Entering a school Brawl TourneyFollow

It's been some time since I've played you, but if you want I can hop online and try to give some pointers.

Some general tips for Marth:
1. Learn his range; Marth's greatest asset is spacing. This means using the length of his sword to attack from just outside counter attacking range. For example when using his fair (forward aerial) against someone try only hit with the tip and land just outside grab/jab range. Doing this means if they happen to shield your attack it (shield grabbing being a big counter to aerials) they can't instantly counter attack you, they have to move, giving you time to react. It prevents you from being pushed for mistakes. Also the tip of the sword does the most damage and knock back.

2. Become comfortable with the c-stick, most importantly be comfortable using it for aerials. By using c-stick to perform aerials instead of analog + A you are free to use the analog stick to control your jump a bit more. This makes it much easier to control your spacing, and you can do moves like retreating fairs with ease.

3. Keep stale moves in mind. Stales moves is a game feature where repeatedly using the same move reduces both its damage and knock back (the knock back part is new to brawl). This means if you spam fsmash to rack up damage then it isn't going to kill as well when you want it to. This doesn't mean you shouldn't spam moves like fsmash and fair, but that you should be aware of their reduced knock back. A specific example: I generally abuse fair to rack up damage, meaning it is high on my stale moves list, so when I finally get an opponent off the edge I will flip myself around and use my bair (back aerial) to edge guard them instead of swiping at them with fair, by doing this I will hit him farther back and thee is less chance he will survive.

4. Practice your edge game. Marth is quite good at edge guarding, his fair and bair both cover a wide area so he can easily interrupt recovering opponents.

5. Know how to use his b moves, they got a lot better in Brawl. Dancing blade is fast and covers good horizontal distance, the neutral combo is nice for knockback and speed, and the down combo is good for damage. Shield breaker is very effective against shields and nice to throw in there to mix it up soemtimes. Up b has been improved a lot. Up b now has better knock back and makes you invincible for the first 5 of 6 frames of the attack. One new use is that you can Up b out of your shield against an opponent (who is close enough). The move comes out too fast for them to dodge, and you have the initial invincibility. The only downside is that it is easy to punish if you miss them or they aren't knocked far away, only use on enemies with higher percent damage. Counter has about the same usefulness, sometimes I like to use it against an opponent who is hanging off the edge when he uses his edge attack. Probably shouldn't be using b moves as often as aerials, but overall they have been improved since melee.

6. Don't use his dash attack. In certain situations it is ok, but overall it's a very bad attack and easy to punish. Using a well spaced fair is a better way to approach an enemy.

Additional stuff: I am pretty sure for this tourney I will be in the top tier of players. Most people in my school laugh at the idea of playing on a Wii and the rest do it for fun. I tried speaking geeky SS speak to a couple of my friends who play the game a lot and consider themselves pretty good and they were baffled.

Most people entering the tourney are doing so to play GH3 which has a bigger following in my school

Also I use the c-stick for aerials because it is a pain in the *** not to

Me and my best friend play SSBB hardcore. Well, at least, like the most hardcore in our area, and we thought of starting.

ETA the rest of my sentence, because it most certainly was not supposed to end at "Starting"

We were thinking of starting a Brawl club, because it'd be fun.

Edited, May 8th 2008 9:50pm by Codyy

I am having trouble with the short hopping. Because I am a spaz I tend to slam on the analog stick when I want to jump and even when I don't it seems I rarely get a short hop

The tourney is the 26th so I should have enough time to get used to it, but I remember trying to use it for melee and having trouble moving my thumb from its standard position on A to X/Y

Is there a certain way I should hold the controller to make it easier?

Something that was forgotten...

Get good at dodging projectiles and such. Most people dont dodge and the either expect their attack to hit/miss/shield. So dodging a projectile in the air throws people off a bit because you can still move around while doing it.

Best practice for this is fight pit or rob and only have them use projectiles.

I'm a freak, I play with the wiimote / nunchuck set-up. I keep the pointer finger of my right hand on the nunchuck's C button, and just tap it for short hopping. I dunno, I just find it a lot easier that way than with any other method, maybe because you can "curl" your finger instead of laying it flat.

Just to note, any b move may be used to turn around.

Ground dodge and shield?

I did pretty well though I feel a bit pissed. I beat my 1st round opponent who used Olimar and the 2nd round they changed the rules to 4 man free-for-all

It was

Marth- me 3rd
Ike- 4th
Fox- 1st
Metaknight- 2nd

The winner went on to the finals and it ironically was Wolf vs Fox. Wolf won

The prize was $30 gift certificate to gamestop and a shirt 2nd place was a shirt and $15 gift certificate. It was fun though and I had a great time. I had more kills than anyone except Ike and I lost because I played waaaay too aggressively and only stopped going on the attack when Ike was eliminated because I had 1 life and the other 2 had 2 lives. I got killed by foxes ^smash that I failed to counter.

Edited, May 22nd 2008 9:22pm by Planks

It was a double tourney with SSBB 1st and GH3 second and they weren't suspecting so many people signing up for Brawl so they had to cut it down to make time.