Above post has been edited.
Fair enough.
This is one reason why I found myself honestly wondering after the first game if he was actually trying. Yes, BH/Sent/Commando is perfectly capable of ruining an IM team of any sort, and I think BH is a lot better than people give him credit for… but all the same, I was not expecting to pull off an OCV against IM/Cable/Doom. That’s the kind of fight where I usually plan to have to frustrate IM into mistakes, keep the distance open, and figure on bailing BH out by hopefully getting the DHC on Cable. The kind of wipeout that I dealt out was not expected at all. I probably could have cheerfully double-OCVed him with BH if I hadn’t felt like doing the DHC on Cable in the second game.
Yeah, getting launched in both games was a bit of a prayer on my part. I can only assume he either isn’t very good at it or he wasn’t expecting that to hit and didn’t react in time. I usually don’t wind up eating very many guard breaks though, so it’s not like this game was going to be over for that. If he had killed my BH though, you would have seen a very different set of tactics from my Sentinel. And this leads me to your next point rather nicely…
Actually, that’s about what my Sentinel on Watts usually looks like. Maybe not quite as crisp, but when I’m playing Watts, my Sentinel is usually pretty conservative, especially if he’s come in after a DHC with a prohibitive lead.
I’ll comment more on this in the Mikey R matchup. (note: it’s Mikey Rhasphone, not Mike Ross.)
Well, here’s where I’ll take issue a bit with the analysis. When I play Sentinel on Watts, I don’t play it the way you might expect from most Sent/Commando tactics at all. Yes, Mikey plays a very good, fierce Sent/Commando, and it’s very dangerous. Heck, when I don’t have BH around, I play my Sentinel a little closer to the more typical Sent/Commando myself. However, that’s not what you see here, for a very simple reason: I’m not even attempting to play a typical Sent/Commando here. I’m not quite sure how to articulate it, but ultimately the general idea is that I don’t see a point in risking Sentinel’s body to assert Commando’s presence at close range when I can assert the same presence from full screen with BH. Then if they can manage to get around that, then I’ll assert Commando’s presence.
I think Drew-Dub probably said it in the way that I still consider my favorite: “you do more from half to full screen than any other Sentinel I’ve ever seen.” It’s this general philosophy that has given rise to my self-deprecating caption where I ask rhetorically like I’m not aware that I can actually move forward. Because with Sent/BH, I, uh… don’t much. 
The end result of this is a very different Sentinel philosophy that looks very different from what you normally see, and often causes people to think that I’m not very good with Sentinel because they don’t see the typical stomp patterns out of me. Instead, most of my damage tends to come from fierce, BH, drones, keep-out pokes, and mixing in the occasional dashing strike or unblockable that throws someone for a loop and mangles someone when they’re not expecting it. It’s not even the same tactics I use when I’m playing Sent/Commando without BH myself, which are quite a bit more aggressive typically than what I do when I do have BH. I don’t often get as uncorked aggro as Mikey does by any means. When I do that, it’s usually either because (a) I’m doing it as a conscious tactic because I think someone has gotten a little too comfortable with the slow pace I usually set, or (b) I’ve lost BH for pocket change and Sentinel has to go into “ZOMG!DESTROYLOL” mode to come back when he only has Commando left behind him.
At any rate ™, what I’m really trying to say is, don’t judge my Sentinel too much just because it seems I’m not doing what you expect from other Sent/Commando. Remember… I did win the game, and if Mikey had tried the same team again, I probably would have won again. And I think he realized that, because he didn’t try it twice.
This much is accurate. Ultimately, what I did was fail to close. I should have just hung back and sat on the lead with Sentinel, and if he managed to get through Sentinel just run the lugnut into the ground and let BH come in and finish him off. Instead, I wound up playing it way too aggressive with Sentinel after his Sentinel came back in, when sitting back on the lead probably would have ruined him, and then once I got low on Sentinel’s life I tagged in BH for no reason at all. I should have just run each character into the ground in order and burned the clock. He probably would have gotten his Sentinel killed on Commando hits alone trying to come back.
