PK-ow!
Smash Lord
My bottomless thanks to Z1GMA, for his gentle nudge to even start a project like this, and his confidence in me, which came at a time more meaningful than he could know.
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Tauntdorf
There are two things needed to win a game: Physical preparedness, and mental preparedness.
Sun Tzu claimed these two things were even sufficient; that the commander who wins
the engagement has done so before showing up to fight it, and the one who comes to do
battle first and then win, can only lose. I'm not too sure about sufficiency. But to them being necessary, I will emphatically agree.
We can put the conditions in two simple statements. If you are to win, then
The 36 Stratagems
My source is the one book, Lure the Tiger out of the Mountains: The Thirty-six Stratagems of Ancient China, by Gao Yuan. My purpose: To show, in a two-sitting work, how they apply to making one sort of decision while playing Ganondorf - taunting, in all forms.
Not all 36 are relevant to this one decision, but they all have something to contribute... except for a few which can't apply since, in short, the game is a direct contest between two parties, with zero outside factors and one well-defined goal: TPK. (Hereafter I will refer to this by saying Smash Bros. is a 'closed system'.)
I discuss not only how the stratagems teach us when to taunt, but also the ones that specifically (but nontrivially) advise not taunting, i.e. advise taking an attack action or keeping your guard up. For to know the one without the other is nothing, no?
It is crucial to discriminate the stratagems by the 'situations' in which they apply, as well. The 36 stratagems are divided into six groups, three of which are for positions of power, three for positions of weakness. I have used the titles appearing in Lure the Tiger out of the Mountains.
However, we are cautioned not to let these categorical boundaries constrain us. Just because they say "if you are in this situation, use this," does not mean "if you are not in this situation, do not try this." Moreover, treat all of these teachings at the same time remembering that "All warfare is based on deception" (another Sun Tzu), and consider that acting as though you are in one circumstance while "really" existing within another, is good enough as the real thing if your opponent swallows the trick. Such is the nature of Illusion.
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Contents:
1.
Relax while the enemy Exhausts Himself
Loot a Burning house
Besiege the Kingdom of Wei to Save the Kingdom of Zhao
2.
Create Something out of Nothing
Watch the Fires Burning across the river
Conceal a Dagger in a Smile
3.
Raise a Corpse from the dead
Cast a Brick to Attract Jade
4.
Steal the Firewood from under the Cauldron
Befriend a Distant State while Attacking a Neighbour
5.
Deck the Tree with Bogus Blossoms
Make the Host and the Guest Exchange places
6.
Fling Open the Gates to the Empty city
Chain Together the enemy's Warships
*~*~*~
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Stratagems when Commanding Superiority
The six stratagems of this category teach ways for the powerful not to be defeated by the weak - which is just as important, logically, as knowing ways to overcome the strong. For every ambitious rookie, there is a stronger player obviously trying to hold his position. You may find yourself on the "favored" end of this relation one day (indeed, you hope to), but if you do, then if you believe there is anything to strategies for the weak to win over the strong, then you must endow equal importance to strategies for the strong to maintain their dominance over the weak.
In short, learning how truly to use strength to defeat weakness, is just as valuable and necessary a lesson as those for the weak to undo this regularity.
Yi yi dai lao - Relax while the enemy Exhausts Himself
For this stratagem to work, you must not merely hold some positional advantage; you must honestly be better than the opponent. If he gives a true opening - as covered under Loot a Burning House - then you should attack, hurting him *tangibly* to give grounding to his mental distress.
The one clue I can give of when to Relax, is on that sort of occasion where the opponent is making "empty technical displays." You can see this perfect example in games where one player nervously or tensely jumps about, frantically going through the motions of combat, but having no *teeth* in it. It may show itself in the opening of a match, but just as likely somewhere in the middle, as strain mounts. Simply put, if that player has less stock, then his display is meaningless and only Exhausts him. If you perceive this, then you may take a breather and Relax - which you may symbolize by taunting. This case of course calls for the down taunt, by which Ganon looks over the sword he took from the Six Sages - with a note of dismissal, not lost on those who played Twilight Princess. This taunt shows your disinterest in the opponent's actions, which is crucial in this case among the other taunts. Those taunts are confrontational, and to confront the enemy may "provoke a desperate fight", which is said in military philosophy to be in every case unwise.
However, to apply this stratagem does not essentially call for a taunt. Indeed, it is most natural to choose stillness (inaction). In this accepted transliteration of the original chinese, the word 'relax' may be assumed to have been chosen carefully; so just do whatever it is that will recuperate your energy. Breathe. Loosen your hands. Maybe even blink a few times (lol). Just relax.
In taking this strategy, know that you are gambling that your opponent truly is
exhausting himself. In the case of a weaker player, his actions show his uncertainty
and unreadiness to defeat you. But another player may use this time to relax and build strength, working out or limbering up his moves. Witness this match between NEO and Isai in Melee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NjqqxW3xM
Do not forget why superiority is called what it is! Yours is the superior position because you can, in general, just belt the other guy down. When that is your advantage, do not forget to *do so*.
Chen huo da jie - Loot a Burning House
"Focus an enemy's mind on what's already gone, and it's easier to take away more." ~Unknown writer 1
When someone is in the midst of loss, it is the easiest time to deprive him even further. A burning house is ripe for looting because the possessions within will not be guarded - their owners will be occupied trying to save other things... or just distraught at the tragedy.
The previous stratagem advised relaxation in the face of an opponent who would deplete himself of his own doing. This stratagem gives us an imperative to drag the enemy through the filth of his mind and back again for more. Already we can see this isn't trivial, is it?
So, first, we have an enemy, who has given an opening... or shows some systematic distraction. Yank the loose thread, and unravel the man it flows from. In this case, a taunt would be nothing. You have to attack. When you know that the enemy is muddled in some previous misplay (or perception of a misplay), your imperative is to hit harder, cruelly, unrelenting, so that he never collects his thoughts again. He screwed up, and he berates himself for the error. He should. Because you're going to make him pay for it.
And remember - don't say anything. It's not like your instinct would be to say something, but it's important. Become the phantom in his mind, the player who will wreck him for that stupid mistake (or, depending on the person, "the character who will destroy his for that embarrassing error.") Whatever it is, just do it. Don't comment on it. Become the winner.
Wei wei jiu zhao - Besiege the Kingdom of Wei to Save the Kingdom of Zhao
This stratagem speaks of diversionary tactics. When under fire, strike back at your opponent in a weak point, and he will have to divide his resources between attack and defense. The name of this stratagem comes from a simple part of history: when a Zhao commander warded off an attack from Wei by sending a conquering force of his own to the Wei capital. The Wei troops were recalled before reaching Zhao, and thus Zhao was saved (for a moment).
In Smash, this has one use: Talk. Broadly construed though, what you are doing is dividing the oppponent's attention between your word games and your play. You do not even have to be trash talking; anything you say that invites a response - or even forces his speech processing abilities to "go to work" - will divide his attention.
Note that this is subtly different from the characteristic example of this stratagem. In the stratagem proper, you attack in a way that he must defend, or else be conquered (lose). In Smash, talk will not win you the game. However, you may be able to produce something that he "can't ignore", just the same as a true attack. And, keep in mind, that simple trash talk, if you do wield it, still 'besieges' him; his morale, his composure, what have you. Of course, some stone-faced Brawlers won't bat an eyelash at your mere words. This is only a reminder of this stratagem's categorization under "when commanding superiority." Don't try this on the reigning pros... unless you have balls of steel. Or you are a pro.
Elicit talk of his tournament performance, perhaps. Put his mind on his past, hopefully his mistakes. Recent ones would be even better - especially if you are in a loser's bracket at a Double-Elim. Of course, that would imply he could turn things around on you. It might be best to use this in pools, or at the meeting of the Winners and Losers brackets (you from Winners, of course).
As always, trash talking is a risky move, for concerns outside the game. While I know no venue that has ever tried to enforce silence or politeness, there must always be an implicit barrier - and you simply mustn't cross it. So be wise about this.
