Pen_Ninja

I recommend that anyone running Time Konoha really grind out the 2C > 6C~j.214X kara-cancel. The lack of forward homing dash options really hurt your combos off jump-ins since you don't have the 623C~A > 6D option you would otherwise. I find time Konoha to be a great idea in LM since they removed the 623B~6C knockdown that ended pretty much every combo. These days I'll do 623A > 236236E to freeze them, then 2C to knockdown and put down a 2[E] or 5[E] to force stand. From there, back dash and delayed 5D gives you a nice high/low 50/50 with more options on block and hit. 5D > land > 2B > 2C > 6C~j.214X > etc 5D > 8j.B > j.E > etc 8j.B in this situation is an IOH that hits every character (to my knowledge) even when crouching (like an IOH tends to do...) from here you still have options... 2B: - 2B > 9j > 9dj.E: short-hop into cross-up overhead j.E - 2B > (5C) > j.5H > j.B: pressure reset, more on this later - 2B > (66)throw: 2B is -2 on block but you have cancel options after it so it makes a decent throw mixup if you don't use it often The issue with these is is that other than the middle one, you can't really confirm if 2B hit or got blocked. That's the risk you take I guess. j.B: - j.B > j.E > 2B > etc: combos and stuff... - j.B > delayed j.E(whiff) > 2B: fake double overhead into low - j.B > delayed j.E(whiff) > throw: this one's dirty :P - j.B > j.E > j.214X > j.C > 2B > etc: a 3rd overhead that comes out fairly quick. This rarely gets blocked in my experience - j.B > j.E > j.214X > j.E > 2B: like the one above but more hitstun and compliments the one below - j.B > small delay j.E > j.214X > j.E(whiff) > 2B: like the 2nd one, fake overhead into low. Same moves as the one above but j.214X is done lower. Can throw instead of 2B - j.B > 9dj.E: the j.E here crosses up, even in the corner - j.B > 8dj.E: as above but no crossup. You can do j.214X stuff after this - j.B > wait > 5B > 5C: best in the corner but works mid-screen in some cases. this crosses over opponents so 5B hits on the other side j.B gives you so many options :O 5C > j.5H > j.B: As above, good to reset pressure, you can go ahead and not j.B and go straight into 2B instead for a low, otherwise, you can do pretty much all of the j.214X related things above. No double jumping this j.B though because it hits too low. Mixups are fun

There's no rule anywhere about whether throws or (throw)xN not being allowed. Sounds like he can't tech throws and is getting hella salty about it and trying to get you to stop throwing him. I don't recall any hard bans on colours for any reasons. Sometimes it's a courtesy thing to not choose colours that are hard to see as to not get an unfair advantage. Off the top of my head I can think of a couple: - Gold colours on any yellow stage: can be really hard to see sometimes - Mu's colour 23 (red and black) on red-ish stages: her lasrers, steins and 6C are pretty much invisible on red backgrounds These aren't really banned anywhere but if someone has a good (gameplay related) reason for you to not play them then it's good to respect that and change.

Oh god... Somehow, even after re-typing what you said, I though you said 4B[m] > 5[D]... 4D[m] > 5[D] makes more sense since it like..... Works...

4D[m] > 5[D]? I'm confused...

