Snake vs. Ice Climbers

Underload · Jan 12, 2010

Discuss the Ice Climbers matchup in here. Discussion is open indefinitely. Don't be afraid to post.

Bulletpoints:

Don't get grabbed. Plain and simple. Learn the range of your tilts and be wary of your opponent's grab habits.
Grenades are your friend. You need to have at least one out at all times. They break chaingrabs, allow you to camp the ICs, and they'll keep your opponent wary of approaching you.
Mortars are also excellent in the same regard as grenades. Mix up how much you charge them, they're amazing for breaking grabs and preventing aerial approaches (like those happen anyway...)
Your counterpicks should be anywhere but traditional starters. Your main focus when counterpicking is to make it hard for the ICs to grab you, chaingrab you 0-death, and keep a lead. Good examples are Brinstar, Rainbow Cruise, Norfair, and even something like Halberd. Ban FD.
The ratio is argued among Snake and ICs players, but 60:40 seems to be a good indicator of the matchup currently.

Notable Posts:

Read these as if it were a conversation between a group of people, not a bunch of separate superposts:

RedHalberd said:
If every IC player played like Kakera It would probably be 50-50 if not in IC's favor.

Once again I think this is a highly undeveloped matchup, especially from the ICs side (But IC's in general are highly underdeveloped). I think at the moment it's probably 55-44 or mabye even 60-40 but I think ICs have the potential to push it to 50-50. Just no IC's player in the US has really developed "approaching" with IC's very well yet. See video for what I'm talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCsb78o6mHY

swordgard said:
Airdodging into the ground, B reversal with nades when its not safe to, no uptilt to beat side B, no backthrow to forward smash, no falling back air against nana as she passes by too fast for fsmash. Trying to mix up forward tilt with something else? Not safe, Forward tilt is very unsafe vs ics if they are running at you. Blizzard? Snake can space nades to hit ics when its alternated. Ice blocks? Ftilt through or power shield, minor inconveniance.

No solo chain grab, no infinite... For the amount of grabs kakera got in(and he should not have for most of them if Snake played better vs ics), that was ridiculously low damage output.

-NaPPy said:
ic's vs. snake is even, but alot of scrub ic's think its not. theres a perfect example of some guy disagreeing with me earlier in this thread. That same person lost to a ganondorf (with ic's) at the tourney we were both at. LOL

inb4lurker

QFT x1000000000 btw

swordgard said:
Unfortunately since I did not see meep play the matchup particularly well nha.

I play Dom(2nd best snake in quebec) and beat ally in tourney before, but unfortunately videos kinda did not get recorded. Next tourney they will. TBH I am near 100% sure that most other people who say its even have no idea why, in order for ics to go even with snake they need to know the matchup perfectly. It is a lot easier to learn the matchup as snake than as ics, but the end result is that they both go even. The thing is, meep lost to ally and a couple of other snakes. Lain doesnt bother going ics vs snakes. Kakera and shuu both play the matchup wrong. Theres plenty of vids of snakes playing the matchup well(look up ally vs meep, ally does it right without even camping, he said it was the first time he had to resort to camping vs me :S ).The problem is that since there are so few good ics players, and they don't apparently know the matchup that well you won't find vids of it.

shmot said:
i too now see why it could potential be even (although am not yet convinced that is actually is). please try and get some vids recorded, swordgard, it would be very appreciated. last time i watched any ics verse ally it ended in fair ****. quite possibly cause the ics were doing it wrong.

that being said, ive lost to ics before as snake. bf is worse, simply because of uair chains. bf is ics best neutral against almost all characters; snake is probably one of them.

i did find it relatively easy to win on sv, however, cause platform camping there is amazing when done right. generally this is what i abuse when im not sure of a mu or am clearly going to/already losing the match.

i was surprised how ineffective ftilt was... i think boost pivots and stuff would be more useful next time.

