Zangief Strategy/Match-up Thread

Definitely the jumping headbutt. After a few hits, they get scared (the smart ones anyways) to jump so much. Then they start doing stupid twitchy things like random SRKs or Tatsus which are easily punished.

Sagat…stand just outside his hk range and crouch punch him in the leg.mp. lp and hp.he’ll stop,and do some other bs on ya

Can I get advice on my Zangief vs. Blanka ?

I have a hard time beating this guy, he’s in my head. I have to give him credit though he’s probably one of the best blanka’s out there.

Match 1
[media=youtube]9SsQGw7yfmQ[/media]

Match 2
[media=youtube]qQDCPtAWgAY[/media]

For a starter, don’t cross up blanka. Up ball and electricity beat that for free on wakeup. The whole point of this match, is to get a lead and sit on it and turtle hard once you have it. Most of the damage you will get will be from reaction to slides, jumpins, and horizontal balls.

To force a move from a Blanka player, most of what you do will start at the beginning of the match, and from there, whether you were successful or not dictates the direction of the rest of the round… What I do, is go to my end of the screen and build meter with kick lariat (at the very end, assuming he isn’t moving forward to slide). Assuming he might want to slide, I stop occasionally, sometimes focus attack forward to absorb the slide and spd. In your video, you’re whiffing a lot of lariats directly in front of him. Blanka, unfortunately, has that upball which beats spd on wakeup and lariat on wakeup, so, uh, wakeup lariating him doesn’t work. If I feel a horizontal ball is coming, occasionally I jump back and do mk (I call this retarded kick) because it beats horizontal ball. If the Blanka player does any ball outside of horizontal ball, you can FA it, so keep that in mind if you want to dash spd or 720 afterwords. Really, do your best to get a lead, and look for the attempts on throwing you (this is usually follow by a hop or a whiff) and punish with a lariat and the whiffed any ball to cr. roundhouse or throw, etc.

Important knowledge: if you see a Blanka with an ultra meter, and you HAVE enough LIFE to live after the chip damage, pretend you’re going to do something on wakeup. I throw out a couple of jabs to see if he’s silly enough to try a wakeup ultra. Block it, once he’s on the ground and rolling into your block, let go of block, and spam light greenhand. By the time his ultra recoil back up, your light greenhand will whiff as his ball rises, and you can ultra when he lands. Yes, I’m serious. No, there isn’t really any timing to this.

You know, how about I add you on PSN? I play Zangief, Balrog, Bison, and Vega. I can give you some more tips over it. Also, I occasionally have good players come over to my place for sessions (although, unfortunately, our best Blanka player had to leave for a job in another town). I hope this helped. Just play a little more conservative against Blanka.

That’s some great stuff Coopa.

All he says is true. I’ve been just sitting back and waiting for blanka to make a mistake and getting damage in and sitting on it. I find that to be most successful. I think I need to work the focus dash forward SPD a little more into my game for countering the slides. I’ve been just doing random neutral jumps whenever I see him coming in. Some times, he’ll slide and I’ll land next to him and I can SPD. It seems like Blanka has a big advantage when it comes to footies though. He seems to out poke me every time.

Thanks SRKCoopa, and yes, add me to your psn.

Renegade, any thoughts ?

Do you need jab hand to come out as a reversal to make this work?

I’ve been going into ultra from C.Forward, but you make this sound so much more appealling and easier to land.

On this note I’ve been wondering about whether blanka has any/much recovery after landing from a blocked ultra?

Also I’m not going to go into specifics but from my experience with the blanka matchup a lot of it seems like guessing and correctly anticipating what he’s going to do. When either side makes the right decision then it tends to beat the other guy cleanly (although aerials seem to trade quite a bit with lariat, but you’re gief so trading isn’t too bad)

Lariats beat ball but loses to sweep and rainbow roll.

Edit: either lariat seems to work on horizontal roll, but punch has better anti-air and kick is harder to punish with slide.

Focus beats rainbow and absorbs sweep.

You can block and punish sweep.

I can’t say much on his poking game though because I don’t see many blanka players use it that much when I meet them online.

The big thing is to just not do anything hugely daring on blanka as he is waking up, because it seems to be very much in his favour so I tend to walk-up and block but ready with a lariat if he decides to hop in for something.

One trick that works from time to time is to walk up to him on wakeup and make him nervous to try to goat a electricity. Then lp SPD. It’s worked for me many a times and they stop doing electricity on wake up which gives me options to poke with cr.lk tick into SPD or combo into EX GH on hit confirm.

I’m pretty that’s no. And especially if you spam jab greenhand, it shouldn’t even be an issue. Don’t be pretty about it. Even pro Zangiefs go scrub mode every once in awhile because, wth, it doesn’t hurt to catch a miss timed block string and throw.

Also, that’s pretty gutsy. I like that. I just ex greenhand when I see an electricity spammer on wakeup. That usually shut them up, but if jab spd works, too, I will try it out.

I will add you now.

Thanks for the advice on Blanka, I think I’ll do better now. The advice on getting a lead and turtling will help me the most.

Now on to Sagat, this Vid is the best I could do against one of the best players in montreal, and I think I was lucky because I landed some psychic green hands.