I play this MU so much it's crazy... Just about every local tournament we run these days ends with me vs our Rachel player in both WF and GF. To directly answer your questions first: __________ mixup Rachel has some pretty true 50/50s that you're going to have to guess your way through at some point in a match, it's unavoidable really. For the most part you just want to know what she's capable of, what she can do in any given situation for example... 5B - IOH j.A vs 2B low you blocked IOH j.A > j.B - dj.A fuzzy vs land > 2B low you notice Rachel jump and wind down but not j.A - late j.B vs empty jump > 2B low you block a j.B in the above situation - dj.A fuzzy vs land > 2B low There's some other stuff like IAD > j.1DC crossups that she can do but the above are probably the core high/low mixups she has and honestly you're just going to have to guess. Throws are kind of a thing to look for but are generally kind of easy to see coming. You can guess one and CA out but you need to be careful that it doesn't get baited. ____________ Oki/setups Once she hits you, she has a few combo ender options, mainly combos into frog, combos into pumpkin and combos into both of these at once. Really, having both isn't much scarier than just the one, your options are limited either way. Frog oki Frog oki comes in many forms. For the most part you'll see 5CC > frog or 3C > frog... 3C > frog is generally more of a set situation than 5CC > frog due to the range of heights involved here. You're always going to be waking up into a certain point of froggy goodness. Rachel has a few options here. 3C > frog > block: Beats DPs and respect, loses to jump out > air dash 3C > frog > 2A > block/2A: Beats jump out (tends to hit during pre-jump) and respect, loses to DPs. 3C > frog > 2B: Beats blocking high, loses to DP and jump out 3C > frog > IOH j.A: Beats blocking low and jump outs, loses to DPs 5CC > frog is a bit different because you're up higher when 5CC hits so Rachel recovers earlier relative to you. Most of this is the same as the above except there's no reason for that... When 5CC is hit high enough, 5CC > frog > 2A > block appears to beat everything. meat 2A recovers before DP becomes active and stops you from jumping out. You're going to have to respect this one but at the same time, it's not always an optimal ender for the Rachel player and the chances where high 5CC enders come up are generally off something like a frog confirm so there's no frog to work with. Pumpkin oki I don't have the most experience against pumpkin oki... I feel like our Rachel could be using it for a few more things than as is but it's still pretty scary. The downside to pumpkin oki is that while with frog oki, Rachel can wait on the ground for George to finish and regain wind, Rachel needs to spend wind to get anything working. Again, the below is to the best of my understanding. 5CC/3C > pumpkin > j.2AD - beats jump outs and respect, loses to DP, high option. 5CC/3C > pumpkin > 2D > block > 2B - Beats jump outs, respect and DP, low option. 5CC/3C > pumpkin > 2D > j.4AB > late j.B - should beat DPs and respect, can go into a fuzzy afterwards. 5CC and 3C are pretty much the same here, the Rachel player can react to your tech choices and you have little option other than wake-up block or wake-up DP. Just be happy that Rachel is probably going to lose some wind here. Frog and Pumpkin No specific scenarios around this one, you've pretty much going to have to block here. Rachel can just wind the pumpkin down and it'll keep you in the frog while being DP safe. You're going to have to eat a mixup here and be happy that the Rachel has used some wind and put George into recovery. _________________________________________________________ So this is all well and good but like... what you're still guessing a bunch of stuff. Guessing stuff really sucks. (I GOT TO HERE AND ACCIDENTALLY REFRESHED...PRAISE THE BOARD (sounds like Lord... get it?) FOR AUTO-SAVED CONTENT) You're going to have to hit the neutral pretty hard and avoid having to block anything. There's a few things to look out for... off the top of my head... when you're coming at her, Jump back > pumpkin > 1D > 6D: Covers A LOT of space below and in front of Rachel on the ground. This will give Rachel a chance to mix up but it uses 2 wind by itself which means 1 or 2 mixups and probably frog oki. - If you see this early enough you can attempt to itsuu through the pumpkin and hit an itsuu B - You can jump over the ground pumpkin at which point you can choose to come down with j.B and beat out a 5B or j.D or air dash away in