What counts as something that 'hits home' for your opponent will vary. For me, it would be talking of an intellectual question, or trashing my "misclicks". Some may fall prey to humour. But for some, smack talk will do the job after all. This variation, is another risk of this stratagem for our purpose in Smash, for I would conjecture that switching approaches in the midst of its use could do no good. You need to get a read on your opponent before using this.
Stratagems for Confrontation
These stratagems are meant for use in encounters between forces of equal strength, with few discordant factors. Winning in such circumstances requires ingenuity and lateral thinking, although vigilance and caution are just as necessary to keep from slipping into the disadvantage - making aggressiveness and perception of opportunity, valuable in turn. Fighting out a battle of attrition is always possible, but too costly to truly consider 'victory'. Mastering the full six stratagems of this kind means, in all, learning to create inequality in equality.
Wu zhong sheng you - Create Something out of Nothing
"I leave words like 'impossible' to the rabble. Whatever I imagine, I can create." ~Unknown writer 2
Bravado. The game system does not truly allow for creativity, which is the heart of this rule, but if there is one thing you can create from nothing it is bravado.
To create something from nothing is the most straightforward way to get an edge conceivable. Need something? Make it! But the stratagem is more than that. The words create something from nothing mean to make opportunity for yourself, through cunning and creativity. *The* origin story of this stratagem is surely that of the Straw Men of Zhang Xun. In brief, this commander, defending the city of Yongqiu from siege, deceived the besieging army by sending nothing more than a thousand figures stuffed with straw - scarecrows, essentially - over the walls of his city, attracting "tens of thousands" of arrows; depleting the invading force's supply, and renewing his own. One can see how Zhang Xun created something "out of nothing."
This is, by the way, the namer of the "Straw man" fallacy in Philosophy of Logic - a form of non sequitur where you attack a claim which is not what your opponent is saying.
Back to Smash. The game is played between people. Human persons. Male, usually. Crowds watch and jeer. This is the straightforward use of a taunt: to win sympathies, to cow the foe, and to bolster your own spirits. A taunt is the same as any move - it comes out and then it has IASA - but its profit goes beyond what an attack will do.
Sure, little will top actually landing that shield-breaking Nuclear Kick, but we are talking about confrontation here. Your opponent has shown his moves. You prepared yourself and kept his hands off your prey. The fight is on and the crowd is in it potentially for either one of you. This is when you Create Something out of Nothing.
But remember that creating this bravado means the existence of something you can now lose - which is the cornerstone of another subtle stratagem that your opponent may use on you.
Also, we will recognize the following wisdom: If you taunt when you are being beaten, it will make you look pathetic, and if you taunt when you are winning hard, it could very easily be just infuriating, or again pathetic. It should not need any saying, but remember that this use of taunting is only itself in the case of Confrontation. Curious how that should work out, isn't it?
Now here is where we may go into all the detail of the three in-game taunts.
. . . in an addendum to this work, that I will write in the near future, my friends.
Taunt when it makes the game better and it costs you nothing. What is important is to know what the taunt really costs - which is what we are learning.
Ge an guan huo - Watch the Fires Burning across the river
This is a stratagem advocating total inaction in certain circumstances. Thus, it is one commanding us not to taunt. The situation is when the enemy is in the midst of an entirely separate turmoil, which will bring him to his own destruction.
This should remind you of Chen huo da jie. It is similar. But here we say to not commit anything to an attack as a Looting would. The judgment must depend on what sort of fire is burning for your opponent. If it puts him already in a weak position, then you should Loot, and try to finish him off. But if you do not have that advantage, you should Watch.
And remember what watch means! It's more than 'wait' - you can observe during this time, as you always should be doing. See what he does under pressure. Think of it as getting to know the kind of player he is, when Fires Burn on 'his side' of the river. Perhaps one way to act here is to switch to a defensive style; stonewall his play, block his approaches but don't push back ("blocking" may mean a counterattack, of course).
Just like Loot a Burning House, the opponent cannot actually suffer any loss outside what the game causes. Yet the events in the mind are real, and a pro is someone who can do something about some of them, at least some of the time. Your opponent has made a mistake. Maybe he keeps walking into your ftilt, or some ridiculous thing. Let him ruin himself, let him repeat the mistake. Do not push him about it; or he may find a way to direct the anger effectively at you. Do not taunt. Indeed, unlike Looting a Burning House, you are mostly hoping not to let on that you are exploiting or are even aware of your opponent's turmoil. Then, it becomes a personal matter for him, that he cannot externalize onto you.
This stratagem applies to Doubles play in a particular way, since friendly fire is possible. But it is rather simple: If your enemies are harming each other, don't intervene. Why not just accept free damage?
Xiao li cang dao - Conceal a Dagger in a Smile
A simple deception. Use a taunt to appear playful, perhaps as a scrub with some code of honor... then roundhouse kick (read: Tipman) the enemy's skull. Four times. FTW.
To Conceal a Dagger in a Smile means to beguile one's enemy with friendliness and sugar-coated words, creating in that very act the chance to slip a dagger in his neck when he next lets his guard down around you.
Now, in a fighter game, you cannot really make your opponent think you have friendly intentions (the closed system property), but the essence of this stratagem does not require that. All it means is making the enemy think you have no teeth... and then baring a blade. Of course, if he really is a scrub, then he may mimic your code - and you should know what to do about that.
But say he's not a scrub. What you are doing to Conceal the dagger is you are inviting the enemy to let his guard down - in the sense that he will take more risks to get greater rewards, of course. He will try to abuse your apparent scrubbery just as you would take advantage of a scrub yourself; even if he doesn't believe you are a scrub, he can still abuse the things you are physically doing (or omitting) to give that impression. But in Smash (insofar as it's a balanced fighter, anyway), rewarding moves have larger risks, and your Dagger is the deadly attack *you* execute, for which, had he not taken that risk, you would not have found the opening.
It takes guts to make yourself out to be a worse player than you are. I could not even begin to do it, last time I tried. Neither would I know the possible social consequences of pulling such a deception. But there it is - the option.
Stratagems for Attack
The notion behind attack is that, tactlessly, to go out to fight the enemy places you in the danger of his own weapons. To learn to attack is to learn how to weaken or defeat the enemy while giving him not so great a chance to reciprocate that damage. Indeed, one may hope to "win without a fight" (Sun Zi), baiting the enemy, coercing him, befriending him, or just watching him until you know enough to make your victory a near logical certainty.
Pao juan yin yu - Cast a brick to attract jade
The kingdom of Jin wanted to attack the kingdom of Chouyou, but there was no direct route. So Jin cast a great bronze bell as a gift for Chouyou. Choouyou built a road to transport the gift from Jin, and then Jin troops came down the road and conquered Chouyou. --Chinese Tale
Incur a small loss to *lure* your opponent into something that gives you a big payoff.
The key here is 'lure'. This is a stratagem for attack. Under the previous section, a stratagem not relevant to taunting is "Sacrifice the Plum tree for the Peach tree," which advocates taking a small loss in order to obtain an overall gain. The wisdom is learning to think flexibly; learning to know when you must move "away" from the goal in order to reach it. The lesson though, in Cast a Brick, is to perceive when you can make your opponent give you something greater than what you give up to make him to do that. In Smash, this is made possible by the variance in risk/reward - a move your opponent uses to punish, itself costs frames of vulnerability. If his character is one that has only singular, highly risky attacks of any decent power (e.g., Toon Link at short range), then this stratagem is indeed one you should systematically use against him.
A whole other thread could be written on knowing to "play dumb", even taking damage, for a time in a match, only to invite an anticipation of your "mistake", which you yourself predict to score a K.O. For the purpose here, we simply talk of baiting an attack.
It is impractical to try to bait an attack with a game taunt, as no one who knows left from right will misjudge the *ample* time they have. However, dash dancing is a perfect example of a way to lure a mistake. If we recall a certain segment of a video of Koskinator versus HolyNightmare (R.O.B.), a dash dance seemed to elicit total confusion from Holy; he could do nothing but spot dodge, it appeared. Kosk seized that stock with a Choke that led to a shield push to edgeguard, then a stage spike, ending the match.