RedHalberd said:
This.
It's almost impossible to have a matchup better than 55-45 against a character that (at the highest level) will grab you once and take a stock. Snake can use Grenades to defend himself but at in general he'll likely trade hits with ICs. Keep in mind that using Ally vs IC's isn't even a legit comparison because Ally is better than every ICs player. If an ICs player doesn't mess up CGs and the snake player knows how to camp then the matchup should no doubt be 50-50. The question is how easy is it to not get grabbed, and how much damage will ICs do every if they can't CG you.

shmot said:
i disagree. a number of characters have very good methods of not getting grabbed. mk is a perfect example here. he only gets grabbed if he makes a rather massive mistake. not a 55:45 mu at all... 60:40 mk at best for ics.

but snake doesnt really have such an easy time avoiding grabs as mk does... but he arguable can kill nana easier. correct me if im wrong, but in a lot of cases, getting nana and popo on opposing sides of the stage will mean certain death for nana, which leaves popo completely screwed.

i suppose its a matter of not making the big mistake first, but i think snake has an easier time forcing the mistake and taking advantage of it. im sticking by 60:40 snake for now.

RedHalberd said:
While MK can play to avoid getting grabbed he still takes a lot of damage while Dair camping and IC's have gross Uair game. And even the best MKs still manage to get grabbed. On paper it may be possible but in practical gameplay even the best players will still make enough mistakes for something like this to happen. And even the best players are not guaranteed to always do a perfect gimp on Nana when they get her on the ledge/off the stage. If top IC's players didn't mess up CGs, most of the time top MK's wouldn't beat them.

And while Snake can kill Nana pretty well, you often see IC's players getting seperated because they make mistakes. So you can say "Snake will only get grabbed if he makes a mistake", but a lot of the time the same is few true for ICs. As far as forcing mistakes I think IC's are able to create a significant amount of pressure on Snake, enough to force him to do something that they can punish. Even if it doesnt result in a grab, Snake loses his shield from camping nades and ICs can technically force him to do something besides that. This will result in a mixup and if the IC player guesses right they will get a grab, just in general you don't see that kind of gameplay from ICs players because the game focuses around getting the grab.

If you watch videos of top IC's players vs. Snake you often see IC's players rarely reading sidesteps or rolls, which on paper could result in grabs. Most of the time IC's losing to snake is due to getting outplayed, which is why I think the matchup is definitly even.

-NaPPy said:
snake cant be flawless forever. He WILL make a mistake eventually and no matter how much you've been ****** the ic's and camping them the game is either gonna get even'd out or you'll be losing. I completely agree with your post.

anyone saying snake is hard to cg is stupid. That bthrow-footstool-ice block-regrab cg is sooo easy on snake. Unless its avoidable somehow? which I doubt

Prawn said:
I think it should also be noted that snake is unquestionably one of the hardest to CG.

In tournament, a grab in which nana is in the right place at any percent over 20-30 on, say, Olimar/Metaknight for me is a VERY good chance of a KO, and I'm not as consistent as I could be.

Snake is a much lower chance of going to death. But I know matchups say "top level" or whatever. So yeah.

edit:

The bthrow-footstool thing is easy(although I messed it up vs bizkit and got scared to do it again LOL) but its SLIGHTLY situational. For example it doesnt move away from nades, it doesn't work on slanted surfaces(most of the time) platforms can sometimes get in the way of nana. And it takes longer, which makes its SLIGHT chance of a screwup multiply. I prefer doing the harder one in hopes of mastering it because it is much more useful.

But it is easier yea.

swordgard said:
You can SDI over multiple times out of hobbling, and at any decently high%(70%+) you can get far enough so that they have to run. This makes it even slower as you cant jump until nana is 100% neutral state and adds a chance to trip.

In other words its completely unviable.

Most good ics still cant 0 to death snake. That includes japanese ics.

swordgard said:
You are so wrong on the second part of your post. Hobbling is completely unviable against anyone who knows how to mash and how to SDI, unviable versus nade setups, unviable on platforms, very time consuming and thus very bad in a lot of situations. It is terribad.

