JesiahTEG
Smash Master
Here's some cool things with Marth that may help you out. Actually some of them are just random pieces of info that some people may not know.
Deal With Crouch Cancelling
Full Hop Forward Air- Since most characters that Crouch Cancel Downsmash afterwards, if you full hop your Forward Airs, they can't retaliate with a Downsmash. I like this method of attacking but I feel a little vulnerable above my opponent. Use it if you feel comfortable with it.
Short Hop Forward Air, Jump Away- This is definitely my favorite approach to deal with Crouch Cancellers. Do a Short Hop Forward Air, and then jump away as soon as the lag from the Forward Air ends. You have to make sure that the spacing on your Forward Air is almost perfect. I mean, that applies to every attack in smash, but just make sure that you hit with the tip before you jump away, or you may still get hit by the Downsmash. This is by far in my opinion the most effective way of dealing with Crouch Cancel.
Ken Combo- That’s right, by short hop fair’ing, and then jumping up and dairing, you will pop the opponent up so that they can’t crouch cancel to downsmash. This only applies, of course, if you hit your opponent with the tip of your down air. I like doing this once in a while, but it is definitely a more punishable option that the above mentioned options. Try it out, see if you like it, but don’t go crazy with it.
Also, basically approaching with dairs will work if you know they’re going to crouch cancel. Only at low percents can they crouch cancel a tipped dair, but for most characters above 20-25% your good to go.
Comboing
Ok, so you know how annoying it is when your comboing a Marth with fairs and your combo gets interrupted by your opponent’s fair? Well, here’s a little trick to throw your opponent off. When you know your going to get interrupted between your fairs, counter. It works surprisingly well, and it will make your opponent think twice before trying to interrupt your comboing. Sometimes, you can even get your opponent to miss their tech for an easy Fsmash. I like using this trick a lot because it’s unexpected. Being unpredictable is a key factor to smash. Also, the intimidation factor might come in when your opponent sees that you read them so well that you took the risk of countering them.
Fair To Waveland- Ah, another unpredictable little trick. Marth can waveland after a shorthop fair, and I like to take advantage of this by fairing them, and then wavelanding behind their shield to land an unexpected forward smash. Sometimes, your opponent might shield it, but it doesn’t happen too often because they usually expect you to keep the combo going. Remember: Unpredictable is good! The more options you have, the more your opponent has to look out for.
End Your Combo With Shieldbreaker- I usually end my combos with Shieldbreaker when I fair my opponent off the stage, and they are too high of a percent for a Ken Combo, meaning my fair sends them to far to follow up with a spike. Now, you may be wondering why I don’t just end the combo with another fair. This is because Shieldbreaker has more horizontal knockback than a fair. I can’t count how many times I’ve finished my combo with a shieldbreaker instead of a fair, and then edgehogged so my opponent would fall right past me, being unable to grab the ledge. If I had faired, my opponent would have just barely made it back onto the stage.
Fair To Sword Dance-This is pretty situational, but it does have its uses, and this is one of those things where you can definitely catch your opponent off guard. After a shorthop fair, use your sword dance to do one of the following. First off, the first hit of your sword dance will act as a jab, preventing shieldgrabs about 85% of the time. After you hit them with the first hit of your sword dance when they try and shieldgrab, you can either continue the sword dance and finish it, or if they are at a high percent the 2nd hit of the sword dance will pop them up for a free grab. Also, if your fair is perfectly spaced, and they continue shielding, your sword dance may be enough to create shield stab, especially if you get the 4th hit off your sword dance off.
Fair To Grab- This works well on just about anyone, but when I talk about it, I’m going to be referring specifically to floaties, like Marth and Peach. As your comboing them with your fair, instead of continuing the combo, you can land and grab them. This is good for a few reasons. First off, you know your combo won’t get interrupted if your grabbing them. Second off, you can trick your opponent into DI’ing wrong. This is because Marth and Peach players generally tend to DI away from Marth for fear that they will get Fsmashed, and to get out of Marth’s comboing. You can use this to your advantage by backthrowing them, because then they will be DI’ing toward you, for a free Fsmash.
