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"Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls..." Game and Watch Matchup + Discussion

cruised

Smash Rookie
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Dec 30, 2014
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NY
TIL while practicing SDI teching that it's impossible to go max distance with GnW's up b using the main stick, but if you hit the c stick in the direction you want to go right after up b, you go max distance.
I remember this being pointed out in the general thread. Managing the angle of upB and a saved double jump is really important to recovering and using max horizontal distance upB allows easier wall riding sweetspots. GW's recovery is "really good" but I personally think that I'm taking it for granted by not paying close enough attention how I'm coming back onto stage just because not a lot of people know how to deal with it. That being said, which character are the most capable of edgeguarding GW? I've had trouble against Charizard and Jigglypuff.

I've been trying to do a recovery mixup by upB-ing away from the edge and then doublejump+b-reverse towards the stage. I haven't tried it against people who seem to have edgeguarding me down but it looks like a worthy option.
 

Shoto

Smash Apprentice
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Nov 17, 2013
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Onboard the Arwing
Tips for G&W vs G&W? Apparently one of my freinds was trash talking the best one in GA about how "great" I am, so he's supposed to challenge me to a MM. I'd prefer not to do it since I'm relatively new, but if I can put up a fight against him then maybe I can prove myself or something like that. ( MY HONOURRRRR )
 

Black Bean

Smash Cadet
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Conway, AR
Tips for G&W vs G&W? Apparently one of my freinds was trash talking the best one in GA about how "great" I am, so he's supposed to challenge me to a MM. I'd prefer not to do it since I'm relatively new, but if I can put up a fight against him then maybe I can prove myself or something like that. ( MY HONOURRRRR )
One thing that you should know is that uair beats dair. All day. This is true for other characters like link, TL, DK, and falcon. I'm sure there are many more but I can't think of all of them right now.

Other than that, I can't really think of any MU specific tips. Obviously, it's 50-50. Maybe find a friend that has an okay GnW and get them to play against you? Then you'll get a feel for the ditto.

Best of luck!
 

Shoto

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I went up against him, and I lost. He is on a whole other level compared to me. I really enjoyed the experience though, and I'm determined to move forward. I also painted my controller, and put a G&W decal on it, so I'll be uploading pictures to the Discussion thread sometime later. Also, thanks black bean :D
 

Black Bean

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Any time bro! There's always a lot to learn from dittos, regardless of who is better. I'm excited to see that controller!
 

UltiMario

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Dash Attack and Dair can cover the edge if they're going for a sweetspot Up-B. Dtilt and Ftilt as always still work if they go higher, and if they stop to Tornado, they're pretty vulnerable unless they're way far out. Fair still gimps in general if you want to go deep, but you have to make sure if you do that they're far enough so they'll die if they want to use Up-B to beat it.
 

Shoto

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Weak fair off stage is my go-to choice, but dash attack does beat sweetspotted recoveries. I don't like to use it like that though.
 

jtm94

Smash Lord
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Responded to you guys.

I saw people say a lot that you can't sweetspot through GnW dash attack, but at that point I'd rather just dtilt them. The only time I'm going to use DA ovs dtilt/chair is if they aren't at high enough % to gimp them and because they probably wouldn't DI the DA then it'd probably set up at least an uair scenario.
 

ConstableD

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Jun 13, 2014
Messages
4
@ jtm94 jtm94
Can you please add me to the Skype call?
Skype name is constabledickins
The filter is catching part of my name... The blanked part is a four letter word for male genitals.. Thank you
 
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ConstableD

Smash Rookie
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Jun 13, 2014
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4
Alright, I'm curious:
Since this thread has gotten off topic a little bit, does anyone have a solid MU list for G&W?
 

jtm94

Smash Lord
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I can craft one.
I feel like he loses to Falcon.
Goes even with ROB.
Beats Sonic.
Beats Puff.
Beats Snake.
Loses to Roy.
Loses HARD AF to Marth.
Loses to Fox.
Beats Falco.
Beats Lucario.
Beats Luigi.
Even with Ike?
I personally lose to Ganon.
Even with Mario?
Beats Squirtle.
Even with Sheik?
Beats DDD.
Beats Charizard.
 
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ConstableD

Smash Rookie
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Jun 13, 2014
Messages
4
So just to recap:

Beats:
:sonic::jigglypuff::snake::falco::lucario::luigi2::charizard::dedede::squirtle:

Even:
:ike::mario2::sheik::rob:

Loses:
:falcon::roypm::fox::ganondorf:

Loses HARD AF:
:marth::marth::marth:


Personally I disagree with Falco, Maybe Im just awful against falco but I have a really hard time beating him.. any tips?
I also think Gdubs is at least even with Falcon, if not slight advantage.
Totally agree with marth.....man **** marth.
 
