Mario vs. Falcon matchup

[drewskii]

Recently I have been doing extremely well in my local scene and I'm planning to start going to some SSS tourneys and hopefully Evo. However recently Falcon has been giving me a lot of trouble lately and I've been struggling to come up with an answer for him. His naira seems to destroy mario and I can't seem to get anything good going. Any tips? Also if you have any footage of Mario vs. Falcon that would be greatly appreciated. I like to visualise what I need to do more than just read about it.

 

[Plunder]

Falcon is a tough MU because on stage he's just a bigger faster Mario.

The only thing that works on a theoretical level as an approach is FH Dair to Uair or fire balls before going in. Everything else seems to lose to Falcon's priority range and speed. I noticed Shroomed used to approach with dash SH Uairs with Doc against Falcons, that seems to work. Both the Marios have seem to have good disjoint from the front on the first frame, plus it leads to grab follow up, combos, and even KO set ups on FFers.

You also have a much superior WD so tricky movement and using his great WD OoS Dsmash can go a long way. Approach then WD back is highly underrated in this MU, its a powerful baiting tool and can lead to openings when they whiff aerials.

 

[TheBoat]

Uptilt does a number on falcon. If spaced properly, you can beat out nair sometimes. You can get a lot out of uptilt by being really tricky with your spacing and throwing it out when falcon commits.

I like to play close to falcon and play a game of trying to read/catch their jump with a quick upair/uptilt and jabbing/spotdodging their grab attempts (or wavedashing back). If you can get a falcon cornered, then it becomes rock paper scissors at that point. Just be wary of his instant upair OOS, if he tends to do them.

Also, I find that falcon (or at least many of the falcons I've played) have trouble when you put aerials out above their shothop nair range. Like Plunder said, fullhop nair is great. Even a falling AC bair really close to their dash dance into pivot jab and bait and catch their jump.

Like a lot of mario's matchups against characters that tend to control the neutral, the falcon matchup feels centered around baiting and acting swiftly OOS. In a lot of matchups, I think short hop forward -> waveland back is super good as a bait and usally puts you in a good position to punish their reaction to your fake commitment.

Full hop fireball waveland and just fireballs in general have felt really risky in this matchup for me. Falcon tends to run below, jump over, or sometimes cancel out mario's fireballs. On larger stages, you can get away with one if you think they aren't going to run in. If they do run in, you can waveland, upair, nair, or double jump after a fullhop fireball. I find fullhop fireball, fade back into upair (right before you hit the ground) a really good mixup. People don't expect you to have a hitbox there so it gives you free openings sometimes.

When you do get in on falcon, the biggest concern is ending your combos at the right time without allowing him to get away with DI out. At mid/lowish percents, don't try to chain many upairs. Sometimes DI out will also make it so you can't uptilt after your upair. The best thing to do, from what I currently understand, is to finish with dsmash or ftilt after getting an upair at low/mid percent, because that works with any DI.

Also, while approaching with short hop bair/upair, you can double jump and waveland or a platform before you hit the ground.
It's my fav thing right now. Looks stylish af and it's not too difficult.


Idk, that's all I got for now. Sorry if there's any typos. I wrote this pretty late at night. I'll check it over later.

 

[j3ly]

You can almost always get several follow up when falcon is launched 30% and upwards (uthrow/utilt/usmash), and capitalizing maximally off utilt is probably the best way to do it - although really hard. Keep using the moves which send him up.


Getting him to 40% from 0% can't be safely done without a grab due to his crouch cancelling, and his potential to death combo us out of it. This is the hard part IMO as we have the least amount of options.


He out ranges us and out speeds us pretty hard so it's important to be in the right part of the stage.. and to play out of shield from any position closer.
The right part of the stage vs falcon is half a wavedash inside what you deem to be his effective range, where you're almost safe (reactively) from his dash jumping nair, any closer and it's best to be shielded as you can't react to him.


It's best to play a shield heavy, grounded neutral game.
This means jabs, WD back fsmash, DWD in jab grab, aggressive ftilts and campy utilts.


Some years ago I could get away with standing still, and utilting his approaches on reaction as them came in, then as people learned how to space themselves with shield, and implement micro spacing this stopped working. The tech itself is timeless tho, so utilt away like a tiny Italian westballz.


Bare in mind falcon has the quickest and most creative movement game.. mario can't even land a hit on a TASbot using falcon to his potential. The closer the falcon is to the skill cap, the more of an uphill struggle it will be.