Fox/Falco
Utilt On Platform To Spike-I’m sure you’ve all seen M2K do this, but it’s as easy as it sounds. Utilt them while they are on a platform, and jump up and spike them. You may need to jump a little bit off the stage to follow them, but it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve seen this work from about 45% on, but works best in my opinion at around 75%.
Uthrow To Spike-If your near the edge facing the middle of the stage, and you grab fox or falco from 40% to 90%, it’s a free kill. Just Upthrow them, and them spike them. This works if they don’t DI, or If they DI away from the stage. Most of the time they are not going to DI this, but if your opponent’s any good they’ll catch on eventually.
Foxfire Below The Stage-If you an get a fox to foxfire below the stage, they should never come back up. Just wait on the edge, and counter their foxfire. As soon as the lag from your counter ends, run off the edge, jump up and fair them out of their foxfire, and just up B back onto the stage. This is a guaranteed kill at any percent. If they are low enough of a percent to foxfire back on, just wait at the edge and counter them again. A good way to get fox to foxfire below the stage is to backthrow him off of the stage. After you backthrow him off, chances are fox will illusion to try and hit you, or illusion to the edge. If they try and hit you with their illusion, just jab them out of it. If they go for the ledge, Dtilt them. I usually get my backthrows off when I’m on the ledge, and I get back up. I’m in a position for a backthrow, and somehow I manage to get the grab off. I mean, I can’t explain it word for word, but if I’m on the edge that’s usually an ideal time to get back up and grab them.
Making Your Opponent Miss Techs
Upthrow To Utilt To Fsmash- While chaingrabbing a spacie, at lower percents try a utilt so that it DOES NOT tip, but instead it will delay your opponent’s fall to the ground, so they’ll have tried to tech when the utilt first hits, throwing them off and allowing for a free Fsmash.
Ken Combo-This is a little bit tricky. Basically to do this, you need to end your fair combo with a spike. So, it might go Fair, Fair, Fair Dair. By the time you fair them a few times, they should be floating, and that’s when you go for the dair. No one ever expects this, and I can almost guarantee you that your opponent will miss his/her tech. The only problem is, it’s kinda hard to get back down to the ground fast enough to punish their missed tech, but you can get it once in a while. After you dair, if you think they’ll get back up before you can make it to the ground, fall to the ground until your near them and then counter. What your trying to do is bait the rising attack. It’s a little tricky, but anything’s possible.
Miscallaneous
Wavedash Behind Opponent- Something I like to do when an opponent hits my shield from behind is to wavedash backwards through them and grab them. It catches them off guard, and makes for an easy grab. This is one of those really really minor and situational things that if you don’t know it, nothing bad will probably happen, but if you do know it and have practiced it, heck a free grab for Marth can change the pace of the game.
Ledgehop Upair-My friend showed me this a while ago, and it works very well. If your opponent is too close to the stage while your on the ledge, a ledgehopped upair will pop them up enough for you to safely land, and even combo into an uptilt, or, my personal favorite, a spike. Usually ledgehop upair to spike only works on spacies at medium percent, like between 40 and 60.
Pivot Fsmash-This really isn’t a trick, but I always hear people asking when to apply this. Well, I learned pivot fsmash specifically to counter dash attack happy sheiks, and it works great. Everytime they dash attack, pivot fsmash. This won me a match in a tourney against a sheik I had never beaten before until I learned this and applied it on the last stock. Learn it, it will be worth it. Against sheik, you need any weapons you can get, and this is a good one.
Edgeguarding Shiek-I learned this from Ijuka while talking to him on AIM, and was surprised to see G-Reg’s Marth use it against me, mainly because I have never heard of anyone using this before. This also works on Marth too, but better on Sheik. Basically, if Sheik is off of the edge, position Marth so that he’s near the edge, but facing towards the middle of the stage. Wavedash backwards off the edge, and use shieldbreaker. The wavedash turns you around automatically, so when you use shieldbreaker, you don’t need to worry about facing the wrong direction. This is a very good way to edgeguard sheik. It essentially traps Sheik, if you hit with the tip. This is because she can’t jump to avoid it if she has her second jump, because of the arc of the shieldbreaker, and she can’t fair you because your sword is longer than her slap. If she manages to upB back to the stage in time so you hit her while she has her invincibility frames, you’ll definitely make it back up and edgehog her by the time she gets there. Try this out, please. It works wonders, and I usually manage to get this off at least once per match.
