Don't Try To Throw A Sumo: Honda Remix Thread #2

I don’t get it. Why would you do a far sweep if it wouldn’t connect? Unlike shotos, Guile really doesn’t move his hitbox forward much while doing a sonic boom, so 99% of the time, if you could trip him, you’ll either land it or get blocked, neither of which lead to a reaction flashkick.

I am absolutely not afraid of a Guile / Deejay who just holds downback. It’s a losing proposition for them, especially for Deejay. It lets me corner them for free, and advance to buttslam range while charged, where I can either cleanly reaction buttslam their fireball for massive damage, or if they don’t fireball it lets me HHS them all day. I’m much more afraid of the type that uses their high-priority jumps a lot to snuff my advances and actively push me back to fullscreen (damn you, Guile jump fierce and Deejay jump jab!).


Here’s the thing about jab headbutt. If you never use it, then you’re basically giving your opponent a license to safely throw fullscreen fireballs all day. If you always use it, then you’re just asking to get kicked in the face every time, as your opponent just waits and punishes every time. But when you mix it up, that’s when it becomes really strong.

  • Honda ground advance beats Opponent wait-and-punish, but loses to Opponent projectiles
  • Honda jab headbutt beats Opponent projectiles, but loses to Opponent wait-and-punish

If you’re so afraid of wait-and-punish that you’re banning jab headbutt through fireballs from your play, you’re essentially playing Rock-Paper against your opponent’s Rock-Paper-Scissors. In actual play, you can often feel which defense your opponent will use. Not only that, but your payoff for guessing right is usually better than your opponent’s. You risk eating a fireball’s chip damage (if you walk forward incorrectly) or a single sweep (if you jab headbutt incorrectly), for a chance at getting close to your opponent, which is the holy graal of Honda vs fireballers and can often win the round by itself. It’s even better if you’re close to your opponent, as then your headbutt will actually connect, rather than whiff and get punished.


Here’s food for thought on the use of jab headbutt vs various opponents:

  • Ryu. Jab headbutt is a pretty damn good round opener, since it beats both opening fireballs and DPs (jab headbutt is slow enough to connect after an opening DP’s danger window, but fast enough that Ryu can’t reliably reaction DP it). It also lets you gain meter and position right off the bat if Ryu opens with a backjump. It’s also situationally useful in early-predicting fullscreen fireballs, though mostly the threat is stronger than the execution here. You can also use it as a poke that beats fireballs at midrange. It suddenly sucks when Ryu gets super.

  • Ken. Similar to Ryu, except it loses to Ken DP at round start, and his super does not shut you down. Also, your super is so much better here anyway that fullscreen jab headbutt is not that attractive. Still sometimes useful when Ken is just spamming these jab fireballs every single time.

  • Chun. It’s really, really useful when you predict a fullscreen slow fireball, gives you plenty of time to recover and push Chun back against the wall. From fullscreen, a jab headbutt goes far enough that you can immediately threaten a buttslam to hit her, which is the main use, as she’s forced to walk backwards or risk eating sumo butt.

  • Guile. Mostly only use from fullscreen in prediction to a boom. Pretty bad as a poke-that-beats-fireballs because flash kick is actually easy to do in reaction to a jab headbutt. Probably the least useful matchup for it.

  • Deejay. Invaluable!! Same as with Chun, it instantly lets you get at buttslam-threat range from fullscreen. If you are in buttslam-threat range, you’ve basically already won. His slide sucks against you (ochio and jump short -> ochio totally destroy it) so he’s kind of forced to retreat. As with Guile though, it kind of sucks at midrange as a poke-that-beats-fireballs. His upkicks can react too well to that, and it tends to lose to his low strong too. Just use it at fullscreen to get in and you’ll do fine. Preemptive comment: “But he’s walking forward and kicking me every time after throwing a maxout!” If he’s doing that then he won’t have a charge to either fireball or upkicks you, so you can just walk forward normally to get in on him. It also means that you’re just not headbutting early enough. It’s okay to block a fast maxout to get more time for the next one.