EDIT: Also, just saying the matchup is far from being fully developped, I got a whole new set of shenanigans for when il play ally next time.

Sinz said:
Alright, this Match up is 60/40. Even if every IC's was like the japanese player, it doesn't mean that every snake will be as clueless as the snake in the video. We can create a ton of shield push with our ftilt, dtilt, and uptilt. Our Bthrow is amazing vs the IC's.

Depending on the stage you will spam C4. However, if you are on FD don't spam it too heartily.

Try to hold onto your grenades as much as possible. Mortar sliding with grenades in hand is a safe tactic.

Cook them grenades and separate the two. Snake separates the IC's better than any other character. once you have them separated Nana should be dead. You get a free fsmash on her when she is running back. Then it is child's play for the rest of the time.

When the IC's are recovering just spam the hell out of mortars. If they upb and grab the ledge there is a very good chance that Popo will be hit by the mortar. If you are confident in your skills you can run off and bair Popo when Nana grabs the ledge.

Stages to ban.
FD

Places to go.
Halberd, Brinstar, Frigate

xxCANDYxx said:
snake ***** ICs pretty bad...prob around 65-35

and best places to take them are halberd and rainbow, probably brinstar too but ive never tested it since the other 2 are much better

Turazrok · Jan 12, 2010

First post!!!
Don't get grabbed. Easier said then done, but don't.

Underload · Jan 12, 2010

Second!

I'll edit in my own thoughts later, I have some work with the ROB thread to do, including posting some pointers there.

Yumewomiteru · Jan 13, 2010

Caaaaammmmmmmppppppppppppppppp

Superspright · Jan 13, 2010

Grenades. Grenades. Grenades. Grenades. Grenades. C4. C4. Mortar. Mortar. Mortar. Grenade. C4. Grenade. and so on in that fashion.

I never played a really good ICs. But yeah, getting grabbed should = death. Always have nades around, or something to blow you up.

Berserker. · Jan 13, 2010

Camp ICs and avoid getting grabbed (Which I doubt) lulz

-Cross- · Jan 13, 2010

I've always heard this MU was **** in Snake's favor. However...
What did this Snake do wrong? Especially the first stock, because the IC's ***** him. This is Japan btw, and Shuu is their best Snake according to the thread in Tactical.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCsb78o6mHY

The thing I noted was that the IC's here went for the grab when he could but was able to apply pressure just fine without the grab. Blizzard and Ice blocks exploded grenades without taking damage from what I saw the IC dealt with the grenade camping with ease. The Snake failed to take advantage when IC's were separated.

I know there are plenty of vids of Snake's owning IC's but I feel that analyzing a match where a good Snake loses to a good IC's will provide some better and more applicable comment.

Deleted member · Jan 17, 2010

Zajice · Jan 17, 2010

I'd much rather go for Nana when they're seperated. Solo Nana is less intelligent than a level 1 computer and doesn't even try to dodge attacks. Popo can still get passed you and back to Nana like nothing happened, making you waste the opportunity to eliminate the IC's 0-death.

And Snake is never good in the air.

Attila_ · Jan 17, 2010

this place is an absolute mess... no idea where im supposed to be posting stuff. but whatever.

so we're supposed to talk about the ics here? the conversation has pretty much been had already:

RedHalberd said:
If every IC player played like Kakera It would probably be 50-50 if not in IC's favor.

Once again I think this is a highly undeveloped matchup, especially from the ICs side (But IC's in general are highly underdeveloped). I think at the moment it's probably 55-44 or mabye even 60-40 but I think ICs have the potential to push it to 50-50. Just no IC's player in the US has really developed "approaching" with IC's very well yet. See video for what I'm talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCsb78o6mHY

swordgard said:
Airdodging into the ground, B reversal with nades when its not safe to, no uptilt to beat side B, no backthrow to forward smash, no falling back air against nana as she passes by too fast for fsmash. Trying to mix up forward tilt with something else? Not safe, Forward tilt is very unsafe vs ics if they are running at you. Blizzard? Snake can space nades to hit ics when its alternated. Ice blocks? Ftilt through or power shield, minor inconveniance.

