potentially chain into a Grimalkin or Fae Vampirism hit if you pull it off.
Speaking of Grimalkin, since I mentioned that using Forward Smash + Up Special was a predictable combo, its worth mentioning that predictability in the windup for said combo is a lot less important when you're straight up invincible for it. Opponents can't exactly interrupt you with a projectile of their own, or consider weaving around the projectile to approach or knocking Tristan out of her spin to be great options when she's invincible. This is an example of going for flashier, higher risk plays being a lot more viable with Grimalkin out, the simple fact that you don't have to worry about the foe interrupting what you're doing and the ability to make some level of microadjustments in how the projectiles will bombard the foe makes the Up Special + Forward Smash approach a real nightmare in the brief window its invulnerability is active. This is especially true when you consider Tristan can weave in her hastened aerials and tilts, and even moreso when you factor in the prospect of the FSmash potentially being curse boosted to make a real hellscape of projectiles to dodge.
Up Smash - Sadistic Impalement
With a cocky, sinister laugh, Tristan poses with a side look toward the camera as curved spikes jut up from her shoulders in arcs above her, before converging to skewer foes together in the middle. For those who have been in Make Your Move or are otherwise familiar with Full Metal Alchemist, it kind of resembles the ribcage attacks of the ugliest and stupidest of that shows Homunculi. This move has solid range above Tristan, having a bit more range than your average swordie Up Smash vertically and the curving spikes giving it some actual solid horizontal range as well. If an opponent is hit by just one row of spikes, they take 13%-17% and upwards diagonal knockback opposite to the direction the spikes stabbed from that KOs at 160%-120%, which is pretty underwhelming for this attack's 17 frame start lag and fairly punishable end lag. If they get pinned in the middle of the hitbox though, which is easier on smaller characters who won't accidentally get hit by a side hitbox instead, this will instead deal a much more threatening 19%-26% and upwards knockback that KOs at 95%-60%. If the foe is hit by the sweetspot, this produces a meaty tearing sound on top of a pretty long period of hitlag to emphasize the damage. Which this is a decent Up Smash with good upwards coverage, it lacks any ability to threaten foes in front of or behind you, and you won't be getting your lag's worth in terms of power if you don't hit the central sweetspot. Speaking of which, one really unfortunate thing is that particularly big bodied characters are basically impossible to hit the sweetspot on, as the hitbox simply isn't big enough to completely envelop them. Perhaps they can enjoy this brief respite from the pain before they get sent hurtling back to the bottom tier where they belong.
This move has a couple twists, the less dramatic of which actually being what happens if you fully charge it, or circumvent the need to charge it by expending a Grimalkin stored curse the same way you would with FSmash. The spikes will glow a dark when this move is fully charged, and will burst into a cloud of cursed smoke and dark fire afterwards that covers the same area the spikes did, dealing 19% and upwards knockback that KOs at 100%. This is mostly just to cover foes who dodge the first hit and coverrs most of Tristan's end lag with another hitbox against aerial foes, turning this from a decent to a fantastic anti-air. Which is pretty helpful as there's a lot of powerful ways Tristan can threaten forward and backward space around her, so being able to cut off upwards approaches so well can aid at putting foes in range of Pseudo Rhongomyniad/Side Special/FSmash pressure.
This moves ability to threaten foes above Tristan is actually only exaggerated based on how many curses are on the foe. If a foe within the potential range of this attack is detected to have curses on them, this attack will actually extend the spikes out much further to try and reach that foe. This increases the height and width of the hitbox by 1.5x if the foe has 1 curse on them, 2x if the foe has 2 curses, 2.5x if the foe has 3 curses, and if you stacked all 3 regular kinds of curses on the foe as well as Evil Curse, you get a move with 3x the height and width it would usually have. Keep in mind the extra range will only trigger if a foe with the relevant number of curses is inside the attack's potential hitbox after Frame 10 of the start lag, which can result in this move occasionally whiffing not activating its massive range increase if the foe weaves around it properly, and it also won't just do it automatically to give you a disgustingly giant hitbox just for having a cursed foe somewhere on screen in free for alls. The spikes are only reaching out for a cursed foe specifically, after all.
Among the many benefits this provides of just having absolutely massive range, supercharging this move with a stored Grimalkin curse while the opponent has some curses on them lets you not just threaten an enormous area of aerial space, it also provides a backup hitbox if the foe dodged the first. Not to mention, since the hitbox in the middle where the spikes will cross through each other is now much, much bigger, you can finally sweetspot big characters effectively, and small characters with comical ease. The only downside is the spikes are still only covering the air and despite their increase in horizontal reach will only hit grounded opponents that are taller than anyone currently in Smash actually is. But threatening such a huge area of space comes with all kinds of perks, between forcing foes to move around to bleed out via DThrow, to just keeping the opponents on ground level while Pseudo Rhongomyniad is charged, to scoring early cheese kills on an opponent high in the air due to just how tall and powerful this hitbox is. And in general, this just adds extra threat factor to the mere presence of any curse on the foe, meaning even less immediately useful grab curses or the low baseline power Soul Burn provide some extra threat to Tristan's moveset while they're active.
If Grimalkin's invincibility is up and you want to limit the ways the foe can run away from you, this is a great move just to force the opponent to reconsider taking to the air, provided they've got some prior curses on them. If they have none, you may want to go for something more immediately ambitious, but limiting the foe's ability to go to into the air means whatever invincible assault you have prepared for a grounded foe is that much worse when they have nowhere else to go.
Down Smash - Territory Curse
Pulling out Failnaught, Tristan's strange bow-harp combination, she runs her fingers along the harp and does an elegant little dance as red up and down slash marks appear next to her from the bow's curse, repeating a few times over the attack's duration. This attack is quick to come out and quick to end, coming out on only Frame 10 and having 18 frames of end lag... but the duration is huge. I'm talking nearly nearly 40 frames, so if you do whiff with this, its going to be pretty painful. The range on the slashes is pretty modest, nothing to really write home about but it can outrange most non-disjointed hitboxes at least. For the first 30 frames of the attack's duration it deals a solid 14%-19% and low angled knockback that KOs at 145%-100%, which given the knockback angle can actually be really potent against characters with bad horizontal recoveries especially given the possibility of using both Fae Vampirism and Pseudo Rhongomyniad to edgeguard recoveries. During the last 10 frames of duration, however, the final slash will occur and be considerably more dramatic, with the claw marks being a bit more jagged and glowing more intensely. If you hit with them during this time period, they'll instead deal a whopping 12 hits(of 0.5% for the first 11) that add up to 21%-29% and mostly upwards knockback that kills at 100%-55%, which makes this move devastating if you manage to land it late into its hitbox, although at a glance this is difficult to pull off. Especially when you factor in that if one hit of this move lands on a shield, that just means the rest of the hitbox is considered invalidated, putting Tristan at some absolutely awful frame minus. Only Morgan could truly save her now...
Except this move is a bit better than that, because you can actually move back and forth during this attack's duration, Tristan moving with a happy little elegant spin in her step. This dance along the stage is not particularly fast, about 2/3rds her underwhelming run speed, but it opens up some newfound utility for this attack. For one thing, you could potentially dodge back from an opponent hitting you during this attack by stepping out of the way, and then slide back in to punish them during their end lag. It won't always work, but you could even potentially slip back in and hit them with the powerful ending hitbox, which has the bonus of dropping 12 hits on the opponent that come out too fast for them to really DI out of in time unlike Up Special. So even if you don't get it at KO percents, you can still either pile on tons of Soul Burn duration or leech quite a bit of health back with Evil Curse buffed Fae Vampirism. Having this highly potent little dodge and counter strategy helps with Tristan's frailty when she doesn't have Fae Vampirism or Grimalkin to help out, allowing her to punish foes that get too aggressive against her combination of slowness and frailty.
Of course, weaving back and forth isn't the only way to use this move. You can also slide forward with it to catch rolls and dodges, slide backwards to go after a foe who managed to sneak behind you with a roll or air dodge. This is all particularly threatening with Grimalkin invulnerability up, as you can basically become an invincible dancing wall of danger with a constantly powerful hitbox through this move. The downside, of course, is that this advances pretty slowly, but it can certainly force a foe back to a corner at the ledge or give them an oppressively long lasting and mobile hitbox to deal with. It also means getting shielded isn't quite as big a death sentence as it otherwise would be, as you can reposition yourself away from the opponent even as the hitbox is no longer a threat. Don't get me wrong, you're going to get punished, but if you dance out of the way you probably at least won't take the worst hit in the opponent's arsenal.
For a couple bonus fun applications of this move, you can use this while approaching after your Forward Smash. While not as obviously devastating a combo as Up Special + Forward Smash, being able to weave in with a timing mixup while the foe is defending against the projectile that came right before you. Also, if the opponent is dealing with the effects of the Back Throw curse and forced to be aggressive, this can be a great option to punish the foe being overaggressive as you weave out of the path of their attack and then punish them, making it just that little bit easier to push the foe into a mistake you can punish that way.
Fully charging this attack causes Tristan's dance to visibly curse the ground she walks on, black smoke coming up from it as red cracks spread through the ground. After the attack's end lag, this cursed ground becomes a trap that explodes in a burst of red energy 30 frames after an opponent touches it. The blast deals 15%-21% and upwards knockback that KOs at 160%-110% if this attack is fully charged the normal way, or 10%-15% and upwards knockback that KOs at 220%-165% if the move is charged up with a Grimalkin stored curse. This lingering trap will last for 5 seconds, and will cover any area Tristan danced over with this move, which is a pretty small amount if she didn't move. That said, if you weaved around a bit it'll be a sizeable trap, and if you moved forward or backward the entire time this covers a pretty imposing area of the stage that you can now zone off. In combination with what your Up Smash can potentially do to a foe trying to get through the air, having a grounded trap like this adds yet more ability for Tristan to just dominate large areas of space. Sure, the curse explosion is telegraphed, but that just means you pressure the opponent with another attack at the same time to force them to take one of the hits, Side Special coming to mind as a particularly ferocious option to combine with this as the moves can cover a colossal amount of range together and both overlapping hitboxes are quite scary. Hell, this trap even synergizes back into Down Smash itself, with the mobile hitbox able to zone foes back into the trap or let Tristan step back onto cursed ground to protect herself if she screws up and hits a shield.
Now you might be wondering why the Grimalkin curse boosted version of this attack is less powerful, and that's because it has a secondary effect. Whatever curse you sacrificed for this move will actually get reapplied if the opponent is hit by it, that Grimalkin curse being stored in the trap itself! Of course, you lose that curse if it gets shielded or avoided, but it does mean you can convert stored curses into traps that can reapply themselves, which can often be more threatening than just the extra damage and knockback. Sure, its not as safe a storage method as just keeping them on you to inject back into the foe with another Grimalkin, but it makes the lingering curse a lot more immediately threatening. The rules of applying only one grab curse at a time remain as they always were, however, as does the "longer Soul Burns overwrite shorter ones" rule, and same type curses just reset their duration to its default length unless they currently have longer than that left for one reason or another.
Standards
Jab - Strings of Failnaught
Turning away from the foe briefly with a sly look back, Tristan once again plays the strongs of Failnaught as a pair of red slash marks appear in front of her in an X-shape. This is a single hit Jab comparable to Ganondorf's, coming out on Frame 8 and dealing 8% and decent spacing knockback that will never grow to the point of killing until unreasonable percents, but at least gets foes out of your face. By comparison to Ganondorf's Jab, this has a bit better range, lower damage, and importantly Tristan actually has a decent few options for when she's spaced a foe away like FSmash, either of Side Specials attacks, and Fair. This attack has pretty minimal true combo potential, though its at least fast enough to combo out of some options so you can use it as a finisher if nothing else. That said, 8 frames isn't as fast as you'd hope for an option mostly meant to get the foe out of your face, but at least I can tell you right now she has a few other good fast moves to work with. Plus, this can serve as the safer defensive option to the riskier but more potent Down Smash, giving you a decent pair of options to use on the back foot in neutral.
This attack's actual hitbox is a fair bit weirder than it at first sounds, however. See, I said the range of this move is comparable to a slightly better version Ganondorf's Jab(with more vertical reach, I might add). But that's true of the reach it has on Frame 1, which is when the hitbox locks onto the foe. As soon as Tristan has gone through the first frame of this move's start lag, if the foe was in reach, the pair of slashes will appear over their position whenever the attack actually goes off. This means it can more effectively catch opponents moving away from you if they thought they could weave around this attack's startup somehow, although given it comes out on Frame 8 this isn't really a big deal at first glance. Where it becomes a much bigger deal is that Tristan can charge her Jab, lights sparkling on the strings as she does so. For every 10 frames of charge she puts in, up to 60, an additional hit of 2% is added with another laser slash going through the foe's body at the start, potentially letting this Jab deal a total of 20%.
The combination of being able to charge this move if the opponent dodges to hit them out of their dodge and the fact that it will track their position if they roll away after Frame 1 means this move is astonishingly good at messing with dodges. The only reliable defensive option against this attack is going to be to shield, and with Tristan able to create bullet hell through Forward Smash and her Noble Phantasm ignoring dodges as well, it adds yet another reason the opponent really needs to keep their shield healthy. Mind you, this attack really isn't impressive at all in terms of impact, but when its got both decent range and has multiple ways of subverting dodges, its a very easy attack to actually land. Whether the goal of that is to gain a minor advantage in neutral or pile on a bit of damage/hits to get your curses working more effectively, the awkwardness of defending against this attack makes it a quite useful part of Tristan's arsenal. If you want the scariest thing though, this attack's anti-dodge properties become really nasty when the hands from Up Throw are active. If you were ever concerned Jab didn't have enough payoff, that should fix your problem, although if you charge it past 20 frames you'll get the much less impressive damage boost effect so keep that in mind.
We're also finally at the part of the set where Grimalkin buffs the speed of moves, in particular reducing the start lag of this move so it comes out on Frame 5 and also slightly cutting the end lag, so its closer to safe on block. Its not actually safe on block, mind you, but that changes if you've charged the move, giving you a maximum of +10 frames on block if the move was fully charged, letting you poke the shield with another move and situationally break it if its already worn down. If you're using the non-Grimalkin version the fully charged version is only +3 on block, but it technically still applies. Aside from just setting up Tristan's long ranged moves that little bit more safely and interrupting more combos, this is just a disgustingly hard move for the opponent to deal with while the invincibility is up. Since they can't interrupt you out of it, they basically have to resort to running away, dodging, rolling, or shielding. Rolling and running away are extremely unlikely to work, dodging only works if the foe predicts you correctly, which is very difficult on a move with 5 frames of start lag, and shielding can leave the foe at as much as a 10 frame disadvantage on block. It also sets up 50/50's with Fair and Side Special on hit, ones that get better the more you charge the move as the frame advantage you gain increases until it outright true combos into full hop Fair at 40 frames of charge or more, and comes dangerously close to doing so with Pseudo Rhongomyniad at full charge.
The downside is that unless you do successfully manage to line things up so that you combo into Side Special or grab a shielding foe, the reward here is really not going to be anything great beyond just piling on some extra damage, and the foe is not going to immediately be in range of this move after you hit Grimalkin as it spaces them a bit too far away. And its not truly a guaranteed hit, if the foe predicts their dodge timing well or you land it late enough into the interval or at low enough charge on a shield you're not getting any real reward out of it, nor is it guaranteed to have a great payoff if it does hit depending on the opponent's movement during your charge and how much you charge. But that said, the sheer difficulty in avoiding Jab during the invulnerable period of Grimalkin is not something to underestimate, especially when it can have some fairly high payoff off one additional decent read. That said, you can get a higher ceiling out of going for better combo options like Nair, better setup options like Forward Smash, or better kill options like Up and Down Smash, so this is more of the fallback option if you absolutely need to get in that last bit of chip damage for a Final Smash or you have exactly what you'd need to secure a Pseudo Rhongomyniad kill off this.
In the rare cases it comes up, like Forward Smash or Down Smash's trap hitbox hitting the foe while Tristan is preparing the move, it will still keep locked onto the opponent even as they take the knockback from that, potentially piling on a bit of extra damage and knockback. This is pretty situational in terms of how useful it is, but its at least worth keeping in mind.
Down Tilt - Bloodletting
Tristan slides across the ground in a brief blur, much swifter and more elegant than the slide kick of that walking toaster Mega Man. By default, Tristan goes a much shorter distance of only about 0.4 battlefield platforms forward, but if she comes into contact with a foe some spurts of blood and slash marks will appear as she appears behind them. This deals 5% and a flinch, and leaves Tristan right behind the opponent, effectively instantly crossing them up. This comes out on Frame 6, Frame 4 with Grimalkin active, and while the hitstun is brief enough that you can't confirm a Nair or Bair out of this, the end lag is also low enough that this goes basically neutral on shields without Grimalkin active, and outright gives frame advantage on block when its active. The one downside is that this is compensating for the fact this move doesn't shield poke well, as its hitbox is a fair bit taller than most Down Tilts, so it does continue the theme of shields being more effective against Tristan than other options, but at the very least this move getting shielded is not going to result in Tristan getting punished.
This attack has a followup that true combos out of the first hit, where Tristan slides back under the foe and turns around, slashing them a second time in a repeat of the first hitbox. This deals another 5%, but low diagonal knockback which Tristan can outright combo off with Nair or Down Special unlike the first hitbox. It also effectively flips the foe around, allowing for stuff like reversals at ledge or throwing the foe back into a Down Smash trap that just got placed behind you. This is actually one of Tristan's best combo starters due to its short start lag and comboing into one of Tristan's best combo extenders or a free curse. That said, the followup hit is unsafe on shield, and like the first hit unless the foe's shield has taken some fairly meaty damage it won't poke it. The opponent can also reasonably dodge both hits because the follow up comes out so fast after the first hit and doesn't really let you delay it, so spot dodges are perfectly effective against this move. Given Tristan has some generally strong edgeguarding too, this move's mere existence forces opponents to be wary pinning Tristan at a ledge, lest they suddenly find their positions reversed and eating either type of Side Special hit or a Dair. Its another reason she's better off in neutral and even disadvantage positions than you might at first expect when the opportunity for a quick reversal is always there.
While Grimalkin speeds up this move to win out trades in neutral better, it doesn't really dramatically change the function of this move, its a combo starter that provides some tricky positional advantages either way. That said, going for riskier follow ups like switching up from your standard Nair/DSpecial follow ups to go for Side Special or Down Smash instead is more effective both considering the slightly increased frame advantage and safer because the opponent won't be able to punish you if you it doesn't connect the way you want it to.
Forward Tilt - Shoe Collector EX
Tristan stabs her foot out, balancing carefully on one foot in a move that comes out on Frame 10 with some surprisingly formidable range and middling end lag. This is partially because the boot is actually extended out a bit further by an aura of pink and black energy around it, combined with Tristan's rather long legs and high heels giving it already formidable range. This attack has 3 different hitboxes, the first of which we'll go over is the one you'll probably hit with the majority of the time you land it, and the one that's the most likely result out of a Grimalkin combo, as true comboing into the sweetspot requires hitting with Grimalkin at the very edge of its range. The middle hitbox deals a hit of 6% as Tristan sticks her leg out and another hit of 6% as she pulls it back, the first hit flinching and the second dealing mostly horizontal knockback that KOs at 200%. As a true combo out of Grimalkin, this hit is kind of underwhelming, but if you want to go for an invincible FSmash/USpecial combo using this to set it up is a pretty good place to start. Up until around 45% it spaces pretty well for Side Special even if its far from a true combo into it.
The sweetspot is where this move really shines, only present on the tip of her shoe and the aura. The first hit is boosted to dealing 8%, and the second hit is accompanied by a small spurt of blood from the foe while they take an additional 8% and knockback that kills near the ledge at 100%, and at 135% from center stage. This is a solid KO option for its lag, but the hitbox is quite small, so it admittedly isn't the easiest thing to actually hit with. Tristan actually looks pretty amused seeing the foe's blood on her shoe, convinced it goes well with her aesthetic, though it'll fade after a couple seconds to leave her looking not quite as fashionable. Aside from dealing good damage, two hits, and serving as a KO move, this sweetspot even has an extra benefit! If you land it on a shield, the shieldstun is actually high enough that it puts Tristan at a small frame advantage on block, letting you go in for a grab. This frame advantage even gets good enough to guaruntee a grab while Grimalkin's out, which considering the variety of powerful curses grab offers is a pretty strong punish to shielding opponents. Again, landing the sweetspot on shield is far from a casual thing for Tristan, but it does give her a way to genuinely punish shielding if spaced well, a rare sight in Tristan's set with her lackluster anti-shield options.
Finally, right up against Tristan's body is a sourspot that only deals 4% for the first hit and 4% for the second, but leaves the foe close and in range for combos. You can combo Jab, Down Special, or Nair out of this primarily, with Nair being your go to option if Grimalkin is up and Down Special being a solid backup if it isn't. The slight loss in damage is arguably worth it for the added combo potential, making this move at its strongest at close and far ranges.
Under Grimalkin's effects, fishing for the sweet and sourspot hits becomes a fair bit easier as Tristan's invulnerability will give her, as well as the fact that this move now comes out on Frame 7. It doesn't really open up new combo opportunities for the sourspot aside from Fair, which really isn't at its best at close range. Given Tristan's anti-dodge options as well, having a move that goes plus on block with the sweetspot has some additional utility because it lets you really rip through their shield's health with a second hit to it while still invulnerable and force them to rely on their dodges to avoid Tristan's onslaught. This is a pretty solid move all around, its main problem being that Frame 10 is admittedly a bit slow for a tilt in Smash Ultimate, which can cause problems for Tristan in Neutral.
Up Tilt - The Void of Britain
Raising her leg up, Tristan does a high kick up at the air, coming out on Frame 6 and dealing 8% on her leg and 11% on the sweetspot at her shoe's heel. The knockback on this doesn't change drastically either way, its basic launching knockback that scales a bit poorly to kill at 210%(180% at the heel), but lets Tristan go into an aerial pursuit of the foe as they're launched right above her. Tristan's air game is solid, especially with her top tier air speed and first jump, so its nice to have a good lead in to that, but this move's horizontal range is admittedly pretty poor. That said, it does come out on Frame 3 under Grimalkin and the upwards reach is actually pretty solid, so there's overall a fair bit going for this move. If you want something with more horizontal range, its not like Tristan doesn't have her fair share of options for that.
Now this is a pretty basic air combo enabler at first glance, but this move has a follow up, and the follow up is a lot more... dramatic. Imitating Ganondorf's Up Tilt, a cursed black and red aura surrounds Tristan's leg as she draws in power, before slamming it down in an explosion of curses and red energy that deals a whopping 33% and knockback that KOs at 60%. Like Ganondorf's Up Tilt, the opponent is drawn towards Tristan with a strong wind hitbox... and like Ganondorf's Up Tilt, it takes until frame 60 for Tristan to drop her leg on the foe. For obvious reasons, landing this follow up is going to be insanely hard, but the range is formidable especially when you factor in the powerful wind hitbox setting the move up. Of course, it could just pull the foe right into your face to attack you if you throw it out carelessly, but at the very least its a decent threat at the ledge, packing a level of raw power unseen elsewhere in Tristan's moveset barring some exceptional circumstances. It even hits opponents on the ledge, which makes it just that little bit more formidable for guarding it. That said, this is still a slightly modified Ganondorf Up Tilt, so you're really going to want to just use the regular Up Tilt and be done with it most of the time.
That said, this move is more useful than it sounds for a couple reasons. The big one, obviously, is Grimalkin. It cuts the start lag of this move to 42 frames while increasing the strength of the wind hitbox to draw foes in more strongly, making up for the decreased period of time it has to pull the opponent in. This pushes it from "basically unusable outside of ledge situations" to "especially factoring in the wind hitbox, it can work on a hard read" in terms of lag. The thing that makes it even better is that the 42 frames of start lag are not nearly as miserable when the opponent can't really punish you for them due to the straight up invincibility Grimalkin provides. It even gives you a consolation prize if the actual hitbox whiffs, because the opponent is dragged right up into your face by the wind hitbox for further combos and pressure. Sure, the end lag is high enough the opponent will be at a decent frame advantage, but given you're invincible and close to them its still an advantageous position for you despite that. Given the high end lag of directional air dodges too, if you can pressure the foe into using one of those to get around your attacks, that's an excellent window to go for this move, as well as if you manage to score a shield break on the opponent. That's particularly notable as you can use this to draw in opponents who get shield broken blocking your Noble Phantasm, giving you something arguably even more potent to smash them with afterwards. Even in the post-invulnerability period of Grimalkin, a bad whiff on the opponent's end can lead into this and spell doom for them especially with the help of the wind hitbox's pull, so that window is generally the best time to use this move.
One other thing to keep in mind this move is really good with a Down Smash trap set up. Using Up Tilt's wind hitbox to keep them close to you while waiting for that to activate means the opponent is basically going to get punished by the explosion even if they knock you away barring a really well timed quick hit into shield. And the two hits, one of which deals fairly massive damage, back to back, will overwhelm shields and dodges that aren't carefully planned out or already worn down by previous staling and shield damage. This is arguably the most powerful thing you can do with a Down Smash trap, but keep in mind opponents will absolutely see it coming when this move has 55/42 frames of lag and is locked behind a follow up, plus Down Smash traps are a pretty heavy investment to begin with.
You're far less likely to get results going for this compared to your other options out of Grimalkin, so to sweeten the deal, this move has an extra incentive. The massively powerful follow up hit actually charges your Noble Phantasm twice as much as normal, effectively charging it like an attack that would deal 66%. This nearly fully charges your Noble Phantasm on its own with just one curse on the foe, and charges it past 100% if you have 2 curses on the foe. If you have a full set of 3, you'll charge the NP bar to 160% from 0% in one hit, which is downright insane, although the stars definitely have to align pretty hard for you to pull this off. That said, this does make going for the 3 curse stack + Evil Curse even more worthwhile, considering maxed out Evil Curse makes landing an impractical laggy move like this much easier. If the stars align even further and you get Forward Throw's effect to activate on the opponent during this move while the opponent has 3 curses layered on, then it will instead deal an effective 86%, which is enough to instantly charge the meter all the way to 200%, and then add a flat +30% on top of that. If you somehow get the stars to align like that, not only do you get access to a long range instant KO from the very start of the opponent's next stock(since they will, presumably, die from Up Tilt), it puts you on track to genuinely go for a 300% Noble Phantasm, netting you effectively a 3 stock lead in total and probably ending the match on the spot if the 200% Noble Phantasm wouldn't already.
Obviously, this is a bit of a pipe dream where everything goes your way, but an opponent dealing with several stacked curses and Grimalkin buffed Tristan simultaneously cannot afford to make mistakes when this exists to provide the threat of a free Noble Phantasm charge at the start of the next stock at the minimum. When the risk is not getting much mileage out of Grimalkin invulnerability as opposed to death or severe punishment, its definitely worth it to fish for this over a safer option sometimes, as the raw kill power and Noble Phantasm charge are absolutely worth the risk.
Dash Attack - Fae Whirl
Stepping forward out of her dash, Tristan does three spinning kicks, sliding forward as she does so, a bit of energy glowing at the tip of her extended boot. This deals 3 hits as she slides forward half a battlefield platform, the first 2 hits dealing 5% and dragging the foe along, and the last hit dealing 7% and diagonal knockback that KOs at 185%. Tristan's kick has a tiny bit of wind up to it, leaving this move to come out on Frame 12, and the end lag is pretty punishable albeit not outright awful. This move will stop Tristan's movement forward at a ledge, but she will continue the spin kicks. There's a small spray of blood after the last spinning kick with a bit of extra hitlag as her heel digs into the foe more, emphasizing this move's impact as it does deal a pretty impressive 17% for a dash attack.
Dash Attack is not really a move that's used to extend or start combos or fish for kills, as it doesn't connect into much of anything else and takes too long to start killing for it to be anything other than a desperation kill move. That said, while this isn't a true combo out of Forward Tilt's medium hit except at a couple very specific character dependent percents, its close enough to one a good portion of the time that going for this move out of FTilt can often land you a hit as long as you at least mix things up if you mix things up from time to time to throw off the opponent's timing and predictions. As the end to a combo string, this attack tacks on a formidable 17%, gets Tristan a fair amount of space, and deals 3 hits for the cases where that's relevant, nor is it a particularly slow move to just throw out to fish for some damage, so it can play a respectable role in Tristan's game as a riskier neutral option as well. Its not an amazingly rewarding move to land, but the combination of reach and damage makes it a generally respectable option.
Of course, under Grimalkin this move goes from solid to exceptional, as while it still lacks in terms of reward it becomes easier to connect into out of FTilt(if still a bit percent specific and finnicky), and with the start lag cut to 9 frames and the end lag drastically reduced, it becomes a much safer move to throw out even if it whiffs. Notably, while Tristan won't gain a lot of combo opportunities out of this move, she will get a lot of frame advantage out of the Grimalkin, enough that going for her Noble Phantasm or detonating a Soul Burn is actually quite likely to work and even can be a true combo at certain percentages. Its very rare you can go Grimalkin -> FTilt -> Dash Attack -> Noble Phantasm, as most characters don't have percent windows where that's feasible and you need a full meter to do it anyway, but when you do pull it off(or possibly use the Up Throw curse to make one part of the process connect that wouldn't otherwise) its quite satisfying.
This move also bullies foes hard out of Grimalkin due to being an invincible approach, and one that's faster moving than Down Smash and carries much more threat and range than Up Special. It does lack Down Smash's movement fakeout potential and the ability to cover both sides, however, so its not really as versatile, but this is a great way to get aggressive and pile on some extra hits that opponents will struggle to react to properly. And if you want to make this move genuinely scary, the hands allowing it to link into Noble Phantasm is one option, but another is Killer's Mark. Adding 10% to the last hit of this move, due to how the knockback formula factors in damage, actually boosts this move's knockback into the stratosphere and lets it kill at around 70%. That's straight up horrifying especially if you activated it during Grimalkin where you can bully the foe with this move's increased speed and your general invulnerability, and arguably makes it the best Killer's Mark payoff in your set to go for. Just keep in mind the moment you lose invulnerability spamming this move is a prime opportunity for you to get punished especially given the three hits give it a somewhat longer duration, and if Grimalkin's speed boost isn't active this isn't exactly a fast attack period.
Aerials
Neutral Aerial - Cursed Vortex
Closing her eyes a bit to focus, a ribbon of red and black energy circles around Tristan, starting from right below her feet and rapidly spinning around her and up over her head. This a pretty quick attack, coming out on Frame 6 and dealing lightly upward weak diagonal knockback and 8%. At some lower percents and with help from Tri-platform stages, this can chain into itself twice, though the end lag is a bit too much to do more than that with much consistency. Still, with a few moves to connect into it like sourspot FTilt and DTilt, Nair can serve as a decent spammable combo move, and it can at go into Tristan's Uair as well. If you're trying to activate Killer's Mark, rack up Soul Burn duration, build up blood for Fae Vamprisim, or just build up to your Noble Phantasm with any selection of curses on the foe, Nair is just one of your most reliable damage builders. The one downsides is compared to a character like resident puke green "goddess" Palutena who can just spam their Nair into oblivion, the short range on this Nair and slightly awkward end lag makes that a lot less safe and a lot less powerful, so Tristan can't really do the "Nairplane" playstyle all that well.
Well, except when Grimalkin's up, where the move's end lag weaknesses are fixed and the start lag is shaved to Frame 4. So if you want to go all in on spamming Nair at that point, feel free, because it goes from a decent combo tool to one better than the almighty Palutena Nair aside from the short range. It comes out faster, it can string into itself a greater number of times, and for a short period its backed up by Tristan being totally invulnerable, making this a very strong reward for landing Grimalkin. All the curses that encourage you to pile on a bunch of hits and damage love having this consistent of an option for doing so, and you have a good few options to start Nair chains besides just relying on Nair's short range on top of that, making it less of a problem.
Of course, I talk up all the good parts of Nair chains with Grimalkin's help, but the fact is that its more a safe and easy option to go for than an absurdly powerful one. You'll certainly build like 30%-40% off this easily, sometimes even more, and its not terribly hard to pull off... but its also by no means guaranteed. A foe playing hyper defensively can avoid this move's short range if Tristan doesn't predict them well enough, this isn't quite as obnoxiously likely to land as Jab. Grimalkin curse boosted setups with any of the smashes or curse applying moves are also potentially higher reward than this move, and don't even get me started on Up Tilt. Plus, you're pretty predictable if your goal is always going for Nair chains, which you can't afford to be when the height of your power only lasts for 1.75 seconds long and the rest of that buff only lasts for 3.25 seconds longer, after which you have to land another Smash Attack lag move to get back this incredibly strong option. So while the "Nairplane" playstyle with Grimalkin is undeniably good between this move's raw speed and Tristan's great aerial mobility, its hardly the end all be all.
Although, it is worth remembering that this move can be high reward if you really want it to be. The Up Throw's hand curse, if you can time the window right, gives this move the potential to chain into Grimalkin and Side Special. Obviously that'll only work if you can actually land this move, but it does come out on Frame 4 and the fact that this move can chain into itself a few times means the timing window becomes a lot less strict. Plus, with Side Special it has the backup function of letting that chain actually kill confirm, you just have to have landed a throw first, which considering this also has the requirement of landing Grimalkin is not exactly a trivial pre-requisite to get your "Nairplane" into KO chain.
Down Aerial - Crushing Insects
Bringing her knee up, Tristan stomps down with one of those fancy shoes of her's as a laser flash is seen off her boot, extending this move's range a good deal. This move comes out on Frame 17, which is very slow for an aerial, but deals a very formidable 17% and a spike strong enough to kill from a groundbounce at a bit above 100% at Tristan's actual boot. The laser flare only deals 14% and a groundbounce that kills at 130%, but considering it extends the kick to have range greater than than that of any sword in Smash barring edgelord shampoo enthusiast Sephiroth, this is a very, very potent spike. Keep in mind the laser won't go through a ledge so you can't use this to 2 frame foes, because that would be kind of disgusting, but it does give Tristan a ferociously powerful if predictable finisher against opponents recovering low. And onstage, when you factor in the range? Its not an awful KO move. Having to get above the opponent to use it is certainly wonky, but your Fair at least sets up for it well.
The thing about Tristan is that her KO options actually end up a bit situational, being locked behind curses in the case of her Noble Phantasm or Pseudo Rhongomyniad, not as potent as the risk involved would entail in the case of Side Special or Forward Smash, or just kind of wonky to actually pull off consistently in the case of Down Smash, Forward Tilt, and especially Up Tilt. This move probably isn't how you want to kill the foe, given groundbouncing foes with it is a bit clunky, but the formidable range and bonus utility as an insane edgeguarding tool at least lets it serve as a solid backup kill move. Its also worth mentioning if the foe has a 2 or more layered on them, you could actually go for a combo of this move into Up Smash by fastfalling right afterwards, which is an extremely potent combo that will kill quite a bit earlier than even the sweetspotted Dair especially with a stored Grimalkin curse charge, making this move way scarier if the foe's got a couple curses layered on.
And under Grimalkin, the start lag of this move is shaved down all the way to 11 frames. I said Tristan had problems killing, but being able to threaten a giant spiking hitbox or, with a couple curses, a giant hitbox that combos into a disgustingly early Up Smash kill on frame 11 is horrifying, and showcases the fact that Tristan's conditional power is something to behold. This can be even easier to pull off if the opponent is dealing with the lingering effects of a curse powered Forward or Down Smash from earlier in Grimalkin's effect, and shows exactly what I mean when I say going for safer Nair combos and Jab setups isn't always worth it. The rewards for playing a bit faster and looser with Grimalkin are just absurdly high.
Back Aerial - Burning Arc
With a bit of a spin to her movement, Tristan kicks out one leg behind her and brings it down toward the ground in a wide arc that takes her whole body moving with it. This wide arc motion actually resembles Bowser's Forward Aerial a bit, and while he might be a bathtub enthusiast that gets regularly beaten up by an overweight plumber, Bowser does own a hell of a fantastic Forward Aerial. Tristan's doesn't quite measure up in power(though with a bit of elegance to the motion she has the ugly lug beat in style), only dealing 9% and medium low diagonal knockback with most of her leg and 13% and similarly angled knockback that kills at 150% at her boot. While that sweetspot is pretty potent, keep in mind it only exists at the tip of her range, so it can be a bit tricky to land. This move has some big range, extended by a bit of energy at the tip of her boot and Tristan's generally long legs swinging in a motion she puts quite a lot of backwards movement into, so while its not as long ranged as Bowser's Fair, it can at least serve a similar purpose of boxing foes out hard. The move comes out on the same frame, 11, which makes it a pretty solid move for pressuring foes across the stage with its raw range even if its a bit lacking in terms of true combo potential. You can also mix up foes by going in close for Nairs, which is a riskier option given the short range but can go into further damage strings and mess with opponent's dodges.
This move's potential to zone opponents to the edge or through the air becomes kind of absurd under Grimalkin. Obviously adding invulnerability to this already formidable move is great, but having access to a power/range nerfed but still potent equivalent to Bowser's Fair that comes out on Frame 8 and only goes -4 on shield is kind of unreal in terms of how good it is. Sure, it lacks the true combos of Nair and with its short duration the foe can outlast it, but it definitely gives you more stage control than Nair would with its range and ability to shunt foes around the stage quicker. Its even pretty easy to start this "wall of pain" tactic if you want to, because Down Tilt lets you get right behind the opponent at a frame advantage to go for this. As your Fair can be a bit wonky to get much advantage out of and Nair strings have their disadvantages over Bair pressure in terms of how good of positioning they give you, it actually is the right move to end Down Tilt after the first hit sometimes if you're interested in pushing for an edgeguard strategy, although its certainly higher risk than just going for the more obvious Nair combos. Also while I do talk up this move's good qualities, not having the range and power of Bowser's Fair makes its shortcomings in terms of lag much more apparent, so foes behind Tristan can use that to take the advantage if she whiffs or relies too hard on this move's range over all else. Certainly a potent positioning option in Tristan's kit, however, and perhaps more interesting if you want to accelerate an opponent's bleeding...
Forward Aerial - Blood Shards
With a brief stall in the air, Tristan fires forth a barrage of 4 small projectiles in succession, each dealing 3% and a flinch and traveling downward at a 55 degree angle traveling a distance that goes a bit further than Tristan's first jump. This move comes out on Frame 13, and does leave Tristan at a small frame advantage if she uses it on a foe up close, but otherwise is a bit of an underwhelming move if you're not using it for its long reach. That said, by virtue of the time it takes to travel, this move actually gets better at longer ranges provided you hit the foes with all 4 projectiles, and they do hit relatively close together even at max range. This improves the frame advantage you'd get out of hitting this move, able to combo into itself if you hit out of a full hop, and most terrifyingly, it can combo into Dair at max range. Considering what Dair is contextually capable of with a heavily cursed foe, or off the ledge, the ability to go Fair to Dair is a very, very scary string for Tristan to have access to, but hitting with the Fair from that height above the stage is pretty difficult and will most likely happen at the ledge rather than anything else. Fair to Fair strings are also good at least, as while you won't get a third Fair most likely its one of the easiest ways in your set to pile on a lot of hits for Soul Burn. That said, this move isn't particularly effective at close range, which can be a problem for Tristan in disadvantage states where she's forced to rely on Nair or Down Special to get her out of them. It also does extremely little shield damage, although the multi-hit will lock the foe in shield for long enough you won't necessarily go into the kind of frame disadvantage some of your techniques cause on shield, at least.
If you hit with this move at less than the optimal range to combo Dair or Fair, there are other options. You can go and 50/50 out of this move with Side Special or Dair due to both moves having massive range, and while its certainly riskier than the true combo options its a very potent 50/50 when it works. Speaking of Side Special, that becomes a true combo option at max range out of Grimalkin, which also reduces this move's start lag to 10 frames. It also improves the windows in which you can combo into Dair or loop back into this move, allowing you to potentially spam it 3 times on one target if you hit with one at the peak of its range. That said, one thing to keep in mind is even though the spread of projectiles isn't very wide, you won't always hit with them even on smaller targets, so sometimes if you pull off a max range Fair but don't land all the hits you'll have to go for a 50/50 or a lesser follow up than you planned. Its also a bit hard to combo this into your less laggy close range options, given the max range puts them well out of reach of said options while moving in for a Dair or a Side Special is totally feasible within that time frame.
This move makes less use of Grimalkin's invulnerability than a lot of Tristan's other options, but it is sometimes pretty relevant. Obviously, this is a bit of a punishable move and even if you're whiffing it at long range, not having to worry about the foe's response as you DI in for another, different attack is a lot better than having to worry about getting punished. Grimalkin's speedup also helps the close range version of this move by letting it combo into Nair, and even makes it a safer move to throw out against characters with reflectors who will throw it right back at Tristan to no effect, leaving her to punish their reflection attempt. On the whole, this is a flawed and risky Fair that will leave Tristan reliant on her other aerials a large portion of the time, but the high rewards it offers her at long ranges to convert into powerful mid and close range options afterwards will frequently make the associated risk worth it. Plus, it can even situationally combo into Soul Burn and, during Grimalkin at max range, it sets up your Noble Phantasm outright, which provides Tristan with a terrifying pair of additional threats out of this move to make her 50/50's that much scarier.
Up Aerial - Ray Arc
Energy claws form around Tristan's fingers again as she slashes her hand above her in a small arc, which is followed by a red ray of energy trailing above her at a downward diagonal slant. The claw and the raw collide together at the end of the arc to create a burst of sparks, which serves as the sweetspot of this move. The ray individually deals 7% and modest upward diagonal knockback that will put foes out of range of close range combos without platforms to assist, but it can help set up Nair chains under Grimalkin or let you pester the foe with 1-2 Nairs even without it. The clawing motion will send the foe directly up and deal 8%, not KOing until unreasonably high percentages but serving as an acceptable juggling tool when you factor in the larger range and coverage the ray gives this move. Both hits can serve as an effective combo finisher when Nair is struggling to combo into itself, not really acting as much of a kill move but letting you tack on one more hit where the rest of your aerials would not really give you that option, and its also just a solid coverage move from above with the relatively wide arc of aerial space the two hitboxes cover combined and the fact that it comes out on Frame 9.
We have not covered the sweetspot yet, but the sparking burst deals 3 hits of 2% followed by a final hit of 12% and diagonal mostly upward knockback that kills at 160%... from the top platform of battlefield's height. Yeah even with the sweetspot, this isn't a particularly formidable kill move, and its awkward positioinng relative to Tristan's body makes it tricky to land compared to the lower reward sweetspots. That said, tricky doesn't mean impossible. If you weave your hitboxes around the opponent well while performing Nairs and use your high aerial speed to the fullest, you can follow a Nair into this move, ending the combo string on a quadruple hit that deals 18% instead of a single hit that deals 7% or 8%, which is a massive increase in the reward. And you might think the fact that it doesn't KO well makes it not worth fishing for, but those extra hits and damage can be necessary to get some extra healing or a Pseudo Rhongomyniad out of Fae Vampirism, or further increase the duration of a Soul Burn. As a final note, the sweetspot occuring in the air above and in front of you provides a very real threat to foes approaching from that direction, which is helpful as Fair does not cover that due to its odd angle and properties.
Grimalkin gives the move some obvious benefits, cutting the start lag to Frame 7 makes it easier to pull off, fishing for sweetspots while juggling a foe with this gets easier when you don't have to worry about retaliation, and setting up the sweetspot out of Nair combos gets easier when Nair's self-comboing ability is so much higher. Using the invincibility this provides to trap landings makes it easier to keep foes in the air where they don't have access to their shield too. But another thing to keep in mind is that, like Dash Attack, this move's sweetspot massively benefits from Killer's Mark. Not to quite the same degree, but boosting that last hit to deal 22% gives Tristan a vicious kill option out of Nair strings as it will now kill at closer to 90% at a top battlefield platform, so you can get some disturbingly early kills on tri-plat stages and some respectably early kills even on Final Destination. Of course, this does require pulling off Killer's Mark in the first place and even under Grimalkin's, lining up the sweetspot isn't as easy as casually true comboing into it out of any Nair, you'll need to actually position yourself well for it. Good thing positioning games are much easier to win in that brief window where you're invincible!
Extras
Alternate Costumes
Tristan's first 4 costumes all use her outfit for her first ascension(which is basically different costumes/art characters get as they level up in game) as depicted in her intro. Her second variant is based heavily on Fairy Knight Gawain's color scheme, specifically the black, purple and blue look of her second ascension, the white in her outfit being replaced with black, the black with blue, and purple replacing the red body of the outfit. Her second 1st ascension alt is based heavily on Fairy Knight Lancelot, and this one basically switches out the reds of her outfits for lighter blues with darker blues for the black parts. The final 1st ascension ascension alt is based heavily on Morgan, which means its the best alt, goes for a mostly black dress with some blue highlighting it.
Tristan's next two alts are based on her second ascension. There is one person in this universe as cool as Morgan, and that is Sakurai, who has established that Smash is for good boys and girls. Apparently Fate/Grand Order's designers absolutely did not get the memo, so we're going to have to modify this outfit. A lot. While the weird spiky black sandals/high heels she's wearing stay, the black veil over her is modified into something like a light robe which partially covers her body, but is still split down the middle to at least slightly retain the spirit of the original. But undernearth, rather than just... whatever she's wearing in her second ascension, it barely qualifies as clothes, we're just going to go with something rather similar to Zero Suit Samus' athletic wear, but switched to a black color scheme. The spiky "crown" remains.
By comparison, the third ascension's design is a lot closer to the original, with one major change. The actual dress component actually covers Tristan's body up until those weird stockings start pretty comprehensively, a simple fancy white dress that doesn't have the... frankly concerning amount of skin showing her third ascension does. It still does show the greying skin around her neck though, as it doesn't cover her shoulders.
Tristan's animations that show a lot of enthusiasm for her bloodshed take on a more morose or aggressive tone if she has one of her two third ascension alts active. She's clearly not enjoying her carnage nearly as much as she reverts closer to her original nature. Her taunts and victory poses will also change accordingly.
Her second ascension and third ascension alternate colors, of which she has one each, are also based on more major Lostbelt 6 spoilers. The first of which is her second ascension alt, which adds streaks and spots of faded blues and a grey and light blue headpiece. This is based off Oberon-Vortigern, the final antagonist of the Lostbelt. Her third ascension's alternate costume adds a red set of red symbols on her outfit in a pattern that loosely resembles the face of Cernunnos, and also replaces her big hat with a pair of ghostly grey antlers, perhaps the closest we'll get to a "Prophet of Cernunnos" look for her. She still seems just as miserable though, sadly, but considering her god is a corpse puppeteered by thousands of years of built up curses, that's not really surprising.
Taunts and Victory Poses
Up Taunt
Smugly leaning forward with a smirk on her face, Tristan says "Is that all, trash?" This one is absolutely for BM and not for taunt parties, in case that wasn't obvious.
Side Taunt
In a flash of magic, Tristan creates a quick mockup of the outfit of the nearest opponent! And... most of the time, her reaction will just be "Feh, lame" before causing it to vanish in a burst of red and black energy. Occasionally with certain high fashion outfits, however, Tristan will display an interest and stash away a copy in hammerspace. A lot of Jojo characters particularly in Part 5, for example, have oufits that will catch her interest.
Down Taunt
Humming to herself, Tristan dances a little in place, attempting to match beat with the background music. If the song's too fast-paced or extremely slow like some of the Pikmin stage songs, she'll try to keep pace for part of the taunt and then shake her head, followed by an "ugh, too fast" if its high tempo or "boring..." if its low tempo.
Victory Pose 1
Tristan's brought herself a prize from the battle, a nice new fancy pair of shoes that just so happen to have a couple suspicious bloodstains on them. She proudly shows them off to the camera, but hey, the foe is still clapping in the loss pose as usual so clearly she didn't take them from anyone important at least.
Victory Pose 2
Crossing her arms with a mean-spirited smirk on her face, Baobhan Sith poses lightly for the camera while taunting the player. "That was so lame, couldn't you have at least made it interesting?"
Victory Pose 3
Tristan twirls a bit dramatically for the camera, before playing a couple notes on Failnaught, and just generally looking like she's enjoying herself with that smile on her face the whole time.
Loss Pose
Tristan does look a little grumpy clapping for the opponent, as she's a bit of a sore loser. That said, if the opponent happened to be Morgan, she's shown to be a lot more enthusiastic and occasionally pauses her clap to outright cheer.
Victory Pose With Morgan
Morgan sits triumphantly on her throne, her usual somewhat morose expression on her face... only for Tristan to walk in from the side, offering Morgan a cup of tea and sitting next to her. Morgan seems to brighten up as Tristan sits next to her throne, occasionally drinking from her own cup.
Up Taunt
Tristan holds her head, muttering rather loudly in frustration. "Headache..." She murmurs to herself, which is actually still a good BM taunt if the opponent did something incredibly stupid.
Side Taunt
Gritting her teeth, Tristan seems to almost spit in frustration. "Worthless fairies, I'll kill you!"
Down Taunt
With a much more half-hearted attempt at dancing that her first or second ascensions, Tristan fails to match the beat of the music much at all. She murmurs to herself as she dances. "Baobhan Sith, Baobhan Sith. The cute girl with the red heels..."
Victory Pose 1
Claws slash the camera as its forced to look down, and Tristan is glaring up at the camera, looking very similar to how she does in her Ascension 4 art, which is also what I used for her Smash section header image. She occasionally looks away from the camera, seemingly losing her self in thought for a moment. None of Ascension 3 Tristan's victory poses use a victory theme at all, to set the mood.
Victory Pose 2
With an insane look in her eye, Tristan laughs at the camera. "Be crushed... Be crushed, be crushed!" She bites down rather intensely on the strange root-like thing in her mouth in this victory pose once the screen pauses.
Victory Pose 3
Tristan is simply shown in silent prayer, the background entirely black in this one. A white figure can be seen floating in the shadow, with Tristan looking back to it as its facial markings make it clear that this is the figure of Cernunnos. Its not fully corporeal, and Tristan is just left looking back upon it during the pause segment.
Loss Pose
Compared to her Ascension 1/2 loss pose, Ascension 3 Tristan looks... almost happy at the opponent's victory, clearly respecting their win.
Victory Pose with Morgan
Sitting on the ground, Tristan just looks exhausted, only for Morgan to come by and place a hand firmly on her hat, before sliding it down to ruffle her hair a little. "You did well out there." She says with a smile, and that actually gets Tristan to look back at her with a surprisingly relaxed and almost happy expression. Even through all the pain she's in, Morgan's presense is still deeply calming for her.
"I am Fairy Knight Gawain, and I'll be entering your faction from this day forth. What's with that look? Is my face that strange? Hm? It's not me who's strange, but my name? ...I-I see. Well, if that's the case, I don't really mind...
(Could it be...that the real Sir Gawain is here...?)"
Fairy Knight Gawain
(aka The Barghest Black Dog)
Parameters:
Strength: B+
Agility: A
Luck: C
Endurance: A
Mana C:
Noble Phantasm: B+
Height: 190cm / 6' 2"
Weight: 120kg / 264 lbs
Source: England's Fae History and Lostbelt Britain
Region: Fae Country - Oxford
Alignemtn: Chaotic Good
Gender: Female
"No matter what world it may be, survival of the fittest is the absolute rule. The weak can only obey the strong."
One of the main characters of "Lostbelt No. 6: Faerie Round Table Domain, Avalon le Fae", the current latest crisis / story inside of Fate/Grand Order, Fairy Knight Gawain is one of Morgan le Fay's fairy Knights of the Round Table and has been granted the name and powers of the historical Round Table Knight Gawain (hence the name).
Statistics
At 190cm, Gawain stands at the same size as the largest in Smash Brothers, with her being roughly the same size as Ganondorf with a chunkier top half. Her weight is considerable to go alongside this, with her 130 weight making her the third heaviest character in Smash Brothers and excellent at taking hits. Despite this extremely heavyweight frame and weight, she moves at a speed equal to Cloud's dash (2.167, 13th in the game) with a walk speed of 1.5 (5th in the game behind Greninja's 1.502), which also means she can move fairly fast in non committal ways. Somewhat high traction, but nothing spectacularly so. The length of her sword for attacks can generally be compared to Ike's as a girthy broadsword.
Her air speed is a bit chunkier than her ground speed, but being equal to Mii Swordfighter's 19th ranked air speed is still certainly valuable (1.17). Her fall speed is quite high, equal to Sephiroth's at 12th (1.84), which combined with her immense size and high weight means she's true combo food, a serious burden to her. She's got some pretty high jumps to go with them though, with a first jump equal to Samus/Dark Samus (13th, 37) and a second jump between Captain Falcon and Lucario at 37.5 (16th). No crawls, wall jumps or floats here, Gawain's stats are as they are: A beeftank who can charge with incredible speed and is just as liable to get damage racked up on her quickly.
Mechanic: Survival of the Fittest
"I might have become a Servant, but my belief won't change. Survival of the fittest. The weak obey the strong. Understood?"
Based on Gawain's skill of the same name, this is a passive ability that affects everybody in the match, so listen up worms! In a world of Survival of the Fittest, only the strongest commands this power! While Gawain is in a match, whenever someone with the lowest damage percent hits an opponent, they get a heal off! This heal is equal to 1/3rd of the attack's damage OR a flat 3%, whichever is higher (so weak jabs still heal 3%!), and on top of that the vigor of superiority (and also all the magic involved here) grants the opponent a buff that increases that character's damage by 1.1x. This buff can stack up to 5 times to a maximum of 1.5x, although the knockback addition is only treated as if the damage was buffed by half (1.05x -> 1.25x), and each "stack" lasts 10 seconds after the hit. Stacks don't refresh each other and all have their own timer, so let's say someone got a hit off each second for 5 seconds, the first stack is at 5 seconds, the next is at 6, until you get to the latest attack at 10 seconds.
As an effect that works for the lowest percent, this is NOT a comeback ability, but instead a snowball ability: Keep up the pressure and not only get potential attack buffs, but heal off damage you may have taken in the process. This perfectly fits into Gawain's hyper-aggressive playstyle and the fact she's so bulky means the healing will give her even more survivability, but it also represents a big downside she has to play around due to the sheer ability to combo her given her stats, she is very likely to start 30%+ in the hole if opponents land a combo starter and be facing down an opponent with multiple damage buffs against her, and probably in disadvantage. Characters can tell how buffed they are both a burning blue-and-purple (red-and-purple in her default alt outfits, changing color with other alt colors), which surges in size with each stack of buff, in addition to the Attack Up icon from Fate/Grand Order (a sword with an upwards arrow) on their HUD for each stack they have on them. Multi-hits only count the first attack for these purposes and having multiple Gawains in a match does not cause this to stack to her ludicrously stacked extremes or anything. Damage over time effects like Joker's Side Special do not trigger this buff, no free 1.5x with a single one for you Bad Joker Man!
While we went over all the buffs EVERYONE can get, Gawain has an added ability to this that only she (and other Gawains in a match) can use! Whenever Gawain hits someone who has any of the attack buffs, some of the aura is siphoned from the foe and into Gawain's impact, this causes the opponent to LOSE one stack of their attack buff, and in turn received a defensive DEBUFF that can be seen as the same color as the aura clouding that enemy's shield in addition to the Defense Down debuff symbol over their HUD (a shield with a down arrow, same as F/GO). This debuff has two effects, which like the attack buffs can stack up to 5 times. The first is a flat 4% damage buff to Gawain's shield damage, so at a maximum Gawain's attacks deal an extra 20% to shields! At that point, Gawain only needs an attack that deals about 22% to break a shield (42% + the natural 1.19x shields take in damage = 49.98%, shields have 50 HP), so opponents need to be veeeeeery careful about shielding attacks! It's even worse for them, though, as Gawain's attacks are blazing enough to get chip damage through a foe with a weakened shield, to the tune of 1/10th of the attack's damage. This includes the bonus shield damage. At full stacks, this means half of an attack's damage gets through!
It's not an easy buff to access and by definition the opponent has to have gotten one-up on you to get it out, but it's powerful as a tool AND an opponent whose ahead basically cannot avoid getting the attack buff on them, giving them a unique worry when ahead that Gawain doesn't have to worry about. Well, except in the Gawain mirror match, which can become VERY funny due to this ability! Each stack lasts for 20 seconds, twice as long as a buff, so it isn't something you can easily just walk off, although like the attack buff they all would be on different timer. Multihits etc also work the same way as the attack buff. With Gawain's life philosophy out of the way, let's get to the Specials!
Specials
Neutral Special: The Black Chains of Barghest
Drawing her non-sword hand back, Gawain sends out a chain from the many that wrap around it outwards in the direction Gawain chooses (forward by default). While range-y, this isn't an attack with that kinda "across the stage" projectile range, with 1.5 Battlefield Platforms worth of length. If the attack misses, then there's a notable bit of ending lag as she pulls the chain back to her, while if it hits it wraps around the opponent for 5% damage and very low ending lag on Gawain's part, leaving her with a few frames of advantage over the opponent. The starting lag is pretty mediocre, as well. This is one of the key parts of Gawain's hyper-aggressive playstyle, allowing her to keep her opponents close via tethering them to her!
While tethered to Gawain, opponents cannot move more than one and a half Battlefield Platforms away from her in any direction. Given they're both magic chains AND Gawain is more than muscular enough to pin down any opponent, Gawain is always in control of where the tether goes. No weight + speed shenanigans here (although given her stats she'd assuredly win in 99% of Smash MUs)! In Gawain mirrors, whichever Gawain lands the Neutral Special has control of course. This means if Gawain and the foe are 1.5 Battlefield Platforms away from each other and Gawain dashes away, the opponent will be dragged with her. But if the opponent tried to dash away, they'd be helplessly dashing against it and going nowhere. Perfect to corall those cowardly campers! This also means if Gawain is knocked away, she will drag the opponent with her, but if the opponent is knocked away, they'll be stuck taking the knockback against the chain's maxmimum distance! Once opponents begin taking knockback this way, they will be taking knockback in place even if Gawain gets close afterwards. While opponents CAN just dash away as Gawain dashes in, Gawain's high dash speed means she will likely catch up to them, and more importantly it means they can never be far enough away to truly feel safe.
There are a few ways to break the chain. Firstly, it will instantly and automatically break if Gawain dies, so don't think you can just run off the edge and Gawainicide casually, even Little Mac can recover from that since they can just save their double jump. Obviously, this will also occur if the foe dies. Secondly, dealing 30% damage to Gawain will break the chain. This is a lot of damage, but at low percents a single combo will likely do at least that much, and remember Gawain has a mechanic that'll be boosting people's attack power, so it's easier than you think. Thirdly, if either character would be launched 2.5 Battlefield Platforms or more of distance, the chain shatters as soon as the attack connects and that character is sent flying. Fourthly, if opponent takes knockback against the chain and it stops them, hitting them during it or within 20 frames of the hitstun ending will break the chain and send the opponent flying. In other words, comboing with the chain stopping knockback breaks it. As an anti-stall and anti-cheese measure, an opponent who enters helpless at the end of a chain is popped out of helpless and has their Up Special refreshed, and the chain breaks if this happens twice in a row with the second time also refreshing their second jump.
And finally, Gawain can input Neutral Special while tethered to an opponent in order to grip the chain and yank it towards her, creating a 5% damage hitbox that knocks opponents towards Gawain. Naturally, this uses up the chain. While this has slight starting lag to it, Gawain fancily wrapping the chain around her fist before pulling it, it is still fast enough to be unreactable at 13 frames. Still, it isn't casual to get off in neutral. The ending lag is very short and so this is a very ideal move for combos, as the hitstun is plenty enough to get a non-laggy attack off. While Gawain isn't punishable if this is shielded, note that this deals VERY low shield stun, so the opponent has frame advantage to either rush in after you or run away as they've been freed from their tether. Especially fast opponents or opponents with high burst mobility, think Sonic, Captain Falcon and Fox, CAN get a punish off Gawain by shielding with something like Dash Attack or Falcon Kick. Something worth noting is that the debuff's flat damage increase on shields will apply to this (why wouldn't it, after all?), so if you get some debuff stacks on the opponent it can become legitimately worrying to shield this despite the potential value, so the opponent might go with a much less rewarding roll for safety.
While Gawain can't just casually suicide if the opponent is smart, an opponent tethered to Gawain has to be somewhat careful near the ledge, mostly if they have a higher fall speed than Gawain (or fastfall to go faster than her). Gawain dying first means she can't just fall off the ledge, but the chain's maximum distance means that you can't just jump out of it, and if you fall faster than her you will be approaching the blast zone kinda closely. Gawain could try to Neutral Special the opponent and drag them towards her as she falls to the blast zone, but the normal combo potential is rather mitigated by only really being able to hit with Up Aerial from such a specific position, which kinda ruins the point of dragging them down. Not using any attack could lead to the opponent footstooling Gawain and recovering, and while this can be a useful situation to trade stocks Gawain will usually die first in last stock scenarios. This CAN be used to try and get someone recovering but Gawain has largely superior options than tethering and trying to drag someone down to suicide kill. Generally, save your double jump when tethered and you'll be fine unless Gawain does something risky.
Since this move can lead to the opponent's advantage state fairly easily if shielded and isn't that fast, it is thus rewarding to use it as a combo EXTENDER rather than starter in many cases, dragging an opponent you knocked away with an attack back to you for a 1-2-3 combo. Not only does it keep opponents well within her aggro range, but it also increases her actual damage potential with that! There's a few other niche applications in the set for the chain, but these are the main ones, and very important to how Gawain's set plays out.
Side Special: Predatory Instincts
Opening her mouth wide, although not to the exaggerated extremes of Wario, Gawain reaches out to take a bite out of the opponent! More than that, in fact: Just like Kirby or King Dedede, she swallows them up whole! Although, unlike Kirby and King Dedede, she doesn't get bigger in the process, the only indication they're inside being a different idle pose (Gawain plants her sword in the ground, with a bit of a thinking pose like Hero's Down Special) and the usual shaking effects of the opponent mashing. Actually eating the opponent deals no damage (and thus won't trigger her mechanic), if the opponent breaks out before you do anything they take 5% damage but will have the frame advantage as they pop out! This move's starting lag is somewhat longer than Wario's Chomp, with similar ending lag if whiffed, and ending lag roughly similar to Kirby spitting out an opponent if the actual attack part of this goes through. By the by, pulling in an opponent with Neutral Special will almost always combo into this attack!
As the intro may have clued you in on, Gawain can take on opponent's moves like Kirby can! Gawain has limits on what she can steal, though, so she's the opposite of Kirby in that she cannot steal Specials. For ease of use, she also cannot steal Pummels. Instead by choosing an input, Gawain will take on that aspect of herself with an audible "gulping" noise, before spitting out the opponent as a projectile that deals 8% damage and light knockback to anyone hit in the way, with them appearing like a fireball compared to a star like the Dream Land characters. This deals 10% damage to the foe who was spit out AND heals Gawain for 10%, this triggers Survival of the Fittest even if Gawain is not at the lowest damage! This is a way for Gawain to start on gettig buffed when behind, and on top of that is one of the best ways for her to get below foes in damage and allow her to start stacking up those delicious buffs. Tilts and Smashes are selected the exact way you'd expect, Aerials with Jump + Attack and Throws with Grab/Throw + Direction. In FFAs, taking on the same move of a different character overwrites the one you have, IE if you have taken Lucina's Forward Smash and then try to take Pyra's Forward Smash, you lose access to Lucina's Forward Smash and gain Pyra's.
