an important thing to remember is that Snake can play as slowly as he wants to due to the amount of stage control and projectile-esque attacks in his arsenal—an opponent lying in wait isn't that much of a problem when Snake is free to do his thing. So they're going to approach, and you're meant to punish that approach. There are situations, of course, where you've got to force their hand a bit. With that:
- Dash forward, wavedash back, ready to punish their reaction. This isn't so much an approach as it is a bait disguised as an approach. Even if they don't take the bait, or you fail to punish their reaction well, you gain insight into how they'll tend to react to an approach.
- A jump makes DACUS a very good option, as it covers a lot of space and also punishes whiffed tilts from the opponent.
- Practically anything else I'd just toss a grenade and wait a bit. Use the grenade's shieldstun to gain an advantage over your opponent.
- Nair has a lot of range on it, and can cover dashes in relatively well, perhaps utilizing a Cypher cancelled NAir to cover your jumpsquat as well.
- JC grab has a large amount of range (Snake has the sixth longest non-tether grab and a long JC)
Other baiting maneuvers can include:
= Dashdances—Snake's is relatively short, but varying the length works wonders at times
= down smash into DACUS—folks tend to want to punish the down smash, and without a projectile they have a very linear way of doing it
= grenade pickup into run up shield+roll, spotdodge, etc.—I'm not sure of the frame data, but it's worth investigating the differences between shield and spotdodge on the grenade explosion. One benefit I see is the availability of grounded special moves and tilts, as well as dashes.
=wavedash into a tilt or jab. Jab in particular is super disjointed and leads into some funny stuff sometimes?
Bait and punish. Don't approach
