rei-Scarred

A fun little thing we've been working on in the skype chat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTFgGyawoy4

IB into drive moves/5A gets a lot of mileage in this matchup. Stay on the ground to avoid flash kick. If he blocks a jump in be aware that this means he no longer has charge and can't flash kick you for a brief period. 6D teleport his black hole projectile at your own risk (though it usually works against bad Kaguras LOL). Spam A nails in the neutral to force him to play aggressive. Kagura is MUCH stronger on the defensive than on the offensive for obvious reasons. Be aware that in a lot of scenarios where you think you can punish him with 5B he can reel back using 2C, dodge your move and CH you. You don't want this to happen. Chicken blocking will avoid the majority of Kag's mixups, but you gotta be aware of his options so you don't do it at a stupid time. Probably 6-4 in Bang's favor but I'm terrible at this matchup so don't take my word for it

This matchup is incredibly rare, so I'll just give the simplest advice I can give. Neutral vs plat is completely dependent on what her current random item is. If you play exactly the same without paying attention to which item she currently has you are putting yourself at a considerable disadvantage for no reason. May seem simple to those who already get it, but I didn't get it immediately and I used to play this matchup all the time. Depending on her items she either has a reversal or she doesn't. She either has a good instant overhead or she doesn't. You can usually body presents with 6D if they aren't paying attention, also.

Bang loves to jump so Amane wants to do the anti air C move a lot which if you can read it is a guaranteed fatal 3C. This alone is generally enough to win the matchup pretty easily considering 2 fatal combos will kill him and Amane's damage is fairly low. Also if he tries to oki you full screen with the low C move just wakeup 6D C teleport and do the 6D CH confirm. If you catch yourself in drill pressure, user barrier sparingly to stop most of the chip and try to backdash out of it. Might be as bad as 7-3. It's likely even easier in CPE than CP1.1 (hint it was easy in CP1.1)

CPE 1. I use neutral throw 1000x more in this matchup than any other. You'll scare him into not using his counters as much and set up oppotunities to bait throw techs as well. 2. IBing goes a long way in this match as a lot of his moves are punishable by 5A on IB (3C, etc) 3. 2D wrecks overagressive Hakumens in the neutral. The IAD at you with j.C or j.2C? CHESTO 4. If he ODs or Mugens in the neutral, run away If you get called out with Yukikaze take it like a man and dont waste 50 meter trying to rapid LOL matchup 6-4 for Bang probably, especially with the Haku nerfs

CPE I preface this by saying Huey and DLZ have infinitely more knowledge of this matchup than me. Boom. Wolf meter seems near limitless in my experience so there's no real merit to trying to get him to waste it. When he is in wolf form, run away a lot, use low to the ground A nails and j.B max spacing if possible to stay as far away from that unholy wolf 5B as possible. If you're lucky when you actually get hit the wolf meter will be low enough that you'll only have to block two or so unreactable mixups and the damage of his combo won't be that high. D nails are useful in this matchup if you are feeling overwhelmed, can usually get you in if you're smart about it. If he is in butler form Bang's normals can contest his quite well so feel free to go crazy with 5B/2B approaches. If you ever get him knocked down go crazy as he has no meterless reversal. If he does have meter be mindful of that option. The more degenerate Valks will probably go for it a lot. Also stagger pressure can be particularly strong vs Valk as his mash normals are a bit slower than average. Once you're cornered watch out for the 6C overhead. That's the/one of the starters he's going to be really looking for. Also be aware that you can tech his wolf throw in this version. Matchup 6-4 in Valk's favor at worst

CPE 1. If you don't mind giving Ignis a tasty treat by all means throw Dnails in the neutral. If you're lucky you might not get CH by j.D for your troubles. 2. Don't mash during Relius pressure. He's going to do a lot of empty jump into either late airdash overhead or land into a low with Ignis covering him while he does it. If you mash Ignis is gonna slap you most likely. 3. If you can't react to 6A (ground overhead) god help your soul. It's really damn slow so you should be fine. Relius's new corner oki looks like this. He smacks you to the ground out of the air with 6A and then throws the Beyblade at you. Still not sure if this is a guaranteed unblockable. I don't think he has a fast enough over head to do anything like that though (confirm/deny Relius players plz). It certainly option selects pretty much any kind of dishonest wakeup you try to do however. If you try to wakeup 6D, he can just j.C or CH grab you as youll be teching into the Beyblade already spinning in front of you. Obviously if you roll it's gonna pick you up. Relius knows Bang wants to be in the air so the majority of his gameplan is initially to swat you out of it with j.D or the stabby move that looks like Carl's Brio. Be conservative and if you have to throw nails use A nails. Actually spend time on the ground and look for openings amidst the Ignis spam. Airdash j.B will usually be your best bet to confirm into a blockstring to get started. This matchup feels like 5-5 to me.

