Electricity bait game. Make him come to you and when he does, and you get to knock him down, chase him with cannonballs that land and electricity spam while rolling across screen. Once he figures that out, its usually too late unless he backs off and controls the pace again. Otherwise, jumping crossups to make him lose his charge once he’s down works too. I love playing against most balrogs. :china:
You should mostly be crossing him up on wakeup, if at all. EX Up Ball is fairly useless in this match since Boxer can punish it on hit (And you shouldn’t be using it when you’re cornered anyway. If you want to get out, use EX Rainbow ball but be smart about it since it’s still punishable). Don’t neglect Blanka’s FA and electricity as pressure tools and counter to dash punches, but once again don’t abuse them either. s.MP, s.LP and c.LP are also good for stuffing dash punches and Boxer’s c.LP, but don’t spam them mindlessly and be careful that you don’t get headbutted into ultra or hit with an EX dash punch. A Boxer player that knows the matchup well won’t be stupidly abusing them anyway, but you should know how to best deal with them regardless.
Unfortunately, the most you’ll get off a blocked lk low smash (The armor breaking dash punch) is s.LP unless you have ultra, since you can’t combo hp elec off of it due to the pushback. EX low smash is completely safe, so don’t try to punish it. Low dash punches can similarly only be punished with s.LP, and EX low dash punch is safe on block as well. Any of the overheads should be punishable by s.HK (This feels inconsistent for me, though. Dunno if it’s a matter of spacing or timing.) or ultra if you have it on block, but you should try and throw them on reaction if you can (Especially the EX one).
Sorry i never meant V ball in corners, i meant rainbow rolls!! lolol doing a V ball in the corner is suicidal!
Cheers but this guy is probably the best in the UK, he knows the match up pretty well.
I’m just waiting for Mullah to play him to see what he can come up with
This may sound obvious, but your best option really is to not get cornered by Boxer, since once he gets you there and has a life lead he usually can just sit down on his ass and counter any attempt to escape. If you are forced in there, your best bet besides trying to rainbow ball out is to look for an opening and push him out with safe normals or an FA (Preferably a lvl2 FA into s.LP xx elec. It helps regardless of whether it’s blocked or not), if possible.
Your next option would be to learn Balrog and mirror match him!
Or st. MP works well too to just keep him away and push him away. :smokin:
Was having a LOT of trouble with Balrog but reading what Mullah wrote in the matchup thread, st.mp is my best friend in this match. It stops the Rog turtling and makes him move. Still have to be careful though.
Hi Blanka users this won’t take a minute.
I have a few survey questions for Sakura Forums Research.
WE are keen to know the opinions of the vs Sakura match up across the character forums.
[list=1]
[]What’s the best approach to beating a average/good Sakura player?
[]How do you beat a defensive Sakura and how do you beat an offensive one?
[/list]
Bait 'n wait 'n trickery. 
- EX up ball sakura crossups.
- EX rainbow roll out of corner. When sak has you in the corner, its hard to get out of her shenanigans
did you post this in EVERY character forum? FOR SHAME!
some vs viper notes:
-use close mk to bait seismo, now you have a reason to learn how to do standing mk into standing jab
-close mk also beats flame kick if you are at the right distance
so now you have a way to fight against viper baiting your grabs with burning kicks. instead of the occasional tick grab or lp ball whiff grab, use mk.
also, a way to get around that annoying repeated seismo bs (since it beats ball) is hop electricity or hop ultra
you can also 50/50 her with an ultra off a grab in the corner if you step back a bit.
viper overall is hard for blanka given that all viper really has to do rush the shit out of him in the first round and not let him build any bar. oh that’s right, don’t bother doing electricity full screen away, or at least don’t do it to obviously, you will get seismo’d
one of the people I play most is flashmetroid and his viper is fucking nasty. thankfully though I’m beginning to learn the matchup and although viper has a clear advantage if you play it smart it’s winable. one of the more important things is conserving bar. DONT UP BALL EVERYTHING. Block, be patient, and learn how to tech throws and see where flame kicks hit. Thanks marvel for teaching me to see stupid shit like that :lol:
anyway, save meter. lp xx electricity blockstrings are your friend here. don’t always ex up ball her jumping hk attempts. A lot of times the ex whiffs and you’re put in an iffy situation and more than likely you’re gonna end up blocking a couple of seismos. if you get put here be patient. if you try to blanka ball as soon you land you’ll eat the seismo the other person was doing at that same point in your landing. if you block it and try to ball afterwards, you’ll get with the next one. ex forward ball also gets hit. your only options here are block, backdash, forward hop, and ex rainbowball. being at that far range isn’t so good against viper due to seismo rush.
ok too stoned to keep doing this…
in the viper matchup, coward crouch goes under flamekick and it will wiff. if viper goes into crossup shenanigans, coward crouch and cancel into hp electricity. it will beat it every time.
Thank you Blanka players for the Sakura match up help. I’m sorry, yes I did post it in every character forum. EVery little helps and many of us Sakura don’t know how to handle match ups so I thought if we know how you handle us we can create a counter strategy of some sort.
doing coward couch is too risky, you don’t want to eat lk, mp, ultra
VS Abel…
I’m completely dead in the water with this one local abel player. I can’t get around anything he does. His c.FP stuffs ever jump in. On hit his ultra punishes and balls or electricity. All I have is footsies, and with his rekka and wheel kicks I get stuff consistently.
So, wtf?
First and foremost it sounds like you’re trying to get in this Abel’s face which is most of the time a terrible choice. You’re gonna wanna stay right outside his grab range and set up a footsie game from there. MP and down MK are you friends here. Also poke with jab into electricity ->walk up repeat to build a little bar here and there.
Second, if you’re gonna jump and getting consistently anti aired, you’re gonna need to obviously, stop jumping. Really though, you don’t really need to jump at him, he has to get near you to do damage. Take this opportunity jump back and build some bar if he has no ultra. You can also use a blockstring to set him up for early jumping HK, crouching MK -> ultra. Point here is that if you wanna jump, don’t do it blindly. Pin him down and space yourself well for a crossup MK. Crossup is imo the best option if you want to jump.
Third, footsies isn’t throwing out random shit, if you’re getting stuffed by wheelkicks and rekkas stop fucking mashing.
Abel is a pretty good matchup for Blanka. You can just turtle the guy and ball punish any attempts to move in. Use jab ball a lot, you can use it as an approach and it has the side effect of punishing him if he moves in. Jab ball > elec, cr.fierce, throw, crossup, jump-in (depending on range). It really increases your options, if he is on the offense you’ll shut him down and force him to turtle, at which point an Abel would be fairly useless.
Since Abel has no fireball you can ball to your hearts content as long as you watch spacing and make sure it doesn’t get blocked because he can punish with ultra. Also, obviously throw out a lot of electricity to scare him out of moving in, all he can do is sweep, and if he goes for that all the time just piano electricity and bait him.
He can punish electricity to easily and I have been ultra’d of a HIT ball…so you basically can’t use that.
How exactly is he punishing your elec? Applied properly it can shut down close range characters.
I am saying use ball to out maneuver him so he’s not in your face the whole match, not to rely on it for damage. If you decide that ball and elec are useless against Abel you just knocked out a big part of your toolset.