A dash dance is a small cost to you: it reduces your options, and is a nontrivial strain on your hands. This is in virtue of which the opponent can even believe he has an opening. However, the enemy may misjudge the opening - or simply confuse himself, as Holy did - giving you the chance to strike. From a dash, it happens that Ganon has stutter-stepped Fsmash (with its character-specific step property), in addition to the reliable knockout Dash Attack. Plus Brawl has a dash cancel with shield.
Remember there's plenty of nontaunt deployments of this stratagem. Indeed, against Toon Link, sure he has only few K.O. moves, but let's suppose he's cautious and goes for a zair. But then, if he does that consistently, doing small damage, then that *is* his weakness. You may now take greater risks, for his cautious nature is not one to actually make those moves risky for you. Exploiting that, though, would no longer be Casting a Brick; it would be... beating a newb. ;D
Jie shi huan hun - Raise a corpse from the dead
"Belief matters more than truth. Every moment, belief in imaginary things alters lives while truth sits unnoticed and waits." ~Unknown writer 3
This stratagem eluded me for quite a while. It means to 'exploit the enemy's ignorance', as though to use the power of apparitions (such as waking dead, which, before the spread of the Zombie genre, really were mortally horrifying), which the enemy will imagine into something more powerful than what you really have. You may then exploit his misjudgment, and for certain 'Corpses', his fear, to advance your agenda, both on offense and defense.
This stratagem has the classical meaning of using 'puppet agents', such as the "child emperors" who populate Chinese history, according to Gao Yuan, and who were manipulated by other persons for their own gains. These other persons were also shielded via their association with these presiding rulers. However, this meaning cannot apply to Smash (unless you can make your opponent think you control stage hazards - and there is something to understanding just how Frigate Orpheon works, I tell ye straight).
I hope to turn this stratagem into a signature exploit for myself, and it certainly is borne of a love of trickery on my part.
The use? To announce, before any match, that one shall "Land not one but two Warlock Punches" before the three games are up. Or, any similar, bold announcement on that model.
Your aim is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But your approach is to exploit your enemy's lack of awareness of the true probability of your prediction. Call that you will Choke-kill once in the match. Call that you shall downthrow seven times. Count them up as you make good on your promise, each time.
The lay person has a wretchedly inconsistent view of probability, is the first truth one learns when studying Statistics. This too you can abuse.
The wonderful thing about this stratagem? It may cost you something to Raise the corpse - e.g., my particular implementation might just make me look foolish - but if your opponent doesn't take the bait? You probably now have a read on his nature and attitude regarding talk. If his reaction is to not react, abuse now that he has shut himself up. When deploying trash talk, pepper him with the sort of sayings you might be wary of having turned around. If he does bite, focus all your smack on this thing you have planted in his mind. When Besieging Wei, make your reference to how he's already "walked into three shin-breakers" and that the others will follow suit.
The optimal strategy for him is neither to assume you're bull****ting nor that you will really try to land the last four, but to ignore your prediction entirely. Yet can any Human mind really do that? We crave meaning. We latch on to horoscopes, lottery numbers, and plenty other meaningless coincident phenomena. Psychologically, we are said to have "confirmation bias", and only conscious attention with scientific training overcomes it. I suspect anyone from pro to newb could prove susceptible to this effect with their other resources given to playing the game.
You are in some sense combining this stratagem with "Point at the Mulberry and Curse the Locust", which encompasses scare tactics, although the exemplifying name suggests the sense of "making an example out of someone, who transgresses you." When you Curse the Locust, you are suggesting that anything which repeats the deed of ravaging your Mullberries, will incur equal wrath. In Smash, this means staying on top of your punishment game, which we as Ganon mains know is at least 90% of Ganondorf's meta. Remaining absolutely flawless in your punishment is (a) instrumental in itself, for obvious reasons, but also (b) goes beyond the damage, to sustaining that "aura of fear" which many writers identify as an essential quality of a true pro.
To go on longer would be to get into that stratagem itself, but I do believe it is relevant to understanding this one. You must try to use your corpse for all you can - make it look not only real, but give it more power than either your opponent or you.
Stratagems for Confused Situations
There is a proverb: "Wild times make heroes." In the thick of battle, in the midst of warfare, in a shot of crisis, facts become blurry. In these times, uncommon, perhaps unique opportunities arise, for prudent thinkers to become leaders, for brave youngsters to become heroes, and for clever rogues to become wealthy lords. Managing the many, tangled factors of such situations, while still stepping out to find (or make) eventualities under your own control, prove the strong-willed from the weak-.
Fu di chou xin - Steal the firewood from under the cauldron
Fu di chou xin means to take away from what supplies your enemy. Another stratagem, for gaining ground (which is the next section), called "Replace the beams and pillars with rotten timber" means to actually substitute resources under your own control for the ones you remove. That could include the whole subject of mindgames and have short books written on it. But Steal the Firewood only speaks of removal. Yes, on reflection the names are sort of backwards; roll with it.
Stealing the firewood is something that could only work in confusion, for the cauldron must be closely passed to reach it. So it is that this tactic must be used with agility, spotting that undefinable opportunity and getting in, messing around with things, and getting out with your opponent not quite knowing what hit them.
What is the one thing that 'fuels' your opponent in Smash Bros.? His mind. Once again we consider trash talk, but we must contrast this with Wei wei jiu zhao. Here, the essence is to find an opening in the confusion, to the things which supply the enemy's power, and cut them, later seeing the effects. The things of which you talk should be, rather than distracting "low blows", full-fledged mindrape.
If I may borrow the words of a comedian (a hack comedian some say, though), this seems to be the specialty of women over men. You want to come up with something so intense, confusing, and inscrutable, that it can be confronted nor ignored; it will just nag at the opponent, the roots of its toxicity in your choice of words, but most of the damage done by the enemy's mind consciously or unconsciously processing it. A dilemma.
Clearly, one must get wholly inside the opponent's mind for this. I wouldn't know how to say what sort of trap you can spring - that's what makes this a stratagem for a confused situation. It's a once-under-the-moon chance, that identifies the skilled for their being able to discern the opportunity itself.
We can only talk of why this might work. This route to Stealing the Firewood applies because the 'confused situation' is the heat of battle, where we, of course, do not attend to every single detail of the match, including one rather salient one, after I name it: Your own mind. You don't have the capacity to reflect on your own thoughts as you think them while *also* trying to keep those thoughts GOOD (i.e. thoughts about good plays). Or, I suppose, the newbie does not have this capacity. As the pro makes his concepts for the game more economic*, he may be able to do this (he still has to train the reflective ability itself as a separate skill). But whether he is conscious of your words or not, they can still infect him. One would effectively have to be a master of meditation to completely ignore a well-crafted 'word bomb' of this kind.
I can't give much specific advice, but I do believe there is a stratagem here for Smash. Perhaps you may wish to reflect on what would distract you the most, when a confusing situation occurs in a game. All I can say is, if this is to work, it will be in a subtle way.
*This is known technically in the field of psychology as "economy of thought" and refers to the refinement of one's representation of his knowledge so that it better suits the task he performs with it. THE MORE YOU KNOW!
Yuan jiao jin gong - Befriend a Distant State while Attacking a Neighbour
Your enemy is a character, and a player who commands him. Your opponent is a person, who has a life, who has goals, who, if good, probably has a social life within the Smash community. In this case, it is not contradictory to seek the enemy's annihilation while entreating for your opponent's friendship.
Such is the lesson that can be taken from Befriend a Distant State. In this case, the far-off, vague entity of "The guy who may come down to other tourneys you visit and talk to you outside of matches" is the Distant State, and the definite entity of "your pairing this round" is the Neighbour.
This stratagem is in contradiction of most of the other things I write here. Technically, it does say to make friends to make a fight easier. Or, to put off "distant worries" to focus on a single, proximal one. So in short, this is the stratagem where I say, it's okay to choose to play a friendly match if that's how you will really play your best. Indeed, you may, through personal charm, avert any of the sort of attacks described here.
