Interesting points. I actually gave bh/cable/cc a few tries the other week and faired pretty well. It really does come down to who you’re matched up against, and they do play with very different styles.
For some reason, Sent/cyc seems to be much more popular than sent/cc around chinatownfair ny.
it really is just apples and oranges. I like both, but can’t play the same way using both teams.
Okay… Sent/Cyclops being more popular than Sent/Commando anywhere is oddball enough to me that I’m going to go out on a limb and guess here: you have almost no serious competition from anybody playing Cable, certainly not nearly in proportion to people using Magneto, right?
If you’re playing against Magneto, arguably Cyclops is better for Sentinel.
If you’re playing against Cable, or any other character running away on you, Commando is pretty much the no-arguments choice. Especially Cable.
that might be the case. I don’t think any of the seriously good players at CF use Cable, and if they do, it’s only for a short time. Almost everyone uses mag, which gets pretty boring to be honest… I guess it’s effective, though.
the funny thing is that I think the advanced players avoid using Cable because he’s not ‘showy’ and he’s repetitive. But then you see mag’s rom, into crossup, … and IM infinite… all for the 1000000000th time, and somehow that’s supposed to be exciting lol. Magneto is seriously becoming as boring as Cable nowadays.
anybody got tricks for blackheart with storm proj assist?
short forward + storm, single dash short forward?
call storm crossup dash into short roundhouse demonons dhc?
is jump fierce + storm behind you really dirty too?
storm is no sent, but there are times i think her typhoon is way better than drones.
the reason i ask is cause my sent sucks on point. i can’t fly for shit. but I can mash assist + super, and run for bar and get random hits into LA xx LS
I’m used to playing cable/bh/cyke though.
Does storm/BH have any decent traps? what about bh/storm?
gunshots + grenades + column beasts the crap out of team scrub though.
can i make bh/storm/cable work? It feels like that team is trying to do much and leaves glaring holes. Particularly in terms of bar-usage.
I found the combo I’m after. I edited my previous post to include the combo. Here it is again in case people don’t look to see if a previously written post was edited…
The Combo:
1]Df+hp, call sentinel, hold uf, hit lp on or almost immediately after, contact, and let BH drift up into them with it, shortly afterwards, airdash forwards, lk, mp, mk, hk, do whatever afterwards.
-If done properly mid-screen, you’ll both drift back into normal jump height during the air chain and FS them into the ground. There they crash into the drones making the combo work.
NOTES
-Tested on Mags, unsure of anyone else
-If their back’s to the wall or the screen won’t scroll, remove the mp from the air chain and it will work. However, they’ll get FS ONTO the drones, not into the ground.
I don’t play there so all I can do is hazard a guess. The reason they don’t use Cable there anymore is because Cable tends to gets ass raped by Magneto and Storm [2 of the most abused, overused guys in the game and]; you just can’t fight at that kind of disadvantage and win for long. To make matters worse, very good, or even just good Sentinels are beginning to beast on Cable on a highly consistent basis.
cable has advantage on sentinel. of course this is assist dependent, but it’s generally true.
and afterall, cable is still top 4 in the game for a reason. and the stupidly simple guard break is still 50/50 for much of the cast.
I really don’t think that’s why people at cf don’t use cable. it’s more a showboating issue than anything else.
Well, people don’t use Cable because most of them are too lazy to really be good with him. Watching a truly good Cable player is sort of like watching Duc play Spiral… you can see it on video, but you may not really know why they’re doing what they’re doing or why it works. Then you see somebody like Rowtron go up against a shadyk or a Soo with Cable and only Magneto for an assist against their Mag/Psylocke and make it look like no problem, when even the rest of us from the northwest figured he was dead.
But basically, lazy Cable doesn’t work any more. You have to know how to block. You have to know exactly where to put the grenades and when to throw them. You have to know when to use the fierce gun properly. You have to know when to use viper beams. You have to know when it’s time to shoot something. You have to be ready to put up a pretty dizzying array of things on the screen to make it as hard as possible to get to you, and yet know better than your opponent does where the holes in your blizzard are so that you can be prepared when your opponent tries to go through them and ambush them there when they think they’ve cleverly found an opening. You have to keep on the move so that you don’t present a stationary target but not so much that you give up your position and space control. You have to be absolutely awesome at pushblocking. And you have to know when it’s time to just pack it in and stop trying to do stuff and just run away to fight another day once you’ve cleared a bit of space. And if you do any one of these things when you should’ve done one of the others, you’re going to lose, so you have to know which is which and when to use it.
