The other night I was playin’ against Locke and ran across this interesting discovery. While I don’t know if it solves the doom prophecy of the game dumbing down to “run until sudden death or victory”, should it ever come to pass or not, this sure makes it a lot less decided by pure luck.
The current SD strategies that have been built since the beginning, to recap, have been starting with a) kill your opponent before the Bob-Ombs start dropping or pray you don’t get hit first after they do, to b) kill your opponent before the Bob-Ombs start dropping and run to the nearest ledge farthest from your opponent after they do and ledgestall until your opponent dies. Upon folowing strategy b, I screwed up and did a jump instead. In a panic, I air dodged and mashed buttons a bit, which caused me to not only avoid a Bob-Omb, but catch it midair. Evidently, these suckers are catchable.
Now, because they spawn fairly close to the ground, I’ve found a couple semi-reliable-to-damn-near-safe methods of catching these. I think this may end up being a risky yet wonderful counter to the 12 minute SD sessions some of us have been having.
1 - jumping Z. Jump and hit Z. You will do a rising air dodge with catch at its startup. Borderline precognition required, but if you can react quick enough, this may be a very strong method of catching one. Slow on the reflexes? This might get you killed faster than if you just run through the field.
2 - block bouncing. Much easier to react to, but a little dangerous. When you see one spawn above your head, block. Providing it hits the shield, it’ll bounce back into the air, making for an easy air catch after. The drawbacks to this are if it misses the shield, chances are you just blew up, and of course, if your opponent has balls of steel, him as well, considering you’re a sitting duck this whole time.
3 - Lunge dashing. Probably the overall safest, but not the easiest, and only some characters can do it. Any character with a decent lunge on their dash attack (see, Shiek, Pikachu, Sonic, ROB… definitely NOT Wolf), can run until they see a spawn within the dash attack’s reach and do so, grabbing it with your dash attack. Similarly, using the lunge can get you out of the way if one spawns over you. This can be used really aggressively, putting pressure on your opponent, if the opponent is also attempting to grab Bob-Ombs. Not sure exactly how many characters can do it relateively well, though.
I put this thread up in order to see more experimentation. Keits said he would make a video as a supplement to this thread. Bring on the testing!