But how do you do all this with a taunt? Simple. Have fun with a fun moment. Between Falcons, this is the downtaunt in the Knee->downtaunt 'combo'. For us, this would mean to make light of your one-in-a-million Nuke Kick shield breaks, and your own epic failures (recovery, anyone?) Dash dance like Koskinator, maybe, or just laugh. A good-natured laugh will do it, if it's *with* your opponent.
Stratagems for Gaining Ground
These stratagems teach nothing more than to pounce on the wounded and to erode at the sturdy. Victory obviously consists in gaining something you did not have before, and so, one must learn how to take.
Shu shang kai hua - Deck the Tree with Bogus Blossoms
This says "pretend to be something you are not". I take from this not the mere adage "give false impression", but rather, "mask your true nature." It is perfectly in accord with this stratagem to be totally guileless of the fact THAT you are putting on a false show. Your goal is not to make someone believe something false, but rather to make it difficult for him to have beliefs that are true. If the Bogus Blossoms are cast *just* the right way, the enemy will not be able to say at all just what sort of Tree truly lies underneath - the enemy won't know how different your 'act' is from the real you.
This stratagem can only apply in Smash on players' first meeting. It is a situation of equality in one sense: You are both totally ignorant. You have thus one chance to get something out of this stratagem.
Here's the crux: To apply this, you have to act like what your opponent thinks better players act like. And that may mean not taunting. Or it may mean taunting profusely. You have to get a read on the opponent as quickly as possible.
On top of that, this is one of those techniques that has a threshold requirement on the opponent. An opponent who isn't good enough won't even see what you're doing. But that should only exclude pure newbies.
Either way, it's only as good as the illusion first lasts. You create a wrong impression, you land a few hits the opponent didn't anticipate from you, and then you're done - play the rest of the match.
This stratagem, thankfully, is not exclusive of an attempt to play dumb. If you favour going into a match pretending to be poor, but then springing an advanced move on the enemy which he maneuvered into, then all you need to do is make it look like you don't know *that* move. Remember, your opponent may know you are Decking the Tree. But it's his guess just which of those Blossoms are Bogus.
However, this is most likely exclusive of the tactic for Concealing a Dagger in a Smile described previously. On reflection though, the persons who would be susceptible to either deception are exclusive. Enemies who are not observant or not serious enough to step into this trick, are not the same as those who are observant and serious enough to see through your Concealing Smile in the other case. Now, if they are observant, serious, and mindful, they may avoid both. But mindfulness is a rare trait.
Fan ke wei zhu - Make the host and the guest exchange places
This one is extremely subtle. It came to me only at the pitch of sleep.
This stratagem will only rarely apply, by factors outside your control, but if you see the chance for this, it is too profoundly profitable while totally costless not to seize it.
When two forces do battle, the one that goes to the other's territory is the 'guest' and the other, the 'host'. Certain simple rules describe the dynamic heuristically - the host will try to cut off the guest's supply lines, the guest will strike the enemy's headquarters. It's not totally one-sided, for that nearness to home makes the guest dangerous, but in short, the host has a qualitative advantage and is in control.
General wisdom says the guest will be defeated if he does not see he is the guest. That is just a requirement of his turning the situation around - to see it like it is. The stratagem here says what it means: Make the guest into the host, and make the host into the guest. Thus, the former guest will be the one fighting with the 'home advantage', and the former host shall be driven out in disarray.
Now, it seems all warfare would be trivialized if one could simply do that, but I believe the statement of the stratagem is the hint of how to use it.
What you are doing here is reversing roles. The host was the host, you knew you were the host, and your opponent knew you knew you were the host. But consider a turnabout - a magnificent string of play that puts you on the stock disadvantage. And then imagine your opponent beginning to act like you. Taking the things you did between stocks and making them his own - aerials, crouch taunting maybe, the same as you. Parroting now everything and anything you spoke at such times, you bearing the unkind end. What would that make you do?
To make the host and the guest exchange places, in Smash, I believe can only be this thing. Host and guest literally translate to matchup and stage pick, but you cannot change those things during any one game. So instead, you have to try to depose your opponent to the status of the guest. He has to feel like he is the one fighting on your terms, on your turf. Make him see his own path to victory, under your boots now, and he will imbue you in his mind with a little of his own glory.
But this is delicate! If you parrot him exactly, it may (a) just look childish, but that may be because of the quantifiable statement that (b) he can realize that, if he acted like such and fell behind, you can do the same too. So you are trying to take from him not his own clothes, but his own glamour, his aura, the way he perceived himself - like one's own voice to oneself, different when recorded and played back (caused by vibrations of the skull, by the way).
The great thing about this stratagem is you may actually turn this into a moment where you win a better player's respect. I believe now that this happened to me, at my first tourney, when I won a small advantage, for a time against an opponent's Wario with my Falco on counterpick. I surprised him with some novel use of aerials, and an Up-B attack that actually hit him, when I mixed it up from a side-B, correctly predicting an attempt from him to time an attack against the Phantasm. He was *eager* to tell me all he could about Falco! It singularly made my experience very positive, even though I lost to every one in pools save a troll and a scrub.
In that situation, this stratagem takes nothing but seeing that you have turned things around... and trying to keep it that way.
Stratagems for Desperate Straits
"Hitting below the belt," in Gao Yuan's own terms; baldfaced lies; self-subjugation; and the ultimate stratagem of them all: Running away. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Why tinker with a saying that is so simply true? While 'failing gracefully' is very much the essence of the wisdom of these six, I shall stick to my outset goal, of investigating the value of taunting, and cover just two of them.
Kong cheng ji - Fling Open the gates to the Empty city
Make a void appear hollow, and your enemy will suspect you really are solid. --Stratagems of the Thatched House
Enemies suspect that enemies have something to hide. Thus, if you flagrantly show that you have nothing, your foe may think you have a devious ambush, and retreat. This allows you to get through a situation in which you have nothing, using nothing (which is all you have). You must then of course try to build a situation not so desperate with the time you bought yourself.
It is thanks of course to the fact that sometimes you *do* lay traps that this stratagem could ever work, so make sure to sometimes do that. Indeed, one must necessarily pair this stratagem - for the purpose of Smash Bros. - with Conceal a Dagger or Cast a Brick. If you really do have NOTHING to use, stand. Dash dance. Do whatever else you've done to lure an attack so far. As Ganondorf, situations arise all the time for us where we have no option. If these come, and you blank even on our "acceptable attack substitutes," (lol thunderstomping <.<) try to condition yourself to pull at least this.
Lian huan ji - Chain Together the enemy's Warships
A force that appears strong may by that same strength be weak. Large armies require complex supply lines and command hierarchies. Massive combatants may have weak points you can attack for massive damage. No, really - everything that a foe has, is a weight that can be used to bring him down.
I could go into the narrative naming the stratagem, but it is rather boring in the end.
In Smash, this is the subtle stratagem I cautioned at the stratagem of Creating Something out of Nothing. And what you will learn to do is use your enemy's own pride against him.
Pro players are something beyond good. They are figures of praise. They are celebrities! They have ambitions, reputations, and for sure at their level they even have a place in their budget for their income from these tournaments. This is something that makes them strong, *and* weak. This is something you can use to make them lose.
For you need only play at the suggestion that they should be doing better than they are, and they may struggle. There are limitations, still. One, you cannot say anything outright when around a crowd of even remotely informed people. A direct challenge could only be effective to catch the ear of a troll who is (unfortunately) party to the games that day - someone that, *any* player I think, could not stand to let see one's own loss. You have to be subtle. You have to make the opponent do the work, of chaining himself up. Make him tie knots in his head.
It becomes relentlessly vague as we wind down with desperate situations, but that is how desperation is.
Good luck.
*~*~*~
Endnotes:
The three quotations attributed to 'Unknown Writers' are taken from printings of cards in the Magic: The Gathering TCG. I've tried very hard to find the names of the specific authors responsible for the texts, but to no avail. I can merely identify the cards:
1. Dash Hopes, Planar Chaos
2. Shimmering Wings, foil version, Tenth Edition
3. Gossamer Phantasm, Planar Chaos
*~*~*~
Tauntdorf
There are two things needed to win a game: Physical preparedness, and mental preparedness.