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jtm94

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My reasoning is that DDD has no outs to bacon besides throwing waddles. It's possible he loses.
Against Sheik we can CC her everything into dtilt or grab > a lot. I've had struggle against Sheik, but it doesn't feel as bad as Marth.
Falcon feels hard for me. It's hard to space anything safely. It feels like a super volatile MU I don't really know.

Falco is just annoying, not quite as overwhelming as Fox. He's only good in neutral because lasers are autopilot. If you take away lasers because of bucket he really doesn't have much left outside of shine pressure, but just shield and UpB. It's entirely possible it could still be bad. Don't be afraid to challenge any and all of my views. I am not the end all be all GnW MU guru.
 

Helsong

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I've decided to pick up Game and Watch, and now I've got a moneymatch in GnW dittos coming up in a few weeks.

I've got an okay grasp on the character, but I was wondering what things in specific I should be looking out for. Are there any options that are particularly vicious or silly?
 

Shockbound

Smash Apprentice
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Sammamish, WA
I recently made a post about how to play against G&W in Sonic's matchup thread. I don't know anything about Sonic though, so what I wrote was pretty generic and probably holds true for the rest of the cast.
Here are some extremely valuable tips for playing against G&W that pretty much anybody in the cast can also take advantage of:
  • First and foremost, be very patient. G&W has very few reliable approach options and can have a very difficult time getting in on his opponent when they are ready for him. His awful mobility in neutral can easily be taken advantage of by a vast majority of the cast by dash dancing and watching his movement carefully. Stages with a lot of room to move around are especially difficult for G&W to maneuver safely in because it's possible for his opponent to run away from him until he eventually loses stage control.
  • Stay on the ground. G&W's only safe option in neutral when you're not approaching him is to shorthop and throw bacon at you. When he does this, being in the air is no longer an option for you because bacon covers a lot of space. However, it's not actually completely safe for him to use; while there is indeed a hitbox on the pan, it's only there for a single frame (the same one that the projectile comes out on) before it disappears. This one-frame hitbox then cannot reappear until 14 frames later even when he executes it perfectly, making it easy to punish when you are dash dancing and ready to react to it. As bacon travels upwards initially, dashing under it on reaction should also be pretty easy to do.
  • If he's sticking to the ground, he's trying to bait an attack from you. If you try to approach him with an attack at this time then he will crouch cancel it and immediately respond with a D-Tilt. This can be very dangerous to be hit by since G&W can then follow this up with a combo string and rack up tons of % on you. This is why patience is such a critical aspect of this matchup for anybody, as he will punish you extremely hard for trying to play aggressively. He can't be on the ground when he tries to throw bacon at you though, so you can punish him with an attack because he won't be able to crouch cancel it while still in the air. As soon as the first piece of bacon leaves the pan you should be all over him.
  • Be very careful when committing. G&W's frame 1 Up-B will end up hitting you if your spacing is a little off, and he will be using this move at any time when he feels pressured. If you are hit by it, you'll be sent upwards along with him and he may be able to follow up on this to kill you at higher %s.
  • Smash DI into him when being comboed. G&W normally has great followups on his Up-Air and Up-B, but these strings will end early if his opponent gets behind him quickly enough. You should always SDI in the direction opposite that G&W is traveling; you'll take upwards of 50% in a single punish otherwise.
  • If he is recovering from above, bait out his aerials and punish them. G&W's hitboxes may stay out for a long time, but he will be locked into that animation for the remaining duration of his airtime if he decides to pull one out. During this time, his entire body is vulnerable to your attacks. Stay on the ground when he does this and, like always, continue dash dancing. The only move that he has that will give him full-body coverage is his N-Air, but it has a 20 frame startup and is easily punished on reaction by challenging him in the air. It also may be helpful to wait for him to land first before punishing, but keep in mind that his Up-Air, B-Air, and D-Air all have a landing hitbox on the first frame that he lands.
  • Watch out for his speedy and long range DACUS. This is the one tool that he has to punish somebody that dash dances too much. It's hard to react to and it will catch you off guard if you aren't expecting it. It isn't totally safe because it has no hitbox until he reaches the end of his slide, so it can be punished on reaction with a grab. The only problem this poses is that it's fairly difficult to identify when he initiates this because the slide that comes after it is completely unexpected most of the time. You can figure out when he's trying to hit you with his DACUS when he attempts to adjust his spacing so that he can be at the appropriate distance for it to connect.
  • All of his aerials are unsafe on shield. This is another good reason to stay on the ground. His B-Air looks like it would be safe on shield, but it's actually his least safe aerial with a -6 on shield. Shield-grab is good for when he ends up very close to you since he will usually try to Up-B afterwards. Even though the hitbox starts on frame 1, his Up-B actually has 8 frames of startup before he actually starts moving anywhere. A grab should always be able to armor through the hitbox.
  • When he's on the ledge, stay away from it and dash dance. G&W's ledge options are very unsafe if his opponent is outside of the range of his F-Air and Up-B, which are pretty much his only decent options. F-Air from the ledge can also be punished by getting up close to him and shielding it or by crouch canceling the late hitbox. Otherwise, use your dash dance to avoid his F-Air and come back in with an attack once he lands (it has no landing hitbox). Punishing Up-B is difficult if he uses ledge invincibility properly, but he cannot act and is vulnerable once he is almost at the peak of his ascension even when he is frame perfect. You can meet him there with an aerial.
Read this to yourself each time you face off against any competent G&W. Having knowledge of those tips above will immediately give you a huge advantage over him, and this knowledge can spare you the trouble of having to figure out how to play against G&W on your own. Some people struggle to deal with him simply because they have no idea what to do when their aggressive playstyle that they use all the time no longer works. Many people get the impression that G&W is an extremely powerful character with tons of ridiculous and broken moves, but he still has very exploitable weaknesses that keep him from being top tier.
As for vicious and silly options, DACUS is the first thing that comes to mind. It comes out so fast that it's quite often completely unexpected and can kill at relatively low %s, especially against another G&W.
 