No solo chain grab, no infinite... For the amount of grabs kakera got in(and he should not have for most of them if Snake played better vs ics), that was ridiculously low damage output.

-NaPPy said:
ic's vs. snake is even, but alot of scrub ic's think its not. theres a perfect example of some guy disagreeing with me earlier in this thread. That same person lost to a ganondorf (with ic's) at the tourney we were both at. LOL

inb4lurker

QFT x1000000000 btw

swordgard said:
Unfortunately since I did not see meep play the matchup particularly well nha.

I play Dom(2nd best snake in quebec) and beat ally in tourney before, but unfortunately videos kinda did not get recorded. Next tourney they will. TBH I am near 100% sure that most other people who say its even have no idea why, in order for ics to go even with snake they need to know the matchup perfectly. It is a lot easier to learn the matchup as snake than as ics, but the end result is that they both go even. The thing is, meep lost to ally and a couple of other snakes. Lain doesnt bother going ics vs snakes. Kakera and shuu both play the matchup wrong. Theres plenty of vids of snakes playing the matchup well(look up ally vs meep, ally does it right without even camping, he said it was the first time he had to resort to camping vs me :S ).The problem is that since there are so few good ics players, and they don't apparently know the matchup that well you won't find vids of it.

shmot said:
i too now see why it could potential be even (although am not yet convinced that is actually is). please try and get some vids recorded, swordgard, it would be very appreciated. last time i watched any ics verse ally it ended in fair ****. quite possibly cause the ics were doing it wrong.

that being said, ive lost to ics before as snake. bf is worse, simply because of uair chains. bf is ics best neutral against almost all characters; snake is probably one of them.

i did find it relatively easy to win on sv, however, cause platform camping there is amazing when done right. generally this is what i abuse when im not sure of a mu or am clearly going to/already losing the match.

i was surprised how ineffective ftilt was... i think boost pivots and stuff would be more useful next time.

RedHalberd said:
This.
It's almost impossible to have a matchup better than 55-45 against a character that (at the highest level) will grab you once and take a stock. Snake can use Grenades to defend himself but at in general he'll likely trade hits with ICs. Keep in mind that using Ally vs IC's isn't even a legit comparison because Ally is better than every ICs player. If an ICs player doesn't mess up CGs and the snake player knows how to camp then the matchup should no doubt be 50-50. The question is how easy is it to not get grabbed, and how much damage will ICs do every if they can't CG you.

shmot said:
i disagree. a number of characters have very good methods of not getting grabbed. mk is a perfect example here. he only gets grabbed if he makes a rather massive mistake. not a 55:45 mu at all... 60:40 mk at best for ics.

but snake doesnt really have such an easy time avoiding grabs as mk does... but he arguable can kill nana easier. correct me if im wrong, but in a lot of cases, getting nana and popo on opposing sides of the stage will mean certain death for nana, which leaves popo completely screwed.

i suppose its a matter of not making the big mistake first, but i think snake has an easier time forcing the mistake and taking advantage of it. im sticking by 60:40 snake for now.

RedHalberd said:
While MK can play to avoid getting grabbed he still takes a lot of damage while Dair camping and IC's have gross Uair game. And even the best MKs still manage to get grabbed. On paper it may be possible but in practical gameplay even the best players will still make enough mistakes for something like this to happen. And even the best players are not guaranteed to always do a perfect gimp on Nana when they get her on the ledge/off the stage. If top IC's players didn't mess up CGs, most of the time top MK's wouldn't beat them.