Gawain cannot copy attacks with certain special mechanics, and if the attack is affected by a meter (IE Joker's Arsene) then it will always use the base version even if she swallowed one who was powered up. Gawain retains copied attacks through stocks, allowing her to build up a sizable alternative moveset throughout the match. Given that there's a LOT of moves of varying uses, it's kinda important to do so! Gawain will use any attack it makes sense to, such as kicks or sword slashes, with her pre-existing limbs and weapons. This means it uses her body size for the hitbox, which the vast majority of the time results in a slight range increase, although with something like Sephiroth's Forward Smash it'll be a slight range DECREASE. For anything she couldn't do normally, she fashions the appropriate weapon / body type / whatever with magic (most commonly making her chains into the shape of a weapon she doesn't have), and uses it as normal. For example, copying a Snake Forward Smash has her make the explosive weapon out of her chains, then firing a blast that's even color coded to her chains!
As for HOW Gawain uses these attacks, they're actually mapped to a third button, by default it is the Y Button (since by default X/Y are both jump, so redundant), but they can re-mapped at will (presumably with an "Other" input for any other characters that might use this idea, given by the time Fairy Knight Gawain is in the game there'd be like 4,000 other characters). Just input it normally but swap out Attack for Y, which from hereon out I will refer to as the "Copy Input" or "Copy", and it'll come out! Copy + Direction in the grab game for throws.
The exact usefulness of copying varies dramatically depending on your opponent, it isn't very useful to copy Olimar's Tilts after all, but even in matchups where it isn't useful you have a 10% damage + 10% heal hitbox attacked to it that is ALWAYS good, so the input has value. Commonly, the most valuable inputs to steal are: Powerful combo starters such as Mii Brawler Neutral Aerial or Up Aerial, granting Gawain useful starters into her heavyweight attacks compared to most faster characters, and powerful Out of Shield options due to Gawain's out of shield game generally being VERY poor (her Up Smash and Up Special are both almost useless out of shield and she has a slow grab). In 2v2s, you could eat your ally to double up on a valuable attack in a matchup as well, such as grabbing Bayonetta's Down Smash or Captain Falcon's Up Tilt against opponents with linear and gimpable recovers, but this is a niche tactic.
As a little easer egg, while Gawain can't copy the opponents taunts, she DOES gain alternative taunts while the opponent is eaten, with Up Taunt mocking the opponent for being weak on the food chain, Down Taunt being a belly pat and Side Taunt idly picking at her teeth while she's still thinking. These are never good to go for, since the opponent can break out during them like normal, but if you just REALLY wanna style on your opponent they sure are there.
Down Special: The Hounds of Hell
Leading her hand forward from an underhand position, almost as if throwing a ball in front of her, Gawain summons a pair of Black Dogs behind her! These are wisp-like dogs (most visually similar to a Doberman) with a blue (or red if alternate colored) hue and spots, which rush forward as they are summoned, leashed to Gawain on chains that extend as far as needed. This pair of Black Dogs are treated as one unit, taking knockback and hitstun together, and begin at the size of a small dog, but increase in size with charge until they reach about 1.3x Ivysaur size. The way this attack works is very similar to Zelda's Phantom with a few twists, the easiest being how Gawain can set when they launch: Tapping the control stick gives you Black Dogs that launch forward when there are only 15 frames left on Gawain's Down Special ending lag, while smashing it causes them to insead rush out 5 seconds later as a much delayed hitbox. Gawain can hold down B to charge up this attack for as long as Zelda's Phantom regardless of which variant is chosen. Black Dogs have 13-29 HP depending on the amount of charge as well, with this attack not taking toooooo long to start up (not counting charging it) and having fairly average ending lag. Still, the starting lag is high enough you would primarily wish to use it in advantage, or with the opponent far in neutral.
Black Dogs will rush into opponents with a bite for 7%-14% that at maximum charge still won't kill until 160%, but goes 2 Battlefield Platforms at minimum charge to the length of Final Destination at maximum charge, serving as Gawain's lone true anti-projectile option. While the HP is problematic for allowing enemies to stop attacks by killing the Black Dogs, it does also allow them to take hits from projectiles on their way forward to the foe! Black Dogs will dissipate into mist when hitting a wall or other solid object, traveling through it while intangible, reforming at the other side at their normal travel speed if possible and dissipating into nothing if not. When they go to a ledge without solid ground underneath they will turn around, but if there is ground underneath they will allow themselves to drop down instead. In the air, Black Dogs function like Zelda's Phantom and stay at the elevation the move was used at, including dutifully waiting there if summoned as the delayed version! This allows Gawain to make aerial traps to go with her excellent ground game. They travel at a moderate speed, so it isn't too hard to react to them in some capacity at all but close ranges yet at the same time Gawain absolutely loves if the opponent keeps taking predictable actions like jumping over them for her anti-airs and to take the advantage away.
This input doesn't do anything while the Black Dogs are out, BUT Gawain can re-input the Down Special within 20 frames of the Black Dogs hitting an opponent (which means the instant version gives Gawain a 5-frame window at point blank) in order to initiate a follow-up attack! This can be done even if they hit the opponent's shield, Gawain pulling back her sword when input, pointing it forward for a stabbing motion, and rushes forward towards the opponent at incredible speeds! This travels 2 Battlefield Platforms, so Gawain can't do this from the entire stage in order to approach people, but the speed at which she travels means she'll pretty much always get this if she inputs it and impact the opponent for 7% damage with her sword stabbing into the foe and gutting them, before brutally ripping it out of the side for another 7% damage that sends them flying hard enough to kill at 140%. In addition to providing great damage total (21% when combined with a minimum charge Black Dog), the opponent will likely have been launched to some degree by the Black Dog's initial hit and so be closer to the blast zone. Gawain automatically rushes directly at the foe who was hit, so she doesn't really need to worry about spacing.
This isn't enough to insta-break an enemy's shield from full health with a minimum power Black Dog even with all 5 shield debuffs on the foe (this attack is treated as a multihit for the purposes of the debuff because otherwise it'd be kinda crazy), but it'll come pretty close and really beat down the opponent's shield (it ends up with about 2 HP at maximum debuff vs. maximum shield health). Note that the Black Dog's hitstun is not enough to get Gawain to the opponent's shield before they can act fast enough in the last 0.5 Battlefield Platforms of her rush to get out an attack, so depending on the opponent they could punish you from that distance. This attack is also somewhat prone to getting parried due to the predictable nature of the follow-up, and Gawain can definitely get punished if the last hit is parried given it has kinda long ending lag. The opponent gets frame advantage from the last hit normally, but it has quite nice shield push so most out of shield options can't reach her before she recovers, although especially long ones will lead to her being punished. Be mindful when rushing in headfirst to crush your enemies beneath your heels and you'll be fine!
Up Special: Chains of Avalon
Gawain pulls her non-sword hand in as the chains on they twitch, before shooting them out! By default this is at an angle like Byleth's Up Special, but there's a brief period where Gawain can angle it in any direction. The chain won't snap to the ledge, but functions like an older tether in that it will drag Gawain to any ground she hits with it, allowing her to Spider-Man her way to walls! She will also drag herself to opponents she hits, who takes 4% damage and a little bit of hitstun. Gawain does not get a true combo out of it, but she moves VERY fast when traveling by chain and so opponents need to both react quickly and have quick reactions. Gawain can jump out of this approach in order to cancel her forward momentum, which allows her to mix up her recovery and approach options with it and potentially bait out opponents using defensive options. This is especially true if they lack range, so she can jump out closer to the opponent while using a rangier aerial to punish their stubby option. The very high speed that Gawain travels means this is a very viable movement option and she won't take anything more than normal landing lag if she tethers to the ground, making it an important landing mixup for the large-bodied fastfaller.
By holding down the Special button when using the move, Gawain will twirl the chain an extra time (adding 1 frame of starting lag to the attack) before shooting it forward and instead pulling what she hits towards her! This obviously won't work on stage where she pulls herself to it normally, which means you won't screw yourself over if you hold down B while recovering or anything (in fact, Gawain will automatically wall jump off walls ala Byleth if used ona wall this way, allowing it to aid recovery!), but attackable and movable objects like opponents, minions, breakable items, Assist Trophies and so on will be shunted towards Gawain at 3/4ths the speed she travels at, taking 6% damage and slightly more hitstun than the normal chain. Unlike Neutral Special, this is NOT a tool that leads into combos, but Gawain has frame advantage on the foe nonetheless and gets first reply to them, most commonly one of her sworded aerials. If the opponent would somehow hit a solid object on the way to Gawain, such as another character throwing a ground chunk or something, then the person Gawain is dragging will take 8% damage and the chain will break.
Gawain can pull herself to something up to 3 times in one air trip, after which the attack can be used but will not actually pull Gawain anywhere. This not only prevents funky infinites, but it means Gawain has to be wary about being walled out from recovering even if she can technically make the distance, especially since from far down she'll almost always need to use multiple tethers. The omni-directional nature of her tether does allow her to go high and mixup her recovery quite a bit on the other hand and so she avoids the linearity some of her fellows in the Super Heavyweight Clan can face.
The nature of Gawain's Up Special not putting her into helpless has another added benefit to her set! Side Special allows Gawain to get other options to recover. Gawain's recovery is already plenty good, but the tether nature of it IS exploitable (as anyone who looks as professional Byleths can see), so adding in other options such as a Falco/Fox Side Special, a Lucina Up Special or so on give her extremely unique recovery mixups that can making edgeguarding her a truly disgusting task. This also allows her to potentially go DEEP for any kind of edge guard, letting her get supremely hype kills for top 10 videos. Finally, the addition of attacks like Mii Brawler's Feint Jump, Sheik's Bouncing Fish or ZSS' Flip Jump can allow Gawain to pull off very acrobatic movement and mix up approaches a lot by altering her momentum or approach angle (or to disengage) by swinging in with an Up Special and then using a movement attack out of it. Melusine's charge jumps can't pull THAT off, hah!
Smashes
Forward Smash: Burning of the Saint
Gawain draws back her sword as it bursts into flames, the dark specter of a beastial head appearing behind Gawain in blacks and blues (the same animation as various attack animations, with a visual wispiness like the Black Dogs), before Gawain swings her sword forward and sending the black beast's head forth! This is a pretty long animation that takes up to Frame 30 to come out (between Ganondorf and Ike's starting lags), with the black beast head being launched on the first frame after the sword's swing finishes (Frame 34). While not the strongest of heavyweight attacks, this attack still deals a crushing 21%-29.4% and killing at 90%-69% so don't think it's casual to take a hit from. This attack is actually safe on shield, due to a combination of unexpectedly low ending lag (Ganondorf Forward Smash-esque) and high shield push that puts most people out of range of a punish despite their frame advantage. The best way to stop this attack is to hit Gawain during the very long starting lag instead, which will also keep the black beast head from launching forward.
The black beast head itself is a projectile that travels across the ground 1.5 Battlefield Platforms, dealing three hits of 5%-7% damage with the third hit launching them away for a total of 15%-21% and mediocre knockback every 0.5 Battlefield Platforms. These hits will drag opponents to the edge of that half Battlefield Platform range. There is a gap between hits every 0.5 Battlefield Platforms that allows a shielding opponent to escape with a roll, sidestep or jump, all of which Gawain can potentially punish in the process. The multihit protection on Gawain's Survival of the Fittest keeps this from being a terrifying shield breaking menace, this will keep opponents in the multihit against their shield and drag them along its path. Combined with the fact that another "cycle" of hits after 0.5 Battlefield Platforms will force an opponent into an option to escape. And with high levels of her Survival of the Fittest debuff, she could try and go in with her own attacks (especially a Jab) to go for a shieldbreak! Or just try to catch out a jump to avoid the attack's further cycles or what have you. If Gawain has a chain on the opponent and a good position, she COULD potentially even drag an opponent launched by this hitbox back with a Neutral Special chain attacked to the opponent to get three more hits in for 30%, but this does require proper spacing and you can potentially get more off of going into another move. This attack can't shield poke reasonably, but the low hitting hitbox can hit people who hang at ledge. Gawain can't have more than one of these projectiles out at once and using a second Forward Smash while it is out will cause the second one's black beast head to fizzle. Although since the black beast head travels quickly there's almost no time to do this anyway.
The ending lag is low enough that Gawain could approach behind the projectile when it's about halfway through its travel time, this allows her to react to opponent's defensive options like jumps, although she doesn't recover enough to strictly punish opponents unless they specifically go for a roll in. They'll always have time to air dodge, throw out an attack, or so on. It isn't the best projectile to approach behind due to this, but it has an added benefit as the black beast head burns the stage as it travels! This gives the stage's floor a wrecked and burning look to it after being traveled over by the beast head, which lasts for 8 seconds. This Burning Field has two notable benefits, the first being that it deals 1% per second non-flinching damage to anyone who stands on top of it or is 1.3 Ganondorfs above it, generally just dealing a bit of damage over time to overly defensive foes. This won't tick down while the foe is dodging or otherwise unhittable and can be blocked by shielding, but will still deal 1% damage to the shield in non-flinching damage. This doesn't get affected by her anti-defense debuffs.
More importantly, Gawain's Numeral of the Saint ability becomes active while on this Burning Field! An ability taken from the true Gawain, normally it would activate in sunlight, but it seems that it's twisted to instead work on Burning Field (which is an actual Fate/Grand Order field condition!). This grants Gawain two buffs while in the same range as the burning field's damage over time. The first is that all of Gawain's fire attacks (such as her sword strikes) have an increase of 1.2x the range due to stronger flames, which visibly flare out larger while Numeral of the Saint is active, allowing Gawain even more safety range when aggressively striking at foes and offers her more options to wall out opponents (although this isn't something she's the best at either way). The OTHER effect is that all of Gawain's fire attacks will ignite the opponent, setting them on fire for a 1%-per-second non-flinching damage damage over time based on the power of the attack, with one second of damage added for every 4% that attack dealt. As an example, Forward Smash adds 5 seconds and therefor 5% damage when it lands with this active! This isn't all that huge of a damage buff, but it's still a nice boon and can lead to other rewards as well. This damage over time doesn't interact with Survival of the Fittest as per usual.
Down Smash: Overwhelming Strength
Gawain swings her sword above her head twice, single-handed despite the size, setting it ablaze before slamming it against the ground in front of her! Another laggy blow, this is the strongest out of Gawain's Smashes at an immense 27%-37.8% damage and killing at 70%-55%. Despite being a Down Smash, this attack's lag and power is more in the realm of a true heavyweight Forward Smash, being one of the laggiest as it comes out on Frame 36. The ending lag is on the high end as well, making this an unsafe move all around despite the immense reward at play here. Gawain slamming the sword against the ground causes an eruption of flame around her with about 1.3x the range of Robin's Down Smash that hits to both sides of her, dealing a still high 20%-28% damage to anyone struck by it that kills at 105%-90%. This gives Gawain both sides range that also covers most of her body vertically, great coverage only hindered by its quite high lag. This attack creates a Burning Field in the range it hit for 12 seconds, meaning it has substantially less range than Forward Smash (and is riskier) in exchange for lasting longer. Burning Field effects don't stack if you use moves that create Burning Field on top of them, but it will add to the timer of how long they last...given how laggy Down Smash and Forward Smash are, however, just throwing them out to refresh your setup is a losing proposition in the long run.
In a similar but less rapid fashion than Corrin, Gawain swinging the sword above her head is a hitbox that deals 4% damage (since this is during the charging animation, charge level doesn't affect it), swinging twice during the normal starting lag (on Frame 12 and Frame 24), on Frame 36 if Gawain holds the charge instead of releasing instantly and then for every 12 frames after that. The hit is too powerful to combo for as long as Corrin's Forward Smash, with opponents able to escape with DI and at times an air dodge, and it doesn't directly combo into the potent sword hitbox as long as the opponent doesn't DI incorrectly (basically, don't DI down). However, the second fiery hitbox is plenty large enough to catch opponents out! The fiery attack lingers long enough for air dodges to be ineffective, so this will hit enemies who try to panic air dodge out of the charging hitbox, and it will usually combo out of the first two charging swings (as percents get higher, opponents can potentiall DI up and jump away).
This allows Down Smash to serve as an odd anti-air of all things, but it'll primarily be a risky-yet-powerful kill move on hard reads with the sword hitbox, especially since the subsequent flame hitbox allows it to catch out rolls if it misses. This also makes it a powerful ledgeguarding option, but the lag of this attack hinders it rather dramatically as opponents can flatout react to it with plenty of options to get around it and it's so very punishable when whiffed. Instead, Gawain would best use it as a surprise option after conditioning opponents with unreactable ledge options such as a shorthopped aerial, and if the opponent begins to do rolls from ledge or the like go for the Down Smash to potentially get a very clean kill. This is also the ultimate risk move out of a Neutral Special, hoping the opponent makes a panic defensive option in response to being pulled towards Gawain and dropping the combo for a Down Smash to smash them with a much harder move. Predict it wrong and you're the one on the wrong end of the food chain, though!
As a final note, attacks like King K. Rool's Down Tilt / Down Throw or Donkey Kong's Side Special can potentially allow this move to become a kill confirm based on the opponent's mash. These techniques are niche to begin with so there's not a ton of copy options, but it gives Gawain a whole new way to approach kills as the percents pile up!
Up Smash: Jail Blazer
Raising her non-sword hand to the sky, Gawain has chains erupt and writhe above her in a long range multihit attack. The weakest of Gawain's smash attacks, dealing six hits of 1.6%-2.24% and a final hit of 4%-5.6% damage that pops opponents upwards with fairly weak knockback for a smash attack. It won't kill until 210%-195%. Total damage is 14%-19.6%. The lack of outright power is made up for with overwhelming range, with both a strong vertical and horizontal range allowing it to cover most of a Battlefield Platform at maximum height (since it spreads out from Gawain's arm, the horizontal range is longer the higher it is) and making landing against it VERY difficult. The move's maximum vertical range allows it to tickle the bottom of the top platform of Battlefield from the ground, which is pretty nutty, but note that the chains have travel time to get that high: It takes about 6 frames before it reaches that height. The multihit duration also makes air dodging very difficult, but it should be noted that the multiple hits actually come out VERY fast! While this makes it a lot more difficult to smash DI, it also makes the attack at least possible to air dodge through: All hits of this attack take place in 19 frames, with even the least duration air dodge in the game having 23 frames of intangibility (Mewtwo and Bayonetta, although Bayonetta has Bat Within on Frames 1-4) when neutral air dodging. This means opponents have 4 frames of leeway to neutral air dodge and completely avoid the attack. They COULD directional air dodge out of it, but most air dodges only have around 18 frames of intangibility and will get tagged by the last hit even frame perfect if they remain inside the hitbox. A directional air dodge could allow them to escape the attack's hitbox range depending on positioning however, with the end result being it can be a lot EASIER to avoid with an air dodge away if, say, you're at the edge of its range.
This attack is on the slower end, coming out at Frame 17, and the ending lag is punishable if the opponent lands with an air dodge, although with 24 frames of ending lag it really isn't THAT bad. The bigger issue with this attack is the non-aerial range: Since Gawain is so tall and the chains shoot upwards from an outstretched arm, this attack has absolutely zero capacity to hit anyone on the ground in Smash and so has very little to no use as an out of shield option. Combined with an Up Special that is generally bad out of shield and, spoilers, a slow grab and Gawain's defensive game suffers for this. This is all in service of offense, as opponents will quickly find themselves conditioned HARD to air dodge or use other options in their kit to avoid this attack's crazy range and after which Gawain can start punishing them HARD for it. In particular if an opponent keeps neutral air dodging or only has one directional way to air dodge, Gawain can go for a very hard read with Down Smash: If they air dodged and Gawain is facing the correct direction, you'll hit the sword sweetspot and can get super early kills, while a miss or incorrect direction can still land the secondary hitbox.
The nature of Gawain's Up Smash and Up Special means that she greatly enjoys eating enemies with great out of shield Up Smashes or Up Specials. Attacks like Link's Up Special, Mario's Up Smash and Up Special, Corrin's Up Special, Zero Suit Samus' Up Special and so on give Gawain the stone wall style defensive options she hungers for, and attacks with good defensive options like the aforementioned Mario Up Smash or a Bowser Up Smash allow Gawain to mix up three strong anti-air techniques with her default long range one with blindspots, an attack trampling/intangible option for opponents happy to land with attacks and punishing hard reads for air dodge happy miscreants. Generally, grabbing one of these two options will be one of her first priorities with Side Special if a rushdown happy opponent has one.
Standards
Jab: Fang Knight Combination
A Frame 4 Jab to come out, Gawain performs a quick "slash" with her non-sword hand and then another "slash" in the opposite direction. Think Wolf's first two jabs in terms of appearance, although Gawain's hands lack the same level of claw Wolf has: Her chains provide a substitute to help out, but this jab has low range. The third hit has Gawain go for an overhead slam with her sword to finish the combo, rushing forward slightly in the process and being the opposite of the first two it is rather laggy to come out to go with the high range. Note that these hits will still combo into each other reliably, but the third hit is going to be a slow one if you whiff the first two, so if you're just checking with a jab you gotta make sure to stop at 2 at the latest. None of these hits are "naturally" safe on shield, but they afford Gawain a swift defensive option and in general a faster move than most people who punch in her weight class! The biggest downside of this move, truly, is the low range at the start of it that prevents it from being as reliable defensively as she would like. The first two hits deal 2% each, while the last hit deals 4%.
Gawain doesn't get much out of the first two hits in any way (though they ARE safe on hit and she loves being close ranged in general), but the third hit forces a tech situation on the opponent from about 20%-50% (with fastfallers starting more around 10% and floaties at around 30%). Gawain has a few options to try and abuse enemies who fall under her heel, but some prominent ones are Forward Smash (which can be a hard read on one roll length while sending a projectile to the other), Neutral Special (can cover any direction and sets up for future combos if it hits) and Up Special (drags the opponent back for a true combo starter). She has other options as well, most prominently Forward Tilt, but those are the prominent ones so far.
This attack might be unsafe on shield, but Gawain can always land all three hits of it on shield, and unlike Forward Smash this is NOT a multihit: These all count as seperate attacks! This means that they each get the buff from Gawain's debuffs (and for that matter the power buff she can have, although at a total of 8% damage that's much more minor). While this attack is nothing special against shields normally it is BRUTAL with the debuffs on, with two debuffs allowing Gawain to reduce the opponent's shield to about 10% HP, and three debuffs allow Gawain to break a full health shield! This makes it one of her scariest options against a defending opponent, since if the opponent goes for a roll you can stop at Jab 1 potentially, and she can mix it into shorthop approaches and other offensive onslaughts to really scare opponents off of their defensive options. This also makes approaching and shielding to stop Gawain's aggressive counterattacks a frightening prospect: All it takes is her checking with a jab and there's a potential break!
Forward Tilt: Flame Calamity
Gawain rushes forward as she pulls her sword back above her head, her non-sword arm outstretched slightly for added visual effect as she travels 0.5 Battlefield Platforms before slamming down the large weapon! Gawain doesn't travel super fast here, I'd describe it as "chunky" even, but it still only takes until Frame 10 for the attack to actually come out (same as a Bowser or Ganondorf F-Tilt). There's two hitboxes on the attack, a sweetspot right in front of Gawain and a sourspot on the rest of the blade. You'll actually actively want to hit with the sourspot a lot of times though: It might only deal 9% damage, but the largely upwards knockback that it deals allows Gawain to follow up with an aerial frequently and so serves as an auxiliary combo starter for Gawain's aggressive gameplan. The sweetspot right in front of Gawain on the other hand deals an explosive 13% damage and kills at 128%, making it one of the strongest Forward Tilts in the game alongside fellow blazing swordsman Roy. This is a notable amount lower than the strongest Forward Tilt in the game Incineroar (who kills at around 116%), but the damage buff that Survival of the Fittest provides can end up boosting it to kill earlier than Incineroar with about 107% or so being the max.
This gives Gawain a potent, multi-use tool that is one of her main aggressive options against an opponent: The movement and range of the swing allows her to catch opponents from very far away and the overhead nature even gives it a hitbox just slightly above her that makes shorthopping it hard to deal with! The best way to tackle this attack is to take a page from Gawain's book and fight it head on: Since Gawain doesn't swing until Frame 10 but is moving beforehand, she can end up rushing right into the attack of someone who is checking it with a quick move like a jab unless she uses it a very long range, in which case opponents can dash out and in due to being at the edge of the range.
You might be thinking "what about shields", but that leads into the second part of the attack! As Gawain rushes forward, a black beast head akin to her Forward Smash appears behind her in the background (so it's them overlapping rather than it trailing her). It opens its jaws as she brings down the sword, biting down 23 frames later which is conveniently the same ending lag as Gawain takes on this attack (and the same ending lag as Bowser/Roy's F-Tilts)! This leads to a case where while the move IS unsafe on shield, particularly on the sourspot, actually taking advantage of that is very difficult for the opponent: The head doesn't disappear if Gawain is hit once the attack comes out (but it will if she's hit before the slash starts on Frame 10), so most out of shield attacks will get hit by the attack which deals 11% damage and kills at 157%. Depending on the power of the foe's attack and situation, this might be worth it (for example a Link Spin Attack) or it might be a raw deal for them.
They can roll away, which avoids the attack but will give Gawain frame advantage to keep aggressively hunting the foe, perhaps even going for another Forward Tilt to force the issue! They could shorthop and land with an aerial, but shorthopping can still be caught by the black beast due to its bite having high vertical range. A fullhop to a fastfalled aerial will usually avoid the head, but Gawain gets out of her ending lag the same time as the attack and so can shield any aerial that does this. One could potentially fullhop (or even shorthop with sufficient air speed) BEHIND Gawain to cross her up and attack before the head finishes which will punish her, but the amount of characters who can reliable do this out of this level of shieldstun is rare. Holding shield is never the right answer: Gawain will get big frame advantage from the second hit hitting shield without being in lag and any defensive debuffs on the foe from Survival of the Fittest can in turn lead to shield break setups since Gawain can hit the opponent in shield during their shieldstun. Even if they choose the wrong option (or, hell, drop shield and get hit) it's better than cowardly hiding behind their shield. Sufficiently fast movement attacks or Dash Attacks in general can potentially hit Gawain and pass by the second attack before it comes down. Finally, opponents could use an option like a Counter with extremely consistent timing here, but the nature of Gawain regaining control right when the attack comes out means she can in theory shield even a Frame 1 hitting Counter (which doesn't exist in Smash itself right now). This does require her to instantly shield though, so if the opponent times the counter to be done close enough to the second hit that it's unreactable she can get caught off guard by a powerful counterattack!
Adding in Gawan's Black Dogs from her Down Special can make this an even more vicious trap for the opponent, as depending on the timing of the attack and when the set Black Dogs go off + their placement Gawain can cover any number of weaknesses in how to respond to this. A prominent usage is to set the Black Dogs as shorthop or fullhop length, so if Gawain attacks when they're about ready to travel the opponent is barred from realistically striking back against her Forward Tilt with those options. They also just in general provide a lot of pressure onto the opponent as a 1-2-3 attack series, albeit this is setup and timing reliant so don't consider this a Gawain staple. It's more of a sometimes food when you can get it out in the right situation, usually Gawain having an advantageous state but not enough to actively press too hard and so choosing to set up the Black Dogs.
Overall this makes Forward Tilt a staple of her hyper-aggressive style: Run in with a movement attack that is worryingly good against many common defensive tools and play against whatever new tricks they take out. It's an overwhelming feeling attack, but take care that Gawain runs into danger every time she uses it, and that properly timed jumped attacks or ranged attacks can still beat out its coverage properties (usually by fullhopping over the overhead hitbox and fastfalling an aerial after).
Down Tilt: Crimson Hand
Gawain takes a spinning step forward as her non-sword hands lights aflame, jutting it out diagonally out in front of her not unlike a certain street fighting russian (and no, not the hunky Ivan the Terrible!). This is another attack that's actually rather quick to come out at the same speed as Samus/Dark Samus' Down Tilts (Frame 6) for the first hit of the multihit, the attack having three hits of 3% with the last one lightly knocking away opponents. This won't combo until later percents due to not having enough hitstun, but starting at around 65% Gawain can combo it into a sourspot Forward Tilt or a Dash Attack. She also still has enough of an advantage to start off an attack or rush in even without a true combo however, with grab being a strong mixup option to opponents who instinctively shield in "prediction" (read: fear) of one of her quick grounded normals. Ending lag is mediocre trending towards the faster end, with Gawain taking a step back to the spot she started the move during the ending lag with an equally elegant spin as the start.
Thanks to the multihit's shield push and Gawain's step-back during the ending lag, this is an attack that is pretty safe on shield and offers a lot less commitment (and about half as much starting lag) as her Forward Tilt in exchange for what is usually much less reward. The fast starting lag also allows it to serve as an alternative to Jab for checking opponents, offering higher range in exchange for being more punishable on a whiff or being jumped over than a very fast Jab 1 w/o followup. This attack does not hit low enough to shield poke opponents, which is quite unfortunate for Gawain given how prominently she can force an opponent's shield down: Consider taking juicy down tilts like Ike's, Lucina's or Mario's with Side Special to fully take advantage of low shields and mix up quick combo starters with your more meaty natural options.
If a Neutral Special chain is attached to the opponent then Gawain will grip it when striking with her fist, causing flame to burn down the end of the chain once the attack concludes! This flame only deals 6% damage and light inwards knockback, but it's a great addition to Gawain's arsenal given she will love to use attacks like this when the opponent is forced up close, allowing this to both help stuff close ranged attacks and provide pressure to opponents trying to space Gawain out near the edge of the chain. Opponents won't be hit by the flames of this attack AND the Down Tilt most of the time (they regain control before it reaches them), but it does instantly provide an attack they need to deal with lest they get dragged back in for more assaults. Shielding is normally a great option, this deals essentially no shieldstun, but if Gawain gets some Survival of the Fittest debuffs on the opponent then they'll be taking 12%+ shield damage just to stop what amounts to an extra on the attack. The flame disappears if Gawain is hit before it reaches its target and it takes 12 frames into Gawain's ending lag for the flame to become active and start to travel, allowing Gawain to be attacked before it comes out and not making this invalidate things like shorthp hits on spamming this.
Up Tilt: Blaze Strike
Gawain takes her blade and performs a quick, inwards and upwards slash not unlike Marth/Lucina or even a reverse Ridley in how it appears! This is another fast technique for the superheavyweight Gawain, with two hitboxes based on where the attack lands that function as a sort of opposite to her Forward Tilt. The hilt is the quick hit that deals 5% and lightly pops up opponents, which if she ends here can combo into a few other moves. Up Tilt's sweetspot is a true combo until obscenely high percents and a good go-to option if there's uncertainty about connecting with an aerial. Neutral Aerial and if you're positioned right Back Aerial are the main aerials you'll be able to get off of this. You could go for other aerials, but their laggier nature means you'll need to get to high percentages or that it isn't "true". Starting at mid percents, around 55% or so, this will usually combo into an Up Smash if you perform it fast enough.
The sweetspot of Up Tilt, which is the sword outside of the close range hilt, deals 9% damage and stronger upwards knockback that will kill at around 170%. This isn't too great, but it can allow Gawain to snipe some kills at the top of Battlefield or other high platforms, and depending on the character there is a window where Gawain can combo the Up Tilt sweetspot into an Up Aerial for a kill confirm, which given the hilt hitbox combos into this sweetspot means Up Tilt -> Up Tilt -> Up Aerial is possible. This begins at around 80% on middle fallers, with floaties starting a bit earlier and fastfallers starting a bit later but having a wider percent range, at around 95% on middlefallers this won't line up for an easy kill confirm (but can still potentiallt 50/50). This makes this fast attack's sweetspot pretty dangerous as it gets higher. At low percents this usually leads Gawain to try and do landing traps, to put opponents on platforms to threaten with Up Smash and just to get in quick and low commitment damage. This attack's ending lag is about the same as a Marth/Lucina Up Tilt, so it isn't all that punishable to mess up with. It makes a pretty good attack to utilize if you Neutral Special the opponent in since it'll usually begin some kind of combo (if timed properly for the hilt) and requires less timing than Forward Tilt with it's movement. Gawain's size does also allow this to poke at platforms more effectively, but it also means that while this can hit grounded opponents they can avoid this by crouching (even some of the bigger bodies), so keep that in mind when it comes to hitbox coverage.
Dash Attack: Brutality Manifest
The horns atop Gawain's head begin to glow brilliantly as she charges forward, before lowering her head and striking with a potent horn drilling headbutt! This looks a lot like her Arts 2 attack, albeit with more movement to it. This attack is on the slower end to come out, Frame 14 (Sephiroth), but Gawain moves at a quick pace during it and travel 0.7 Battlefield Platforms while charging forward with the hitbox! There's two different hitboxes to it, with the sweetspot of 15% damage carrying through 3/4ths of the attack and killing at 105% as a particularly powerful Dash Attack to charge in with! The last 1/4th of attack deals a lower 10% damage and won't kill until about 150%, but that still isn't bad for the sourspot of a dash attack. This attack is generally punishable on whiff and doesn't have ideal ending lag, but it's lower than you'd expect from such a power move. The nature of this attack also means it lacks the disjointed range of her sword strikes, making it more vulnerable to jump-ins than a Forward Tilt.
This attack has very large shield push on it that makes it extremely safe on shield! The sweetspot sends opponents a full Battlefield Platform away, while the sourspot is 3/4ths of a Battlefield Platform, so an opponent punishing Gawain for hitting a shield with this is simply out of the question. The distance also makes it great for catching out rolls, so the proper response is pretty much always a jump from the opponent. This move's biggest function, however, is trapping landings and whiff punishing moves that are far away. While this attack has less effective range than Forward Tilt due to lacking the disjointed sword and comes out 4 frames slower, Gawain travels the entire distance faster than a Forward Tilt by a not inconsiderable margin. This makes it ideal for whiff punishing opponents outside the range of your normal attacks, this is a great way to sneak out a kill if opponents are avoiding your laggier heavyweight kill options if you land the sweetspot, and means she can do something like a dash dance to threaten a powerful burst hitbox or to go into one of her aerials instead. And in general it's power-to-lag ratio is pretty good, so it's not bad to throw out just as a strong move.
Aerials
Neutral Aerial: By Fang and Claw
Gawain performs a swift and backhanded "slash" in front of her with her non-sword hand, at a slight downwards angle, as her chains sling forward with the look of a "claw". This is a very fast swat that has lower range than her sword, but somewhat more range than her stubby Jab. It is still pretty strictly more of a close range move, though. Getting hit by any part of the attack deals 8% damage and light knockback at a shallow, forward-downwards knockback as a move that is just plain great when the opponent is close to the ground. This will lead into pretty much anything in Gawain's kit outside of her laggy Smashes: Forward Tilt, Down Tilt, Dash Attack, even an Up Tilt if you're close enough and the opponent is tall enough! She can even get off a grab despite its high lag for a grab, don't even think about Forward Smash or Down Smash though. The ending lag on this is faster than average AND it has a fairly solid autocancel window, making it a great move for Gawain to go to when she wants to pretend she's a fast combo character.
Gawain can also go into a Side Special off of this, which makes it one of her main non-Neutral Special options to combo into the Side Special and start getting additional moves into her set. This attack's low range does make its safety against shield rather iffy, especially since it is saddled with a 0.7x shieldstun modifier: Even with the autocancel, Gawain needs to land pretty low to be actively safe on shield, a contrast to her much safer aggro options like Forward Tilt, Down Tilt and her other aerials, and it can't be spaced to be much more safe. This also makes it fairly lacking in terms of cross-up potential. Even if Gawain DOES land it unsafe, however, opponents might be afraid to punish her because they're unsure if she landed low enough to be safe, which means she could try and check the opponent punishing them with a Jab if they're slow on the draw. And if they just hold shield to try and avoid this mess, she can go for a Side Special as a command grab in order to punish them!
This move also has some aerial usage as well, largely a close range gimping option. The knockback is too low to really kill most characters (sorry Little Mac) just with the angle, but if you stuff someone with this they'll almost certainly be stuck recovering low, which can allow Gawain to use powerful techniques against that like her Down Aerial or even just go suuuper deep low hoping to recover with her Up Special and possibly a stolen one! If you're close to a platform, you can use this to knock people to it for a grounded combo, and opponents ON platforms might slip off if they're near the ledge and allow a fastfalling Gawain to get off a hit. Just note that given its stubby range and lack of a prolonged hitbox like combo sex kick NAirs means it's really easy to stuff and outrange, even when not against fellow swordies.
Forward Aerial: Sword of Promised Victory
Gawain draws her sword back as flame bursts alive around it, before thrusting forward with it as a long stab! Visually, this is most similar to Sephiroth's Forward Aerial in appearance as a horizontally long but vertically thin thrust attack, although Gawain's sword has noticeably less reach to it (while being slightly more range-y vertically due to the sword being thicker). Gawain's sword also does consistent damage across the entire blazing broadsword's blade: 12% damage, killing at 160%, which given how this can super safely poke out people is plenty good! While Neutral Aerial serves the purpose of an uncertainly safe damage racker (via combos), Forward Aerial is all about aggressively spacing out opponents who think they can just rushdown Gawain to stop HER rushdown, or who try to jump away from her assaults too frequently. It's also one of her better air-to-air options given the range AND is her primary aerial combo finisher since it can scrape at a long distance where other attacks can't reach in the combo + deals good damage and knockback. This move's Frame 12 startup is almost exactly average and its ending lag is nothing special one way or another.
This move is great near ground level, it DOES have an autocancel window, in a lot of ways but also heavily flawed. The first is something any Sephiroth player has dealt with: The thin hitbox means against a lot of opponents, it'll go over their heads if you use it at normal shorthop timing. Gawain DOES have a way around this, though! Her Forward Aerial can be angled up or down like a Forward Tilt, and a down angled Forward Aerial should hit low enough to stop all but the crouching Snakes of the world. The downside is the low angle harms its air-to-air capabilities: If the opponent shorthopped in reply, what would normally be a clean hit to keep them out might go right under them and leave YOU punished instead! An upwards angled Forward Aerial is almost always used as an anti-platform tool, with Gawain shorthopping and angling it up to strike at people hiding on low Battlefield Platforms, Smashville platforms, and so on. It'll miss even characters like Bowser if you up angle it for grounded hits, so it's almost never advised in those situations. Adding in a good coverage Forward Aerial from the opponent dramatically helps this move's neutral, as opponents can't rely on you to make a binary anti-standing or anti-shorthop option if you can throw out something like a Cloud or Lucina Forward Aerial that can strike both options depending on timing.
Gawain has another technique she can master with her Forward Aerial, however! By holding down A during the attack's starting lag, she'll do more than simply stab her sword out, as the flames will burst out from her sword's hilt and send her rocketing forward! This can only be done once per air trip and sends Gawain flying 1.2 Battlefield Platforms, but makes it take until a much later Frame 19 to actually get going and so is reactable. She travels fairly fast, and overall this can make a servicable replacement to stealing mobility options for mixing in with her Up Special shenanigans, although the fact this isn't refreshed when hit and is pretty limited in how Gawain can travel makes it less useful than taking something like a Zero Suit Samus Flip Jump. As long as Gawain ends in the air it has pretty much the same ending lag as the default version.
Instead, this is usually used as either an "aerial whiff punish" like a Dash Attack when someone like a Marth or Lucina just refuses to stop Forward Aerialing in front of you, or as a psuedo-stall than fall with a down angle to it (angling this attack causes Gawain to travel at a diagonal with the blade). This is particularly a mixup if you keep shorthopping Forward Aerials, throwing off their defensive timing before rocketing in to punish the option they picked! While this attack deals normal damage for most of its travel, but if Gawain impacts the ground the flame from the boost will explode around her like a pillar! This strong landing hitbox deals 13% damage and is a "seperate attack" from the normal Forward Aerial and so will get Survival of the Fittest effects again. The pillar of flame also creates a Burning Field that is only 1.2x as wide as Gawain and only lasts 5 seconds but still offers an alternative way to create the effect.
This effect can put your enemies in a real bind if you have Black Dogs at the ready to jump at the opponent, since Gawain has a variety of options to pursue the opponent: She can Forward Aerial with movement to catch out opponents trying to jump away OR on the ground, fake a movement Forward Aerial and go for a normal one to be able to be stopped much more easily, wait for the Black Dogs to strike and then rush in with THAT timing with the Black Dog follow-up attack, or even land and use something like your movement Forward Tilt/Dash Attack or tethered grab! This is an excellent use of getting out Black Dogs in your advantage state and put serious pressure on any opponent without strong defensive options with the variety of approaches on display here.
Gawain's landing lag is dramatically increased when landing with this hitbox and so even when you hit with both hitboxes against a shield it is ridiculously punishable. Don't whiff it either! While very vulnerable against shield, three Survival of the Fittest debuffs will make this a Bowser Bomb level threat that breaks a full health shield and two requires opponents have essentially an undamaged shield to not take a break. If you have Survival of the Fittest debuffs on the opponent this therefor becomes a serious case of cat and mouse with the opponent: Will Gawain just throw out another spacing Forward Aerial to poke you down for her stronger hits? Or is THIS going to be the time she abandons all reason and rockets in with the alternative Forward Aerial, shattering your shield if you hold it up too much? The attack is reactable but you won't be able to actually tell which Forward Aerial Gawain is using until Frame 7, so it's only a matter of "Gawain is using a Forward Aerial" and not WHICH one for reaction (except at long ranges where travel time increases how long a foe has to react). Ultimately, this encourages opponents to retreat when Gawain uses her Forward Aerial, which over time gives Gawain the center stage...or she Neutral Specials the opponent and FORCES them to play her close range guessing game! They could also go for full hops to jump over your attack and punish you, which will also avoid the normal Forward Aerial, but constantly fullhopping in response to a neutral tool is going to get predictable fast and let Gawain use her strong anti-airs or just meet the foe with her own fullhop if overused.
Up Aerial: Hellhound Headbutt
Gawain's horns glow brilliantly as she leans back, before smashing upwards for a vicious headbutt! The most classic of Up Aerial attacks! If Up Tilt is Gawain's main aerial launcher and Up Smash is a killer landing catcher, then the laggy Up Aerial serves most clearly as the kill option of the group. This attack comes out 1 frame later than Zelda's Up Aerial (Gawan's is Frame 15 compared to Zelda's Frame 14), making it one of the laggiest in the game, and lacks the range of that attack. In return it deals monstrous damage, 18% total (and unlike Zelda's 17% UAir Gawain's doesn't have a sourspot) and will kill extremely early at 95% from a fullhop, which is somewhat earlier than Up Aerials like King K. Rool or Zelda. This move's ending lag is appropriately long and only has autocancel frames on the last 8 frames of its ending lag so using it at a grounded level is a hazardous proposal. It isn't without reward, however: This attack is a great punish to opponents who play overly afraid of Gawain's Up Smash, leaping up at them if they do pre-emptive air dodges and smashing them away with a very potent hitbox! The downside is that Gawain will almost certainly suffer bad landing lag if doing this: Irrelevant if she kills her foes, sure, but it means a misprediction causes her to pretty much lose all momentum.
Since the Neutral Special chain dragging enemies in will depend on where the foe is, this is one of Gawain's power options for opponents who get reeled in from directly or mostly above her where a Forward Smash wouldn't hit and a Down Smash would risk opponents falling out of the charging hitbox (and likely not fall into to begin with). This attack can true combo out of the Neutral Special pull IF Gawain both is very quick at inputting it AND already in the air with the foe above her. 3 frames of jump squat after inputting the Neutral Special mean if the opponent air dodges on strict reaction, they can escape, which also tells you how tight the window is to get this true combo. Outside of this usage, the fact both her Forward Aerial (if angled) and Back Aerial have some level of vertical reach means she cooould try to mix up the opponent with them, but these are quite awkward tools to try and use for it so it is mostly limited as a hard read kill option.
Depending on the opponent's aerials, this move can benefit a LOT from her Side Special, in particular Neutral Aerials and Up Aerials that knock opponents upwards: Stuff like a Mario Up Aerial or Palutena Neutral Aerial might not only be able to link into themselves, but allow her to actually combo into this Up Aerial in a way the rest of her kit isn't quite designed for and so get off early kill confirms! Pretty much any early Up Aerials also allow her to combine fast and slow Up Aerials with her other natural up hitting tools to get more true 50/50s or even frame traps that force opponents to either take the quick aerial or have Gawain hit an Up Aerial (though a true frame trap requires particularly fast aerials). It's also worth remembering that for attacks where it is logical, Gawain performs physical attacks normally, or in other words the hitbox size of something like Mario's Up Aerial is scaled to the size of Gawain's body, giving it range on par with a Ganondorf Up Aerial. It's a particularly nice effect on UAir due to the presence of many flipkicks, drill kicks and the like that directly benefits Gawain here.
Down Aerial: Sword and Stone
Raising her sword high above her head, Gawain plunges it downwards as a vicious stab and holds it there: It ends up looking much more like a Link Down Aerial than, say, a Roy down aerial in how it is presented. A Frame 15 Down Aerial (the same as Mewtwo, Diddy Kong and others), this attack has a very powerful initial sweetspot and a less powerful hitbox on the rest of it. The sweetspot deals a pretty monstrous 19% damage and kills off the top at 105% on grounded enemies! This is only at the start of the rather laggy stabbing motion, so don't expect it to be what you hit with most of the time. The rest of the attack's very long duration deals a still sky-high 16% damage, but the knockback is pretty depreciated to only kill off the top at around 145% or so, making it a solid kill move but more about the high damage than kill potential. In addition to the long starting lag of this attack, it has a very long duration that allows it to control a lot of space and potentially eat through air dodges, but also makes it hard to take advantage of its low ending lag in the air as this move has very poor autocancel frames that exist late enough Gawain CANNOT autocancel this move out of a full hop! This is Gawain's aerial that requires the most commitment in that regard.
Assuming that Gawain doesn't fastfall during the attack, she will bounce off of opponents she hits! This includes shields, which means this move is actually incredibly safe against shields as she'll almost end the move in the air after bouncing for low ending lag. This drastically reduces the power of the attack to a mere 9%, but the light upwards knockback actually allows Gawain to potentially get a combo attack off of this. Most commonly this is either a Neutral Aerial out of a second jump or Gawain fastfalling the pogo hit to land and hit an Up Tilt (ideally ending the pogo lag right before hitting the ground or during the last 3 frames for the small autocancel window). At higher percents, it is possible to double jump into Side Special with good timing for a combo as well! Even if Gawain fails to convert anything off of this however it's still some free damage and safety. Fastfalling means Gawain won't pogo, which allows her to mix it up. Be aware this is VERY unsafe on shield if you do not pogo.
The hit after bouncing off of opponents can hit opponents' shields twice in addition to the opponents themselves, which is a big deal when combined with Survival of the Fittest in allowing Gawain to seriously chip away at the obvious choice to shield and punish her landing aerials! At enough debuff level (3 debuffs), this has the potential to fully break a shield, although more commonly the second hit will shield poke if the first hit did THAT much shield damage instead. This encourages Gawain to be more recklessly aggressive with her bounces as the game continues onwards in order to maximize the power of her mechanic!
While these do give Gawain some landing options, she still suffers in the same way many heavies do due to her large hurtbox and high weight. It's even worse for her with her very high fall speed, making her more susceptible to juggles, and this weakness is exasperated by how Down Aerial is a strong lander against shields but VERY beatable if predicted! After all, the opponent just has to dash in and out to have her land with that gross landing lag of hers. Against enemies who are juggle heavy fiends, look for great landing option aerials to counteract the predictability of this being her attempt at a landing tool, such as drill kick style Down Aerials, a stall than fall to mix up landing timings or a sex kick.
Back Aerial: Binding of the Weakest
Twisting her body so that her non-sword arm is behind her, Gawain extends a flurry of chains behind her as a fairly wide multihit! This move's range is more tall, as the chains extend pretty far up and down, than far as the horizontal reach is a fair deal shorter than most of her sword attacks overall. A quick move (Frame 9) to come out, it deals three hits of 3% and pretty light knockback away from Gawain. At low percents, this move's also low ending and landing lag allows it to wall of pain opponents a few times as long as Gawain fastfalls the attack and its wide vertical range is excellent at stuffing opponents who love to jump around to get in (especially if you've been using your thin Forward Aerial a lot!). By comparison, this move's lacking horizontal range means the best way to avoid it is to just hover out of range, after which the opponent can rush in to try and punish or just take the initiative away from Gawain. This move is safe on shield if landed, but the opponent does still get the initiative here as well on actually getting aggressive.
When landing this attack it can serve as a pretty strong combo starter, predominately into Forward Tilt and sourspot Dash Attack but sometimes into a Down Tilt or a Grab. Jump -> Neutral Aerial is also a pressure option that isn't usually true, but if the opponent isn't blocking then you get a much lengthier combo from NAir's better starting traits. Dash in Side Special can also be mixed in instead of a grab or Down Tilt if you'd rather have the extra move. Usually, those require the opponent to not DI DOWn and away so that they don't land as fast and cannot react in time, which makes it a niche but valuable grab setup. And if the opponent didn't pre-emptively do a non-shielding defensive option you'll get the grab in anyway. In the air, Gawain has much more trouble comboing this and it instead is primarily for a bit of safety and spacing as one of Gawain's two fast aerials and having decent range.
Grab Game
Grab: Dominant Predator
Gawain extends out her non-sword hand and releases multiple chains from it, sneaking to ensare her prey! This is a pretty classic tether grab with bad starting lag but excellent reach, with Gawain growling slightly and yanking the chains back to her if she misses for poor ending lag (although it's a bit faster than the average tether). If she does manage to capture a foe, though, she will drag them in while extending a foot out, using it to press them down to the ground when they reach her. She keeps the chains wrapped around her arm so the opponent is locked in place while the foot is firmly planted on them for her grab animation.
If Gawain grabs an opponent who has 100% or more damage on them, she'll lick her lips once the foe is pinned under her. Maybe her Purpose is starting to kick in?
Pummel: Crushing Insects
Gawain digs her heel into her opponent as a quick pummel that deals 2%, overall dealing damage at a faster clip than average, and fast enough to slip some in starting fairly early. As a general note, pummels (both her own and her opponent's) will not trigger any of Survival of the Fittest's buffs/debuffs. It'd be kinda dumb if you could just pummel to get that many buff stacks, right?
As a note, you might be wondering how you perform stolen throws with Gawain given they're normally done without a button. You hold down the Copy Input (Y by default), then press a direction. This is also why you can't copy pummels, since they're overall usually meaningless inputs but would interfere with the control scheme a lot. Given her unique grab stance, she reaches down to grab opponents for throw animations that require it.
Forward Throw: Eternal Rejection
Gawain reaches down with an open palm at the opponent writhing under her heel, gripping their head (or body/other grabbable areas for people without heads) quite firmly and palm covering their face, flames licking around her fingers. She lifts them up as she removes her foot from the opponent, the flames engulfing them for a bunch of rapid 0.0\1%/0.2%/0.3% hits that eventually total 4%, before letting a large burst of flame shoot the opponent away for 5% more damage! The chains shatter as the opponent is sent flying from the knockback of what is Gawain's KO throw, killing at 185% at ledge. This all counts as one multihit for Survival of the Fittest purposes.
This move directly benefits from Gawain's Numeral of the Saint ability, specifically when enemies are set on fire, burning up the remaining seconds of damage over time to increase the damage of the fiery burst! This doesn't scale with the amount of damage over time on the foe and instead flatly gives +5% damage to the final hit of this attack (bringing it to a total of 14%) while boosting the knockback to kill at a pretty solid 140%. It's no Ness Back Throw, but that's a pretty high end kill throw all the same! This attack has a knockback angle with a notable vertical slant compared to a lot of kill throws and some higher than average ending lag due to the blowback from the fiery explosion, this attack lacks a lot of utility outside of just being a kill throw since the high angle makes recovering easier and doesn't set up offstage stuff any better than most throws that send people far away.
For most characters, their (horizontal) kill throws are on Back Throw rather than Forward Throw. This allows characters to get up and get cheap kills by reversing ledge situations, which is something Gawain does not have. This is, however, actually somewhat of a boon due to Side Special! Take someone's KO throw and you have a highly ambigious DI mixup at high percents as to which kill throw she's gonna throw out! The vertical angling of Gawain's Forward Throw becomes a benefit here, as it can kill opponents off the top instead of the sides even if you're not close to a ledge and thus helps the DI mixup work even when your back is to the ledge!
Down Throw: Black Beast Rush
Gawain reaches down and grips the foe's throat (or just firmly squeezes their body etc without a throat), letting go of her heel-stomping position only to quite viciously grind them across the ground while flames burn them up! She tosses the opponent away at a forward-slightly-high angle after one Battlefield Platform with a ferocious growl, before regaining her composure by planting the tip of her sword into the ground with a pose that looks like one of her skill activation poses. That gives this throw rather large ending lag, which prevents many follow-ups and means that the opponent will at least be able to get back to some semblance of neutral before Gawain gets to rush in. On the plus side, damage on this throw is quite high: The multihits rapidly add up to 8% damage while the throw deals a strong 7% for a total of 15% which makes it one of the strongest throws in the game!
The opponent's flames scorch the very ground beneath them as they are ground against it, allowing Gawain to create Burning Field over the area the foe is scraped across that lasts for 7 seconds. If the opponent is already on fire from her Numeral of the Saint, which requires her to have had prior Burning Field setup somewhere, then the Burning Field created by this is boosted to last for 12 seconds! This allows her to potentially get a nice refresh on her prior fields or use them to spread around the field even more and make it a brutal enviroment for worms like her opponent to writhe in! This is also, in general, Gawain's easiest way to create reasonable Burning Field due to less lag and commitment compared to her other attacks since you basically just need to land a grab. The downside of this is that, in general, this creates the Burning Field in the least immediately beneficial way: BEHIND Gawain with the opponent thrown in FRONT of her, making it pretty useless until the foe gets past Gawain...or Gawain could have a Neutral Special chain ready to yank them back to her to do a cross-up combo and send them behind her! An Up Special made to grip enemies and send them spiralling back to her is also useful here. And if you get the boosted version, the increase in time that it lasts makes it a LOT easier to work with!
Up Throw: Saint's Strength
Gawain steps off the foe and just as quickly whips her arm upwards, sending the opponent flying off the chain and straight up for 9.5% damage, quite the strength to send foes flying with just an arm flick like that! This doesn't have any particular kill power due to low knockback growth nor does it have any real combo potential due to the high base knockback, but placing opponents directly above Gawain does mean that she can go into her landing mixups, and at a wide range (55%-80%) this will place opponents on the top Battlefield Platform to fall into prone. Gawain can then chase them for an Up Aerial read on their getup option, which is a strong 1-2 punch to deal with.
Since this throw has VERY low ending lag, Gawain can go for a Neutral Special chain recall if she already has it on the opponent which will almost always force an air dodge, and at that point she gets to go to town on aerial options. Trying for an Up Special to drag opponents back down or zipline into the air is a less powerful but less setup intensive option as well. Quite the simple throw to use, really.
Back Throw: Queen's Orders
Gawain tugs at the chain the foe is bound by, causing them to be dragged on the ground behind her for 4%, while at the same time taking a step to turn herself backwards and perform a vicious, downwards swing with her sword as they skid by for another 4% damage. Off with their heads! A solid 8% damage total throw, the light knockback that this attack provides makes it Gawain's premiere combo throw and a very solid one at that! Forward Tilt is an obvious one and will get the sourspot for a further combo, while Dash Attack combos into its own sourspot and 50/50s with the sweetspot as more of a killing option. Starting at around 30%, Gawain can go for a shorthopped Neutral Aerial combo extension compared to the Forward Tilt if she desires, and at around 50% grounded combo continuation begins to get more difficult but Gawain gets either a 50/50 or a true combo (depending on enemy DI largely) with her Forward Aerial.
You are, of course, free to mix this up to your heart's content, such as including any of the enemy's combo extension options you've taken with Side Special to make totally new combo paths that can stress an opponent's DI capabilities, launching a surprise Forward Smash to try and catch unaware foes with the projectile portion, going for a Neutral Special to tether to the foe instead of going for a strict combo to get a better one (this is a much more viable tactic at higher percents where Gawain's combos out of this become increasingly less reliable) or reel in a Neutral Special on the opponent to get a continuation that way!
This move forms a natural and basic DI mixup with Forward Throw, albeit one that isn't super effective due to Forward Throw's rather lengthy animation, and has the oddity of a Back Throw combo starter when most characters will start with a forward hitting throw like Down Throw. Especially since with your back to a ledge the combos out of this move become less rewarding or harder, Gawain gets less reward off a reversing Back Throw after returning to ledge than most characters. This does form a potent DI mixup when also combined with Side Special stealing a traditional forward combo throw however, as Gawain gets to do something few characters can and DI mixup combos AND kill throws! Combine this with a good KO Back Throw and it can be very, very ambiguous what to prepare for to minimize combo damage or maximize kill possibility because there's what will often be 4 seperate optimal DI angles to deal with!
Final Smash: Black Dog Galatine
Swinging her sword with a mighty roar, Gawain sends out a wave of fire RIGHT out of her Extra Attack visually that covers a looong horizontal range and is the activation hit for this cinematic Final Smash! Once opponents are ensared within it, up to three, the game cuts to Gawain bloodily ripping off one of her horns with a wildly angry expression on her face! With s downright beastial roar, she becomes covered in blazing red and deep purple energy as she accesses the TRUE power of her identity as the Black Dog Barghest, growing to positively massive proportions as her sword gets more and more enflamed, cutting to Gawain letting out a final scream as her giant humanoid form towards over the puny opponents! A single swing of her massive sword creates a torrent of flames that render everytone on screen little more than a silhouette, until the fire completely covers the screen and then vanishes as it returns to the normal screen. Gawain has her horn back on as the match continues, but a zoom-in will show it cracked and barely hanging on, and blood continues to stream down the sie of her face where she ripped off the horn for the rest of the stock.
This Final Smash does a pretty massive 66.6% damage while killing at 66.6%, with the activation hit having a long range but a bit of a slow start-up for a Final Smash activator, which for the most part is somewhat of a downside. It isn't all that bad, though, and it sure LOOKS really cool! (And in Gawain's non-knightly outfits gives an...interesting view, too!)
"Servant, Lancer. Fairy Knight Lancelot, has arrived in response to your summons.
...It seems you don't have any ties with me yet. Well, you can know about that little by little."
Fairy Knight Lancelot
(aka Melusine)
(aka The White Dragon of Britain, Albion)
Parameters:
Strength: C
Agility: B
Luck: B
Endurance: A+
Mana: A+
Noble Phantasm: A+
Height: 147cm / 4' 8"
Weight: 20 kg / 44 lbs
Source: France's Fae History, The Legend of Melusine
Region: Dark Swamp
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Gender: Female
"Melusine is not my real name, either. But it's a very important name."
One of the Fairy Knights of the Round Table in "Lostbelt No. 6: Faerie Round Table Domain, Avalon le Fae", the latest chapter in the hit mobile gacha game Fate/Grand Order, Lancelot is described as the "most loved" and "most beautiful" of the ones that we see and is the most outright "powerful" (not necessarily physically strong) of the three. In-game, this is represented by her being a 5-star Servant compared to Gawain and Tristan's 4 Stars.
Mechanic: Form of the Dragon
Mechanic before stats?! Well, with how Lancelot works that's just to make explaining easier! Lancelot is a form change character who, through her Neutral Special, can temporarily OR permanently switch from her first, fairy knight form into her "true" dragon girl form! This is done primarily on her Neutral Special and means that Lancelot has two sets of stats to her, which is why I put this before the stats section.
In addition to changing form normally, many of Lancelot's attacks have the ability to go into another attack(s) from the other form as a change during ending lag or other predetermined areas, often limiting Lancelot into going for a specific move in exchange for this. This allows Lancelot to shift forms more seamlessly, but forces her to commit to using specific moves that makes it more predictable and punishable. More will be explained in Neutral Special, but this makes explaining everything else easier!
Dragon Form Lancelot moves will be written in this text color and for ease of reading + flavor she will be referred to be "Melusine" inside of her dragon form. As an additional fluff note, her HUD changes to say "Lancelot" or "Melusine" based on which form she is in.
Statistics
While in her Fairy Knight form, Lancelot is a ground-based character with high ground mobility and weak survivability. Her weight is equal to Sephiroth at 79, another powerful-yet-lightweight beast, and her overall size is between Mario and Luigi. Her 2.415 Run Speed puts her directly between Shei (2.42) and Mythra (2.41) for the 5th fastest character in the game on the ground, with her high walk speed being equal to Little Mac (9th). Her traction is a bit slippery.
Aerially, Lancelot isn't particularly fast in the air at Corrin air speed (1.019) and the same air acceleration, with a high fall speed equal to Wolf (1.8, 12th). While she can do a lot of fastfalling for shorthop shenanigans, her poor aerial control and mediocre air speed mean she isn't THAT great at it. Her first jump is somewhat low to the ground and equal to Wolf, while her second jump is fairly good at Bowser Jr. level but not all that impressive. She tends to be best aerially when going for close to the ground play, basically.
Melusine's stats are the complete opposite of her Fairy Knight form's, being a completely air-based fighter with multiple jumps and high survivability but more slow speed. In addition to her dragon legs giving her additional height, the height of her wings counts as a hurtbox and causes her to be only a bit shorter than Ganondorf effectively. The width of her wings, which extends into the background and foreground, are not hurtboxes. She gets a pretty nice boost to her weight to go up to 108 (Tied with Samus and Dark Samus), but given her size it's somewhat under what you would expect. Her dash speed sees a notable drop to Falco levels (including the part where Falco has about a 0.400 boost in initial dash that quickly degrades, so she is a bit faster when foxtrotting) with Bowser Jr. walk speed. She retains the same traction as her Fairy Knight form.
Where Melusine truly dominates is in the air game, sporting a total of 4 midair jumps to go with a R.O.B. level first jump (9th highest). The energy thrusters on her dragon wings flare up with energy whenever she does an extra jump and each of them are pretty good as far as extra jumps go. Combined with extreme floatiness (At 1.10 Fall Speed, she is the 2nd floatiest character in the game and roughly as close to Peach/Daisy's 1.19 as Jigglypuff's 0.98), a very high air speed (1.325, third behind Yoshi and Jigglypuff but ahead of Mewtwo) and very good air control. Her Gravity is equal to Peach/Daisy. This allows Melusine to have extremely strong air control, going far offstage for kills while also walling out opponents with her aerial play.
Adding onto Melusine's aerial dominance is the ability to Charge Jump. By holding down Jump for 12 frames in the air (this isn't available with her ground jump), Melusine can jump at 1.5x her normal jump height in any direction! Just hold down the direction you wanna go while charging up. Holding it down while attacking won't make it work, so it won't interrupt your short to the ground forward aerials, but it does allow Melusine to take crazy aerial paths and
In an overall sense, Lancelot form tends to play as an aggressive, grounded combo character with some issues landing and aggressively mediocre air stats with a trend towards poor air control. Melusine form is more durable and has a strong air focus, but her ground speed is subpar and she becomes a much larger hurtbox that makes her higher weight be comboable, although her very floaty air speed means she isn't total combo food. This form tends to play more with longer reach and more spacing + defensive oriented.