It’s not easy to do. The percentage of Cable players who suck is starting to rise to be as bad as the number of BH players who suck, and the perception of Cable is weakening with it. I’ve been of the opinion since B5 (aka Evo2k1, before it was called Evo) that Seattle in particular and the northwest in general has the Cable players around. There’s northwest Cables, and there’s everywhere else, with only very scattered and sparse exceptions. Nobody up there got the memo that Cable’s supposed to suck now or get rushed down for free, and up there he doesn’t. Everywhere else, people beat the lazy Cables and then assume it couldn’t possibly be anything that the Cable players are doing wrong, so they give up on Cable and play Magneto/Storm/Sentinel. In the northwest, they still use Row’s team as a staple. Everybody uses that team up there, except for maybe JMar.
True story: a couple years ago, the team tourney at Evo comes down to JMar/Duc/Row against Justin Wong/Demon Hyo/Sanford. The New Yorkers are coming out of the losers’ bracket; in the first set Justin mops up everybody. In the second set, JMar gets a double snap and manages to get Wong off the stage. It ultimately comes down to Sanford v Row for all the marbles, Sent/Commando against Row’s Cable. Sanford goes for the team super as Row super jumps (not a bad move), but Row pushblocks the captain sword so that he’s not on the ground when the super’s over, and shoots Sentinel to death in the face before he can block because Commando’s not off the screen yet. This is quickly decisive and becomes the tournament-winning move. Sanford is seen on camera afterwards wailing in frustration, “Why did Sentinel get shot?!” Preppy’s voice can be heard off camera, answering without hesitation with the Seattle/NW MvC2 mantra:
“Everybody gets shot!”
^ 
That makes sense. Can you take a minor detour to give some further details on how to get a good Cable? What specifically do they do that makes them so much better than the rest of the Cables in the world?
i think he did already 
So is it a better idea to use Team Watts more than Scrub as the anti Magneto/Storm killers or still use both? I use Scrub for the most part, but my Sent is crap.
My opinion, is that it depends. Personally, I’m biased in favor of using BH to get rid of Magneto and Storm instead of Cable, but Team Scrub gives Cable all the tools needed to destroy a Magneto. My problem is that I can’t use team Rowtron worth shit. That specifically is what I’m after here. Hence why I asked the question I did. If I was using Scrub, I wouldn’t care. I can do quite fine against a Mags with that. Even though my Sentinel is ass.
I personally prefer BH/Sent/Commando over Scrub most of the time to go after Magneto/Storm teams, although there are times when I wonder if I should use some variant of Scrub to go after teams like Santhrax, Storm/Sent/Cable, or MSS. MSS in particular is starting to worry me that it’s just not a good matchup for Watts. It’s not that BH can’t fend off Magneto, it’s that Storm is a terrible matchup for even a good BH, which means that it’s in your best interest to have Sentinel try to fight her, but then you wind up in a situation where Sentinel has to fight both the opposing Storm and the opposing Sentinel. It’s very hard for Sentinel to stay ahead of Storm/Sentinel in a chip fight when he has to carry the team for two-thirds of the game. I have a tendency to try to hand off the game to Sentinel and just let him stall it out, and that’s very difficult to do. I tend to use the meter a great deal in order to trap and chip down and burn the clock, which means that I often don’t have the option of triple-DHC’ing back around to BH like a Santhrax player would do so back to Storm in order to continue to protect the lead.