Make sure you click on HQ (High Quality) to get a better resolution for this one.
[media=youtube]H0WHOq421fM[/media]

Thanks !

if you block blanka’s head sliding, you can piledriver him.
also, if you jump, and blanka does head sliding, if you just do nothing but block in the air, you can always block it.
so head slide doesn’t really work as anti air unless we do air attack.

You have really good execution from what I can see. So I would say you have all the physical tools you need to be successful. I saw some stuff that I do a lot, which is that you throw out a lot of random green hands that really should be saved for punishers. I notices this especially on the blanka show.

I would say be a little more patient against blanka and about once or twice a match you have a chance to do as someone else said and do an empty jump into SPD or Ultra. I would use this freebie for an ultra personally. If you do go in to try and bait eletricity just be ready to kick lariat out of trouble or do my personal favorite, back jump while shooting out mk for awhile. you also might have the chance to land a couple low roundhouses into knockdowns baiting electricity.

edit: I just watched that sagat video and saw you walk up and get some SPD’s on his wake up in his face! That is some filthy stuff! I probably enjoyed that far too much! It was like I was doing it! HAHA! anyways… Does anyone else flex with Zangief after a win?

GGs to Temujin. I wish we could play offline one day or something though because Zangiefs mirrors aren’t really the way to get better. Also, our Boxer vs Zangief matchups were okay. Boxer needs his combos to make that matchup even, so sorry I couldn’t impress you with my Boxer. Just take note of what I said, and you will get better.

I find it amusing I often do horrible against other Giefs.
I guess I start thinking of what they can do to me, since I can do it to them. And all my plans are foiled my lariat spams. I have a hell of a time trying to counter them.
And then I eat cross up splashes, yet mine will lose to lariats. Ive been ex handing just to get away.

Gief vs Gief is a stupid stupid match.

Basically, you have 3 moves.

Jump+Up+ HP (headbutt)
-beats lariat, beats jump ins,

F+HK
Moves gief forward, punishes lariat, and stuffs gief jumping early

S.MP
beats everything. Seriously. Everything gief has on the ground, this wins.

On Wakeup, Gief can’t do anything vs another Gief but dash back and jump. Meaty SPD beats Lariat, Green Hand, Ultra, SPD (EX), Super. Much the same as Abel.

Far Jump HP is ok.

DO NOT CROSS UP, Lariat trade is never in your favor, and it will trade every time.

DO NOT EX GREEN HAND, Even FADC back, gets Jab SPD’d. Use meter for Traded lariats, and even super attempts.

Neatral jump FP (not headbutt) is also boss, and beats lariat as well.

This match is about pokes, and who gets the random SPD/Ultra. Gief has all the tools to deal with himself really well.

Next up I’m going to analyze the shotos.

Couple of things I didn’t like…You should really think about not jumping in Sagat’s face so much, especially on his wake up.

I’m surprised that Sagat didn’t punish you more than he did for that.

Also, wake up SPD’s against Sagat? You’re asking to get nailed.

Everything else seemed pretty decent though…

Both of you aren’t really playing the matchup right, to be honest.

You are jumping in too much.

You are doing way too much random EX green hand, and never FADC back to avoid the punish.

You are not using c. MK to go under high tigers and KKK lariat to go through lows. You should only jump the lows with J. HP (it’s laggier) , then follow with immediate S.HK if it hits. Even then, you shouldn’t be jumping that much. Uppercut/F+HK/-> ultra hurts too much.

You need to cross up fierce splash more, since that beats uppercut clean. Crossup Splash into combo (KKK lariat or EX hand combo) rinse repeat is good against sagat.

I’m going to post the winner’s finals between Eric Kim and I in a couple days. It’s a 3 of 5 match I lose 2-3, but it’s a great example of how the match should be played.

He isn’t anti airing you nearly enough, and not punishing your mistakes with combos into ultra.

I’ll make sure to post that up soon.

On sagat i have been doing crouching jab buffered into exgreenhand at the distance where ex greenhand will hit him cleanly if he fireballs. If sagat player sticks out a RH or F+RH then the jab will connect followed by quick ex greenhand that will combo to knockdown. If sagat does not poke, then you will whiff a jab and no greenhand will come out.

This has really stopped the sagat player I play against from mindlessly using standing roundhouse as his go-to button for giving gief a hard time. Before I discovered about doing this I used to try standing just outside of roundhouse range and hitting medium punch on sagat’s whiff, which was a much more clumsy solution and is less safe and beat by alot more of sagat’s stuff.

Do it by starting at DF crouch, then jab, then swing stick to D then back to DF and hit two punches. Will be quick enough that no greenhand comes out on whiff and it will make sagat have to think about consequences of bearrape when roundhousing.

Good thing is if you are quick then you can react to fireballs in this position too by omitting jab and just doing the greenhand shortcut.

Thanks for the feedback. The advice that you guys gave me on Blanka really helped and I beat him for the first time in a long time yesterday 7-5. I did what SRKCoopa said just sit back and pick my spots and it worked.

Against Sagat I’ll practice moving through fireballs without jumping as much, I guess training mode is a good place for that. And I didn’t know crossup splash was safe I’ll start doing that too.

Are you saying crossup knees are not needed then vs. Sagat ?
Also, when you say to use jump HP to jump over fireballs and it’s laggier you mean you stay in the air longer ?

Looking forward to your vid Renegade.