Brother Mojo

Immediately running straight into your fist isn't as funny as when they immediately run straight into your glowing outstretched hand. "Gotcha. Any last words?" Anyway, I picked Tager because atomic collider is basically the most awesome move to watch in the game. Also, because his massive damage output allows me to win when the opponent only screws up once, which disguises the fact that I'm not very good at these games.

Yeah, j.C whiff doesn't require magnetism and should get the opponent close enough for whatever. I've seen people land 2B 2C after 623C, j.C whiff, late j.2C and the reach on that is pretty weak against grounded characters.

True, I hadn't considered those. Jin's Musou could also fit into this category, perhaps? Anyway, speed is the primary consideration there. If the move is slow enough that 6A would come out first, they could just be lumped in with backdash and additional consideration isn't really necessary. If it's faster, 5A is probably the best counter to those moves, making it a more valuable option than I'd thought.

WARNING: THEORY FIGHTER AHEAD. Feel free to correct me on anything if there's stuff I haven't thought of or if something doesn't work as well as I think it would. Tager's options basically seem to boil down to 5A, 6A, 360A, 623C, (delayed) 720C, block, and backdash. Other options seem basically subsumed or dominated by the preceding. (For example, Spinny beats both poke and j.poke, plus maybe backdash, but 5A is in basically the same situation and doesn't burn 50 heat. 6A and 5D both beat backdash, but 6A combos better and also beats projectile stuff. etc.) Your opponents options are, generally, poke, j.poke, reversal, block, and backdash. Note: If you 720C or 360B too early, you'll catch them in a purple throw, because a purple throw will happen even a few frames after they've recovered from hitstun. 360A is slow enough that it won't purple throw, so no risk there, plus the invulnerability helps. Tager's 5A beats poke and j.poke, and possibly backdash if you react quickly enough with a longer-range poke. Against jumping opponents, try to 5A (stuff) xx 623C, (stuff) xx Gadget. Against grounded opponents, the safe option is to combo to 3C xx Gadget. Tager's 6A beats backdash and projectile DPs. Also people who do slow jump attacks, but whatever. Combo 6A to 2C xx 623C, etc. Tager's 360A beats block and poke, pretty straightforward. Tager's 623C beats j.poke and... that's about it. However, there are some mean combos if you land 623C as the first hit, so it opens them up for tons of damage. Tager's (delayed) 720C beats block, poke, and backdash if you hold the button, and inflicts real Soviet damage. However, that 50% heat requirement makes it more risky. Block beats multi-hit reversals, like a lot of supers. Against single hit reversals it's ok unless they have meter to RC or are Hakumen. Otherwise, it just puts you on the defensive... but being on the receiving end of a blockstring is better than being on the receiving end of a combo. Backdash beats single-hit reversals, like Inferno Divider, tk'd Hotaru, etc. Using backdash over block seals up their options in this case, since IDs can't be rapid canceled, Hotaru can't be jump-canceled or canceled into Tsubaki, etc. Then just punish however you want, such as 360B, 720C, etc. So, if your opponent can't use a reversal (because they don't have 50 heat and aren't Ragna, Jin, etc.) then 5A, 360A, 623C and maybe 6A are all you really need. 360A and 623C are probably your best damage options, and 6A handles backdashers cleanly as well as sometimes beating jumps. 5A serves as the lowest risk/lowest reward option. If you ignore it, you've got a pretty good 3-way mixup. If you're fighting against Litchi, Tsubaki, etc. with a projectile-type reversal, then 6A becomes more important, but otherwise stuff remains basically the same. Against people with a special reversal, add backdash to the mix. Against people with a reversal DD, use block instead, but it's pretty risky since if you guess wrong it allows them to completely take the offensive again. Anyway, a 4-way mixup isn't so nice. Gadget against such characters requires significantly stronger yomi. That's what I've got. Still waiting for a chance to actually play CS. Again, correct me if I screwed up anywhere.

From another thread: It's currently phrased sort of ambiguously in the guide.

In the video, it went blue after the 236236B. Might be a timing issue on the part of the player, but comboing into such a low move as they fall seems like it might just not work.

