Sonic Matchup Export #5: Snake

[Mr. Johan]

Oh, look at that, an update.

Matchup Discussion #5 - Solid Snake

Current Matchup Ratio: +1

Sonic Consensus: TBD

This thread will be used to compile all Matchup-relevant data, and to keep discussion of the matchup clear and concise. Please refrain from submitting a MU ratio only; try to elaborate on the MU so everyone can understand why the MU ratio is what it is.

Match Up Summary and Key Points​

Main Things to Watch For, and How to Fight It​

Stage Picks, Stage Bans​

Important Links​

VR Training: A Guide to Using Solid Snake
Techs Every Snake Should Know​

 

[JMan8891]

Keep Snake in the air. Don't run into the Nair, but if he is airborne, he doesn't have stage control, and his is juggled easily. Get him offstage: he may not die to for a long while with good DI, but you again are denying him stage control. Be careful of nades, but use them to your advantage when applicable. ASC from slightly above and in front (over Ftilt) can be used well, just don't be dumb about it and eat an Utilt.

Use and abuse the grab game. A simple dash in/shield from time to time and you'll often catch snakes jabbing or Ftilting. Shield grab>profit. If you are repetitive, he will just grab you. Be prepared for Dthrow/tech read Ftilt in retaliation

Range and stage control, plus early kills with Utilts broken range, I'd call it a +1 Snake's Favor

My2cents

 

[BSP]

For now:

Stay close enough so you can pressure Snake. As Jman alluded to, you do not want Snake to establish stage control with mines, nades, C4, etc. Stay close enough to pressure him.

Don't spindash into grenades. That's free damage for him. IIRC, if Snake is holding a fresh grenade, Fair pressures and does not blow the nade.

Snake's continuous A jab will beat Spindash no matter how charged it is.

Most Snakes almost always have a grenade out, meaning that if you land a grab, a pummel, Fthrow, Uthrow, or Dthrow will cause it to blow up. If you don't have port priority, this can lead to bad situations very fast. Even if you do have priority, it's still risky. You do get Snake in the air, but you're also somewhat trading with him, which is obviously not in your favor. The safest thing to do when you land a grab is to immediately Bthrow. Then, you can worry about punishing his landing.

If he doesn't have a nade when you grab him, go for a pummel or two and then Uthrow. You need the damage and it puts Snake where he does not want to be: above you.

When Snake is above you or offstage, you need to be in his face. Those situations are your biggest opportunities to rack damage on him. Above: pressure his landings hard and punish. Look for the Breversed grenades and C4s. Offstage: try to hit him out of cypher if you can. If he goes for the extremely high cypher, punish his landings. Don't get too greedy and chase with spring. If you get Uair'd, you're done.

Try to avoid trading with Snake at all costs. He will outlive you by far and he KOs you fairly quickly, and has a solid selection of solid KO moves.

Here's Espy v Ally 1 from MLG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZIhNNX56SQ

It's a bit old, but it does show one thing. If you're not next to Snake on your own terms, get out fast. His CQC game is leagues above ours between jab, Utilt, Ftilt, grab, and pivot grab. We've really got to pick and choose on this one.

Snake's advantage imo.

 

[FRiSKruns]

Snake is free, shield-grab or Dash Attack OoS beats all of his grounded options that aren't a grab.

He can't really approach us and we don't *really* have to put up with grenades, he can't afford to cook grenades since we can grab him/DA him for attempting to do so.

His Recovery is super slow, and his landings are super easy to punish if predicted.

His best moves in this MU are Jab, Ftilt(only as a punish), Utilt(only for killing when frame-trapped/off of a read), Pivot Grab (to punish predictable approaches),
Grenades (but mostly just to punish predictable/linear approaches), and *maybe* DACUS to punish our landings.

It's slightly easier for us to rack up damage on him than it is for him to rack it up on us, since we can actually follow-up.

The only real difficulty of fighting Snake is the fact that he only has to get us to 120%~ to kill us when we DI and we have to get him to 150%+ unless we get an offstage gimp.

I would say the ratio would differentiate depending on the level of play, but generally probably 50:50 Even if not 55:45 Snake

 

[True Blue]

Though you definitely have to be careful with Dash Attack because Snake could possibly Back Air you after you hit them.
And remember that Snake can pull out a grenade on Frame 1. Unless I am mistaken but that is what I have been told from plenty of people.

 

[FRiSKruns]

Though you definitely have to be careful with Dash Attack because Snake could possibly Back Air you after you hit them.
And remember that Snake can pull out a grenade on Frame 1. Unless I am mistaken but that is what I have been told from plenty of people.

Yes, we do have to be careful, but assuming we space it properly we won't have issues.

There's 3 ways to hit someone with a DA, 2 of them are the right way, one of them is the wrong way, problem is that the wrong way is incredibly easy to do by accident.

1st correct way is to Hit them with the early hitbox that does 6% fresh, you'll get enough distance and hitstun on them that they can't punish it w/o a projectile that comes out in less than 6 frames (basically nobody in the game can punish it unless you just did it toward a ledge)

2nd correct way is to Hit them with the last 2-5 frames or so, that way you can get a guaranteed pshield off of their responding punish like Snake's bair or MK's dair gets pshieldeed guaranteed so long as we hold shield. (This is great for getting free grabs on Snake)

and the wrong way is to hit them anytime in between, which leads to being stuck in our DA animation(15+ frames IIRC).

Edit: and yes, he can pull a nade out on frame 1, our DA comes out on frame 4 though so as long as we're only doing it to punish a move with at least 4 frames of lag we'll be fine(Fast Fall landing lag is 4 frames IIRC).

 

[MeekSpeedy]

sideB > Snake