Specials
Neutral Special - Ray Horizon A
It's here I'll explain more about HOW Lancelot's form swapping works. Lancelot has a 5-part gauge on her HUD, the same spot as most gauges of this type, and with the appearance of the enemy Noble Phantasm gauge in Fate/Grand Order but with blue coloring over the normal yellow. It is segmented into 5 parts. Transforming from one part to another via Neutral Special takes 1 bar (AKA 1/5ths of the gauge), while transforming during other moves takes up 2 bars, and 1 bar takes 12 seconds to fully regenerate so using them up is a sizable commitment!
Transformation is overall pretty quick and seamless with a speed like Pyra/Mythra's, and Lancelot can in fact dodge attacks during the transition like the Blades. This means while it can be too slow to really "combo" or anything it's not particularly punishable to switch between forms, and with enough frame advantage such combos ARE possible. For better comboing potential, however, Lancelot can use her transformation at select points during select moves, sometimes only as a flat transformation like Neutral Special, other times by inputting an attack or specific attack (which causes her to transform into the other form and perform that input), or in some moves do either of them. Lancelot does not have a limit on the amount of times she can do this in an attack string save for her meter, which means that the maximum she can do is starting attack -> swap -> swap for 4 bars of meter. This can definitely lead to strong options for the dragon girl that go beyond anything her normal set can achieve, but do be aware you're spending a LOT of resources on this: It'll take 48 seconds to get all of that meter back! And it would be most dreadful to, say, get stuck off stage as Lancelot and not have enough meter left to enter the Melusine form to actually recover. Lancelot's meter becomes restored to full whenever she dies.
There IS more to this attack than just pure transformation, though! Holding down B for 30 frames will cause Lancelot to surge with energy (just like one of her skill activation animations) as she lets out a yell, before being covered in a blinding flash of light over the next 20 frames. This permanently transforms Lancelot into her Melusine form!At first you may think this a downside, as she loses complete access to any of her Lancelot attacks! But keen eyes will notice many differences from transforming into Melusine normally as she access the full power of her Albion heritage, most obvious is that the transformation gauge has been replaced with a Noble Phantasm gauge that has the appearance of the player Noble Phantasm gauge in Fate/Grand Order save for the bar that fills up being blue. This meter works the same as Little Mac's power meter, but it takes twice as long to fill up (approximately 666% damage dealt or 200% damage taken) by comparison. Damage TAKEN before permanent transformation counts towards her Noble Phantasm meter, damage DEALT does NOT. There's even a little percentage indicating progress to the right like in Fate/Grand Order!
When this meter reaches 100%, Melusine glows with the aura of a Final Smash, ready to utilize her Noble Phantasm on her unworthy foe! We'll get to the effects of her Noble Phantasm after fully explaining the buffs a permanent Melusine receives, but just know that unlike the Noble Phantasm of Gawain's sister that it is much more full power and a key reason to go through with this. One potential option is to try and KO an opponent without using the permanent transformation, then going for it on their next stock and going for a swift Noble Phantasm to get a huge damage lead! Predictable? Very! But it's a technique that can bolster overwhelming strength. Something worth noting is that Melusine's Noble Phantasm is "use it or lose it" just like a normal Final Smash Meter, disappearing if she fails to use it within 20 seconds.
So, what about the OTHER buffs?
- Melusine's attacks deal 1.2x damage and she takes 0.8x damage from all enemy sources, making her overall more durable and more of a damage threat no matter the circumstance and helping to reduce the load from losing those juicy Lancelot combo starters. This damage boost does not apply to her Final Smash and the damage reduction does not apply to enemy Final Smashes.
- Melusine's weight is increased by 8 points to be equal to Charizard/Incineroar for a tie at 6th heaviest character in the game, showing off the power of her dragon durability. On top of that, the damage reduction passive she has makes her even tankier, making her an EXTREMELY hard heavyweight to kill! This is another reason it is good to consider unleashing the dragon when you're at high percents.
- Melusine gains a 5th midair jump. It is very small, basically just stalling her in place, but it does allow her even further options for aerial wall of pains and gimps.
- Melusine has a small, light blue surge of energy around her (like a highly reduced version of the aura she had when activating her permanent transformation) to further show she's permanently transformed. And most importantly, to look cool. Attacks of hers that use energy also look a touch more vibrant and brilliant.
- Melusine's Neutral Special is changed completely, since swapping is now useless to her. Instead it is a manual charge move similar to Cloud's Down Special, essentially having Melusine charge up in the same way as her permanent transformation animation. This fills up her Noble Phantasm meter as the same rate as if she dealt 12% damage per second of use and unlike Cloud's Limit she ONLY gets it in one second chunks. While this makes it hard to get, Melusine is perfectly happy to start charging up and dare opponents to charge in and stop her! This is primarily used to force the foe to get in close so you can stop their approaches or punish them rather than charge up given the slow rate, but a cowardly enemy is going to just give Melusine access to a powerful attack if they let her charge up enough. Melusine's meter gain is halved in the air to discourage trying to just air stall for meter and is further cut in half again if she spends more than 2 seconds in the air charging juuuust in case.
Overall, Neutral Special is the crux of your playstyle, to swap between an aggressive melee form and a heavyweight zoner while unlocking supremely powerful finisher or survival options when the time calls for it in exchange for losing speed and damage potential. This gives her a VERY high skill ceiling and a troublesome skill floor as not only is learning two movesets required but also how they flow and interact with each other. But those who truly take the time to nurture and master the dragon? They'll get a multifaceted character with beautifully deep options and beloved power to crush all who oppose them!
Melusine Final Smash: Hollow Heart Albion - Known By No One, Innocent Heartbeat
Lancelot's Final Smash isn't achievable in normal play like Melusine's, so we'll be ignoring that until the end of the set. Melusine lets out a loud roar, uncharacteristic for her normally more cool emotionless tone, as her body surges with more energy than even her permanent transformation! This is a long start-up of 28 frames, eminently reactable, with the same buff icons appearing over her head as in the game as she charges up the attack: Ignore Invincible and Buster Up!
After those 28 frames, Melusine rushes forward like a fighter jet 3 Battlefield Platforms at incredible speeds! This does still add some frames of lag to enemies not right up close to her, so keep that in mind. The Ignore Invincible buff means that in addition to the normal Final Smash shtick of being unshieldable, she cannot be stopped by dodges, invincibility, pretty much anything short of a respawn platform (respawn invincibilty in general still stops this to prevent respawn camping cheese)! Note that she IS still vulnerable to attacks during all of this, so that's another way around it. Most commonly, you'll be trying to whiff punish a foe who uses a particularly unsafe attack, a strong read on a roll or when the opponent is prone (although note that the nature of getup attacks will allow it to trade with Melusine's Final Smash with proper timing, or beat it out).
If she DOES hit opponents during the rush, she can hit a maximum of three, then she will trigger a cinematic Final Smash as she glows even brighter, traveling through three rings as her body seemingly becomes one with her rushing energy, before it turns around and glows more brilliantly before she morphs into her TRUE form: The remnant of the dragon Albion! She roars ferociously as she transforms, coming around and opening a (rather unfortunately placed) hatch on her cyber-dragon body to unveil a laser that she fires upon her enemies! They're even placed the same way as enemies in Fate/Grand Order are when she fires, heh. This deals 8% + 10% + 12% + 14% + 16% damage (Total: 60%) spread out over 5 hits and will kill at 65% center stage, a grotesquely powerful blow to have main set access of! Enemies who would be "expected" to be KO'd (have a dramatic kill zoom-in) by the attack but still have more damage will have "OVERKILL" appear plastered in the corner the same way as when you deal more damage than HP to enemies in F/GO. The lag, time limit to use and high conditions to even get the meter filled mean this isn't the easiest attack to even start to use, but it's more than worth it! Melusine appears back where she launched the attack when she gets it off as she re-appears in her dragon knight form, while she huffs and puffs out of breath as the energy disperses at the end of her range on a whiff for punishable ending lag!
Curiously, Melusine actually gets a few buffs if she MISSES the attack, as the Ignore Invincible and Buster Up effects are not used up on whiff! These cause Melusine's next three attacks to cut through shields (but not dodges and the like as with the true Final Smash, lacking THAT power) and deal an additional flat +3% damage per hit, so you can still get something out of it on a miss and encouraging some rather reckless usage of it instead of just letting it expire.
Side Special - Peri Dancer / Horizon Void
Side Special - Peri Dancer (Fairy Dancer?) in Fairy Form, Horizon Void in Dragon form. Fairy Form's attack is a Dancing Blade style Rekka that begins with a rush in punch and then leads into an attack chain decided by direction which are largely based on her attack animations from F/GO. Figure out specifics later. Dragon form Side Special is based on her Extra Attack, putting her twin Ardonights together to create a rail cannon energy blast that is fired off. The energy blast lingers once it hits the target as a multi-hit with suction properties. Many of Form 1 Lancelot's attacks cancel into transforming into Dragon Form for SSpec.
Up Special - Helicopter Blades
Up Special - Human form is an upwards leap where she helicopters her Ardonight blades around, before plummeting at a diagonal level as a kind of combo of Mr. Game & Watch's Up Special and Terry's Power Dunk in execution. She creates a gravity hole akin to Horizon Void when she lands in a strong multihit that draws in opponents. Pressing B allows her to drop early. Up Special is a fast warp that she can do twice in the air, further contributing to her insane air game.
Down Special - Melusinedrop
Down Special - Fairy form is a Kazuya-style Command Grab (for now), Dragon form is a circular Sephiroth style Counter based on one of her Skill Use animations. Landing Melusine's counter attack while permanently transformed adds to her Noble Phantasm gauge based on the power of the enemy's attack. Lancelot's Command Grab attack is more horizontally oriented in start-up than Kazuya.
Forward Smash (Dragon) - Named Burst Stream of Destruction, because smol angry Dragon Girl Lancelot is ripe for Blue-Eyes White Dragon jokes. Not sure the exact effect, but it's obviously a big attack.
Forward Smash (Fairy) - Eternal Minigun Mastery. Exploiting her love of high power guns, Lancelot takes out a minigun and anyway she just started blasted. Lets out a long stream of multihit attacks that deals massive damage and pushes opponents to the end. A laggy but high power spacer and damage racker that's a bit odd in Fairy Lancelot's kit, but Dragon Lancelot makes great use of the range. Can shift to Dragon Form after the attack into a Side Special OR can shift FROM Dragon Form on Side Special to this to use the gravity effects from Horizon Void in different ways.
Down Smash - White Lightning
Down Smash (Dragon) - White Lightning, continuing the BEWD jokes. Based on her Arts 3 attack, she sends out her dual Ardonights as laser strikes that zigzag up and down diagonally to both sides of her, before teleporting back to her at the end. A great coverage move with solid power, but since she starts by shooting down and then they bounce up it is hella weak to shorthops and other jump-in attacks.
Up Smash - Melusine Dragon Jet
Lancelot rockets upwards like a jet, striking with one of her Ardonights as she flies upwards for good damage.
Standards[/center
Jab - Jab
Jab (Dragon) - 3-hit laser sword combo based on one of her attack animations, slow for a jab but powerful.
Forward Tilt - Forward Tilt
Forward Tilt (Dragon) - Lancelot transforms one of her twin Ardonights into a dragon-like maw, which clamps down in front of her as a powerful hitbox. It's quite strong and range-y, but it's lag leaves something to be desired: More of a combo finisher or for use with the opponent pinned down by projectiles.
Down Tilt - Sweep
A sweep with one of Lancelot's blades and a tip that trip.
Up Tilt - Pirouette
A pirouetting sword stab that looks rather graceful and fits nicely into her combo game!
Dash Attack - Slam
A powerful, damaging leap into a double handed slam against the foe that can dodge low attacks.
Aerials
Down Aerial - Diving Slash
Down Aerial (Fairy) - A stall than fall with no stall. It's pretty weak (7%) damage as Lancelot drops down either straight down or at an angle based on angling, but she has almost no ending lag when landing it and properly spaced it is actually safe on shield!
Down Aerial (Dragon) - Multi-stomp kicking again similar to Snake's, but with a lot more options. Lancelot has three options on the last kick. Letting the attack finish naturally, which gives low knockback good for combos. Press A again, which results in a much slower but spiking stomp hitbox. Or hold down A, which results in Lancelot spiralling upwards before flying down in a powerful stall than fall. It's all your favorite Down Aerial archetypes in one!
Forward Aerial - Swift Swipe
A swift sword slashing swipe for combos.
Back Aerial - Strong Swipe[/center[
A slow sword slashing swipe for kills.
Up Aerial - Up Aerial
A single strike with a spark at the tip that's a powerful sweetspot.
Neutral Aerial - Sex Kick
sex kick
Grab Game
Grab - Quick Grab
Smol hands, smol range, fast to come out.
Pummel - Punch
punch, 1%
Up Throw - Suplex
Up Throw (Human) - Rising suplex style throw akin to Kirby or Metaknight, which has her dragon wings appear for a brief moment as she boosts herself upwards. This is Lancelot's KO throw and the amount she rises scales with the foe's damage, with a good damage percent she can hit high platforms to get some early kills!
Up Throw (Dragon) - Lancelot kicks up the opponent with one of her dragon claw feet, then rockts into the sky after them. A 4-part attack where Lancelot can choose where to send the opponent with every strike, showcasing Lancelot's speed and allowing her a supreme positioning tool.
Down Throw - Combo Slam
Smacks the foe against the ground, popping them up lightly for a combo throw.
Forward Throw - Shotgun Blast
Pushes the opponent forward and then steps forward while taking out a shotgun, blasting the opponent away strongly.
Back Throw - German Suplex
Lancelot lifts the opponent above her head, then drops them into the ground with a German Suplex for another strong attack.
In the ancient history of British Fairies, she was said to be the "Good Fairy of the Lake" but after compilation of Arthurian legends, she became regarded as a wicked woman who opposed King Arthur. On the other hand, she is identified with Vivian, the fairy who endowed King Arthur with the holy sword and protected him after his death.
Because Morgan comes LATE in a rather complex and involved storyline within Fate/Grand Order's storyline, it uses a multitude of terminology to explain things within it. For ease of reading from the many people NOT super invested in the game, I've included a general glossary of terms from this arc so you can better understand what I am talking about.
Chaldea - The organization the main group of heroes is a part of, including the main character (who will be referred to hereon as Gudako) and all of their Servants.
Foreign God - A powerful being supposedly hailing from space, which appeared after the events of the game's first arc (Observer on Timeless Temple) and its aftermath (Epic of Remnant). It descended upon the Earth and "bleached" its surface clean of life, leaving almost no survivors, and now seeks to overlay a new human history on top of it so that it can descend upon the planet and conquer it. Chaldea seeks to stop it from doing so and restore "Proper Human History" in the process, having escaped through plot we don't need to get into right now. A number of in-universe noted contradictions cast doubt on everything from its nature to the true purpose of its plans.
Lostbelt - An alternative timeline that was pruned by the planet itself for being a "dead end", but was brought back into existence by the Foreign God and is part of its plan to replace Proper Human History with a new one. They are sustained by the Trees of Emptiness that the Foreign God planeted in defiance of the planet's will. Chaldea must destroy the Lostbelts in order to bring back "Proper Human History", but this will result in the timelines once again returning to non-existence, leading to a good deal of debate.
Tree of Emptiness - Alien objects the Foreign God planted into the Earth that sustain the Lostbelts and contain incredible power. If the Tree of Emptiness dies, the entire Lostbelt begins to go through a process called Cosmos Denial as the planet once again asserts its the timeline's non-existence, causing it to fade from reality. The Foreign God wishes for them to reach full power and "bloom" so that it may use it to descend to Earth. They possess a rudimentary will and are able to fight for their own survival.
Crypters - A group of 7 Masters from Chaldea who were caught in the explosion that began the plot way back in the first arc, where all Master candidates save for the protagonist were killed or brutally wounded and put into stasis to try and save them. The Foreign God offered them a second chance at life in exchange for working under it to bring the Lostbelts to fruition and have them become the new Human History. Lostbelt 1's Crypter is Kadoc Zemlupus, Lostbelt 2's Crypter is Ophelia Phamrsolone, Lostbelt 3's Crypter is Akuta Hinako, Lostbelt 4's Crypter is Scandinavia Peperoncino (which EVERYONE believes is an alias due to being so absurd), Lostbelt 5's Crypter is Kirschtaria Wodime, Lostbelt 6's Cryptier is Beryl Gut and Lostbelt 7's Crypter is Daybit Sem Void.
Lostbelt King - An incredibly strong being / ruler within each Lostbelt, said to be the STRONGEST in their Lostbelt, who helps ensure the Lostbelt's existence in the world as chosen by the Tree of Emptiness. Since they come WITH the Lostbelt they are not explicitly aligned with the Foreign God or their Lostbelt's Crypter, often leading to conflict with their Crypter in how to advance the Lostbelt or if their goals are at odds with each other. Lostbelt 1's King is Ivan the Terrible, Lostbelt 2's is the goddess Skadi fused with the Irish god-slayer Scathach, Lostbelt 3's is Qin Shi Huang, Lostbelt 4's is God Arjuna, Lostbelt 5's is Zeus, Lostbelt 6's is Morgan le Fay and the final Lostbelt's King remains unknown at this point in time.
Rhongomyniad - A tower of light that anchors the "layers" of the world, in particularly the outer layer of the world ("Reality", as we know it) and the Reverse Side of the World ("Illusion", a realm that many mythological creatures retreated to as the Age of Gods ended and the location of Avalon) and thus helps create "the world" as we know it. The mythological lance Rhongomyniad is a shadow of its power gifted to King Arthur, a fact only she and Merlin were aware of. Morgan wields a Magecraft version of the lance that possesses incredible power.
The Queen of Fairy Britain, the Ruin of the Round Table, the Lostbelt King of the Sixth Lostbelt: Faerie Round Table Domain, Avalon le Fae. It is completely impossible to discuss her any further without giving RIDICULOUS amounts of spoilers to the sixth Lostbelt so beware for ahead there be Spoilers. This also contains some notable spoilers for Lostbelt 5 as well.
You good?
We good.
Lostbelt Statistics
"So you have summoned me... Berserker, Morgan. As the Queen of Britain, the Land of Fairies, I shall continue to curse Proper Human History. As long as you do not have a problem with that, I shall lend you my power as a Servant. It is a fact that I cannot change my status as Queen. You shall work hard as my retainer. Or perhaps, you'd like to become my wife?"
In possession of E-Rank Endurance, a Berserker when summoned as a Chaldean Servant (meaning a defensive negative against everyone) and much more of a squishy wizard than a melee master, Morgan serves as one of the lightest characters in all of Smash Brothers at Weight 72. She beats out only Jigglypuff (68) and Pichu (62), falling short of Mr. Game & Watch and Squirtle (75). Her dash speed is not horrible but is below average and unremarkable, a 1.595 equal to Corrin and Ivysaur. This suits Morgan perfectly fine: Her playstyle, after all, is all about killing her enemies without getting in close. Her walk speed is equal to Palutena and she has very low traction.
Aerially, Morgan has middle of the road air speed equal to Palutena/Piranha Plant (1.0) and while in possession of more average fall speed (Mewtwo/Palutena level) her abnormally low Gravity (0.063, above Rosalina and below Kirby for 3rd lowest) gives her a significently floatier feel. Her first jump is solid and above average but nothing to write home about (Robin level), but her second jump has Mewtwo-esque movement and "floatiness" while being the 2nd highest behind Mewtwo at 56.5 (Mewtwo is 57.35). This does help with her weight, and she lacks the delay Mewtwo does in her hurtbox being shifted.
Put it all together and you get an easy to kill character with middling mobility. Her good jumps + very low Gravity can really let her hang around falling opponents and having a long lasting, threatening air game but she otherwise lacks movement ability. But it isn't Morgan's statistics that are to be feared: Her ridiculously powerful Magecraft and wide array of abilities more than make up for her low innate stats.
Lostbelt Specials
Side Special: Infinity Mirror Network
Given what I just said, it might be surprising that Morgan's first move is a strictly melee affair, beginning with Morgan holding her hand above her head (in a manner very similar to her charging her Extra Attack in F/GO) as an optional charge. Once released, Morgan sweeps her hand forward in a regal manner that has somewhat more range than you'd expect (she does use a LITTLE magic to extend the range, as a treat) but still very much a melee range command grab. Charging the move does not actually increase the move's damage, with the enemy enveloped in a black hole-like maelstrom of magic when hit that deals 8% damage before being launched with a simple wave of Morgan's hand for 4% damage. The base knockback of this attack is quite high, with the overall end lag vs. hitstun ensuring this as mostly a neutral reset without any notable frame advantage for either side. This perfectly suits Morgan's highly ranged playstyle, naturally.
The starting lag of this attack is actually pretty fast if you don't charge it, although charging to full takes 60 frames and cannot be stored. The far harder issue is that Morgan does NOT usually want to get in close to her opponent, as even her normals are designed for ranged use and not gritty melee combat. Leave that to the Fairy Knights of the world rather than a supreme sorceress like Morgan. Whiffing leaves her about as vulnerable as Bowser after a failed Side Special. Morgan's setup on moves like Neutral Special, Down Special and Forward Smash can all make this a LOT easier to hit and lead to a bit of a cycling nature of using setup to land Side Special which in turn helps land all of the rest of your ranged move.
Ufufu. Yes, I haven't mentioned the big reward for this move yet, have I? An opponent struck by this move is connected to Morgan's Infinity Mirror portal network! This allows Morgan to use this to shortcut ANY of her non-Special attacks to strike THROUGH the portal system, allowing her to essentially perform the attack from opponents ANYWHERE on screen! That Forward Tilt of yours? Use this and even if the opponent is 2 Battlefields Platforms and 1.5 Ganondorfs above, the hitbox will appear either in front or behind them (depending on if Morgan is facing at the foe or opposite them) anyway! This is a ridiculously powerful cheat ability that can flatout allow Morgan to combo opponents while halfway across the screen and without nearly as much regard to things pesky normal Smash characters consider such as "positioning", although truly getting a big state off this is difficult.
A base command grab gives two uses of the portal network on the foe, while a fully charged one gives five uses, a 20-frame charge is three and a 40-frame charge is 4. Enemies can tell that they are afflicted by the air around them appearing somewhat distorted, like the ripple of light waves after putting your finger to the surface of water, and periodic crackling of black and ice blue energy around them. Morgan can stack this as many times as she wants, but when you're landing that many command grabs on the opponent you'd probably be better off actually getting reward from it, wouldn't you? There is no time limit on this effect, so Morgan isn't in a "use it or lose it" situation. Opponents just have to deal with being marked by her. The effects do go away if the foe or Morgan is KO'd, unsurprisingly.
Morgan is free to command grab as many opponentsas she likes, and she doesn't even have to "choose" which enemy to strike down with her multifaceted magecraft! Instead, Morgan activating her Infinity Mirror Network will "refract" her hitboxes when multiple enemies are all afflicted by Side Special, which in blunt terms means the hitbox appears at the location of ALL foes on screen that have it. Side Special everyone else in an 8-player Smash? Now your Forward Tilt is striking at EVERYONE on screen! Morgan's actually quite the monster in FFAs and 2v2s thanks to her great area of effect abilities. This DOES mean that she can't save up stacks of it on specific opponent afflicted by it. Control has never been the strong suit of Berserkers, has it?
As for how to use it: Using B + A for the starting lag of Smash Attacks will make that attack use the Infinity Mirror, while all other inputs require Morgan to hold down the A button for the move's entire starting lag. Specials cannot use the Infinity Mirror Network and so do not have any inputs, throws obviously do not work with it but your grab does which is just "hold down the grab button" (or Shield + A for old schoolers as well). Note that this means Morgan has B + A Smash turned on and cannot turn it off.
Neutral Special: Beyond the Furthest End
A skill beyond what the Prime Human History Morgan could achieve, an embodiment of the Lostbelt King's manifestation and a skill unique to her. The attack's animation itself is based around her Arts 2 attack animation and is another non-storable charge attack. Morgan transforms her weapon into a bizarrely axe-like form as black-blue energy gathers violently in between the very open gap between the two-sided axe heads as black, mucky liquid swirls at her feet. The charge takes 60 frames, same as your Side Special, with the attack being released with Morgan swinging her axe down as if to behead someone (with one hand) as the cursed black mana oozes forth like a veritable ocean of malevolence! Even without charge this attack is VERY laggy, at 43 Frames of start-up it is between a Sephiroth Flare and the base version of Byleth's Neutral Special (both of which come with cancel options to make them more feasible unlike this move!). The reward is WELL worth the wait, however, and Morgan has veeery low ending lag if she actually pulls this technique off! Morgan's fall speed is reduced to 2/3rds of normal while using or charging this attack in the air, making it more feasible to get off there.
First off, the hitbox travels 2 Battlefield Platforms uncharged and the full length of Final Destination if fully charged! This is a LOT of range, although the hitbox doesn't quit "truly" use it, with opponents being dragged only one Battlefield Platform worth of multihits before being launched upwards, so you can't just drag opponents off the side of the stage. It's still a potentially grotesque edgeguarding tool that forces opponents to not go mid if they see her starting it up at ledge: Choose high or low or die then and there. The multihits total 11% with a launching hit of 5% that does not scale with charge and moderate upwards knockback that lacks killing potential. After traveling its full distance, the black mana falls to the ground. If used grounded, it simply stays on the ground it traveled, while aerial use will fall down at a high fall speed until it either falls off the stage or hits ground. It has no hitbox, windbox or any other properties to make it effect anyone in the game and is merely to allow you to coat the ground with it so don't worry about Morgan completely bodying anyone who goes low.
Any ground that the black mana falls upon is coated in it, which "waves" back and forth on the ground it coats as an "idle animation" like an ocean rather than being totally static in appearance like Inkling ink, remains coated for 25 seconds. Morgan CANNOT use her Neutral Special again while ANY ground is coated in her previous Neutral Special, so take very great care when actually using your Neutral Special to not just coat a teeny-tiny part of the stage and be left with a useless input. Once some part of the stage is under her iron-fisted rule, Neutral Special will now instead allow Morgan to command her black mana from anywhere on screen, once again transforming her lance into it's odd axe-like form, and swinging it in different patterns to command it to do what she wishes. The swings have no hitbox and are just a fancy casting animation.
Exactly what part of the stages Morgan covers can be highly influenced by her position, and she can potentially coat entire stages with it. Let's take Battlefield as an example. If you used this at the very edge of Battlefield facing inwards, you could coat the entire bottom of Battlefield in your black mana, but you won't hit any of the platforms and so opponents can use them to avoid it. On the other hand, you could use this attack from a double jump which will be tall enough that Morgan will be above the top Battlefield Platform, meaning she'll end up coating all the platforms in black mana, but since the platforms are above the main stage she'll only get a bit of it on the main stage through the gaps in the platforms, creating a reverse situation where opponents will hide under the platforms to avoid the stage control instead. A single full hop will coat the two bottom platforms but not the top platform, creating a more even distribution of black mana on the middle and edges of the main stage but the two bottom platforms, with opponents navigating clear "safe zones" either on the top of the tallest platform or below the two bottom-most platforms. And this is just Battlefield: Stages with different layouts, such as Smashville or Town and City, will have their own unique quirks to how Morgan will be able to set up her kingdom...but I can't go over EVERY stage in the game, so we'll leave it to your imagination now that I've wormed the basic idea into your mind.
Let's go over Morgan's actual abilities with this out, shall we? By using Neutral Special and Down, Morgan plants her axe head-first down to command the black mana. This causes the mana under any and all opponents within its inky borders, even in the air, to begin bubbling and oozing under them! This only count actual opponents or stuff like clones, and won't create them under minions. This stays stationary where they were when the attack was first used, so merely moving can be a good way to avoid it. After 25 frames of this vile animation, a wicked and inky hand of black mana reaches up a short distance to try and grasp at any foes who it can reach! They don't go up very far, they won't be able to reach the lower Battlefield Platforms from the main stage for example, but their effect if they DO snag opponents is very strong! Dragging the opponent down into the muck, this causes any opponents gripped to be pitfalled right then and there. Which, yes, means there is now in theory a FrozenRoy set that can pitfall all 7 opponents at once.
This pitfall is roughly equivalent in length to King K. Rool's Down Throw, but is more valuable to Morgan since this move actually has LESS ending lag than the 25 frames it takes for the hand to come out, allowing her much more of a degree of freedom in how to follow up on it. Why, depending on the opponent's positioning, this can be a VERY good kill option...oh, wait, Side Special. That means you don't have to worry about that pesky positioning a lot of the time, huh? This is only partially true as the nature of Morgan's best kill options (Forward Smash, Down Smash and Down Special) somewhat preclude straight-up comboing out of a pitfall like this. But it's not impossible! The downside, of course, comes from ease of use: Morgan needs to set up a laggy zone that opponents can simply step away from to avoid, the opponent keeping up movement avoids the pitfall (or just being in the air) and unless Morgan also has a Side Special setup she's liable to not be in the right position to truly take advantage of the pitfall. It's much harder to utilize its advantages than just "ha ha funni grab" is what I'm saying.
As a note, Morgan can only have one Neutral Special effect out at a time, which includes when any opponent is pitfalled by this effect (which prevents any dumb pitfall infinites). Some of these effects can be long lasting, so she has to utilize careful planning in what the most proper one to execute at any given time is. It also means that opponents don't have to worry about other options while her current one is going, leaving enemies potentially free to just run at Morgan's face when she starts bubbling her witch's brew of pitfall power.
How about Morgan's Back option? This has her curl a finger forward enticingly while also cutting her axe inwards for its casting animation. Ink rises out of the muck from the FURTHEST away from Morgan's current position and begins rotating towards her as a very fast, buzzsaw-like hitbox! This hitbox has a similar size to King Dedede and travels towards Morgan at Captain Falcon's dash speed, striking down anyone in its way for 12% damage and moderately powerful knockback in the direction it is traveling which 90% of the time will mean knocking enemies TOWARDS Morgan. It travels as far as it can towards Morgan until it hits any ground not covered by black mana or a ledge, at which point it melts back into black mana at that location. This means that how powerful this effect is depends a LOT on your positioning of Beyond the Furthest End. Coating a large part of the area in unbroken muck makes this he most effective, but if you have this on platforms you can essentially snap turn a platform into an uninhabitable zone for a few moments. Only have it slicked at the ledge? Well, it can at least allow you to add it to a ledgetrapping repertoire in that case!
In general, the primary usage of this move is as a combo starter from afar and to work with her Forward-Neutral Special for strong stage denial. Since it will most of the time hit opponents towards Morgan, she can simply follow-up with an aerial or perhaps an Up Tilt or Up Smash as long as she isn't too far from the opponent (or too CLOSE at high percents where they'll fly away fast). Its large hitbox size allows her to control the stage her black mana touches, usually requiring a full hop to jump over if the opponent does not want to shield the move. Note that the buzzsaw counts as a projectile, so opponents with reflectors will have an edge in getting around this. Like with most of her Neutral Special attacks, Morgan has pretty low ending lag on actually using this, although since it travels a long distance it'll lock her out of Neutral Special options for a while.
Then there is her Forward option, which has Morgan thrusting her hand forward with an open palm as if to decree all enemies Stop while raising her axe form to the sky. This causes a wall almost as tall of Ganondorf made out of pulsating black mana to slop out of the dark ocean at the end of it CLOSEST to Morgan, before launching itself forward at Fox's dash speed to slide across the black mana! This wall actually deals zero damage but instead functions as, well, a moving solid wall: Projectiles stop against it (although projectiles that deal 18% or more will actually destroy it and continue going unimpeded!), opponents get pushed against it and cannot move through it (except in this case, to prevent any big abuses, with any getup or ledge option or a roll) and so on. The terms of when it ceases to exist are the same as her Back-Neutral Special.
While Morgan's Back-Neutral Special serves as a combo starting tool and is for Morgan to get aggressive while controlling the far away stage, her Forward option is exactly the opposite: A potent counter-camping tool that rejects the notions of lesser campers projectiles and makes a mess out of opponents who are approaching by basically forcing them to perform a jump or a roll to get around it. Needless to say, Morgan's multitude of ranged options means she can absolutely punish the hell out of jumps and rolls even from quite the distance, to say nothing of Side Special afflicted foes needing to worry about even stronger and more debilitating punishments. This does take longer than most of her other Neutral Special options to start, but the ending lag is still on the low side and so she has plenty of room to punish her enemies' options should she correctly predict. This is also great for forcing opponents to edge slip, which can set up a good ledgetrapping scenario at the edge of a stage and lead into niche kill confirms from platforms in the right situation or a combo starting.
While this is largely a defensive tool, it does have a unique offensive use: Since Morgan will be pushed along by her own wall, something she needs to consider when using it so as to not position herself improperly, she's free to attack while moving! Opponents could use this property too, but Morgan being in control of using the actual attack means it will almost always be used in a situation beneficial to her and not, say, when it will simply push an opponent into her face. This can be used for Morgan to approach opponents, it starts at the edge closest to her so she can just step in front of it so it can appear behind her and push her forward, but it's also actually a great retreating tool as she gets to move herself while throwing out a projectile, set up her Down Special or use her Side Special to strike at the foe with all of her normals while being kept out of harm's way! It's a truly multifaceted tool to consider.
Finally we come to the Upwards Neutral Special option, which has Morgan swirl her axe above her head a few times as if stirring a pot above her head before setting it back down. This works similarly to the Downwards option in that it requires enemies to be over top of her black mana, be it in the air or on the ground, in order to work its magic. If there are none, then Morgan's spell fails as she suffers this attack's brief ending lag. If there IS anyone on it, then it will cause the black mana to bubble up in a substantially different way than the Down option. Rather than a pool of bubbles like something emerging from it, a single bubble of increasing size begins to press out from under where the enemy was at the time over the next 40 frames, with Morgan able to move halfway through for a rather short FAF all things considered. Once the bubble pops out of the muck on that 40th frame, it becomes a hitbox that explodes into a burst of black and blue whenever any opponent touches it for a pretty strong 15%! Enemies at ground level are killed at 160%, while being closer to 110% at the top of its 2.5 Ganondorf height vertical range. The mana bubble is about the size of Jigglypuff.
This mana bubble doesn't stay fully stationary as it travels, but sways back and forth up to 0.5 Battlefield Platforms to the left/right of where it started as it goes up. 0.5 Battlefield Platforms to one side th first 0.5 Ganondorfs, then 1 Battlefield Platform the other way (ending up 0.5 BFPs in that direction from where it started) over the next 1 Ganondorf, then going back the same distance back the direction it first chose over the last Ganondorf of height. This makes it excellent at it's primary job of air control: Jumping takes care of all of her other Neutral Special options to some degree after all, so taking some elements to the sky will keep opponents from just deciding to shorthop like a manic Palutena main. If the opponent has moved to the left or right of where they were when this move was initially input, it will sway that direction to start and then continue its alternating pattern. If they haven't, then it picks whatever direction Morgan was facing when this was used.
In addition to anti-airing, this is also Morgan's most directly powerful option from Neutral Special and the only one with any realistic kill power. The pitfall CAN lead to kills, but it's positioning dependant and the most easily avoided of her Neutral Special options. This is especially true in matches with many players, which can lead to a loooot of bubbles on screen like a magic minefield! And while your other Neutral Special options are largely strong for combos INTO Morgan's moves, this is your main one you'll combo your moves INTO instead, knocking opponents away like a trap. The fact the bubbles take 2 seconds total to rise makes them a reasonably solid trap, but it does also mean that they lock Morgan out of her Neutral Special options for longer than most of her other choices.
Overall, Neutral Special is one of Morgan's strongest stage control tools. It takes a laggy attack that can ultimately be easy to avoid the damage of to use, but properly placed it gives her access to four specialized tools with lag that would be a lot lower than a normal character without setup gets to utilize, with all of them having excellent synergy with her aggressively long range set. This is always a move Morgan should be on the lookout to use as it benefits every aspect of her game if she has it down, changing the texture of the match for opponents movement and approach options as they will likely want to minimize their exposure to it as much as possible.
Up Special: Mirror of the Lake
Whew, after such a long move, let's get one of the simpler ones out of the way! Morgan closes her eyes as her body seems to ripple like water, a faint blue magic emanating outwards from the staff. Morgan then disappears completely, re-appearing with a similar wavy effect in whatever direction she chose as a teleport recovery! This teleport goes roughly the 1.2x the distance as Mewtwo's, which is quite good, but Morgan does NOT enter helpless at the end of this move! while the ending lag is a bit long this does still allow Morgan to potentially use it to chase enemies in the air or even combo opponents from previous hits! It also leaves Morgan less vulnerable when using it as an escape option in comparison to a Mewtwo or the like since she can defend herself, giving her more uses of this outside of mere recovery.
The downside to this attack is substantially more starting lag: While most Mewtwo-style teleports are pretty fast affairs, with Mewtwo's taking until Frame 9 or so, Morgan's doesn't actually teleport her until Frame 17! This is much more in line with a Zelda-style teleport with a hitbox (which teleports on Frame 17), but Morgan completely lacks that aspect! This also makes Morgan in general much more susceptible to edgeguards that she has to be aware of, although on the plus side her very long double jump means she often does not need to rely on Up Specialing back to stage as much as many other characters. The long distance also does mean that it's very hard to have Morgan die without either taking an active role keeping her from returning to the stage or simply knocking her clean off the blast zones.
While not directly related to Up Special in any way, it's worth noting that Morgan can command her Neutral Special when returning to stage, which does make actually edge guarding Morgana lot harder: From using a Down or Up NSpec to keep enemies from camping the ledge to pushing them away with it with Forward NSpec or timing it so a Back NSpec will come to the opponent as she reaches the ledge, Morgan can use basically any of them to cover the weaknesses of her Up Special.
Down Special: Divine Magecraft Rhongomyniad
The holy magic that pins together the world and stitches together "Reality" and "Illusion", the divine magecraft that stands above even the Olympians, Rhongomyniad is Morgan's ultimate trump card. Did you think that Morgan was so foolish as to force this technique to be relegated to a Final Smash?
I must confess, I have not been entirely truthful about all of Morgan's abilities, as she has something else to keep in mind during all of these moves: Morgan has her own meter to utilize her Down Special, with the appearance of the Noble Phantasm bar from Fate/Grand Order save for the base color filling it up being a dark blue rather than a red, complete with a number representing what % it is full to the right! It takes the same numbers as the Final Smash Meter to fill up one bar of this meter: 150% damage taken or 250% damage dealt will fill it up to full. Unlike the Final Smash Meter, Morgan can fill MULTIPLE bars up to a maximum total of 5, overcharging her Down Special to ludicrous degrees! Every level not only has the % going up to a maximum of 500%, but also shows icy blue cracks starting to break into the darker blue of the meter, and after 300% those icy cracks being filly up by pure black. It's a chilling effect! Morgan's meter is emptied to 0 when she dies, unlike a Final Smash.
Obviously, really high levels are basically impossible (good luck taking 750% damage or dealing 1250% damage in a stock!), but Morgan does have multiple bonuses that make getting at least to the second level of charge more feasible. The first is that the amount that an attack Morgan hits fills up her meter scales with distance! Hitting point blank is a normal, 1x damage = meter gain, 12% dealt is 12% dealt. At 1 Battlefield Platform away, this increases to 2x: 12% damage is equal to 24% damage for the meter. 2 Battlefield Platforms? 3x, 12% -> 36% for meter gain. And at 3 Battlefield Platforms or anything longer is a massive 4x boost, meaning that 12% damage now equals a massive 48% for the purposes of her meter! Getting to very high numbers is still very, very difficult, but it isn't quite as infeasible as it might seem. This is especially true in FFAs or 2v2s: The ability to hit multiple opponents at long ranges means Morgan can potentially get her meter a lot faster, contributing to the small theme of her excelling at killing many of her hated enemies at once.
Striking at such long ranges, particularly for the maximum 4x meter amp, may seem exceedingly difficult. But Morgan has Side Special to potentially let her hit from anywhere and specializes in ranged combat, so it isn't nearly as hard as you might think. She also has another, additional way to help out with her meter gain! While on top of her Side Special mana, Morgan passively gains Rhongomyniad meter simply by being on it! She doesn't even have to be on the ground: As long as her body is above it, she will continue to gain the meter. The only requirement is that there not be a solid surface, such as a platform, obstructing her and her mana. If there is a platform, slope or other stage and the like between Morgan and her mana, it cuts off her source. She gains Rhongomyniad meter at a rate of 100% meter per minute with the exact mana gain being fluctuating but equal to an average of 1.6% per second. Since her Down Special doesn't have decimals, however, it alternates from 1% to 3% per second depending on which second it is to reach the 100% per minute total.
While not something Morgan can rely on, after all the black mana only even lasts 25 seconds and most matches aren't going to go on the eternity needed to fill a meter solely passively, it does highly encourage enemies to approach her should she stand tall upon her kingdom of black mana, lest she simply fire off spells at the foe while getting closer to absolute victory. Morgan has some other tricks to increasing her meter generation as well, but we'll get to those as the moveset continues on since they wouldn't make a ton of sense here. In general, Morgan will always get at least one meter's worth of Down Special in a match, a second bar (be it to replace the first after use or to get a level of overcharge) is very viable in most matches, a third bar is stretching the limits of 1v1 viability and requires extremely good play, and the fourth/fifth bars are extremely difficult to achieve.
As for the meter, it has two uses just as the actual Down Special has two uses. We will begin with the ability which Morgan can perform by Holding the Special button for at least 8 frames, with different effects depending on if the control stick was tapped or smashed. None of these techniques actually use up Morgan's Down Special meter, but are powered up by how much of it she currently has on her. Tapping the control stick causes Morgan to raise her arm with an open palm, a Mini-Rhongomyniad appearing behind her! It appears one Morgan width behind her and one Ganondorf above her, and she can hold down the button for as long as she wants to determine what direction it can fire before setting it by simply releasing B. If Morgan is hit before setting the Mini-Rhongomyniad, it fizzles. It's appearance is a lance of pure, blazing hot yellow-white energy bathed in a more holy and subdued glow around it that exudes a feeling of endless contained power despite being only a fraction of Morgan's true might. Morgan can have up to twelve Mini-Rhongomyniads out at the same time, enough to surely topple even the greatest of Calamities! Mini-Rhongomyniads are not hitboxes while out and there's minimal ending lag with average starting lag to set one.
Holding the Special button and smashing the control stick causes Morgan to scratch her chin with a slight thinking pose as she lightly points her spear forward. This is a signal for all Mini-Rhongomyniads on the field to fire off! This has pretty low starting lag and ending lag, so it isn't a big commitment to fire 'em off. They shoot off at lightning quick speeds, the shape of the spear unable to be seen as it travels like a beam of pure energy, travelling up to the distance of all of Battlefield in a flash! They stop at the first opponent they hit but go through solid ground: Morgan's Rhongomyniad is shown to be able to strike anywhere on the planet with pinpoint precision, even the underground Olympus when firing from space, and so it is well within Rhongomyniad's abilities to simply move through the ground as if it did not exist. This allows Morgan unique opportunities with, for example, stopping low recoveries as she can set up her Mini-Rhongomyniads to fire diagonally through the stage to hit below a ledge. It also means that platforms cannot stop her power: she's more than free to rain death upon or above to her foes even through a chunky stage. Enjoy hiding out in Temple's Cave of Life while Morgan sets up a deadly storm, folks!
Morgan embues her Mini-Rhongomyniads with only a fraction of their true power which is why it doesn't cost any meter, but in turn means they are not impressive power-wise at the start, dealing a mere 4% but with some impressive hitstun. Rather than being strong on their own, they are setup that begets setup: Morgan being closed enough to the foe, or having a Side Special set up, allows her to follow up with an attack like Forward Tilt for a short combo starter, while releasing it when an opponent is already flying in the air serves as a solid combo extender. Shieldstun is minimal, so shielding this and moving on with your life is viable strategy. Overall, nothing too big.
As Morgan's Down Special meter increases, so too does the damage and hitstun of the move: 8% with a 1.2x hitstun modifier that makes this a much better combo starter and particularly extender for one full gauge, opening her up to continue combos even at high percents. 12% and a 1.4x hitstun modifier at Level 2, which starts opening her up to some kill confirm potential and means that she can get some really long combo strings at low percents despite absolutely not being built for it, not to mention in general it is just a pretty good damaging move. Weaving together patterns of Mini-Rhongomyniads makes it perfectly viable to hit opponents with multiple given enough time and positioning, but you're going to need to get an opponent in juuuust the right spot unless you get a ludicrous amount of setup time to just spam them out.
Level 3/4/5 deal 16%/20%/24% respectively and begin inflicting a paralyzing effect akin to Zero Suit Samus when hitting an opponent, making it both easier (just fire them all at the same spot) and harder (you probably won't have a lot of pre-existing setup to take advantage of this charge level, all of them heading to the same spot drastically reduces potential coverage) to hit with. The paralyzer effect is light to begin with, about the same as the Level 2 hitstun really, but is extremely high at the massive Level 5. A level 5 Mini-Rhongomyniad true combos into the Level 5 Rhongomyniad attack we'll get to in a moment, making it a complete and utter kill confirm if she's willing to spend the meter. But if the opponent has been damaged enough, she could save the meter and instead go for some of her other strong kill options. Oh, and of course you just dealt 24% with a very combo-centric option. You ain't hitting level 5 much, but the power you possess when you do is immense.
All this talk, however, has been about the cheap version: Let's get to the real deal. The "proof" of Morgan being the strongest Lostbelt King. Morgan needs at least one bar of her Down Special to even use this version, which is done by using any Down Special input but not holding the Special button, and will completely consume all levels of your Down Special bar, so you best make it count. Upon use, Morgan taps her spear-staff against the ground with a light "twang" noise: In the air, she makes the same motion and the air below her ripples as if the staff had touched the surface of water. A brilliant, beautiful light shines out from her spear as she calls out "Rhongomyniad." with a dry, emotionless voice. This entire motion takes little time (6 frames), after which light shines from the top of the blast zone in front of her, about one Battlefield Platform at one bar and just over 2/3rds of Battlefield at maximum. After 10 more frames of light filling the sky, a spear of divine judgement falls from the heaven, the light that pins the world surrounding it! It falls from the sky at rapid speeds, 2x that of a fully charged R.O.B. laser, and just like her Mini-Rhongomyniads cares not for the terrain of the Earth and pierces through all solid terrain until it makes its grand exit at the bottom of the stage. This move has a 16 frame startup total (roughly the same as Limit Blade Beam) and Morgan has moderate ending lag attached to it. Rhongomyniad is a projectile, but it cannot be pocketed, reflected, or any of those other shenanigans you might be thinking of.
At Level 1, Rhongomyniad deals 23% damage and kills at 110%: Powerful, to be sure, but in this case its strength derives largely from the intense range it possesses. The knockback is primarily vertical and it kills opponents off the top, meaning Morgan can snipe some cheap kills at opponents hovering close to the top blast zone or who keep going super high. The fact it has a full Battlefield Platform of range means that avoiding it is fairly difficult, and its vertical dropping nature means you can throw it out as a pretty killer tool at the ledge. Still, Morgan won't be frequently using this move until she gets to Level 2: The reward increases sizably for doing so and the buff of having a single bar out for her Mini-Rhongomyniads is a fairly strong boon to give up. It's still an important threat when she has it, but...
Well, at Level 2, the damage gets bumped up to 34% damage and it will instead begin killing at 80%, some truly "heavyweight" numbers that work quite nicely with the still strong range of the attack. Morgan doesn't take longer to call upon Rhongomyniad's splendour as charge levels go on, so this is still a Frame 16 attack and thus is pretty overtuned for its speed. It's perfectly possible to combo into this with the right moves, a close range Mini-Rhongomyniad will absolutely do the trick for example as can a Back-Neutral Special although that is very positonining bizarre as the more damage the foe has, the further they need to be from Morgan to not zoom past where the hitbox would land before she can use it. In short, its usage is very similar to Cloud's Limit Cross Slash in usage as a powerful and punishing kill move, having amped up damage and kill power in exchange for a more odd hitbox, some more lag at the start and the potential for even more increased power if she holds onto it.
Level 3 is generally the last feasible option Morgan has and she will usually be deciding between Level 2 and Level 3 on any given stock. Level 2 is more realistically achievable, and greeding for Level 3 can easily result in Morgan losing all that meter dear to her given her light weight. It also requires pretty good play to be feasible: At 450% damage taken/750% dealt to reach this level, she'll likely have needed to landed multiple very long range strikes in order to get her meter high enough. The reward is suitably worth it. First off, the range the attack lands in (and the size of the light during the starting lag) is now 1.65 Battlefield Platforms and thus much, much more difficult to run away from! On top of that, this attack now deals a completely staggering 48% damage and will killat 55%! That kill percent is pre-hit, of course. This is your big reward option, the flashy kill move that you might even use after taking a stock in a match you're crushing to really put it out of the foe's reach, hampered by the difficult requirements to access it. Still, this is but half of the full glory that is Rhongomyniad!
At Level 4, the animation of the spear falling changes slightly so that the light energy around it is a swirling maelstrom of pure power, and it will automatically cause KO zoom in regardless of if it will kill the opponent! The lance is hard to even see with the overwhelming, golden glow save for the lance head. At 70% damage that kills at 20%, this is essentially a Final Smash in all but name and a testament to the Lostbelt King that she can bring such power to bare without one! What is there to say? It's a 70% damage, 20% killing move that takes 16 frames to start up and has strong range. Both this and Level 5 are extraordinarily powerful tools that you should look to use as soon as you can if you ever happen to come onto them. You're liable to only ever be able to get this if you have an extra way to get meter, though, for example being in a Free For All or fighting someone who summons a legion of minions.
Level 5 is the full, unadulterated strength of Rhongomyniad, with the attack going into overdrive in all respects. First off, the power outpouring out from the magecraft now gives Morgan intangibility on Frames 1-6 of the starting animation AKA the entire part where she casts its spell, making this a reversal that is very difficult to stop (you've probably taking hundreds of percent in damage by now, though). While Morgan retains her listless voice, she no longer simply calls out its name, choosing from voice lines like "Begone." or "Perish." with significent contempt in that icy cold voice of hers. Rhongomyniad's light now covers half of Battlefield and when it strikes it is a giant pillar of light that lingers for 30 frames as the entire screen shakes from the raw might on display. At 100% damage, it has knockback even stronger than a Flare Blade and will kill just about anything at 0% in the process. The lingering nature means it will catch out any and all rolls/dodges, it flatout cannot be stopped by shields as they shatter like a shield break followed by the opponent instantly taking the damage and knockback from the move, it is too large to dodge usually, and overall if Morgan managed to achieve the stringest conditions required for this technique she should at least be rewarded with a good ending for once.
Lostbelt Smashes
Forward Smash: Psuedo-Caliburn
Transforming her lance-staff into a sword like form, Morgan draws it close to her while it glows an eerie and icy blue! Morgan gathers energy for a while within her mighty sword, leaving this an attack with hefty starting lag: At Frame 20 it is akin to a Pyra or Wolf Forward Smash in terms of lag. This horizontal swing is also somewhat lacking in range for a swordie, still certainly disjointed but it's a bit less so than most as Morgan is rather disinterested in the swing and ultimately has slightly less range than Roy's Forward Smash. On the plus side, this move's damage is rather mighty at 19%-26.6% and will kill at 87%-61% as a strong killing move! The ending lag on this attack is actually fairly reasonable at 28 frames, not the as great as Wolf's but she can actually throw this out with reasonable safety for the lag. The nature of Morgan's delayed hitboxes allow her to combo into this with more ease than the melee masters of the game as well, such as calling upon a Back-Neutral Special while on a platform above and then smashing opponents hit towards her away!
While already a perfectly reasonable move, this is NOT the only use of the move. Just like the Buster attack animation this move derives from, there's a second part to this it. 1.5 seconds after its first use, a black hole-like force of black magic appears on ALL foes within a circular radius around where Morgan used her Forward Smash. The radius is such that if Morgan used it on the middle of Battlefield, it would penetrate roughly halfway into the two bottom-most Battlefield Platforms, but its height would be a bit too low to reach the top Battlefield Platform. The black hole appearing over the foe remains for the same starting lag as the Forward Smash, before an "echo" of the Forward Smash strikes over them for the same damage and knockback as the one Morgan released! This echo won't "fizzle" if the opponent leaves the radius, so you can't just leave it to stop the effect, although it can be shielded or dodged or what have you as per normal. This can hit any number of opponents and unlike her Neutral Special will work on minions as well. Note that it is perfectly overlapping the middle of the opponent's hitbox, so you can't just outrun it or something.
There are two ways to avoid this attack. First off, you can simply not be inside the radius when it checks for opponents 1.5 seconds in, sidestepping the entire issue by ceding great stage control to Morgan. This is especially true if she uses her Forward Smash on top of her Beyond the Furthest End mana, as opponents too scared to approach will be giving her free Rhongomyniad meter in the process. Secondly, you can hit Morgan with any attack that deals hitstun. Crude, but effective. Doing so will break the spell she cast (with a light blue flash over her lance to indicate this) and prevent it going off. This is a very risky proposition for the foe, as running into Morgan by definition means entering the radius of her Forward Smash, but is obviously the most rewarding and reliable of the options. It also means she can't use the secondary hit as a revenge move to opponents who punish her for missing a badly timed Forward Smash, since they'll just hit her and stop this. You need to be a bit...tactical on when to use this. Prone situations and at ledges are big ones, but this move IS safe on shield against a large number of opponents if used at the edge of its range, so keeping your distance can lead to wolf-like situations of throwing out a strong-ish attack that's hard to punish.
Using this for Side Special is very interesting! It doesn't transport the slash to the opponent, that goes off normally, but instead when the 1.5 second echo goes off it will go off on ALL opponents afflicted by Side Special! It'll still go off on anyone inside the normal radius, and in fact prioritize that over using the Side Special up, but it'll also go off on anyone afflicted by it no matter where they are on stage. This basically eliminates running as an option to deal with this attack and offers up a WORLD of possibilities for early kills with strong timing. You thought 87% was an early kill? Throw this out and have it go off when the opponent's been flung away from another strong move and watch those early offscreen kills seep in! One winged angels everywhere will weep over this technique's results. The fairly short duration before the echo goes off plus the fact you need to hit within a short window so the opponent is in hitstun and can't just, say, air dodge the echo's strike due to being out of hitstun.
Another piece of trickery is that there's no way to immediately tell if Morgan has actually used her Side Special stack here, as the slash is the exact same no matter which variant she has used. It'll be obvious once it goes off in 1.5 seconds, if the foe is outside of the radius and it starts up she used it, and if it doesn't then obviously she didn't. The ambiguity within those 1.5 seconds can pay off big for Morgan. For example, an opponent seeing Morgan use her Forward Smash from far away on the stage might think to themselves "there's no reason she would Forward Smash there if she DIDN'T use her Side Special ability!" and either try to defensively plan around the delayed hitbox (which means taking predictable actions like shielding which Morgan can exploit) or try to aggressively approach Morgan to stop it by hitting her (which Morgan can reply with her variety of counter-approach options or even just end up with the foe entering the radius of their own will) even though Morgan didn't use it at all. Similarly, using it up when it doesn't seem like it'd make sense (like if the foe is pretty nearby) might make them assume they can just run out of the Forward Smash radius and then have to scramble to react to the 20 frames of starting lag when it turns out not to be so. In short, it's an intensive pressure ability that exudes a menacing aura no matter what Morgan does.
She won't lose the Side Special stack if the opponent enters the radius of the normal Forward Smash echo and is tagged by that instead, but she WILL lose it if she's hit and has the attack cancelled that way so using it isn't a totally free proposition.
Down Smash: The Reverse Side of the World
Bright blue energy radiates out from under Morgan's feet as she raises up her lance, the air to the sides and above her rippling with immense power. This move has an abnormally early charge window that starts on Frame 3, when the energy begins to radiate, and releasing it has Morgan stab the lance directly down in front of her model (rather than "in front of her", in other words it isn't extending out from her hurtbox). When she impacts the energy with this, two much larger lance echoes drop down to both sides of her, each of them about a Morgan in width and striking from 1.3 Ganondorfs above. At 21 frames for the attack to start, this is one of the laggiest Down Smashes in the game on par with Mewtwo and Sephiroth, with moderate but not particularly bad ending lag on top of it. Morgan plunging her lance into the ground is a 3%-4.2% hitbox that true combos into the rest of Down Smash if released ASAP, but you have to be overlapping her hurtbox to be hit by it so this isn't all that important.
This move's damage is solid but given the lag associated here rather...underwhelming at 14.5%-20.3% damage and knockback that'll kill grounded opponents a 180%-160%. AERIAL opponents are a different matter entirely because Down Smash is actually a spike in the same vein as Bayonetta, so you won't be killing people on stage with this as the groundbounce isn't nearly strong enough, but offstage you can send people straight off the bottom of the screen at around 70% (assuming they are level with Final Destination's ledge: More or less depending on vertical elevation)! And of course, opponents with bad vertical recoveries can be killed earlier than that. This is, naturally, a huge threat that opponents have to play around when it comes to the ledge. It should be noted, however, that the lances stop when they reach the same ground level as Morgan's feet, or in other words it won't go BELOW the ledge or a platform when used over the edge. The lance's hitbox is large enough to hit people holding the ledge or potentially 2-frame them, but it won't be gimping people who stay just a bit below that.
While not the strongest of Down Smashes for the lag, it does also have the benefit of some pretty sweet coverage. Since it drops from above it can actually catch out people on the falling part of a shorthop (although anyone except maybe Steve will clear it at the heights of their jump) and the width to both ends makes it adept at catching out rolls. The ability to catch out rolls is particularly useful if people keep trying to use rolls to get past your Forward-Neutral Special, as it's a predictable panic option to catch out with this. This attack is generally not safe on shield, so do be careful about overusing these harder reads given your light weight can only take so much punishment.
Utilizing this attack with Morgan's Side Special is a bit...tricky, but very rewarding. First off unlike Forward Smash, your opponent will always know if this is targeting them as the rippling air appears next to them rather than Morgan, with it perfectly following them at the same distance as the opponent moves back and forth. This continues as Morgan charges up the Down Smash and until she releases the charge. After a moment of Morgan stabbing the ground, the rippling waves will STOP where they are on Frame 15, then the lance strike appears on Frame 21 as normal. The damage and so on remains exactly the same, of course.
So, I mentioned this is tricky to hit. That's because since the rippling waves follow the opponent's movement and the attack strikes downwards from both sides like normal, this will never hit an opponent who is just standing still or jumping in place. Since the rippling stops in place on Frame 15, however, that means that if the opponent was moving when in those next 6 frames they'll almost be hit! Unless their, say, Sonic dashing at his "rollin' around at the speed of sound" level. The sword's being able to anti-jump at the start of them similarly means that if an opponent was jumping and NOT in place, they'll get snagged by this and groundbounced which can lead to a combo if Morgan is either in range OR has proper setup to snipe enemies from afar. Obviously simply getting in the solid strength of a smash attack is also some nice stuff. It plays quite nicely into Morgan's aggressive stage control game, as opponents can have to deal with something like Forward-NSpec or Back-NSpec that really wants movement to avoid at the same time as Morgan prepares a Down Smash to set them in a difficult to escape position, the Forward-NSpec wall can push opponents right into the hitbox, a delayed Forward Smash that gives them a pair of high powr problems to deal with, and you get the idea.
The really dangerous time to use this Side Special ability, however, is when the opponent is recovering! Opponents are naturually going to want to be moving back to the stage, but if they just mindlessly charge forward against this technique they'll be sent hurdling into the abyss. An air dodge can naturally avoid this, but using up an air dodge when recovering is always a risk and depending on the situation an opponent might be too far away to safely do so. Properly timing a recovery could allow them the real respite, and they could let themselves drop or lower their aerial momentum so they can vertical jump, but both of these will reduce how far they can naturally recover. A Level 3-5 Mini-Rhongomyniad true combos into a Down Smash that uses up SSpec, as long as Morgan delays it properly for the longer stun times of a later level Mini-Rhongomyniad. She also needs to use it very quickly after firing one off due to the Mini-Rhongomyniad's high travel speeds. It isn't the easiest to pull off, but it can make for a stunning kill confirm!
Something to keep in mind with all of these is that the time from charge release to attack, AKA when opponents will know when the lance echoes will drop, is 18 frames and thus certainly reactable by opponents. You aren't just going to drop this on opponents who have to guess. Because of this, it is best when the opponent has other things on their plate to deal with, when you think you can catch them sleeping due to the fact the reaction window is at least low enough opponents need to be on the ball to avoid it, or be able to take advantage of them reacting to it for it to be meaningful. And of course, it does require you to land a close range command grab to begin with.
Up Smash: Vampiric Inheritance
A move that would make a certain adopted daughter very happy to see, Morgan raises her lance-staff to the sky as blue energy swirls around it like a blue 3D astrolabe with a bright, glowing purple-red center. Red energy, a mix of bright red at the edges and deep crimson at the center, pours out from Morgan's feet as this attack is charged and prepared as well. A single burst of purple-red energy from her lance signals the spell's actual casting, with every opponent in an infinitely tall pillar above her having the energy sucked out of them as orbs of the same purple-red color, which absorb themselves into Morgan's lance during the ending lag (or while she's hit away if someone else interrupted or whatnot). This is all based on her Arts 3 attack animation. This isn't like Palutena's Up Smash, where there is a physical beam or object causing the attack, just that everyone in an infinite vertical space above Morgan within the width of 1.15x her model will trigger getting hit by the effect. Getting hit deals 16%-22.4% damage with rather light knockback all things considered, failing to kill from the ground until 210%-180%. Of course this is made up for with the absurd vertical range, you can ABSOLUTELY snipe opponents launched high on the screen with that infinite vertical range to kill much, much earlier!
While the vertical range is immense, the horizontal range is pathetic and essentially encompasses Morgan's model. This makes it strictly for knocking people out of the air and means that it's very risky if the opponent is close to the ground: All it takes is a move to the side and she'll be eating a punish. The ending lag of this attack is somewhat long as well, so keep that in mind. Since the range is so high vertically, Morgan has added appeal on admittedly banned stages like Spear Pillar and Temple for whatever that's worth, but it also means Morgan can essentially threaten any platform she can stand under in a way no other character can. While Morgan's ending lag is on the longer end, the very high range of this attack does allow Morgan to potentially force air dodges on high flying foes and still have time to catch the landing or otherwise aggress them.
Dealing damage isn't the ONLY benefit there is to this attack! The energy that surges back to Morgan is for more than just show, as it gives her two benefits to her on-hit. The first is a slight heal as Morgan siphons away the opponent's life force, healing her for half the damage dalt (8%-11.2%). Morgan's hardly a beeftank like her Fairy Knight Gawain, but it does help give a little survivability to the light magician. The other is that it, thematically, drains the opponent's mana (sadly this won't drain Hero's mana) and siphons it off into her spear-staff to increase her Down Special charge by the other half of damage dalt (8%-11.2%)! This isn't "8%-11.2% damage worth is added", but instead "The meter goes from 0%-8% or 0%-11%"! This is obviously a strong boon, as that reprenents muuuuhch more damage than this attack does, and serves as one of the "shortcut" options to making higher Rhongomyniad levels viable. Using a Mini-Rhongomyniad to then land an Up Smash can be a bit of a self-feeding combo! It also should be noted this move's range makes it a prime example to get the ranged bonus on Rhongomyniad's meter gain, a true "farming tool" if you will.
