Ah, snake. I was undefeated against snake between november and july, I mercilessly beat down every single so cal snake. Then all of the sudden, I played razer at genesis and lost (I was playing AWFUL that day, 2nd game was last hit meh) and have lost to 3 different snakes since >.<
I used to autopilot the matchup, but then I forgot a lot of the stuff I was doing. But after playing with a handful different snakes recently, it's come back to me. And with that, here we go:
Playing snake is all about predicting. His dash attack and mortar slide are too hard to react to, so ya gotta learn their habits quick and predict accordingly. It's a great feeling when snake is far away from you, and then they try to DA/mortar, and all of the sudden you have them grabbed.
Grenades: Just throw pikmin at them to block them and try to neutralize that aspect of his game. I've found that unless you're 100% sure you can do something with them, don't ever try to pick them up. Lately the snakes I've been playing will throw grenades very low (the throw where he doesn't shielddrop the grenade and holds forward and throws) and that's actually pretty hard to block. You just want a wall of pikmin way, way out in front of you. Try to sneak those whites in, and as in most matchups use the purples to **** up his grenade/general spacing to try to lead to more.
Upclose: A lot of snakes I play will run up and make it look like they are gonna dash attack, and right when it looks like they will, they sidestep and then tilt. You pretty much don't want snake anywhere close to you. I'd recommend slightly charging your smashes for a fraction of a microsecond to throw off his timing. That way it's harder for snake to powershield/sidestep Fsmashes. Btw, fsmash is godly for spacing in this matchup.
If I get grabbed-dthrown, a lot of the time I won't do anything right away. Sometimes a wakeup-utilt works nicely, but if the snake has good timing you can forget about that. Sometimes I wait a half second before doing anything. From what I hear, EC snakes are good at ****** Olimar with dthrow. With that in mind, my advice is to not get ***** by it and you should be good.
When I get Snake offstage, if I can I jump right away into his recovery zone just to make him nervous. Sometimes it'll make him hesitant to use his cypher, and then he is really at your mercy. Get him off stage a lot, even if that sometimes means *gasp* wasting your KO throws.
When you're offstage, watch for a bair off the ledge when recovering low. Sometimes I'll put myself in perfect position to get hit by it, then whistle it. It puts me in a great spot because for that split second the snake player thinks he hit the bair, while I'm safely on the ledge. This usually leads to a spike or at least the snake having to repeatedly C4 himself to get back to the stage.
Other than that, just remember that snake can only have a maximum of 4 explosives he can "leave behind": 2 grenades, C4, and proximity mine. Just constantly watch him and keep track of where all 4 of these explosives are at all times, and be smart about it. Stay as grounded as possible, it's a very bad idea to be in the air in this matchup. Snake will try to force you in the air with grenades, so keep those away from you, because you basically either have to jump or sit in your shield and lose all your mobility if those things get close to you.
Oh and if there is a proximity mine around just throw a pikmin at it. I always chuckle to myself every time I throw a pikmin past the mine, and as it's walking back to me, minding it's own business, it gets ***** by this massive explosion XD
I'll add more if I think of anything.
GREAT picture, Hilt XDDD
, but I hate snake in general (more then anyone else in the game) 