Movement
Here’s just a few movement habits you can develop that can do nothing but improve your game. What I mean by that is these may not help you all the time, but they will help you at least once in a while, and, if performed correctly, nothing bad can ever come from them.
Wavelanding On Platforms-Pretty self explanatory. I saw a match on pokemon stadium where M2K got two grabs off on PC by wavelanding off a platform to a fair to a grab. It can’t hurt, unless you mess it up. I also saw a match where Cactuar just killed Dave, and as Dave was respawning, Cactuar messed up a waveland and died for it. It’s all good though, Cactuar went on to win the match, so if you see this Cactuar don’t hate me.
Wavedash Fastfall Edgehog-Just a quicker way to edgehog, and anything faster is better. Basically, you have a few frames from the time you first wavedash off the ledge to when you grab the ledge to fastfall and grab the edge. If you mess up, chances are you’ll fastfall through the edge, and possible get edgehogged yourself, or at least end up in a bad position. Just practice it, and there shouldn’t be a problem. This is good for tricking sheiks into going for the ledge, and at the last second just wavedash off, fastfall and grab.
Pivoting-Eh, I wouldn’t worry about this too much, but it definitely couldn’t hurt to be able to perform this on command at least majority of the time. More options are always better.
Waveland From Edge-Ledgehop and then waveland. Some of the time you can get a grab off with this, and Marth’s wavedash/waveland length is very long, making this even better. It’s really just another way to get up from the ledge, but it doesn’t hurt to know this.
The Ultimate Mindgame
This is by far the most situational out of everything I have written in this post. Basically, for this to work, you need 2 things. First, your opponent needs to be a noob who has never seen Ken in person, but has definitely heard about him. Second, you need to be Asian.
On the character select screen, choose red Marth and input KEN for your name.
You’ll have the noob so intimidated he may even cry.
This probably helped some of you, to others this probably didn’t help at all. But I hope it helped, at least a little bit. Most of this stuff I thought of on my own, except the stuff that I mentioned learning from someone else.
Deal With Crouch Cancelling
Full Hop Forward Air- Since most characters that Crouch Cancel Downsmash afterwards, if you full hop your Forward Airs, they can't retaliate with a Downsmash. I like this method of attacking but I feel a little vulnerable above my opponent. Use it if you feel comfortable with it.
Short Hop Forward Air, Jump Away- This is definitely my favorite approach to deal with Crouch Cancellers. Do a Short Hop Forward Air, and then jump away as soon as the lag from the Forward Air ends. You have to make sure that the spacing on your Forward Air is almost perfect. I mean, that applies to every attack in smash, but just make sure that you hit with the tip before you jump away, or you may still get hit by the Downsmash. This is by far in my opinion the most effective way of dealing with Crouch Cancel.
Ken Combo- That’s right, by short hop fair’ing, and then jumping up and dairing, you will pop the opponent up so that they can’t crouch cancel to downsmash. This only applies, of course, if you hit your opponent with the tip of your down air. I like doing this once in a while, but it is definitely a more punishable option that the above mentioned options. Try it out, see if you like it, but don’t go crazy with it.
Also, basically approaching with dairs will work if you know they’re going to crouch cancel. Only at low percents can they crouch cancel a tipped dair, but for most characters above 20-25% your good to go.
Comboing
Ok, so you know how annoying it is when your comboing a Marth with fairs and your combo gets interrupted by your opponent’s fair? Well, here’s a little trick to throw your opponent off. When you know your going to get interrupted between your fairs, counter. It works surprisingly well, and it will make your opponent think twice before trying to interrupt your comboing. Sometimes, you can even get your opponent to miss their tech for an easy Fsmash. I like using this trick a lot because it’s unexpected. Being unpredictable is a key factor to smash. Also, the intimidation factor might come in when your opponent sees that you read them so well that you took the risk of countering them.
Fair To Waveland- Ah, another unpredictable little trick. Marth can waveland after a shorthop fair, and I like to take advantage of this by fairing them, and then wavelanding behind their shield to land an unexpected forward smash. Sometimes, your opponent might shield it, but it doesn’t happen too often because they usually expect you to keep the combo going. Remember: Unpredictable is good! The more options you have, the more your opponent has to look out for.