On top of all of that, this move is fairly useful when combined with Side Special and in many respects can be seen as a kind of Down Special inversion. The bursting energy below Morgan will also follow any opponents who are marked with a Side Special as a tell for them to know what's going on, bursting upwards a small amount to indicate the hitbox going off when Morgan's attack goes through! The Up Smash will track opponents until 5 frames before it goes off, which will plant it in place in a manner just like Down Smash. Conversely, however, the fact the Up Smash hits exactly where the opponent was while having a thin hitbox means that avoiding it is the opposite: You gotta keep moving! Standing still is naught but an executioner's sentence, although one could shield this attack still, while an air dodge or fast movement is the usual key to dodging. In the air it can basically require an opponent keep holding left/right (trying to reverse course might slow you down!) or air dodge.
This is especially dangerous when considering the vertical range, which when going to opponents marked with Side Special is either the lowest solid ground under them OR the bottom blast zone if there is no stage under them, allowing Morgan to strike from pretty heinous positioning (and usually get a hefty Down Special meter bonus for range) and is especially strong against enemies who recover low. They might need to drift back before going to the ledge to avoid just hanging around under it and having Morgan summon an Up Smash on them to force a very tight ledge grab timing to avoid being hit. And obviously this has good synergy with your attacks that opponents want to jump over, like many of your Neutral Special options. Up-Neutral Special is particularly interesting because its swaying nature can cut off horizontal options tha would normally be used to avoid this, although you'll need to get the opponent in the air first.
Lostbelt Standards
Jab: Blazing Blue Divinity
Morgan extends her hand out in front of her, shooting out an ethereal blue sword that travels 0.4 Battlefield Platforms as a swift projectile jab! This is pretty fast, but also pretty weak: It only deals 4% damage. The set knockback of 0.3 Battlefield Platforms in the direction the sword travels is very useful for getting opponents out of Morgan's face, and it deals decent shield push even if the opponent ultimately gets good frame advantage off of it. This is a rapid jab that Morgan can use up to 3 more times for a total of 4 times, although in that regard it is pretty...weird. While there isn't a lot of ending lag associated with ending the attack on the first jab, each subsequent jab increases Morgan's overall ending lag by a little more each time. Jab 1 is safe on shield if landed near the tip of its range, while the rest are much more uncertain.
So, I mentioned that the rest of Jab was a bit odd. Basically, Morgan doesn't have to only send jabs outside of the first straight forward, but instead can hold down A + a direction to Rapid Jab in different directions! The exact nature of how it fires is that the direction you pick is the knockback of the attack, rather than the blade's travel direction. An opponent being sent to the right will have the sword appear behind them on the left and stab rightwards, a hit downwards appears above the foe and strikes downwards, you get the idea. The Jab uses the end of the sword's distance as a "center", so if you make it fly left to right it'll appear 0.4 BFPs to the left of where the sword's 0.4 BFP travel would usually go and travel 0.4 Battlefield Platforms to the right.
On the other hand if you hit the OPPONENT, then they are treated as the "center", meaning you essentially summon the swords 0.4 Battlefield Platforms away from the opponent after which they travel in their appointed direction. This allows Morgan to steadily knock opponents around very freely, choosing any direction to knock them in as the attacks will for the most part combo into each other. I say "for the most part" because depending on the opponent's DI + Morgan's directional choices, it IS possible to knock opponents out of this loop (for example, if they DI very far horizontally and your next hit was at a vertical angle that means it misses with travel time) but this will not happen until higher percents and is a difficult affair. Hitting a shield does allow Morgan to continue this directionally diverse follow-up.
Holding A at the start of this attack instead activates a unique feature, as its low energy cost for Morgan means she can use her Infinity Mirror Network WITHOUT landing Side Special first on it! This DOES come at the cost of highly extended starting lag, going up to Frame 21 as Morgan gathers up magical power inside of her outstretched hand. This has the same effect as if the opponent had become the Jab's center point, allowing Morgan to summon swords to strike around them at their normal range, speed and so on from directions of her choosing. In matches with more than one opponent, it picks whichever is nearest to Morgan when she input the attack. If there are any opponents with Side Specials on them, it will ALSO have Jabs appear next to them, so enjoy eing able to in theory combo everyone in an 8-player Smash with your Jab from anywhere on stage if they all got Side Specialed.
This is one of Morgan's highly valued pressure and positioning tools, as not needing to use Side Special first makes it a go-to for cross-stage pressure before you have setup going. The ability to choose knockback directions holds a lot of value, for example Morgan can pin an opponent down right after using a Downwards-Neutral Special in order to get a pitfall, although the Jab's ending lag will likely prevent Morgan from getting much of a reward unless she is very close. It can be used with a Mini-Rhongomyniad being fired for coverage, you can pin down an opponent for an incoming Up Smash or knock opponents skirting the radius of a non-SSpec Forward Smash and bounce them right in for a vicious, potentially stock-ending combo...as a tool, it is very versatile and mostly hindered by the high starting lag and ending lag on this variant compared to quicker but more specialized options like her tilts.
Forward Tilt: Spear of Destiny
Morgan transforms her staff-spear into a more lithe and directly thrusting spear forward, spinning it with levitation above an open palm so its tip points and very gently stabbing forward eeeeeeever so slightly in front of her, causing the air in front of her to shatter and ripple with energy as if the glass covering reality had been broken! One frame later, an energy version of the lance's head in full splendour pierces out a much longer distance starting 0.5 Battlefield Platforms in front of her! This move's starting lag is pretty much exactly average for a Forward Tilt at 8 frames and ending lag that's only a touch longer than average. No matter what part of this attack hits, it deals a pretty strong 11% damage that will kill at 155% or so. It's lacking in any combo potential, instead you'll be using it to space the everliving daylights out of opponents thanks to its range or as a combo ENDER for those rare occassions Morgan gets one relatively nearby off.
This move's range is split into two halves, the first being the physical stab right in front of Morgan. This has VERY low range as Morgan baaaarely extends the tip out with her light action, putting it much more in line with a close range melee move than any kind of sword-user or the like. After that is a half Battlefield Platform "dead zone" in front of Morgan without any hitboxes at all, which is what makes the rest of this move's range less obscene, and where opponents will want to nuzzle in close to deal with Morgan. It being how to get around this move is a core part of why she enjoys the midranges so much and why opponents want to get in close! After the 0.5 Battlefield Platform is the blue magic energy "echo" version which has distance LONGER than a Corrin Forward Smash! Yeah, the range on this is pretty grotesque, Morgan can flatout hit opponents lingering in the middle of Battlefield when standing at the very ledge on her quick tilt! For all the faults against enemies who get in close the crazy range on this fast attack is a huge part of Morgan's spacing game, chipping away at shields from high safety, poking out poor defensive options to her lingering long range game and exuding a constant pressure at the mid to long range. Morgan can pressure the opposite Battlefield Platform without even leaving her own! The nature of the hitbox also allows Morgan to poke from behind her Forward-Neutral Special moving wall, which is nice.
Using this with Morgan's Side Special will have the energy lance summoned about half of its length away from all Side Special inflicted enemies in question and so makes horizontal dodging pretty difficult. This is also one of the best options Morgan has to do so, as it is unreactably fast with good damage and so can easily catch out opponents doing rather innocent, normally hard to punish options from most anywhere. It's also one of the faster attacks to "tack on" at the end of knockback to try and push opponents off that blast zone edge! Note that using this won't have an energy spear strike in its normal spot for Morgan, so in multi-player matches this can leave more of a blindspot with just her tiny melee range hitbox to contend with. This can matter sometimes in 1v1s too, largely involving enemies who have minions or other destructible objects, but for the most part it's the same since you'll be aiming at said enemy anyway.
Up Tilt: End of Heartbreak
Waving a single hand dismissively, a trio of inky black and cracked light blue spears appear from rippling portals on the ground in front of Morgan, a rather long animation for an up tilt at 11 Frames for the spears to all fire upwards at the same time roughly 1.5 Ganondorfs of height. The spears are spaced out about 0.25 Battlefield Platforms and deal 6% damage each with light-moderate upwards knockback. It won't kill, but it isn't something so light you can do detestable Mario Up Tilt trickery or what have you, it usually will have to either lead into an aerial or more reads. The gaps are close enough a character can get hit by two of these spears for 12% damage, which will up the knockback to kill at 170% or so but removes any direct combo potential outside of starter percents. It is, in theory, possible to land all three for 18% damage that'll killat 120% but there isn't any character in default Smash Brothers who is big enough to get hit by it. Could hit someone in Giant Smash, though. You CAN combine them another way, as spears that would go over a ledge will instead be put at the ledge, so depending on the distance you use this from you can bundle 2 or 3 of them right at a ledge for a single big attack at the cost of coverage! The ending lag on this is also a touch long, but not horribly so.
This move starts up with the first spear slightly in front of Morgan, which means this move offers NO coverage directly above Morgan, a pretty big blindspot! Now, there's still a lot of usage for this stopping opponents jumping to and fro given its disjointed nature and high range, but it needs to be used more predictively because using it on pure reaction can lead to opponents just drifting into you and hitting you with an approaching aerial. This is an amazing move to use under platforms, giving wide coverage from below that can't be countered with attacks, but do be aware that smaller characters might be able to stick between the gaps and avoid the spears.
Morgan does have another option to go with it, though! To be specific, she can angle the attack left/right, and being able to fire this diagonally has a loooot of implications! This move becomes much more aggressive if angled forward from Morgan, shooting out at a 45 degree angle. This slightly lowers their vertical height to 1.3 Ganondorfs, but adds 0.7 Battlefield Platforms of horizontal distance to the mix! Since they're angled forward this variant provides NO coverage directly in front of Morgan, making it essentially completely vulnerable to close range shorthops, but the furthest spear from Morgan travels at a low enough angle it'll threaten opponents on the ground close to it. This is a very aggressive tool overall, sacrificing defensive viability to get more horizontal knockback that is excellent for spacing and range that lets her zone more actively. It also can now reasonably hit opponents recovering high, something it can't normally do due to the bunching at ledges. Note that you CAN still bunch up the spears at ledges while angled, allowing Morgan to essentially shoot out a single very powerful spear with lower than expected lag.
When you angle it inwards, Morgan aims the spears at a 45 degree angle towards her. This makes them fire above her head and even behind her, with the same 1.3 Ganondorf height/0.7 Battlefield Platform length as the forward variant. This is the exact opposite of the forward variant in strengths, as it gives Morgan some very strong coverage directly above her and slightly in front of her, basically a punishing tool for people who try to stick super close to her and opponents who go for cross-ups. The knockback angle changing to the same more horizontal one as the forward option but BEHIND Morgan also allows her to hit enemies at a rather unique angle. You could, for example, approach with your Forward-Neutral Special wall pushing you forward and use a back angled Up Tilt to send them over it while still moving forward, giving Morgan a LOT of space and time while side switching on the stage. It also allows Morgan to threaten more with her back to the ledge, mixing up between Back Aerials and back angled Up Tilts.
When utilized with Morgan's Side Special, this will always summon them on the ground closest to each enemy who is marked, and if an opponent is offstage will instead bundle up on the nearest ledge to them. This makes it a rather useless affair if the opponent is high in the air, putting this move largely in service of landing traps with other delayed hitboxes or just generally to catch landings. The range on display also means you could just drop this on a grounded enemy, but the fact that the reward is soooo small means you should really just save your Side Special. A default angled Up Tilt will have the opponent be on the center spear, with the location determined on Frame 1 and not tracking the foe. Forward/Outwards angle puts it 1/4th of a Battlefield Platform behind the foe and angled forward, Backwards/Inwards is in front of the foe and angled back. These basically allow Morgan to throw out spears designed to counter either retreating or advancing from grounded opponents, used with a Mini-Rhongomyniad you can absolutely pin an opponent down to combo into another attack either with sufficient closeness OR with more stacks of Side Special ready. Without that or other setup, though, this is still a weak reward even with the coverage.
Down Tilt: Cold Iron Darkness
Curling one outstretched finger in a beckoning manner, Morgan summons a pillar of sloppy black mana like fire that glows an ice cold blue from its inside and has an overall size and shape similar to Ness' PK Fire. The "fire" burns about a Morgan's width in front of herself, but she can angle it forward to have it strike two Morgan widths in front of her while angling it back will cause it to burn directly in front of her. The attack itself deals a multitude of rapid hits that add up to 7% before lightly knocking the opponent into the air, having a somewhat long duration that combined with this move's low ending lag makes it Morgan's only natural grounded combo starter (she CAN get combos off of other moves, especially with Mini-Rhongomyniads, but they're almost always more niche or require setup by comparison). Note that this attack doesn't last NEARLY as long as a PK Fire, it just has a biiit of a long duration. This attack is safe on shield at its default or longer ranges, but it isn't safe on shield at the ultra close range, and NOT using the close range variant leaves a bit of a gap against opponents who are right up against Morgan which is exploitable. Starting lag is pretty much average for a Down Tilt.
The most important thing about this attack is that unless you use the furthest variant, this will ALWAYS allow a combo into Side Special! The opponent needs to get up in percentage before it combos into more than a minimum Side Special, but even just having an option to tack two onto the opponent is something Morgan greatly enjoys. She does have some other options from this such as Forward Tilt or Forward Aerial, at close range a Grab or late in a stock an Up Smash, but Side Special is just a very valued option. As the opponent gets higher in percentage, Morgan can get more Side Special charge levels on them, this usually involves jumping and charging it in the air in order to command grab them after the Down Tilt's knockback. Requires some nice timing, though!
This move isn't all that useful to use up a Side Special for, however. It requires the foe to be grounded, as the pillar only appears on the ground and unlike the Up Tilt doesn't have killer vertical reach, and you need to use another Side Special charge for your combo follow-up unless they're close enough that even using up a Side Special charge is just...why. The attack always starts up right below where the opponent was when the move was first input regardless of how you angle it. It can be a bit more valuable with Neutral Special attacks at the ready for a more natural combo, but for the most part there's simply better uses of resources.
Dash Attack: Silver-Haired Slayer
A veeeery laggy Dash Attack, the kind that Melt-like fans of fat penguins will be well attuned too, Morgan pulls her spear-staff behind her to an exaggerated degree before leaping upwards, performing a vicious spinning slash as she comes down that gives her a full spin with 360 coverage! At Frame 23, this move is the second laggiest Dash Attack in the game behind King Dedede (Frame 26) and above Hero (Frame 21), so you're gonna have a pretty tought time hitting this all by its lonesome. And it has some extremely long ending lag as well, with 35 frames of total ending lag! Needless to say this is very unsafe on shield, if whiffed, and so on. The plus side of this attack is simple: Raw power and range. This move's range is about equal to Link's Spin Attack to both sides of Morgan, which allows her to Obliterate rolling cross-ups and strike from further than many characters can reliable intercept her. And at 18.5% damage that'll kill at 77% center stage (58% or so near a ledge) this move hits HARD, which can certainly spook foes when you have a bit of charge on your Mini-Rhongomyniads and fire them off at a range! The leap that Morgan pulls off is also high enough to avoid some low-hitting attacks in the same way as Ridley or King K. Rool's Down Smashes work.
Morgan is free to leap off of ledges with this attack and go a bit deep for an edge guard, which she will find also drastically reduced her ending lag if she doesn't land on the ground during it! Roughly in half to 17 frames, in fact, making this a still hard to hit with yet safer option compared to the grounded version. Landing at any point during the ending lag makes it go to the full 35 frames of grounded ending lag, so you really must clear yourself from the ground to use it. And this has excellent synergy with your Side Special use, which is unique because it actually teleports Morgan to her opponent! This happens when Morgan leaps into the air on Frame 17 and has her disappearing into nothingness as the background ripples like water, with the same ripples harkening her return 2 frames before the attack would come out, right in the face of Side Special marked opponents!
While it isn't used much in this set otherwise, Morgan does have the ability to create clones or "reflections" of herself or other characters, and in this case Morgan uses it to a brief advantage as a Morgan appears at EVERY opponent afflicted by Side Special! These reflections are very fragile and will shatter to pieces if hit by absolutely any attack, so opponents can still attack to stuff it like with the prime Morgan, and they will also shatter into nothingness once the ending lag of the attack starts. Morgan will by default appear to the closest foe marked by Side Special, but can move the control stick in any direction to appear at the closest foe in that direction instead (if there is none, default to the first option). This offers up some minor Morgan mindgames in matches where it is applicable.
Leaving this aside, Dash Attack's teleportation with Side Special has a LOT of uses, most predominately giving Morgan a heavy whiff-punish option that can be used anywhere on stage given her strongest attacks like Forward Smash don't easily do so is important even if this an even LAGGIER option. It also allows Morgan to follow aerial opponnts, which means she's in a perfect spot to reduce this attack's ending lag dramatically, and in fact this attack is pretty much totally safe if an opponent has to air dodge in response to it! It makes the mere act of Morgan dashing a threat with outstanding hitboxes like Back-Neutral Special, Down Smash or the afterstrike of a Forward Smash, not to mention Mini-Rhongomyniad setups that all make opponents wonder if Morgan is going to Dash Attack with the timing to combo off that faster blow. The wide range of this attack also gives it some niche appeal against opponents trying to do flippy crap to avoid your Side Special follow-ups since it can catch various options of it out.
Lostbelt Throws
Grab: Cold-Hearted Queen
Morgan taps the bottom of her spear-staff against the ground with critical, half-open eyes at the opponent as the ground in front of her glows a light blue and inky black. This is a slightly laggy grab with good range, disjointed as well, as an opponent grabbed by this is forced to one knee to kneel before their one and only queen. Opponents who cannot really do this animation, such as Kirby, instead get character-specific animations such as Kirby being squished down like his crouch, or someone like R.O.B. getting his head-bowing crouch slightly modified. Morgan stands in front of the foe in a deadpan and slightly haughty way, displaying her royal dominance over the lowlife worm in front of her. Their models shake and struggle to escape the grab almost more like escaping a pitfall than a traditional grab escape, unable to flail their limbs against Morgan's magic.
Morgan absolutely can use her grab with her Side Special! This causes the energy to collect overlapping all Side Special afflicted opponents: Morgan can only grab one opponent at once which by default is the one closest to her but if the one she would "normally" grab dodges it'll definitely still grab a second person who has been Side Special marked if the first person isn't hit. This doesn't grab the opponent, but rather pulls them through the portal and dumps them in front of Morgan as if she had performed her standing grab, preventing any silliness involving THAT. Morgan CAN grab opponents in the air due to this, bringing them down to their appropriate placement under her heel. Compared to the normal grab, this takes 17 frames to come out.
Pummel: Court of Queens
Morgan very lightly taps her staff against the ground in a faster and smaller way than her grab, shocking the opponent for 1.2% damage at a slightly slow rate.
Down Throw: Mana Tax
Morgan reaches her hand down to the foe not unlike her Ascension 4 artwork, which you saw way back in the stats section, brushing it against the enemy's cheek gently...as she releases sparks of blue mana from it, basically electrocuting the foe in place with her magic as they writhe under her touch and burning a symbol into them! It looks quite similar to the Command Spells from Fate, but with a light blue that fades into dark blue instead of red, and pulses with energy as Morgan flicks the opponent away with casual ease and moderate knockback that will usually keep an opponent grounded. The multihits add up to 5% while the flick deals 2.5% damage, with both Morgan and the enemy left in roughly frame neutral, uh, neutral! All things considered, the throw portion of this throw is pretty mid, if you want to return to neutral it sure does work!
As you may have guessed by the brand left upon the enemy, this throw has more to it than just a simple neutral reset! If the foe doesn't do anything, then the command spell placed on them will do the same thing it does to those treacherous and malicious fairies inside of Morgan's Lostbelt: Suck out their mana. In this case, it is meant to turn the Command Spell into a bomb given she's fighting a foe! And while this time bomb takes a VERY long time to go off, 12 seconds, it's exceedingly powerful at 30% damage dealt that kills at 90%! That can be shielded, sure, but 30% on a delayed attack is a LOT for a shield to hanle, with Morgan having an exceedingly high number of options to take advantage of rolls and air dodges. It's such an exceedingly powerful option that there should be no surprise that the opponent has recourse to it.
The spell, after all, WAS originally designed to siphon mana from those fairies and use it to power up Morgan. The same is true here. Whenever the opponent hits Morgan, the Command Spell on them will glow a bright blue and send wisps of blue energy to Morgan (who is presumably flying away from the hit). This REDUCES the power of Morgan's Time Bomb by an amount equal to the damage the attack dealt. So a 10% damage attack knocks the time bomb's damage to 20% (which, for reference, kills at 140%) for example. The move has a "floor" of 8%, after which it won't go down any lower unless they completely clear the 30% in which case the mark disappears like dust. The 8% floor has no killing power, dealing light-moderate knockback, though given it is a delayed hitbox it can still help Morgan out by landing other attacks or what have you.
This isn't STRICTLY good for the opponent, though! They are, after all, paying Morgan's mana tax and so she will gain benefits from it. The first is that Morgan gains 1.5x the amount of Rhongomyniad meter from the hits as normal, so if a full 30% time bomb was cleaned up that'd be the same meter as if she got hit for 45%. A small but, to be sure, but an effective one. The second is that Morgan's next damaging attack she uses, regardless of if it hits or not, gains damage dealt equal to half the damage she had taken! This is used up when the attack goes off, and represented by the attack having bright glowing blue on it (or if it had it already, intensifying it). So if you took 10%, your next attack deals 5% more. If you took 20%, it deals 10% more. But if you took 10%, used an attack, then took 10% more and attacked the 2nd attack would only get +5% since you "used up" the first 10%. Easy to understand, right?
These boosts will be stronger on your big kill attacks such as Dash Attack or Forward Smash, able to push down their kill percents by a sizable amount, but the nature of the buff only empowering the next attack means you'd have to hit this raw and without setting up into it. This is naturally a substantially harder affair! Note that for Forward Smash, the later "echo" keeps the buff since it is the "same attack", so you do get some double dipping power there. Faster attacks can take advantage of the buff by just quickly converting the damage out on a fast hit, particularly with a Side Special to just get aggressive with the opponent. This can sometimes muck up your combo moves but remember that hitstun increases with knockback dealt (which increased damage will cause) and that Morgan has a LOT of ranged options to keep up with the higher knockback, so you can still snipe it with an Up Tilt, a Side Special fueled follow-up, a Forward Tilt or whatnot.
Up Throw: By Inferno's Light
Morgan holds her hand to the sky with an open palm, glorious light bathing it as it glows from under the opponent for a brief "charge period" animation, before a brilliant golden spear from Rhongomyniad bursts out from the ground and pierces the opponent into the sky! This is Morgan's juggling throw, dealing a potent 13.5% and having nice knockback but not killing off the top until 240% or so. The knockback is directly upwards in front of Morgan, which allows Morgan to threaten with a step forward to Up Smash the opponent and usually demands horizontal DI + the opponent being on the lookout for the Up Smash. While Up Throw is not a natural kill throw, the Up Smash combo is particularly dangerous as a 50/50 kill option with Morgan forcing air dodges or strong DI starting from 150% on most neutral stages lest they be sent flying off the top at an early date. Note that this doesn't really ever become a kill confirm though, so it is less reliable than her other kill throw options. Up Aerial is another move Morgan can threaten out of this throw, trading the potential power of Up Aerial sweetspot's kill power for less reliability and being a more narrow damage window to use it in.
And on top of that, it is important to remember that Morgan's Rhongomyniad blasts come from the top of the blast zone, so opponents reeeeeeally have to keep an eye out for attacks from both vertical angles here. Mini-Rhongomyniads can make thinks even more risky for the foe by covering diagonal angles that make avoiding Up Smash / Rhongomyniad harder, but this is a more commital approach to Morgan's setup all things considered. At low percents, before Morgan's knockback scaling kicks in, Morgan can attempt to jump and use a Neutral Aerial to knock foes back to (Fairy) British earth to go for an air-to-ground assault.
Back Throw: In Purgatory's Shadow
Morgan steps into the background in a simpe motion, looking at the foe with a cold gaze as she summons a copy of herself by the foe! The copy runs the opponent through with their staff in the thin lance form, dragging them "forward" (which since the copy is facing opposite of Morgan means behind Morgan) as it shatters into pieces while dragging them forward. The exact motion of the "dragging" depends on how Morgan angles the attack which affects the angle: no angle has it ground down and shatter as if being worn down from the legs up, down has it stab more from above and shatter as it crashes to the ground, while an up angle is a lifting lance thrust that shatters the Morgan clone from the arms back as it moves upwards. This move deals the same amount of damage, 9%, no matter which angle Morgan picks, with the angle being more about what knockback Morgan wants out of the move.
The default angle is a fairly standard angle of knockback for a throw, but it also has the strongest of it, particularly in high base knockback that serves to get breathing room. In comparison to Down Throw, this trades in the explosive hitbox for more breathing room for Morgan to perform setup and Back Throw's own interactions (more on those in a minute). Throwing up a Mini-Rhongomyniad is easy with the time Morgan gets, although setting up a Neutral Special would be quite unlikely. The ending lag on this is too much for most combos, but with a portal Morgan could at least pressure the opponent if she wanted to.
I mentioned interactions: All of Morgan's Back Throw options interact with the wall from Morgan's Neutral Special, with the default angle causing enemies to crash into it with a most potent crash and splat. In addition to some long freeze frames as the foe impacts it with a visual akin to breaking the walls of the King of Fighters stadium, the foe takes an additional 9% damage from the impact and launching them away with knockback away from the wall (keeping the up/down orientation they have, in this case up) that kills at an early 145%! This is Morgan's strongest base damage throw and strongest kill throw, although Morgan has to be aware that the nature of the knockback being reversed can mean needing to grab at awkward spaces since you need to knock them away from the closest kill side into the wall to rebound them off. This is otherwise straightforward, as kill throws tend to be.
Morgan's Upwards angle has drastically reduced knockback compared to the other options, making it Morgan's combo throw out of Back Throw and her only really true combo throw inside of her grab game. Forward Aerial is a combo out of it that also functions as a kill confirm option, but note that Forward Aerial's frequent use as an important spacer in her arsenal means it'll usually be staled out of killing at its baseline power. Neutral Aerial is a solid option out of this that can potentially lead into an extended combo (although less reliable than most characters') and a reversed Back Aerial isn't a true combo but snags people out of it if they aren't prepared.
Smashing a foe against the wall here deals only light damage, 4%, but cuts the knockback from the attack even more while adding hitstun to it and shunting opponents into light direct upwards knockback. This allows Morgan to combo into pretty much any aerial (although the nature of Up Aerial's hitbox makes it difficult to hit with), and if she has her Portal network ready both Up Smash and Down Smash provide true combos in addition to plenty of the rest of her set. Note that since you need to use Morgan's wall to set this up that spiking a foe offstage with a Down Smash combo isn't really a Thing. A particularly fun option is Morgan's Jab which allows Morgan to space the opponent basically anywhere in the nearby vicinity. Jab also doesn't require Morgan to land her command grab first, so it is an evergreen option that will always work if Morgan is uncertain of what's gonna combo out. Note that Morgan can also combo her command grab out of this! This makes it one of Morgan's options for "looping" her setup so to speak by using Neutral Special setup to help get a Side Special and one of he better Side Special landing tools along with Mini Rhongomyniads and Down Tilt. But of course you're requiring the difficult Neutral Special setup time so.
And then there is the Downwards angle, which sends opponents at a low angle that forces tech situations until quite high percents! This is an especially valuable tool in Morgan's arsenal due to a wide variety of options at her disposal to tech chase opponents. Her Neutral Special is the biggest one with the buzzsaw option being one of the best ones, although Morgan could also use her wall for high repositioning purposes. Mini-Rhongomyniads allow her to section off options for the foe unless they want to time a roll something fierce, while a full powered Rhongomyniad can potentially cover any roll option unless they time their i-frames to go through it although this gets harder with more and more damage because Morgan needs to move before using the attack or the foe will be far enough to roll away. Unless this is at the ledge, where they won't have the room! They could also just hit the tech and ignore the whole quandry of course.
If you don't want to worry about the foe hitting the tech, then have your clone break itself upon your wall. The opponent will be dragged against it for three hits of 2% damage and enter untechable prone at its feet! How Morgan can react depends heavily on what direction the wall is facing vs. the foe at that point. If it is moving away from the foe, than the foe will be in prone where they hit the wall as it moves away. But if it is moving towards the foe it will move them along its path. Depending on where Morgan is, that'll either bring them closer or further to her and in turn will affect how she reacts. One thing Morgan can do against this and prone abuse in general is Dash Attack, especially if she is close enough that she can Dash Attack in one direction to cover a roll but threaten that Morgan will instead teleport and cover the other roll direction. And Forward Smash's secondary hit, of course, makes for a great chase option as well. Morgan has a lot of options to kick the opponent while they're down, so never miss a chance to make a fairy feel worse about their situation!
Forward Throw: Heart-Stealing Curse
Morgan closes her eyes, extending her non-wand-holding hand upwards as a red-black orb forms inside of it. At the same time, a brighter red-pink and black slowly compressing sphere appears over the opponent. If their body type allows, it will appear over their heart-area. A squeeze of Morgan's hand squelches the orb's life and in turn causes the orb on the opponent to explode outward in a shower of blood (or oil), as Morgan attacks their heart directly! This sends them flying for 10% damage and knockback that makes it Morgan's killing throw as it slaughters opponents at 185%. With no real speciality to the diagonal knockback and somewhat long ending lag (preventing easy portal follow-ups), this move's actual knockback portion of this attack really exists just for murder. The area where Morgan's magic worked its destruction continues to pulse with residual magic for the next 7 seconds, functioning as a damage over time on the opponent as her heart-rending curse leeches off of the opponent.
This damage over time is interesting for two reasons. First off, the fact it is leeching damage off the opponent causes Morgan's Rhongomyniad meter to increase with the damage dealt! This is pretty important for Morgan, allowing her to boost up a vital Rhongomyniad meter both for damage / combos (being a reason to use this throw early potentially!) or for the big Rhongomyniad finisher on foes getting into kill range! The other is the exact amount of damage it deals depends on the opponent's distance from Morgan! If they are literally in Morgan's face, the damage over time is nullified completely, while going 0.5 Battlefield Platforms away makes for 1% damage per second. Morgan's meter gain is equal to half the damage dealt, so it fills up 0.5% of the meter with every tick. Note that is not "equal to 0.5% damage" but "0.5% of the meter" (or 1/200th). Starting from 1.5 Battlefield Platforms, it instead deals 3% damage per second to the opponent, which offers quite the tremendous damage should Morgan manage to keep the foe at bay for substantial periods!
And finally at 3 or more Battlefield Platforms, almost the entire length of final destination, a glorious 5% per second is dealt to the opponent. This is VERY hard for Morgan to keep going, it essentially necessitates setup and a portal or other circumstances, but a total potential payout of 35% from that is nothing to sneeze at, plus it'll increase Morgan's meter by a whopping 17.5%! That's just over 1/6th of a total meter which for a single move is quite crazy payout, especially since Morgan is still getting natural meter from the damage AND the distance gets her a bonus on that damage for the meter!
While Morgan keeping the foe at that distance for 7 seconds is general infeasible, she can absolutely blast her enemies away at mid percents then run away for about 2 ticks of the damage, trying to use whatever tools she has (NSpec wall / buzzsaw, Mini-Rhongomyniads, Jab, any Portal charges) to make getting back to her as much of a pain as possible to get damage without needing to focus too much on truly "hitting" the opponent, letting them destroy themselves! You lose a lot compared to her other throws in different ways, but it offsets that risk with reward for strong play to slay the opponents.
Lostbelt Aerials
Forward Aerial: Black Hole Blast
Morgan holds an extended palm forward as she creates a rather large sphere of energy in front of herself, a singular hitbox that deals 12.5% damage and knockback that won't kill until 155% but has particularly high base knockback! A fairly average Forward Aerial to start up, the sphere has a solid radius (2/3rds Charge Shot) that lets it really eat up space against opponents! This makes it the main close range "spacer" in Morgan's arsenal, due to Forward Tilt's blindspot, but it does suffer from fairly high ending lag and landing lag that doesn't let it autocancel from a shorthop: She can full hop to fastfall and cancel it, sure, but if you want to do a little hop to anti-air people approaching then you're going to have to deal with ending lag that prevents much in the way of follow-ups.
Where Morgan's Forward Tilt is all about controlling the horizontal range and Up Tilt is all about guarding against approaches pre-emptively, Forward Aerial is generally about telling opponents right in your face "no" and sending them on their way. It's your most aggressive pre-emptive option when it comes to, say, following a Forward-Neutral Special and serves as her primary combo ending tool with high damage and a favorable position after. It perfectly covers the space that Forward Tilt leaves lacking as a blindspot, but in return it lacks the pure horizontal range the crazy tilt has and is liable to be more punishable than it in those close to the ground situations by a comfortable margin.
That isn't all there is to this attack, however, and it combines with her Side Special options! See, by pressing A again, Morgan will lightly press against the sphere and send it flying off as a projectile, which makes it one of Morgan's only "traditional" projectiles in the game. Given it is gated by the need to perform the first part of the attack, it isn't a fast one! This dark energy sphere travels 2 Battlefield Platforms and deals a modest 10% with knockback that will kill at 180%. This isn't too impressive on its own, but works wonderfully when combined with the Up-Neutral Special bubbles to trick out opponents, to mix in with Mini-Rhongomyniads to pin down opponents, to throw over the top of Forward-Neutral Special walls and so on, often being mixed together with a forward angled Up Tilt as the aggressive ranged options of choice. It takes roughly 12 frames to fire off this projectile and there's pretty solid ending lag on doing so. If Morgan lands OUTSIDE of the autocancel window, then she will have about 5 frames before the sphere disappears to input the follow-up attack and end up firing off this projectile on the ground! The lag means this isn't really a way to make it "safe", but you can do a kind of weird anti-approach wall into a fastfall projectile firing. Just don't get predictable, since it isn't too hard to jump over the aerial and hit Morgan.
Holding down A on the follow-up hit instead sends the dark sphere 1 Battlefield Platform in front of the nearest opponent that has a Side Special on them, with it now taking until Frame 17 to fire off but Morgan suffering somewhat less ending lag in return, and basically serves to give an opponent afflicted by Side Special a direct projectile threat against them. Unlike most of Morgan's moves, where mixing up with the Side Special version doesn't necessarily do much, Morgan mixing up a normal follow-up projectile shot while at a different part of the 2 Battlefield Platforms of range has some pretty notable advantages! With the different speeds to fire them you can trick an opponent's defensive timing well enough, and make it ambiguous where the "safe zone" in terms of getting distance FROM Morgan is.
No matter which type of follow-up attack is used, Morgan has some recoil akin to R.O.B.'s Back Aerial but in reverse that pushes her back upon either firing it or sending it onto a Side Special marked foe. Morgan can use this as a minor escape from some of her bad situations or other positioning, but in turn it means that especially with the ending lag it is NOT a projectile to approach behind and much more about sniping opponents stuck in all your strong, aggressive spacing tools. It also means it can potentially shunt you away from ledges if you, say, fire it above one to try and clear opponents out but also that using it very close to the ledge with your back to it can push Morgan ONTO the ledge and cancel its ending lag ala a Palutena or Zelda teleport platform cancel. This is pretty niche, being on a two-part attack and all for timing and spacing, but it can allow Morgan to really pop out and surprise some foes!
Neutral Aerial: Reflections of Sin
Closing her eyes as her body glows an ethereal blue, a ring of eight spears form around Morgan in an equally spaced circle before all of them rush and converge onto her! The spears melt away into her body as they impact her majestic form, with the spears dealing 7% damage and REVERSE radial knockback! This means knockback that goes the opposite direction of its orientation to Morgan, so the attack spikes from above Morgan and foes below Morgan are sent upwards, in front of Morgan they fly backwards and so on. The knockback on this is on the lower end that makes it much more of a combo aerial, with the weird range and knockback providing unique utility: The spears begin a solid distance away from Morgan, think about the distance of a Marth F-Tilt of horizontal but in a circle around her, which means they begin with their highest distance and shrink with the move.
The reverse radial knockback, on the other hand, offers a lot of utility to Morgan: Getting UNDER foes now makes for a good edgeguarding option for Morgan, who can threaten a Neutral Aerial spike in addition to her sweetspot Up Aerial. Hitting from directly above or close to it leads to potential combos (and in particular potentially a sweetspot UAir 50/50 which has kill potential), and knocking the opponent away with unique horizontal options in Morgan's kit is excellent with her NSpec black mana or Mini-Rhongomyniad options, keeping opponents from being totally safe from, say, a Rhongomynad set behind Morgan by being in front of it since Morgan can knock people behind. Morgan can also do things like ping-pong opponents between her Neutral Special and black mana buzzsaw or combo extension with her Mini-Rhongomyniads. Downsides to this move include mediocre starting/ending lag for a combo Neutral Aerial and the reverse radial knockback occassionally making it awkward for Morgan to actually follow-up. It also tends to be unsafe on shield compared to various Neutral Aerials unless you can abuse the range well, so approaching with it doesn't work as well.
Morgan's portal network causes Morgan to go full into the visual effect of the attack from the game, opening up a portal on top of Morgan herself upon which the spears disappear into. This is a unique portal effect within Morgan's arsenal for a few reasons: This actually doubles the damage of the attack to 14%, quite a nice chunk of damage, and it hits the very next frame after entering the portal with the spears all appearing directly on top of the opponent. This means the only way to actively avoid the attack is to shield, roll, air dodge, counter or so on: You can't avoid it by moving or jumping or whatever the peasentry of Smash would come up with. The downside is this attack loses all of its knockback and hitstun properties, merely impacting the foe to skewer them without sending them flying or interrupting them!
This makes for a tense dynamic whenever Morgan has her Infinite Mirror Network at the ready on the foe, allowing her to threaten some "asssured" damage to force the foe into a snap decision: Shield the strike or roll it or tank through it to instead deliver a strike at Morgan should she use it too close to them, taking 14% for a better advantage state or damage trade against the queen. But with the variety of options Morgan has to threaten the opponent such a decision can become quite complex! For example, Morgan's Neutral Special can set up a future pitfall or popping bubble or buzzsaw that opponents need to react to, then Morgan times a Neutral Special to either deal plenty of hits to their shield or force them to take free damage to avoid them. This can be combined with Mini-Rhongomyniads or Down Throw for more pressure without Morgan even getting close to the foe!
Morgan can also simply use it as a punishment tool for anyone who swings for the fences too much to strike them rather safely during the ending lag of the attack. Speaking of ending lag, note that unlike most of Morgan's attacks this move's portal powers occur at the move's ENDING LAG, which has a few effects. First off, it makes it slow enough it is always reactable, so don't expect to just shorthop NAirs for overly free damage without something else to keep the foe occupied once you get a portal on them. Secondly, it means Morgan can totally hit with the 7% hit AND have the ending lag portal strike for 14%! The portal option doesn't add any ending lag to this attack so it can make for a grotesquely powerful combo starter albeit one that suffers from requiring setup and resource commitment on what can easily be a real whiff. It also means Morgan will not use her portal resource nor get off the portal part of the attack if she is hit before the move's ending lag begins.
Up Aerial: Oath of the Fairy Knights
Morgan raises her hand to the sky as three ripples appear in the space above her head, one directly above her and two more slightly angled and to the sides. A moment later, a trio of glowing golden (very much the same color as Rhongomyniad) swords strike outwards from them! The three swords all meet together at their very tips, where they break and shatter during the attack's ending lag. There's two general hitboxes to this attack: The sweetspot where all three blades meet, and the sourspot of everything else. The sourspot deals 8% damage and lightly knocks opponents upwards, with knockback that would be solid for juggling were it not for this move's bad ending lag. Because of that it merely keeps opponents close for aggression rather than more concentrated juggling options.
The spot where all three meet is a powerful sweetspot that deals 19% damage and kills at a sizable early 97% from a full hop! This makes it Morgan's best aerial kill move (although the nature of Up Smash means it can kill earlier despite much lower knockback by hitting foes much higher on the stage much easier) and one of her excellent kill options as befitting the glass cannon of an ice queen. The sweetspot is brief and small, so it isn't all that easy to hit with raw...of course, Morgan has plenty of options to fix that! A NSpec buzzsaw on a platform is a particularly stylish way to do so, but a properly aerially aimed Mini-Rhongomyniad can turn an aerial conversion into a kill confirm into an Up Aerial, albeit this is something that's gonna require quite a specifically pre-placed option. Right after one of Morgan's D-Throw time bombs go off is also an excellent time, although with a portal Up Smash tends to be the superior option in response to that.
Speaking of portals, the swords that Morgan summons will appear under the foe's current location such that the sweetspot would precisely skewer them in their present location. This is actually a bit of a bother for Morgan to hit aerial foes with, since as long as they just naturally fall they'll end up hitting the weak sourspot instead, but this can be particularly strong against opponents who are locked down on the ground while Morgan is in the air. This is particularly good against enemies pitfalled by Morgan's Neutral Special, but other options such as Mini-Rhongomyniads with enough meter will also work. The rippling portals first appear on Frame 3 at the location they'll fire out and fire out at the move's normal starting lag of frame 13 (which combined with the long ending lag gives it an overall lag feel similar to Zelda's UAir). This only kills at around 112% on the ground and it is still pretty unreliable, but it is a lot less commitment than one of Morgan's laggy and flashy kill options and the portal aspect allows Morgan to even throw it out while retreating!
Back Aerial: Winter's Blackest Night
Transforming her wand into its wand-axe form akin to Neutral Special, Morgan swings behind her with mighty strength as inky black mana tinged with ice blue drips from it! Quite the laggy attack in Morgan's arsenal, it serves as Morgan's kill option outside of her Up Aerial as it kills at 108% with a strong 17% damage. Those are heavyweight numbers from this Berserker! This hefty swing starts deep below Morgan and finishes with a high arc above and behind her, combine that with the long handle of the wand-axe and this move has impressive range that can serve as a slow wall to break out opponents taking more measured approaches to Morgan. It also makes it pretty fun against recovering opponents, used low enough Morgan can actually two-frame with it since it goes deep down enough! This is doubly so because the low start of the attack sends the opponent at a slightly downwards (but mostly forwards) angle that can wreck some poor recoveries. In turn, the late upwards hit has a somewhat upward slant on the knockback compared to most of the attack, so it can kill ever-so-slightly earlier if the foe is high in the air. As befitting the slow ending lag, the attack also is slow to recover from, and because of that is the least safe Morgan option if it whiffs. The shield push is enough that hitting with the edge of Morgan's range will be safe on shield. One thing worth noting is that Morgan's Mewtwo-esque second jump can be effective combined with Back Aerial, allowing Morgan to rise while covering quite a lot of space behind her, and "snag" enemies with the bottom start of the hitbox.
An opponent struck by this assault will have ice blue energy from it "crack" over their body during their knockback, disappearing at the end of their knockback with no effect if nothing further occurs. Smashing into one of Morgan's Neutral Special walls will trigger it, causing the wall to explode in a violent display of inky black and icy blue that adds 10% damage to the attack and increases the knockback (while shifting the angle upwards slightly) to kill at quite the cool 77%! This makes it a powerful kill move on par with Morgan's Forward Smash situationally, with the Neutral Special wall's duration being quite variable depending on how much of her Neutral Special she has set up, but it also allows Morgan to create more threat with it out. Doubly so since Back Aerial's wide coverage makes it a good move for her to use to reject people leaping over a wall. If the wall is going behind the opponent, a downwards striking Back Aerial will reject the opponent right into said wall. Given this move is reactably laggy and this is an obvious technique, it is best mixed together with Forward Aerial (another great rejection tool) to keep opponents on their toes!
Striking with a Mini-Rhongomyniad instead causes an explosive burst of light and cold blue, which completely stops the knockback from Back Aerial while tacking on 7%, but grants an increase in Mini-Rhongomyniad hitstun / stun proportional to the amount of knockback left on the back aerial (with more knockback = more hitstun / stun). This can potentially turn even the laggy Back Aerial into a strong combo tool for Morgan to go with! Much more situational than the kill options but you can find use of it. Use of Back Aerial with Morgan's portals isn't much: It is reactable in speed, the range factor isn't as important with the portals up, and Morgan has more generally useful options out of the portal expenditure. It does help make the wall and Mini-Rhongomyniad interactions easier, especially the mini-Rhongomyniad ones thanks to allowing more leeway with their placement, so it can be helpful for making long range punishes that extra little bit painful.
Down Aerial: Three Calamities
Raising her non-wand hand above her head, a sphere of muddy and slimy dark energy forms within Morgan's palm out of which shoot three dark projectiles that appear like jagged spikes shooting downwards! One of these spikes shoots directly down, while the other two shoot down at 30 degree diagonal angles to the left/right (1 each way) of the downwards projectile. Each of these deals 6% damage and light upwards knockback that can allow Morgan to get a combo out of it if it hits close enough to Morgan. This will most commonly be Neutral Aerial, which in turn can cause opponents to be threatened by Up Aerial after as a ladder "combo" (NAir -> UAir doesn't combo but Morgan can UAir to be aggressive). The sphere has a very brief sweetspot hitbox when the spikes first shoot out, lasting only one frame, that deals 18% damage and quite the strong spike that Morgan could try to use as an extremely risky callout to foes above her while over a blast zone. Kill with the spike, or be left totally open (likely to an ENEMY spike) as her attack flies downwards when the foe is above her. Starting lag is a bit slow, with slightly fast ending lag given it is a projectaerial.
When combined with Morgan's Infinity Mirror Network, the sphere appears about 1.4 Ganondorfs above the opponent, so using it to hit with the spike sweetspot is pretty much impossible. The spikes launch fast enough you can catch someone off guard with this well enough, but the reward of landing the strike is almost entirely tied to Morgan being able to follow up on it, so unless Morgan has something useful to get off of it (another fast enough portal move, an incoming Neutral Special option like the buzzsaw probably on a platform, a pre-set Mini-Rhongomyniad) it isn't worth fishing for. The projectiles go about 2.6 Ganondorfs of distance, so Morgan can launch them from the air with relative impunity, and descending with it can be viable to make landing easier for the Lostbelt King.
Morgan's Down Aerial will bounce off of solid surfaces that it hits up to two times, which prominently includes her Neutral Special wall! This means that Morgan can re-adjust the firing of her Down Aerial to hit at somewhat wild angles due to shooting off three + diagonals, like having only one of the furthest diagonals hit her Neutral Special wall and rebouncing against the ground while the other two only rebound against the wall. This is, however, a specific scenario because Morgan's Down Aerial also interacts with her Neutral Special goop! When impacting Morgan's black mana, it will melt into it and submerge itself in it (indicated by the area's surface rippling and a light purple spike slightly poking out of it).
If an opponent moves over this area (with a maximum vertical detection range of 1.4 Ganondorfs) within the next 3.5 seconds, then the spike will shoot out of the ground at the same angle as if it had been bounced off the ground with refreshed range (if it was going down + left, it'll start going up + left, etc) after 10 frames. This is a pretty sneaky trap for Morgan to add on to her already tough, stage controlling black mana. Depending on how close Morgan was to the ground, she can either have them planted wide and far from each other (used higher in the air so the diagonal spikes have more room to seperate) or clustered as close traps to section off a more specific area or even trigger multiple at once (used close to the ground). Spikes will automatically shoot out after 3.5 seconds, allowing Morgan to use them as delayed projectiles in a pinch, and can only enter black mana once in their life time. Black mana doesn't count towards spikes' two stage spikes per use.
While using the Infinity Mirror Network for this doesn't give great reward, it should be noted the two diagonal spikes will be spaced to make traps to both sides of an opponent if they are on top of Morgan's black mana, which can potentially make navigating the area tricky for opponents and exploitable for Morgan to punish inevitable jumps should they be caught in the middle. This becomes even more true if Morgan has a Mini-Rhongomyniad set with an anti-shorthop angle, something always good for her to have around, which forces either full hops (making it a bit harder to strike a waiting Morgan) or to take a risk to escape being stuck in the middle trap. And having two Mini-Rhongomyniads out can make escape harder, but of course you're still using lots of resources for this, so it is instead best to just kinda use it for "plant traps near the foe and work with the setup you got" rather than get overly complex on a pretty low reward trap. Also note that dodging the middle spike can allow it to be planted inside as a trap as well, potentially further constricting the foe. Given this is an aerial Morgan DOES need to, well, use it in the air though! So she needs a bit of time to get to the ground to anti-air the foe (unless she, say, aggressively double jumps in herself OR has more portals to punish from anywhere in theory) and there's some additional "getting ready" time here. It's a nice boost to combining your Infinity Mirror Network with your Neutral Special anyway.
Final Smash: Lordless / Roadless Camelot - The Now Unreachable Utopia
The Winter Queen summons her throne (that which would make an Iguana blush!), which she takes a seat upon for this Final Smash. Rather than an activation hitbox, Morgan's Final Smash is time based: She must gather magic from her throne, connected to all of her magical systems within her castle, leaving her immobile but able to use any attack that would not move her while gathering mystical power for 2.5 seconds. Hitting Morgan with 12% non-projectile damage will cause the Final Smash to fail and Morgan to lose her Final Smash ball / Meter. It is impossible to avoid the Final Smash if its timer goes off, even with a dodge or invincibility.
If she succeeds in getting it off, then blue light will envelope the field, gathering ALL opponents on the stage to her! Her steely gaze casts itself upon them as a legion of Rhongomyniad spears crash down and surround them, thundering with each strike in the cinematic, before finishing off with a huge burst of energy under the foes, empowered by the spears, which sends them flying. This is a massively damaging Final Smash, 70% (40% Meter) that kills at 30% pre-hit damage, which especially given this is a omni-hit is obviously very powerful. This is made up for with the fact that it is one of the most vulnerable Final Smashes to start with given the generous window to interrupt it.
The final shot of the Final Smash normally will have Morgan sighing from her throne and getting up to resume combat. However, if Morgan would get kill the last stock in the match with it, she instead slumps down further into her throne with a sigh, frankly looking more dejected than normal and sinking a bit more into her depressed state.
"Ha… Why are you always like this, Baobhan Sith...
You should really change that bad habit of yours of crying after being broken down..."
Tristan Taylor is a side protagonist from the original Yugioh, who was a former bully of Yugi's alongside Joey before they became his friends after being bailed out of a fight with a bigger, stronger bully. After that, Tristan joins Yugi's friend group, serving as the muscle of the team by virtue of being bigger and stronger than the rest of the group. Unfortunately, this is not a particularly useful skill for two reasons. One, this is a world where most things you can accomplish are dictated through card games, not physical combat. Two, Tristan is almost never strong enough to actually solve physical problems encountered by the cast, which makes his one talent utterly worthless. He ends up just kind of sticking around with the party as a commentator on duels who doesn't really know what he's talking about, basically because he's part of the friend group and very rarely contributing anything of value. He does, at least, manage to rid Bakura of the Millenium Ring's influence briefly by tossing it away once, and also snaps Joey out of a funk at one point.
Tristan gets a grand total of one chance in the series to actually duel, in a 3 vs 1 duel against one of the Big Five, Nezbitt. The Big Five aren't even known for being particularly competent duelists, one of them lost to Tea in a 1v1. While Nezbitt is at least more competent than Crump, the fact that Tristan managed to lose this duel is absolutely embarassing, especially after bragging to Joey's sister Serenity that he taught Joey everything he knows about Duel Monsters. Tristan ended up in the body of a robot monkey for several episodes while eventually the entirety of the Big Five was possessing his body at once, and he only got his body back in the final escape from the Virtual World. For the record, this one time Tristan even bothered to duel never even happened in the manga. He also tends to get a lot of particularly lame subplots attached to him, like his thirst for Serenity and the one time he had to carry an obnoxious baby around during the Death-T arc of the manga. He does get to duel in a few of the video games too, where his decks are always so hilariously bad you have to assume he's constructing like that on purpose.
I normally wouldn't bring this up, but Tristan's appearance in Yugioh the Abridged Series is so infamous it kind of has to be mentioned. Basically serving as the token idiot of the group, Tristan displays absolutely astonishing levels of stupidity that a lot of the series comedy is derived from. While the "one guy who is a massive idiot" is a pretty long standing comedy trope, Tristan generally was well remembered in the Abridged Series for having a lot of the funnier and more memorable quotes because his stupidity could justify him saying just about anything ridiculous for the situation. While I'm not personally much of a fan of the Abridged Series and especially not the early episodes, one thing does have to be said in its favor. After defeating Joey and dissing him and Duke Devlin, Kaiba drops "Tristan, you are the single most worthless human being I have ever met", and honestly, he's really not wrong.
Stats
So, the best thing about Tristan's stats is his 103 weight that ties him with Ryu and Ken while being just a tiny bit taller than those characters, which is to say he's a pretty average humanoid fighter in terms of size and weight. Tristan's dash speed is a horribly lackluster 1.41, putting him in the bottom 10 in the game, and frankly that's the better side of his mobility. Tristan's air speed is the absolute worst in the game at 0.63, putting him well below King Dedede as his jumps are also just awful, making him liable to die at hilariously low percents off stage. At the very least, with his 1.79 fall speed, he won't be staying in the air especially long on stage, and it means his fall speed doesn't hurt his recovery quite as much as Little Mac's does. Suffice to say, Tristan lives up to his reputation of having absolutely no redeeming qualities as a duelist in Smash, and while he's got a couple gimmicks to help carry him, I'm just going to be up front with you. Playing Tristan is playing Smash on Hard Mode. You do not pick Tristan because you want to be competitive, you are picking him to flex on people less skilled than you or for raw comedy.
Specials
Neutral Special - Robot Monkey Tristan
After his defeat at the hands of Nezbitt, Tristan's body was taken by the Big Five, and his mind was left in the body of a robot monkey. Perhaps as an apology for this indignity from Kaiba Corp, he's now gotten himself a copy of that robot monkey, probably courtesy of Mokuba because I really doubt Kaiba is willing to acknowledge Tristan's existence. For his Neutral Special, Tristan takes out the robot monkey and sets it on the ground in front of him, before taking out a controller that strongly resembles Enemy Controller. Tristan now gains control of the robot monkey, which he can steer around the stage until he either presses B again, or uses a dodge/roll/shield to cancel out of control of Robot Monkey Tristan. Tristan is completely vulnerable to attack while controlling Robot Monkey Tristan, so you're going to have to be careful about that.
Robot Monkey Tristan is actually pretty fast on his feet compared to his human version, having the same 1.239 air speed as Greninja, and a formidable 2.40 dash speed that puts him slightly behind Fox. It has two decent jumps and can short hop like a real character, too. Robot Monkey Tristan is unfortunately quite fragile, however, taking knockback comparable to Squirtle at 50% and having only 30 stamina, short circuiting and shutting down once that much damage is dealt before vanishing from the stage. Taking control of the Robot Monkey is pretty fast as Tristan pulls out the controller on Frame 6, though setting him out in the first place takes a full 25 frames, and when Robot Monkey Tristan dies either from hitting a blast zone or damage Tristan needs to go through 15 seconds of cooldown before he's repaired and ready to use again. Robot Monkey Tristan will generally not do anything once Tristan stops controlling him barring a couple specific commands. That said, one thing worth keeping in mind is once Robot Monkey Tristan completes the start lag of an attack, you can switch control back to Tristan immediately, not having to go through the attack's duration or end lag as the monkey has already committed to your command.
Robot Monkey Tristan has access to a rather small list of attacks, and I wouldn't exactly call them formidable either. His first attack, a Jab, has him slap in front of him with one of his hands, a short ranged attack that comes out on Frame 3 and deals 2% and a flinch. Its not quite fast enough on the end lag to loop into itself and the lackluster range can make it a bit tricky to get in and hit with, but it can serve as a decent annoyance, and if Tristan drops control of the Robot Monkey he can be the one to combo off it. However, the best combo move in Robot Monkey Tristan's kit is his singular aerial, where he spins in a circle and swings his tail around him for 4 rapid hits of 1% and flinching. This comes out a bit slower than the Jab and will likewise not link into itself due to the short range and slightly higher end lag than you'd hope, but because you can drop the controller during this move's end lag like with the Jab, you can have Tristan himself go in and follow up on it. Of course, you'll struggle to get as much mileage out of the Monkey's Nair if it uses it on an opponent higher in the air rather than out of a short hop, because of Tristan's garbage air game, but sometimes you can at least use it to link into Up Smash.
Robot Monkey Tristan does have a couple fancier attacks than this, but they come at a heavy risk. If you use its dash attack, it will angrily leap through the air and latch onto the foe like a Pikmin, dealing an initial 25 frames of hitstun that Tristan can capitalize on as it angrily latches onto and harasses the foe like in the image above. After that, it basically functions as a Pikmin from Olimar's Side Special, but 1.5x stronger than the non-White Pikmin in his set. The downside is it will basically remain latched onto the opponent for 6 seconds... or until it just dies from the foe's attacks, which is extremely likely while its latched onto them, basically serving as a suicide attack. Still, this is a real setup for Tristan's smashes that does require you to sacrifice the monkey, but trust me, its the best chance you'll get to use them regardless, and if you miss you get a consolation prize of some extra damage. This dash attack comes out on Frame 12 and, as a grab hitbox, it'll pretty much get beaten out by anything, but it can get around shields at least.
The other thing Robot Monkey Tristan can do is actually use Tristan's Smashes, which utilize his monster cards. Upon doing so, Robot Monkey Tristan's face will lose its expression and turn into a holographic projector, producing the monster in question after a full second of start lag at which point it starts its own attack animation. Thankfully, you can cancel out of control of the monkey after... 40 frames of this start lag, which gives you something pretty exciting for your efforts, a desynced copy of one of Tristan's Smashes you can knock the opponent into! Of course, you only have a window of like 40-50 frames to utilize it with Tristan's slow set, and these aren't exactly amazing Smashes because these are Tristan's monsters we're talking about, but it rounds out the Robot Monkey's kit with another strong but risky option that's harder to land than the Dash Attack, but less suicidal.
All in all Robot Monkey Tristan is a somewhat frail minion who doesn't offer quite as much desynced pressure as MYM minions often do, since you have to spend all the time controlling it yourself, and its attacks are hilariously ineffectual on its own. That said, its the best tool in your set for landing Tristan's laggy KO moves and actually gives him something resembling real pressure while its out. Tristan's ability to perform combos or land KO moves without Robot Monkey Tristan's help is embarassing though, so you better get used to that fact when you're dealing with his painful 15 second cooldown period.
Down Special - Block Attack
Tristan plays a card down on his duel disk(which he spawns for this attack) and causes a large image of the card Block Attack to appear around him. This is, as you'd probably expect from a card called "Block Attack", a counter, with slightly better Frame Data than Marth's actually as the window is from Frames 6-30 and then ending on Frame 60, leaving a 30 frame window where Tristan is wide open. If the opponent hits Tristan during the counter, one of two things will happen. If the foe was in the air, Tristan will rear back and punch them in the face for 10% and mostly horizontal knockback that KOs at 220%. This doesn't have a ton of range but Tristan will move forward enough you should at least be able to catch people who outrange him in melee range with this... but for landing a counter, when counters tend not to be very good in Smash Ultimate, this reward really isn't worth a ton. This punch is quite punishable if Tristan whiffs it too, as you'd expect from a counter.
There's a faint green glow in an area about a battlefield platform radius around Tristan when you counter with this move, and if you hit an opponent on the ground with that aura, the counter's better effect will activate. Specifically, rather than punching the opponent, a green aura will surround them and force them to put up their shield for 35 frames, on 25 of which Tristan is free to act. This guaruntees a grab, and while Tristan's grab game isn't great, it tends to give him a much better advantage state than the punch does, and also gives him 4 options instead of 1. This isn't factoring in the other possibilities with this move, such as shield poking with Down Tilt, or, if the stars align, outright going for a shield break on the opponent.
If you have Robot Monkey Tristan out, his leaping attack combos out of this, which upgrades Tristan from having 25 frames to punish a foe's shield specifically to 25 frames of free reign to attack the foe however you want. The foe will also have the monkey latched onto them dealing them some extra damage until they destroy it on top of this, but this is likely to sacrifice the Robot Monkey, so keep that in mind. Other things you can do include simply repositioning the monkey lightly before going for a grab, just to give yourself a more optimal advantage state out of your throws. Obviously you don't have time to move it around a lot, but the window is just large enough to at least set it up to better follow up your throws and give Tristan something of real throw combos.
Side Special - Rare Metal Soul
Activating a card with a similar animation to Down Special, this one causes an orb of light to appear around Tristan and get absorbed into his body over a period of a total of one second long, although after Frame 35 if Tristan gets hit it won't knock the orb of light away. This gives Tristan a buff, just as the card buffs Super Roboyarou in the anime by 1000 ATK... until the end of the turn. So as you can guess, this is a very temporary buff, Tristan has only 5 seconds to use it, and it buffs a grand total of one attack before going away. There are exceptions with this move, it won't use up Rare Metal Soul to use Block Attack to force a foe to shield, and it won't use up Rare Metal Soul to use an attack with the robot monkey. The pummel will also not use this buff, it'll only be expended on throws.
So what does this buff do? Well, for most of Tristan's moveset, its a flat 5% bonus damage and slight knockback boost in the attack, and that's about it. For the amount of time you put into it, that's not really all that impressive a buff, and it'll even break what few combos Tristan has if used poorly. That said, if you get the free time to set it, it does make Tristan's non-Smash power moves hit quite a bit harder and turn into serviceable KO moves, but that's not the real prize you want out of this.
No, the real reward here using Rare Metal Soul on one of your Smash Attacks, which gives that Smash Attack a unique buff that will be listed in that respective move. These buffs are actually quite potent and give Tristan a genuinely powerful set of Smashes, but as always with Tristan, there's a catch with allowing him to be even remotely competent. This doesn't make his Smashes any faster, and as you've probably noticed, going for specifically smash attack after spending a full second of lag without fishing for any kind of advantage state first is a hilariously predictable line of play, and everyone will see it coming, which is why when you get the space to pull this move off you probably are only going to want to go for the Smashes incidentally. But when you do pull them off, the rewards are satisfyingly powerful, and you have some options that are at least potent with the damage buff.
Helping land Rare Metal Soul boosted attacks is one of Robot Monkey Tristan's best uses. Since he won't use up Rare Metal Soul himself, he can actually combo or at least give a solid advantage state going into moves boosted by this buff, although you still have only a 5 second period to pull this off relying mostly on Robot Monkey Tristan's limited moveset. Still, chaining Robot Monkey Nair into a Rare Metal Soul boosted Up Smash is a genuinely terrifying threat for opponents, and. Okay it'd probably be going too far to say this will make the foe take Robot Monkey Tristan seriously, its Robot Monkey Tristan. Look at him.
For the record, yes, these really were the best spell and trap cards I could find for Specials, and I dug into the Yugioh video games. Did you know that in his first 3 video game appearences, Tristan didn't use spell or trap cards? He barely used effect monsters. By the fourth game he finally adapted and jammed a bunch of equip spells in his deck to buff his monsters, and by the fifth game he added the incredible... Negate Attack and Enchanted Javelin(both cards that were pretty weak even in the early Yugioh days). He may very well have peaked in his embarrassingly bad duel with Nezbitt, honestly.