Sun Tzu claimed these two things were even sufficient; that the commander who wins
the engagement has done so before showing up to fight it, and the one who comes to do
battle first and then win, can only lose. I'm not too sure about sufficiency. But to them being necessary, I will emphatically agree.
We can put the conditions in two simple statements. If you are to win, then
- You have to be physically ready to do what it takes to win. You must have the reflexes, the vision, the technical mastery, the agility, and the stamina to play the game.
- And you must be mentally ready to seek the win. You have to be able to see yourself being the player who wins the game. If you cannot visualize your victory, you will not create it.
The 36 Stratagems
My source is the one book, Lure the Tiger out of the Mountains: The Thirty-six Stratagems of Ancient China, by Gao Yuan. My purpose: To show, in a two-sitting work, how they apply to making one sort of decision while playing Ganondorf - taunting, in all forms.
Not all 36 are relevant to this one decision, but they all have something to contribute... except for a few which can't apply since, in short, the game is a direct contest between two parties, with zero outside factors and one well-defined goal: TPK. (Hereafter I will refer to this by saying Smash Bros. is a 'closed system'.)
I discuss not only how the stratagems teach us when to taunt, but also the ones that specifically (but nontrivially) advise not taunting, i.e. advise taking an attack action or keeping your guard up. For to know the one without the other is nothing, no?
It is crucial to discriminate the stratagems by the 'situations' in which they apply, as well. The 36 stratagems are divided into six groups, three of which are for positions of power, three for positions of weakness. I have used the titles appearing in Lure the Tiger out of the Mountains.
However, we are cautioned not to let these categorical boundaries constrain us. Just because they say "if you are in this situation, use this," does not mean "if you are not in this situation, do not try this." Moreover, treat all of these teachings at the same time remembering that "All warfare is based on deception" (another Sun Tzu), and consider that acting as though you are in one circumstance while "really" existing within another, is good enough as the real thing if your opponent swallows the trick. Such is the nature of Illusion.
*~*~*~
Contents:
1.
Relax while the enemy Exhausts Himself
Loot a Burning house
Besiege the Kingdom of Wei to Save the Kingdom of Zhao
2.
Create Something out of Nothing
Watch the Fires Burning across the river
Conceal a Dagger in a Smile
3.
Raise a Corpse from the dead
Cast a Brick to Attract Jade
4.
Steal the Firewood from under the Cauldron
Befriend a Distant State while Attacking a Neighbour
5.
Deck the Tree with Bogus Blossoms
Make the Host and the Guest Exchange places
6.
Fling Open the Gates to the Empty city
Chain Together the enemy's Warships
*~*~*~
*~*~*~
Stratagems when Commanding Superiority
The six stratagems of this category teach ways for the powerful not to be defeated by the weak - which is just as important, logically, as knowing ways to overcome the strong. For every ambitious rookie, there is a stronger player obviously trying to hold his position. You may find yourself on the "favored" end of this relation one day (indeed, you hope to), but if you do, then if you believe there is anything to strategies for the weak to win over the strong, then you must endow equal importance to strategies for the strong to maintain their dominance over the weak.
In short, learning how truly to use strength to defeat weakness, is just as valuable and necessary a lesson as those for the weak to undo this regularity.
Yi yi dai lao - Relax while the enemy Exhausts Himself
For this stratagem to work, you must not merely hold some positional advantage; you must honestly be better than the opponent. If he gives a true opening - as covered under Loot a Burning House - then you should attack, hurting him *tangibly* to give grounding to his mental distress.
The one clue I can give of when to Relax, is on that sort of occasion where the opponent is making "empty technical displays." You can see this perfect example in games where one player nervously or tensely jumps about, frantically going through the motions of combat, but having no *teeth* in it. It may show itself in the opening of a match, but just as likely somewhere in the middle, as strain mounts. Simply put, if that player has less stock, then his display is meaningless and only Exhausts him. If you perceive this, then you may take a breather and Relax - which you may symbolize by taunting. This case of course calls for the down taunt, by which Ganon looks over the sword he took from the Six Sages - with a note of dismissal, not lost on those who played Twilight Princess. This taunt shows your disinterest in the opponent's actions, which is crucial in this case among the other taunts. Those taunts are confrontational, and to confront the enemy may "provoke a desperate fight", which is said in military philosophy to be in every case unwise.
However, to apply this stratagem does not essentially call for a taunt. Indeed, it is most natural to choose stillness (inaction). In this accepted transliteration of the original chinese, the word 'relax' may be assumed to have been chosen carefully; so just do whatever it is that will recuperate your energy. Breathe. Loosen your hands. Maybe even blink a few times (lol). Just relax.
In taking this strategy, know that you are gambling that your opponent truly is
exhausting himself. In the case of a weaker player, his actions show his uncertainty
and unreadiness to defeat you. But another player may use this time to relax and build strength, working out or limbering up his moves. Witness this match between NEO and Isai in Melee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NjqqxW3xM
Do not forget why superiority is called what it is! Yours is the superior position because you can, in general, just belt the other guy down. When that is your advantage, do not forget to *do so*.
Chen huo da jie - Loot a Burning House
"Focus an enemy's mind on what's already gone, and it's easier to take away more." ~Unknown writer 1
When someone is in the midst of loss, it is the easiest time to deprive him even further. A burning house is ripe for looting because the possessions within will not be guarded - their owners will be occupied trying to save other things... or just distraught at the tragedy.
The previous stratagem advised relaxation in the face of an opponent who would deplete himself of his own doing. This stratagem gives us an imperative to drag the enemy through the filth of his mind and back again for more. Already we can see this isn't trivial, is it?
So, first, we have an enemy, who has given an opening... or shows some systematic distraction. Yank the loose thread, and unravel the man it flows from. In this case, a taunt would be nothing. You have to attack. When you know that the enemy is muddled in some previous misplay (or perception of a misplay), your imperative is to hit harder, cruelly, unrelenting, so that he never collects his thoughts again. He screwed up, and he berates himself for the error. He should. Because you're going to make him pay for it.
And remember - don't say anything. It's not like your instinct would be to say something, but it's important. Become the phantom in his mind, the player who will wreck him for that stupid mistake (or, depending on the person, "the character who will destroy his for that embarrassing error.") Whatever it is, just do it. Don't comment on it. Become the winner.
Wei wei jiu zhao - Besiege the Kingdom of Wei to Save the Kingdom of Zhao
This stratagem speaks of diversionary tactics. When under fire, strike back at your opponent in a weak point, and he will have to divide his resources between attack and defense. The name of this stratagem comes from a simple part of history: when a Zhao commander warded off an attack from Wei by sending a conquering force of his own to the Wei capital. The Wei troops were recalled before reaching Zhao, and thus Zhao was saved (for a moment).
In Smash, this has one use: Talk. Broadly construed though, what you are doing is dividing the oppponent's attention between your word games and your play. You do not even have to be trash talking; anything you say that invites a response - or even forces his speech processing abilities to "go to work" - will divide his attention.
Note that this is subtly different from the characteristic example of this stratagem. In the stratagem proper, you attack in a way that he must defend, or else be conquered (lose). In Smash, talk will not win you the game. However, you may be able to produce something that he "can't ignore", just the same as a true attack. And, keep in mind, that simple trash talk, if you do wield it, still 'besieges' him; his morale, his composure, what have you. Of course, some stone-faced Brawlers won't bat an eyelash at your mere words. This is only a reminder of this stratagem's categorization under "when commanding superiority." Don't try this on the reigning pros... unless you have balls of steel. Or you are a pro.
Elicit talk of his tournament performance, perhaps. Put his mind on his past, hopefully his mistakes. Recent ones would be even better - especially if you are in a loser's bracket at a Double-Elim. Of course, that would imply he could turn things around on you. It might be best to use this in pools, or at the meeting of the Winners and Losers brackets (you from Winners, of course).
As always, trash talking is a risky move, for concerns outside the game. While I know no venue that has ever tried to enforce silence or politeness, there must always be an implicit barrier - and you simply mustn't cross it. So be wise about this.