  • Sagat. Pretty worthless from fullscreen, he recovers fast enough to just throw another fireball, even if you correctly predict one. Just forwardjump instead from fullscreen. It’s kind of good from 3/4 screen though as it beats both high and low tiger shots. Too bad it mostly sucks against tougher Sagats who mostly don’t use tigershots and instead just jump roundhouse all day and dizzy-punish your headbutts, jab or otherwise.

  • Dhalsim. Somewhat useful at fullscreen as an early prediction, though you might get pushed out with limbs immediately afterwards. Really good at midrange though, since it cleanly beats limbs, fireballs and flames, which are his main tools here. At worst you might eat a downback jab or a drill. As good as it is though, in practice you mostly just buttslam anyway, since that also beats limbs, fireballs, and drills (but loses to upflame I guess).

I must have worded it wrong, I was writing that while also working, sorry. I meant they can flashkick the HK sweep as it’s coming out. I usually try to do it from max range and they have plenty of time and the reach with HK Flashkick to hit me out of it as soon as they see it start to come out. It only happens against really good Guiles, but more than one has done it and it’s happened a few times.

I’ve been using jab headbutt a little more lately, I still rely more on bulldogging, floating fierces and well timed jump-ins, though. I’ll look for ways to mix it in more.

If I’m at the range where I think a Guile or DeeJay is going to follow a projectile with a jump attack I do an early jumping jab or early jumping strong. If the DeeJay player is using jumping forward jabs, those tend to hit high if your walking forward, that gets you a good throw opportunity. Everytime they do it they run risk of getting grabbed and throw looped or Ochio’d. The risk/reward there is usually in your favor.

Deejays that do a lot of jump back jab, those need to be HP Headbutted. It’s not that hard from anywhere from 3/4 screen in to time a HP headbutt to hit them as they land (I do that all the time to jump back DJ’s, Blankas and Cammys that do nuetral jumping shorts, etc.). Even if you do it too soon all you do is eat one jabs worth of damage and your right in SS range.

Speaking earlier about ST vs. HDR match-ups, none of Honda’s anti-fireball buffs really help vs. Guile. He recovers too fast for the improved Super to ever be usefull (other than AA), jab headbutt isn’t that great anywhere but full screen, only jumping short is sometimes usefull.

Crossposted from a discussion on sirlin.net:


About Honda vs Fei Long: This matchup is pretty interesting because knowledge of the finer points of the matchup can swing it pretty wildly around. I’ve played a few really good Fei Long players in the past two years, like Aqua Snake and JigglyNorris, learned a trick or two from facing them, and today I believe that armed with the better knowledge, the matchup really is Honda’s advantage, 6-4, maybe even 6.5-3.5. Here’s Honda’s perspective on the matchup:

One great move from Honda here is, unexpectedly, the neutral jump fierce. Well-timed, it can slap chicken wings out of the air, dodge rekkas clean (and punish with an ochio on landing), often beat Fei’s air normals if Honda jumps first, is generally hard to punish, and Fei’s punish options aren’t superb (jump jab does really little damage, walk-up flame kick is pretty hard to pull off fast enough).

In particular, right after an ochio, if you neutral jump, Fei’s reversal flame kick will whiff you every time (big punish time!) and if he doesn’t reversal flame kick, you can land on him with the jump fierce and follow up as you like. Pretty useful since you can’t do much other pressure after an ochio.

The other Honda secret to the matchup is the roundhouse button. The regular low roundhouse will stuff rekkas clean (example: at the beginning of the round) and the far sweep is the one thing you can do to reliably beat Fei’s stand fierce. So if you need to shake things up, you walk forward and threaten far sweep / towards jump / vertical jump fierce / HHS, and Fei has to do different things to counter each one. Without the far sweep and low roundhouse, though, you’re playing rock-paper-scissors without scissors and Fei can just mash stand fierce with impunity all day.