I doubt the combo could be extended much past this point, really. Bakuga manages to tech out of several similar combos, so I'd bet that, if that combo went on much longer at all, the untechable window would shrink to nothing. Anyway, this combo was discussed a few pages back: And an answer to your question on difficulty:

Cool, because at about 4:20 in that video, he does 360A, 2B 2C xx 623C against a cornered Tsubaki and the combo counter stays red. She dies from the 2C so it could be techable between the 2C and the Collider, but I doubt it.

In this video, Tager play is generally somewhat lackluster, but a pretty good combo showed up off of 5A: 5A 5B 3C, 2B 2C xx 623C Only 1500ish damage, but that's not bad for starting from a jab, given Tager's terrible CS combo rate. Was performed against Tager, but looks fairly general. Would require testing. Also, it could probably be followed up with either 2D or j.C (whiff), lowest j.2C xx 22D for magnetism etc. Also, was it always possible to 2B 2C xx 623C after 360A in the corner?

- Is King of Tager 1080D? Someone said two circles and D, which would be 720D. - Gadget Finger isn't mentioned in Special Moves Overview. - Those are still the CT combos, aren't they? I don't see a single Gadget Finger, and it seems like it's generally possible to followup Atomic Colliders with a lot more, now. Their untechable time doesn't seem to drop as much in longer combos.

A couple of Tager matches here, but they're kind of depressing: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm8966215 It's like the guy didn't realize he was playing Continuum Shift. A bunch of that old walk forward, 6C 5D followup to Atomic Collider. He tries the j.C whiff, lowest j.2C a couple of times, but always screws it up by superjumping. Only one Gadget Finger, and he wasted it on a purple 720C.

Yeah, this is confirmed over in Spirit Juice's thread in BB:General. Sad, but understandable. However, he also said that (so far as he can tell) Atomic Collider works as a true anti-air reversal. Head invincible from frame 1. Combined with the fact that it's unblockable and has a Gigantic Tager Hitbox, people might actually be afraid to jump in at Tager now... at least until they figure out which of their air moves have Body attribute.

You mean when the hit first could come out? That would be consistent with 360A and 720C. If held, I'd assume Collider's head invincibility would wear off as soon as you passed the earliest possible hit.

Saw a nice combo in the third match of this vid. Apparently, if you land Atomic Collider as a starter, you can: 623C, j.C (whiff), lowest j.2C, 2B 2C xx 623C, j.C (whiff), lowest j.2C xx 22D 3.2k meterless damage into Gadget mixups. Looks like it'd work on basically the whole cast, too, but it'd require some testing. In the match it's against Taokaka. EDIT: Wow, even more hilarious... in the vid it was escapable after the first hit, but could probably work off of a lowest j.2C: With magnetism, (lowest?) j.2C, 2B 2C xx 623C, 623C whiff, 6B 2C xx 623C, j.C (whiff), j.2C xx 22D Comedy goldmine. 3.9k of comedy gold, also meterless.

Once you're standing on the staff, hold the stick/d-pad/whatever away from the opponent for a little bit, something like a second. Then, simultaneously, push forward and D. Any time it says "Charge (direction)" in one of the commands, that just means hold the stick in that direction for a little while.

Saw a nice combo Ora did in the start of the third round in the first of the above videos. If I've got his moves right, it was: 3C (ch) xx 214D -> C, 2C (JC) j.C x5 (land) 2C 4D -> D, j.C x5 (DJC) j.C x5 xx j.214B Worked on Bang for 21 hits and 2790 damage. Can someone confirm this? I'm not sure I got the right normals or if the followup he used from Ouroboros was D. EDIT: Immediately after that, he performs a combo that looks like 236C, 5B 3C xx 214D -> C, 5C 2C 4D -> D, j.C x5 (DJC) j.C x4 18 hits and 1700 damage. Bang recovers at that point, though, so in practice it'd likely be better to just use a j.214B at the end rather than double jumping and going for more j.Cs.