Up Special - Grappling Hook
Taking out the grappling hook he used to help break in to part of Pegasus' castle, Tristan tosses it at a 45 degree angle as it attempts to latch onto a ledge, provided you're using this in the air. The metal hook deals 11% and mostly upward knockback that kills at 155% on contact, increasing to 13% and entirely upward knockback that kills at 130% at the end of its reach. This has a bit of start lag the opponent can interrupt with faster aerials, and trust me when I say no other quality of this move makes up for that fact. The range is shoddy, its probably the worst tether in the game in terms of distance, and unlike Little Mac and Ganondorf's recoveries you do actually have to latch onto the ledge with this for it to work. Suffice to say Tristan's recovery is abysmal and he will get gimped and die at earlier percents than his weight would normally warrant all the time.
On the ground, Tristan will instead wide up and cast the grappling hook forward a distance a bit over a battlefield platform in range, dealing 7% and knockback that just pops the opponent up into the air when the hook collides with the foe and 1% and a flinch if the foe just bumps into the rope while the hook is being cast out ahead of them. After its fully cast out, Tristan will briefly pause before snapping the rope back to him, tripping foes touching the rope itself for 7%, while if they're touching the head they'll get flung right towards Tristan with 12% and backward knockback that starts out pretty strong but scales very poorly so it won't kill until around 300%. This move comes out on Frame 21, so its pretty hard to land especially when you consider that the pop into the air will give opponents a chance to react to the second hit.
What you can do, however, is cast it out below an opponent that would fall onto the rope if you want to hit with the second hit, which while laggy enough that its tricky to land certainly isn't impossible. A proned opponent is a much better setup to Tristan's laggier moves than a lot of Tristan's set offers him if he reads their getup options well, and if you hit with the hook this can straight up combo into Up or Down Smash. Tristan also pulls the rope back in shockingly fast and doesn't have much end lag either, so it doesn't really cause you to go minus by much on shield and actually should give you a bit of an advantage outright if the foe dodges the second hit. Plus, once the foe starts getting popped up further into the air(around 70%, this knockback scales that slowly), they won't be able to shield before the rope snaps back, although unfortunately the first hit will start knocking the foe out of reach of the second one by 150%. This means the foe will have to go for some kind of dodge and with Tristan's low end lag that's easy for you to follow up on.
With all that said, for the lag invested getting real payoff out of this move is way trickier than it should be, which kind of goes to show its hard for Tristan to get a big advantage state without the Robot Monkey's help. Its at least something you can throw out to fish for better chances to use your Smashes or start a mini-combo on a good read. If you do have the Robot Monkey out, however, this does help it land its Smashes by giving the foe a double hitbox to worry about that covers a significant chunk of the stage at once. Its also not a bad move out of Block Attack, given it can shield poke at relatively high shield health, and if you specifically land only the second hit out of Block Attack a trip is a half-decent reward out of that counter.
Also you usually shouldn't use this move with Rare Metal Soul, this is exactly what I meant by the fact that Rare Metal Soul messes up your combos as it will hit the foe too far on the first hit for the second to be relevant. Though boosting the power of the second hit by laying the rope out below them can sometimes come in handy, so its not a completely worthless combination.
Smashes
Forward Smash - Lava Battleguard
Calling out the name of his monster, Tristan summons Lava Battleguard as it appears next to him, before smashing down in front of Tristan with its club in a large arc, comparable to moves like Ike and Ganondorf's Forward Smashes. In fact, this move has the same start lag as Ganondorf's Forward Smash of 29 frames... but sadly, Lava Battleguard does not measure up to the King of Evil in power, only dealing 18%-25% and knockback that KOs at 105%-60%. Still, Lava Battleguard's a bit taller and wider than Tristan and he swings the club in a very wide arc, so this move at least has impressive reach and coverage, and the end lag is a little shorter than Ganondorf's FSmash as the move has an FAF of 65. It also deals slightly upgraded shield damage to hit a tiny bit harder than Ganondorf's FSmash against a shield, which is quite scary against an opponent stuck in Block Attack's effect.
All that said, the reason you use Ganondorf's Forward Smash was for its power, and this move doesn't really have more range because Lava Battleguard still isn't actually bigger than Ganondorf. There is a small benefit to this move over Ganondorf's version at least, in that Lava Battleguard's beefy body will actually help Tristan soak up hits, reducing the damage of incoming attacks by 5% and giving him super armor against attacks that deal less than 5%. This basically lets Tristan armor through any attack that deals less than 10% with this move, and will reduce the knockback and damage of moves that do hit through the super armor so you won't get punished as badly. This means at the end of the day, this move is a little easier to land than Ganondorf's Forward Smash, but just keep in mind that some moves will not just punch through the armor but actually get improved combo potential from their reduced knockback, so if you want to utilize the armor on this move you really have to have a much better read on the opponent than most "armoring through" techniques. Its also slow enough that nothing the robot monkey does can true combo into it, even the Dash Attack. That said, if you can get time for Robot Monkey Tristan to project this attack, its an imposing piece of stage control while its happening due to the size and power of the hitbox, and it even does a bit of work to protect the robot monkey while the attack is winding up too.
If this attack has been powered up with Rare Metal Soul, the move changes a bit by becoming a two part attack. After Lava Battleguard strikes the foe, they'll be stunned instead of taking knockback, and then Swamp Battleguard, the natural counterpart and friend of the Lava Battleguard, will appear next to it and also smash in the same arc. Swamp Battleguard is bigger than the Lava Battleguard and as such swings on a bigger arc, and Lava Battleguard's hit is reduced to deal 14%-20%, but Swamp Battleguard's will deal 20%-28% and knockback that KOs at 65%-30%. When you factor both hits in, this is a Forward Smash that deals 34% and KOs at 51%, which is hideously powerful, and by its two hit nature it makes it quite hard to dodge Swamp Battleguard's second attack with traditional dodges! Plus, both hits together will break a shield from full, and the minor protective effect is still there to force opponents to interrupt it with slower, stronger attacks.
The combined teamwork of the Battleguards is actually really powerful, but for what its worth, the opponent can still roll away from or interrupt the move, and it is by far the most transparent thing for Tristan to fish for once he has Rare Metal Soul active. The Robot Monkey being a nuisance at this point is a lot bigger of a deal though, as using it to poke the opponent and keep them in range for the double Battleguard assault helps, but getting the Robot Monkey and Rare Metal Soul both active at the same time can be very challenging. You also really only get one shot at double Battleguards before you have to set up Rare Metal Soul again. That said, this is undoubtedly the most powerful tool in Tristan's set when you get to use it, and the mere fact you could fish for it provides some real pressure on the foe that you could use to land weaker Rare Metal Soul attacks instead. And on some level, I think Tristan would be glad that his strongest technique is based on the power of friendship.
Up Smash - Cyber Commander
Once again shouting the name of his monster, Tristan summons his favorite monster, the Cyber Commander. His choice of this as his favorite card resulted in Bakura turning him into it for a Shadow game early in the series, and with its 750 ATK and lack of effect, you really have to wonder what Tristan sees in this card. I guess if you like buff military guys with big weapons, the selection was pretty limited back then. Pointing his shoulder mounted rocket launcher upward, the Cyber Commander fires off 3 blasts in a row that are each about 1.2x Wario's size above Tristan, dealing 2 hits of 4%-6% and flinching, followed by a final hit of 7%-10% and upward knockback that kills at 115%-80%. This is a fair bit faster than Forward Smash to come out, but still fairly slow on Frame 21, and between the slightly long duration and high end lag this attack ends up massively punishable if it whiffs, to the point it has a later FAF than FSmash. Still, the range is pretty good, and the duration makes it decent at catching out air dodges.
This attack's reach gets better when you consider that Tristan can angle it forward and backward with each hit, letting this hit at a 30 degree angle in front of or behind Tristan. The fact that you can angle each shot means you have a second chance to hit the foe even if you whiff the first hit, and also makes this a bit better at catching directional air dodges.
Rare Metal Soul boosts the size of the explosions to 1.5x Wario's size, lets the move be angled 45 degrees instead of 30 to increase its potential coverage, and boosts the number of explosions from 3 to 5, with the additional 2 being added hits of 4%-6%. The final hit's knockback is boosted to KO at 80%-50%, as well. While this isn't as powerful as Forward Smash, the 5 hits and large range make it very good against air dodges, and the fact that it comes out quite a bit faster means the Robot Monkey is better suited to setting this move up.
Down Smash - Super Roboyarou
For his Final Smash, Tristan calls out the name of his monster as it appears next to him, this time Super Roboyarou, the card he choose as his Deck Master in the duel against Nezbitt. Super Roboyarou is honestly one of the worst fusion monsters in the entire game, between its inability to be Special Summoned with Instant Fusion, awful statline, and an incredibly slow effect to tag out for an even worse monster as well as a pretty mediocre ATK boosting effect. So of course Tristan picks it to represent him. Regardless of his in-game worth, in Smash, Super Roboyarou performs a flurry of stabs on both sides of Tristan, dealing a total of 16%-23% across 8 hits, before the final hit knocks opponents away at a somewhat low diagonal angle with knockback that kills at 220%. Even after the end lag, Super Roboyarou will stick around for 25 frames in a brief salute before disappearing, which will come up in a moment.
For now, this is Tristan's fastest smash attack at 19 frames of start lag, but the rewards are paltry compared to Up Smash and Forward Smash in terms of kill potential. The good news is unlike those moves, the end lag isn't too bad, to the point that at 0%, you can actually follow this move with Tristan's fastest standards. Which is good, because this move actually has a follow up of sorts. If Tristan connects any hit while Super Roboyarou is saluting and Super Roboyarou already landed the final hit of the Down Smash on the opponent, he'll instead do a flying kick at the opponent, homing in on their position at lightning speeds that deals 10%-14% and diagonal knockback that KOs at 100%-60%, technically making this Tristan's strongest regular Smash! That said, once you get past around 40% even heavyweights don't really combo out of this move, at which point it just kind of becomes a mediocre spacer.
Unless of course, you get Robot Monkey Tristan involved! All you have to do is position him right, smack the opponent with any weak attack while the opponent's flying by him, and suddenly Super Roboyarou's got all the power you could ever hope for! Of course, this does require lining him up properly to smack the foe with Jab or Nair, or landing Dash Attack when the opponent's out of stun and could swat the monkey away.
Rare Metal Soul with this attack is a bit of an oddball, as it doesn't buff the power of the attack at all, but rather decreases the knockback of the first hit immensely so that its pretty easy to actually combo off. This isn't all that flashy, but guarunteeing at least 26% and solid KO power out of this smash attack which isn't nearly as slow as Tristan's other options is still a formidable reward for Rare Metal Soul, and probably the easiest one to mix up opponents into compared to the Forward and Up Smash. But if you want to get really fancy, Super Roboyarou will actually stick around another 25 frames after his second hit. If you, somehow, score a combo off the second hit, which is very difficult to do because the opponent is taking it at 20% at minimum even if they started DSmash at 0%, Super Roboyarou's body will briefly spark with lightning before he instantly zooms to the targets location, impaling his spear through the foe with a screen zoom effect! This deals 25%-35% and knockback that KOs at 40%-0%. Obviously this is a SUPER difficult attack to land, as it requires the Robot Monkey to be very much in the exact right place at the right time, and that is, for sure, the only way you will land this. But if you do, the opponent is probably dead, which means there's a bit more for the opponent to fear from this than just the "safe" Smash Attack buff if you can line things up perfectly. Admittedly, lining things up perfectly is NOT Tristan's specialty, but that's where the player comes in to pick up the slack for him.
Also, this is a great attack to give to the Robot Monkey to use for itself, as Tristan will have an easier time following this attack from a Robot Monkey than vice versa just by virtue of having a larger moveset. Obviously, putting Tristan and the Robot Monkey through the 40 frames of lag to get this off the ground isn't easy, but being a lingering hitbox separate from Tristan makes it possible to combo into it and then back out of it only for Super Roboyarou to finish the job, which can make for some pretty potent damage and kill confirms when it works!
Standards
Jab - Headbutt
Lowering down a bit, Tristan decides to use his head for once by smashing it into the opponent for 6%. This comes out on Frame 8 and due to its close range has serious issues comboing out of much of anything, but the diagonal knockback it deals is small enough that this is a move Tristan can kinda combo off of. Regrettably, even factoring in all this move's obvious flaws, its not really a great combo starter mostly because Tristan has very few options to fill combos, but it will let you get another hit in, and for Tristan, that's worth celebrating.
The tip of Tristan's hair, due to its pointyness, is actually a small sweetspot that deals 8% and slightly higher hitstun. This hitbox is already small so hitting the even smaller sweetspot is very difficult on a character who is not precision based at all, but at the very least, the presence of the Robot Monkey should make it easier, and on the cases where you do manage to space Tristan's pointy hair into actually damaging the foe, you can do some nice 50/50's with DTilt and DSmash that probably wouldn't work the best out of Jab without it. As you might expect, Robot Monkey Tristan can make setting up this sweetspot easier, and also his ability to intercept a foe's knockback with his own attacks can give Tristan a way to extend his combos, making the small ones he can pull off out of this move just that little bit more substantial.
Forward Tilt - Friendship Breaker
Performing a right hook, Tristan punches the opponent in the face, in an identical fashion to how he punched Joey to try to snap him out of his stupor over losing Red Eyes to a Rare Hunter. This moment is famous for being censored from the 4Kids dub, which most people think was a bit ridiculous, but fortunately in Smash Tristan can replicate it to his heart's content. This attack comes out on Frame 5, the fastest in Tristan's set, perhaps replicating how sudden it feels to get punched in the face by your best friend. As Tristan leans into the punch it definitely has more range than Jab, but its still pretty mediocre in that regard, but at least you can combo out of Down Smash with it. It also deals a respectable 11% and knockback on a low diagonal angle that scales really poorly and won't kill until 280%.
So as you might have guessed, this is not a combo move. You can combo it out of Jab, but that will end the combo right there for a whopping 17%. Tristan is okay when the opponent is out of his face though, it gives him time to set up the Robot Monkey or Rare Metal Soul, or space them out to make better use of the Grappling Hook. This can also be a nice, sudden way to knock an opponent into a Robot Monkey for some further damage or potentially even a Smash Attack channeled through it. With all that said, at the end of the day despite its spacing potential this is a move you can confirm very little off, and the range really isn't anything to write home about, so its a pretty mediocre attack overall. But we're dealing with Tristan Taylor, the king of mediocrity. Just the fact that this is a fast move makes it important for him, at the end of the day.
Down Tilt - Low Blow
Tristan pivots his whole body into a low roundhouse kick, in a move that is exceptionally slow by Down Tilt standards as it comes out on Frame 15! The good news is, this attack actually packs some half decent punch to it, dealing 14% and diagonal mostly upward knockback that kills at 125%. On top of that, the hitbox is low enough to actually shield poke once a shield's taken some decent chip damage, which makes it a solid payoff to landing Block Attack on an opponent, or something to surprise an opponent shielding Robot Monkey Tristan's Nair with. Its also got okay range as Tristan really puts his body into this kick, moreso than his rather blunt and short ranged FTilt and Jab.
If you have Rare Metal Soul active, this will kill at around 95%, making it honestly one of the best options for using that if you're not spending Rare Metal Soul on a Smash. Obviously, you'd rather go for those much higher payoff options, but if the foe's at 95%, a kill move is a kill move, and you CAN technically combo this out of both Robot Monkey Tristan's Dash Attack and Nair cleanly, and Jab even sets it up half decently. With that said, between Jab, Forward Tilt, and Down Tilt, Tristan's neutral game on the ground is honestly kind of garbage and that's just something you're going to have to deal with.
Up Tilt - Uppercut
Tristan swings his arm upwards in a somewhat long reaching uppercut as Tristan uses the full length of his arm, dealing 10% and modest upwards knockback you could pursue the foe into with your air game at a frame advantage. At some small windows that are as small as they are for reasons we'll get to, this does true combo into Uair, but you could also try to read a Fair or Bair on the opponent if you feel like playing risky. This move comes out on Frame 8, and largely isn't too bad except for one thing.
Tristan's air game is really, really bad. I've said this before but it really has to be said, outside of some pretty specific percentage windows you won't get the Uair true combo, this launches foes too high at a baseline for Nair to work, and going for Fair or Bair out of this move is... bold. Basically, you're either at a very specific percent window where Uair makes sense, or you probably just want to use this to get foes out of your face, which given the decent lag and range this move is fine at... although the horizontal range of this attack leaves a LOT to be desired, you don't exactly get good coverage. That said, if you want to make a risky play, and sometimes you have to if you want to succeed at Tristan, going in for a Fair or Bair can work out if you calculate your risks properly, and if you do the rewards of both those moves are actually pretty decent when you land them.
Dash Attack - The People's Elbow
Tristan slides to a stop while slamming his elbow forward in front of him, in an attack with some modest range thanks to Tristan sliding along the ground a bit during it and decent power, dealing 13% and mostly horizontal knockback that KOs at 150%. This move does come out on Frame 14 however, so while its not quite in the reactable window the opponent throwing out fast attacks will usually beat it out. This is especially true because while the attack has decent overall range due to Tristan sliding forward, its pretty easy to beat it out with longer reaching attacks due to the actual elbow not having a ton of reach off Tristan's body, and its also easy enough to duck under with a crouch for most characters. But hey, the power and reach are at least somewhat respectable.
This move does have one extra perk to it, it does quite a bit of work against shields. Dealing double shield damage and quite a bit of shield push, it leaves the foe with just a small fraction of their shield left after you hit with this, even managing to nearly pop it from full with Rare Metal Soul active. This at least means the move is good against one defensive option, and its not bad at catching rolls either, so if Tristan is on the offensive in terms of pressure this is a good way to keep it up, just as long as you're confident the foe's not about to interrupt it. Its effectiveness against defensive options makes it a decent target to use Rare Metal Soul on, it'll still only kill around 115% but that can go a fair bit lower at the ledges and this is probably Tristan's most "practical" KO Rare Metal Soul KO, barring a couple things lining up well with your Grab.
Grab Game
Grab - A Good Hard Talking To
Like he does to Joey in the image above, Tristan grabs the opponent by the collar or closest approximate, lifting them up off the ground if they're too small. This is a one handed grab with not a ton of reach to it, but it gets a bit of extra range out of a dash grab if you'd rather go for that. Its overall a very plain grab though, not much to be excited about on its own merits.
Pummel - Tristan You Must Chill
Tristan angrily shakes the opponent, dealing them 1.5% in a relatively fast pummel that can make for some okay damage racking at mid percents, or open up a couple new KO opportunities at high percents. In a lot of sets, you could talk about removing staling from your more spammable moves, but this is Tristan, he doesn't really have moves he can spam.
Up Throw - Command Angel
For the final time in this moveset, Tristan calls out the name of his monster as he summons it to his duel disk while still holding the opponent in one hand. The Command Angel then appears next to him, and with one foot boots the opponent up into the air for 7% and middling set knockback, before spreading her wings and releasing a pulse of white light. This is representative of the Command Angel giving a buff to all other monsters Tristan has in play, which in Smash would be a buff to his robot monkey and his Smash Attacks. Before we get to that though, the downside of this move is that Tristan is actually left at a very slight frame disadvantage when it ends, meaning this is far from a combo throw and basically puts Tristan back in neutral with the foe out of his face but with a couple more frames to act. If you're going for this throw, you better be doing it with intent to get mileage out of the buff, because its not worth a ton on its own.
For Tristan's Smashes, this shaves 5 frames of start lag off their start lag, but only for the first smash you use after this move. Still, unlike Rare Metal Soul, this buff will at least last until you use a Smash Attack(or the robot monkey option we'll get to in a second), and it will stick around for 8 seconds, so its at least an easier buff to capitalize on even if its less powerful. If you stack Command Angel's buff with Rare Metal Soul AND use Robot Monkey Tristan's Dash Attack, you can true combo the double Battleguard FSmash, which is scary stuff if you can make all three of those things line up. Even otherwise, Tristan's Smashes all benefit a good deal from coming out 5 frames faster, becoming easier to mix up into, and easier to punish opponents with.
For the Robot Monkey, it actually affects the painfully slow option to use Smashes with the Robot Monkey, only requiring Tristan and the Robot Monkey to commit to 20 frames of lag before the Robot Monkey can be left on its own devices to finish calibrating the smash attack, taking another 20 frames before the Smash comes out. This makes using Robot Monkey smashes actually something you'll get frequent windows to do, as opposed to it being more of a luxury option normally, and makes it a great time for Tristan to pressure a foe into a Robot Monkey smash if he has a Robot Monkey on hand. Of course, you only get one smash buffed like this, and after that this buff is used up, but it gives Tristan about as much pressure as he'll ever have while its active to be able to double up on powerful attacks so much more easily.
Down Throw - The Allied Forces
For Tristan's final card for the set, he activates the Allied Forces, which appears behind him before Tristan lightly boots the foe for 4% and a flinch that puts him and the opponent into frame neutral. Not exactly the best place for Tristan to be, given he's pretty miserable, but you don't want to use this throw unless you've fulfilled some pre-requisites. And given the basis of The Allied Forces being for monsters too boost each other up, this throw gets better the more of Tristan's monsters have gotten hits on the opponent this match, as every Smash attack monster that has landed a hit on the opponent will appear to strike the foe once each.
Each of these hits deals 5%, as Lava Battleguard bashes the opponent with his club, Cyber Commander slams his gun into the opponent, and Super Roboyarou will impale the opponent on his double bladed spear. If Swamp Battleguard showed up to get a hit in on the foe, he'll actually join in with a club bash of his own. This means if you've landed each Smash once this stock, this throw deals a total of 19%, and if you landed a boosted Forward Smash that will boost up even further to 24%. This throw's power is reset whenever Tristan loses a stock, but not when the opponent loses a stock, so if you killed a foe with the double Battleguard FSmash you can always count on this throw to deal at least 14% until the opponent next gets in a kill.
The knockback, likewise, scales with the number of hits, but at 9% it opens a unique window where Tristan can outright combo off this move at a decent frame advantage with his aerials. The problem is that Tristan's aerials are kind of terrible and you won't get much of an impressive combo off this, but it at least makes landing this with exactly one monster's aid a little more worthwhile. At 14% this starts to turn into a KO throw, killing at 130% off the top blast zone, and that drops to 100% with all 3 Smashes and a frightening 70% with Swamp Battleguard for extra support. Suffice to say, the more Smashes you land, the better the end result of Block Attack, or any other grabs Tristan manages to pull off throughout his stock, its not like his grab is actually all that bad compared to the rest of his set.
Obviously, the challenge here is landing a bunch of smash attacks with Tristan's garbage set to set them up, but its not like there aren't strategies available. The Robot Monkey can both set up Smashes and has its own copies it can use that count and can be pressured into, Up Throw can cut their lag to make it easier, your Grappling Hook can sometimes set them up as well. And while USmash and DSmash aren't the easiest moves to hit, the former's long duration and coverage and the fact that the latter really isn't all THAT slow make it easy enough to land them if you play strategically. FSmash can even armor through some attacks to land easier, and enhanced FSmash goes through basically all defensive options barring a backwards roll. Use each Smash's properties well, and you'll be equipped with a shockingly devastating throw until you lose your next stock... which can happen in a flash considering your recovery, but every bit helps.
Forward Throw - Gut Punch
Tristan pulls his free hand back and punches the opponent square in the gut, sending them staggering back a short distance at a sizeable frame disadvantage, and deals 8%. For a normal character, this is where I'd say you could combo out of this, but unfortunately, this is Tristan. His two moves that could combo out of this, Jab and FTilt, are too short range to actually pull that off. SH Nair is just barely too slow to true combo out of this, and none of your other aerials will work, nor will Down Tilt or Dash Attack. The fact is, if you're going for this throw, you're not guarunteed any rewards out of it.
That doesn't mean this throw is useless, however, because true combos aren't the only valuable combos in Smash. Just having that frame advantage is at least nice for Tristan, as it gives him an advantage on reading the foe's next reaction. If the foe goes for an attack, it will probably have to be a faster move at the frame disadvantage they're at to knock you out of your approach, so you can easily go for Forward Smash to counter that. If the foe trying to dodge, Down Smash is a long enough lasting multi-hit that should hit them out of it. Dash Attack is good against shields, and you can mix up the foe between Fair and Nair to potentially get either an easy hit in or the actual payoff that Fair provides. This is definitely worse than going for true combos for sure, and it requires you to have a better read on the opponent than they have on you to make it work, but this move does have some decent rewards for Tristan if he reads the opponent well, which is something a lot of his faster options don't offer.
For the record, the Robot Monkey gives you a few middling true combo options out of this using Jabs/Monkey Jab/Nairs, and FTilts. Its not exciting, you'll usually only get about 25% off it even at low percents, but that's a pretty solid reward for landing a throw that Tristan would never be guaranteed without the monkey's help.
Back Throw - Suplex
Grabbing the opponent under their shoulders(or something equivalent on non-humanoid characters), Tristan leans back and suplexes the foe behind him. This is... not a terrible KO throw, it deals 12% and diagonal knockback that kills at the ledge at 140%. Before those high percents this is also your best option to give yourself some real space from your opponent if you haven't landed a few Smash attacks this stock, letting you set up a Robot Monkey or Rare Metal Soul. That said, the knockback is too high to lead into Robot Monkey shenanigans easily, and this move will never combo into anything ever, so its only going to serve this pretty rudimentary pair of purposes. But hey, if you have no better options out of Grab and want to guarantee 12% and room for yourself, this move does fine.
Its also a pretty good move to apply Rare Metal Soul to. The +5% to this attack's damage makes it a KO throw on par with Incineroar BThrow, which isn't half bad when you factor in that you can use this move if you successfully predict a foe trying to shield your Rare Metal Soul boosted attack. Once you get a few Smash Attacks in during any given stock, Down Throw will start to outclass this move both in damage and potential as a Rare Metal Soul move/KO throw, but if you haven't gotten to that point yet this move does fine.
Aerials
Neutral Aerial - Double Kick
Tristan kicks twice in front of himself, first with a smaller, shorter range kick followed by a large ranged bicycle kick that he actually puts his body weight into. The first hit deals 7% and weak forward knockback that will knock the foe out of range of the second hit except at extremely low percents, and the second kick deals 12% and stronger horizontal knockback that KOs at 170%. While this move has the decency to come out on Frame 7, and the weak horizontal knockback is enough to at least be safe on hit as the second hit doesn't have THAT much end lag, you're never getting a combo off this because of the second kick, and the second hit is laggy enough with Tristan putting his full body into it that you'll get punished hard if you don't hit with one of the two hits.
So what's this move good for? Well, if you at least hit with the first hit, which isn't THAT hard, it resets things in the air so Tristan can work on getting back to the ground, where he's... marginally more competent. But if you want to get full mileage out of this move, you basically have to get the foe to air dodge in anticipation of something else. If they do, you'll get to land the second kick, which is a decent kill move at the ledge or off stage, and onstage will definitely give Tristan the space he needs to get back to solid ground. That said, this is a very incompetent move that is the definition of high risk, low reward, and unfortunately for Tristan his aerials do not get better from here.
Forward Aerial - The Tristan Slam
Tristan swings his arm in a spiking downward swing, similar in motion to Mario and Ganondorf's Fairs, though he doesn't do quite as dramatic a windup animation, looking more measured, if that makes sense. Unfortunately, in taking pains to not overextend himself during this attack, Tristan makes it lose some range compared to Ganondorf's, and its actually laggier, coming out on Frame 18 while dealing only 9% and a weak hit on a downward diagonal. This isn't going to gimp many characters, though it will at least sometimes work out against Little Mac, more serving as a combo setup by smacking the foe into or bouncing them off the stage. See, the fact that Tristan takes a more measured approach to this punch is actually good for the end lag of this move, so you can actually land some combos off this!
The most obvious combo string you can get out of this move is Fair -> Jab -> FTilt, which is a rare 3 hit combo in Tristan's set, but you could also combo it into Nair if the ground isn't close enough for you to pull that off. While Dash Attack might not be a true combo out of this move, with the opponent's tiny window to react and its effectiveness against both shields and back rolls, its a solid follow up to this move, and while its by no means a powerful follow up Dair can get you to the ground while either batting the foe to the side or forcing an air dodge, unless they can intercept you SUPER fast with their Uair/Nair. Going for Forward Smash or Down Smash out of this will require some good prediction, but with the smaller window the opponent has to work with, they're more likely to throw out an attack that will bounce off Forward Smash's armor, similar to with FThrow but with a bigger frame advantage.
Of course, that said, this move has 18 frames of start lag and not particularly great range, and your Nair is absolutely not helping you land it, other than maybe scaring foe's out of their air dodges. This is absolutely miserable for air to air combat and another example of Tristan being garbage in the air, but if you're brave enough to go for it, there is a tangible reward here. As an aside, while the knockback doesn't exactly become amazing with Rare Metal Soul, it does make it strong enough to gimp a larger portion of the cast when you land it, so at least it has that going for it.
Back Aerial - Power Swing
Turning around and raising an arm in front of him as he winds up, Tristan delivers a powerful straight punch to the opponent behind him! This is Tristan's strongest non-Smash attack(barring exceptional DThrow circumstances), dealing 17% and horizontal knockback that kills from center stage at 130%, much earlier at or off ledges! It also has, uh, 22 frames of start lag! If you weren't feeling like Tristan was awful enough in the air after his first two aerials, this one will probably convince you. The range is fine for a punch, but it has fairly little coverage up and down, so Tristan has to just deal with whiffing on opponents above or below him, making this move even more hilariously unreliable. There is almost nothing nice to say about this move, aside from the fact that its power is genuinely pretty impressive for an aerial.
I said almost nothing, but this move does have one small thing going for it. For a grand total of 4 frames right as Tristan brings the arm up behind him, this move has super armor, on Frames 14-17 specifically. While this is a pretty laughably small amount of super armor that's certainly difficult to use, its not impossible, and a well timed Bair can power through an opponent's aerial and smack them in the face for a pretty strong hit. If you have Rare Metal Soul active and are at the ledge, this'll kill at something like 60%-70% too, so the rewards are actually proportionately high for pulling this off. That said, its pretty optimistic to make use of 4 frames of super armor that start 14 frames into a move all the time, but it at least continues the trend of Tristan's aerials having... a niche. Just not necessarily a good one.
Down Aerial - Third Rate Stall Then Fall
With a bit of trepedation, Tristan stalls in the air before falling toward the ground with a downward kick, moving on a slight forward angle and descending at 1.5x his fastfall speed! On contact with Tristan's boot, it knocks opponents out of the way for 8% and modest diagonally upward knockback that will KO at about 275%. This move has the misfortune of coming out on Frame 15, on top of being a stall then fall, so its absolute garbage as an actual attack because its so laughably easy to see coming for basically no payoff. Tristan's landing lag isn't terrible, though its not unpunishable if an opponent is right on the ground waiting for him.
So what purpose does this move serve? Well, it means unlike Little Mac, Tristan at least has a tool to escape the air if he ever gets the chance to use it. Its objectively terrible at everything else, but being a faster fast fall that deals damage to get yourself back to the ground is a way you can at least try to compensate for how terrible your aerials are, rather than going for risky Fair/Bair plays and hoping they work out until they inevitably don't. That said, when your attempt to return to the ground with this inevitably gets interrupted by a foe with an aerial that comes out like 9 frames faster that isn't even their fastest aerial, you'll get a swift and brutal reminder Tristan is such a third rate moveset that even this "get out of jail free" card is more like "get out of jail for 300 dollars".
But hey, if the Robot Monkey's around, you can use that to distract the foe before you go for Dair, which gives the monkey some extra purpose in providing Tristan with a little more safety if he's struggling with the opponent badgering him in the air. Not a ton of it, mind you, but its anything.
Up Aerial - Fourth Rate Headbutt
Tristan leans his head back and slams it forward, creating an arc about twice as big as his head, which is to say, laughably tiny. This comes out on Frame 7 and deals 8% and modest upwards knockback that might kill in the late-200%'s, and like the Jab features a sweetspot that deals 12% and KOs at 180% at the tip of his hair. The hitbox is already tiny, and the sweetspot is so small you will basically never hit with it, and the end lag is high enough that its genuinely quite punishable on a whiff. Like Tristan's other aerials, this move is objectively awful, but at least it has the decency to give Tristan a way to get foes above him off him if he can get close enough to land it, like how Nair can do that for opponents at the same height as him.
As for what this move is good for aside from that, well it combos out of Up Tilt at specific percentages, a window smaller than what you'd like due to the tiny hitbox but it is a nice way to tack on damage in that case. It can similarly combo out of Down Throw with the aid of 1 monster from your Smash Attacks. While its range solidifies Tristan even further as a fourth rate character, it can't be said you'll never use it as it follows up on some of Tristan's more genuinely solid moves from time to time.
Final Smash - Joey Wheeler
Upon acquiring the power of the Smash Ball, Tristan uppercuts in front of him in an area massively enhanced in range by the Smash Ball's power and Tristan sliding forward, covering nearly a solid Battlefield Platform of range with vertical reach covering the entirety of it. Upon hitting the foe, they are sent flying into a cinematic, where Tristan shouts "GO GET EM, JOEY!" Joey Wheeler is then seen doing the exact face and pose as the above image, before summoning a trio of monsters on his duel disk to attack all the opponents caught in this attack!
The first monster to attack the foe is Flame Swordsman, who performs 3 slashes each dealing 4% to the opponent, before Jinzo appears next and blasts all the opponents with a psychic shockwave, dealing each of them 8% and leaving them in the same stunned animation they would have from a shield break. Finally, Red Eyes Black Dragon rears up and unleashes Inferno Fire Blast on the opponents, shooting a huge fireball at the opponents that explodes for 24% and knockback that KOs at 80%, or more accurately 60% since that KO percent does not factor in the prior hits of this move. Joey and Tristan high five as the opponents are sent flying, and then Joey disappears. But at the very least, Tristan finally was able to make use of his friends, all of whom are vastly more useful than him.
When Galeem consumed the Smash Universe, those who survived did so in great, underground vaults. When they opened, their inhabitants set out across ruins of the old forums to build new movesets, establish new communities, forming tribes.
As the decade passed, what had been Smashboards.com united beneath the flag of the New Make Your Move Republic, dedicated to old-world values of democracy and the rule of law. As MYM grew, so did its needs. Scouts spread east, seeking territory and clout, in the dry and merciless expanse of the Internet. They returned with tales of a franchise untouched by the speculation that had scorched the rest of the world, and a great game called Fallout: New Vegas (2010).
The MYM mobilized its army and sent it east to occupy the Smash community, and restore it to working condition. But across the Discords, another society had arisen under a different flag. A vast army of slaves, forged from the conquest of 86 newcomers: Warlord's Legion.
Four years have passed since MYM held the Dam - just barely - against the Legion's onslaught. The Legion did not retreat. Across the river, it gathers strength. Campfires burned, terraforming DAirs beat.
Through it all, the MYM Discord has stayed open for business under the control of its mysterious overseer, Mr. Arrow, and his army of rehabilitated Tribals and Discord bots.
You are a courier, hired by Masahiro Sakurai, to deliver a Smash acceptance letter to MYM24. What seemed like a simple delivery job has taken a turn…for the worse.
extending Make Your Move 24's submission period to the end of October 31st!
There was a good internal debate on if we should end as planned on the 25th, go more for a short term September extension or do a longer extension. We decided to do a single long extension to October 31st for a few reasons: A September extension wouldn't allow us to hit Halloween for next MYM which is a major holiday, almost all members had long term projects they put on hold for the Jams Con / FA Day that would be good to complete and MYMers being on a roll making sets (just about 20 sets within the last month!) that we wanted to be able to continue seeing. In the end, we decided that a mega extension to the most hallowed of MYM holidays, Halloween, to fit in with all of that.
Note that since we decided to give a mega extension there will be no more submission period extensions, unlike normally where we incrementally give out small ones. Prepare to have all of your sets ready by that date. We're moving forward with it even if we don't get a single set in that timeframe!
Additionally,
the submission period of the August JamCon has ended! Voting for it begins now and will continue until September 1st
A good successful round, it would seem. Our entries are:
- Honchkrow by UserShadow7989, a bird of misfortune with a Super Luck ability!
- Jinako Carigiri by GolisoPower, an adorable NEET connected to a God of Fortune!
- Cookie Scouts by bubbyboytoo, whose Lucky members will hopefully keep you from being engulfed by the Grandmatriarchs apocalypse!
- Tumble by Slavic, assuring that you WILL lose friendships over that classic Mario Party luck! Or have Tristan Taylor get posted, one of the two.
- Benny by Kholdstare, because what could involve luck more than Vegas?
Please get your votes in by September 1st! Remember, to vote, post a comment in the thread like you would comment a regular moveset (something substantial, nothing one-line) and clearly mark that you're voting for it as the winner of the JamCon.
Comment block for everything posted above. Will add in comments for Morgan later (and Lancelot when she's ultimately done), and put in my Jamcom nomination.
Jinako’s melee is decent for what it’s talking about, bringing up other moves and even being aware of Down Special’s buff. But a good hook could do wonders for her set. I do like the elephant statue being a falling hitbox via Shield Special and having limited stamina, just that the way it’s implemented means it doesn’t necessarily work with Jinako’s melee game, because the statue can only use Specials. That’s not inherently a bad design choice - you would be easily justified in giving the statue REALLY powerful Specials given your options are more limited from it, and that the statue only has 30HP. Oh, and the statue’s recovery being worse than Jinako’s. For all these reasons, I would be fine with some of the statue’s Specials being more jacked up - Up Special could have super armour as you fall, heck her Neutral Special could have LESS start-up as the statue than her human counterpart. And while statue Down Special does have armor on start-up, what if the statue’s buff was better or just lasted for longer? There are various possibilities here.
You did say you didn’t feel right with Jinako being able to throw her one-ton statue around, which is fine. Maybe it could stay out as a construct that can block enemy projectiles so you can lazily camp at them with Jinako’s Side Special and F-Smash, at the risk of the statue being exposed and more easily destroyed? Perhaps Jinako could interact with the statue with some of her moves, making them more fun? For example, if you hold B while using your Neutral Special and the statue was in range (maybe farther away) of the attack, it’ll get pulled in towards Jinako, and if it reaches her while the attack is active she’ll enter the statue and instantly transition to the stronger statue version of the attack! And maybe she could carry the statue around from the winds of her gust Up Special, where afterwards the statue plummets and deals high damage to anyone it falls through. Maybe if you press B again when the recovery ends, Jinako can enter the statue and instantly transition into the statue’s Up Special plummet! That could work well given the angle of Jinako’s recovery. Finally, as for ideas on get-up attacks to threaten with via Jinako’s D-throw, maybe you can press B to have Jinako curl up with some starting lag, then do a quick and strong, super armoured slide along the ground? It’s slow enough that you can’t use it well when an opponent is tech chasing you, but works from your D-throw. Jinako could even have the option to put herself in prone from her Dash Attack (first hit) or D-tilt as a mix-up if foes stay away.
Those are just ideas, but like Red you did make this set very quickly. For what little you had to work with for the melee, I’m curious what you could do with a stronger, fun idea that you could play off with your entire moveset. Doesn’t have to be a complex set of options like Lucrezia, could even be a simple construct that stays around, and can be thrown around or applies bonuses to the character just by being near it.
Love getting our first FAte set. It seems you and Froy were enjoying LB6 in private, given you’ve both adapted your writing styles to match your Fairy Knight’s character. Tristan reminds me of both Master Xehanort and Sekuna/Primordial Darkness. For Xehanort, Tristan does her own take on Gareth’s gameplay relevant Final Smash to a satisfying extreme, going so far as to have a Final Smash you can overcharge to insta-kill the foe and even take off two stocks! Even the Final Smash pocketing idea was surprisingly out-there and a nice touch - imagine if regular fighters could do that with their Final Smashes. There’s certainly room for expanding upon these kinds of relevant Final Smashes: maybe one day we’ll see one that summons a powerful minion or construct, like Werner’s cat, and that frees up the fighter’s Specials to control this construct or what not. There ARE plenty of Servants who summon beasts or ships/machines in their Noble Phantasms!
With how melee-focused this set gets later, it could be worth bringing up moves that can combo into your Noble Phantasm, because that feels absolutely possible. The most obvious ones are F-Smash with being a slow-moving projectile, and even F-tilt’s middle hitbox because it deals low-angled knockback: I could see the latter starting tech situations at late percents, and if the foe misses their tech you could kill confirm into your Final Smash! That would make that F-tilt hitbox a lot more terrifying, especially when you mention that you can true combo into it from your Neutral Special.
Speaking of Neutral Special, there’s Doomfist vibes going on with the 1.5 seconds of invincibility on hit, which gets good mileage out of the melee and basically superpowers Tristan’s Standards and Aerials with the caveat of needing to fish for this laggy move. Now, this is just a rough thought, but given how prominently the invincibility is mentioned, what if pressing shield when you hit with Neutral Special let Tristan store the invincibility (and MAYBE buffs to her Standards/Aerials) she got? She would need to hit with another (non-grab/throw?) move to regain the invincibility (not against shields, of course), and it would go away if she doesn’t hit with a move for X seconds. It probably wouldn’t be your jam, but it could mesh well with some of Tristan’s moves that benefit from keep-away, like her status effects such as D-throw’s bleeding.
The grab game might have been my favourite part of the set, because those status effects? They were actually quite creative. U-throw was my favourite, being either a combo extender or kill extender, but you have to hit the foe within a certain interval during the status effect, preventing you from getting or looping the benefits too easily. B-throw was also a neat take on “this throw applies a breakable construct on the foe that debilitates them”, except said construct regenerates over time so they have to potentially throw empty attacks against it or take damage. Finally, I enjoyed the aspect of the melee approach being “Jab and N-air are easy to hit, but not as rewarding” vs “D-air is harder to hit with, but is more rewarding”.
While Master Xehanort and Primordial Darkness had stronger concepts or fun with the big-bodied heavyweights, Tristan is a very well-executed status effect character, an archetype that can be a little hard to make interesting compared to more enticing MYM concepts in my opinion. My thoughts on a Baobhan Sith set were just to make her a minion alongside Beryl Gut, her Fetch being a voodoo doll style move where if you hit the doll within 1.5 seconds of creating it, its full damage and knockback is dealt to the foe, otherwise they just take damage and no stun. But the soul-rotting aspect would be interpreted as Tristan taking damage when she creates the doll, despite not doing so when she uses the NP in-game. It’s an idea that Hades could do with soul-stealing or whatnot, though. Or Dark Falz 0.3/Olga Flow, lol.
While you weren’t expecting much from this set, I’m absolutely glad you made it! Tristan was a very entertaining read, being an intentionally bad character, his Smashes being the real highlight of his set in how essential they are for him and their comedy (Commander and Roboyarou being bad, Battleguards using the power of friendship). Reading this set right after the other Tristan was especially hilarious, that being the comparison to their grounded Up Special and Side Specials respectively: both come out on frame 21, but Taylor’s doesn’t have much of a reward while Fairy Knight’s does!
This set does have some interesting ideas. Moves that only combo from REALLY low percents like U-tilt to U-air would be fun to play around with on a character who could use them to more deadly effect, like a fighter who can temporarily drop the foe’s percent back down to 0% (like a healer), or someone with some ridiculous mechanic that doubles the damage of their attacks if they use them to combo from their own attacks. I also enjoyed your interpretation of The Allied Forces by giving the throw an extra hit for every Smash you’ve landed (even with Swamp Battleguard if you’ve used the buffed version!): reminds me a bit of KholdStare’s Rarity set from MYM10 where you want to land every attack in your set on an opponent, and could actually be a sick centerpiece on a combo-centric character who can easily combo into their own moves but gets barely anyway reward for doing so. Even F-throw is a surprisingly legitimate move for its melee.
This is an interesting Jamcom set with a different approach to Kurt Zisa, trading some basic details like damage, KO percents and lag/frame data for Yes Man having 3 attacks variations for Benny’s moves, and a very concise writing style in general. Fast and loose, indeed. Now I know why you were having a hard time thinking up moves. I find it especially funny how Benny is literally incapable of killing people with head shots as a reference to the Courier (except during the Final Smash, lol), and moves like D-air that bring up how Benny met Yes Man and how Yes Man is ironically getting his revenge on the pulse grenade. I also love the one-liners that Yes Man offers during Benny’s throws, we don’t get enough of those in MYM sets, and they work refreshingly well in this kind of quickie.
Given the popularity of “tag team” sets like Hina, Rufus and Ernest Amano last contest, I’m curious how good of a set Benny could be if you elaborated on some of the basic details (particularly the projectiles, like Yes Man’s F-tilt rocket), some mindgame potential Benny has between his attack variations and the combo potential Benny could have relative to Yes Man’s positioning. Seriously, Yes Man has a lot going for him, having projectiles even in Benny’s tilts! And the way Yes Man is implemented is handled conceptually well, having most of the power in Benny’s set, being his recovery and needing to plan out which attack he uses beforehand. But I understand you may want to work on bigger stuff, and editing the set too much could go against the spirit of the Jamcom being intended to throw out quicker sets. I do like the set as-is, though, and enjoyed hearing about Yes Man performing his aerials lower or higher than Benny due to lagging behind when he follows him in midair. I also like his D-air, either punching away the pulse grenade or throwing it as an item depending on what you programmed Yes Man to do.
And then there’s Down Special, which is interesting for its luck-altering properties and really fits with the Jamcom’s theme! I like every part of it, except that foes have to get countered by Benny to make him drop his chip. I’d say Benny should drop his chip if the foe hits him during his counter’s lag or grabs him. Also, what if the power-up Yes Man receives from having the chip inserted into him varied based on how much luck Benny had from it? So there’s another incentive to spamming counter before you give Yes Man the chip.
This is a pretty wild, MYM’ian Bubby set, and it was made within the timeframe of the Jamcom! Love having a sequel to the Grandmatriachs, and the Cookie Corruption is an interesting mechanic that’s creepy flavour-wise - not seen this kind of meter-based mechanic that decreases your weight! This moveset gets relatively daring with its RNG, my absolute favourite effect being the cool mega boost you can get for your Jab, followed by doubling the foe’s lag in exchange for making their attacks super powerful. It’s nice that you can gain some degree of control over the RNG aspects by using the Chancemaker (yet another set that can mess with Smash character’s RNG, coming off reading Benny). It gets particularly fun with the big boy move that is Down Special: all of the constructs were fun, and I absolutely appreciate you making it so projectiles can pass the construct, because that’s something I think some construct-based movesets aren’t always conscious of. The antimatter condenser is basically a modern, heavily toned-down Strangelove bomb, pretty smartly-implemented by giving it the potential to blow up on its own over time, and the fractal engine which can duplicate your projectiles.
I also enjoyed this set’s melee, which achieves a lot for how concise it is, and I see you taking inspiration from Law’s quick draw mechanic with F-tilt, U-tilt and N-air. D-tilt was also fun in how it works with making the foe trip. If anything, I do feel that the melee doesn’t play off its constructs (and perhaps mechanic) as well as it could: D-air is the only non-Side Special projectile you can duplicate, though to be fair said duplication effect is VERY powerful, and I could see the Cookie Scout benefitting from a slow but strong Smash that could work very well from the alchemy machine if foes are trapped by the projectiles, even a tech chase from the tripping. It could even have some super armour on hit, so you can detonate your Strangelove bomb without being launched yourself! But I imagine it was your intention to give the Scout no safe attacks or super armour to destroy the bomb, just being a wild card that makes foes scared of attacking near it - and that’s just fine. The cookie storm also seems a bit vague description-wise and what it can do for the Cookie Scouts, like whether it can leave the foe open to a Smash or how much damage it can do in total.
Regardless, I did enjoy this set! It’s especially good coming from you as a quicke, and isn’t far off from being my favourite set of yours when it has even more MYM’ian appeal than Cychlom did. It’s also enjoyable to see Runes from you per usual, especially to get a feel from you how balanced you make the effects on each tier since you made the extra. I’m sure FA and the Grandmatriachs will be proud of this offering.
Continuing your trend of detailed character analyses and fantastic character choices is… Spike from Cowboy Bebop! Old MYM was too busy posting sets for Death Note and Fullmetal Alchemist characters to touch other animes. I absolutely love the links to various youtube clips of Spike’s feats - they’re really handy to have and it shows a ton of dedication to the character that you were willing to search for them.
It’s funny that we’ve had 2 recent sets for characters with a Neutral Special that fires bullets that last for 1 frame, and can fire off a certain number of bullets before they have to reload. Neutral Special is a fine move, but it’d be neat to get a sentence or two for its application in neutral or what kind of reward you get from it. Could you use the hitstun to open up opponents and rush in for a quick hit up-close? Can you unload all your bullets on them, at the cost of having to reload? I also wonder how far the bullets travel, not just for this move but all of Spike’s bullet moves in general.
Down Special is a hilariously short move, not that that’s a bad thing! Spike having a counter is very fitting given your build-up of his character with his canon abilities section, and his “I’m calm,” quote. But the counter should be its own unique reward instead of a free grab, which I would be fine with IF grabs were a super important part of his moveset (and what happens if he counters in the air, where you generally can’t grab enemies?). How about Spike redirects the enemy to go flying in the opposite direction they attacked him from? So if they attacked Spike from the front, they’d go flying behind him, in a good position to Neutral Special, Side Special or maybe Dash Attack, while if they attacked him from above they’ll take downwards knockback! And anyone who attacks him from below? They’re getting knocked above him for a juggle. Perhaps the counter could deal more knockback if Spike was grounded where he’s most comfortable, as he has a more solid footing to put more strength into his counter, acting as a potential KO. Whereas using it in the air results in less knockback but better combo potential. Maybe the grounded version deals more knockback the stronger the countered attack was, while the aerial version deals more hitstun. It’d be a pretty fun move and would give Spike something extra to work off.
I’m curious about Side Special. It doesn’t sound like the attachment portion has a hitbox, but in that case the intangibility was a nice touch as they prevent Spike from being casually punished when he’s successful. Is his running animation the same as his dash? Could he use this move from a dash for mindgames? The fact that Side Special has no hitbox actually synergizes well with his Down Special, because if foes attack Spike thinking he’s going to attach something onto them he can just counter them!
Instead of the attached item being RNG-based, how about you can pick between one of the 3 by angling the input? So you get one item if you angled the control stick forwards, one if you angled it upwards and one if you angled it downwards, similar to how you can angle certain Forward Tilts and Forward Smashes. This portion of the set has a lot of potential to mesh with Spike’s game - the explosive could put foes on the defensive to shield or dodge its blast, for instance, but Spike seems like more of a reaction-based character with quick hits rather than a powerhouse. What if the bomb could be transferred to Spike via touch (or by grabbing Spike), similar to Mega Man’s Side Special, and it gave foes an incentive to go after him? The bomb is still fine as-is though: you could even talk about how it could act as a kill extender for Spike if say, he manages to hit or combo the foe before it blows. The other two items overlap in effect with being damage-over-time, not quite as interesting, but then the move had an RNG approach to it. Maybe one of the effects flinches the foe periodically if they’re not attacking, shielding or dodging?
While I’m not sure if it was intentional design-wise, I actually like Spike’s U-tilt, U-Smash and U-air all being gun-based moves that utilize his ammo mechanic (as well as his F-air, which I imagine would have a good deal of horizontal range given its start-up). It means that Spike has to be conservative with his Neutral Special, otherwise he’ll have no way to protect himself from attacks from above! And I’m not entirely sure how effective his Up Special would be for protection. Funny enough, Spike’s F-tilt and his F-Smash seem like they’d be great against short-hopped approaches given their attack animations, so he’s not entirely screwed if he runs out of ammo and foes don’t give him the space to reload. This is particularly where his Down Special counter works well with this set! Having no ammo would also compromise Spike’s ability to combo from his F-tilt effectively, as his U-air and F-air seem like they’d be his best KO options from it onstage. Also, given U-tilt uses ammo and doesn’t kill that early or have great coverage, I think you could definitely afford to give it quicker start-up, like on frames 5-6 instead of 13, but that depends on how far the bullet reaches. With good reach, I could see the move comboing into itself well and being a nice set-up for Spike’s killer U-air - if he still has the ammo for it!
I’d love it if you were able to expand upon, say, Spike’s Specials for a start, because with the dedication you put into your intro and extras, it would be great for Spike to be the best set he can be and live up to his full potential - such a great character deserves it. If you want more help or clarification, feel free to respond on Discord. Also, this set’s extras are really good: it’s great to have links to those soundtracks, a home stage, spirits, taunts/victory poses, links to his alt costume references and Final Smash with a shout-out to Spike’s crewmates. Good job on getting out your second set!
Super Luck is a neat mechanic that, funny enough, reminds me of our Raikou’s ability to extend the area their sweetspot covers, but triggered in a similar way to W’s insult-to-injury mechanic by hitting a foe already in hitstun. I especially enjoyed how the Murkrow were handled in how they “desert” Honchkrow if they fail to hit the opponent; a great way to balance out their minion factor while also being a very in-character nod to an aspect of Honchkrow’s character/dex entry. I particularly liked how Side Special can play off Super Luck by triggering its sweetspot early into the rush to start combos at earlier percents. The berry gathering move was fun - berries and items do have neat potential with Pokesets - not only for the writing of Murkow implied to have stolen the berry from a Trainer, but tying in well with Honchkrow’s air game and ground weakness by having the Murkow needing to get the berry from the ground. Playing Little Mac must be quite the influence if you’ve gone and done a take on an aerial version of him, huh?
Honchkrow’s moves were serviceable beyond the Aerials, and probably limited by your vision for him having an intentionally poor ground game. The Smashes being strong help to demonstrate Honchkrow’s power with its high base ATK, which is a fine approach at the very least. I wonder if moves like Jab could have a sweetspot to exploit with Super Luck, even if it was something as simple are more damage output, but then they’re probably not the type of moves Honchkrow would want to fish for or hit out of a Murkrow attack on purpose. What if Honchkrow had a way to stun opponents for Super Luck outside of its Murkrow, like a throw that creates a low profile tornado trap that deals hitstun, maybe has a weak suction effect on grounded opponents, forcing them to approach by the air where Honchkrow excels! Other than that, I”m not sure what to offer comment-wise, but for what it’s worth I do think Honchkrow is better than Hopper was pre-edits!
JAMCOM 2 NOMINATION
I loved reading this set! It was pretty surprising coming from you. Tumble might be one of the most entertaining sets I’ve read in a long time, which is saying something when a lot of good writing styles have been put on display in MYM. It’s clear that you had a ton of fun writing Tumble, not taking the movesetting/technical aspects too seriously, and the fact that the Jamcom’s theme promoted RNG probably helped with that. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific part of the writing that was great, because it was a blast from start to finish, but the grab game with Game Guy (nice pun with Grab Game Guy, by the way!) and U-throw were particularly funny. Of all the Jamcom sets, Tumble definitely took the RNG aspects the farthest, which I’m perfectly fine with because honestly. I even found some of the RNG applications interesting: specifically B-air, a powerful move that can come out between frame 5-25 but being an aerial makes it very unreliable to hit with. And F-throw randomly positioning the foe to be a better combo or KO throw, and U-throw having a random launch angle like that one Ganondorf mod video where all of his launch angles are random. D-throw was also a funky throw.
It’s refreshing to get a friendly take on this cereal mascot’s character, which I’m sure FA appreciates in contrast to his MYM11 set. Those edgy cereal mascots from MYM11 are still a fun meme read though, reading this set made me bring them up.
I’m a BIG fan of the Neutral Special delaying your projectile for 2 seconds instead of firing it right away, giving you a bigger reward you can punish from in exchange for losing the projectile if the foe attacks you. It was surprising to see such a creative concept on this character, honestly felt like something you’d put on a Witchverse character. I almost want to steal it myself, because it would be amazing on a super slow Ganondorf-esque heavyweight - give them a reason to attack you, maybe catch them out with super armour on your attack or even a typical Down Special counter.
Combined with the Side Special platforms and the Up Special teleporting, and FYM has a pretty solid base to work off of. F-Smash was an interesting way to take advantage of FYM’s artificial movement on a bandage platform (it states that the bats cover a 5 unit tall space, which I’m assuming was meant to be 0.5 units or something among those lines), and the bats sticking to the underside of platforms was unexpected. F-air had a fun cartoony animation, and I enjoyed D-air for being a great use of his body type - I do wonder if you could do more with the attack, it has the potential to have more hitboxes given its height, and I wouldn’t be entirely against FYM having the ability to kick through his bandage platforms if say, the player held the control stick downwards. This could even lead to some fun, like bouncing the foe up onto the platform in prone! Also, it’s funny how Yummy Mummy, Roxanne and Honchkrow all have cargo throws, but in FYM’s case the ability to teleport was a neat, unique twist to this!
I’d agree with FA that some of FYM’s concepts have untapped potential execution-wise - the platform got plenty of spotlight in the melee, but with FYM’s body type you could make him do fun things like a throw out a bandage diagonally downwards to pop foes up, using the platform to extend his combo game or have fun with auto-cancelling aerials to extend your combos. Also, I’m sure FYM would enjoy a move with super armour or invincibility as a counter against opponents who try to attack him before his Magic fruit comes out, backing away if they’re too fearful, but it’s not a huge deal to not have here. Maybe his Down Special could be a counter? Heck, FYM’s powerset would even justify him having a tether (just like the original set!), but it probably wouldn’t be fitting for his set given he’s something of a ranged character.
Survival of the Fittest is certainly a way to start the set and characterise Gawain - might want to say that other fighters only get stacks when they’re trading with Gawain and not other fighters, as it would be a bit weird for her own mechanic to kick in if say, Gareth and Hubert are on the other side of Temple beating away at each other in a FFA settings.
I was not expecting Gawain to have a move-stealing attack! While Gawain doesn’t have minions to steal attacks from, for what it’s worth move-stealing is a decent fit for a heavyweight, and I appreciate you bringing up potent moves you can steal in certain input sections. Up Special and N-air do say that Gawain can steal recoveries despite her Side Special explicitly saying she can’t steal Specials. I prefer it that she can’t steal Specials, because although being able to take something like Lucina’s recovery can help with the exploitability of Gawain’s own Up Special and gives her extra air time, she’s already solid enough as-is, and Specials ARE generally potent moves.
I appreciate you setting various restrictions with the tether to prevent cheese, especially the 2.5 platform limit so foes don’t go flying off the screen with Gawain if they launch her super far, or are left to recover as she respawns. I do think the tether is a little oppressive in some areas, like how Gawain can just pull the foe with her as she dashes and potentially off the stage (but it’s good that her Up Special and U-air aren’t super potent from this), or her chain yank which is not hard to land in exchange for losing the tether. I almost wonder if there’s potential in Gawain being able to pull the foe back with her dash: she could suddenly go into reverse F-tilt with its good reach, but not KO as early due to having your back closer to the ledge, pull the foe into a delayed Down Special or even your various burning patches, even though said patches aren’t very dangerous for the foe to be standing on, maybe even pull the foe around during their get-up. Speaking of F-tilt - this is a VERY cool move! It fits in very well with Gawain’s aggressive game, conditioning the foe to attack her instead of shielding given her vulnerability and movement on the start-up. It’s a great melee attack and actually my favourite move in the set.
While I’ve heard that FA and Kupa were big on Gawain, I wasn’t as sold on her tether and move-stealing’s placements as her main concepts, or at least found Gareth and even Hubert more interesting. I almost wonder if the move-stealing held back the potential of her grab game, which did (interestingly) hinge on DI mix-ups of stealing an enemy’s throw half the time, but was otherwise simple and serviceable. Nonetheless, I DID enjoy Gawain as a solid set with no glaring balance issues, enough that Gawain could secure a RV if the contest doesn’t get too stacked. It’s great to see the Fairy Knights of LB6 getting sets so ridiculously soon, hope you finish Lancelot so MYM24 has the entire trio and their queen!
Vyoom! Wolf's Wolfen screams across the empty void. Samus is hot in pursuit, struggling to keep her ship up to speed. Following close behind Samus is Fox, occasionally weaving past her to take pot shots at Wolf. Close behind Fox is Kirby on the Warp Star, just curious at what's going on. Fox grits his teeth; dang, he might lose Wolf...
Krakakrakakrakakrakakraka! A flurry of bullets speeds past Fox's Arwing and Samus's Gunship; one barely misses Kirby and he struggles to stay on the Warp Star. A fast ship speeds by Fox and Samus -- it's hard to see what it is at first, but as two missiles fly past the Gunship and Arwing and smash into the Wolfen's left wing, Fox gets a good look. It's a red racer with two long wings, with missile launchers and heavy machine guns alongside a heavy plasma blaster on the bottom. His eyes widen. Is that--
"Need some help?" Fox looks down at his comms. A human! With fluffy hair and a lanky build, no less. "I'll help you out for 60%."
Fox grits his teeth and nods. The Swordfish II pummels the Wolfen again before it goes spiraling downwards before being intercepted by the Swordfish; unceremoniously, the ship drags it to Fox, and the pilot opens his cockpit. He's in a teal and red spacesuit, and when Fox opens his cockpit, Wolf is nonchalantly thrown into the Arwing with him with paws tied behind his back. The Swordfish speeds off, and Fox never sees it -- nor its pilot -- ever again...
At least, that's how the story goes when Fox talks about
SPIKE SPIEGEL
(Unmarked spoilers ahead. You've been warned! No, seriously. take care reading this if you haven't watched Cowboy Bebop -- it's a phenomenal show and probably my all-time favorite.)
...So imagine how awkward he must've felt when Spike showed up to Smash!
(If you ask Samus, it was the other way around. Fox was struggling to keep up with Wolf.)
bubbyboytoo
I would like to begin by saying... "Delicious!" It is about time that confection casting characters completed the crew. Since I like to
start with dessert, I shall highlight the special moves first, which with the exception of Dough Rope, were all uniformly appealing. 'Cooking; baking' pseudo-random events by the deliberate application of a special move option such that they favor the Cookie Scout player is an excellent idea, and I certainly think that the low H.P. combined with the lack of projectile obstruction served to balance the unique and influential effects of the Chance Maker, a thing especially called for at high Corruption levels. The Fractal Engine is an interesting touch that compliments Chip's projectile game by offering mouth-watering possibilities for
Cookie Toss. I cannot help but think of a white chocolate, macadamia nut cookie flying through the engine,
which causes the duplicates to travel on different paths, each raining misery on the sad opponent! The Anti-matter Condenser has all the charm of a melting down nuclear reactor... but in a good way! It adds a sense of urgency when both players send out attacks frequently nearby, which might be a promotion for one backing away of their own accord. The Alchemy lab is clearly another reason to mind their manners. Together, these builds say virtually the same thing-- 'Time for paranoia!' Golden Cookie stands out to me, because it encourages the opponent to 'come out of hiding' if they were exasperatingly so doing, even without the player necessarily using the move which is a tremendous merit to the passive portion of any mind game. However, the Cookie Storm effect seemed particularly difficult to imagine. If I could only make one change to the wording of any part of the document, it would be with the purpose of adding more clarity to what Cookie Storm's arrangement in space is, though I would happily overlook that. Returning, the edible, variable projectiles in Cookie Toss bolsters these above ideas. Finally, Dough Rope is a versatile tool that has the same 'watch yourself!' factor with those mentioned spikes, and outside of my personal inability to be as enthused about it as the other special moves (trying to imagine a rope grapple made of cookie dough that is easily distinguishable as such is challenging), it appears to belong with the rest of them, from a consistency stand-point.