There are a lot of parallels between the general game plan of Santhrax starting Storm and Watts starting BH. You’ve got a good DHC from the first characters to Sentinel that’ll effectively kill an opposing Magneto. Watts has a better chipping and altitude space control game with Sentinel on point (and using Storm-Y is not a particularly good substitute, BH’s assist is still way, way better at this), while Santhrax has a better horizontal chipping and space control game. I usually figure that Sentinel himself can handle the horizontal parts and that he favors a vertical attack, particularly against Cable, but against Magneto and Storm I’m beginning to wonder if he doesn’t prefer more horizontal help. Regardless, one significant element that I don’t use much is to try to build and keep the meter for a triple DHC back to BH like a Santhrax player often will to get back to Storm, so that BH can return to point and protect the lead instead of waiting until Sentinel gets killed and then praying that Commando can somehow pull off a DHC to do it later. Against MSS, there’s a distinct possibility that I’m asking too much of Sentinel in this matchup and that I should play him a little more meter-conservative to battery back up to be able to get the rotation back around to BH for the endgame. If there’s a better character in the game at stalling out the last 10-20 ticks on the clock in the endgame than BH, I don’t know who it is… but I don’t use it that way unless it’s by happy accident. It’s ultimately a flaw point in the plan I usually have to rely on safe DHCs to swap characters that then leaves Commando in the second slot while Sentinel’s on point and he’s forced to work on his own to get BH on point if Sentinel gets killed.
Another true tournament example that I’m just now reminded of in this that’s very relevant to this question: I was playing a best-of-five match in Portland against a guy who was using some team like… I think it was Magneto/Storm/Ken or something unconventional like that, but I do remember it was Magneto in front and Ken in back. I was using Watts. The first two games both happened in pretty much the same, very very frustrating way. BH would destroy Magneto. Then Sentinel would wind up on point by a DHC rotation, and then goes and beats Storm in a grind-out. But he’d be low enough on life by the time Storm got out, that Ken would then come in with a mostly full life against a badly weakened Sentinel. Ken is actually not a really great matchup for Sentinel for some screwy reason. He’s got just enough speed, the hurricane kicks are a nuisance for him, Commando’s assist has trouble tracking him when he’s going fast enough, and although Sentinel can slow that fight down a lot if Sentinel’s got only 15-30% life left and Ken’s at a full bar, my money’s frankly on Ken. And so then once Sentinel died, Commando with just BH as an assist got rolled up, and then BH would too once Commando was dead. It was one of the more bizarre things I’ve ever run into in my tournament career, and got me more than a few jeers and accusations that I was a paper tiger from Portland guys who’d gotten way too tired of losing to me. I’m down 2-0 in a best of five, and I was feeling more than a little frustrated because I’m just slapping the guy down for the first 80% of the fight and then inexplicably getting rolled by Ken for reasons that were too bizarre for me to figure out immediately amidst the stress and rising panic of a tournament situation where I’m in a hole.
So after the second game, I’m hearing everybody cheering the guy on, I’m in a state of near-collapse mentally, and so I finally close my eyes in one of those faux-Zen moments to think. The mental conversation in my head went something like this: “All right. I’m better than this guy. I know this. Everybody here cheering for him knows this because they all want to see me lose. I am so not going to let them walk away talking about anything but a moral victory for this guy. Something’s going seriously wrong here, and I don’t know what. I can figure that out later, but for right now I need to do something different. What else have I got…? (pause while I’m going through all my other teams in my head) …Scrub? I can take the same leads with Sentinel/Commando that I’ve been doing with BH, but I’ll bet he can’t pull off that Ken comeback crud on Cable.”
(It’s moments like these where I stop now as I’m writing this and reflect that I was probably a much better tournament player up in Portland than I am now in California, when I realize that just about all of these pseudo-Zen moments where I stop between rounds, look at the bigger strategic picture or just think a little outside the box to shift gears, and then come up with something brilliant that wins me a match that looks really, really bad starting out, have all happened when I was up in Portland. I don’t know if it’s because I just had a lot more energy to put into the game in Portland or if I just haven’t been taking the game as seriously down here, or what, but it bothers me now that I think of it. :shake: )
ANYway… so I married myself to Scrub to carry out the rest of the match. And it goes exactly according to plan: for game three and game four, Sentinel rolls up the early game just as I’d been doing before, but then Cable comes on to point and just flat shuts down any hope of comebacks. It isn’t the only time that kind of thing has happened, and Scrub is probably a very good “I’m pissed off and I’m just going to regulate now” team for me, all things considered… IF my Cable is in practice. For whatever reason, when I’ve got that kind of edgy mindset and my Sentinel doesn’t have BH, I play Sentinel very very differently, much more aggressively, and there are times when I wonder whether it’s more effective that way. I don’t regret that at all – when my Sentinel is in the middle on Watts, he has to be more conservative because he’s carrying the lead most of the time, whereas starting out on Scrub (or even Santhrax), he has to be the one to carve out the lead in the first place, so it’s two totally different mindsets, completely independent of the fact that he has to do more by himself without BH around.