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Helsong

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I'll start getting the DACUS down immediately. I know for a fact that my opponent doesn't utilize DACUS that much, at least right now. He's a pretty patient player most of the time, but I do know how to bait him into a more aggressive stance. Sounds like I just need him to approach me recklessly and just try to wall him out until I can get a good punish.

CC d-tilt has worked wonders for me in almost any matchup thus far, so I'll keep using it. I was not aware all of his aerials were unsafe on shield, though! That's super useful to know. Can GnW bucket bacon?

Thanks for the tips. I'm a bit more confident about this now, considering we're evenly matched. Thanks for your help!
 
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jtm94

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GnW vs Sonic is the MU I play the most, haha.

dtilt is amazing. One of the safer approaches on shield is frying pan hitbox, landing immediately as it comes out, into jab > dtilt. It will bait out a grab from most people and then they get hit by jab > dtilt. Then follow that up with an uair or UpB > aerial depending on percent.
 

Helsong

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I've actually never used the pan hit at all before. I know it can spike.

Actually, I guess since you can land-cancel bacon, that is a pretty safe approach. pan -> grab might work if they keep shielding, and then pan -> upB for a mixup in case they happen to have a really powerful oos option. Against a GnW though, your idea of jab -> dtilt sounds like it'd work best, and possibly even shield poke?
 

jtm94

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It shield pokes if they are already wore down a little. Especially against another GnW because he doesn't have the best shield.

Pan > jab/dtilt is a frame trap I believe.
Pan > UpB should be completely safe on shield.
If you mix up both options it can be pretty powerful because once you hit them a time or so doing it people will start respecting it so much you can just go in on their shield like > pan > jab > jab > dtilt > dsmash
 

Shaq

BRoomer
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Ayo what's good everybody? I've been mainin this dude in PM because G&W's throws are just so free. Helps me with my only weakness, free throws.
I've been lookin into some combos with him like Dribble to Parachute, I call it the Alley Oop. Any1 else got any good combos?
 

salaperuna

Smash Rookie
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Hi @ Shaq Shaq , glad to see you're interested in PM! Glad you're into G&W too, he's a real fun character.
As a professional basketball player you've got to know G&W sometimes has trouble approaching safely, so be careful.

Actually, I know for a fact Mario handles balls pretty well, and he can even dunk - so make sure to try him out too. Maybe he's more your style. Oh, and don't try to get too many balls into G&W's basket since sometimes it's pretty easily punished.

Edit: any tips you could share based on the predecessor to all smash games, the fighting game Shaq Fu?
 
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Helsong

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So I played a few friendlies against my opponent today, and we went 50-50 in games. Not too worried about showing my cards. I tried out a few things I learned here, but I still had issues dealing with UpB OOS. How should GnW deal with another GnW using that to escape punishes? Respect it and pursue into the air with my own UpB? or possibly just use bacon to cover where ever he might land?
 

ConstableD

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jun 13, 2014
Messages
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Why is G&W vs marth so bad?

I get bodied constantly by my friend (marth main) and he asked me today why I loose the matchup so hard
 

UltiMario

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Falcon feels hard for me. It's hard to space anything safely. It feels like a super volatile MU I don't really know.
I really don't think G&W loses to Falcon.

Both characters do really nasty things to eachother, but you really only need to get like 2 good hits on Falcon to take the stock. G&W just combos Falcon for all of eternity and it's braindead easy to gimp Falcon at the edge, even at 0.