The Corruption mechanic is an interesting flavor on the damage-powered meter type, and I am glad you gave the Cookie Scouts a substantial incentive to control its stages throughout the match, lest they should become overly strong at no cost, with so many facets of their moveset empowered by a full meter. It presents a unique issue for the scouts in that a consistently unfortunate game causes them to lose the advantage exponentially fast while still allowing them to have considerable say over the matter, so I think the mechanic is well-balanced, given the playstyle it contributes to.
Speaking of playstyle, I think you did an an excellent job of consistently adding the crucial elements that add to the Cookie Scouts' general strategy, which seemingly focuses on keeping the opponent's mind preoccupied, regardless of where they are or what they are doing. This is chiefly exhibited by Golden Cookie and Borrowed Buildings-- each with both passively, and actively influential mind games. Down aerial attack garners both positive and negative attention for being particularly strong as an edge tool. I think it is an innovative aerial attack with a distinctive functionality, giving it an 'out-of-the-box' quality. On the other hand, while it does not seem too strong at a glance, its implications could add up, depending on details that were not provided in the document. A "hefty start-up" was mentioned, but depending on what this and the landing properties are, it can be negated by the brief end lag, and down aerial attack could be repeated over several short hops, spammed to create a puddle of nearly unavoidable dough, should the opponent be far enough from the ledge to allow sufficient time for this, forcing them to climb the edge after grabbing it to be met with cookie dough, or jump with equal stress about where to land, giving the scouts an easy time of sending them back off-stage. This is supported by the fact that there is no theoretical upper limit to the presence of dough balls, and five seconds of keep time may be enough to ensure that a mess can be made near the ledge, but again, this depends on other information. Even if only three could be out, careful spacing of these could make a recovery become a death sentence. Perhaps it is not that bad, but it feels like it would give the opponent too much to worry about. Considering the combined effects of having those out together with a structure from Borrowed Buildings, and assistance from Corruption and/or Golden Cookie effects, while it may not be very likely that all of these will be a problem at once, it seems like it could be a mite overwhelming with proper set up. After all, with a potent option like this, I would certainly want to prepare for it! Therefore, I would personally reduce the expiration date on the cookie dough by perhaps one second, at the least.
Overall, I think it is a great moveset, especially considering that you seemed to be pressed for time. Since I have not yet designed a personalized ranking system, I shall simply say that you did a good job with consistency:
It was a sweet treat! Whereas, hearing the name alone, I had no interest in the Cookie Scouts before, this set may just have me searching to learn more about the game.
Since I am not really involved with Pokémon, it is a strong statement for me to say that you did a good job of establishing a thematic and canonical basis from which I can understand the moveset choices made, and of characterizing both the 'mob boss,' and the 'avian threat' hemispheres of Honchkrow. The brief, thematically explanatory remarks that were implanted in many of the move descriptions helped to consolidate the conceptual effects that they were meant to achieve. What I appreciate about the Super Luck mechanic is that it fits with the idea that Honchkrow, not necessarily being personally involved with the harm that befalls its opponent, can take advantage of the mayhem caused by underlings by swooping in at just the right time with its aerial adroitness to maximize its own effect, yet it is not a gaudy thing to devise. On the other hand, the 'CROWnies' (If I may independently pun) mechanics are not quite so modest, but who would want them to be with how appropriate they are? You were careful to ensure that gathered Murkrow had no hurtboxes, lest Honchkrow benefit additionally from easily acquired, weaponizable 'meat shields' that give it an extra edge against projectiles and lagging attacks, which could lend itself to complaints from Honchkrows staunch foes!
Down special was a particularly creative special move-- so true, in fact, that I was disappointed it was not given a name! It befits the criminal underworld alluded to by the whole theme of Honchkrow, and though it is very specific in nature, as you said, the tactical functionality of it is very appropriate and useful.
Murkrow's up special seems, for a kind, a necessary evil by a fighting game character that makes pronounced use of summons, and I like the slight Sonic flavor that Murkrow takes as it homes in on its opponent, leaves a reactionable window before swooping, and harasses its opponent from a position that can become awkward, but with the added benefit that... somebody else did it, as Honchkrow is free to move in if the opponent, annoyed with the Murkrow, abandons their defense to eliminate it. However, what seemed to me to be lacking was the specification for whether or not the move could be repeated in succession to
harass the opponent with multiple Murkrow for an extended annoyance. This may not always be safe, or even practical, but
I am certainly interested in knowing the answer to that.
I was fascinated by the bird motif that was apparent in the aerial attacks, which were all distinctively and beneficially quirky. Where other characters simply attack, Honchkrow performs these unique, offensive aerial maneuvers, some of which are concealable by down special. These combined with its aerial mobility, up special characteristics, and hover capability give Honchkrow an unusually interesting air game that inspires me to be more creative with my aerial attacks in future sets!
I was very pleased by this set, and found it engaging. If Honchkrow were a product to sell, this set would be good advertisement. I think Honchkrow now ranks as a favorite pokémon of mine just as an indirect result of that document!
Preliminary remarks: This document was well-organized and cleanly laid out. The summaries at the end of each move were helpful for finding information quickly when reviewing the set on repeated occasions, and that is a feature I think especially voluminous movesets would benefit from. Also, it is a nifty trick using patch notes to make the character feel more 'alive,' as though they are 'having the bugs worked out.' In addition, it suggests room for concerns in the set such that when they do occur, they seem more authentic, so when something is overlooked, it detracts less from the believability of the set.
Jinako appears to be a very odd character. Because her game seems, in large part, to revolve around her spatial positioning with respect to the statue (this part assuming a certain answer to a later question) in order to alter her special moves and suddenly affect defensive capabilities on a whim, Jinako, I would say, has a potent stationing game that is so in a different sense from most characters in Smash Bros. currently. While many campers accentuate the use of projectiles or reflectors, Jinako essentially has a fortress at her disposal that not only acts as a barrier to projectiles, but also gives her a hiding place, in addition to a remote site of special move activation if that was read correctly, so Jinako's playstyle executes in a novel way.
Some of the approaches you took to give Jinako a defensive, anti-approach playstyle, have fun twists in store for several of her moves. Having a transformation that, for a change, functions as an attack, and leaves an obstruction lying around to hinder ranged attacks supports such a playstyle, and stands out from characters currently in the roster that transform. I do have a question though for setting an earlier statement at total peace. If after transforming, Jinako exits the statue, can she re-enter it without being near it, causing the statue to disappear, or is her ability to transform entirely contingent on proximity? I think the writing would do well to clarify that. If the latter is so, then it would be an excellent balance, in my opinion, as the shield special sounds quite strong for a transformation move, the move being a good out-of-shield option that starts so quickly, has a Bowser-sized hitbox (if I understood correctly), and even has K.O. potential at higher damages, while leaving Jinako with a useful barrier upon exit. Speaking of exit, I presume she does that more quickly than she enters (Is that correct?) The answer to these might give some idea about how flexibly she can transition for the power/speed trade when the battle becomes very dynamic.
Modaka Slingshot's healing of allies would be a thematically consistent touch that would leave me laughing if I had the opportunity to use it safely, but seeing as how it extends one-quarter of the range of Final Destination, starts on frame 9, and slings four modaka for a potential healing of 18% damage in one sitting, that seems a bit strong for a gimmick
if all of my interpretations were correct, and that is without the opportunity for spamming! If it retained those effects, then I would personally balance it by making it ammunition-based, with a total modaka count that exhausts quickly (say, forty?), leaving Jinako without a projectile until a stock is lost.
Severed Tusk draws my attention, as well as the opponent's, for the unique auto-turning effect it has. It is a novelty that makes it harder for Jinako to avoid attacks, which along with the full second of start-up, nicely balances this move. Finally, Makeshift Bed and Vaudeville Axe are creative add-ons to the throw game that distinguish
it from others.
"That Is The Ring-A-Ding Move, Baby!"
Benny by Kholdstare
So with my limited knowledge of Fallout New Vegas from TheRussianBadger's video, as well as some of the stuff provided by you, Khold, I'd say this is by far one of the best ways to start Fallout's hold on MYM! Well, behind Joshua Graham, anyway.
The integration of Yes Man seems really fun and extensive. The idea of using Taunt buttons to use different commands with him is a unique idea and gives Benny a layer of mind games that is rather enjoyable. As for the Specials, Maria is a unique take on the headshot mechanics of Marth's Shield Breaker, and the fact that you have 13 shots per clip to do it gives him some ample opportunities to do so. It could make for some hype gimping moments if your opponent is recovering and you land a headshot. The Platinum Chip, meanwhile, is an interesting Special that sounds like it'll be laughably infuriating. The idea of having Yes Man be upgraded with it is also a very novel idea, as well, and pretty balanced considering the amount of set-up you have to do to achieve it. Furthermore, the idea of spending Luck stacks to land Hero-style crits is also really unique and really brings to mind how Crit Stars work with Gareth from last JamCon.
I actually didn't know Benny used a knife, either, that must've made the tilts a lot easier to do. Making Dash attack a command grab is another unique idea, too. We have yet to see a character with at least one non-Throw, non-Special grab attack, and putting in a Dash attack sounds very logical and makes sense! Making it an attack that knocks the opponent in the opposite direction of your Dash is a nice idea that reminds me an awful lot of my Sub-Zero set last contest. The fact that you can have Yes Man roll over them after being thrown sounds like a very cartoony image in my head, and that's just hilarious!
Moving on to the Smash attacks, I wonder how F-smash selects fighters since one of the big details about V.A.T.S. is the ability to target separate enemies. Does it pick the closest one like Palutena's Auto-Reticle? Is it a random target? This may need some clarification. The rest are easy enough to take in, though. Bringing Snake's Brawl D-smash back for one of Yes Man's Down Smashes gives is refreshing, and really adds to some area denial, too.
Also, Yes Man seems to be damn-well armed to the teeth here. I know he's a Securitron reprogrammed by the big man, but holy hell, are you sure he doesn't have the Mk. II OS??? I mean, I dabbled into some of his taunt-attacks before, but WOW, I think he's got a Mk. III OS here! As for Benny, the man just oozes "suaveness". His flavors give him that nice 60's slickness that the series is known for, too, the man's just oozing with charisma.
Okay, lemme just say, you're starting to be equal to Ouro Kronii in terms of sadism with this set, and that's not something to put lightly.
Anyways, Tumble is so delightfully devilish I can feel the demon inside me snickering in malicious mischief thinking about how to play with him. This is enough RNG to put Hero to shame, and honestly? I think that replicates Mario Party's "FU" nature to a T. Starting with the Specials, they're so beautifully woven together, and the idea of Stars enhancing your own weight or sabotaging your opponents' sounds both really devious, and a really unique way to represent getting the lead in Mario Party. As for the Millenium Star, it really feels like a reward for grinding your way to getting an extremely powerful attack. In that regard, it gives Tumble players a bit of motivation to strive for such a nuke. Moving onwards, the idea of dice putting you on a "space" is a fun effect that's uniquely tied to the Coin resource. Chance Time sounds just as revolting as it is in Mario Party, and I love/hate it lol. As for the items, it's nice to see the variety, though I am curious about how the Plunder Chest would work against characters that don't have items. I mean, I could understand if it was Diddy Kong, Snake or K. Rool, but for the rest, I'm not too sure. I also really love the Bowser Suit, giving him an alternate means of bolstering his weight, but combined with Stars, this puts his weight two points above Ganondorf, which is nuts, to say the least. Now a Ganondorf-tier heavyweight using something this powerful isn't unheard of, shoutout to Incineroar, but being able to take so much damage before dying, then summoning a crazy meteor storm like that would've given me cause for concern, but you're sacrificing your stars to go back to Diddy Kong-level weight, which is a good trade-off, to be honest.
Anyways, moving on: the moves here clicked with me, and this is from someone who played only one or two games of Mario Party 3. The idea of randomizing the Jab with the partners was enough to make me raise an eyebrow, as that'd be like if you had no control over which Jab to use as Ryu, but the fact that they're personalized dependant on whether or not he's in the Bowser Suit alleviated my concerns...even though dealing 20% and bury with a Jab because of Thwomp is rather ridiculous, but then again, Kazuya can do 38% and go through shields on the last two hits with his, so okay. I'll let it slide. Not much to say on the rest of the tilts, though. But still, they're pretty nice to go through.
Slavic, depending on how Honchkrow and the Cookie Scouts turn out, I may have to give you my vote for this JamCon and hopefully you'll be the Super Star this time around! Good work!
A Proverbial Cookie Monster (MY VOTE!)
Cookie Scouts by bubbyboytoo
Well, I must say, the Cookie Scouts thoroughly impressed me, and now you're turning me into another person who wants to play Cookie Clicker when it comes out on Steam.
As I've brought up before on the Discord, the corruption mechanic reminds me very heavily of how Nagoriyuki's Blood Rage mechanic works in Guilty Gear in the sense that it puts you in a high risk, high reward state but if you don't want to activate it you can mitigate it with a move/mechanic that reduces it. I know you've said it's a coincidence, though. Just something to note.
Moving on to the Specials, the Golden/Wrath Cookie effects seem very balanced for what seem to be rather powerful effects, so there's no one must-have effect solidified amongst whole crowds of Cookie Scout mains. It very much has one for how one wants to play her, which is just fine and dandy. Me personally, for the Golden Cookie effects, Click Frenzy sticks out the most for me, as making the jab comparable to a Smash attack sounds beautifully disgusting. Meanwhile, with the Wrath Cookie effects, I'm personally gunning for Ruin. 20% damage for free? Sign me the hell up! I also love how you can have an easier time choosing which effect you want with the Chancemaker. It really makes you feel more in control of the character you're playing, as opposed to Hero who, while still a fun character, often feels like the game's playing the character for you.
Moving on to the Side Special, this gives Cookie Scouts more potential for some very big-brain Pac-Man-style plays, especially with how the Fractal Engine could basically turn a Smash match into "Touhou Daitoumu ~Boundless Baked Sweets~" or something. The effects of the Side Special's stages of cookies gives you a bigger choice in what to do. Fractal Engine Macadamia Cookies are basically allowing you for your more slow moves which can give you some amazing kill confirms and the like, and the chocolate chip cookies can force a more ground-based opponent to do an aerial approach what with its tripping properties, and it really tickles me with the amount of shenanigans where Fractal Chocolate Chip Cookies are practically guaranteed to trip opponents if you manage to land them all in quick succession. And hey, even if it doesn't work, that's some free casual play laughs down the line, right? I also really love how the Wrinkly Cookie is basically a poison cookie, really plays up the more sinister side of the scouts.
Moving onto the buildings, I love how unique and varied they are, as well as how solid of a role they have. The Alchemy Lab is basically your sentry turret if you keep it alive for long and serves in area denial, the Antimatter Condenser is basically your Strangelove bomb that psychologically attacks the opposing player and is basically a timebomb you want your foes to blow up, the Fractal Engine gives her a level of projectile tomfoolery that would make an NRS game recoil in shock, and the Chancemaker gives you a much better grasp on the reins of your character. They all give Chip a nice way to adapt to other players' playstyles and set herself up to have varying unflinching advantages against them.
As for her normals, they're good and balanced, and have a grand appeal to them, too. Jab seems like an amazing attack that puts Kazuya's to shame if you have Click Frenzy activated, so for some this could be just about the only attack you'll ever need if your cards are played right. The Smash attacks, despite being fun and unique, give me a sense of existential dread from reading it, lol. Destroying entire condensed UNIVERSES to hurt fighters in Smash gives me a layer of unease and makes me feel really tiny knowing the lore behind the Idleverses. Thanos ain't got nothin' on this chick, lemme tell ya.
So in a sense, you can liken this to, funnily enough, a cookie. A bit of a hard exterior, but once you get past that, it's all warm, crunchy goodness that'll make you feel happy. Exquisite work, Bubby! My compliments to the baker of this proverbial cookie!
You Made Us A Set We Can't Refuse
Honchkrow by UUserShadow7989
And last but certainly not least is the mafia birb himself, Honchkrow, and he proves there's strength in numbers.
Starting with the Super Luck mechanic, I love the idea of making all your attacks with sweet spots always hit with sweet spots when your opponent is suffering from any form of stuns. It, in a sense, gives jab-locking some extra value to Honchkrow's kit. It also gives Honchkrow an amazing combo game as he can get to kill percentages in fewer hits thanks to the fact that Super Luck hits prioritize the sweet spot, making it easier to kill with it!
Considering the fact that Ultimate seems to heavily favor aerial combat, I'd say Honchkrow being a reverse Little Mac would make him a nightmare to fight against, especially with the Murkrows and Berries to bounce around with. Starting with the Murkrows, I love the concept: it in a sense is reminiscent of how Magnus's minions work, except that since there's only one kind of minion to work with, it seems overall easier to manage. As for the Berries, there's a lot to unpack here, thanks to its varied effects and how many Berry types there are. The Sitrus Berry being, to my understanding, a landmine that heals Honchkrow the next time he's stunned gives him, in a sense, a unique layer of armor against more combo-heavy characters like Greninja and Sheik. As for the Liechi Berry, the damage multipliers stacking with Moxie, which we'll get to later, gives Honchkrow even better damage output, especially when Super Luck is exploited. It really adds to Honchkrow's potential offense and builds on the rest of his kit, too! The Salac Berry sounds like it'll be great for bolstering his recovery and his ability to be everywhere on the stage at once while limiting opponents' movement with your Murkrow gang.
Moving on to the Specials, it was a rather enjoyable experience reading through them. The Down Special stuck out to me the most, since it essentially takes what Piranha Plants do with Side Special, and utterly dunks on them with what they can do, especially since it affects not just your own attacks, but your Murkrows, as well, providing them with greater protection from outside forces. Really makes him seem more like Bruno Bucciarati in terms of leadership, in a sense. Moxie seems like you'll be exploiting his buff very often considering the fact that you'll more than likely whiff your Murkrow projectiles and make them nervous, and the 1.2x buff to your attack is a fair reward for applying discipline to your bird henchmen. The fact that Murkrows are their own unique attack for Murkrow-Side Special gives them a sort of appeal to them since you describe them as "too grand to be a [Ice Climber-style] mook, but no Pikmin", so it seems to give Murkrow a sort of unique middle ground as far as properties go.
The normals seem perfectly balanced, too, and there aren't too many sweetspots for Super Luck to exploit, so your foes aren't always in danger from getting hit by one. Well, unless the other player has a rather evasive playstyle, then by that point, you'll mostly be whiffing your attacks. Up throw, out of all of them, really stuck out with me, since it's a very unique take on the cargo throw, which I honestly feel is rather underused in actual Smash, now that I think about it. Although, and I don't know if I'm understanding this right, since this is basically a mid-air DK cargo throw, who's to say you won't carry your opponents to the blast zone at any percentage? I mean, I know you can mash out of it like with DK's throw, but if you engage in U-throw from the ledge and fly straight to the blast zone before releasing, that's basically a cheap kill. Again, might not be understanding this right, just voicing a concern of mine.
But overall, the Honchkrow Famiglia is a force to be reckoned with, and I'll happily kiss the ring on Honchkrow's wings. If he even was wearing a ring. Anyways, excellent work!
Now here's a set that's dedicated to the bit; luck is something of an underexplored focus in MYM these days, and Tumble is happy to try as many possible ways of implementing luck as possible, with surprisingly synergistic and fun sounding results. For the most part, the random possibilities aren't strictly superior to each other- Tumble simply has different ways of playing off of each result, and so is encouraged to just roll with whatever luck he's given, much like his source material. Notable exceptions to the 'all results equal' rule are the item block, which he can charge for better results and both he and his foe are given fair warning of the results of, Thwomp's Jab which is a lucky reward that might not come out at a good time, and Back Throw, which is a deliberate gamble on his part you're choosing to risk over more reliable other throws.
Speaking of reliable, much of the hitboxes in the standards and aerials are in fact reliable. Some like Back Aerial can be oddball and potentially leave you in a bad spot, but it can be mitigated and they lean into giving more reward for that risk. Combined with Tumble having good mobility and being able to buffer his lacking weight as the fight goes on (letting him escape combos early and hang in there late if he's playing well), he's fairly well equipped to fight and not completely at the mercy of rng. The randomness is something that can catch opponents off guard as often as it is something that can trip up Tumble himself, effectively being odd mix-ups and frame traps.
Though that's not to say some aspects don't get lost in the shuffle- Tumble's coins and stars are relatively forgotten past the Specials, and while that's not really a big issue given they're more passive benefits/incentives he wants to juggle, there's points like Down Aerial where it'd be nice to acknowledge the multi-hit being good for racking up coins on a successful hit. Up Throw's knockback angle being determined by the arrows are neat, and you can extrapolate that the arrows are directly up, diagonally down and forward, and diagonally down and backward, but it'd be nice to have that explicitly stated. Neutral Aerial is a funny mental image (that makes me want to make a Chicken-Infested Commoner D&D OC set), but the exact hitbox is a bit vague; is the chicken an oddball all-around hitbox, a short-range hitbox in front of Tumble?
The set goes a little further beyond just toying with luck, giving Tumble a super mode in the Bowser Suit that gets a lot of attention for something that can only come up with luck (and is plenty of fun to picture) and a super attack to build towards and act as a reward for careful play/accessible with a bit of luck in the Down Special. Even if he's having a rotten time with the rng, just fighting well can get Tumble plenty of coins, and launching the foe off-stage gives him some space to fish for a free star from a hidden block- tying properly engaging the foe into mitigating luck.
Tumble's already a hit with several other readers, and I can see why! It's a fun dip into the unknown with plenty of character, an obvious love-hate relation with Mario Party we can all sympathize with, and a willingness to take risks that's impressive for a 4-day set. My favorite part of all this is how it captures the feel of the better Mario Party games; lots of luck elements but plenty of strategy to go with it, all with crazy events and props. Despite the heavy lean into luck, fighting with or against Tumble feels like it'd rarely be frustrating, with none of his options being too swing-y and a lot of his biggest tricks requiring you work a bit to earn it. Everything feels like it'd be 'fair', which is amazing for what a chaotic mess it would appear to be for first-time players. Good work, Slavic!
Here's a set that's full of charm and ambition! Seems we've got a full house of that this go-around. Benny is effectively a 4-in-1 set with Yes Man having three possible inputs to nearly each of Benny's, supplementing his own flawed moveset as a potent ally that can nevertheless be dispatched. As you have to choose which of three variants he'll use to support Benny's next moves in order, you have to get into Benny's scheming mindset and rely on your smarts- and a bit of luck with how the cards fall- to make the most of these potent support options. More than likely you'll be adapting to the situation and rolling with the punches when whatever plan you had goes awry, but that just fits the character, doesn't it?
That said, I do feel the moves could each use a little bit of expansion- not just in the sense of the move data like damage percents that were accidentally omitted, but a little more on how the different inputs interconnect (or fail to do so in the event Benny's left flying solo). Even then, I can't say it's been completely ignored; each move does go over individual application of each variant and how Yes Man's support is best applied, there ARE several examples of different inputs referencing each other, and drawing up a complex web chart of how each variant of each move plays is not remotely feasible for obvious reasons. This is a set that has solid concept grounding and mostly just leaves me wanting 'more' rather than having a glaring flaw. At most, I could say the throws feel a little anemic and could stand to be expanded on/given a bit more to do (though Benny explicitly not being a grappler means having a mechanically weak section is hardly a negative; maybe Yes Man has three possible responses shared among all the throws that are more general and give them a bit of zest? I'm not sure).
As an aside, I love the Yes Man intel extra, and wish I was better at writing dialogue to start including it in my own sets. I'll see what I can whip up. It's a strong set and I'm not sure if I place it above Tumble or not, given they both have a strong character feel and are fairly ambitious for 4-day sets. Excellent work, Khold!
Another excellent set this Jamcon, Cookie Scouts leans into the luck manipulation theme as Tumble did, but pairs it with a reasonably fleshed out melee game, a few neat constructs, managing your stats, and giving the player more of a direct hand on fine-tuning the odds. Like the prior two sets I commented here, the Cookie Scouts show off some charm with their choice of weapons and casual disregard for the well-being of their Idleverses, bringing some of the bleak humor from their source material into Smash. I was half-expecting the Alchemy Lab to shoot gold nuggets/ingots as a reference to one of the news ticker quotes from the game ("Malfunctioning Alchemy Lab shut down, found to turn cookies into useless gold."), given how on point it all feels.
Mechanically, the Cookie Scouts do have an advantage over the above entries in that the set covers interplay between the moves and how some of them work with different constructs; I feel there's a good mechanical grounding in everything the set does, though I did raise an eyebrow at Cookie Storm's damage given we don't know the rate of fire (it DOES take some luck to get it while positioned right, or set-up with a Chancemaker to eliminate the former issue, but I feel the set has a good number of spacing options for the latter). Most of the most crazy things Chip and her fellow scouts can do luck-wise is locked behind her laggy Neutral Special and requires some extra bit of work besides in most cases, though, so I feel that the Neutral Special works out fine.
I'm actually at a bit of a loss again for what advice I can offer to improve the set; I'm a big fan of it, and I feel 'more' is too vague a request when there's not much need to complicate it further with extra details/interplay between moves (as much as I always appreciate it). It's an all around solid, and I feel this is the big thing, complete set as a hypothetical 'final product' compared to the two sets above, which do need more tweaking and more thought given to how their moves interact. The grab game was a bit bland, but it functions, and I feel that's a shared weakness for this mini-contest so far. Nicely done, Bubby!
EDIT: Thinking on it more, the main thing I'd suggest it explaining a bit more about how the stat changes from the Cookie Corruption mechanic would affect her play in melee, as well as how the buffs/debuffs from Golden Cookies and Wrath Cookies similarly affect play. I could see Frenzy's speed boost allow chaining together what would normally be spacer inputs into a proper combo, for example.
Last (well, first) and certainly not least, Jinako rounds out the Jamcon entries as a well-made, solid set with a high quality melee game. Of the sets here, I feel it has the most polished melee in terms of going over how each input is used in relation to each other and all the small details like Down Throw's self-prone effect and secondary roll, Dash Attack's optional second hit, etc. This is all built around a fairly interesting central gimmick in which Jinako indulges her inner otaku and enters her statue like a mech suit, albeit one she needs to take care with. Being limited to Specials only and the statue being relatively frail concern me (30% isn't a lot for something that winds up with a 30 second cool down, though the fact it works as a needed limiter on the form means I'd sooner lower the latter than raise the former), but it has a lot of fun application in how it will continue its Specials as you exit the statue- and I echo the sentiment that I wish we saw a little more of that.
The set ties itself together very well for the most part, but there's not a specific example that pops out at me as playing off of the statue in a strange, interesting way. That's not to say there aren't fun combo chains that you can build off of it, you've outlined several combos in the set, and human Up Special's interaction with it is great, but the statue feels like it has a lot of untapped potential 'wow' factor given the concept and the way you've implemented it. Perhaps the pull effect from Neutral Special can linger a bit, letting her keep the statue close as she goes on the offensive or pulling it along to keep it handy? Holding Shield Special could let Jinako command the statue to act from a range, if that's possible, with some downsides- or maybe if it's mid-input when she uses Shield Special, it'll continue that input as it appears near her? My knowledge of the character is a little lacking, unfortunately, so I'm not sure what's within her power to do with it. This is far from a glaring issue, I find the set very solid all around, but I feel like there's something there I'm not quite parsing that could push it a little further.
Jinako as a set feels like it handles the fundamentals best of the Jamcon, and I think it remains solid throughout compared to other sets with one or two weak sections or that feel incomplete. It's a solid set I'm going to keep in mind when voting period comes, for certain.
After reflecting on it some and skimming through the sets again/rereading my comments, I think I ultimately have to give my nomination to Cookie Scouts.
Tumble leaned hard into the luck theme and presented a lot of interesting ways to implement RNG, but felt a bit disjointed when taken as a whole. Benny feels like it has a lot of potential, a charming sense of character, and an ambitious and well-executed core concept, but similarly his inputs don't have interplay, and potential is more relevant for where it goes from here, while the Jamcon is about what you can produce just in the time allotted. Jinako has a solid melee game and a cool core concept, and feels properly completed, but the melee and said core don't quite link up.
Cookie Scouts did a little of everything- neat concepts, decently cohesive melee, integrated luck in interesting ways, played off of the core presented in the set, and had some real personality to it. I feel all four sets have different strengths, but Cookie Scouts, as is, feels like the most complete package of the Jamcon's offerings. Again, great job to everyone who participated!
Jinako
The elephant statue that serves as this set's core is, if nothing else, a pretty neat central basis for a set. On its own a transformation that limits you to buffed versions of your specials would probably not be all that good, but with Jinako's ability to separate the statue from her, using it as a shield and manipulating it to use its specials separately from Jinako it becomes a lot more fun. Plus there's some strong incentives to actually put the statue over Jinako as a transformation for a bit, between the extra strong buff from Down Special and the fact that Up Special and Neutral Special can pull some pretty extreme combos if you have a statue right there to use with them. Its all balanced out by the statue not being all that durable and having a whopping 30 second cooldown once its destroyed... which to be honest, strikes me as a bit extreme? It'll only really take the 2-3 hits to break the statue and then you lose access to your most interesting tool for like half the stock, I'd think the statue should at least be a bit more durable and/or not have as massive a cooldown, though given how strong USpecial -> Elephant USpecial is I'd be careful making it respawn TOO quickly at least.
I think where this set loses me a bit is the later sections, and its for a mix of reasons, but not because the melee is fundamentally messed up or anything. On the contrary, I think you've gotten to the point where you're at least writing up moves with pretty distinct use cases, and while in your earlier efforts I frequently found the frame data to be pretty questionable, it seems mostly reasonable at a glance here. I'm not sure some things can combo that you say combo, admittedly, though that's mostly in the sense of "I don't think it'd work as a true combo" as barring attacks with exceptionally high hitstun or some weird knockback angles that groundbounce(or Smashes that come out on like Frame 6-10, there are a few of those in Smash) it tends to be pretty hard to actually combo into a Smash attack, like you suggest with FSmash a couple times in this set. Disjointed elephant specials probably could, at least, but that's because of their unique positioning. But that tangent aside, I'm mostly just not sold by how the melee flows off the base, aside from having a few combos off things the Elephant can do. I tend to enjoy more specialized melee that gains additional depth when used in conjunction with the core concepts of the set, and Jinako's melee mostly just feels like it doesn't get anything all that special off interacting with the elephant stuff aside from the occasional longer combo string. Making use of its pushing water stream more often, having interesting ways to set up the NSpecial and USpecial power plays the set allows for, and maybe some extra ways to cash in on the buff(though the high damage combos this set can situationally pull off are at least something for that) would probably help my ability to appreciate what this set's doing. Maybe even find a way to make use of the Ryu auto-turn on opponents activated by Down Special? I'm not particularly sure about that concept being in the set period though, its not an awful way to implement the taunt mechanic but I feel like giving it infinite range on all enemies in the match might cause some needlessly annoying things to happen, though it might be fine given the effect seems like it'd end up so minor in practice.
But as is, while I'm not as excited about it as I was Shin Godzilla, this set does show a stronger understanding of Smash fundamentals than previous sets of yours I've read, and considering that I'd say its a fairly solid effort especially for the short time it was made in.
Tumble
Gonna be honest, I'm really not sold on this one as a serious set. Tumble very much just embraces the RNG nature of Mario Party for what it is, and while I don't think most of the RNG effects in this set are particularly game breaking, it definitely feels like too large a percentage of Tumble's success comes from pure luck for my liking. Its not as though the set will 1% of the time just win because of insane luck because none of Tumble's options feel especially powerful, but it does feel like the difference between matches you get good luck on Side Special, get the Bowser Suit vs not getting the Bowser Suit, and activate the Bowser effect on Up Smash or don't would have a massive effect on whether or not Tumble can actually have genuine success in any given match. For what its at least a part time competitive fighting game, I think this many interconnect luck elements, plus several other ones like "sometimes you just get a 5 Frame Bair and sweetspot FSmash all the time and sometimes those moves are never particularly useful" just ends up being too much, especially when the rest of the cast doesn't have them.
What doesn't help my opinion of this set is honestly, it feels like when the luck doesn't line up in Tumble's favor, the set isn't really functional? And frankly, he needs a LOT of luck to go his way to be even passable, because Tumble's statistics are pure garbage. 70 weight and an awful vertical recovery are begging to die at laughable percents, and then when you actually get stars, he gets a whole... 5 weight out of the ordeal and a slightly better Up Special. 20 coins for a star is honestly a pretty hefty amount of work, given you get 1 coin per attack you land plus some incidental ones here and there from luck based elements, and its not like Tumble seems to have much of a real combo game. It seems hard to get more than 1-2 stars in any given match which makes Tumble kind of laughably frail without the Bowser Suit, which you can only get by paying 10 coins and hoping, or paying less than 10 coins and hoping way harder, and its not like Tumble turns into some unstoppable force of nature when he GETS the Bowser Suit, he just becomes kind of decent for 7 seconds or until he uses the beefed up Side Special. The Millenium Star seems like nothing short of an absolute pipe dream to actually get, and honestly when you do get it the reward seems pretty modest for the absolutely herculean to get to.
I've been ragging on Tumble a bit now and that's mostly because a few people have taken this set as a more serious effort, where I'm not convinced it works well. With all that said, I feel the fact that Tumble's so underpowered does kind of work in its favor, because a disjointed comical pile of RNG should probably not be the set that's dominating the competitive scene, and more of a fun gimmick to bring out in casual matches. And as a fun gimmick for casual matches, I think Tumble does a reasonable job of bringing Mario Party's chaos to mix with Smash's own brand of chaos, representing all sorts of parts of Mario Party from the items to the stars to moving on the board and even more obscure elements like the Game Guy and what I've generally heard referred to as "Bowser Communism". Its a pretty impressive variety of effects that get implemented into Smash in ways that actually all make at least some amount of sense and at least don't end up breaking anything. On top of that, this set is generally really funny. There's a lot of great lines in here, just having a laugh at this absolutely absurd character choice and all the chaos and annoyances he brings to Smash, and it makes the set consistently enjoyable to read. Between the high entertainment value that I think would at least on some level translate in an actual Smash match and the fact that the set doesn't really break anything other than its own body the second an opponent sneezes on it, I can definitely get what this set's appeal is. I just think by more traditional MYM metrics it has very little going for it, so its hard for me to endorse all that highly in either JamCon or general voting.
Cookie Scouts
So like with Tumble, this set has a worrying amount of RNG for the player to deal with thanks to how the Golden Cookie buffs work... but then the set actually has the decency to give you a way to work around it. The Chancemaker is honestly kind of brilliant as a way to get both "adapt to the RNG" and "actually getting to make maximal use of the effects on display" in the same set because when the fragile construct is out, you can actually pick what the Golden Cookie/Wrath Cookie does for you. Its still a bit more luck than I'd like when you factor in the building special stuff and the chance of a Golden vs Wrath Cookie, but I enjoy the way luck is implemented in this set too much to be all that bothered by it, serving as probably my favorite use of chance effects in the JamCon. Honestly, all the buildings are fun too, not just the Chancemaker, the Alchemy Labs/Antimatter Condensers/Fractal Engines all giving the scouts some very unorthdox and enjoyable effects to tinker around with, with Alchemy Labs/Fractal Engines being quite worth protecting as the chancemakers are in their own right while the Antimatter Condenser acts as a mini-Doomsday Device the opponent just wants to avoid breaking.
I'd say this set doesn't have the strongest payoff for its core I've seen, but the latter inputs at least display a reasonably strong awareness of how the buildings/Golden Cookies/thrown cookies would influence their use. Down Tilt/FSmash are great at capitalizing on the windows of opportunity that Alchemy Labs and Chancemakers can provide, Dair gives you another fun thing to multiply with the fractal engine that benefits heavily from the corruption mechanic, and the miniature version of Law's blade drawing mechanic gives that bit of extra substance to how you use FTilt/DTilt. Plus, I feel the set has a lot of fun with the animations, I found the way the Idleverses were used to feel particularly creative and cool in that regard even if their effects weren't necessarily as awe-inspiring as you'd expect for smashing a pocket universe. And to be fair to you, especially on 3 days notice on a non-Special move, I don't exactly expect that to translate into Smash easily. It also just generally displays a strong knowledge of how Smash works and gives enough interesting niche use cases to the melee to keep your interest even when its not doing stuff that interacts well with the set's core, which is pretty impressive for the time period it was made in.
I will say I do think the set falls off a bit in the grab game, to be clear, the throws not having much of an interesting catch to them either in how they interact with the Specials or on their own. I'd also say I don't feel the set's flow is what it could be, which I think owes to how many elements the set crams in with such a short timeframe to work with. You've got a corruption mechanic that turns you into more of a glass cannon later in the match, 4 buildings to juggle, a a manipulatable RNG mechanic with like 12 different effects to worry about in total, a big assortment of cookies for Side Special even if they're all pretty basic, and corrupting cookie dough that basically only ends up relevant on like two moves. It ultimately means given the short development cycle, none of these individual mechanics can flourish as much as they would with more time dedicated to them individually. I'm not saying running with a bunch of wacky mechanics in the same set like this is a bad idea, on the contrary I think its kind of exciting to see you take this approach compared to the more reserved(but ultimately better) Calliope Mori, but having a bit less of them to juggle and more time to work with them would've probably made for a much stronger set. As is, I still enjoyed this set and think it shows how much you've progressed over the past few contests that you could put this together in like 3 days.
Benny
You know, I'm definitely with you on headshots never killing the opponent being a pretty funny mechanic for Benny to have to deal with, given arguably the character's most iconic moment is him shooting the player in the head and it not actually doing the job. As a gameplay mechanic, I kinda prefer an outright reward for landing a precise hit like that on the opponent, but it does at least give a great deal of damage and sets up an edgeguard scenario, which isn't terrible for a projectile at all. That's admittedly not really the focus of the set, the real core component being the interaction between Benny and Yes Man, which honestly is a very interesting way and... probably more ambitious than the sub-contest's made for concept. The way you describe it isn't a 4-in-1 but rather half a move and three different back halves that can compliment it, but it still requires writing 4 moves for basically every non-Special/Throw input. And I do think the interplay between Benny and Yes Man's moves is honestly pretty cool, as Yes Man's attacks either cover the weaknesses of Benny's individually lackluster set, or amplify its strengths to give him some real punch to his attacks, and depending on how you command him you can choose which end you want to lean into.
I do think the net effect of this is cool and makes for a decent number of fun to read moves, I found the idea of suicide KOs using Yes Man particularly fun, but it doesn't always work for me. I felt with the Up and Down Smashes Yes Man was doing a flashier move that didn't really connect at all to what Benny's lackluster one, which is a lot less interesting to me than the moves they combine their efforts despite the Up and Down Smash Yes Man moves on paper being more interesting. Its not helped that the moves that take advantage of Benny being able to rig his crits end up feeling very underwhelming because of this, feeling like they end up barely mattering to the Smashes despite it honestly being a cool mechanic to control Hero crits like that. Its probably just better almost 100% of the time to give Yes Man the buff, its not like the counter's all that great either. This ends up leading to another problem, honestly... I don't feel I have a strong idea of what Benny's gameplan actually is, feeling more like it leans on having a wide variety of options than having a cohesive goal. Some of the individual options are certainly fun, but with the gun and luck mechanics feeling like a dead end and Benny's stage control options not adding up to any clear goal, its hard for me to say this set has the kind of strong focus I like in my MYM sets.
All the same, I do think this set has fun to be had, Benny's bizarre personality on full display here. While the grab game doesn't have the kind of Yes Man/Benny interplay I found the most interesting part of the set, its dialogue and animations are honestly one of the best parts of the set for their sheer entertainment value. I feel the gameplay probably needed more time to get properly tuned than the Jamcon provided, but I at least do enjoy what you're going for with how Yes Man works and the characterization, and I'm glad to see the Fallout series finally get its first set after 24 contests.
Honchkrow
This set doesn't have as strong of a luck theme as Cookie Scouts, Benny, or Tumble, interpreting the Super Luck mechanic with way less RNG than Pokemon had... and honestly that's fine with me. Flavor-wise, its exactly on point with what Super Luck is meant to be in the first place, and the set absolutely takes advantage of it from multiple compelling angles. There's obviously a lot of sweetspots in the set that become a bigger deal when you can land them from any hitbox of the move, with some pretty unique applications of this mechanic like the Bair and literally all the Smashes. On top of that, it makes the tiny, needling hits of your Murkrow minions actually a big deal beyond being combo setup tools, making them into a very real threat. That's before you get into the added depth of the nervous state giving Honchkrow a buff when he smacks them out of it, and more excitingly the ability to pluck berries to not just give Honchkrow a variety of buffs, but cancel his end lag. Considering his ground game struggles with tons of very punishable attacks, this feature gives him a really cool way to circumvent but not totally avoid that problem and turn his otherwise weak ground game into a very helpful combo tool. It certainly doesn't help that his Smashes lean hard on the "high risk high reward" kind of pay off that actually warrant him using wanting to be on the ground at times, unlike a certain infamously balanced boxer.
There were a bunch of other little details in the set I liked too. Side Special using nervous Murkrow to give Honchkrow much greater airtime is a very fun mechanic to get the most out of your aerials, and the simple mix-up potential that Down Special provides to Honchkrow's decently large variety of movement attacks and further heightening the threat of the Murkrow makes it pretty compelling as far as "modernized smokescreens" go. I will say, I feel the set falls off a bit in the grab game, I feel the place grab occupies in his set is certainly interesting as a difficult option with decent rewards on the ground, but I feel like the rewards don't have quite as much substance or power as I'd like at the end of the day. And part of me came out of the aerials wishing that one of them had a bigger payoff comparable to his Smashes. This is a character who spends most of its time in the air with several jumps, further ways to extend his airtime, and a general lack of presence on the ground without conditional setup. I think it'd be nice to give him SOMETHING much bigger he could commit to while in the air, but I guess with that much aerial presence Honchkrow can probably just go for the gimp and doesn't need anything fancy. But I like fancy stuff and I think the air game would be a good place for at least a little of it.
All the same, I didn't come out of this set with a ton to complain about, and it ended up my favorite JamCon set by a pretty safe Margin. This set has my JamCon 2 Nomination.
Fairy Knight Gawain
Oh hey, now we get into the Avalon le Fae sets that I've been very excited for since I heard you were making them to go with me, who foolishly thought I was JUST doing a Tristan theme. I see Kat's not quite as high on this set as I was, and admittedly it did take me a bit to get into this set when I started reading it, but I think as the set goes along it sells itself well. Gawain takes a very different approach to the problems heavyweights suffer than I'm used to for MYM sets, in that it basically never relies on Super Armor to get through the opponent's attacks and win. Instead Gawain is a fair bit faster than your average superheavy, and just leans into full out aggression with her chains, black dogs to enhance her assault on the opponent, and melee that absolutely encourages her to keep getting aggressive. As Kat pointed out, FTilt is a huge highlight of this set's options, because it absolutely wrecks defensive options and forces the opponent to stop Gawain by hitting her back... which is thankfully a perfectly reasonable response to what is otherwise a super powerful move that has both great combo and kill potential. I really like the decision to put this kind of melee move in a character's kit as it emphasizes the character's strengths and weaknesses when fighting the foe due to its sheer effectiveness, save for one obvious flaw. Its kind of like what I was going for in Primordial Darkness' FTilt, only I think you successfully balanced this one on your first try.
I talk up FTilt a lot but the melee is generally really solid and further encourages the path of encouraging a foe to win trades with you rather than going on the defensive, especially since a successfull offensive on Gawain can snowball hard with the help of her mechanic to power the foe's attacks against her. While on paper, giving a heavyweight an extra weakness like this seems a bit harsh, Gawain can just as easily flip it in her favor, and reversing the foe's assault on them gives her bonuses the foe could never have, such as absolutely crippling their shields. Given this mechanic gets the most mileage when you land long combo strings, I feel like this gives the chain an important role in her moveset for the simple fact that it extends her combos quite a bit, something she definitely needs to keep up with the fact that she's almost certainly bigger combo food than the opponent. Speaking of food, also known as the opponent, Side Special was... not a choice I was expecting, to say the least, but I do think the move copying feels warranted here. It feels like a compelling reward to some of her combo game to get a new move off the opponent to use, to shore up some of the oddities of her gameplan by giving her faster/stronger smash attacks depending on which one you steal, or filling in her throws/aerials/tilts with options that shore up the weaknesses of each section. I like the idea of having both a kill Forward and Back Throw to mess with DI to give the FThrow's kill potential some extra purpose, that's a fun little mechanic to enhance her grab game. While incorporating move copying can be awkward due to how inconsistent it is from opponent to opponent, I think Gawain handles it surprisingly well as due to either standard heavyweight weaknesses or bizarre properties a lot of her moves are worth having a secondary option to that almost anyone in the cast can fill pretty well. Like that FTilt is super powerful, but I would absolutely be happy to grab a slightly more conventional FTilt for neutral to go along with it, for example.
For complaints, Kat pointed out the inconsistency with recovery stuff, I'm sure you'll change that quickly enough. I also felt that Burning of the Saint just ended up a mechanic that kinda went nowhere, giving Gawain some incidental DoT without a particularly interesting endgame. It does, at least, contribute to the FThrow/BThrow mixup I mentioned earlier, but I wish it felt like it added more to the set than just a mild increase to Gawain's damage output. But overall, I think this is honestly a really cool take on the heavyweight archetype that hasn't been explored before, and manages to have a bunch of good design in utilizing copied moves and depth and uniqueness provided by its melee that I actually think its my favorite set of yours this contest! Admittedly, that probably won't stick from what I've seen of Morgan, but you have to finish that one first.
Ferrijit
You were very surprised when I said this set was my 2nd favorite in the entire contest, but I think I can explain why pretty easily. I was a huge fan of Jalter's wyverns, I felt the way they balanced minions and your knack for creating innovative ways to play off them to enhance what Jalter was doing despite her not being primarily a minion character was probably my favorite part of that set. If we're going to put minions in a modern set, Jalter kinda set the standard for what I'd want them to be like. Anyway, this set is "what if we just took everything you liked about the Jalter wyverns and made it 3 even more in depth minions instead of one and focused the entire set around it". Of COURSE I'm going to love this set when you consider that.
The set avoids the problem a lot of minion sets have of putting the foe in a PvE situation by basically letting Ferrijit dictate her summons entire pattern, and the heavy cooldowns and the heavy risks of having some of these minions out with their permanent deaths prevents the set from just overwhelming the foe like an old school Hugo set. And once that's out of the way, you can get into the cool stuff. Every member of the team help Ferrijit's sniper skills on the opponent, letting her build up a massive amount of range and damage on her Neutral Special bullet and make it into an extremely potent attack. But there's a lot more to it than that, with each member of the crew contributing to her FSmash, serving as a method to get her high into the air for the payoffs that provides both with her air game and down angled Neutral Special, and then each crew member has their own fun mechanics to work with. Nervall's bomb, Kerass' rage, and Fraktall's more varied attack patterns all providing a lot to play off in their own right, especially when you consider the ways their mechanics can interlink. The set also has some pretty new ideas for how to utilize minions I feel like I haven't seen in older sets, Up Smash sticking out to me as something I've never seen before as you basically catch the minions and fling them back at opponents who hit them as a counter. Given the permanent death mechanic for her allies, having such a potent punishing mechanic for them feels pretty important too.
I guess selling a set on minion interactions isn't really anything new at the end of the day, its been an old MYM staple for as long as I can remember, but I think its easier to enjoy when it takes away a lot of the old problems the genre had. In practice, they feel like disjoints and follow ups to Ferrijit's attacks with some extra personality and depth due to how little of a role the AI plays, so when the set's providing them with all kinds of new attacking routes via the grab game and Forward Smash, its entirely on the player, not forcing the foe into a gradually more unwinnable PvE situation you poke attacks through to make worse. And on top of that, the heavy use of her bullets that grow in power with range and all the synergies that the set has to set that up make her feel like a proper sniper in a game where sniping mechanics feel hard to implement. And honestly, while the set definitely has simpler moves that aren't particularly eyecatching on a more frequent basis than, say, Yin did, I feel like she definitely needs some stuff unconnected to her heavier minion mechanics when all her minions are permanently killable. And really, the moves aren't exactly boring either, the sniper shot and their use in setting up Ferrijit's more ambitious plays gives them more than enough substance that I didn't find myself wanting for something fancier on those inputs. I had a ton of fun with this one Kat, thanks for adding it to the FA day lineup.
Trafalgar Law
I am way late to the party on finishing this set, I have no idea why I put it off THIS long to read considering its a very popular set, and to be honest its popularity is not at all unfounded. The way Room works as a range extender is honestly a concept I haven't really seen done before, reminding me a bit of the old school cage sets but replacing boxing the opponent in inescapable walls you pester them through with giving Law a new set of powerful techniques and range that extends through the entire are.a. It admittedly does feel a tad oppressive, Law's combo potential in the Room is hilariously strong and Shambles is a terrifyingly powerful ability to just reposition a foe however you want, but its kind of limited by the 6 second duration unless you get stuff like the Auto-Counter or the heart severing technique out of it. And for that matter, Law's also admittedly a bit limited by his kind of terrible lag problems before his combo strings get going, so it probably balances out in the long run.
And for what its worth, those room mechanics are really exciting, even beyond the range extension. Ripping out a foe's heart to use as a "voodoo doll" extension of their hurtbox that also puts them on law's level in terms of lag? Tons of fun and works great with all the range Law has to work with. The stalactites are a versatile tool that can kill, extend combos, or provide Law with an item to mess around with using Shambles. Shambles itself provides tons of combo extension opportunities and gets even more elaborate when you have a chunk of earth and a heart to mess with. Its all very cool stuff, and when the melee game takes advantage of it, such as in the Smashes, I'm kind of floored by how good this set turns out. FSmash's tricks with Shambles and a room seem absurdly fun to mess around with, especially when you throw an auto counter into the mix, while still serving as a functional KO move outside the room so its not exactly just useful in that context. Dash Attack has a load of cool features to it and makes excellent use of the "anime swordsman suddenly is behind you and you get slashed up" animation. Up Smash and Down Smash might not be quite as exciting as those two moves but they're still very solid, and I found that the standards and aerials really got some nice additional depth from the simple presence of the nigh infinite range extension and Law's sheathing mechanic. Its rock solid stuff and this isn't just your best set ever, this is your best set ever factoring in the time period it was posted.
I'll admit its not really a frontrunner level set for me, and I guess the reason comes down to two reasons. As brilliant a concept as the Room is, there's definitely a certain clunkyness to not being able to use the other variants of Law's Specials in the Room, and I feel like Law's out of Room specials end up feeling kind of disappointing because of that. I'm not sure how much substance you really could've given them if your most important tool takes them away for a while, but they feel less important than most of the Standards that come after them because of it. I also don't feel the Standards and Aerials are everything they could be, really. When you ignore the Room and sheathe/unsheathe shenanigans these attacks feel extremely basic, with little attention given to how they play in Neutral or with shields or their exact combos, nor are they given any little nuances to add much substance to them beyond that. And I'm not saying every move has to be like that or mention all that stuff, but frontrunner-tier sets tend to make things a bit more consistently interesting on later moves. And I do think the lack of advanced applications on the standards would matter for Law in practice, because sometimes the Room is just not going to be a thing you get time to setup, and his gameplan without it feels really plain, though I guess that could be said of a lot of MYM characters without their core toys. Either way, I'm admittedly mostly just trying to explain why this set isn't SV tier in a way that's probably not as clear as I wish it was because, from a perspective of pure innovation and core mechanics, it is THAT good. Excellent work Rychu, can't wait to see what you make from here.
Honchkrow UUserShadow7989
Super-fitting moveset for the gangster Pokemon, and it met my expectations for what a Honchkrow set should be with the Murkrow minion management, Dedede-like stats, and aerials coming first to kick off the normals. Super Luck is implemented well here and seems like a pretty fun mechanic, I like sweet spot play, and of course I love the haze move as I've always been a fan of those Into Red Smoke style playstyles, and Murkrow does it very interestingly here by having the minions be obscure while fitting with his theme of being the summoner of night and a dark-type in general. Berries' various applications with making the normals more robust is interesting and gives them the added oomph they need with them being in a JamCon set. I like the interaction with Salac Berry on the Smashes the most out of all of these. Forward Smash seems like a really explosive and fun move, while Up Smash reminds me heavily of Kurt Zisa's so I like it a lot. I also love the neat playground-y stuff like Forward Throw dragging foes down slopes, it gives it more flavor beyond the typical 1v1 Fox only Final Destination headspace you typically play out the moves in your head in. Overall Honchkrow was an enjoyable set and what I look for in a Pokeset, nicely done.
JinakoGolisoPower
. Really interesting set that does some cool stuff I like, like forcing foes to turn to face you and mentioning a lot of funny references for the attacks. Swapping back and forth between the statue like it's a mech is super fun as is the laser beam. A couple things: F-Tilt says there are notes about rebalance the neutral in the TL;DR but it doesn't mention it, just that it can deal damage. Second, the statue is only a hitbox when she summons a new one, right? It doesn't smash down if the foe doesn't destroy it when she gets out. Third, the animation for the Fthrow I love, love, love. There's a lot of personality in this set and I grew to like a character I had no knowledge of before. I also like how the JamCon and your writing help meld together for a very readable set. As opposed to the big names in MYM, your writing style is one of the most digestible out of all of them and I admittedly find myself enjoying your sets more because of them. Stuff like the last sentence on NAir is great. As you can see with Benny and Kurt Zisa, I'm aiming more for this readable style. The data and playstyle functions on these moves are great, and I'm definitely going to learn some stuff from it. Final Smash I can understand just from the GIF, too, but it has no data. The extras are all great, and I'm impressed you managed to get them in during the JamCon too. Great job dude
Cookie Scoutsbubbyboytoo
I'm really high on this set, it's one of my favorites in the contest so far. Just a joy to read and imagine. It hits all the high notes for my own personal moveset tastes with the specials and a lot of the normals, especially the constructs, and especially stuff like Fractal Engine and the Down Aerial. The luck manipulation here is a way better handling of what I did in Benny, I'm honestly pretty jealous. The moves are short, sweet, and get to the point, lending to their readability but admittedly leaving me wanting for more, but this is a JamCon set so I have no place to use that as criticism. Honestly there's very little to critique here, but I'll drop a few ideas: you mention DAir comboing with Fractal Engine, but since it drops it straight down, how does Fractal duplicate it? Wouldn't it spawn on the same spot? It doesn't mention stacking or increasing the effect of the movement altering (unless I missed that) so if the traps can exist in the same spot the only thing I can think of them benefiting from is maybe the Cookie Corruption damage stacking? Second, while the Scouts have interesting personalities that vary wildly between them, there's not much personality communicated through the moves and animations. You could really flesh out the set with edits by giving each of the Scouts different animations conveying their personality for the moves or at the very least, the taunts/victory animations. You do describe the animations of the moves but they leave much to be desired for personality, which is a shame because I'm actually pretty interested in this girls and feel they could be the protagonists of the Cookie Clicker franchise in MYM. That's about it! I love the referencces and inspirations, like idleverses, and reading the moveset is like eating a box of Chips Ahoy. Awesome job Bubby!
Tumble was a really fun set Slavic
. Insert Komm Susser Tod joke here. There's a plethora of RNG but it's very fitting for the character and JamCon theme, and I think this JamCon was the onus for a Tumble set ever getting made in the first place. I love this weird Toad-like creature, did you come to it because you already had ideas for Tumble or just saw Chance Time and was like "wait, why not just do a Mario Party set?". Anyway, I love the toolbox playstyle and how you can use coins and stars to your advantage. Increasing weight is an idea that wouldn't have occurred to me but makes sense. The set oozes Mario Party, and feels like a good representative of the franchise. The dice block hopping was one of my favorite parts of the set, I'm really sold on the idea and how you mix it up with the various mushrooms and of course the super cool Bowser Suit. The moves are very proppy, yes, but I don't see that as a bad thing, it's more of a representation of Mario Party 3 (I assume just 3) as a whole. This helped you get direction for the moveset in a short time and feels very sporadic and fun. Reminds me a lot of what I had ideas for Fall Guys, so obviously I'm down with it. I really like little details like having the screen effects be N64-styled specifically to sell the MP3 angle. Grab guy is also pretty galaxy brain of a choice, but like you said is pretty perfect for the set. I do wish it didn't end so abruptly but that's just JamCon. Overall the set was pretty enjoyable and a great note for my JamCon reading to end on.
Nominating Cookie Scouts by bubbyboytoo for the JamCon winner! Competition was really stiff after that though, and I liked all of the sets. Nice job everyone, thanks for participating.
Shin GodzillaGolisoPower
You have to do a lot of unconventional things to make Godzilla work in Smash, and I commend you for taking it on. The set captures the essence of Godzilla perfectly, The set reminds me of MasterWarlord's Valozarg (way back in the day) in many ways, but because you do things in a much different manner, it highlights your own strengths and quirks as a setmaker. I really liked the inspiration for many of the moves, even the unconventional ones - Grab shouldn't work as well as it does, but you do a great job implementing it. The set really makes you feel like Godzilla. There's a lot of bombastic huge hitboxes and you maintain the facade of balance pretty well with their polarizing upsides and downsides. I'm not sold that Godzilla wouldn't be totally OP, but I can take that it would with the slowness of the character and the huge hurtbox plus limited movement tools. There is quite a bit I wasn't satisfied with though. Not being able to jump gives you a unique opportunity to use the jump button for Godzilla-unique moves or inputs, -and you do avoid the pitfall of just avoiding giving Godzilla aerials out of convenience - so having a useless button as Godzilla feels like a missed opportunity. I feel like the set could go for some attacks you can do on the ground with the shorthop input. Second, I think the idea of third party military attacking Godzilla during the match is cool, but not in the context of Godzilla doing the attacks itself. The idea of doing regular attacks during your Smashes is awesome, but Godzilla initiating the military attacking it as an attack against the foe is in the same territory as accidental attacks which are pretty taboo. I think you could fix this issue by giving Godzilla bonuses by attacking during the Smashes that results in it knocking the helicopters or whatever down as hitboxes that can hit the foe rather than only the explosions the hitboxes.(edited)
This way, it's the sort of collateral damage you see in these movies: helicopters getting knocked out of the sky and smashing into buildings or people on the ground, tanks getting kicked out of the way and slamming into other vehicles, and so on. I'd rather a knocked away missile or helicopter being the hitbox against a foe rather than the helicopter's missile exploding on Godzilla being the hitbox against the foe because the methodology behind it is Godzilla wants the military to attack it so it can run the explosion into the foe, if you see what I mean. It also implies that either the military considers the other fighters as monsters that must be taken out too (so why aren't they turning on them?) or they consider them as civilian bystanders and don't care they're firing too close to them. My last major issue is with the frame data in the move endings. You have the startup frames as way more than the FAF, which doesn't make much sense unless I'm just reading them wrong - a move with a FAF of 12 can't have startup lag of 59 frames. Or are you implying there are 12 active frames in the move, rather than the normal 2/3 frames hitboxes usually have? That would be nice to clarify. Finally, while not a major issue, the humor in the set is a little disconnected from the tragic tone of the character. You have a really bombastic personality but it's a little jarring to see memes and stuff like "Move *****!" next to Godzilla tragically vomiting blood. Not asking you to change it or tone it down, just thought it took me out of the set a little. Might not do that for everyone else though, and I'm definitely not asking you to temper your enthusiam for your characters!
I'm not totally negative on the set though. It's mixed, but I did enjoy reading it. You really love the character and we could definitely tell, I do like all the media you included with the set to help reading. The extras were indicative of it too, and I like the little touches, like the changelog being "evolutions" to match the character. Nice job Goliso, and I appreciate the risks and experimental approach you took in the set!
Dragging myself away from Ghost of Tsushima (AKA my controller died and needs to charge) in order to take care of some JamCon comments! Definitely not last minute or anything, and definitely not because I've been playing too many games!
What a glorious ******* and a character I'm so glad got a set. Benny's one of my favorite parts of New Vegas, even if I don't fully understand why, and this set does a great job at encapsulating his personality and how much he really does versus how much he pushes onto others with Yes Man. I've also attempted a New Vegas NPC + Robot duo set before but never finished, so it's nice to see one in completion. Well, more or less completion. I actually don't find myself minding the lack of damage or concrete numbers that much on readthrough, helping streamline the set a bit and keeping the set manageable for a four-day time limit. While Benny seems pretty consistently described as a four-in-one set, he actually feels very similar to puppet fighters from traditional fighting games, or at least Guilty Gear / BlazBlue ones. The four variations of attacks don't really break apart into four different movesets, instead providing Benny with a flow that allows him to pick and choose options at the cost of both choice paralysis and becoming pretty pitiful when he's left alone.
Even with how plainly most inputs are described, this moveset is just cool. First, it screams Fallout with really well-written lines for both Benny and Yes Man, fun references to story and mechanics such as the headshot gimmick that everyone's already mentioned or VATS on a Smash, and the idea of describing all the move data using the SPECIAL system is really cool (Now you just gotta fill them out!) Aerials are one of my favorite areas conceptually for the set due to Yes Man frequently having a different altitude from Benny when he performs his attacks. Even when not explicitly outlined, there's clear thought as to how the different moves and their different variations connect to each other. A stand-out example is FAir's ability to cancel into NSpec or a landing Forward or Down Smash. Another move I'm fond of as someone who loves nontraditional counters is the Platinum Chip. Conceptually really strong, the only complaint I have about it is I don't think the luck-stacking effect gets nearly enough mileage in Benny's set outside of specific matchups. This isn't a huge gripe, either, since it also serves as a decent counter and isn't just a dead input for certain matches.
As much as I applaud this effort and thoroughly enjoyed the set, I'm wavering on whether the three Yes Man variations for every attack are worth having or if a single Yes Man input per attack would have strengthened the set through more singular focus. Some areas the three variations feel unnecessary, many of the standards I would even say. But then there are instances such as the Smashes or DAir where I actually am very glad there's so many variations. It's a conundrum that's a symptom of having a set with this complexity, and ultimately I'm glad this route was taken I think. Still, this is a great way to kick off my reading for the JamCon and a great way to incorporate Benny (and Fallout) into Smash, excellent work!
I know I was warned about Fate's story when I mentioned needing to learn about it to understand this MYM, but I am thoroughly baffled by the introduction to Jinako. Not that really has to do with the set itself, but those sure are Some Words being used in Sentences! Also confusing to keep misreading modaka as Madoka but that's entirely on me. I do have to agree with the comments before me that have mentioned this is impressively 'finished', as the time crunch has definitely shortened a lot of my plans for both Lyn and Tumble. Being able to present a moveset that doesn't look as rushed is a nice skill. I also find Jinako an all-around better realized set than Red from the last JamCon (helping that she actually has Tilts!) and I think you've continued the trend everyone has of refining the approach to JamCon from last time.