I’m beginning to think that Sentinel likes having horizontal help though, enough that this is one of the reasons that MSS and Team Row work very well with him on point, because he has Magneto on both teams. Since I can’t play Magneto worth a damn, I’ve started experimenting (again) with Scrub with Cable set to viper beam assist, which works much the same way in terms of space control and just has different hit and chip properties, but it can’t be ducked under (I think it’s the only other beam assist that can’t besides Mag’s) and it works for lockdown and keeping the low altitudes under control to free up Sentinel to fly around without having to worry about somebody wavedashing up under him. I think that’s as much the weakness of Scrub these days.
But Scrub has a bigger weakness, and that’s that if Sentinel gets snapped out for Commando, you’re in trouble. Magneto can then go on to kill Magneto, and then you’re stuck in a situation where he can DHC to Storm to hand off a probable lead at any time. And if I were to ever write a “How to tell if your CABLE sucks…” post, one of the first things I’d ask is, “When you fight against Storm, is your biggest worry that she’s going to rush you down? If you answer yes, your Cable sucks.” Because the biggest worry Cable has with Storm isn’t rushdown… it’s that he can’t chase her down very well when she’s ahead unless she just screws up. In fact, if you’ve got a truly good Cable against a truly good Storm, whoever is ahead to start with is usually going to win most of those fights.
This is one reason why Santhrax has come to replace Scrub: if Commando gets snapped in, he can DHC safely back out for either of the other two characters. It’s also why I usually use Watts, more or less the same story. However, I don’t think Scrub is useless, but I think that the way people play it needs to be reformulated, because I don’t think Sentinel/Cable-B/Commando is that good against the rush. I’m coming around to the idea that Sentinel wants the horizontal help enough, and few enough people ever get counter-AHVB’ed these days anyway, that Cable-A is probably the better assist for that team again. I’m still working on this one, but I like what I’ve got with it so far. I’ve experimented a lot with that before, and I’m just lately coming around to it again. Cable-A helps Sentinel hand off a good lead, and Cable is still about as good at protecting a lead as anybody.
good stuff, Stiltman.
I’d be interested on your input on Cable and his matchups since NW probably is the only place that really uses Cable anymore. I can tell you for sure that at least in NY (cf), none of the highest level players use Cable, and I think it’s because of 1) they’re not as good of Cables out here , 2) cable gives few opportunities to show off, no where near the likes of Mag, Storm, or Sentinel, and/or 3) cable is rarely rushdown, at least nothing like Mag, Storm, Sent.
I guess such a post would belong in the Cable forum… but that place is dead, so maybe you can bring it back to life .
just recently got into blackheart. can’t wait to try out all these tips and stuff that I read on here. was wondering if people could start posting up vids of blackheart players in action though. I’m gonna do that too if I find any matches with interesting stuff in them.
That is highly not the case, as a few ov those guys still play Cable. The main thesis here as far as Cable usage out here is the fact that the game has become fast-paced IMHO. These days ppl that are used to playing chars such as Doom, Cable, and BH cannot rely on the lazy half-assed tactics that worked in the past for they’ll get shut down HARD. The other part to this is that now players will have to adapt to that level ov speed and be able to read and block nearly everything that comes their way or risk being one-touch kllled.
With myself saying this, I’m not sayin that it is now impossible for those chars to win said matchups against the ones that make up MSS…what is to be said about that is that players need to step their shit up with Cable and be able to read out stuff that gets thrown at them and counter accordingly…Cable is not capable ov air dashes, trijumps, nor move cancelling via flight. He still has AHVB x3-4 but if all you’re trying to do is wait to shoot someone without the correct amount ov patience then you’ll most likely get owned…
And for the record…despite me being a east coast player, from what I’ve seen:
Cableguy’s Cable>>>>>>>>>everyone elses Cable…nuff said…take notes from his matches and you’ll see what to do and what not to do.