Well… there actually was some half intelligent thinking behind this. Namely, Cable/BH/Commando is often a straight counter to Team Scrub. As little as you can move safely on Sent/BH/Commando, it’s usually that much uglier with Cable/BH/Commando, and it’s very hard to keep after that team if it’s played right without getting either the point character, the assist character, or both of them killed. When my Cable is in practice on this team, it is not unusual at all for me to put up OCVs against Team Scrubs with it. In fact, at Evo 2k2 I played against about three or four different people who used Team Scrub on me with this team. I won every single game with that matchup and only failed to OCV them once.
However, as you can see rather plainly, my Cable had a lot of rust on the gears and wasn’t comfortable on those sticks at all. I hadn’t played that team at all since I left Portland and my Cable would have been awful that day no matter what team I used – which is why, even though in the NW Cable was widely known as perhaps my best character, I hadn’t been using it in the tournament to that point at all. I probably shouldn’t have even tried it, but the instinct to use the counter-to-the-counter was strong enough that I couldn’t resist.
I probably should put some time on this team at the arcade before the next tournament. Either that or Team Scrub starting Cable. One way or the other, it’s a nice weapon to have against Sent/turtle/Commando teams that manage to get past my Sent/BH tactics, and has been for years, which is why I still use it. Even against other teams, people either usually know how to fight it or they don’t, and if Cable doesn’t wilt like he did there, usually it’s a “don’t”. Seeing how Mikey did against Cableguy later in the tournament, this is another area where I’m irked at myself, because my Cable used to look like that too.
Um, no. cr. rh for two hits into jab RP is not rollable at all. It’s only rollable if the cr. rh hits all three hits. I do it because a lot of people see the windup to the cr. rh, which looks a lot like a cr. short early on, and they think it’s safe after the first instant or so and often don’t block the rest of it.
Yup. Blind tags with BH killed me in this tournament. This is why I was saying I didn’t feel like I showed very good judgment in team management. I know better than that, and I did it anyway. Killed me against Mikey, and killed me against Larry too.
This match probably was over when I failed to convert the DHC on his Storm. If I do that right, his Storm is dead and my Sentinel is sitting on a lead. I didn’t.
In all honesty, I still haven’t seen a California Cable that’s as good as the ones I’ve seen in the NW. Seattle and Portland never bought into the idea that Cable got owned by rushdown, and simply adapted instead. So when I’m playing both with and against Cable with California opposition, I usually find myself having a much easier time than I would in the NW. I probably would get away with playing Watts on most any California Cable player short of Randy Lew just fine.
Yeah, it is just you. The video where I OCVed Woomighty in our first game with my Sentinel starting against his Santhrax was missing from the ones posted. :sad:
Already answered this. It is not rollable, and it’s only unsafe in that if they’ve got an invulnerable AAA you’ve got more time to get hit with it. However, it goes right through Commando.
Not on Watts, they don’t. Not as a primary part of the arsenal. If I had been playing something other than Watts you’d have seen more of this, but I wasn’t, so…
Well, it wouldn’t hurt to mix up Sent/BH lockdown to some degree, but the time to do it is right after I’ve already done fierce/BH/HSF after a setup. I have a pattern I tend to do which is pretty much devised as a pure frustration and lockdown where I’ll set up some form of aerial poke or frying pan, call BH, land, back away to full screen, and fierce/HSF. If they haven’t guard cancelled out of it (and BH often screws that up) then I’ll do fierce/BH/drones right after that, followed by an additional fly cancelled fierce. When I’m mixing in the roundhouse drones it’s usually after I’ve already established the fierce/BH/short drones, and I’m doing it to (a) check if they’re awake, and (b) see if they know how to get out of it. If they’re not awake, they often don’t react to the slower drones coming when they expect the faster ones, and the cr. fierce that comes after it will lock them down until the bombs drop. And if they just don’t know how to get out of it, then this is good to know too, because the bombs do about three times as much chip damage as the short drones do. What I do then is a little more open ended.