End Your Combo With Shieldbreaker- I usually end my combos with Shieldbreaker when I fair my opponent off the stage, and they are too high of a percent for a Ken Combo, meaning my fair sends them to far to follow up with a spike. Now, you may be wondering why I don’t just end the combo with another fair. This is because Shieldbreaker has more horizontal knockback than a fair. I can’t count how many times I’ve finished my combo with a shieldbreaker instead of a fair, and then edgehogged so my opponent would fall right past me, being unable to grab the ledge. If I had faired, my opponent would have just barely made it back onto the stage.
Fair To Sword Dance-This is pretty situational, but it does have its uses, and this is one of those things where you can definitely catch your opponent off guard. After a shorthop fair, use your sword dance to do one of the following. First off, the first hit of your sword dance will act as a jab, preventing shieldgrabs about 85% of the time. After you hit them with the first hit of your sword dance when they try and shieldgrab, you can either continue the sword dance and finish it, or if they are at a high percent the 2nd hit of the sword dance will pop them up for a free grab. Also, if your fair is perfectly spaced, and they continue shielding, your sword dance may be enough to create shield stab, especially if you get the 4th hit off your sword dance off.
Fair To Grab- This works well on just about anyone, but when I talk about it, I’m going to be referring specifically to floaties, like Marth and Peach. As your comboing them with your fair, instead of continuing the combo, you can land and grab them. This is good for a few reasons. First off, you know your combo won’t get interrupted if your grabbing them. Second off, you can trick your opponent into DI’ing wrong. This is because Marth and Peach players generally tend to DI away from Marth for fear that they will get Fsmashed, and to get out of Marth’s comboing. You can use this to your advantage by backthrowing them, because then they will be DI’ing toward you, for a free Fsmash.
Fox/Falco
Utilt On Platform To Spike-I’m sure you’ve all seen M2K do this, but it’s as easy as it sounds. Utilt them while they are on a platform, and jump up and spike them. You may need to jump a little bit off the stage to follow them, but it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve seen this work from about 45% on, but works best in my opinion at around 75%.
Uthrow To Spike-If your near the edge facing the middle of the stage, and you grab fox or falco from 40% to 90%, it’s a free kill. Just Upthrow them, and them spike them. This works if they don’t DI, or If they DI away from the stage. Most of the time they are not going to DI this, but if your opponent’s any good they’ll catch on eventually.
Foxfire Below The Stage-If you an get a fox to foxfire below the stage, they should never come back up. Just wait on the edge, and counter their foxfire. As soon as the lag from your counter ends, run off the edge, jump up and fair them out of their foxfire, and just up B back onto the stage. This is a guaranteed kill at any percent. If they are low enough of a percent to foxfire back on, just wait at the edge and counter them again. A good way to get fox to foxfire below the stage is to backthrow him off of the stage. After you backthrow him off, chances are fox will illusion to try and hit you, or illusion to the edge. If they try and hit you with their illusion, just jab them out of it. If they go for the ledge, Dtilt them. I usually get my backthrows off when I’m on the ledge, and I get back up. I’m in a position for a backthrow, and somehow I manage to get the grab off. I mean, I can’t explain it word for word, but if I’m on the edge that’s usually an ideal time to get back up and grab them.
Making Your Opponent Miss Techs
Upthrow To Utilt To Fsmash- While chaingrabbing a spacie, at lower percents try a utilt so that it DOES NOT tip, but instead it will delay your opponent’s fall to the ground, so they’ll have tried to tech when the utilt first hits, throwing them off and allowing for a free Fsmash.
Ken Combo-This is a little bit tricky. Basically to do this, you need to end your fair combo with a spike. So, it might go Fair, Fair, Fair Dair. By the time you fair them a few times, they should be floating, and that’s when you go for the dair. No one ever expects this, and I can almost guarantee you that your opponent will miss his/her tech. The only problem is, it’s kinda hard to get back down to the ground fast enough to punish their missed tech, but you can get it once in a while. After you dair, if you think they’ll get back up before you can make it to the ground, fall to the ground until your near them and then counter. What your trying to do is bait the rising attack. It’s a little tricky, but anything’s possible.
