If you jump on the banana as SOON as you see him start to eat then he won’t have time to walk up and grab/cmd grab so there’s no mixup. All he can do is press a button so just block and now you’re in his face. You could even VR and be in his face AND at advantage.
Other than that, I actually would recommend jumping at him. What does he get off an AA? cr.MP, which does little damage and now you’re in a situation where you both have to guess. If he presses buttons you have to respect and block, but if he goes for grab to beat that, you can guess EX SPD. If he jumps to beat that, then you can AA cr.HP or air SPD. The risk reward for jumping at Birdie is heavily in your favor because not only do you get waaay more damage off of successful hit, but you discourage him from pressing his slow, long range buttons, which allows you walk him to the corner where he dies to cr.LP and st.HP.
I really don’t think this matchup is bad for Gief. And no this isn’t based on fighting random online Birdie; I actually have a really good one in my scene.
Thanks man. The info is much appreciated. Don’t sell yourself short either, I’ve played a multitude of the ranked matches you have played and I’m in Silver. You’re clearly a great player. Good English as well!
Based on all the information and results we have so far I think we can safely say it’s a bad match-up for Gief. I think that’s pretty clear. How bad exactly? I say very bad but others might think it’s ‘only’ kinda bad.
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Now that we’ve talked a bit about Birdie I’d like to present you with my next unwinnable match-up: Nash.
Blocking and walking him in the corner has about a 5% success rate so far. Completely infeasible. Then there is the usual advice about him having no wake-up. Whenever I get a knockdown you had best bet I try to meaty him but very little has come of that. Interrupting his moonsault is also next to impossible. Both LP and crHP often completely miss and the moonsault is generally way too fast/sudden to be able to react to it with a slow move like crHP anyway. Not only that, when the blue scythe part comes out your anti-air usually straight up loses or at best trades with the moonsault. Lariat seems to be the only recourse but even that is often too slow.
The best thing I can usually hope for is blocking and having enough V-metre to reversal.
So does anyone have any solid strategies against Nash? Because what I’ve tried so far sure doesn’t work. I can’t even beat Super Bronze Nashes online.
From what I’m hearing/reading/watching, I think people are largely playing the matchup wrong. The game is young so that’s not really farfetched. IJS, when I play the matchup, it never feels unfair and I regularly beat Birdies, even good ones.
But don’t take my word for it; apply the advice I’ve given and see if it helps.
If you jump on Birdie and he hits cr.mp, then that’s free momentum in his favor. You have just given him a free mixup on you which you have to guess in order to avoid. Going for the EX SPD is extremely risky because Birdie has a free st.HK on you after the cr.mp, which is a very nice crush counter for them and you’ve just lost a bar. Although don’t deliberately stop yourself from jumping at Birdie completely, since there are certain ranges where cr.mp isn’t the best and it’s pretty important to test someone to see how their anti-airs are.
I just don’t suggest putting yourself constantly in a free mixup, I personally prefer trying a very patient ground game until I get a knockdown on Birdie, since he’s not the best on wakeup, and then forcing him to make guesses.
Your advice is to jump at him. Birdie has the best anti-air button the entire game. I get where you are coming from with the risk/reward but he can literally build an anti-air wall in this game. And that’s not even including the (EX) anti-air grab.
If you play against good Birdies a lot, you must have some more advice than that.
I watch Itazan matches and Snake Eyez matches and holy hell they do NOT have a good time vs Birdies. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that Snake was put into losers at Final Round by one.
The point is that he has to guess too, and it’s not free because if Birdie guesses wrong he, at best, loses momentum and at worst, gets hit for big damage and gets put in a mixup himself.
SCENARIO: Gief jumps and Birdie AA’s with cr.MP
OPTION 1:
- Birdie does that "free" st.HK
- Gief blocks and VR and now you're +2 in his face.
OPTION 2:
- Birdie now knows about VR and goes for throw
- Gief does EX SPD, Birdie eats 240 dmg and now has to guess
And that’s assuming he even successfully AA’s. Also, if Gief has CA, it’s even more fucked. Playing super patient is usually going to get you killed; his buttons are better and he gets more off of them. At equal skill, it’s very unlikely that you’ll beat Birdie by outfootsie’ing him; you’re going to beat him by getting in and mixing him up. If you play a patient ground game, how do you knock him down such that you get follow-up pressure? st.HP and st.HK? Like Iso said, those are easy bait for st.MP xx Bull head. Dash up EX SPD? That’s even riskier than jumping.