What I could do is, after the fierce/HSF setup when I’m free to call BH again, I could mix in an attack with Commando or I could do as many as several cr. fierces without calling BH before I actually do call BH, to leave them wondering how long it’s going to be before the inferno’s going to come. They’ll know it’s coming, but when? This both plays on the frustration and mind games of the regular vanilla lockdown once it’s already established, and might get you a few hits because they super jump at the wrong time and run into BH on the way up, or they wildly go after you thinking they’ve finally got an opening only to run into Commando when they get there. Lots of mind games that can go into this that I don’t often employ.
However, doing fierce/BH/fly forward and attack is a very bad idea on many, many levels. BH is not Mag-A out there. He’s slower to release, slower to recover, slower to get out, and a bigger target you have to protect. If you try rushing immediately after you throw him out there, you’re left with a good three or four second window where you can’t call another assist because you’ve still got this big ugly demon with bad hair gesturing at the ground back there. There are a lot of different things that can happen depending on who you’re up against, most of them are bad, and the good ones aren’t better for you than the bad ones are for them.
Just at a rough tear…
– another Sentinel will probably do to your BH exactly what I did to Mikey’s.
– Cable will shoot you both.
– Storm will call an AAA to clear Sentinel away while she throws typhoon/hail at BH across the screen. Cyclops is good for this.
– Magneto and Strider are more limited in what they can do to punish anything, but these are still characters that you want to keep at a distance that you’re now attacking head on and can’t call another assist against for several seconds, when you don’t have to.
If you’re going to attack, you’re not gaining that much by calling BH to force them to sit there while you come in as compared to the risk you’re taking positionally and possibly tactically on the way. If you’re going to play Sent/BH with tactics that are better suited to Sent/Commando, then you may as well actually use Sent/Commando and make a clean job of it.
That’s about it for now. Yeah, long again. Oh well. It’s a good discussion.
Cool Cool stuff.
I now, with the replys you gave and all, understand how your Watts differs from mine. I play my BH the same way that you do, but looking at the footage, our Sents differ.
It’s all good though. I still think you should probably trade in the cr. rh(2 hits)xxrp to lk, lk xx rp though. But you know, that’s just meh and all.
I’m actually going to try and get some footage of me playing Watts soon though for some criticism and suggestions. And Stilt, check with those Salinas cats (KillaKelly, WooMighty, etc.). I think they are going to work on another Salinas Hyphy hour tape soon. It would be tight to see a BH player on the tape.
Oh… KillaKelly and WooMighty were the guys you had in mind? I beat both those guys in the tournament.
But yeah… Sentinel, on my Watts, is the anchor of the team who cleans up after BH leaves point. Sent/BH/Commando has enough different weapons that Sent/Commando by itself doesn’t have that you don’t have to take as many risks to assert control, and so I simply don’t. It’s not that I’m not capable of stomping away with Sentinel, it’s that I choose not to because I don’t have to. It wouldn’t hurt to mix in a few other tactics as I get back into practice, by any means, but the core of my game plan is still something you can glimpse in those videos: BH f***s people up and then Sentinel comes in and plays mop bucket. Sometimes Sentinel actually has to win the game too, and he’s prepared to do it, but I do it with a patient, conservative control game instead of uncorking the offense.
My Sentinel’s got an algorithm somewhere in his wiring that if BH is alive, he doesn’t move forward much unless it’s as a surprise change of tactics. There’s a reason why I carry a caption under my name on this board like “I can move FORWARD too???” :wgrin:
Who did WooMighty use? Last I saw some of his footage it was Combofiend.