fear of 6A full-ish screen, frog > B/C lobelia > 6D: This puts you in block stun long enough and pushes George forward enough to almost guarantee a blockstring into frog pressure, only uses 1 wind and often puts you in the corner as a result. - DO NOT try to itsuu through this... you will die. - Jump back to avoid the lobelia, air dash over George while Rachel is in recovery from the lobelia - IB the lobelia and attempt to jump out of George... This one is harder because of the IB on a projectile with an odd speed (thanks wind) and may not work if George is too close but if you pull it off, it means that George has to recover full-ish screen, j.3D > air dash > j.B: Gets Rachel in extremely quickly and starts her pressure very easily. Costs 1 wind and often means you're in the corner... possibly just after bursting her out. - Anti-air her! Oh shit, you're Litchi! You have no good anti-air! Proceed to attempt to block mixups while your vision is blurred by tears. - Throw out a yomi DP... definitely a scary option but with the hitbox coming back down, it's hard to punish if she didn't actually air dash in. - Itsuu is risky here as it's hard to get a move out before Rachel hits you after landing... use at own risk - The best response is unfortunately situational... If the staff is near you, you can send out a 5D if staff is vertical or a 41236D if staff is horizontal... it'll blow this up. ___________________________________________ General stuff... I'm a big fan of not killing George... Litchi doesn't have the best tools, mainly because moves that kill George aren't jump cancellable or are really slow (6D[m], 3C[m]) but also because killing George does not put him back on cooldown... George only goes on cooldown once he activates. For this reason, running up and IAD backwards is really good and leaves Rachel without a frog for a while. Do this with care, especially with the pumpkin around, it can be an issue if you get hit on the way in. Rachel's 6A anti-air is amazing. So good... Don't try to cross it up, it'll hit you. Don't try to double jump to bait it, she can just do it again. Don't try to hide under the covers, the boogey-man 6A will find you. I find that your best option is j.D[m] as it halts your air movement and CHs 6A. At which point you can land and do 6[6][D] as she recovers to get yourself some nice pressure. Without staff, you want to back off... really. When your staff clashes with a lobelia, Rachel can use lightning on said staff before it touches the ground. This WILL catch you out when you think you're safe because you deflected the lobelia and it WILL suck. Keep this in mind. Choose your horizontal and vertical staff sets carefully. Vertical staff blows up air lobelias and pumpkin summons. Horizontal staff blows up ground lobelias and pumpkin summons. This feels more important than most other matchups because of the penalty involved in getting it wrong (it's death). Itsuu is not as good in this MU as you would really like it to be. Rachel is made of projectiles but she's also made of movement options. She has ways of getting in between itsuu angles and punishing itsuu whiffs hard without much issue. Use it every now and then but don't rely on it. TK lightning is plus on block. Don't screw around after she does it. Feel free to DP her out of the follow up though. It's generally not plus enough to gaplessly run in and follow up. If she ever escapes pressure and does the whole "wind to the other side of the stage at the top of the screen" thing. Feel free to 6[6] at her all day or attempt to DP her while she's going up and still in the corner. At that point you're not really punishable and it'll reach up that far and allow a short combo into pressure afterwards. Wind will stop 63214B[e]. This really annoys me. If Rachel winds when you do 63214B, you'll jump at the staff and just plain miss... often ending in you getting CH. Use this when you know Rachel isn't going to wind stuff around. DO NOT COUNTER ASSAULT OUT OF GEORGE BLOCKSTUN. Rachel has no real reason to do anything but block and regain wind while George is going. You're just giving her a free punish. Uhhhhh... That's all I can think of. This MU is kind of fun but kind of frustrating if you guess wrong often enough. You just need to accept that you're going to get hit sometimes when you're in pressure. Just take whatever you can get out of a successful guess and carry on. Some of this may be slightly off. I play this MU often and have dabbled in playing Rachel myself though so hopefully I'm OK. Aaaaaaalso... I didn't really proof read this... so yeah