What counts as something that 'hits home' for your opponent will vary. For me, it would be talking of an intellectual question, or trashing my "misclicks". Some may fall prey to humour. But for some, smack talk will do the job after all. This variation, is another risk of this stratagem for our purpose in Smash, for I would conjecture that switching approaches in the midst of its use could do no good. You need to get a read on your opponent before using this.
Stratagems for Confrontation
These stratagems are meant for use in encounters between forces of equal strength, with few discordant factors. Winning in such circumstances requires ingenuity and lateral thinking, although vigilance and caution are just as necessary to keep from slipping into the disadvantage - making aggressiveness and perception of opportunity, valuable in turn. Fighting out a battle of attrition is always possible, but too costly to truly consider 'victory'. Mastering the full six stratagems of this kind means, in all, learning to create inequality in equality.
Wu zhong sheng you - Create Something out of Nothing
"I leave words like 'impossible' to the rabble. Whatever I imagine, I can create." ~Unknown writer 2
Bravado. The game system does not truly allow for creativity, which is the heart of this rule, but if there is one thing you can create from nothing it is bravado.
To create something from nothing is the most straightforward way to get an edge conceivable. Need something? Make it! But the stratagem is more than that. The words create something from nothing mean to make opportunity for yourself, through cunning and creativity. *The* origin story of this stratagem is surely that of the Straw Men of Zhang Xun. In brief, this commander, defending the city of Yongqiu from siege, deceived the besieging army by sending nothing more than a thousand figures stuffed with straw - scarecrows, essentially - over the walls of his city, attracting "tens of thousands" of arrows; depleting the invading force's supply, and renewing his own. One can see how Zhang Xun created something "out of nothing."
This is, by the way, the namer of the "Straw man" fallacy in Philosophy of Logic - a form of non sequitur where you attack a claim which is not what your opponent is saying.
Back to Smash. The game is played between people. Human persons. Male, usually. Crowds watch and jeer. This is the straightforward use of a taunt: to win sympathies, to cow the foe, and to bolster your own spirits. A taunt is the same as any move - it comes out and then it has IASA - but its profit goes beyond what an attack will do.
Sure, little will top actually landing that shield-breaking Nuclear Kick, but we are talking about confrontation here. Your opponent has shown his moves. You prepared yourself and kept his hands off your prey. The fight is on and the crowd is in it potentially for either one of you. This is when you Create Something out of Nothing.
But remember that creating this bravado means the existence of something you can now lose - which is the cornerstone of another subtle stratagem that your opponent may use on you.
Also, we will recognize the following wisdom: If you taunt when you are being beaten, it will make you look pathetic, and if you taunt when you are winning hard, it could very easily be just infuriating, or again pathetic. It should not need any saying, but remember that this use of taunting is only itself in the case of Confrontation. Curious how that should work out, isn't it?
Now here is where we may go into all the detail of the three in-game taunts.
. . . in an addendum to this work, that I will write in the near future, my friends.
Taunt when it makes the game better and it costs you nothing. What is important is to know what the taunt really costs - which is what we are learning.
Ge an guan huo - Watch the Fires Burning across the river
This is a stratagem advocating total inaction in certain circumstances. Thus, it is one commanding us not to taunt. The situation is when the enemy is in the midst of an entirely separate turmoil, which will bring him to his own destruction.
This should remind you of Chen huo da jie. It is similar. But here we say to not commit anything to an attack as a Looting would. The judgment must depend on what sort of fire is burning for your opponent. If it puts him already in a weak position, then you should Loot, and try to finish him off. But if you do not have that advantage, you should Watch.
And remember what watch means! It's more than 'wait' - you can observe during this time, as you always should be doing. See what he does under pressure. Think of it as getting to know the kind of player he is, when Fires Burn on 'his side' of the river. Perhaps one way to act here is to switch to a defensive style; stonewall his play, block his approaches but don't push back ("blocking" may mean a counterattack, of course).
Just like Loot a Burning House, the opponent cannot actually suffer any loss outside what the game causes. Yet the events in the mind are real, and a pro is someone who can do something about some of them, at least some of the time. Your opponent has made a mistake. Maybe he keeps walking into your ftilt, or some ridiculous thing. Let him ruin himself, let him repeat the mistake. Do not push him about it; or he may find a way to direct the anger effectively at you. Do not taunt. Indeed, unlike Looting a Burning House, you are mostly hoping not to let on that you are exploiting or are even aware of your opponent's turmoil. Then, it becomes a personal matter for him, that he cannot externalize onto you.
This stratagem applies to Doubles play in a particular way, since friendly fire is possible. But it is rather simple: If your enemies are harming each other, don't intervene. Why not just accept free damage?
Xiao li cang dao - Conceal a Dagger in a Smile
A simple deception. Use a taunt to appear playful, perhaps as a scrub with some code of honor... then roundhouse kick (read: Tipman) the enemy's skull. Four times. FTW.
To Conceal a Dagger in a Smile means to beguile one's enemy with friendliness and sugar-coated words, creating in that very act the chance to slip a dagger in his neck when he next lets his guard down around you.
Now, in a fighter game, you cannot really make your opponent think you have friendly intentions (the closed system property), but the essence of this stratagem does not require that. All it means is making the enemy think you have no teeth... and then baring a blade. Of course, if he really is a scrub, then he may mimic your code - and you should know what to do about that.
But say he's not a scrub. What you are doing to Conceal the dagger is you are inviting the enemy to let his guard down - in the sense that he will take more risks to get greater rewards, of course. He will try to abuse your apparent scrubbery just as you would take advantage of a scrub yourself; even if he doesn't believe you are a scrub, he can still abuse the things you are physically doing (or omitting) to give that impression. But in Smash (insofar as it's a balanced fighter, anyway), rewarding moves have larger risks, and your Dagger is the deadly attack *you* execute, for which, had he not taken that risk, you would not have found the opening.
It takes guts to make yourself out to be a worse player than you are. I could not even begin to do it, last time I tried. Neither would I know the possible social consequences of pulling such a deception. But there it is - the option.
Stratagems for Attack
The notion behind attack is that, tactlessly, to go out to fight the enemy places you in the danger of his own weapons. To learn to attack is to learn how to weaken or defeat the enemy while giving him not so great a chance to reciprocate that damage. Indeed, one may hope to "win without a fight" (Sun Zi), baiting the enemy, coercing him, befriending him, or just watching him until you know enough to make your victory a near logical certainty.
Pao juan yin yu - Cast a brick to attract jade
The kingdom of Jin wanted to attack the kingdom of Chouyou, but there was no direct route. So Jin cast a great bronze bell as a gift for Chouyou. Choouyou built a road to transport the gift from Jin, and then Jin troops came down the road and conquered Chouyou. --Chinese Tale
Incur a small loss to *lure* your opponent into something that gives you a big payoff.
The key here is 'lure'. This is a stratagem for attack. Under the previous section, a stratagem not relevant to taunting is "Sacrifice the Plum tree for the Peach tree," which advocates taking a small loss in order to obtain an overall gain. The wisdom is learning to think flexibly; learning to know when you must move "away" from the goal in order to reach it. The lesson though, in Cast a Brick, is to perceive when you can make your opponent give you something greater than what you give up to make him to do that. In Smash, this is made possible by the variance in risk/reward - a move your opponent uses to punish, itself costs frames of vulnerability. If his character is one that has only singular, highly risky attacks of any decent power (e.g., Toon Link at short range), then this stratagem is indeed one you should systematically use against him.
A whole other thread could be written on knowing to "play dumb", even taking damage, for a time in a match, only to invite an anticipation of your "mistake", which you yourself predict to score a K.O. For the purpose here, we simply talk of baiting an attack.
It is impractical to try to bait an attack with a game taunt, as no one who knows left from right will misjudge the *ample* time they have. However, dash dancing is a perfect example of a way to lure a mistake. If we recall a certain segment of a video of Koskinator versus HolyNightmare (R.O.B.), a dash dance seemed to elicit total confusion from Holy; he could do nothing but spot dodge, it appeared. Kosk seized that stock with a Choke that led to a shield push to edgeguard, then a stage spike, ending the match.