I’ve been playing a lot of Thrax and Doom/Storm/Sent lately, and I know that when I play those teams, my Sent is aggressive, especially with the latter just because of the lockdown of Sent/Doom. With my Watts, my Sent is basically just trying to force them into the vertical plains, where I can then decide where and how I want to deal with them.
I know sometimes, when I can get them to super jump from full screen I will just fly forward + BH. If it hits, then if you are fast enough, you can unblockable when they’re on there way down, either way, you can continue from there with the conditioning.
But I know on the last Salinas tape, Mikey Rasphone, Cableguy, and a Matrix user were also on there. But yeah, one more thing, I start Sent against Mags. Do you start Sent, or BH?
He used Santhrax starting Storm in the first game, and my Sentinel OCV’ed him. He went to MSS in the second and third games, he got a little lucky and I got a little careless to force a third game.
Hmmm. Interesting. I think the most common unblockable set up for me is to catch them off the bounce from a Commando hit if they don’t find a way to stop themselves from coming straight back down (e.g. what happened to Mikey’s Cable).
I usually play Sentinel more conservatively on most of my teams than most other people do, but it depends on the team and his role. On Watts my Sentinel’s tactics revolve around using all the tools at his disposal to make it as frustrating as possible just to move freely, much less attack. Scrub is a careful rush-and-zone where I try to halfway minimize the risks because Sentinel has more trouble getting out easily. If it’s Storm behind him instead of Cable I play it more aggressive because he can get out any time he needs to. If it’s SSP I tend to try to keep him closer to the ground; this is a team that I think has potential but I’m a little leery of falling in love with too much just because of the sheer trouble it has with Sent/Commando teams. Need to study how Justin plays MSP more before I’ll really feel comfortable with this team.
I almost always start BH on Magneto.
Can one of you guys(Stilt or CoosCoos) create a link to the above mentioned vids of Stilts matches of the Fairfield tourney? I’m really interested in seeing how Stilt plays BH. Thanx.
I agree with keeping Sent on the ground with SSP. Her assist really doesn’t help him in the air all to much.
Yeah, it’s a great alternative to the fly under + Commando.
Sure thing.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search=Fairfield+Tourney&search_type=search_videos&search=Search
There are three matches of him on there.
Actually, I’ll do a little better than that link: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=tiltmatic
This’ll actually get you the specific tournament videos from it.
Alright, thanx guys. I’ll comment on it tomorrow.
So I was porkin around today practicing, and it seems I found…sort of a Sent/BH fastfly
Launch, sj. lk xx fly xx d + lk + BH, f. lk xx dp rp, Fly forward as BH hits, f. lp xx low rp, f. lk, f. lk xx dp rp.
I’m going to tinker with it some more though.
On the rare occasions when I play BH/Storm/Sentinel (which I often jokingly refer to as the All-Ugly Team), a Storm/Sentinel DHC can be comboed into launch/fierce/BH/upwards RP with a bit of timing. Does a lot more damage than you’d think, it’s in Cammy or Commando territory.
Yeah, I wasn’t just unpardonably awful in the matches other than in the team management judgment. BH’s blind tags were not accidental, I really was just being that stupid. Cable AHVB failure was a simple sign of how bad of shape my Cable rust was in, which is why I shouldn’t have picked a Cable team to begin with and knew it in advance. Starting BH on Larry’s Storm was a genuine screw-up that I didn’t mean to do – I don’t start BH on Santhrax unless I’m pretty much completely certain that they’re going to start Sentinel. I like BH, I think he wins a lot more fights than people give him credit for if he’s well played (and demonstrated it to a fair degree in that video) but even I don’t like starting him against Storm.
ah as finals are close to coming and going I find myself back on here…tears up
anywhere I can go to see these clips you’re talking about? I’ll watch each match ONCE, and comment on how I would have played each
Glancing back a page when this one has so few posts on it sometimes helps.
New Combo.