When Fei is rushing you down (with stand fierces, low fierces, overheads, rekkas, chicken wings, jumps), your #1 tool is holding down-back and spamming negative edge ochio attempts while focusing on reacting to the chicken wing. I talked about how to do that most effectively last year: you release 1~3 buttons to attempt ochio, depending on your confidence that Fei will get in throw range, and reset your options by pressing the punches again whenever you block a hit.

This is mainly vulnerable to Fei’s overhead, but the important thing to remember is that the overhead doesn’t do that much damage, so it’s okay to eat an overhead every now and then and avoid walking into his flame kick trap. Your instinct will be to press a button right after eating the overhead, but that’s exactly what he wants - just keep your cool and wait to punish the inevitable special that Fei will eventually try to do: headbutt / buttslam the chicken wing (put most of your reaction focus into this), punish rekkas on block if you can (it’s hard to make them safe at Fei’s rushdown distance), and MP HHS every blocked flame kick for a really nice knockdown.

Every time you get a knockdown, go for the usual meaty crossup roundhouse tick throw, which will be really hard to flame kick. What will happen if the Fei knows the deal is that he will reversal chicken wing towards you, but that’s perfectly fine for you: at that distance, you can just block it all, then punish with ochio every time. This means that anti-air knockdowns (punishing jumps, whiffed or blocked flame kicks, punishing chicken wings with jab headbutt) are worth big damage: the initial punish plus the practically guaranteed damage from the meaty crossup setup. If Fei just blocks the hit, just do the usual combo into low jab -> negative edge ochio to be 100% safe from flame kicks.

Once you’ve got this iron defense well established, and Fei starts second-guessing himself, you can get a little bolder. One trick is to watch the timing between Fei’s stand fierces: if he’s getting predictable with them, it’s very possible to sneak in a fierce headbutt between them, for meter gain / chip damage / interrupting him in the startup of anything. If he’s too focused on rushdown or on stand fierces, you can also often sneak in a diagonal jump fierce and put Fei in a guessing game: he must flame kick if you follow up with HHS and avoid flame kick if you don’t. Not following up is your stronger option here, as it’s unpunishable and can lead to big damage if Fei whiffs a flame kick.

Honda’s super sucks at anything other than anti-air punishes here, and HHS is actually not very good (because of Fei’s stand fierce and because he can block your jump fierce then flame kick the HHS).

So…what’s the fucking defense once Honda gets you down exactly? I got a buddy who goes to ol’ reliable fatass anytime he gets mad and the rape ensues. Doesn’t matter who I take, I usually lose. Ryu seems my best option. I’ll zone him as best I can, but he’ll jump in safely sometimes just inching further and further for the threat of death hugs.

He doesn’t even use HHS or ochio. His whole game revolves around fierce headbutt spam, jumping in FK. Once I’m down or in the corner, he’ll crossup with the buttsplash or jumping LK (think it’s LK, never really played Honda) splash into a regular throw. This is what bothers me. There is no time for a wakeup. Block it, and he immediately throws. Rinse repeat. When I do a crossup on him, he can throw me before I can even land a c. lp or mk.

And heaven forbid I even try throwing the fatass. He always wins the throw. Can’t explain it.

Any advice is appreciated. I’m not a huge HDR guy. I’m 3S and mvc…so I’m pretty much scrub play for now until I better learn the mechanics of HDR.

Jump back roundhouse will beat headbutts all day, and you have to land crossups SUPER deep in order to combo, it isn;t like newer game

Anytime you block or get hit by a jumpin, just mash out dps, if you know he goes for throw every time. you can;t jump, so dp is probably your only option

Just curious…is it news that Fei loses to Honda convincingly? The flame kick is an enormous liability in this match. Honda can put Fei in many Catch 22 situations and can readily pressure at will on knockdown. From midrange, Honda can threaten to headbutt and “spamming” HP is not the deus ex machina that some Hondas make it out to be.

If Ryu vs Fei is 6-4 then the Honda match has to be at least 6.5-3.5. It makes me sad. I think it all stems from fat boy’s jealousy of Fei’s stellar abs.