Better than Rodolfo’s Cable? I have to disagree.
Heh, let’s not have Cable invade the Blackheart territory now…I haven’t seen much ov Rodolfo’s Cable to say anything about it yet…and plus, I like Cableguy’s gimmicks…Besides that I meant no disrespect to Row…
No worries. =) I actually like Cableguy’s Cable a lot as well.
http://zachd.com/mvc2/matches/ECC/ECC9/team%20tourney/7a%20TT%20GF%201of3%20RowTron%20(W%20MagCableSent)%20vs%20Matrix%20(StormSentCyke).wmv
http://zachd.com/mvc2/matches/ECC/ECC9/team%20tourney/7a%20TT%20GF%202of3%20RowTron%20(W%20MagCableSent)%20vs%20X%20(SentStormCyke).wmv
http://zachd.com/mvc2/matches/ECC/ECC9/team%20tourney/7a%20TT%20GF%203of3%20RowTron%20(W%20MagCableSent)%20vs%20JWong%20(MSP).wmv
http://zachd.com/mvc2/matches/Evolution/evo2k6/evo%20vegas/team%20tourney/17b%20TT%20GF2%20JWong-DHyo-Sanford%20(2W)%20vs%20JMar-Duc-Row%20(3W).wmv
http://zachd.com/mvc2/matches/California/SVGL/Northern%20California%20Regionals%204%20-%20NCR4%20-%204-23-05/2i%20RowTron%20(2W%20MagCableSent)%20vs%20Cableguy%20(Scrub,SSCable).wmv
http://zachd.com/mvc2/matches/Evolution/evo2k6/evo%20vegas/money%20matches%20and%20casual/11c%20MM%20Vercette%20(MIMS)%20vs%20RowTron%20(2W%20MagCableSent).wmv
Check out those matches to see how awesome Rodolfo’s Cable is. :tup:
I mean no disrespect towards anybody I’m about to mention, I’m simply making a candid observation in response to the Cableguy vs Row question.
I’ve seen and played against both of those two. I’ve seen Row beat shadyk and Soo when they were playing Mag/Psylocke and Row had Cable/Mag-A. I’d honestly consider that a tall matchup for Cableguy’s Cable when he’s got Team Scrub behind him.
The thing to keep in mind when you’re watching video of Row is, 95% of the time you see him play (probably more), he is screwing around. He does it constantly. I’ve said it myself and seen it said that it’s damn near useless to test yourself by playing against him because he screws around so much that you don’t know whether you did well because you’re actually doing something right or if it’s because Row is goofing with you. It is perhaps one of the greater “what if” questions in MvC2 as to how much better both Row himself and the rest of Seattle around him would be if he didn’t do that… but then he wouldn’t be Row. It is very hard to get a picture of that guy or to see him talking to anybody without this really goofy smile on his face. He’s really smart, he’s really quick to pick up on things that other people miss (probably about as good as anybody short of Justin Wong), and even screwing around he’s better than the vast majority of Marvel players in the world. He loses to JMar because JMar is in much better practice than he is and has been for the last five years, and JMar is very good at winning known fights; Row is the better player when both of them are truly in practice, is much more experienced at fighting top competition, and thinks much better outside the box. (e.g. if my name is Duc Do or I have a Spiral that’s on that kind of level, I would much rather play against JMar than against Row) When he actually buckles down and tries hard, Row is really freaking scary to play against.
Cableguy is not as smart as Row, he’s not as mentally tough as Row, and he’s not nearly as experienced as Row.
I’ve seen both of these guys play, I’ve played them both in tournaments, and I’m not being a Row homer when I say that he’s forgotten more than Cableguy knows. There are very, very few Cable players outside of the northwest that really scare me at all when I play their Cable, and I’m just not at that point at this moment with Cableguy’s. I can think of at least half a dozen players from Seattle and Portland whose Cables scare me more than Cableguy’s – there are honestly guys you’ve never heard of up there whose Cables would scare me to play against more than his. e.g. when they’re all in practice, I’m absolutely, without question more afraid of any one of Row, Kuan, Rattana, Trinh Nguyen, Jackson Chen, Cody, SamB, or Theo Crooks playing Cable than I am of Cableguy.