Actually, this isn’t exactly new, it’s just new to me. I heard it from Transmetel. He claims that in one of Alex Valle’s matches, Valle’s BH jumped, called Sentinel, and airthrew the person away from him [back the way BH came from] right into drones then supered them. Here is the research I did into this last night on Dreamcast after hearing this…
WARNING: TESTED ON DREAMCAST ONLY
=*normal jump, airdash forwards [optional but recommended…], call Sentinel, B+Hp/k to score the air throw.
Follow-ups…
1] Stuff before you land…
1a Judgement day [air] and DHC out killing the character
1b slide airdash hk followed by one of the following…
-normal jump [or sj], airdash, lk,mk [if the combo meter restarts and this hits, call Capcom, dlk,dmk, and kill the character via DHC]. If this hits and it doesen’t restart the counter, launch the person or standing hk them [if you think it will hit]. If blocked, sj, and airdash back under the cover of drones, or whatever.
-ground Judgement day and DHC out to Sentinel killing the character
2]Stuff after you land…
2a Judgement Day
2b Launch the character [lp,mp, or DF hp will work vs airbourne opponents] followed by one of the following…
-Inferno XX HOD whiffed, HSF,
-Air Combo to reset or airthrow.
When used defensively, this doesen’t have nearly the effect as when used offensively. If your back’s to the wall and you call Sent then back throw them into the drones, the best you can usually accomplish is this combo…
1]jump back into the corner with BH, call sent and airthrow them into the corner to trade places. On the way down late in the descent, lp.
2]Immediately upon landing sj with lp [very tricky], airdash forwards, lp, lk, mp, airthrow/mk.
Further experimentation needed.
As a side note, you can do the BH lightning ground throw into Sentinel Drones, and it will combo. Your recovery is so bad that it’s useless however.
You can also airthrow someone into Capcom. Call capcom, jump, airthrow. Good for a quick 40 points of damage, useless otherwise [no combo potential].
Quote of Stiltman’s from another thread
Typed Conversation between me and Stiltman in the BH teams worth noting? thread. I copied it here since something interesting was in it.
If you get over a j. fierce and try to hit BH in order to make the fierce demons go away, and he jumps up to meet you and pokes you back into the demons, he can kill you off of that.
A few questions:
1]How easy is it to set up a situation like this
2]How easy is it to exploit this
3]What are the best ways and combos to exploit this for the kill
Setting it up is not that hard. People try to go over BH j. fierce all the time. The most common case has them trying to hit you and then they get hit in the back by the demons’ return. The problem is, trying to combo that into Commando after block stun just isn’t going to happen much in that situation.
However, sometimes your Magnus players will learn, hey, if you get over the demons, wait for them and don’t try to do anything until they’re off the screen. This is fairly smart of them when they do, but if they start getting too predictable about it, this is when you can meet them in the air as they’re going over and hit them. If they’re normal jumping, that’s just gross… something is probably going to happen that will get them hit, whether it’s a tail knocking them back into demons or a guard break into demons. Either way, if you get the tail off without getting hit, you can pretty much call Commando after a brief delay at that point and trust that something’s probably going to happen that’ll send them flying. After that, it’s just a matter of getting used to the idea that comboing demons into Commando works the same as comboing anything else into Commando. The demons will keep them bouncing just long enough that you’ll get back to the ground (this is why the slight delay on Commando call is necessary) in time to do something off of Commando.
It is something of a trick-shot tactic that probably won’t happen much. I think I’ve gotten this particular situation to happen exactly once in my life, and that was in the afore-mentioned case of a Magneto player who was doing a lot of turtle-in-my-face tactics. There aren’t that many who are going to do that, but it’s a good thing to keep in your back pocket for the ones that are, because turtle-in-your-face Magnus is probably more annoying and difficult to deal with than the more aggressive ones that at least will usually forget to block.
Another Deathfist Original BH Combo…
The above post reminds me of a combo I invented recently.