And while Snake can kill Nana pretty well, you often see IC's players getting seperated because they make mistakes. So you can say "Snake will only get grabbed if he makes a mistake", but a lot of the time the same is few true for ICs. As far as forcing mistakes I think IC's are able to create a significant amount of pressure on Snake, enough to force him to do something that they can punish. Even if it doesnt result in a grab, Snake loses his shield from camping nades and ICs can technically force him to do something besides that. This will result in a mixup and if the IC player guesses right they will get a grab, just in general you don't see that kind of gameplay from ICs players because the game focuses around getting the grab.

If you watch videos of top IC's players vs. Snake you often see IC's players rarely reading sidesteps or rolls, which on paper could result in grabs. Most of the time IC's losing to snake is due to getting outplayed, which is why I think the matchup is definitly even.

-NaPPy said:
snake cant be flawless forever. He WILL make a mistake eventually and no matter how much you've been ****** the ic's and camping them the game is either gonna get even'd out or you'll be losing. I completely agree with your post.

anyone saying snake is hard to cg is stupid. That bthrow-footstool-ice block-regrab cg is sooo easy on snake. Unless its avoidable somehow? which I doubt

Prawn said:
I think it should also be noted that snake is unquestionably one of the hardest to CG.

In tournament, a grab in which nana is in the right place at any percent over 20-30 on, say, Olimar/Metaknight for me is a VERY good chance of a KO, and I'm not as consistent as I could be.

Snake is a much lower chance of going to death. But I know matchups say "top level" or whatever. So yeah.

edit:

The bthrow-footstool thing is easy(although I messed it up vs bizkit and got scared to do it again LOL) but its SLIGHTLY situational. For example it doesnt move away from nades, it doesn't work on slanted surfaces(most of the time) platforms can sometimes get in the way of nana. And it takes longer, which makes its SLIGHT chance of a screwup multiply. I prefer doing the harder one in hopes of mastering it because it is much more useful.

But it is easier yea.

swordgard said:
You can SDI over multiple times out of hobbling, and at any decently high%(70%+) you can get far enough so that they have to run. This makes it even slower as you cant jump until nana is 100% neutral state and adds a chance to trip.

In other words its completely unviable.

Most good ics still cant 0 to death snake. That includes japanese ics.

swordgard said:
You are so wrong on the second part of your post. Hobbling is completely unviable against anyone who knows how to mash and how to SDI, unviable versus nade setups, unviable on platforms, very time consuming and thus very bad in a lot of situations. It is terribad.

EDIT: Also, just saying the matchup is far from being fully developped, I got a whole new set of shenanigans for when il play ally next time.

@asf: completely wrong. not advise people on what you dont know about please. its becoming a rather large problem around these parts.

Underload · Jan 17, 2010

shmot, I want to quote everything you said and put it in the OP. But quoting your post will only show the parts you wrote, and not the things everyone else said.

Any way you can get me the info?

Attila_ · Jan 18, 2010

Underload said:
shmot, I want to quote everything you said and put it in the OP. But quoting your post will only show the parts you wrote, and not the things everyone else said.

Any way you can get me the info?

if youve got an msn, i can send it through that. or email works too. otherwise, it will involve lots of changing stuff, which no one wants to do. pm me.

Zajice · Jan 18, 2010

You can click the quotes and put them all up individually yourself?

Or screenshot it and upload that.