Previously we had ways of setting up so that you always hit on the same frame but it seems like they've randomised it in 1.1 so it's impossible to get every time. BananaKen probably knows the most about that.

You've pretty much got it. I forget what the actual damage is but black hole wont do any damage until your opponent hits the floor, at which point I think it does 1800 but allows them to tech immediately. The idea is to hit them with something else on the same frame to get that ~1800 damage but continue to combo afterwards.

It'll work as long as you summon Ada early enough that she recovers in time to hit your opponent before they tech out of cantabile. You can't solo combo out of cantabile (non-CH) without Ada so you need to either have her around before the combo starts or summon her before cantabile even starts.

Nothing will ever compare to 1.0's 6B > full corner carry + almost 4k

I'm always happy to let somebody else do the work :P He'd be more qualified than myself I'm sure. @sG... what's the haps?

It's all really situational in the end... Much like most other character's neutral, it depends on what's happening in the match at that point in time. I guess I'll do a Litchi tutorial at some point... I feel like I'm finally good enough. Hopefully people won't hate me as much as when I made my Kokonoe video

Default blocking high and switching to low when you guess that a low is coming seems like a terrible idea. You're turning every high and every low into pretty much a 50/50 situation as opposed to blocking low and reacting to highs which lets you actually use reactions to block as opposed to pure blind luck... As for learning how your opponent pressures and blocking according to their habits: A good player is going to mix up in a way that shows little/no habits. If you spend the first round getting a read on whether you should GUESS high or low in any given situation then there's no guarantee that a good player is going to stick to the mixup path that you seem to have imagined is present... A good player, in fact will take advantage of the fact that you've pretty much made it as simple as possible to condition them into expecting one thing and use that to hit you with the opposite ever time. A player should have to put in work if they want to condition you into something... not have you do it for them.

more on the 6C > 4Kote > 5D oki... It looks to still be a good option but it's not as fool-proof as before. You can still do the same combo to catch forward rolls: 5D > 5B > 236B > 236C whiff > staff 2 > 6D > 5D > Kanchan > 6D > Tsubame > 6C But on no-techs and back rolls you can no longer get 5B > 4B on most of the cast so you need to do the following: 5D > 5B > j.B(e) > j.C(e) > j.B(m) > 5B > 4B > 6D > Tsubame > 6C There's a few problems with this... - You need to react to how they teched. After the 5B, forward roll, back roll and neutral tech > block all require different followups. It's definitely possible to react to each of these at the very least. - It's no longer DP safe. You can try and teach yourself to react to neutral tech with 2A > 1B > etc and hope that this will OS the DP but that's harder to do.

I recommend keeping up your training mode to make sure you're aware of all or at least most of her combo routes and where (screen position and hit stun scaling-wise) they should be used. This character shines when you finish combos properly and allow yourself to take advantage of her oki. I also recommend dropping the training dummy on block all and testing out ways to reset pressure in or out of the corner. It'll give you practice in Litchi's other strong suite and also give you an idea of how the staff acts at any point of time which also helps mid-screen confirms. Just try to be unpredictable but somewhat safe and efficient with it.

Uhhh... this is no fun... 6C > 4kote > 5D > 5B > 214AB oki took a bit of a hit with the "4B(e) no longer moves Litchi forward" nerf. 4B seems to whiff on a bunch of characters. It still works on big bodies like Tager and only just seems to work on Azrael but from what I've seen so far, 4B will whiff on Noel and Jin. I'll run through and test it tomorrow... it's too late at night now.

Optimal meterless and OD-less combo off non-CH 3C is the following 3C > 236A...

You'll need to super ball or OD... Both of which are different combos depending on HP and/or screen position... Someone not on their phone can list a bunch of them if they wish...

2C > 5D > 5B doesn't work on Jin or uhh... I think Amane is the other one... It's something to do with their spinny crumple animation. You can do 2C > 5D > 236D though.

Using graviton to pull them down after/during greed climb is actually part of one of the challenge mode combos. 5D > 236C > 5C is in there somewhere.

I was worried about this so I tested it last night. I had no issues hitting daisangen > 5B mid-screen (microdash 5B for mid-screen) or in the corner against any of these characters (with the exception of Ragna... I assumed the same issues still applied to him). I did it off 5B > 5C > 2C > 3C though... I doubt the 3C really changes much. also vertical stick-man at the end of a combo definitely makes your opponent tech on the way down which kind of sucks but was definitely expected.