The idea of having a summonable suit of armor that can be turned into a barrier/disjointed or sustained hitbox is pretty neat. There's a lot of incentive to switch somewhat regularly for placement and defensive options, or to activate an almighty Severed Tusk. Limiting this defensive form to only Specials helps streamline the set and make it more realizable within the time limit, and the nature of the Statue keeps it from feeling like wasted potential through this limiting. The gameplan of comboing opponents between essentially two heavyweights is appealing. As basically everyone else has said, though, the Statue's lifespan and recovery is pretty underpowered, I would both increasing the health and decreasing the recharge time after destruction, maybe 45% and 15 seconds? Miiiiiight even be able to get away with 10 seconds.
There's a major area I'm worried about with Jinako and that's her gimping power. She doesn't have a ton of wind/water hitboxes on her set, but the ones she does are VERY powerful. The big fears here are both the Statue's Side Special and Jinako's own Up Special. These hitboxes are some of the most powerful in Smash Bros. and tend to be pretty restricted in actually appearing in movesets. Mario and Squirtle's water streams both require a charge time (which admittedly isn't that hard to prepare) and don't push opponents downward. Despite that, these are some of their strongest tools (at least I assume from experience), and limiting the Statue's range on the water blast and/or preventing that downward push would help keep this from being entirely oppressive. I did realize I misread Up Special as I thought it created a downward windbox which would be frankly disgusting, and throwing in a quick specification on the wind lifting foes upwards would not be a bad idea. Obviously I think windboxes can be utilized responsibly given how many my last JamCon set had as a unique way of launching opponents into an aerial game.
Jinako doesn't fall apart through the set, either. Her attack effects and animations both stay interesting through each input section which makes an easy read also entertaining with plenty of character. Though not extravagantly long, the melee in the standards and beyond works well and moves have clear roles while still being their own thing. I do think some of the descriptions of combos can be a little odd, especially with some of the moves described as slow (like FSmash) being discussed as a combo ender. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't, I'm not qualified to say, but it is enough where it raises some flags. All said, this was a definite improvement over both your MYM23 output and your last JamCon set with Red, even if I did have a fair bit to say about it. Good work!
For a quick synopsis of my feelings on this set, I think this nails what a JamCon set should be in every way. The Cookie Scouts adds to our frankly concerning number of Cookie Clicker sets in the perfect set choice for both JamCon and FA Day. Cookie Scouts is concise but complete, no moves feeling rushed and tying into the moveset well. There are definitely short inputs, look at the throws for a quick example, but there's a clear game knowledge that allows the moves to work within the smaller wordage. The moveset is ultimately how I envisioned Tumble working with regards to weighted random items, but the Cookie Scouts handle it in a both more concise and a more balanced manner that I envy.
Honestly, the real star of the show here is the actual writing. It takes good game knowledge and deliberate narrative skill to make short moves like this still feel fully vested in the playstyle. That's on top of managing to capture the eldritch hubris of Cookie Clicker and giving some personality to these I guess non-characters? The actual mechanics are great, too, with just enough playground to feel like a Cookie Clicker set but keeping it focused so the set feels fully functional (again, I compare this to my own JamCon set which is definitely a logistic disaster). I love the base idea of the Scouts corrupting themselves in the endless mission of more cookies, and having a simple way to undo the mechanic helps streamline the set and allow for a lot of flexibility in how they play. My favorite of all the moves is definitely the Golden / Wrath Cookie. I tried something similar with Tumble's Item Box but this does it way better, both being simpler and having a better variety of effects, with the cookie of choice having a much stronger method of manipulation.
Unfortunately I'm a little burnt out right now, so just touching on the main area I could see improvement; a little more written out. I've already mentioned that this set manages to stand out despite the later inputs petering off in terms of word count, but with a good set it's natural to want a little more (unless it's a dragonmaid). The actual gameplay is good as described, but giving some more pizzazz to the animations on the attacks would help cement the Scouts character-wise and just be a little more meat for the eyes. Still, had this been posted outside a JamCon I would never have realized it was made in a time limit because the set just feels that deliberate. Excellent work with meeting and exceeding the expectations of this JamCon, bubby!
Like the Cookie Scouts before it, Honchkrow is a set you could have presented me blind and I would not have thought it was made in four days. This is a whole set, complete with its own neat tricks that are always fun to see in a set. Fun fact, opening the Super Luck Bulbapedia page was the first thing I did for the JamCon and I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one with that mindset. Super Luck is a pretty straightforward but clever mechanic that only gets as much mileage as the rest of the set provides, and thankfully mastering Super Luck is well worth it with how many sweetspots fill the mafioso's moveset. Combine this with certain moves leading into Super Luck only with Salac Berry's effect and the mechanic starts to become very cool and a great interpretation of the ability.
The ability to command a small army of Murkrows to annoy your opponent is great, though I would say as one off-the-cuff suggestion it would be a cool touch if the 'projectile' Murkrow were able to steal a foe's held item when they hit and return to Honchkrow. Not something that hurts the set to not have but fits in well for both Pokemon and would be an easy thing to tack on. The summonable haze completes the criminal mastermind playstyle of the set, allowing Honchkrow to conceal his commands while also protecting his meek soldiers from harm. It's a well executed interpretation of an obscuring fog that doesn't ruin the battle. The nervous Murkrow and angry Honchkrow mechanic is a somewhat goofy but very fun way of including Moxie and fits both Pokemon well.
Fittingly, Honchkrow is at his strongest while in the air, featuring both plenty of hitboxes and a lot of mobility. Despite the air superiority, the grounded moves aren't just phoned in weak hits, instead being moves that struggle to see as much general use. The fact that Berry Canceling works better for grounded attacks is neat as well, Honchkrow more inclined to use his brains than brawn when fighting out of his element. This is a set that knew exactly how much it could get out of both four days of writing and the character it was for and made a tight set with very little to comment on. The gameplay is fun to imagine with some great interpretations of the Pokemon and their moves, and the set oozes with personality, especially impressive for both the time limit and Honchkrow essentially just being an animal. There was clear thought about the weaknesses of the set and how to keep them from being crippling, an understandable approach from a Mac main. Really excellent work with this one!
After all is said and done, my August JamCon nomination goes to...
Honchkrow, by UUserShadow7989
! Now hopefully I don't wake up with a Rapidash head next to me.
Cookie Scouts by bubbyboytoo - 3 (GolisoPower, UserShadow7989, Kholdstare) Honchkrow by UserShadow7989 - 2 (ForwardArrow, Slavic) Tumble by Slavic - 1 (Katapultar)
Congratulations to bubbyboytoo for winning our second JamCon, an excellently close affair! We eagerly await what theme he shall pick for the next week.[/b]
"My wife is seven months pregnant with a baby we didn't intend. My fifteen-year old son has cerebral palsy. I am an extremely overqualified high school chemistry teacher. When I can work, I make $43,700 per year. I have watched all of my colleagues and friends surpass me in every way imaginable. And within eighteen months, I will be dead. And you ask why I ran?"
The high school chemistry teacher-turned-methamphetamine kingpin whose descent into moral depravity kept audiences spellbound over the five-season run of Breaking Bad, Walter White stands out among television's class of modern anti-heroes. Far from a vessel for fleeting escapism, Walt positions viewers to question, and for better or worse rationalize along with his increasingly indefensible choices, navigating Albuquerque's criminal underworld after a terminal lung cancer diagnosis. Circumstances see Walt's Nobel-caliber chemistry wisdom married with the street smarts of ex-student and delinquent Jesse Pinkman, an odd partnership quickly and repeatedly destined to land itself in tight corners.
With guns to his head, figurative and literal, Walt develops a knack for saving himself with spur-of-the-moment gambits and inventions, courtesy of dark alter ego Heisenberg. Over time, or perhaps no time at all, Walt drifts further away from his purported original meth-making goal, leaving behind a nest egg for his family, and toward making a personal splash in a world he believes never gave him a fair shake. Fans still debate whether that's actually true, or if Walt only ever had himself to blame for his own resentments, and cancer simply was Heisenberg's golden opportunity to awaken after 50 years of dormancy.
This is the moment Heisenberg becomes a moveset. Spoilers ahead!
STatistics
Fall Speed^v^v^8.5 / 1.86 units(8th, between Captain Falcon and Simon) Size^v^v^7.5 Weight^v^v^6 / 100 units(30th, tied with Cloud and Mii Swordfighter) Aerial Movement^v^v^3.5 / 0.987 units(57th, tied with Snake and Villager) Jumps^v^v^1.5(comparable to Snake) Ground Movement^v^v^1 / 1.4 units(81st, between Zelda and Dr. Mario)
At a glance, Heisenberg's battlefield stature most closely resembles Snake, who in canon actually matches Walt's weight of 165 pounds and is a hair taller, at 6 feet versus 5'11". Side by side, however, Walt is a touch lighter and presents a marginally smaller target than the legendary mercenary, not carrying around as extensive an assortment of weaponry or man-spreading in his idle stance. Naturally, the middle-aged science guy won't be physically keeping pace with most of the cast, aside from the speed of his (in this context literal) fall — he's fortunate to not be succumbing to cancer in real time, as contemplated in my 2014 concepts. Rather, Walt will find himself leaning on ranged, lingering or area-of-effect attacks, stemming from chemical reactions and constructs that, as in his series, transform him into a chaos agent, capable of toppling opponents with significantly more established power.
Heisenberg's idle animations see him adjust his glasses or check his watch, as though ensuring his cook still is on schedule. Every now and then, he'll also whip out a burner flip phone and engage in a brief conversation with another character from the Breaking Bad universe before snapping the phone in two and discarding the pieces. Walt will call the different characters at random, not repeating the same conversations during a match unless left stationary for a significant timeframe. Here are some example snippets players might hear, cheerfully devoid of any firm indicator as to just how far along this Walt has progressed in his series' timeline.
"Jesse, it's me...wanna cook?"
"Jesse, what the hell are you talking about?"
listens to Jesse's voicemail "Yo yo yo! 148, 3 to the 3 to the 6 to the 9, representin' the ABQ, what up, biatch?! Leave it at the tone!"
"Skyler, I, uh...just called to say that I'm sorry, but I'm going to be late tonight. It's Bogdan, he's got a bug up his butt about the receipts."
"Hank, that laundry...sounds like a real shot in the dark there. It just sounds kind of thin."
"Saul...no, Saul, -Saul-! Shut up, listen to me!"
"Mike, whatever differences you and I have, they'll keep. Right now, we have bigger fish to fry."
"Ted! I just want to talk!"
"Todd...I think I might have another job for your uncle."
"Lydia...how are you feeling? Kind of under the weather? Like you've got the flu?"
Walt's default appearance is in his brown jacket, button-up shirt and black pork pie hat — the patented Heisenberg get-up. Also among his alternate costumes are his pilot episode attire, devoid of clothing except for a green apron and tighty whities; a yellow hazmat suit, fresh from the Superlab; and his finale appearance, with a tan jacket, green shirt, an unshaven mug and full head of hair.
Unless otherwise stated, KO percentages are on Mario from the middle of Final Destination.
MECHANIC - EMPIRE BUSINESS
Next to Heisenberg's HUD icon, players will notice a distinct icon upon starting a match: a small meth baggie, filled with his 99.1% pure Blue Sky product, overlapping with a green $10k figure. That sum represents Walt's life savings, a figure he's desperate to grow for his family's sake and, in Smash, his own. Walt has no shortage of summons and weapons he's able to cobble together in the heat of battle, but the downtrodden high school teacher can't casually acquire these tools for free.
Walt's Specials and a handful of standards will deplete his cash reserves to varying degrees, lowering the figure over his meth baggie by the corresponding amount. Should the player attempt to use an attack that costs more than Walt can afford, he'll undergo a brief no-sell animation, rifling through his pockets and muttering, "Where's the rest?" As these pay-to-play moves generally stand out as bread-and-butter multi-use or KO options within Walt's set, he'll need to keep a careful eye on exactly how fat he's stackin' benjis at any given time. Thankfully, a very particular set of skills empowers Walt to provide — funds for players to turn the battlefield into a Heisenbergian hellscape for foes, that is.
SpeCials
NEUTRAL SPECIAL - CRYSTAL COOK With minimal startup, Heisenberg dons a gas mask and begins cooking this moveset's obligatory meth. In a cartoony Smash manifestation of Breaking Bad's various meth-making montages, Walt rapidly cycles through a miniature assortment of glass lab equipment, pots, pipettes, dripping tubes and what have you, with pieces manifesting in and out of his hands in tendrils of green smoke that evoke his series' title sequence.
As Walt uses these tools to mix together differently colored chemicals and powders, he's able to strafe back and forth at a slow pace, devoid of any hitboxes but able to cancel out at any point with a different movement, offensive or defensive option. Walt's lab apparatus becomes larger and more elaborate, the longer he cooks in one fell swoop — up to Bowser-sized metal tanks and filtration systems appearing and disappearing non-tangibly in the background, into which Walt pours full-blown chemical jugs as he nears his 2.9-second, or 175-frame maximum cook time.
As Heisenberg cooks, the dollar figure abutting his meth baggie icon begins to climb — a representation of his crystal's street value, realized via offscreen (and apparently instantaneous!) distribution he has arranged so he can buy his various trappings. Walt makes financial gains at a set interval, in amounts that climb at an exponential rate the longer he cooks without stopping, churning out progressively larger quantities of meth in bulk. After 35 and 70 frames, Walt earns respective $1k and $2k sums — amounts that rise to $10k on frame 105; $25k on frame 140; and $50k on frame 175.
Given the game's frenetic pace, Walt is likely to find himself building up his stash gradually, in dribs and drabs when he can find openings, and as needed to stay solvent during combat. Left entirely uninterrupted, Walt can produce a cumulative $88k worth of meth in one fell swoop, and carry a maximum of $100k at a time. Once Walt passes $50k, the meth baggie in his HUD becomes a larger clear sack and, upward of $75k, upgrades into a transparent tote box, both filled to the brim with his prized product.
While Walt is free to fundraise to his heart's content, he's got one critical consideration to heed as he earns his keep. As one might expect, much of Walt's attack repertoire sees him bring out no shortage of liquids, powders, gases and other such compounds, most of them generic because that's what happens when the extent of your chemistry knowledge comes from watching Breaking Bad. Unfortunately, these chemicals just so happen to have a detrimental impact on the purity of Walt's crystal, the precise nature of which I'll leave to your imagination so I don't get watchlisted for Googling the ins and outs of meth-making too extensively.
Anyhow, if Walt lands the same chemical attack twice among the most recent seven moves of his stale-move list, the meth in his HUD's baggie, sack or box will turn pale gray, instead of blue, as the icon's dollar amount drops by 25% — affecting both its immediate figure and the funds added via subsequent cooking. A third repeated attack, or two separate attacks repeated twice within that seven-move list, turns the displayed meth a dull shade of brown, decreasing the value of Walt's current and earned funds by 50%. In both reduction scenarios, the dollar figures will round up to the nearest multiple of $500 as needed ($75k, reduced by 25% to $18,750, rounds to $19k, for instance).
And a fourth repeated attack, two distinct attacks repeated thrice or three attacks repeated twice within Walt's last seven moves, triggers an 'X' overtop his meth icon. When this occurs, Walt loses the entirety of the money he has accrued, pausing to melodramatically grasp his head and growl, "Jesus!" The player is left to interpret whether this outcome has resulted from the crystal actually losing its value or simple ego-driven refusal on Heisenberg's part to put out an inferior product, or perhaps both — the chemistry -must- be respected! Who better to understand that than a moveset-writing community whose members spend hours fussing around in Smash Bros.' training mode, on the off chance any other members find KO percents for comparable moves germane down to the last percentage point?
Heisenberg has no recourse upon losing the entirety of his earnings, other than JMM — just make money. Thankfully, however, he can restore the full value of partially tarnished drug money by refreshing his stale moves, such that the offending chemical attacks causing the 25% or 50% reduction leave his most recent seven slots. As with the rest of Smash's cast, Walt's attacks stale upon striking a foe or their shield, but not on whiff, a distinction players must monitor as they safeguard his meth's purity. Of particular note here is Heisenberg's collection of lasting external hitboxes, which have the potential to nick foes right as their active frames are about to expire — or for daring foes to nick them to put a tighter squeeze on Walt.
The inherent relevance Walt's chemical attacks have to his central mechanic means players must take a calculated approach in using them, including some that, on most other characters, could be tempting to mash or spam. This could be considered an inversion of the traditional ammo bank mechanic: while Walt doesn't directly spend money to use most of his regular moves, he bears a different kind of cost when a failure to diversify his attack patterns tanks his meth purity, and therefore, his purchasing power for some pretty crucial staple tools.
Of course, Walt, too, might well come across circumstances where he can reap benefits from repeating moves, despite the hit to his finances. That is, so long as he avoids opponents backing him into a corner, such that his only way out is a move that pushes his product past its impurity threshold, leaving him with a crazy handful of nothin'. By pressing both L + R simultaneously, players can observe a miniature menu of Walt's seven most recent stale moves. Two rows of smoky-green boxes — four up top, three down below — above his head depict silhouettes of those attacks, with any duplicates flashing progressively redder as they increase in count.
Closing out with some miscellaneous notes, Walt's Neutral Special only works while he's on solid ground, not permitting him to cook meth in midair. As noted in his mechanic, Walt starts each match with $10k. And upon getting KOed, he loses half of the money he accrued to that point — not a pleasant penalty, albeit one that doesn't leave him to fully rebuild from the ground up. Stock losses will stop drawing Walt's funds down after they dwindle to $500 as the figure's lowest possible multiple, though he personally can reduce his savings all the way to $0 via aggressive spending. No better time to restart the cook!
DOWN SPECIAL - INVENTORY Heisenberg extracts a clipboard and enters a stance, rifling through its papers, as a trio of green smoky thought bubbles appears in an arc above his head, each depicting its own device. In a manner similar to Shulk's Monado Arts, the player can make a selection by releasing the input after they've pointed the control stock toward one of the devices. As each device is highlighted, the dollar amount in Walt's HUD will alternatively flash with a cost figure, colored red and prefaced with a minus sign to convey the item's price.
In any case, once the player chooses, Walt then turns his back to the screen and fiddles to affix the chosen item to the ground, as fast as Snake can plant a C4. There, the object becomes an interactable construct, albeit a pass-through one that won't inhibit player movements. Make a Down Special selection in midair, and Walt will drop the chosen device beneath him — though the objects sport 3% flinching hitboxes as they fall, their summoning method renders this unwieldy for anything resembling a typical Z-drop combo. And in either case, if the player releases the input without making a selection or shields, Walt will exit his clipboard stance without making a purchase.
Once Heisenberg has at least one device onstage, he unlocks a means of controlling them by way of Shield Special. Here, Walt puts a hand to his chin, taking on a pensive expression as additional smoke bubbles appear above his head. Though he chooses among these identically to Down Special, these now show the objects he previously has planted onstage. Each bubble shows a zoomed-in snapshot of the object at its current position — on a platform, at a ledge and so on — potentially changing in the moment, if the item is moved during Walt's selection, or vanishing, if it is destroyed before he can choose it. Once Walt has determined which device he's going to control, out of a possible maximum of five, his Down Special changes in different ways allowing him to do so. A clipboard icon sits underneath the various device bubbles, in case Walt wishes to return to purchasing items instead of controlling them.
At a high level, once the player acclimates themselves with the different device control schemes and switching among them, Walt becomes capable of orchestrating some truly impressive Rube Goldberg set-ups. Each of the three available objects boast effects that Walt can arrange to have linger while he moves around and attacks, potentially influencing them further by way of his various chemicals. The big ticket to ride here is, obviously, proper management of each device as match circumstances change, handling the right items at the right time to bring about the desired results. And beyond that difficulty curve, Walt must be on solid ground to use Shield Special. That foes can block him from switching to control his desired devices with as little as one successful breakthrough, no matter how deviously he's set them up, renders him a bit of a glass cannon.
Onward, to the different devices Heisenberg can leverage, if the price is right:
Device #1 - Magnet
YEAH, BITCH! MAGNETS, OHHH!! Ahem... Walt sets a circular black magnet, connected to a series of wires and small boxes, at his feet for a reasonable $2k sum. The magnet system cobbled together at Old Joe's junkyard extends a touch into the foreground and background, its interactable onstage portion one training stage square wide and about a third as tall. The contraption isn't all that durable, with 20 HP before its circuit presumably is broken. However, the magnets' relatively low profile means foes generally will need precision, rather than mindless whaling, in destroying them.
In controlling a magnet system with Down Special, Walt holds a small remote-esque device sporting a circular dial. An initial Special input has him stop in place as a translucent blue sphere surrounds him, signaling the ensuing magnetic effect's area of influence, with a repeat input triggering it for an additional $1k. By default, the system's dimensions reach three squares to either side and one square above him (and one below, if he happens to trigger the stance while falling).
As Walt fiddles with his remote, the player also can tap the control stick up twice more to increase this sphere's radius up to two additional levels — to six squares in both directions and two squares of height for $2k, and a nine-square radius and three-square height for $3k. Tilting the stick back down while Walt's fiddling has him reduce this range back down, and defensive inputs cancel the stance.
Once set off, magnets exert a light inward pull on all opponents in their reach, comparable to what one might experience from a weak wind effect on the ground and in midair. Though not significantly, weight and speed factor into how much pull a magnet exerts on individual characters on the ground or in the air, as well as when stationary or actively moving opposite it. While the systems have the potential to affect foes across most, if not all of your standard legal stages once set up and funded, the magnetism only lasts up to three seconds per use — Walt can stop their pull prematurely with another Down Special input.
With smart timing, Walt can suddenly set off magnets to try dragging an opponent into a different damaging trap, or perhaps to put them in punishment range or offstage or in the middle of a committal attack or animation. Spamming magnetism, however, tends to be a no-go; opponents can find openings to interrupt Walt as he's upping their distance, and without too strong a melee game to write home about, he might not always want to draw them in in the first place.
Beyond just affecting opponents, magnets exert pull on external character summons and constructs, including Walt's own (the exception being any other magnet systems he has acquired). Other Heisenbergian devices are pulled at a pace of two training stage squares per second, taking the most direct path to reach the magnets as a central point — a grounded object on the same level will travel horizontally, for instance, while one on a higher platform might be pulled downward through the air.
Magnets can bring Walt's devices up or down through drop-through platforms, though — much like their in-universe counterparts — will only pull objects up against solid stage sections or walls, after which they clatter uselessly to the ground. Walt generally will not want to completely pull objects in until they reach his magnets, lest they become concentrated at a point where foes can destroy several devices in one fell swoop. Rather, by starting and stopping well-positioned magnets, Walt can reposition items he has laid out elsewhere onstage, should he deem a different location optimal later on.
At more advanced levels of play, Walt can position and quickly trigger two magnets — as much as he'll have time to switch between and set off, given their short timers — to exert different onstage pulls for a short period! Should he overlap two separate areas of influence, characters and constructs in that section are drawn inward to the overlap's center, rather than to either of the two magnets. The precise location of this section, of course, depends on the magnets' degree of overlap based on their placement.
In any case, while grounded characters keep both feet onstage, closeby devices can be made to hover between two magnets as momentary aerial traps — potentially one Walt can bring into being on relatively short notice with enemies in range. In defiance of physics, these levitated objects will remain airborne for seven extra seconds even after Walt's magnets expire or one is destroyed, flickering slightly with blue magnetism before falling to prolong the trap for his efforts to bring it into being. It takes practice, and money, to pull off, but given the potency Heisenberg's upcoming objects can have even just in a standalone capacity, lifting one or more into a foe's face the right context might well be the recipe for also elevating his legend to new heights.
Device #2 - M60 Machine Gun
Heisenberg grabs a cold black M60 machine gun, the military-grade sort of firearm one might see mounted on an armored vehicle, or on the down-low, in the back of Lawson's car outside of Denny's. In any case, Walt here plants it upright on the ground atop a mechanical base for $3k. Ever so slightly larger than a Super Scope, the machine gun sports 25 HP and, at first, faces the same direction as Walt at the time he brought it out.
With this Down Special variant, the player is free to drag the control stick around while holding the input, prompting Walt to click a set of car keys and angle the gun from its default horizontal trajectory to point most any direction, outside of directly up or down. Release the input, and the mechanical base will activate the gun, which rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat fires a constant stream of bullets five training stage squares in a torrent about as thick as Ivysaur's bullet seed. Similarly, Walt's bullets pelt opponents one after the other, inflicting multiple rapid hits of 2% that gradually push them to the stream's end. There, however, foes suffer a single stronger hit of 4% and knockback capable of KOing around 120%.
Triggering Walt's machine gun regularly will have it shoot five bullets over a full second, after which the weapon undergoes a 90-frame cooldown. The player then can repeat Down Special to re-angle its trajectory before firing again. While the gun is actively firing, the player also can repeat the input to have the gun keep firing in the same direction for up to two additional seconds, at a rate of $500 per half-second.
Given their directional versatility, prolonged bullets have the potential to needle opponents in a number of contexts — horizontal shots can hold foes in shield, diagonal downward bullets can ricochet off the stage to intercept shorthops and higher angles can snag foes dropping down from above. Be warned, however, Walt will take half-damage, albeit no stun, from being in the line of fire. He can sit amid the bullets to attack foes caught in their hits, or to grab and hold them in place, but not fully without consequence.
Any magnets Walt has triggered before firing his machine gun also can influence their direction. Once bullets enter an active magnetic field, they'll curve inward toward the central system, effectively re-shaping their trajectory into a 'j.' Walt has options as to whether he seeks to shoot a curving bullet stream from jump, shooting the gun with a magnet already on, or throw foes off by suddenly activating a magnet once bullets already are flying, and his opponent potentially has committed to a defensive maneuver in dodging them.
From a mechanical standpoint, bullets fired into the zone where two active magnets overlap won't split the stream hitbox but rather are directed at the magnet closest in direction (if not physical distance) to where the machine gun is pointed. A bullet stream will remain curved in a magnet's direction even if its magnetic field become inactive before the full round is fired, opening the door for difficult, yet artful setups where a single bullet stream is curved several times as multiple magnets are started and stopped.
And Walt is fully capable of levitating an inactive gun into midair with overlapping magnetism, upon which he temporarily gains the ability to aim its bullets directly up or down, not to mention access to a new aerial vantage point for sniping. Naturally, aiming or bending bullet streams will determine where their strong final launching hitbox materializes, sometimes letting Walt land earlier KOs shooting at targets closer to the screentop or recovering.
Device #3 - ANFO Bomb
Heisenberg's third, final and most costly inventory item sees him whip out a homemade ammonium nitrate-fuel oil (ANFO) pipe bomb for $4k. Without a cartel boss' wheelchair in the immediate vicinity, he simply places the crouching Squirtle-sized explosive on the ground. By default, Walt's pipe bombs pack 30 HP a pop, a figure he can manipulate to his liking with Down Special.
Here, the input puts him in a stance, holding up a walkie-talkie in one hand to influence his bomb's durability. Tap up or down on the control stick at this time and Walt will mash the walkie-talkie, producing a cellular blip noise and respectively adding or subtracting 5 HP from his creation over 20 frames — both for $500 a pop, up to a 60 HP maximum. Once a bomb hits 10 HP or less, it will begin flashing an ominous red, and, upon reaching 0 HP, will detonate after a split-second pause, akin to a triggered Bomber item. The ensuing blast is marginally smaller, and a touch stronger than Hero's Kaboom, inflicting 29%, 15% in extra shield damage and vertical knockback KOing around 60%. Similarly to Steve's TNT, Walt is fully vulnerable to his own bombs but thankfully has a 0.5x knockback multiplier in place, such that, if he and a foe both are launched simultaneously, he's got a leg up on survival odds.
Compared to Walt's previous two constructs, his grounded bombs can be knocked around by enemy attacks or his own, with each taking knockback akin to Wario at 20%. Given this launch and staggered explosions, foes without disjointed or projectile attacks still can dispose of the constructs, though doing so still might prove harrowing, depending on any adjustments Walt has made to its durability. As a natural rule, stronger attacks that will launch bombs farther also are more likely to inflict more damage, bringing the trap that much closer to detonation. And, as with comparable in-Smash explosives, pipe bombs are especially susceptible to flame-based attacks, of which Walt has several. Rather than immediately detonating Walt's bombs, however, fiery moves inflict damage with a 1.33x multiplier, still posing a threat in close quarters with the constructs without always immediately removing them from the picture.
Where, precisely, Walt's bombs go off has relevance if he wants to go for broke and set up a chain reaction of multiple explosives at once. One bomb that detonates close enough to another that has had its HP reduced at all will launch it outward, triggered to blow up a half-second later, and so on. At the upper extremities of big-brain play, Walt can have multiple deathly blasts march forward across the stage to terrorize victims, who, depending on their percentage and bomb placement, could even find themselves caught in two successive blasts for a probable kill. These sorts of set-ups can, of course, be undone by launching just one explosive out of line, so Walt often will have to be the one who knocks...bombs into just the right place for the chain to function.
In terms of device interactivity, drawing a bomb in toward a magnet a foe is attacking can be a quick way to get them to back off, lest they mistakenly self-destruct. Walt also might enjoy suddenly activating a magnet to draw both a mid-attack foe and a bomb inward, such that the former triggers the latter. And bombs naturally make for an ideal object to position as an aerial trap by way of two magnets. Depending on placement, levitated explosives can deter shorthops and landings, and generally make navigating the stage around Walt all the more treacherous — especially when he can fire or curve bullets into bombs without knocking them away, keeping a foe in the stream long enough to combo the machine gun's pelting hits into one big finisher.
SIDE SPECIAL - CAR FU With how often the Breaking Bad universe emphasizes cars as keys for characterization, not to mention Heisenberg's cover as a car wash owner, it's only fitting he brings a few rides of his own into Smash. Hold Side Special, and Walt will sit in place, as though behind the wheel, as a green holographic outline of a car appears around him. Releasing the input then prompts the vehicle to suddenly materialize around him, with a universal 15 frames of startup as Walt floors it forward across the stage. Keeping the input held constitutes a charge, through which Walt cycles through progressively more impressive — and expensive — car models. There are three possible selections, each with its cost flashing over his HUD, akin to Down Special objects, and only appearing in the cycle if Walt has the necessary funds.
Though the specifics differ from model to model, all of Walt's cars share several properties, and can be used in several similar respects. After Walt chooses a car, he'll drive it forward at a certain default speed, which the player can speed up and slow down with the control stick, much the same as Wario's bike; as an additional wrinkle, light stick presses in the opposite direction has Walt back his car up in reverse, while a harder press has him pause momentarily to swerve the car around. Car fronts and rears have ramming hitboxes, the force of which varies based on the vehicle's speed. Grounded foes run over by a car's front or back tires at point-blank range also are forced into prone; if Walt is driving fast enough, and his foe doesn't react with sufficient haste, he can even reverse back overtop a prone foe to inflict extra damage and launch them!
After a minimum 30-frame commitment driving, a jump or dodge will have Walt stop his car in place as he exits with that action; the player also can buffer an aerial for him to leap out with that attack. Should the car be traveling faster than its default speed in either direction as Walt exits, he'll do so with directional propulsion, automatically reaching his top midair speed. Stand next to a stationary car and press Side Special again for Walt to re-enter it and resume driving. In midair, cars zoom forward a set distance before gradually succumbing to gravity, giving Walt a much-appreciated tool for boosting his horizontal recovery, albeit at the expense of the car likely falling to its doom, unable to be used further onstage.
When not being driven by Walt, cars sit onstage as pass-through constructs, not inhibiting enemy movements but plenty susceptible to attacks (aside from projectiles, which are not obstructed). Each vehicle has a set amount of stamina that, as it's depleted by enemies, will result in the car visually getting scuffed up and eventually destroyed. Most attacks have a rather limited capacity to actually launch cars, which take knockback comparable to metal Bowser. That said, players can target a vehicle's front or back wheels while whittling down HP to pop them past a certain threshold. This cuts the vehicle's speed in half with the destruction of one side of wheels, and removes his ability to run foes over with that side, while popping both tire sets renders Walt unable to drive it again or run over foes, period.
Walt has a degree of defense while driving, being able to muscle through a set amount of damage from most enemy attacks before being forced out in a tumble state. However, all vehicles have a small-ish weak spot at their windshields, which can be shattered with any attack dealing 9% or more to launch Walt; if he returns to a windshield-less car, that same spot offers no protection whatsoever. And independently, particularly lengthy attacks, like Sephiroth D-Air, can penetrate through cars to give their driver a bad day. Walt can have up to two cars of any model onstage at a time, and, whenever one is destroyed or falls offstage, has a seven-second cooldown before he can purchase a replacement.
Cars and magnets: Naturally, Walt's cars are a prime vessel for interactivity with his Down Special objects. One key distinction between car models is their amount of space available for constructs to be mounted atop them. The vehicles have two to four spots to which Walt can affix objects by holding Down Special while standing next to that portion of the car (hood and trunk, then one or two roof spots). If he's affixed a magnet to one car spot, activating it to drag in other Down Special objects also will automatically attach them once they reach the vehicle, in the order of which open spots are closest. If none are, they'll cluster around the magnet without attaching and fall off as the car moves.
Driving around with a car loaded up with constructs can render both the former and latter all the more harrowing for foes to navigate, though Walt generally ought to have a conscious plan in doing so, lest foes take advantage of the proximate hitboxes to destroy the car and constructs in one fell swoop. If a construct-carrying car is destroyed, the objects will fall to the stage below. And, should the player wish to detach an object from a car, they can highlight it with their Shield Special menu and press A + B for it to drop off early.
Though not a real barrier to dodging cars, magnets suddenly activated at just the right time can spell the difference between a foe casually hopping over a vehicle or getting waylaid by its light inward pull just long enough to get rammed. Magnets also can exert a pull on cars themselves, if Walt drives into their active fields or activates a contraption with a vehicle sitting stationary on the same horizontal level. Here, cars automatically accelerate to their top speed as they cruise over to the magnet. Rather than stopping at the magnet, cars will zoom past, slowing to a stop as they travel one to three training stage squares beyond, before suddenly being pulled back in the opposite direction. Walt won't want to arrange this back-and-forth trajectory with just any magnet, as if he's careless, he may find himself helplessly watching his car pulled offstage prematurely.
Placed well, however, Walt's cars can accelerate back and forth several times over a portion of stage, as long as that magnet is active. He also can prolong this trajectory by having a second magnet take over with its pull as the car comes into range. These 'slingshot' setups are the most reliable way for Walt to run and reverse his car back over a victim in quick succession. Whereas regularly, he might have to jab lock them in the tire's path for this to work, a magnetized car's sudden high-speed reversal can get the job done in and of itself, so long as the foe is run over close enough to where the vehicle will snap back. Of note, magnets are Walt's one method for dragging around cars that have lost both sets of tires, though these vehicles don't have any active hitboxes as they're pulled.
With two cars onstage, Walt can crush grounded foes in between the vehicles either with direct driving or indirectly through magnets. This will net him damage and knockback across a broad spectrum, influenced by the cars' models, and therefore speed, plus whether one is stationary or both are moving. At a minimum, foes will take 9% and knockback KOing around 115% from one of Walt's cheapest car models ramming another at its minimum speed. As more of a median hit, foes crushed between a mid-level car model, traveling at its default speed into a counterpart doing the same (de-accelerating past a magnet) take 23% and knockback KOing around 65%.
And, at their power ceiling, two top-model cars smushing a foe at full speed inflict 48% and knockback KOing around 15% — a costly, and challenging set-up to pull off, and yet a highly satisfying one. Standing and shielding also isn't a fantastic option, as each collision inflicts 20% in bonus shield damage, regardless of the aforementioned underlying factors involved. Of note, however, each of Walt's cars involved in these collisions takes 0.5x damage on impact, whether or not a foe is involved. While this can be a tempting way for Walt to get rid of a car already on its last legs, he can't just back up and repeatedly floor one vehicle into another without stamina consequences.
Cars and guns, bombs: Cars' interactions with Walt's other two Down Special constructs are comparatively more simple, yet no less potentially meaningful. Attach a machine gun to Walt's car, and he can spray its fire while driving or pulling that vehicle around. Perhaps more than Walt's other two items, his placement of machine guns across his car's object slots can determine its utility, giving him access to different angles from the vehicle's front, roof or back.
At its most basic level, shooting while driving can fill the air space foes often will enter in evading grounded cars, requiring more precise, and maybe punishable movements to avoid getting clipped by bullets. If Walt's gun is angled down, such that the bullets ricochet off the stage in front of the car, he can advance an angled wall of bullets at his target, perhaps one he can lurk behind in case they dodge through. Naturally, these set-ups become that much harder to escape unscathed if Walt has in-match momentum, such that he can place and activate multiple machine guns on a single car.
If Walt catches a foe amid bullets fired from a car, he can accelerate such that the foe is carried within the stream, ultimately taking the launching hit at a different point. Drive a vehicle underneath one or more active magnetic fields while a machine gun is firing, and aerial foes will have even more of a hell of a time avoiding curving streams, the curve of which fluctuates mid-stream! And, with more subtle, targeted driving motions, Walt can have bullets reduce a pipe bomb's stamina bit by bit, potentially so, once he's finally ready for it to blow, the bullets will carry his victim right into that explosive climax.
Bombs themselves are a tempting object to affix to cars, if only just to inhibit foes from knocking them loosely around the stage. One of Walt's more devious setups involves triggering the explosives by driving a car overtop them. This isn't always an instant-blast option, as the bombs take the lesser damage from the vehicles' tires versus their fronts or backs. Even so, with a sufficiently-low HP bomb nearby, opponents unfortunate enough to not remove themselves in time will see themselves run over, after which their prone behinds are caught in the explosive blast as a true combo.
Walt also can try working bombs in with his car collisions, by strapping an explosive to one or both of the colliding car sides, hood or trunk, sandwiching both a foe and a bomb between two cars or, if you're a human TAS player, both at once. Sufficiently strong collision hitboxes will set off any impacted bombs, subjecting any hapless soul in the middle to both the crash and explosion(s). With multiple bombs or premium car models involved, this can net Walt an instant KO on all but the heaviest foes, a well-earned payoff for the expert planning it will have taken him to get even near that point.
What's more, cars can lead to bombs snagging foes who otherwise might find themselves outside the blast radius. Bombs that explode in contact with a car produce a hitbox 1.5x as large as their default explosion, with the added peripheral range resulting from flaming car shrapnel! Various assorted gears, shards and metal pieces protrude outward from the base explosion, inflicting five rapid hits of 4%, the last of which deals knockback KOing around 95%. While not as potent a KO tool as the bombs themselves, car shrapnel can tack on helpful damage and, situationally, prompt poor defensive maneuvers into the path of an actual bomb in the midst of a chain reaction. As with collisions, of course, Walt's cars aren't left unscathed from getting blown to kingdom come, with a 0.75x multiplier on damage taken from the explosives.
The sky really is the limit in terms of the sorts of arrangements Walt can mastermind combining his various objects and cars. These can be as simple or complex as Walt can manage at any given time. Beginning players might opt to simply keep a lone pipe bomb as a trap while using a car to help Walt more easily, and threateningly, traverse the stage, in a workaround for his otherwise mediocre movement. With mastery of object placement and activation, however, Walt can go for broke with truly memetic KO tactics — some choice examples include driving a magnet-toting car off the ledge such that it pulls in an active machine gun, Leeroy Jenkins style, or dragging a magnetized midair bomb into an enemy by changing the car magnet's proximity to a second magnet elsewhere onstage.
Worth keeping in mind, even when a car's useful life is near its end, don't dismiss the possibility of using its carcass far later on, if foes don't have time to fully destroy it. Walt might not be able to drive a battered-up vehicle, but pulling an affixed machine gun stream around or blasting out well-timed flaming shrapnel might be just the ticket he needs to emerge victorious.
With multiple Heisenbergs in one match, cars have a faint color outline to signify which Walt's vehicles count toward their maximum of two. That said, each Walt is fully capable of driving, pulling around or affixing objects to their counterparts' cars, potentially leading to ludicrous scenarios where one Walt has even more tools to play with should be wrest away control.
Here's an overview of the car models Walt can bring into battle:
Pontiac Aztek
Simply pressing Side Special, or holding the input for up to 29 frames has Walt drive out his avocado-colored 2004 Pontiac Aztek, representative of his lame suburban existence at his series' inception. At three training stage squares long, by two tall, Walt's Aztek is stumpier than his other two vehicles, and appears distinctly less impressive, too, already with a few dents and a cracked windshield presumably originating from assorted Heisenberg hijinx.
Cost:$5k Stamina:30 HP (8 HP per each set of tires) Speed:Pikachu's dash speed (default), Mario's dash speed (minimum), Meta Knight's dash speed (maximum) Impact damage:12% (default speed hit), 7% (slow speed hit), 15% (maximum speed hit) Impact extra shield damage:5% Impact KO percents:110% (default speed hit); 125% (slow speed hit); 95% (maximum speed hit) Run-over damage:8% Aerial Movement:Two training stage squares before beginning to fall Driver Protection:12% before Walt is forced out Object slots:Two
El Camino
Here's a car Walt never actually owns or drives over the course of his series, but is nonetheless beloved by its fans, even being the namesake for its own Netflix film. That's church, yo! Walt can summon an El Camino by charging Side Special anywhere from 30-59 frames. Though an older model than Walt's Aztek, the better upkeep of the 1978 Chevrolet El Camino enhances its properties in a number of ways. The El Camino measures in at four squares long and two tall.
Cost:$15k Stamina:50 HP (18 HP per each set of tires) Speed:Charizard's dash speed (default), Joker's dash speed (minimum), Little Mac's dash speed (maximum) Impact damage:18% (default speed hit), 14% (slow speed hit), 22% (maximum speed hit) Impact extra shield damage:10% Impact KO percents:100% (default speed hit); 115% (slow speed hit); 85% (maximum speed hit) Run-over damage:12% Aerial Movement:Four training stage squares before beginning to fall Driver Protection:15% before Walt is forced out Object slots:Three
Chrysler 300 SRT-8
The latest and greatest among the vehicles Walt handles over the course of Breaking Bad, a ride truly befitting a kingpin of his stature. Heisenberg leases this crown jewel as a 51st birthday present to himself, right after trading in his Aztek for $50. Achieved with a full 60 frames of charge, the 2012 Chrysler 300 SRT-8 is five squares long, with most of its body two squares tall. As an exception, the car's front-most square — its protruding hood — is only one square tall, giving the vehicle a slightly lower forward-facing profile without sacrificing any of its ramming reach. This car is the most expensive standalone item Walt can acquire throughout his moveset.
Cost:$25k Stamina:70 HP (28 HP per each set of tires) Speed:Sonic's dash speed (default), Fox's dash speed (minimum), Wario's fully-accelerated bike (maximum) Impact damage:24% (default speed hit), 21% (slow speed hit), 29% (maximum speed hit) Impact extra shield damage:15% Impact KO percents:90% (default speed hit); 105% (slow speed hit); 75% (maximum speed hit) Run-over damage:16% Aerial Movement:Six training stage squares before beginning to fall Driver Protection:18% before Walt is forced out Object slots:Four
UP SPECIAL - FLY-BY A few things happen at once in quick succession, in such a way that Heisenberg, otherwise a regular middle-aged human being, can defy the laws of physics to recover. A maddening little buzzing noise occurs as a common housefly appears, barely visible as it zips diagonally upward in front of Walt. Visibly miffed, Walt begins climbing an aluminum step ladder, which materializes in place and extends as he goes to hunt down the little contaminant, carrying his makeshift "fly saber" in one hand. Even in Smash, it appears Walt can't escape the fly central to Breaking Bad's infamous bottle episode of the same name, the entirety of which he insists on spending locked in the Superlab with Jesse, undergoing character work while trying in vain to catch the little bugger.
Starting on frame 12, Walt begins climbing diagonally upward at a sharp 80-degree angle. He moves one training stage square every 15 frames, over which time two higher rungs appear from the extending ladder. Up Special commits Walt to climbing at least six rungs, each pair of which costs him $1k, the lion's share presumably in fees to Saul for the connection to a ladder appearer guy on such short notice. Afterward, Walt reaches the top of the ladder and performs a mediocre jump from it, about as far as most characters can directionally air dodge upward. He'll snap to the ledge if he reaches it while climbing from directly below — sometimes saving on a few rungs in the process — or while leaping. Walt also can cancel out of his climb with an air dodge, though doing so offstage requires careful ladder spacing to avoid a self-destruct.
Out of his leap, Walt's options are limited to a stationary air dodge or simple attack, akin to Bowser Jr.'s own Up Special — an incentive for players structuring Walt's recovery to use his midair jump, a car or both in some combination before bringing out the ladder. To attack, Walt smacks down in front of him with his personal swatter, a 40-frame action with an active hitbox from frames 8-14. The goofy weapon reaches out marginally less than a typical sword, inflicting 7% and decent knockback that'll net Walt some breathing room, but won't KO until 180% — unless, of course, he sweetspots a hit with the swatter's head, which deals 9% and spikes with above-average force. Players can buffer the swatter smack so Walt attacks right as he leaps, ideally deterring gimp attempts that otherwise can strike him through his non-solid ladder as he's climbing.
Ladders poof away if Walt is knocked off climbing, and begin falling in place if he reaches the ledge, hops or dodges off. The metal frame drops a bit more slowly than Pac-Man's midair hydrant, its underside sporting a piddling 4% hitbox akin to Banjo's Shock Jump Pads, technically capable of annoying low recoveries but not typically worth the effort. If Walt is knocked back during his Up Special leap, he can call upon another ladder (and buzzing fly) to continue his attempted return to the stage, though only after the first ladder has disappeared off the bottom blast zone.
Walt isn't limited to just six ladder rungs if he's got enough disposable income kicking around. He'll continue climbing, and his ladder will keep extending in two-rung increments for $1k a pop as long as the player holds Up Special, with him leaping off automatically once they let go. Walt's largest possible ladder extends up eighteen rungs, or nine training stage squares in recovery distance, for a $9k sum. With that sort of added distance, players can have Walt extend up above the ledge from a ways offstage and then air dodge down as a recovery mix-up.
More pragmatically, the ability to have a longer ladder recovery aids in cases where foes continue interrupting Walt's recovery, necessitating several subsequent climbs to reach the ledge. Of course, if Walt has let his meth cook fall by the wayside or neglected its purity to where he's run low on cash, aggressive foes can force him to burn through his remaining money until he hits rock bottom. Then, like Hero without his MP, Walt's attempts to summon a ladder will be met only with an infuriating poof of white smoke — the end point of a true bad choice road.
Bankrolled onstage, Walt's ladders unlock a whole new realm of possibilities to play around. If Walt uses Up Special on or above the stage, his ladder will briefly reorient after he stops climbing or it lands on solid ground, becoming a more typical Smash ladder! As with their counterparts on stages like Wrecking Crew or 75m, these ladders are pass-through objects that any character can clamber up or down. While hanging on, characters can throw out virtually any aerial while stationary without relinquishing their hold, outside of inconsistent stall-then-fall exceptions (Bowser's D-Air doesn't release him from ladders, but Link's does). The tops of onstage ladders also become miniature drop-through platforms, each a paltry one training stage in length.
At a high level, ladders give Walt a greater chance to pursue enemies into midair than his mediocre jumps otherwise might allow, whether through throwing out aerials mid-climb or after leaping off its rungs, or standing at the top to use a grounded attack at a greater height. Triggering some construct set-ups below Walt, like an arrangement of guns or bombs, can leave him in a position to climb up after a foe as they're launched skyward, greeting them with a killing blow near the top blast zone — a true ladder combo, and one requiring legitimate skill to boot. Of course, Walt could find a more aerially adept opponent harnessing his own ladders to greater effect if he's not careful micromanaging the immediate vicinity.
Ladders have safeguards to keep characters from stalling on them, toppling away into the background upon taking a set amount of damage. Any character still holding on or standing atop at this time is forced into a vulnerable tumble state. Walt's default six-rung ladders can withstand 13% from enemy hits before falling, same as Pac-Man's hydrant, plus 2% for every extra two rungs extended (as with cars, projectiles are not inhibited). As caps, Walt is restricted to 18 onstage rungs or three separate ladders at a time, whichever he reaches first. He still can use Up Special to recover offstage, or even in midair above ground upon reaching this limit, though in the latter case, any falling ladders will disappear rather than becoming constructs upon landing.
Another staple setpiece for Walt in engineering his foes' doom, ladders allow him to literally take his traps to new levels. Though most characters can't use Specials while climbing, Walt can use Down Special specifically to acquire and affix objects to the section of ladder he's overlapping. He's able to attach one item to every two rungs of ladder, including the top surface, each of which will fall to the ground below if the ladder itself is knocked down. Compared to elevating objects through aerial magnetism, ladder traps are almost always easier for Walt to set up, at the cost of the items' support system being far flimsier to dismantle. If Walt is insistent on an aerial magnet trap, placing a magnet partway up a ladder can allow for greater ease in overlapping a section of its field with a second magnet on the ground.
Ladder flimsiness is not always a bad thing, of course — though most of Walt's attacks pass through ladders, bombs are an exception. As such, if he plants several lower-stamina bombs a short ways up a ladder, and collapses it with a blast at its base, the explosives will drop down into the fiery hitbox, cascading outward and blanketing enough of the vicinity with their own detonations to truly put the fear of god in foes. Less immediately scary, but no less potent, is keeping several ladders upright side by side, with alternating magnet and machine guns placed at varying heights, such that one bullet stream can be gradually curved by multiple magnets, or one key magnet can pull a few streams
Cars, too, complement ladders in a few different capacities. As Walt's cars don't knock down his ladders, he can try magnetizing a vehicle toward a victim before hopping onto a ladder to block off escape attempts via jump or dodge. As with aerial magnetism, planting a machine gun from a ladder's vantage point allows Walt to angle it directly up or down, or unlock new angles for ricocheting its bullet off the stage or platforms.
And though magnets on cars won't pull ladders onto their available slots, Walt can initiate Up Special overtop a vehicle or drop a ladder down to affix it to one slot. In this roundabout way, cars can indirectly tote around more objects than their slot count otherwise might allow, at least until knocked down, upon which magnetism will be needed to keep them on the vehicle. And objects or no, Walt is fully free to joyride atop a ladder on a car careening offstage as it's pulled past a strong magnet. He'll have a window to use a grounded attack or two to polish off his foe's stock, at the cost of those constructs definitively becoming sunk costs offstage. Was it worth it?
StandarDs
JAB - THIRTY-EIGHT SNUB Walt whips out his Ruger LCR handgun and fires a bullet in his foe's direction, a slight grimace on his face. Emerging on frame 7, the non-projectile shot travels five training stage squares horizontally over 25 frames before dissipating. For the bulk of its trajectory, the miniature bullet inflicts 4% and a pinch of stun, not dissimilar to Joker's own gun. Evocative of Mega Man's pellets, Heisenberg's gun also produces a brief strong hitbox around the gun's snub-nose barrel right as it fires, between frames 7-8, inflicting 7% and outward knockback KOing around 200%. By default, Walt will stop at a single bullet, stowing his gun through frame 38.
Continuing to tap A after Walt's first shot, however, has him continue firing bullets. Each bonus shot costs him $500 and is staggered 14 frames apart. Walt is able to pelt the same victim multiple times, though he's limited in his ability to lock a foe perpetually in place, as every third bullet inflicts low set knockback. While shooting, Walt can stride forward or backward and jump to better aim his bullets — like several Smash analogues, his handgun also occupies his N-Air, though he retains a distinct F-Tilt. Walt can fire up to eight shots uninterrupted and, after firing eight shots through one or multiple jab barrages, he'll undergo a slightly longer 52-frame cooldown as he reloads the gun's chamber.
Walt's handgun nets him the standard pros and cons one might associate with such a ranged jab. He's free to pepper an opponent from mid-range at the cost of a faster physical strike in cases where breathing room sure would be nice. As Mike once said, if push comes to shove, that piece won't help you. Thankfully, the handgun's strong firing hitbox is large enough to leave Walt able to pull off jab-lock combos on prone victims. Handgun bullets function similarly to those from acquired machine guns in terms of curving inward at active magnets, situationally helpful for catching out moving targets, though generally less versatile, given jab's lesser frequency. And of particular value for Walt's gameplay: as a rarer non-chemical attack, jab won't trigger reductions in his meth's purity and ensuing dollar value upon repeat uses in his stale move queue's latest seven slots.
Jab isn't an effortless means for emptying that queue, as multiple bullets fired in one sitting still count just as one move. Nevertheless, a sporadic shot here and there can come in clutch in cases where Walt wants to edge out an impure attack or two, letting him reuse the input with fewer or no consequences, and without staling really hurting his handgun's general ranged utility to boot. In more dire situations, where repeating Walt's chemical neutral tools has him about to irreparably taint his product, he can rest somewhat more easily with at least jab (and N-Air) in his arsenal as options that won't push him over the edge. Then again, if saving money is the focus here, running up a bill spamming bullets ought not to be Walt's sole recourse, either.
DASH ATTACK - DUFFEL BAG BOY A bulky black duffel bag appears around Heisenberg's shoulders as he dashes, upon which he swings it by its strap in a frontal upward arc to smack victims. Walt rears back for 14 frames before swinging, traveling three training stage squares over the full animation and crossing up shields during the first half of that. His duffel bag hits over the first four frames after his startup, inflicting 6% and low knockback.
Though the smack won't KO until nutty percents, it boasts a backward launch trajectory that sends foes behind Walt as he dashes. It's a perfect position for them to be struck by B-Air if they're too slow to react, or for Walt to turn around and use a tilt, grab or other, slower punish if reads their reaction. Walt can attempt the same follow-ups if he crosses up his target, though with 28 end lag frames, his dash attack is otherwise rather unsafe on shield.
Aside from being a second consecutive non-chemical attack for Walt to leverage without fear of impurity — seriously, you won't see another one of these for some time — dash attack is one among a few non-Specials Walt can bolster via his cash reserves. Should the player quickly mash B up to three times during Walt's startup, he'll spend $500 a pop as his bag bulges progressively fuller with rubber-banded stacks of bills. Jeez, whatddya got in there, cinderblocks?? Each press of B adds a lone frame of additional startup and end lag to Walt's bag swing but increases its damage by 3%, up to a meaty 15% hit.
It's the sort of hit one might also expect to result in greater knockback, too. Instead, however, Walt's bag now tears on impact, producing a Bowser-sized cloud of dollar bills behind him, right below his victim while they're in hitstun. The cloud lingers for two seconds, progressively thicker with bills that inflict increasingly frequent light flinching hits of 0.5%, the more Walt expended at the move's onset. A victim might reasonably take just 1-2% before Smash DIing out of a base-level cloud, a figure that could rise to 4-5% at maximum thickness.
In any case, for the added cost, Walt can cut a bit more loose with his turnaround follow-ups — a buffered F-Smash can confirm from a medium cloud if a victim gets caught in the bills. Predictive foes can buffer an air dodge to immediately get OFF out of Walt's cloud, though if he's ready, he can react by grabbing and B-Throwing them back into the bills for a little bonus damage. If Walt crosses up a shield with a loaded bag, the cloud also will appear around his victim's bubble, leaving them able to roll away but snagging them if they're too fast to drop their defenses as they go to retaliate.
Should Walt whiff dash attack after filling his bag, he won't immediately lose the funds. Rather, he'll start his next dash attack with those fat stacks already loaded up, capable of filling it further if not already at capacity from three B presses. The one drawback here is, after seven seconds, cash added on a whiffed input will disappear from Walt's bag, perhaps having burned a hole in it. It follows, then, that while Walt can re-attempt to land dash attack's stronger hit and lingering add-on, his opponent is more likely to see it — and its marginally more punishable animation — coming.
FORWARD TILT - HALF MEASURES An Erlenmeyer flask of green science liquid appears in Heisenberg's hand, as he swipes its open end in an arc one training stage square in front of him. The flask's liquid cuts through the air in a slash-esque visual as Walt swings it, inflicting 9% and horizontal knockback capable of KOing at the ledge around 115%. It's a decently fast animation, emerging on frame 9 and leaving Walt with 24 end lag frames. At low to mid-percents, Walt often can send a foe into prone with F-Tilt, perhaps in the path of a pulled car, beyond which his swipe often can combo into at least one handgun bullet if his victim doesn't move quickly.
After Walt uses F-Tilt, a transparent green arc of gas remains behind along where he sloshed his flask. This gas arc has no hitbox, simply sitting onstage for up to 12 seconds or until after Walt reuses his default-angled F-Tilt again. Did I say default-angled? That's because, when the player angles Walt's F-Tilt diagonally up or down, the liquid in his flask changes color, respectively taking on a red or blue hue. Angled F-Tilts, too, leave behind colored gas arcs, which behave identically to Walt's green ones, outside of their differing upward or downward bents. Up to two differently-colored gas arcs from F-Tilt — green and red, green and blue or red and blue — can percolate onstage at a time.
Gas arcs create the potential for fun mix-and-matching should Walt reuse F-Tilt, such that its liquid hitbox overlaps. When this transpires, the overlapping portion of gas takes on a stronger hitbox, dealing twice F-Tilt's regular damage and 1.33x its normal knockback. The color combination of gas arc and F-Tilt liquid also tweaks the attack's launch trajectory. Overlapping one gas arc with the same color liquid from an identically-angled F-Tilt simply will enhance the move's existing knockback along that path. Blue liquid from a down-angled F-Tilt overtop blue gas, for instance, sends victims down even more forcefully, further extending the damage range at which Walt can send foes into prone compared to vanilla down-angled F-Tilt, which itself serves this function compared to regular F-Tilt.
Contrasting two different colors and angles, however, gives Walt even more precise control of his resulting knockback — green liquid from a normal F-Tilt over a blue gas arc will send foes at an angle in between those of his regular and down-angled versions, perhaps still letting him set up a tech chase but further away. Red liquid over green gas, meanwhile, can send a victim at a more gradual upward trajectory, perhaps targeted at a construct the foe otherwise might miss if launched from an up-angled F-Tilt.
As noted, gas arcs vanish after Walt repeats F-Tilt angled that same way. It is, however, possible to achieve a triple F-Tilt stack, for thrice the move's regular damage and 1.66x its knockback, if Walt connects one color F-Tilt liquid with the remaining two gas colors. This generally requires set-up so the low blue liquid can connect — overlapping green and red gas near a low platform or ladder, and then using a down-angled F-Tilt on top. Pulled off, the volatile mixture can spell the end of a stock near the ledge, sending foes careening offstage at an unwieldy angle for most recoveries, if not all the way off the side blast zone. Yeah, Mr. White! Yeah, science!
A single F-Tilt can be punished with fast out-of-shield options, though spaced well, Walt's liquid inflicts a touch of shield push that generally will leave him out of harm's immediate way. Repeating F-Tilt when up against a shield can set up somewhat of a guessing game for Walt's victim in playing around his purity mechanic. On Walt's end, his second stronger F-Tilt can effectively shield-poke, especially if he's angled liquid down at his victim's feet, or at least take a bigger dent out of their bubble.
Of course, this will constitute putting the input twice in his stale move queue, inhibiting F-Tilt's utility elsewhere or even jeopardizing his money supply if he's doubled up on multiple other attacks. In many scenarios, foes can count on Walt not throwing out more than two F-Tilts in quick succession, block both and then retaliate. Playing on that expectation, however, he can change tacks with a grab while his opponent still is shielding. And, should his foe come to expect -that-, circling back to repeat F-Tilts can win him the day as his foe drops shield early.
DOWN TILT - THERMITE Heisenberg lifts up a silver hunk of thermite, synthesized from aluminum powder and powdered iron oxide, and drops it to the ground at his feet. Coming into being on frame 8, the Soccer Ball-sized thermite descends at a fast pace, comparable to a far weaker Villager bowling ball. The hunk decks foes underneath to deal 6% and upward diagonal knockaward that won't KO until upward of 200%, but is a perfectly good combo starter should Walt proceed with a shorthopped F-Air — a feat he's more than capable of, with a relatively minimal 17 end lag frames.
Dropped thermite sits onstage as a non-tangible presence for up to 12 seconds, or until Walt hits it with D-Tilt again. With thermite present, Walt uses a second, distinct D-Tilt, here whipping out a small blue blowtorch and firing a tuft of flame a training stage square forward, low along the ground. Emerging on frame 9, Walt's flame inflicts a slightly stronger hit for 9% and vertical knockback capable of KOing off the screentop around 175%. Walt's flamethrower supplements his thermite drop as a combo starter, albeit with a different trajectory that will lead into even more guaranteed options at lower damage levels.
After his 25 end lag frames wear off, Walt is free to dash underneath and immediately follow up with U-Tilt, U-Smash or a shorthopped U-Air — or, against a foe he's primed to air dodge on impact, sit in place to catch them with a grounded hit. Naturally, Walt also can drop thermite hunks offstage to badger foes, though given purity concerns and the low knockback payoff, he'll generally want to reserve this tactic for when he's sure a single hit will doom a low recovery versus spamming the move like Sonic does with his spring. A more pertinent choice could involve hanging around the ledge to try two-framing a target with Walt's blowtorch hit. Get OFF the toilet...err, ledge!
Should Walt fire his blowtorch such that it blows into his thermite, its regular flame hitbox is replaced by a different pyrotechnic reaction. The thermite reacts to the flames and produces a crackling pillar of sparks, one square wide and three tall — perfect for melting a thousand-ton World War II-era German cannon, or the lock at a chemical warehouse. The pillar lasts for 90 frames, inflicting a light stunning hit of 1% every nine frames, up until a finishing hit that deals 3% and outward knockback KOing around 120%, at least, if Walt doesn't smack them out or drive a car through them first. Of note, should the player input D-Tilt twice, Walt will proceed immediately from his thermite drop to using his blowtorch, overriding five frames of the former hit's end lag in the process.
While normally, D-Tilt versions one and two both count as a use of the input for the purposes of Walt's purity, immediately dropping and then lighting thermite on fire registers as a single D-Tilt use. Past lower percents, foes have an opening to air dodge away in between the thermite drop and sparks. One option Walt can attempt in counteracting this involves triggering a magnet strategically centered between his foe and thermite, hunks of which are capable of being pulled in, too. Dragging both inward at once can drag a victim into the sparks, right when they thought they were out! More simply, he can straight up read his opponent's dodge, move in and punish with a dash attack or grab.
And should Walt begin stringing his victim in the direction of an existing thermite piece, setting off sparks can make for a great finisher, or at least the threat of this can bait other enemy reactions. Fortunately for Walt, in cases where his meth purity is in question, he's able to use other attacks with fire properties, not just his flamethrower, to set off thermite sparks. In cases where other attacks set off the thermite, such as jab's close-range hit, its sparks do not constitute an additional D-Tilt use, what with Walt already having used a previous input to place the trap.
Thermite serves as a complementary mini-tool among Walt's various Down Special objects. Beyond the magnet application alluded to earlier, Walt can drag thermite — sparking or otherwise — along the ground or through the air, even able to briefly set it as a midair trap (though lighting it can prove difficult without a nearby platform or ladder). Otherwise, Walt can seek to snag a victim at the cross-section between machine gun bullets and thermite sparks for a nice heaping of bonus damage. Naturally, aiming the gun is easier with a foe stuck in place via thermite, and, so long as a hunk of the stuff is along the horizontal path of a bullet stream, Walt can time when he sets off the sparks to set his victim alight right as they pass by.
And thermite is an excellent candidate for a flame hitbox to whittle down the health of bombs placed on low platforms above, or bomb-toting cars either stationary over the hunk or driven through its active sparks. Try this for a true big-brain play: carefully position one car bomb, set it off and have Walt watch as the resulting flaming shrapnel triggers both thermite to hold a foe and a second bomb they're powerless to escape!