Mugen still isn't that threatening unless you combo through it, like 6D > Mugen > etc. or 6C (CH) > Mugen > etc. Otherwise, Mugen still has some recovery where they could hit you, or they can probably just play runaway until it wears off. But if you start to actually land that Mugen combo, then hell yes you can expect your opponent to burn a burst in a round where they're otherwise way ahead of you.

actually, I go "of course, but I'd actually expect you to do X and correspondingly I'd Y. Yomi layer two, baby." and put on my shades.

or B+C throw into corner. It's garbage for almost anything but combo purposes, but has tons of combo options. It has a few situations where you can abuse the fact that it's unblockable, but that's only really against characters without a reversal where you have major frame advantage due to whiffs, wakeup animations, etc.

Super flash + zero invincibility = waste of 100% heat and a burst icon. It's like Ragna's Devoured by Darkness. If they don't know what they're doing you'll kill them, but if they have a clue what's going on you'll just get punched in the face. Stick to the Spark -> Astral combos, or Astral on neutral wakeup against characters that don't have any sort of invincible reversal.

I main Tager, and one of the few people I get to play with offline plays Hakumen... so watching this video was kind of depressing. In the first two rounds, you weren't comboing in a lot of situations where you could have. Also you were burning way too many magatama with Gurrens, something I did early on back when I was trying to play Hakumen. At first it may feel like it's hard to get in without them, but you need those stars to do actual combo damage. Similarly, stop throwing Shippus into blocks. Hit-confirm that 6C. Also, you were whiffing a ton of counters. It's pretty easy to counter against Tager when he does his slow start-up moves, like B sledge, anything with D, etc. Wait for when he does one of those (or online, when you expect him to do one of those) rather than just throwing them out randomly. In the last round, you were pretty obviously saving up stars to Astral, and then started jumping around like crazy. One, if you hadn't been saving stars and instead had been doing actual combos, he would have already been dead. Two, don't jump to buffer the 720, use one of your standing moves, like 5D. That allows you to control the timing more precisely. Three, the only reason it hit is because your opponent didn't know that it was a counter. If you look, he obviously started his 2A after the superflash. Anyone who actually knows Hakumen would just do nothing or barrier, and then punish you for it, and then you're down 8 magatama and just got punched in the face. The super-counters are only useful once the opponent has already commited to an attack.

Fuzzy guards aren't really a glitch per se... it's more that they aren't really avoidable due to the nature of blockstun and block switching. When you're in blockstun, you're stuck in the blocking pose appropriate to your block type (high, low, air), and not really allowed to do anything else, with specific exceptions like Dead Angle/Counter Assault, Burst, etc. The most important exception, however, is switching your block type, so that you don't get stupid unblockables just from following up a high move with a lot of blockstun with a low, or vice-versa. However, as mentioned, your pose is stuck the same due to the blockstun. So, if you're hit by an attack while you're guarding high, and then you press down-back, you'll still look like you're standing and blocking and still have the corresponding hitbox, even though now you'll get hit by overheads and successfully block lows. As soon as you block another attack, your character's pose will switch accordingly and your blockstun will reset. You could theoretically allow a character's pose to change during blockstun between standing and crouching block, but that would look really stupid in certain situations, plus it would give the attacker more visual cues as to how the defender is blocking at any given moment which would pretty radically alter the dynamics of the mixup game, I think.

Well, the stylish reversal 720s are when you IB in the middle of a blockstring and then 720 through the next move. However, it's not guaranteed. That only works if the other player does what you expect them to. If they spot/predict the instant block and jump-cancel or throw out a DP, your 720 will get stuffed. If they don't... you've gained access to about a million places you can throw in a 720 out of nowhere and make your opponent eat dirt. It's about risk/reward, and how well you think you can read your opponent. However, I'd definitely recommend starting with the common ones which give you plenty of elbow room, like ice-cars or DPs. Watch out for people with 50% heat, though.

What does that "attack" column even mean? It says "high," "low," and "mid," but seems to have no correlation to how the attack must be blocked, what properties (head/body/foot) it has, how hard it hits, or anything. What is it even for?

It's not possible on reaction to the superflash, anyway. Tager's superflash for the 720 occurs on the first active frame rather than before, so there's no time to react with a super of your own or a DP. If there was, it'd really be pretty weak.