Here is a combo I invented last week Sunday. I decided to put it here so that we have all the trickshot and non-trick-shot combos in one place.
Opponent superjumps and air-dashes towards you, and you do this…
1]Wait till you no longer have drones on screen
2]Call Sentinel-y when the sj icon disappears [or is about to disappear] and immediately sj lp,lk, micropause, airdash, lk, mp, mk, hk.
-The chain knocks them down into the drones
-The hk hits them off the drones
-They’re bouncing meaning that they are at risk big time.
3]Continuations:
a-Jumping hk again, tag out to Cable/Ironman/Storm
b-Judgment day, DHC HSF [much better and more stable in this situation than one might think. DHC in Sentinel between the 29th and 35th hit.]. You have the option to launch [you MIGHT have to do a short dash; not likely though].
c-Launch, AC
d-Standing Hk, tag out to Cable/Ironman/Storm
e-HOD or InfernoXXHOD
The concept for this combo was born from the following combo. I’m sure someone thought of it first, but I had nobody to ask about this one, so I invented it myself [by taking the classic sj cancel combo and inserting drones into it to enhance it’s power…].
Dlk, [optional call of Sent-y], dmp [+optional call of Sent-y], [optional call of Sent-y], sj cancel lp, pause, airdash, lk, mp, mk, hk, land, and do whatever you want [they’re bouncing from the hk]
-Basically, you select the best optional call point of Sentinel drones among the ones I mentioned earlier, and do your worst.
This can get brutal really fast. You’ve done 35-45% damage before you’ve even got the chance to super their ass. The potential after the initial combo for extra damage is almost unlimited.
So I’ve been fucking around with BH a lot lately, and I’ve found some stuff for those needing some stuff to put them over the edge in a match.
BH/IM
cr. lk + IM, cr. mp xx sj. lp xx airdash back, whatever.
Just a standard super jump canceled combo. What happens is you super jump cancel the mp, and hit lp and airdash back, then IM’s assist hits fully and they fall right next to you for whatever you want to do.
BH/Mag
j. lk + mag, j. lk, mag hits, launcher.
This works when coming down from a jump. You can do the normal things after the launcher like air combo or, Inferno xx super(xx DHC). Also in the corner, cr. lk + mag, cr. lk, mag hits, launcher works on everyone.
BH/Cap
cr. lk + cap, cr. mp xx sj. lp xx airdash fwd, ad. magic series.
You can add cap to the the super jump canceled combo for more damage to it. Also I’d like to note that cr. lk + cap, cr. lk, cap hits, inferno works in the corner on bigs. Sometimes you can get a double bounce in the process(it’s more likely to happen on Juggernaut, but it can happen on the other bigs).
I think that’s all I remember for now. I’m still looking for more things and stuff so I’ll post more another time.
Okay, I did some testing on the standing hp. I’ve NEVER done this move on purpose to a player before, so I had to do some testing to get a clue to it’s hitbox, and learned some interesting things about it.
1]It can be sj canceled. [mentioned before, but deserves restating…].
-The timing is tight, I’m just going to assume that it’s just me
2]It’s properties are like the standing mp in terms of the victim’s flight angle when hit by the chest bump. Odds are this means basic combos only, BUT you may be able to flying screen someone into an assist off that air combo. Everyone should still try it out.
3]The person seems to almost need to be inside Blackheart to get hit, so I can see how they can get nailed for a real high trianglejump, a rectangle jump, or when descending from a sj.
4]If you miss, there’s a chance they’ll get clipped by the projectiles it sends out. Those send the person out in even more dangerous and exploitabe trajectories. Even worse [for the intended victim I mean…], they may get held in hitstun point-blank for a call assist, sj chain combo that flying screens them into an assist.
This is a deceptively dangerous move for the opponent to get hit by and better than i thought.
Standing hp, sj cancel, lp, lk, mp airdash lp, lk, mp.