I guess you're letting go of ]D[ too early or not pressing 6 fast enough or at all. If you're getting 4]D[ instead of 46]D[... It's probably because you're inputting 4]D[

I guess my main point is that I personally dislike giving somebody an entire Carl combo and expecting them to learn it because then they may try to stick to that combo as if it was set in stone where really, Carl can pretty much build combos on the fly and I feel like it's important to learn that skill early. What exactly is the problem with doing 46D mid-combo? I can't imagine it'd be much different on any sort of controller/stick.

Puddle no longer hits low You can still do mid-screen unblockables from 236H summons if you end a combo in 2D/22S > ]K[ > shadow gallery then UB with ]D[ + 22H > FRC > run up j.K etc It means you really need to get a hit on your first mixup though (or 2nd if you hit confirm a low fast enough...) of you'll run out of shadow meter before ]D[

I find that when I teach people how to Carl, it can be good to give them some suggestions on how to handle controlling the doll. Something along the lines of learning your to time your negative edge timings with your other button presses. I know all of my doll hits are still input relative to when I input normal Carl moves... my biggest example would be doing 5C > sj.B > j.2C+2]D[ > j.C where I'm already holding down for the j.2C so I just need to press C and let go of D around the same time, almost like I'm rolling my hand. I also find it helps, during combos and blockstrings, to hold D, then let go to attack and immediately re-press the D button as opposed to trying to do a combo/blockstring without the D button pressed, then when Ada is needed, press and let go of the D button quickly. You've often got the activation animation to sit through plus it's just absolute hell on the muscle memory. So some section on general advice in regards to the general execution of the character seems like a good idea. Also in the combos section, my personal preference would be to not list entire combos most of the time. With the exception of like... solo corner combos (2B > 5B > 6B > 2C, 2B > 6A > jc > allegretto > 66j.B > j.2C > allecan > etc for example)... just list out some of the combo extensions that you can do and let people know that they can pretty much mix and match between them. Where you could do like 5B > 6B > 623C > 421]D[ > 5C > sj.B > j.2C > j.B > dj.B > j.C > 6]D[ > 6B > 6A > j.B > dj.B > j.C I'd prefer a section explaining things like Your basic air combos: - 5C > sj.B > j.2C > j.B > dj.B > j.C - 5C > the one with j.As in it... I don't actually do that one >__> mid-screen, CON - 623C > 421]D[ > 5C > jump combo (This starts juggles really well) - full jump combo > j.C > 421]D[ |> 5C (Tell them to remember to double jump straight up for this one and to input 421]D[ straight after j.C is buffered) - opponent in air > 5C > sj.B > j.2C > 2]D[ > j.C > (Backdash) > 5C - etc mid-screen NCO - 623C > 46]D[ > 5C - full jump combo > j.C > 6]D[ > 6B > 6A - etc Just running through all the routes you can do from any situation and let them know that since most of them end back in the same position, you can pretty much mix and match. Explain combo theory instead of full combos. Tell them how to start, all of the things they can do in the middle and then suggest that they end with 8]D[ > (3C) or j.C > oki. I'm just personally against giving somebody an entire Carl combo for every situation, especially when they're just learning... Give them the building blocks and let them build their own. We're giving them really big building blocks and at the most they're going to have to put like... 3 or 4 together and it's really obvious as to where they fit. You ended this one in 5C, opponent in the air, CON... now do pretty much any of the CON routes. My 2 cents

Kanchan has a small wallbounce that can cause you to cross under your opponent as Kanchan also moves you forwards. It's good practice to judge how high your opponent is when Kanchan hits and if you can get away with it, take a tiny step backwards before doing 6D or anything else. Try staffless near the corner - 5B > 5C > 3C > Haku > Hatsu > Chun > 5B > Kanchan > 5B > 4B > Chun > 5B > 6C You'll find that if you don't hold back for a tiny bit after Kanchan then you're likely to get 5B > 6B instead.