Coming from playing Psykotik semi frequently who I believe to be in the top 3 Carl players on the continent with a roughly 40-60 win rate if I'm playing well (which I believe is about the expected for the matchup) here are my notes. 1. Don't get hit. Seriously. It might sound like a donk but I'm going to be quite honest if you get hit by a good Carl you're probably going to have to burst. There is very few confirms Carl doesn't like to have for example: j.A air to air leads into j.A teleport Ada j.AAC knockdown into command roll/fuoco option select. If you neutral tech like you should, you will have to block fuoco as a crossup followed by a likely near unreactable series of sandwich mixups. If you roll like an idiot fuoco hits you, you eat a combo and end up in a similar situation. Now that out of the way, how can a matchup where getting hit = death be only 4-6? Well to be honest Carl's wakeup is ass and his buttons are ok at best. Seen mostly by Carl constantly hiding behind Ada waiting for his opponent to make a mistake. Ada has GOOD ass buttons and doesn't have a health bar that when depleted loses Carl the game so obviously he's going to take his "risks" with her when he can. This is where Bang and most other close range brawlers get their in vs Carl. If all you do is beat up the doll Carl isn't going to win so he is forced to come to you AT SOME POINT. This matchup takes extreme patience at the high level, but it's all about forcing Carl to make a mistake and capitalizing. Nails in the neutral are pretty ass as Ada eats them and Brio will smack you clean out of the air if you do something stupid. (1.subpoint1: don't get counter hit by Brio) And so where are we? We want to beat up Ada and we don't want to use nails. Another prerequisite for our plan of attack is we need to be able to jump cancel. Say you run up 5B 2B to interrupt Ada's attack. 2B is not jump cancelable so if Carl IADs at us and spams jump A we will have no answer to him and he's going to confirm it into command roll for a crossup into pain and suffering. This is why the goto Ada slapping string is 2B 5B. If Carl tries to IAD at us to protect nee-san we now can answer with jump back j.B or jump forward rising jump A depending on his distance from us and confirm it into something. This is the neutral vs Carl in a nutshell suffice to say. It took me a long ass time to figure out how to play it since it's so different from any other matchup, but you'll be amazed how much easier it gets playing like this instead of mindlessly airdashing and throwing D nails. If Carl isn't biting when you smack Ada just keep doing 2B 5B jump cancel land d2B 5B. If the doll dies at any point you can go fucking bananas and Carl doesn't want that to happen so eventually he'll do something. Things to watch out for: that one armor move. I dont even know what it's called, but it's really slow and easy to avoid even if you punch it. Something ACTUALLY threatening: Anima now has armor in CPE and is fast enough that if you 2B 5B it, it will grab you and FATAL. I don't have a clear cut answer for this yet lol. Need to have the reads. ================================= ONCE YOU GOT THE FUCKER KNOCKED DOWN 1. If you burst Carl off of you as you're running/IADing back at him to try to get momentum he really likes to do wakeup Volante. If you actually get him blocking by throwing Dnails be prepared to get slapped in the back of a head by a black ball of magic. I don't think he can do this on a raw "Bang is standing on top of me help" knockdown but I am unsure, confirm/deny Carl players plz 2. He likes to wake up command roll. Especially on netplay. You can punish this with a spaced/timed 2A. They tech roll, 2A hits, confirm into combo. They command roll, 2A whiffs, meaty 5B slap they dumb ass with big boy damage. They neutral tech, 2A whiffs, dash up and do real pressure. 3. His backdash dodges meaty command grab clean. Also command roll dodges it so lmao dont even try ================================= FUCK IM BLOCKING WHAT DO I DO Mostly pray. Be ready to block crossup if you see a command roll and react the best you can. Most of the standard pressure is designed to counter hit you mashing, so if you can actually somehow weather the storm you should be able to eventually jump out and reset to neutral. If he does oki Rhapsody of Memories you do a slightly delayed 6D (first hit is a little slow) and do a C teleport. It will likely get stuffed, but you are a 99% going to eat a combo into a reset otherwise. Here's a handy chart to how helpful 6D will be on wakeup in general Also I mash Ashura in this matchup a lot. In most cases I have to do it in the opposite direction as he will try to cross me up, but if he blocks it in the air you can freely reset to neutral from that point. Fuck I'm sure there's more to say, but I'm blanking. We'll use that as a starting point I guess.

Thanks, Brandon! edit: midscreen command grab combo is missing a 5C. Random typo that caught my eye.

What makes command grab better than normal grab for Slayer? How plus (if at all) is K mappa on hit? Is there any sort of near universal air pickup for Slayer or is it all height dependent? Every time I think I can do a j.S in an air string it whiffs This is my first serious GG so please be gentle. Will probably have lots of questions this weekend when I really start the grind.

Speaking of combo videos I just finished my last Cp 1.1 video. It's pretty fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YItE2-ZCmzo

http://www.twitch.tv/bgcallisto/b/591654061 Start of vod = me vs grant casuals 1:09:30 Me vs ChosenNinja (close lose. choked) 2:45:00 Me vs Woocash (won + styled on pretty hard) right after that I lose to nobody_exe's Kagura pretty embarassingly. I usually play a lot better vs. him but he was on point that day. Poor adaptation on my part, but I know what to do now. Random Chicago local = killers all day. Got 3rd I just watched the vod of this. We have an eerily similar playstyle. It's a little something I like to call correct, that I don't see very many US Bangs implement, gj. That said that looked more like a local's GF than a major's GF :[. How many entrants?

Off of what? He does 5.1k meterless off 5B in 1.0...

Got 4th at Summer Jam 8. Bang stuff. Someone just asked me this on twitter. Here's the write up http://puu.sh/bhZzk/1dca77ae6f.png Maybe it was you lol

I'm probably the only Bang player that perceives this as a bad thing, but it's true none the less https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BuYTH9tCQAAWz6z.png:large