UP TILT - HYDROFLUORIC ACID
A plastic jug appears in Heisenberg's hands as he sweeps it over his head, slinging a streak of clear liquid in an arc above him. Walt ducks slightly as he does so, with an apprehensive look on his face, as though in avoidance of the jug's contents. He definitely has good reason to do so, as the jug contains hydrofluoric acid, plenty capable of eating through metal, rock, glass, ceramic, not plastic, but definitely playable fighters. A relatively fast tilt, coming out on frame 7, this liquid inflicts 8% in fiery damage and vertical knockback KOing around 140%. The hitbox begins a bit to Walt's side before he swings the jug in earnest, capable of snagging adjacent taller opponents.
With 21 end lag frames, Walt is certainly capable of kicking off a juggle situation with U-Tilt — a concept that might seem antithetical to his purity mechanic, but an added feature on the attack can render enticing. While his acid might not literally dissolve enemy corpses, it leaves a lasting sting on its unfortunate victims. If Walt lands a subsequent fire attack on such a foe while they're still burning with U-Tilt's flaming hitstun — the same effect seen across all of Ultimate's fiery moves — they'll take 1.5x its regular damage, albeit no added multiplier on knockback (outside the natural added knockback that results from higher damage). Naturally, Walt's U-Tilt itself often is the prime candidate for capitalizing on this effect, which, on a fighter unconcerned with the quality of their methamphetamine, could send enemy percents skyrocketing at an alarming rate.
Because Walt is perhaps MYM's only character not among that group, he usually has to put more thought into racking damage on these acid-scalded victims beyond Ultimate's typical U-Tilt mashing. Fortunately, the effect works in reverse — Walt can inflict burning hitstun with another attack before comboing into U-Tilt to realize its added damage potential with just one use of the attack, if not more at a lower cost to his purity. Up through mid-percents, D-Tilt's flamethrower pops foes up nicely to connect into U-Tilt, while Walt's acid also can intercept victims caught in thermite's spark trap, among other upcoming attacks.
Alternatively, riskier players could go for one, two, even three repeat acid swings for potent damage if they're confident they can land enough other distinct attacks to push those U-Tilts out of Walt's most recent seven stale moves (to slots eight, nine and 10) without permanent consequences for his drug money. It's also a route Walt could take if he's managed to squirrel away enough money to weather fund reductions, or else is far enough ahead in the stock count or has enough constructs already onstage to where the inability to immediately summon more is no big deal.
Until then, lowly bourgeoisie players could instead mix things up by stopping after one U-Tilt, readying themselves to react to a retaliatory attack or dodge from their victim with a shield-grab from below. And few KO tactics are more satisfying than simultaneously hitting a foe and triggering a bomb with U-Tilt, such that the acid's burn effect boosts the bomb's fiery damage and, in turn, explosive knockback.
SmAshes
FORWARD SMASH - FULMINATED MERCURY
Heisenberg reaches into a plastic baggie of clear meth, pulls out a shard and winds up, reaching his arm behind his head. On release, he hurls the shard forcefully to the ground a short distance in front of him, upon which opponents will come to realize this...is not meth. Rather, Walt has chucked a piece of fulminated mercury, a little tweak of chemistry with explosive properties.
F-Smash is a touch unorthodox in terms of its timing, as Walt technically has three startup frames before his fulminated mercury becomes an active hitbox, but first undergoes 28 charge frames, for a 31-frame total startup. Upon impact with the stage or a foe, the shard detonates in a smoky Wario-sized blast, which boasts a sweetspot on those hit point-blank and a sourspot for those at the periphery or nicked at the hitbox's tail end. The former inflicts 20-26%, 10% in bonus shield damage and knockback KOing from 100-65%, while the latter deals 14-18% and knockback KOing from 140-105%.
By default, his shard travels diagonally to the ground two training stage squares away over 12 additional frames, a healthy range at the cost of a close-range blind spot, especially against smaller opponents. Angling F-Smash down has Walt toss his fulminated mercury right at his feet, at the square directly in front of him over eight frames, while an up-angled input results in him throwing his fulminated mercury in a comparatively slower arc, with it traveling up three squares and landing four squares away after 54 frames (barring an earlier landing on a platform). And regardless of Walt's angling, fulminated mercury will fall up to two training stage squares below his current plane if he initiates F-Smash at a platform's edge, vanishing if it doesn't connect with a target beforehand.
Evocative of its canon use, Walt's fulminated mercury is best suited for ambushing unsuspecting enemies or in hard read situations. Frightening as his ability to blow up foes both on the ground and in midair might be, Walt becomes highly susceptible to punishment throwing out F-Smash aimlessly, with 34 end lag frames and foes' ability to reflect its shards as projectiles, in a departure from most of Walt's other ranged moves. And while F-Smash is among Walt's best KO tools beyond his Special constructs for purchase, its sweetspot can be comparatively restrictive. While a charged F-Smash can KO foes marginally earlier than the strongest solo car ram, for instance, the smaller hitbox renders Walt's timing window tighter for landing it in common punishment situations, such as when an enemy is dropping down in front of him with an air dodge.
Walt has a few more tricks up his sleeve when it comes to sending foes into orbit with fulminated mercury. Should the player buffer a second F-Smash while Walt is in the first half of his end lag from a first use, he'll hastily reach back into his baggie and hurl another shard, cutting his regular charge frames in half. Walt does not telegraph which direction he's preparing to throw his fulminated mercury during his charge frames, opening the door for players to either hurl two shards at the same trajectory in relatively quick succession, or mix up throws in two different directions to try covering movement options.
Similar to Lucas' D-Smash, two shards thrown in the same direction can prove beneficial for Walt in eating away at shields, covering dodges and rolls or even two-framing foes, at the cost of committing him to a longer, more punishable animation. Meanwhile, hurling mid- and long-ranged shards back to back can push a foe steadily backward into other traps, while consecutive long- and close-ranged shards can punish foes who mindlessly dash in to punish Walt after F-Smash numero uno. A well-timed shard thrown at an offstage foe also can scare them into a hasty recovery option, which Walt can cover with a second toss.
Thankfully, two disparate shards are unlikely to ever combo into each other on non-giant targets, so Walt can capitalize on this application without concern of tainting his actual meth, unless his victim happens to have external constructs on which Walt's moves also will stale. Of course, given the fire effect on F-Smash's sweetspot, Walt might consider an extra use here or there warranted, in cases where he wishes to set off his bombs without getting caught in the crossfire.
As far as other Down Special objects are concerned, magnets don't fully attract pieces of fulminated mercy, given Walt's force in throwing them. The systems can, however, influence the trajectory of his tosses, adding or subtracting a training stage square from the flight distance of shards that are thrown within or into their magnetic fields. An up-angled shard thrown into a magnetic field ahead of Walt, for instance, will fly five, rather than four squares, and just three squares if Walt uses that F-Smash angle while in the field of a magnet behind him.
One situational sneaky application of this comes from Walt using a down-angled F-Smash in front of an active magnet — in this case, the fulminated mercury actually will be pulled one square behind him before hitting the ground, more than capable of covering enemy rolls timed to perfection. By comparison, machine guns have simpler, yet still potent complementary uses, with Walt able to throw shards so as to bait a foe into its bullets, or else angle bullet streams so targets are held in place for greater ease of landing F-Smash's sweetspot.
DOWN SMASH - PHOSPHINE GAS
Heisenberg faces the screen as he extracts a cooking pan full of meth-making chemicals from hammerspace. Holding it in one hand, he then enters a charging animation where he gently shakes in powdery red phosphorus from a plastic container in his other hand. As he powers up D-Smash, a small handful of fiery sparks fly out of his pan. This creates a close-range series of 1% multi-hits that can catch out those engaging in (excessively) mindless rushdown or lying at his feet in prone, holding them in place for his ensuing attack at low to mid-percents. On release, Walt aggressively thrusts the entirety of the container's powder into his pan, first creating a fiery plume and then a briefly lingering cloud of crimson toxins.
Coming out on frame 16, Walt's flames erupt centered around his body, covering about 0.75 training stage square to either side and reaching a Ganondorf into the air. The plume itself only lingers three frames, inflicting 13-17% and vertical knockback KOing from 190-155%. Though definitely wanting from a KO standpoint, Walt's D-Smash has a surprisingly low 15 frames of end lag. This can equip him to either surprise low-damage opponents with a phosphine burst so they fall into prone beside him, barring a well-timed tech, or combo into U-Tilt, U-Smash or an aerial against those at mid-percents. Now's a nice time to note, at a macro level, Walt enjoys a multitude of potential combo starters across his kit, such that versatile players aren't stuck in hot meth purity water by having to overrely on one or two such starters when racking up damage.
Right after Walt's fiery reaction triggers, a two-by-two square-cloud of red chemicals materializes around him. The toxins linger for two to four seconds, depending on charge, inflicting 1% every five frames a character remains in contact, or up to 48%, if they're in contact the entire time. That's not the fastest rate of damage in the world — Piranha Plant's breath can inflict more than 50% in two seconds. Then again, the potted meme can't instant dash attack against close-range foes who shield D-Smash to produce a different cloud of flinch-inflicting bills that overlaps with its poison.
By its lonesome, phosphine gas often incentivizes foes popped up by Walt's initial flame plume to jump or dodge away instead of landing, effectively stacking the deck in a standard 50/50 setup. Of course, Walt is perfectly free to sit in his red smoke, with only his silhouette visible, rather than precise actions. Should he do so, foes who brave a landing aren't sure whether to simply drop down and grab Walt out of his shield or fall with an aerial to interrupt a Smash he's charging. In either case, Walt's stale move queue only registers one D-Smash use if a foe is hit by the same attack's plume and toxins. That said, there's an occasional unique element of risk to repeat D-Smash use: if Walt lands the move multiple times before whiffing, foes can trigger a violation of his meth purity on contact with the lingering cloud, occasionally forcing a game of keepaway.
At a basic level, phosphine gas can lend an element of surprise to Walt's burst-type moves like dash attack or Side Special, as foes take an instant longer to register the speed at which Walt is driving a car out at them. Toxins also can be positioned to obscure the trajectories of ranged attacks like F-Smash fulminated mercury or bullets. For sneaky fun, initiate D-Smash atop a ladder near a magnet, before firing a machine gun such that the precise curve of its bullets is harder to discern and avoid.
And Walt's ability to place a bomb in the midst of his gas can prove especially worrisome for foes looking to barge in after him. The toxins not only will obscure the internal object, and whether it's flashing near detonation, but also gradually whittle down its stamina. In that respect, phosphine gas becomes an alternative to Walt directly attacking his bombs, or paying to manually click down their durability, at the cost of less control and slower pacing — as non-organic constructs, bombs take damage from the toxins at one-third the rate of a character, or 1% every 15 frames.
On a visual note, should Walt stay within phosphine gas after completing D-Smash, or leave and then re-enter its cloud, he'll laglessly pop on a gas mask to protect himself while inside, akin to K. Rool with his Kaptain hat during blunderbuss usage. Don't think too hard about why Walt doesn't do the same against other Heisenbergs' phosphine gases during ditto matches.
UP SMASH - GRILLED
Heisenberg bends down slightly and begins fiddling with a cord attached to a Bunsen burner, which manifests as a baseball-sized metal spigot at his feet. On release, he kicks a small metal gas switch at his feet, prompting the burner to expel a narrow pillar of flame a good ways into the air after a 25-frame startup. A far cry from any cute colored tufts you might have encountered in high school chemistry, Walt's flames travel four-and-a-half training stage squares skyward, capable of poking up at opponents through Battlefield's top platform. Half a square thick, the fire boasts an initial strong hitbox at its apex that deals 15-20% and vertical knockback KOing from 120-85%.
While not a full-blown trap, Walt's Bunsen burner has a touch of longevity, continuing to burn for 90 frames, during which the entirety of its flames take on a weak hitbox of 6-8% and outward knockback that won't KO until obscene damage levels. Walt, meanwhile, regains mobility after 25 frames, becoming able to coax foes to either side of the burner into its flames as a disjointed means for extending combos. As with D-Smash, foes hit multiple times by the same U-Smash don't duplicate the attack in Walt's stale move queue, though touching a lingering flame from a whiffed U-Smash can lead to such staling, whether or not it's conducive for meth making.
With flames behind Walt, perhaps if a foe has crossed him up, a staple setup involves him pivot grabbing to catch his victim and B-Throwing them into the burner. This, in turn, will bounce them back out at him, such that he can follow up with a shorthopped aerial or a well-placed second U-Smash from below. With a burner sandwiched in between him and his foe, on the other hand, Walt can employ a configuration of magnetic fields, bullet streams or pulled cars to push his target into the fire for a smidge of extra remote damage. As placement of Walt's Bunsen burner is key in determining what strings he'll be able to accomplish, players likely will find themselves practicing turnaround U-Smashes to ensure he's got flames right where he wants them.
Of note, while Walt's flames by themselves don't send foes far, they won't overwrite knockback from stronger attacks that launch foes in. This effectively knocks the target back in the opposite direction with slightly more force, with a boost from the fire's added damage. In hard read situations, Walt can, for example, perform F-Smash backward to cover an enemy roll, blowing them into a closeby fire pillar to send them soaring forward even more powerfully. The risk here, of course, is Walt overshooting his victim past his own direct follow-up, potentially setting that foe up to punish him in return. Go ahead and play with fire, but don't get (figuratively) burned!
As far as other applications go, Walt's U-Smash makes for a great follow-up to one or more U-Tilts once his foe has reached mid-percents, or a tool in threatening enemy landings, especially used atop a ladder near the upper blast zone. Bunsen burners also are more than capable of setting off thermite hunks; their broader spark pillars will overlap the thin flames and inhibit caught victims from Smash DIing out through them, rendering their escape more predictable.
Naturally, this fiery impact holds true for bombs, too. Unless he's purposefully added stamina for a setup, Walt is able to bring default bombs to the brink of detonating with even just an uncharged U-Smash (high-health bombs left sitting in flames will take one added weak hit over the pillar's duration). Depending on how he's conditioned his opponent, Walt might well bait adverse reactions when he so much as walks under one or more explosives lined up in vertical range on a platform or ladder — just mind their height, unless you don't mind a "face off," and not the fun kind.
AerIals
NEUTRAL AIR - THIRTY-EIGHT SNUB Here's Heisenberg's midair iteration of his Ruger LCR handgun shots from jab — an input structure that grants him at least one bread-and-butter aerial that doesn't eat into his purity. His gun's properties here are functionally identically to Walt's grounded variant, with him able to drift forward and backward in midair as he fires additional $500 shots.
How Walt fires his shots has ramifications for the landing lag he goes through. When firing a single shot, Walt undergoes a less-than-optimal 22 landing lag frames, barring a precise auto-cancel window during the animation's final three frames. Should he fire multiple bullets, however, he's able to land without hassle and, with continued presses of A, immediately transition into jab on the ground, beginning to walk forward or backward in accordance with his aerial momentum.
This functionality makes it more challenging for Walt to engage in shorthop campy inanity with single shots or spam single-bullet N-Airs to clear out his stale move queue. It can, however, lend to some potent air-to-ground setups. Firing off a few bullets as Walt's descending often can condition foes to shield, freeing him up to close the gap with a grab or a follow-up attack if they drop their defenses too early and get nicked.
Low enough to the stage, his handgun's close-range hitbox in particular can topple foes into prone unless they time a tech to near perfection. When this happens, Walt can immediately combo into dash attack, move in for a jab-lock combo or try steering tech chase movement with external traps or an option like F-Smash. And, if Walt sees the opportunity, he's free to slide up and down a ladder to better aim his shots — perhaps into the magnetic field of his choice or while riding around, should his ladder in question be resting atop a pulled car.
FORWARD AIR - ALUMINUM AMALGAM Heisenberg appears to strain somewhat, leaning forward in midair with a pair of scissors in one hand and a small sheet of aluminum foil in the other. From there, he reaches out a training stage square and clips the sheet twice rapidly, producing a flurry of aluminum shavings around his hands, before clipping a third time more decisively to polish off the sheet with a spark. Coming out on frame 11, Walt's clips and resulting shavings constitute a melee-range hitbox, dealing two initial stunning hits of 2% through frame 24. Finishing out the move is a third, stronger strike, inflicting 4% in fire damage and knockback KOing around 135% at the ledge. Upon completion, he'll undergo 25 end lag frames before regaining mobility.
Not especially at home in midair, Walt often can find himself jammed if his opponent cuts through his trappings and gets him in a juggle situation. That said, F-Air acts as his best aerial option for netting breathing room, a helpful function given N-Air's comparative lack of lasting hitbox coverage outside its point-blank blast. Its offensive properties also aren't anything to sneeze at. Against low-damage opponents, Walt can chain a few F-Airs together to usher his victim around the stage. This'll start him off with a hit to his meth purity but likely bring about a solid damage lead on his opponent, and, with enough of a stock lead to where money is less of a material concern, can prove all the more tempting as a reliable damage builder.
When you consider Walt's rather minimal 9 landing lag frames, he gains flexibility in terms of how he comes down over the course of F-Air. Land while catching a foe in clips one and two, and Walt can quickly transition into no shortage of grounded options, some of which include F-Tilt, an instant un-charged D-Smash or grab, depending on what won't run afoul of his product. Committing to his third clip while descending also can effectively combo into Walt's U-Tilt for bonus fire damage on larger enemies or push them into his desired traps, at the cost of rendering him briefly more vulnerable on whiff. And naturally, there's always fun to be had baiting foes with whether Walt is about to drift into a bomb to set it off with his third fiery clip or veer back at the last instant.
BACK AIR - NEGRO Y AZUL Heisenberg turns in midair as he pours a flask of blue liquid into a beaker of transparent chemicals, prompting a copious curl of white smoke to flow out at a diagonal upward angle. Emerging on frame 11, Walt's smoke extends one diagonal square over 28 frames, during which it inflicts four rapid hits of 1%, followed by a stronger hit of 6% and knockback KOing around 125% at the ledge.
While B-Air isn't excessively strong in and of itself, Walt's concoction comes with an added wrinkle — a moderately strong windbox that manifests around his beaker right after his final hit appears, over frames 40-42 of Walt's 27 end lag frames. The windbox isn't especially noticeable, as the smoke's final hit takes precedence unless Walt's opponent buffers an input to leap, dodge or other comparable burst option. Then, akin to unorthodox moves like Mega Man's U-Air, the smoke will provide an often-unwelcome boost, applying a 1.5x multiplier to their directional movement.
Whereas F-Air tends to extend combos at low- to mid-damage levels, Walt often will find himself cooking up smoke as a spacing tool. That B-Air's windbox doesn't stale even as its regular damage and knockback do is a great standalone motivator for foes to stay leery of hasty movements in Walt's immediate vicinity. B-Air also is adept at finishing off a string of moves, whether from a reversed shorthop or when Walt's foe is in hitstun behind him, from dash attack, for instance.
Though flawed, B-Air also generally serves as Walt's best bet for aerially crossing up a shield — a maneuver many characters prefer carrying out with N-Air, but that Walt's handgun isn't conducive to pulling off. Though still somewhat punishable, with Walt's 16 landing lag frames, foes must carefully time their retaliation, lest a lingering hit snag them or his windbox intercept any shorthop aerial they attempt in response.
Otherwise, though not a true combo, Walt can sometimes chain a landing B-Air into a turnaround F-Tilt or pivot grab unless his foe has catlike reflexes. Introducing active magnets into the mix can further throw off enemy counterplay to B-Air's smoke windbox. While foes are normally OK grinning and bearing the final hit without getting blown back, a magnetic field gently dragging them back into Walt's range might just be all the go-ahead they need to attempt an adverse escape option. And though B-Air isn't Walt's best bet for precision with knockback, it can render lingering traps like machine gun fire, especially curved, or U-Smash fire hazardous even from across the bulk of the stage, when one wrong move on his enemy's part can send them careening back into their waiting hitboxes.
UP AIR - BREAKAGE Heisenberg grips a bulbous evaporating flask full of red liquid and swings it violently above his head, where it shatters in a burst of chemicals and shards, whether or not it made contact with a target. Somewhat of a staggered move, coming out on frame 14, U-Air's Wario-sized hitbox inflicts a healthy 15% in fire damage and vertical knockback KOing around 135%. Walt's blast can effectively polish off foes close to the screentop, though depending on his positioning, this can be easier said than done. That's because, whether or not Walt landed U-Air, its resulting chemical reaction pushes him down two training stage squares, rendering him likely to touch down and undergo his 18 frames of landing lag, at least at first.
You see, U-Air undergoes a distinct change when staled, beyond just a reduction to its damage and knockback: the ensuing lack of explosion force also halves the distance Walt is pushed down. A second use of U-Air after landing the move once has Walt drop just one square, with a third sending him down a half-square, beyond which the drop becomes negligible at best. Combined with Walt's otherwise solid 28 end lag frames, he's able to convert U-Air into a capable juggling tool over a rather wide span of enemy damage, beyond its base functionality as a one-off launcher. Similar to U-Tilt — a logical precursor to a shorthopped U-Air — this aerial is one Walt might wish to strategically stale, so long as he can land enough other attacks to push it to slots eight, nine or 10 in his stale move queue to avoid a lasting detriment to his meth purity.
Beyond N-Air, U-Air is another instance of an aerial Walt can enhance with help from a well-placed ladder. By their lonesome, his piddling jumps can create an opening for some foes to prematurely escape his chemical blasts. That said, ladders let Walt extend the sort of threat regularly communicated through empty hops into the skies. He's able to leap on and off its rings, or ascend onto and down from its top step, as needed to bait enemy movement, especially if he's doing so from a ladder affixed to a moving car. Should his foe waste their second jump or air dodge, he might well also gain access to punishment options beyond U-Air — possibly a grounded attack from atop his ladder or a different aerial from lower down.
Situationally, Walt's U-Air can have value unstaled, independent of him saving it for a vertical KO. As a recovery mix-up, Walt can throw one or more U-Airs out into the ether to bring himself down close to the bottom blast zone. While seemingly counterintuitive, a combination of horizontal car movement and a vertical ladder climb can see Walt safely back to the ledge, out of reach from a good portion of the cast. It's the sort of premium-service recovery package Walt will need some disposable income to pull off with regularity, but hey, with the right cook, he can afford it!
DOWN AIR - BOX CUTTER No, not -that- type of box cutter. . .Heisenberg makes a brief departure from his chemistry-oriented attacks, here bending over slightly to set a triple stack of cardboard boxes loaded up with soda cans at his feet. While the boxes normally are loaded up with Coca-Cola and Coke Zero, their contents are randomized, so the discerning eye occasionally can spot rows of Baja Blast, horse pop, Purple Flurp and so on. In any case, after 18 frames, Walt begins descending atop the training stage square-sized stack at a speed comparable to Steve's anvil. Similarly, Walt is free to ride the boxes all the way to the ground or leap off after a minimum 25 frames of falling, though boxes won't refresh his midair jump in cases where he's burned it beforehand.
By default, the underside of Walt's boxes inflict 14% and diagonal upward knockback capable of KOing around 125%. While that's a far cry weaker than Steve, whose base anvils KO at Mario at 90%, Walt has his own methods for giving his D-Air added oomph. Similarly to dash attack, the player can tap B up to three times during Walt's startup for him to layer dollar bills in among his various soft drinks, here creating the appearance of progressively more bulging boxes. Each special input costs $500 and increases Walt's damage by 5% while lowering his KO percentage by 15% — up to a maximum-strength D-Air dealing 29% and knockback KOing at 80%.
It's the sort of option that most definitely will keep foes attempting to juggle Walt on their toes, and can truly decimate low recoveries, though, when a box stack disappears off the bottom blast zone, he has a three-second cooldown before he can summon another. Dropping soda boxes by their lonesome also can be rather telegraphed, as Walt often will need to double jump to get in position. And compared to dash attack, Walt assumes more risk loading his D-Air boxes up with cash as, by contrast, he doesn't get a window to repeat the attack with its added benefit — at least not without positioning it somewhere crafty.
Upon landing onstage, Walt's soda boxes become passive pass-through constructs, with a base 15 HP plus 5 HP per $500 inserted. In and of themselves, these boxes don't accomplish much outside from serving as constructs characters can strike to gain a moment of extra hitlag on attacks, making them briefly easier to land. Where Walt can truly get experimental, however, is placing boxes on top of his onstage ladders. Boxes with no extra cash simply sit on the ladders' top steps, cascading down to the stage like a Thwomp if and when that ladder is toppled. As foes must directly knock over ladders, rather than using projectiles, this sometimes can incentivize them to leave ladders alone instead of attacking mindlessly.
Walt, meanwhile, can use a bomb to knock down his ladder and its soda boxes early, though, with cash stuffed into the stack, he can save his explosive for later, better effects. That's because ladders will see varying levels of their stamina tick down when straining to support cash-loaded boxes, up until they're left to automatically drop the stack. Soda boxes carrying $500 will cost ladders 2 HP per second, while $1k increases this up to 5 HP per second. And, regardless of a ladder's HP, boxes packed to the gills with $1.5k will shudder for 15 frames before immediately collapsing, all the better for throwing off the shield or dodge timing of enemies unfortunate enough to be caught below at that instant. Of course, the threat of box-dropping also frees Walt up to simply fastfall down and attack or grab his target as mix-ups.
Boxes can be further repositioned by way of active magnetic fields, which — when overlapping with a stack on a ladder or drop-through platform — can drag it diagonally down to its central point, with the boxes retaining their falling hitbox while in transit. Two overlapping magnets also can set boxes as aerial traps. This functions as an alternative to Walt's ladder traps that sends the stack plummeting down after a set time, independent of its extra cash weight. As a mix-up here, Walt can abort one of the two magnetic fields before the midair trap is about to come into effect, causing the boxes to resume their controlled fall toward the remaining magnet instead.
And box stacks often can become helpful external tools for micropositioning or triggering Walt's Down Special objects affixed to his ladders. Collapsing that support system gives Walt another means for lowering those magnets and machine guns back to the stage, beyond a bomb at the ladder's base. When enacting this while a machine gun is firing, Walt will pepper a broader area of horizontal airspace with bullets as the firearm descends. Meanwhile, explosives attached to or underneath a box stack-carrying ladder bolsters their "ticking time-bomb" nature even more than already was the case. By adding stamina to individual bombs, Walt can exert control over whether his falling boxes create a row of big blasts in one fell swoop or selectively detonate lower-HP bombs in the chain, leaving others to be launched outward with dangerously lowered health.
Depending on what crazy degree of preparation each player is capable of, there's potential for Walt to enact even more berserk setups. These generally involve him dropping a box from one ladder onto another ladder with more or less stamina affixed to a car he's driving by, with bombs naturally involved somewhere in the equation. As great a setpiece as boxes can be in that respect, Walt only can have a single stack onstage at a time and, should he repeat D-Air with preexisting boxes out, they'll vanish as a new stack drops beneath him. As such, if Walt wants to preserve a painstaking Rube Goldberg trap he's prepared, in which boxes play a pivotal role, players might find themselves stuck weathering a midair skirmish without any downward defenses. If it's a choice between knocking an assailant away with D-Air or losing a stock, Walt might just be left to pick himself up...dust himself off...and start all over again.
GraB-GAme
GRAB - BARREL Heisenberg lifts a plastic black 55-gallon barrel, presumably picked up by Huell at Home Depot, and slams it down in front of him. Walt shares his 14-frame startup and grab range with Villager's net, with speed and reach both scaling accordingly with his pivot and dash grabs. Should Walt scoop up a victim, he'll place the barrel in front of him, his foe's upper half poking awkwardly out its open top, and grimace as he firmly grasps them by their shoulder or shoulder equivalent. On whiff, he stumbles over his feet awkwardly, undergoing 27 end lag frames.
In a nutshell, Walt's grab isn't the fastest and can be punished if used predictably, especially from a standstill. That said, enterprising players are likely to find no shortage of opportunities to put it to use, especially in reaction to careless dodges or shields, or as Walt descends from N-Air, F-Air or B-Air. Of note, Walt's constructs remain active while he's holding a victim, letting him trigger a magnet to pull his barreled opponent (and him along with them).
Naturally, he also can grab and hold a victim in harm's way — in machine gun fire, under falling boxes, in thermite sparks, phosphine gas and so on. Dangerous as this can be, Walt generally will need impeccable timing to set up those external hitboxes and then grab a victim in the limited window they're still active, and in such a way that they're positioned to be hit.
Walt's foe automatically is relinquished if they take more than 10% in external damage while grabbed or undergoing his throw animations. It's a balance safeguard that doesn't inhibit Walt from KO setups with bombs or cars, but keeps foes from taking obscene damage from Something Stupid, like repeatedly rammed by a car getting pulled back and forth across a magnetic field.
PUMMEL - CHOKE Heisenberg has two distinct pummels at his disposal, both of which live up to this move's name in a manner of speaking. With a regular press of the input, Walt seizes his victim around the throat or throat equivalent and throttles them, starting with his own strangled yell to grapple in what Breaking Bad's scriptwriters would describe as "typical awkward white boy fashion." Each pummel inflicts 1.3% over 30 frames — by comparison, Ultimate's slowest pummels hover around 21 frames.
Similar to the rest of the roster, Walt is perfectly capable using pummel to shove stale moves out of his queue, but not at such a fast rate that this constitutes a catch-all solution for fixing meth purity. As noted above, his grab can be punished if used predictably and, especially against lower-damage victims or good mashers, he's unlikely to get more than one or two pummels off while still having time to perform a throw.
Players can use an alternate Special Pummel while Walt is holding a victim, so long as he hasn't already used his regular pummel during that grab. Pressing B with a foe in Walt's clutches has him angrily sling a cup of seemingly benign tea across their face or face equivalent. In reality, series fans will be unsurprised to learn that Walt — again — has laced his victim's beverage with ricin, a colorless, odorless, tasteless, yet extremely potent poison derived from castor beans.
Ricin's notoriety in Breaking Bad lore carries over into Smash, as Walt's 24-frame tea-sloshing animation inflicts an initial 1.6%, followed by 13% in gradual poison damage over six seconds — in between what Joker can inflict with Side Special with and without Arsene. Setting Walt further apart, however, after six seconds, Walt's victim flashes a sickly green, undergoing a moment of stun comparable to ZSS' paralyzer at 0.75x charge if they don't carefully time a dodge (read: simply holding shield won't work). Players only can perform one Special Pummel per grab, and Walt cannot revert back to any regular pummels after doing so, though he's still able to use a throw.
Naturally, ricin represents a standout benefit for Walt, both from damage-dealing and setup perspectives. Compared to something like Sephiroth Side Special, watching the damage counter for Walt's poisoned foe tick up gives all players involved more of an indicator as to when they'll keel over with stun, beyond just counting down a timer. Conversely, should that victim take additional damage within that window, it can throw off not just their timing in dodging, but Walt's in tracking and punishing their stun. Certainly, feeding a foe ricin can be just the ticket Walt needs to clinch a given KO setup, but as with the rest of his kit, it's not a gimme, and micromanaging enemies in the leadup could give them the opening they need to turn the tides back in their favor.
Perhaps the most rare, dangerous chemical in Walt's arsenal, ricin also has a special place in the context of his meth purity, as a lone move that fills two slots in his stale move queue with just one use. Under his mechanic, this constitutes a repeated chemical attack, automatically bringing about a 25% reduction in his product's value. And should Walt re-grab a victim and use Special Pummel again before clearing it from his most recent seven moves, he'll automatically lose his full cash reserve — really not great, unless you're attempting a Hail Mary in a last-stock situation, or looking to kick off a theoretical "broke Walt" match as a challenge.
Of course, this double slot occupancy can cut both ways in the hands of strategic players. Despite the inherent reduction to Walt's finances, Special Pummel also by default functions as Walt's fastest standalone option for removing stale moves from his queue. If Walt finds himself sitting on his hands, refraining from using a valuable chemical option because it's occupying multiple spots, perhaps among his fifth to seventh-most recent attacks, he can make use of ricin to quickly flush them out. That way, the next time he busts out those moves, it might be to even more devastating effect, capitalizing on the toxin's bonus damage and stun.
FORWARD THROW - BARREL TOSS Heisenberg squats down, grabbing both ends of his barrel and visibly strains as he attempts to lift it into the air. Over a 45-frame period, Walt raises the barrel up from very low to the ground to chest level, 1.5 training stage squares high, before throwing it forcefully downard — or just releasing the heavy container and allowing gravity to do the rest, it's open to interpretation. Try rolling it, moron! It's a barrel — it rolls!
Ahem. In any case, by default, Walt's captured victim exits the barrel on impact with the stage, bouncing a short distance into the air 1.5 squares in front of him while taking a pretty standard 7% and knockback that won't KO until upwards of 200%. The player has two potential mix-ups at their disposal: repeating the input within the first 30 frames of Walt's startup has him immediately throw the barrel down one square in front of him, inflicting 5% and bouncing his target a bit higher into the air, above his head. Holding the input, meanwhile, prompts Walt to heave up his barrel for 15 additional frames before throwing it down three squares away, dealing 9% and sending his target at a low-to-the-ground angle capable of putting them at prone at low- to mid-percents, barring a tech.
Walt's various F-Throw angles give him a degree of customabizability as to what type of combo setup he wants to initiate. An early F-Throw sets him up to combo into a shorthopped N-Air or F-Air, or else sit in place, preparing a grounded attack to punish potential enemy air dodges. Regular F-Throw often serves as Walt's preferred means for bringing a victim near a lingering F-Tilt gas arc, before quickly running up and repeating his preferred F-Tilt angle while they're in hitstun. With good timing, Walt can chain F-Throw into a few repeated down-angled F-Tilts, able to continually hit a target into and out of prone across the stage if they fail to time techs. And charged F-Throws come in handy when Walt wants to try positioning a tech chase situation between himself and a construct opposite his foe. It's a strong utility throw that won't cut into Walt's meth purity, though outside of his handgun and dash attack, chemical attacks generally will come into play when maximizing its damage-racking potential.
From a construct standpoint, Walt occasionally can pile some extra damage on his victim before throwing them by lifting his barrel into an external hitbox, such as an elevated thermite trap or bullet stream (though the latter poses some risk of hitting him as well). In a manner similar to F-Smash, active magnets to either side of Walt also can slightly tweak his barrel's trajectory, adding or subtracting a square to its travel distance. A potential result involves Walt's barrel coming down one square behind him, if he's used an early F-Throw with a magnet to that side. And, from atop a ladder, Walt's default and charged F-Throws can send foes at different diagonal angles down into constructs or prone on platforms below. Though this can send opponents offstage in preparation for a gimp, virtually all characters exit hitstun quickly enough to easily make it back to the stage without further intervention from Walt. No time to rest yet!
BACK THROW - GRANITE STATE Heisenberg crosses to his barrel's opposite side, whipping out a silver cannister of liquid nitrogen and spraying a robust stream of freezing gas at the container. The stream's force lifts the barrel off the ground, carrying it four squares at an upward diagonal angle over the course of a second. During this time, Walt's victim takes a cumulative 8% through multiple rapid hits of 1%. After reaching this trajectory's apex, the nitrogen's sheer negative temperature shatters Walt's barrel. This inflicts an extra 4% and launching his victim with force sufficient to KO around 130% at the ledge, or potentially earlier if opponents are carried up past the upper blast zone.
Within Walt's repertoire, B-Throw is his best bet for putting some distance between him and his opponent — the importance of which can't be overstated, in situations where Walt needs just a bit more time to cook up some profits. Even at low percents, B-Throw isn't normally set up to combo into any of Walt's direct attacks, though his victim's gradual elevation over the course of the animation generally increases their odds of bumping into an external hitbox. Should Walt arrange such a collision, he'll be able to capitalize on a paltry 20-frame cooldown as his target's final hit takes effect. That way, he can close the gap to continue applying pressure or — if he's pushed them back into a dollar bill cloud or burner flames — sit tight as they're launched back in his direction, ready for another choice follow-up.
As with F-Throw, magnetic fields can exert some pull on victim-toting barrels as Walt is blowing them back, either adding or removing a square from their distance pushed. Toss an opponent toward an active magnet with B-Throw, and their ultimate knockback will take effect a touch further away from Walt, broadening the range of constructs they can hit or increasing his likelihood of sending them offstage. A magnet in front of Walt, on the other hand, will keep his victim closer to melee range, giving him a chance to connect with a reversed B-Air if they're at low damage.
DOWN THROW - BURIED
Moving in cartoonishly fast fashion, Heisenberg uses a shovel that manifests in his hands to quickly dig in a circle around his barrel, burying it over 45 frames to lower his captor into a pitfall effect. A rather no-frills option, Walt's pitfall inflicts 5% and holds targets with about the same strength as K. Rool or Banjo's analogues. Similar to dash attack and D-Air, Walt is able to enhance D-Throw's strength by forking over fistfuls of cash. Players are able to press B up to three times during Walt's animation's startup for him to shovel dollar bills into his barrel as he digs, putting his hard-earned cash safely in the ground along with his target. One $500 increment bolsters Walt's pitfall strength a bit higher than that of the aforementioned two Rare characters. Another payment renders it another mite stronger, and the $1.5k maximum produces a pitfall to rival the strength of Inkling's roller.
Scary as the prospect of such burials on a throw might be, a few extenuating circumstances often require Walt to play around his pitfalls more strategically than your average bear. With a 45-frame cooldown as he stows his shovel, Walt is limited in his ability to immediately transition into a laggy attack, especially given his victim's ability to start mashing during his burying animation. There's also that, with each cash increment Walt stuffs in his barrel, his knockback threshold for launching his victim out becomes progressively higher — ranging from 90 knockback units, same as Ultimate's vanilla pitfalls, and increasing by 20 units with each $500 added. For a frame of reference, Bowser's F-Tilt inflicts a greater 160 knockback units on Mario at 100%.
Putting these pieces together, Walt is free to confirm into more basic attacks, like his handgun or a tilt, against low-percent foes out of a base-level pitfall. That said, throwing money around doesn't necessarily amount to a free Smash, especially given Walt's charge frames on his strongest option in F-Smash. Against competent mashers, Walt generally can start confirming into his fulminated mercury around 120%, though get too greedy charging and his victim's escape will not only set him back whatever sum he invested into his pitfall, but also leave him rather vulnerable to a retaliatory falling aerial. Burying a victim next to an existing bomb or machine gun also can pay dividends, though unless they're respectively close to detonating or angled right, these too, aren't necessarily sure bets.
On the other hand, Walt can pull off potentially more rewarding setups harnessing the variable knockback storage thresholds he can institute in his pitfalls. Depending on his pitfall's strength, he can needle his buried victim with a few weaker grounded attacks, like jab, down-angled F-Tilt or either version of D-Tilt, building up damage while also influencing how forcefully they're sent out along the ground — potentially into an untechable prone state, past one or two good hits. Deeper pitfalls also expand Walt's potential to cross up his victim, determining which way they're ultimately launched. And there's always the freedom for Walt to step away, whether for a few more crucial moments of meth cooking or to start arranging his next death trap.
Mechanically, like any drop-through platform, Walt can pitfall his victim on top of a ladder. While this doesn't tend to be an especially fruitful setup, every now and then Walt can plant an opponent before immediately dropping down and using an aerial to detonate a bomb he's affixed below. There's also spacing shenanigans to be had burying a foe on a ladder on a moving car, if one feels so inclined.
UP THROW - CHEMICAL DISINCORPORATION Heisenberg grabs two plastic jugs of hydrofluoric acid, as seen in U-Tilt, one in each hand, and empties both into his barrel over 38 frames, prompting a searing hiss as smoke rises up around his captive victim. Walt's opponent takes 5% in fire damage and an instant of hitstun in place before getting launched a short distance vertically out of the container, with force that won't KO until upward of 200%. With a fairly minute 17 end lag frames, Walt then can flow right into U-Tilt for a guaranteed combo up through mid-percents, one that will capitalize on the attack's flaming bonus damage to boot. Past that point, foes can leap or air dodge away, though they ought to do so quickly, lest Walt buffer an uncharged U-Smash to further torch their sorry behinds.
U-Throw occupies a unique role in Walt's kit as a tool that actually grows in strength, the more it appears in his stale move queue, at least to a point. Chalk it up to acid residue remaining in Walt's barrel and putting progressively more hurt on his target. The natural result, of course, are tweaks to U-Throw's utility. Should the throw occupy one slot in Walt's queue, acid from a subsequent use will inflict 10% and vertical knockback KOing around 150%. At middle strength, U-Throw stops comboing into U-Tilt outside low percentages, instead shifting into a 50/50 setup tool for Walt.
Should his victim react with an immediate midair jump, Walt can cover their movement with U-Air, while staying stationary or air dodging in place opens them up to a charged U-Smash (or a car or F-Smash if they're left to fall all the way down). In both cases, his foe will exit hitstun before Walt strikes, removing his ability to achieve bonus fire damage, though he's unlikely to complain, given U-Smash and U-Air both represent stronger standalone follow-up attacks than he can achieve from regular U-Throw.
And, with two U-Throws within Walt's stale move queue, another one causes his victim to take a peak 15% and vertical knockback KOing around 100%, launched out as though their barrel were a barrel cannon. At low damage levels, Walt can use strong U-Throw to attempt the 50/50 tricks outlined above, though he's otherwise best off building up to this iteration for a finisher against a foe at KO percent. Mechanically, U-Throw will not grow more powerfully if Walt stales it four or more times. Rather, his throw's variants operate on a cycle, with the base version manifesting if Walt has zero, three, six or nine U-Throws occupying his 10 queue slots. Medium U-Throw emerges with the attack in one, four, seven or ten slots, with strong U-Throw coming out with two, five or eight slot spots.
While not especially relevant if Walt is at all bothering with meth purity, this staleness quirk is a quiet deterrent from him from simply spamming U-Throw whenever he grabs a victim, so as to always have the strongest version in his arsenal. Rather, if he wants to hang on to U-Throw as a KO tool, he'll have to strategically use attacks as his enemy's percentage starts climbing, making sure not to prematurely push that second use of the throw out.
There's also buggery to be had using Walt's regular pummel to influence which U-Throw variant takes effect. As an example, if Walt has three U-Throws in his queue, one or two in its ninth and tenth slots, he can perform one or two physical chokes to switch from his base throw to his strong and medium versions, respectively. Beyond the baked-in versatility, this switcheroo can really do a number on enemy DI unless they happen to have been monitoring Walt's stale moves as closely as he has. One downside that can become a byproduct of efficient U-Throw use is Walt having to hold off from splashing ricin tea over his victim, lest he accidentally end up with a less optimal version of the acidic attack.
Walt's U-Throw offers perhaps his most direct opportunities for interactions with external constructs. If he grabs a victim caught in a thermite trap, Walt can automatically realize his fire damage multiplier from U-Throw itself, tossing his victim while they're already ablaze from the sparks. This same effect can be achieved if Walt immediately grabs a foe bounced off the side of Bunsen burner flames, albeit with a far tighter turnaround time requiring him to buffer U-Throw.
Separately, Walt's barrel constitutes a hitbox as he's pouring his acid inside, inflicting a set 5% and low set flinch to outside opponents. Should Walt grab a victim right next to a low-stamina bomb, he can pull off a rather devastating damage setup. Properly positioned, Walt's barrel hitbox will trigger the explosive and detonate it the instant after his victim is launched, comboing U-Throw into his bomb blast, which itself will inflict fiery bonus damage. It's an arrangement foes can jump or dodge away from beyond mid-percents on Walt's base U-Throw or low percents on medium U-Throw, adding another wrinkle into which variant he seeks to keep at any given time. But should Walt use U-Throw next to a bomb on a car, his barrel hitbox will reach up high enough to set the explosive off, sending weaker, but still potent car shrapnel up at his victim to prolong the damage range at which they're in some level of danger zone.
As an easter egg, should Walt finish off an opponent's stock with U-Throw in a stamina match, his acid won't launch them from his barrel. Instead, they'll let out their death cry as they sink down into the container in their drowning animation. Oh, man...that's messed up!
Final Smash
FELINA SMASH - CRYSTAL SHIP
Heisenberg remarks in an echoing voice, "Stay -out- of my territory," prompting his RV-turned-mobile meth lab to appear and drop a short distance to his level half a second later. The 1986 Fleetwood Bounder appears in all of its glory, a decent amount larger than Walt's regular cars at seven training stage squares long and three tall. Walt will capture foes to be hit by his ensuing attack if the RV falls onto them or they otherwise make contact over the 1.5 second it lingers onstage, up to a three-character maximum. Should he whiff, the RV will vanish in a big poof of green smoke as Walt angrily kicks a spot of dirt.
Connect, however, and players will transition to a cinematic, with the screen zoomed in on the RV's windows. Caught characters appear against the glass in their screen KO splat as the windows cloud over with red phosphine gas that begins to choke them. The camera then pulls a ways back to reveal the RV's location in the middle of the remote New Mexican desert, surrounded by a rough-and-tumble looking group of tatted men, wearing leather jackets and brandishing various firearms. Looks like Walt has called on Uncle Jack's neo-Nazi gang to carry out another dirty hit job on his behalf.
The gang proceeds to fire their weapons into the side of the RV, peppering it with bulletholes to render it a makeshift coffin for Walt's opponents. As they do so, the camera pulls back just a touch further to show Heisenberg in the foreground, facing the screen as though breaking the fourth wall. He proceeds to sip from a mug of coffee as, behind him, the RV explodes in a massive blast, engulfing the surrounding ground and neo-Nazis. It would appear Walt had rigged the tenement on wheels to blow from the start and tie up all of his loose ends in one fell swoop. Characters suffer a total 52% over the course of the cutscene, after which they take steep knockback capable of KOing around 50% as they and Walt reappear onstage.
ExtRas
UP TAUNT - PIZZA TIME
A pizza box appears in Heisenberg's hands as he lets out an angsty snarl and thrusts it upward, prompting the pizza inside to soar off into the background. I've heard the private residents who own the Whites' house in Albuquerque -really- appreciate when very normal and well-adjusted fans show up outside to reenact this taunt onto their roof.
SIDE TAUNT - REFLECTION Heisenberg extracts one in a series of assorted Breaking Bad props, holding it in both hands and gazing pensively at it for a moment before stowing it back into hammerspace. A list of possible items he can evaluate includes a missing poster with his face, a couch pillow embroidered with "find joy in the little things," a tattered, one-eyed pink teddy bear, broken shards of yellow plate, a black GPS tracker, a bottle of Schraderbräu, a copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Glass," a marijuana cigarette, a potted lily of the valley plant, a fast-food bag from Los Pollos Hermanos, a Roomba and a battered gold front-desk bell — ding!
DOWN TAUNT - SAY THE LINE, WALT! Heisenberg stares down his opponent and commands, "Say my name." Should the player repeat this taunt within a three-second window, he'll instead follow up, "You're goddamn right." Depending on the match-up, the pause between his lines can be filled with any number of amusing responses from that character's own taunts.
ENTRANCE - THE LONG WALK ALONE
An outline evocative of Breaking Bad's two-panel title text appears in the background and emits green smoke as Heisenberg strolls into the foreground, ready to begin this particular standoff.
VICTORY POSE #1 - I'VE WON...
Heisenberg holds a cell phone to his ear and simply states, "I won," looking a little battered but with a weary contentment.
VICTORY POSE #2 - ...BUT AT WHAT COST? Heisenberg stands next to a metal cook tank, smiling faintly as he lifts a hand and places it gently on the contraption, a reminder of the one pursuit that made him feel...alive.
VICTORY POSE #3 - FLY AWAY HOME
The camera traces a housefly, as seen in Walt's Up Special, as it buzzes briefly around before landing on Heisenberg's glasses, shown right as his splash screen appears in a close-up detail shot straight out of Vince Gilligan's playbook. Walt's eyes narrow hungrily as he monitors his target, which rubs its legs together infuriatingly, so close and yet so far out of reach.
Of all your modern sets, Walter just might be the one closest to your older, MYM10-13 style sets, given he’s more of a regular human with a penchant for traps. While the Down Special props get especially cool when they’re combined together, I have a soft spot for movesets that play around with stale-move negation, the meth mechanic being odd but a unique way to punish Walter for spamming his moves. I also appreciate that you didn’t include meth as a consumable substance in the main set, as it would have felt wrong to see more innocent characters like Dixie Kong consume it. Seems like something David would have done in the old days if he had tackled this character, whereby this set handles its touchy subject matter very tastefully. Coincidence or not, I find it intriguing that Walter’s last attack input (U-throw) and Final Smash portray him the most villainously in his moveset (along with his ricin pummel), like they represent the full depths of his depravity.
Also, I believe this is the first MYM set ever to utilize Smash Ultimate’s ladder mechanic. The ladder is a bit weird in some areas flavor-wise, given you can place one on top of a car and stand on top of the ladder to use your ground moves (the latter seems potentially powerful when Walter’s moves like his U-Smash are fine at KO’ing from regular ground, but I’m not too against it).
The melee moves do make good use of the meth mechanic, with F-tilt being a particular favourite that gets stronger the more the move is used in one place. I also quite liked U-throw for getting stronger based on its placement in the stale list. D-Smash and U-Smash were unique for placing traps that could still stale if they hit when the main move whiffed, giving foes a weird incentive to get nicked by them if it would decrease Walter’s money. Other fun moves include Dash Attack and D-air, but really the majority of attacks in this set were enjoyable, with some touches of creativity without being ridiculous. I agree with FA in U-Smash being overpowered as-is, if mostly for its lingering duration. I would personally make only a small section at the bottom deal knockback, have most of the lingering flames not deal hitstun, but still let the flames bounce foes back if you manage to knock a foe into them. Even then, it is basically Palutena’s U-Smash that lingers as a trap, so your suggestions to tweak it in the chat sound good.
Walter White
This is a character I've honestly long had a complicated relationship with, and for reasons that are absolutely not the fault of anyone responsible for his creation. Its kind of a mix of the amount of hype that goes into the type of television he's from when it usually doesn't interest me and bad experiences with some Breaking Bad fans in MYM chat in the past that put me off being able to enjoy the show for a long time. I'm well past that point now, obviously, but its taken me a while to realize how much there is to appreciate with the character and even if I have far from a comprehensive view of Breaking Bad as a series, this is an incredibly exciting choice. Especially given he's pretty ingrained in MYM history despite being a character who never got a set, and now 7 years after the initial preview of him dying of cancer for his mechanic and giving meth to opponents for what, IIRC, was mostly a powerup, we finally get a serious, massive project to bring him to life.
And honestly? I'd say the wait's been pretty much worth it. Using the meth as a means of funding Walter's operation through the Neutral Special is probably the right way to handle the mechanic as implementing the drugs in gameplay itself will always run into some awkwardness. And ultimately, he makes it to make money, after all. I also actually really like the way Walter's funding is balanced, where he can get enough to beef up the standards he wants it for off a small NSpecial session but not much more than that, he gets a small but usable amount to work with off 105 frames, a pretty impressive amount at 140 frames, and bordering on unlimited funds at 175. Of course, if you do get the 175 frame amount, its not all smooth sailing, because you could still lose it through mismanagement of your chemical attacks... which in some cases outright encourage you to spam them to get the maximum mileage. It creates a genuinely interesting ecosystem to get the most out of Walt's meth-brewing, one its clear you thought about a lot designing it the more I think about it. The fact that his recovery is dependent on his money supply and a lot of his specials lose some of their most effective options if Walt ends up broke certainly don't hurt in making the play with money very interesting, and make it so even if a player isn't getting a ton of breathing room for setups they'll still want to hold onto their cash if possible.
I don't think I need to TELL anyone that the setups Walt can make are cool. They still require a lot of player input to get full mileage out of, they're not at all set and forget traps and definitely at their most powerful if sprung at the right place at the right time. They're also built with a LOT of synergy between options, as you can turn them into mobile setups through use of a car, and bullets/magnets/bombs/ladders all amplify the effectiveness of each other to an impressive degree. Its definitely difficult to get a lot of the more galaxy brain setups the set offers on the fly, sure, but there's a lot of mileage you can get out of just combining 1-2 items with a ladder or car, for example, and the bigger setups are so terrifying when they do happen they absolutely do feel worth the money if you have it to spend. Honestly this set feels a bit like what older vehicle sets wanted to be with stuff like setting your inventory on top of a car and driving it around, lacking the more absurd balance problems those sets have and only feeling absurdly powerful if you put the work in. Its just the right combination of smaller setups that do really fun things for the sets general play patterns and huge "sky's the limit" ones that really make the set's skill ceiling feel absurd that make it so fun, even if I could call it maybe a little too indulgent in some places it exactly captures why I loved these old setup sets without their bigger flaws.
The thing that was arguably even more impressive to me was the fact that you went and gave Walter impressive stuff AFTER all the money/setup intensive specials? I would never have guessed there was so much potential for this character, but you really got a LOT out of his chemicals and even some of his non-chemical attacks, leaving a huge portion of his melee feeling interesting. Highlights include Jab/Nair for all the ways the "spammable gun move" fits in with Walt's playstyle while giving him close range flaws(and taking advantage of his setups), Forward Tilt's elaborate play with gas arcs, UTilt and DTilt creating reasons to spam them despite the inherent problems of doing that, and I honestly just really like the simple nature of how FSmash can be followed up, it gives a simple thrown explosive a lot of depth. These aren't the only good moves, mind you, there's rarely a dull moment with this set and it still feels practical enough with all its options to carry it to the finish line. To level some real complaints against the set though, I feel some aspects of the set's balance do echo the issues of old setup characters, as it sometimes feel like Walt crumbles a bit too much to pressure to get stuff he wants to going and once he gets everything he wants the snowball is a little hard to interact with at times. Neither of these are extreme enough to break the set, far from it, but it does leave me questioning if this set is my favorite in the contest or not despite all the praise I've heaped on it.
To go back to the stuff I loved though, the sheer amount of character stuff in the writing and playstyle is just stellar. The way the mechanics combine to make Walt under pressure from all sides, with his own moveset perfectly capable of screwing up his operations on top of the opponent probably being better in melee combat than he is, the general need to improvise and occasionally pull out some absolutely brilliant stuff, and the set ending by showing the answer to "are Walt's actions justified". The answer, for the record, is no, his actions are clearly monstrous and never had a truly reasonable motivation in the end, which I think you'd notice if you read those last 2 moves let alone watched much of the show. The set is absolutely filled to the brim with references to the show, with a number of quotes I don't even recognize despite getting a decent amount of Breaking Bad info through osmosis, but also TONS of stuff I do know about that is really nice to see in the set. You said it was a love letter to Breaking Bad, and you absolutely were not kidding, this set feels like even if its 7 years past the craze, he has everything you'd ever want out of a set for the series. I do think I'm leaning towards this being my favorite set in the contest at this point, it was absolutely worth the wait.
JamCon, or Jam Contest, is a mini-contest we hold each month. Each JamCon will take place over 96 hours (4 days) where a theme will be posted at midnight of the start of the JamCon and contestants will have 96 hours to write and post a moveset for that theme. The theme can be taken as literally as you want, but it needs to obviously be related to the theme. The theme can be related to the character or the playstyle, or both. The contest kicks off RIGHT NOW, so get cracking! (Originally it was 72 hours, but we're experimenting with giving a little more leeway for it.)
In order to participate, simply write a moveset once the JamCon has started and when you post it note that it's for JamCon. In Google Docs, you can also put JamCon in the title of the document. Anyone is free to participate, and joint sets are allowed. Once posting has closed, everyone (even if you didn't participate in the JamCon) can vote on their favorite. Voting will be open two weeks after the JamCon posting period ends. To vote, post a comment in the thread like you would comment a regular moveset (something substantial, nothing one-line) and clearly mark that you're voting for it as the winner of the JamCon. Results on how many votes each moveset got will be posted 24 hours after that, and the winner will be determined, with tiebreakers being initiated if necessary depending on circumstances.
The winner of the JamCon will be able to choose the next month's JamCon's theme. Good luck everyone, and have fun with it!
Once a JamCon entry has been posted, major edits won't be allowed until the winner has been cast. Minor edits, like spelling, grammar, formatting, number crunching, and etc. are allowed. Basically no major changes to the playstyle.
No matter what gimmick you're using, it still has to fit the requirements of being able to be voted on for the Top 50.
You can still edit your moveset after the JamCon is over if you're not satisfied with how it will do for the Top 50.
This whole thing works by the honor system; the intent is to make a set in three/four/however many days in the spirit of the JamCon, but we're not gonna rules lawyer you if you pick up something you'd barely started on earlier for it. Heck, you could have a finished set kicking around that just happens to fit the theme for some reason and only you and God would know.
More notes will go here if someone has a question.
September's JamCon theme is... "The Influence!"
You're free to be as literal or liberal as you want with this, as long as it's within reason, even if it's a bit of a stretch (you can't just say you choice in character affects how the foe fights you!). Any definition of "influence" can apply here:
Alcohol or drugs?
Religious indoctrination?
Simple peer pressure?
People that influence society around them; good or bad role models and leaders, great heroes and protectors that inspire hope, villians and monsters that inspire despair and fear?
Paradigm-shifting inventors or scientists?
Celestial bodies' spheres of influence?
Characters from genre-codifying entries in media, like Half-Life, Quake/Doom, or the Three Stooges?
A character or piece of media that had a big effect on you personally?
Some examples:
From Smash itself: Mario is one of the most popular fictional characters on the planet; if anyone is influential, it's him. Hero, Link, Sonic, Cloud, Pikachu, Steve, etc. also count for similar reasons.
On the other end of the spectrum, Ridley is universally reviled as the leader of the dreaded Space Pirates, and Sephiroth among others also carries a similar aura of dread in-universe.
Calliope Mori both indulges in wine herself and can forcefully inebriate foes, plus the huge influence VTubers in general have had on internet culture in the last year or so with their explosive rise to popularity.
And I guess Kamoshida, who nobody likes but if you try to stand up to him he'll break your leg, also counts; plus he's an Olympic medalist that brings good publicity to Shujin Academy.
"im sorry mr whited i made the moveset before the jamcon" "god damn it jesser now we cant win the contest"
a
Voting period will last two weeks, and entries will end at midnight AST, the end of Sunday the 12th (so you get all of the 12th to do things). Now get out there and set some moves!
The woman woke up to unfamiliar surroundings, her red hair splayed across the grass. Light flooded her eyes as she lifted herself up before the blinding sting subsided and made way for a large plain. She checked herself, hoping they were still on her. In her right hand, a black, high-tech firearm vaguely resembling a revolver, its barrel segmented into small black blocks. In her right, a purple game controller with a bright gray joystick and bright-colored buttons. Good. She still had everything she needed.
She stared at the controller in her hand, an object touched by mysterious forces, as she remembered what happened: it suddenly appeared in the building she had arrived at to search for her lost brother, and when she made an attempt to cleanse it, she blacked out, plucked from her reality and into this one.
"Where...am I," she asked out loud. She saw visions of glass shards in the air around her briefly flash before her eyes before vanishing. "Really? I'm...not so sure about that. Best thing we can do now is explore the place."
She set off to trek across the plains, her new purpose to figure out her current location. Eventually, she saw a large, metallic object float down above the plains, causing her to jump to a nearby rock and take out her gun. She heard the sound of people landing on the ground one by one. "Yup, definitely not home anymore," she snarked before the shards flashed again, suggesting she go turn to look. She turned around the rock to get a peek at the new arrivals.
BOOM!!!
The ground beneath her trembled as though someone set off a high-power explosive at her location before she scurried back behind the rock, a wave of dust flying past it. She breathed in and out, calming herself down. Voices then were heard from past the rock.
"What the fu-, I mean, what the f-word was that," said a deep female voice, the shock evident in her voice.
"S-senpai, are you alright," squeaked a much younger, energetic voice as the woman heard more footsteps.
"I'm fine. It's not every day that something makes me jump," said a baritone male voice. For some reason, it didn't feel like physical speaking. It felt as though reality itself was being warped to form those words.
"WHAT THE &%!^# WAS THAT," shouted a gravelly, masculine voice.
"I-I'm sorry, did I hurt anybody," said a rather cute, feminine voice. The voice sounded like she was distressed from doing something.
"I damn well hope not," shouted the gruff voice. "What'd I tell you about jumpin' from tall heights, Lip?!"
"Wait, that was you," said the deep woman's voice incredulously. "You scared the living crap out of us! What even are you, a ton?"
"T-That's just the weight of the burden of data transfer! It's not my actual weight," shouted the shy voice, apparently this "Lip" girl. Panic instantly followed as deep whooshing sounds were heard past the rock. She heard a loud, alien screech and the sound of flapping wings as she tried to picture what was going on behind her.
"P-Please, Ms. Passionlip! Do not flail your hands around in such a manner," said a digital, rather servile voice. "If you keep doing this, you might -KILL ME, YOU BIMBO- accidentally knock the Orbiter out the sky!"
"Enough," said the baritone voice. "We must move at once. The League of Villains may have received word of our return to Earth, and are most likely mobilizing to intercept us if we do not act quickly."
The woman sighed, now fully calm from this sudden event. But she still had so many questions. Where did they come from? Who was the League of Villains? Were they sucked in here by an OoP as well?
"Operator, I am detecting a single unrecognized signature," said the servile voice. "It is located at that rock behind you."
"The League found us already," said the energetic voice with extra shakiness.
Knowing that the jig was up, she concentrated her power to lift the rock and turned towards the group, the dust now having settled. She stopped before she could throw it, however, just to get a look at these new adversaries.
A robot with two snakes on his arms, a young girl with a large backpack on her person, a pink-haired woman in black with a scythe, a giant purple wasp creature that seemed to take an interest in this new arrival, a blond man with a cigarette in his mouth and carrying a spear, and a purple-haired girl with the most "volume" she had ever seen in a human being and metal hands that look more dangerous than anything that tried to kill her. Not the strangest thing she had seen, but this group ranked pretty high.
"State your name," the baritone voice said, although nobody appeared to say a word. Though with the robot raising what looked to be a shotgun and aiming it at her face, it was safe, or rather unsafe, to assume that it was the one talking. "Who are you and why are you here?"
Do I tell them, she asked internally. They might not believe what I tell them.
The glass shards flashed before her again before she let out a loud sigh. Fine, I guess it wouldn't hurt. Might as well be on their good side.
Came in a bit under the wire, but I think most of the MYM community will appreciate this next Jamcon entry!
One of the most influential characters in their source series, with the ability to influence the movements of their enemy if conditions are met. No matter how fast you run, you can't escape Justice.
EDIT: Updated version of set here, original entry preserved for posterity.
Slavic
Lyn
Kholdstare
Kurt Zisa
GolisoPower
Red
WeirdChillFever
Rockerduck (and Jeeves)
FrozenRoy
Gareth
Torgo the Bear
Gamera
Rychu
)
This is only partially true as the nature of Morgan's best kill options (Forward Smash, Down Smash and Down Special) somewhat preclude straight-up comboing out of a pitfall like this. But it's not impossible! The downside, of course, comes from ease of use: Morgan needs to set up a laggy zone that opponents can simply step away from to avoid, the opponent keeping up movement avoids the pitfall (or just being in the air) and unless Morgan also has a Side Special setup she's liable to not be in the right position to truly take advantage of the pitfall. It's much harder to utilize its advantages than just "ha ha funni grab" is what I'm saying.
bubbyboytoo