And you’re not just jumping solely to land the hit. You’re also jumping to discourage him from pressing the buttons with long recovery and make him focus his attention on AA. I’m not saying hold up-forward like an idiot (though Marn somehow beat a Japanese player by literally doing that with Mika), but it’s something you should do with some consistency because any Birdie player will tell you that the one thing they fear is that random jump in on a medium/heavy button that nullifies all the work they just did.
It doesn’t matter how good cr.MP is; it does little damage and there’s no guaranteed follow-up. And if Birdie is constantly AA’ing you that means he’s not focusing as much on his ground game, which is one of the reasons why I suggest jumping more often. Because it’s his amazing ground normals that kill Gief, not cr.MP. I’m just giving my thoughts on the main things I feel Giefs are struggling with. Aside from ignoring the banana and being more conservative with rushdown, I pretty much agree with all of Iso Arska’s advice. That’s an awesome write up.
Also, Snake Eyez played a long set with the Birdie that I train with at FR. They pretty much traded and Snake ended up winning the set by a small margin; both agreed that the matchup was close to even.
I realized that I know how to fight typical hit and run Nash but don’t know how to fight pure fireball/AA Nash. I can barely touch Nash if he doesn’t want to be touched. Block is not effective if he keep firing fireball. You can barely move forward if you just walk/headbutt/flex and Nash can kick you back randomly between fireballs, it’s too fast to react. If you jump, AA is waiting.
Hit and run Nash comes to you frequently so Gief has a lot more chances to hit him.
@chief713
Can you PLEASE do me a favor and post this in the MU thread?
I have been saying that this is a 5-5 and a number of ill informed people in that thread are calling this a 7-3 in favor of Birdie. (Laughable)
Personally, I have trouble dealing with Gief for the exact reasons you stated. As a Birdie player, it feels like I can do everything right and STILL lose the round.
Head butt and flex all projectiles moving forward until you get in and make them nervous; they want you to jump. Flex and spd backhands and ranged kicks. st jab counter into mix up all moon kicks even EX. Cr HP the inevitable teleport. CA plant finish to demoralize them haha.
cr LP to keep fast characters like ken from rushing in to throw. When they jump attack into throw its hard to read but I often like to v reversal any jump ins I don’t anti-air with crHP, lariat or stLP. Wake up is always rock paper scissors but sometimes you can catch them with CA is they failed to notice you have super.
Hey im not a zangief player but i wanna give a special thanks and shoutout to chief173 and iso arska and a few others who are trying to help out with zangief matchups. No matter how bad a matchup may be or seem at first if you guys stick together and take advice then mentally you can always be prepared for any matchup. That goes a long way to building player skill level
On prediction, defensive poke crouch LP, should do it. Safe on whiff, Guards the front area, if Ken’s body or limbs enters that area, he gets hit. Should also do well (speed, range) against his slower attacks, cr.MP or cr.MK. Add in crouch block while your hitting air, just in case.
No offence intended but how good is this Birdie player exactly? Does he place well in tournaments? I ask because it seems to me that a professional player and pretty much the best Zangief in the world right now beating this unknown(?) Birdie player by a small margin does not exactly say very positive things about the match-up.
I still can’t help but look at Birdie and see a character far superior to Zangief nearly all areas. Footies, anti-airs, EX moves, wake-up, armoured moves, range, the list goes on.
To me this is exactly why this match-up is so terrible. Nash is basically the best projectile zoner in SFV and he can just rip Gief apart piece by piece. As I mentioned a few posts ago I have found no answer to Nash at all. It might be slightly easier offline than online because of Nash’s weakness on wake-up but even accepting that I think Nash just destroys Gief if he plays it smart.
not really a matchup things a straight up massacre i see snakeeyez doing a lot of v skill…is there another playstyle that’ll work without that much of a gamble
All good, it’s a fair question. The player is UA Jan and he got top 32 (or maybe 34th?) at FR. He’s also one of the top Marvel players, was the best Potemkin in the U.S. and was one of the few people that beat Justin back in Vanilla SF4 (with Gief). So he’s definitely not a scrub even if he isn’t exactly one of the best in SFV atm.
And like I said before, you don’t have to take my word for it, just try it in Casual/Battle Lounge and see if your results aren’t better. It won’t kill anyone to try a new strategy, especially if what you’re doing now has you feeling like the match is 4-6 or worse.