Obviously the Falcon's goal is going to be to not get hit, but with how large G&W's hitboxes are, it's not always that easy. If you mess up, you're just as vulnerable to Falcon's potential 0-to-deaths as Falcon is to yours, especially with G&W's bad tech rolls. The match-up is definitely volatile for that reason, but I think G&W has an easier time converting hits into kills, giving him the edge.

Why is G&W vs marth so bad?

I get bodied constantly by my friend (marth main) and he asked me today why I loose the matchup so hard
G&W thrives on his range and good recovery keeping him alive for way longer than his weight tier would normally allow. When you get a character that has faster, longer ranged moves, and gets rewarded for spacing their moves just outside yours (tippers), and then combine that with the ability to set up kills on G&W starting at like 40% on most stages, you pretty much just get a living nightmare.
 

Shockbound

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So I played a few friendlies against my opponent today, and we went 50-50 in games. Not too worried about showing my cards. I tried out a few things I learned here, but I still had issues dealing with UpB OOS. How should GnW deal with another GnW using that to escape punishes? Respect it and pursue into the air with my own UpB? or possibly just use bacon to cover where ever he might land?
Dealing with Up-B OoS is a matter of knowing how much space you and your opponent can actually control.

G&W is deceptively vulnerable while above a grounded opponent, and this is a position that's made even worse for him whenever he uses Up-B OoS. Using Up-B immediately puts G&W in fastfall and removes his ability to airdodge until he gets hit or ends his air state. This means that his options for returning to the ground are pretty much limited to pulling out an aerial to protect himself on his way down or to aim for a platform beforehand to restore his options as soon as possible. If you make a point of staying directly below him for the entire duration of his air state then he will be limited to just ONE option upon landing: D-Air.

If you do manage to keep yourself directly below him, G&W will start trying to use his remaining mobility options to get himself to a position where he can escape being directly above you. He can use his double jump and bucket stall to end his fastfall to give himself more time, but both of these are single-use and can be baited out simply by chasing him from the ground to keep yourself directly below him. This keeps your zone of control in the one space where G&W has no choice but to enter. A smart G&W will use B-Reverse Chef to mix up his movement while in the air to make it hard for you to keep your zone of control in the right spot, but if you can keep up with him then he will eventually have no option but to try to land directly on top of you with a D-Air. Since you already know that he'll be using D-Air you can easily dash out of the way and punish him just after he lands to avoid the landing hitbox. This is part of the reason why characters with high ground speeds are exceptionally difficult for G&W to deal with.

Respect his F-Air. I stress the word "directly" so much because if you stray too far from being directly below him during his air state then he will pull out a F-Air and fade back with it in an attempt to clip you with the flub hitbox. If it connects then it's a fairly safe and rewarding option since it covers a huge amount of space and can usually lead to a deadly D-Tilt followup. However, if it doesn't hit then he's going to be stuck in punishable landing lag that you should be capitalizing on. Simply staying just outside the range of his F-Air once he pulls it out (it'll usually be telegraphed since he needs to pull it out ahead of time to get the flub hitbox) will leave him open to being punished.

Furthermore, since you're also playing G&W you can greatly lengthen your zone of control by using the bacon from an up-angled Chef. This is great for punishing an opposing G&W that's trying to get back to the stage from above since G&W has no fast aerials to swat them away with. The trajectories that come out of an up-angled Chef will keep the projectile lingering in one place for quite a while around the point when it reaches its apex, so it can continue to limit options in a given space even after the opposing G&W manages to maneuver around it.

Bait out his D-Air and challenge it. This move takes a long time to execute once it's brought out, so G&W will be locked into that animation for pretty much the rest of his air state. This is often accompanied with a fastfall since it can give him some protection while he returns to the stage. However, his hurtboxes are still left completely open during this time. His foot hangs down all the way to the end of the handle, so this means that you can use Up-Air and have just enough range and disjoint to reach him. Your hurtboxes during Up-Air are dispersed in a way that makes it so your head is placed behind you, keeping you well away from the key as you start to get closer to it. Here's a picture showing how the two moves interact:



This picture shows two G&W's that are facing the same direction. When they are facing opposite directions the spacing is slightly different, but you can use your imagination and see that it's still enough range to hit him safely.

Well placed bacon will often force a D-Air from G&W when he tries to swat it away. Use this knowledge to your advantage.
 
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Helsong

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I won the MM ditto 3-1! I am now richer an extra $5. No recording though, sorry.

Thank you to everyone who gave me advice. I'm still a total beginner at Gnw(and this game), but I can definitely feel improvement. I mostly just had issues finding ways to approach when he was camping me out, but otherwise, I think I played it well. I flubbed DACUSs a few times though, despite my practice. Once again, thanks everyone!
 
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