Now before people think this is good info, I'm gonna debunk the things I see wrong with it.

asf218sef said:
What to do:
- Camp with grenades [learn to camp, don't throw nades without a plan].
- Spam C4s. You shouldn't spam C4s ever. They're generally very easy to avoid and need to be used just as strategically as any other move.
- If Ic's are close to you...use 1 ftilt, not 2...because ic's will cg you. This doesn't make sense. If you land the first hit, it's perfectly safe to use the 2nd. Only use 1 if they shield it, but that's a general rule for every time it gets shielded.
- If Ic's are separate try to kill popo...not nana. Again, bad idea. Its really easy to kill Nana when she's alone because she has such a bad AI. Popo has a pretty easy time getting back to Nana since he's controlled by an actual player.
- Use the stage to spam things like C4s and grenades
- When the Ic's want to go back to the stage is because they are in the air, most of the times they'll use (right+B) so...Snake have to use his fsmash. . . If you really think you can land it sure, but there are more reliable ways to punish ICs recovery.
- Don't get grabbed. Obv

Stages:
- Ban: Fd
- Cp: Yi, Bf, Frigate I think anything where the stage changes and breaks grabs is good.

Overall MU:
- Equally camp each other. I don't think ICs camp Snake very well at all. Ice blocks aren't that great compared to any of Snake's projectiles.
- one of them approaches, mostly ends bad for Snake. Things only end badly if you get read/predicted and punished for it.
- Snake can easliy take advantage of Ic's in the air. Not really. Snake is never good in the air. He can try to punish them for trying to get back on the stage as well as he can to any other character though.
- Ic's does better on the stage.
- Snake ***** on the air with nair. This actually isn't a bad idea, since DIing the nair might separate the two. This doesn't mean spam it though.

Underload · Jan 18, 2010

Looks like you know enough about the MU to write a summary, Zaj.

:/

Zajice · Jan 18, 2010

It would all be theorycrafted, since I've only fought one ICs in tourney and the rest are with one of my friends without a main that I always beat (Spelt).

Underload · Jan 18, 2010

Trust me, people theorycraft about characters they've literally never played against before all the time. Don't be so darn shy about it.

Attila_ · Jan 18, 2010

i disagree. theorycraft is rarely correct. unless someone has experience, dont write it. please

Zajice · Jan 18, 2010

Tbh, theorycraft is better than nothing. It at least gives you something to work off of instead of leaving you completely in the dark.

Theorycraft isn't always wrong, it's just not always right.

Underload · Feb 5, 2010

Aright, everybody hates this thread, apparently. ICs are on the rise and are finding ways to get around camping and dominate Snake, but still no one wants to discuss it. No wonder these boards are dead, we're lazy.

Anyway, I still need ratios. I've seen everything from the conservative 70:30 (a stretch, imo) to a radical 50:50 or even worse for Snake. I want a common consensus between all of us. Alright?

I'll build a summary and everything once I get a few more posts. For now, Olimar!

Sinz · Feb 6, 2010

Holy ****.

I didn't even know you made this thread. My bad.

Alright, this Match up is 60/40. Even if every IC's was like the japanese player, it doesn't mean that every snake will be as clueless as the snake in the video. We can create a ton of shield push with our ftilt, dtilt, and uptilt. Our Bthrow is amazing vs the IC's.

Depending on the stage you will spam C4. However, if you are on FD don't spam it too heartily.

Try to hold onto your grenades as much as possible. Mortar sliding with grenades in hand is a safe tactic.

Cook them grenades and separate the two. Snake separates the IC's better than any other character. once you have them separated Nana should be dead. You get a free fsmash on her when she is running back. Then it is child's play for the rest of the time.

When the IC's are recovering just spam the hell out of mortars. If they upb and grab the ledge there is a very good chance that Popo will be hit by the mortar. If you are confident in your skills you can run off and bair Popo when Nana grabs the ledge.

Stages to ban.
FD

Places to go.
Halberd, Brinstar, Frigate

xxCANDYxx · Feb 7, 2010

snake ***** ICs pretty bad...prob around 65-35

and best places to take them are halberd and rainbow, probably brinstar too but ive never tested it since the other 2 are much better

Sinz · Feb 7, 2010

Thank you Candy for contributing. It really appreciated when a recognized player comes in and helps out. ^.^

kackamee · Feb 7, 2010

Watch out for Desynch'd blizzards. They hurt.

Amity · Feb 24, 2010

i hate being grabbed by them -_-

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