A dash dance is a small cost to you: it reduces your options, and is a nontrivial strain on your hands. This is in virtue of which the opponent can even believe he has an opening. However, the enemy may misjudge the opening - or simply confuse himself, as Holy did - giving you the chance to strike. From a dash, it happens that Ganon has stutter-stepped Fsmash (with its character-specific step property), in addition to the reliable knockout Dash Attack. Plus Brawl has a dash cancel with shield.
Remember there's plenty of nontaunt deployments of this stratagem. Indeed, against Toon Link, sure he has only few K.O. moves, but let's suppose he's cautious and goes for a zair. But then, if he does that consistently, doing small damage, then that *is* his weakness. You may now take greater risks, for his cautious nature is not one to actually make those moves risky for you. Exploiting that, though, would no longer be Casting a Brick; it would be... beating a newb. ;D
Jie shi huan hun - Raise a corpse from the dead
"Belief matters more than truth. Every moment, belief in imaginary things alters lives while truth sits unnoticed and waits." ~Unknown writer 3
This stratagem eluded me for quite a while. It means to 'exploit the enemy's ignorance', as though to use the power of apparitions (such as waking dead, which, before the spread of the Zombie genre, really were mortally horrifying), which the enemy will imagine into something more powerful than what you really have. You may then exploit his misjudgment, and for certain 'Corpses', his fear, to advance your agenda, both on offense and defense.
This stratagem has the classical meaning of using 'puppet agents', such as the "child emperors" who populate Chinese history, according to Gao Yuan, and who were manipulated by other persons for their own gains. These other persons were also shielded via their association with these presiding rulers. However, this meaning cannot apply to Smash (unless you can make your opponent think you control stage hazards - and there is something to understanding just how Frigate Orpheon works, I tell ye straight).
I hope to turn this stratagem into a signature exploit for myself, and it certainly is borne of a love of trickery on my part.
The use? To announce, before any match, that one shall "Land not one but two Warlock Punches" before the three games are up. Or, any similar, bold announcement on that model.
Your aim is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But your approach is to exploit your enemy's lack of awareness of the true probability of your prediction. Call that you will Choke-kill once in the match. Call that you shall downthrow seven times. Count them up as you make good on your promise, each time.
The lay person has a wretchedly inconsistent view of probability, is the first truth one learns when studying Statistics. This too you can abuse.
The wonderful thing about this stratagem? It may cost you something to Raise the corpse - e.g., my particular implementation might just make me look foolish - but if your opponent doesn't take the bait? You probably now have a read on his nature and attitude regarding talk. If his reaction is to not react, abuse now that he has shut himself up. When deploying trash talk, pepper him with the sort of sayings you might be wary of having turned around. If he does bite, focus all your smack on this thing you have planted in his mind. When Besieging Wei, make your reference to how he's already "walked into three shin-breakers" and that the others will follow suit.
The optimal strategy for him is neither to assume you're bull****ting nor that you will really try to land the last four, but to ignore your prediction entirely. Yet can any Human mind really do that? We crave meaning. We latch on to horoscopes, lottery numbers, and plenty other meaningless coincident phenomena. Psychologically, we are said to have "confirmation bias", and only conscious attention with scientific training overcomes it. I suspect anyone from pro to newb could prove susceptible to this effect with their other resources given to playing the game.
You are in some sense combining this stratagem with "Point at the Mulberry and Curse the Locust", which encompasses scare tactics, although the exemplifying name suggests the sense of "making an example out of someone, who transgresses you." When you Curse the Locust, you are suggesting that anything which repeats the deed of ravaging your Mullberries, will incur equal wrath. In Smash, this means staying on top of your punishment game, which we as Ganon mains know is at least 90% of Ganondorf's meta. Remaining absolutely flawless in your punishment is (a) instrumental in itself, for obvious reasons, but also (b) goes beyond the damage, to sustaining that "aura of fear" which many writers identify as an essential quality of a true pro.
To go on longer would be to get into that stratagem itself, but I do believe it is relevant to understanding this one. You must try to use your corpse for all you can - make it look not only real, but give it more power than either your opponent or you.
Stratagems for Confused Situations
There is a proverb: "Wild times make heroes." In the thick of battle, in the midst of warfare, in a shot of crisis, facts become blurry. In these times, uncommon, perhaps unique opportunities arise, for prudent thinkers to become leaders, for brave youngsters to become heroes, and for clever rogues to become wealthy lords. Managing the many, tangled factors of such situations, while still stepping out to find (or make) eventualities under your own control, prove the strong-willed from the weak-.
Fu di chou xin - Steal the firewood from under the cauldron
Fu di chou xin means to take away from what supplies your enemy. Another stratagem, for gaining ground (which is the next section), called "Replace the beams and pillars with rotten timber" means to actually substitute resources under your own control for the ones you remove. That could include the whole subject of mindgames and have short books written on it. But Steal the Firewood only speaks of removal. Yes, on reflection the names are sort of backwards; roll with it.
Stealing the firewood is something that could only work in confusion, for the cauldron must be closely passed to reach it. So it is that this tactic must be used with agility, spotting that undefinable opportunity and getting in, messing around with things, and getting out with your opponent not quite knowing what hit them.
What is the one thing that 'fuels' your opponent in Smash Bros.? His mind. Once again we consider trash talk, but we must contrast this with Wei wei jiu zhao. Here, the essence is to find an opening in the confusion, to the things which supply the enemy's power, and cut them, later seeing the effects. The things of which you talk should be, rather than distracting "low blows", full-fledged mindrape.
If I may borrow the words of a comedian (a hack comedian some say, though), this seems to be the specialty of women over men. You want to come up with something so intense, confusing, and inscrutable, that it can be confronted nor ignored; it will just nag at the opponent, the roots of its toxicity in your choice of words, but most of the damage done by the enemy's mind consciously or unconsciously processing it. A dilemma.
Clearly, one must get wholly inside the opponent's mind for this. I wouldn't know how to say what sort of trap you can spring - that's what makes this a stratagem for a confused situation. It's a once-under-the-moon chance, that identifies the skilled for their being able to discern the opportunity itself.
We can only talk of why this might work. This route to Stealing the Firewood applies because the 'confused situation' is the heat of battle, where we, of course, do not attend to every single detail of the match, including one rather salient one, after I name it: Your own mind. You don't have the capacity to reflect on your own thoughts as you think them while *also* trying to keep those thoughts GOOD (i.e. thoughts about good plays). Or, I suppose, the newbie does not have this capacity. As the pro makes his concepts for the game more economic*, he may be able to do this (he still has to train the reflective ability itself as a separate skill). But whether he is conscious of your words or not, they can still infect him. One would effectively have to be a master of meditation to completely ignore a well-crafted 'word bomb' of this kind.
I can't give much specific advice, but I do believe there is a stratagem here for Smash. Perhaps you may wish to reflect on what would distract you the most, when a confusing situation occurs in a game. All I can say is, if this is to work, it will be in a subtle way.
*This is known technically in the field of psychology as "economy of thought" and refers to the refinement of one's representation of his knowledge so that it better suits the task he performs with it. THE MORE YOU KNOW!
Yuan jiao jin gong - Befriend a Distant State while Attacking a Neighbour
Your enemy is a character, and a player who commands him. Your opponent is a person, who has a life, who has goals, who, if good, probably has a social life within the Smash community. In this case, it is not contradictory to seek the enemy's annihilation while entreating for your opponent's friendship.
Such is the lesson that can be taken from Befriend a Distant State. In this case, the far-off, vague entity of "The guy who may come down to other tourneys you visit and talk to you outside of matches" is the Distant State, and the definite entity of "your pairing this round" is the Neighbour.
This stratagem is in contradiction of most of the other things I write here. Technically, it does say to make friends to make a fight easier. Or, to put off "distant worries" to focus on a single, proximal one. So in short, this is the stratagem where I say, it's okay to choose to play a friendly match if that's how you will really play your best. Indeed, you may, through personal charm, avert any of the sort of attacks described here.