Miscallaneous
Wavedash Behind Opponent- Something I like to do when an opponent hits my shield from behind is to wavedash backwards through them and grab them. It catches them off guard, and makes for an easy grab. This is one of those really really minor and situational things that if you don’t know it, nothing bad will probably happen, but if you do know it and have practiced it, heck a free grab for Marth can change the pace of the game.
Ledgehop Upair-My friend showed me this a while ago, and it works very well. If your opponent is too close to the stage while your on the ledge, a ledgehopped upair will pop them up enough for you to safely land, and even combo into an uptilt, or, my personal favorite, a spike. Usually ledgehop upair to spike only works on spacies at medium percent, like between 40 and 60.
Pivot Fsmash-This really isn’t a trick, but I always hear people asking when to apply this. Well, I learned pivot fsmash specifically to counter dash attack happy sheiks, and it works great. Everytime they dash attack, pivot fsmash. This won me a match in a tourney against a sheik I had never beaten before until I learned this and applied it on the last stock. Learn it, it will be worth it. Against sheik, you need any weapons you can get, and this is a good one.
Edgeguarding Shiek-I learned this from Ijuka while talking to him on AIM, and was surprised to see G-Reg’s Marth use it against me, mainly because I have never heard of anyone using this before. This also works on Marth too, but better on Sheik. Basically, if Sheik is off of the edge, position Marth so that he’s near the edge, but facing towards the middle of the stage. Wavedash backwards off the edge, and use shieldbreaker. The wavedash turns you around automatically, so when you use shieldbreaker, you don’t need to worry about facing the wrong direction. This is a very good way to edgeguard sheik. It essentially traps Sheik, if you hit with the tip. This is because she can’t jump to avoid it if she has her second jump, because of the arc of the shieldbreaker, and she can’t fair you because your sword is longer than her slap. If she manages to upB back to the stage in time so you hit her while she has her invincibility frames, you’ll definitely make it back up and edgehog her by the time she gets there. Try this out, please. It works wonders, and I usually manage to get this off at least once per match.
Movement
Here’s just a few movement habits you can develop that can do nothing but improve your game. What I mean by that is these may not help you all the time, but they will help you at least once in a while, and, if performed correctly, nothing bad can ever come from them.
Wavelanding On Platforms-Pretty self explanatory. I saw a match on pokemon stadium where M2K got two grabs off on PC by wavelanding off a platform to a fair to a grab. It can’t hurt, unless you mess it up. I also saw a match where Cactuar just killed Dave, and as Dave was respawning, Cactuar messed up a waveland and died for it. It’s all good though, Cactuar went on to win the match, so if you see this Cactuar don’t hate me.
Wavedash Fastfall Edgehog-Just a quicker way to edgehog, and anything faster is better. Basically, you have a few frames from the time you first wavedash off the ledge to when you grab the ledge to fastfall and grab the edge. If you mess up, chances are you’ll fastfall through the edge, and possible get edgehogged yourself, or at least end up in a bad position. Just practice it, and there shouldn’t be a problem. This is good for tricking sheiks into going for the ledge, and at the last second just wavedash off, fastfall and grab.
Pivoting-Eh, I wouldn’t worry about this too much, but it definitely couldn’t hurt to be able to perform this on command at least majority of the time. More options are always better.
Waveland From Edge-Ledgehop and then waveland. Some of the time you can get a grab off with this, and Marth’s wavedash/waveland length is very long, making this even better. It’s really just another way to get up from the ledge, but it doesn’t hurt to know this.
The Ultimate Mindgame
This is by far the most situational out of everything I have written in this post. Basically, for this to work, you need 2 things. First, your opponent needs to be a noob who has never seen Ken in person, but has definitely heard about him. Second, you need to be Asian.
On the character select screen, choose red Marth and input KEN for your name.
You’ll have the noob so intimidated he may even cry.
This probably helped some of you, to others this probably didn’t help at all. But I hope it helped, at least a little bit. Most of this stuff I thought of on my own, except the stuff that I mentioned learning from someone else.
.