But how do you do all this with a taunt? Simple. Have fun with a fun moment. Between Falcons, this is the downtaunt in the Knee->downtaunt 'combo'. For us, this would mean to make light of your one-in-a-million Nuke Kick shield breaks, and your own epic failures (recovery, anyone?) Dash dance like Koskinator, maybe, or just laugh. A good-natured laugh will do it, if it's *with* your opponent.
Stratagems for Gaining Ground
These stratagems teach nothing more than to pounce on the wounded and to erode at the sturdy. Victory obviously consists in gaining something you did not have before, and so, one must learn how to take.
Shu shang kai hua - Deck the Tree with Bogus Blossoms
This says "pretend to be something you are not". I take from this not the mere adage "give false impression", but rather, "mask your true nature." It is perfectly in accord with this stratagem to be totally guileless of the fact THAT you are putting on a false show. Your goal is not to make someone believe something false, but rather to make it difficult for him to have beliefs that are true. If the Bogus Blossoms are cast *just* the right way, the enemy will not be able to say at all just what sort of Tree truly lies underneath - the enemy won't know how different your 'act' is from the real you.
This stratagem can only apply in Smash on players' first meeting. It is a situation of equality in one sense: You are both totally ignorant. You have thus one chance to get something out of this stratagem.
Here's the crux: To apply this, you have to act like what your opponent thinks better players act like. And that may mean not taunting. Or it may mean taunting profusely. You have to get a read on the opponent as quickly as possible.
On top of that, this is one of those techniques that has a threshold requirement on the opponent. An opponent who isn't good enough won't even see what you're doing. But that should only exclude pure newbies.
Either way, it's only as good as the illusion first lasts. You create a wrong impression, you land a few hits the opponent didn't anticipate from you, and then you're done - play the rest of the match.
This stratagem, thankfully, is not exclusive of an attempt to play dumb. If you favour going into a match pretending to be poor, but then springing an advanced move on the enemy which he maneuvered into, then all you need to do is make it look like you don't know *that* move. Remember, your opponent may know you are Decking the Tree. But it's his guess just which of those Blossoms are Bogus.
However, this is most likely exclusive of the tactic for Concealing a Dagger in a Smile described previously. On reflection though, the persons who would be susceptible to either deception are exclusive. Enemies who are not observant or not serious enough to step into this trick, are not the same as those who are observant and serious enough to see through your Concealing Smile in the other case. Now, if they are observant, serious, and mindful, they may avoid both. But mindfulness is a rare trait.
Fan ke wei zhu - Make the host and the guest exchange places
This one is extremely subtle. It came to me only at the pitch of sleep.
This stratagem will only rarely apply, by factors outside your control, but if you see the chance for this, it is too profoundly profitable while totally costless not to seize it.
When two forces do battle, the one that goes to the other's territory is the 'guest' and the other, the 'host'. Certain simple rules describe the dynamic heuristically - the host will try to cut off the guest's supply lines, the guest will strike the enemy's headquarters. It's not totally one-sided, for that nearness to home makes the guest dangerous, but in short, the host has a qualitative advantage and is in control.
General wisdom says the guest will be defeated if he does not see he is the guest. That is just a requirement of his turning the situation around - to see it like it is. The stratagem here says what it means: Make the guest into the host, and make the host into the guest. Thus, the former guest will be the one fighting with the 'home advantage', and the former host shall be driven out in disarray.
Now, it seems all warfare would be trivialized if one could simply do that, but I believe the statement of the stratagem is the hint of how to use it.
What you are doing here is reversing roles. The host was the host, you knew you were the host, and your opponent knew you knew you were the host. But consider a turnabout - a magnificent string of play that puts you on the stock disadvantage. And then imagine your opponent beginning to act like you. Taking the things you did between stocks and making them his own - aerials, crouch taunting maybe, the same as you. Parroting now everything and anything you spoke at such times, you bearing the unkind end. What would that make you do?
To make the host and the guest exchange places, in Smash, I believe can only be this thing. Host and guest literally translate to matchup and stage pick, but you cannot change those things during any one game. So instead, you have to try to depose your opponent to the status of the guest. He has to feel like he is the one fighting on your terms, on your turf. Make him see his own path to victory, under your boots now, and he will imbue you in his mind with a little of his own glory.
But this is delicate! If you parrot him exactly, it may (a) just look childish, but that may be because of the quantifiable statement that (b) he can realize that, if he acted like such and fell behind, you can do the same too. So you are trying to take from him not his own clothes, but his own glamour, his aura, the way he perceived himself - like one's own voice to oneself, different when recorded and played back (caused by vibrations of the skull, by the way).
The great thing about this stratagem is you may actually turn this into a moment where you win a better player's respect. I believe now that this happened to me, at my first tourney, when I won a small advantage, for a time against an opponent's Wario with my Falco on counterpick. I surprised him with some novel use of aerials, and an Up-B attack that actually hit him, when I mixed it up from a side-B, correctly predicting an attempt from him to time an attack against the Phantasm. He was *eager* to tell me all he could about Falco! It singularly made my experience very positive, even though I lost to every one in pools save a troll and a scrub.
In that situation, this stratagem takes nothing but seeing that you have turned things around... and trying to keep it that way.
Stratagems for Desperate Straits
"Hitting below the belt," in Gao Yuan's own terms; baldfaced lies; self-subjugation; and the ultimate stratagem of them all: Running away. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Why tinker with a saying that is so simply true? While 'failing gracefully' is very much the essence of the wisdom of these six, I shall stick to my outset goal, of investigating the value of taunting, and cover just two of them.
Kong cheng ji - Fling Open the gates to the Empty city
Make a void appear hollow, and your enemy will suspect you really are solid. --Stratagems of the Thatched House
Enemies suspect that enemies have something to hide. Thus, if you flagrantly show that you have nothing, your foe may think you have a devious ambush, and retreat. This allows you to get through a situation in which you have nothing, using nothing (which is all you have). You must then of course try to build a situation not so desperate with the time you bought yourself.
It is thanks of course to the fact that sometimes you *do* lay traps that this stratagem could ever work, so make sure to sometimes do that. Indeed, one must necessarily pair this stratagem - for the purpose of Smash Bros. - with Conceal a Dagger or Cast a Brick. If you really do have NOTHING to use, stand. Dash dance. Do whatever else you've done to lure an attack so far. As Ganondorf, situations arise all the time for us where we have no option. If these come, and you blank even on our "acceptable attack substitutes," (lol thunderstomping <.<) try to condition yourself to pull at least this.
Lian huan ji - Chain Together the enemy's Warships
A force that appears strong may by that same strength be weak. Large armies require complex supply lines and command hierarchies. Massive combatants may have weak points you can attack for massive damage. No, really - everything that a foe has, is a weight that can be used to bring him down.
I could go into the narrative naming the stratagem, but it is rather boring in the end.
In Smash, this is the subtle stratagem I cautioned at the stratagem of Creating Something out of Nothing. And what you will learn to do is use your enemy's own pride against him.
Pro players are something beyond good. They are figures of praise. They are celebrities! They have ambitions, reputations, and for sure at their level they even have a place in their budget for their income from these tournaments. This is something that makes them strong, *and* weak. This is something you can use to make them lose.
For you need only play at the suggestion that they should be doing better than they are, and they may struggle. There are limitations, still. One, you cannot say anything outright when around a crowd of even remotely informed people. A direct challenge could only be effective to catch the ear of a troll who is (unfortunately) party to the games that day - someone that, *any* player I think, could not stand to let see one's own loss. You have to be subtle. You have to make the opponent do the work, of chaining himself up. Make him tie knots in his head.
It becomes relentlessly vague as we wind down with desperate situations, but that is how desperation is.
Good luck.
*~*~*~
Endnotes:
The three quotations attributed to 'Unknown Writers' are taken from printings of cards in the Magic: The Gathering TCG. I've tried very hard to find the names of the specific authors responsible for the texts, but to no avail. I can merely identify the cards:
1. Dash Hopes, Planar Chaos
2. Shimmering Wings, foil version, Tenth Edition
3. Gossamer Phantasm, Planar Chaos
