The Ground Game and Gaining the Upper Hand

The most basic type of strategy in any fighting game happens right at the start of the match. When the announcer tells the players to fight, their characters start in the middle of the arena facing each other. There is an equal area of space behind and between each character, and the characters start off in their standing idle animation. At this point, neither player has an advantage over the other.

In order to achieve an advantageous position, each player must play the ground game, commonly nicknamed “footsies” by Street Fighter players. This involves both players performing attacks to try and find an opening in the other’s strategy. However, there are 3 different ways to attack that all vary in timing and functionality: pokes, placed attacks, and counterpokes.

Pokes, are attacks that come into contact with the opponent (whether on hit or on block) to apply pressure. By nature, pokes prevent the opponent from using attacks of his or her own to control space for a brief period of time, and it also can condition said opponent to keep blocking to stay safe. The poking phase of your strategy is the primary way by which you gain an advantageous position, but more on that later.

Placed attacks don’t hit the opponent at all. When one player uses them, the goal is to control space in front of the opponent. Thus, the opponent has to respect that space controlled by the whiffed attack and avoid it to avoid taking damage. In other words, the opponent may have to find a different angle to attack or simply attack at a different time (maybe both).

As the name suggests, a counterpoke is a special type of poke whose purpose is to hit an already active attack (in other words, a placed attack) out of its animation. Since all attacks in fighting games are hard commitments, the person who originally did the placed attack is stuck in that animation and is quite susceptible to counterpokes. In some games, like in the Guilty Gear series, counterpokes gain special properties such as dealing extra damage or causing the opponent to stick to the wall. The process of counterpoking is also known as “whiff punishing”.

As stated in the previous article, many of the basic rules of fighting games can be described like rock-paper-scissors, and the ground game is no exception. Counterpokes beat placed attacks because they can hit the whiffed attack animation on reaction. Placed attacks beat pokes by dissuading the opponent from getting close. Pokes beat counterpokes by putting the opponent into impact freeze for long enough not to be able to punish.

Also, as a side note, a move that is useful in the ground game typically has decent startup (less than 10 frames, let’s say), covers a good amount of horizontal space in front of the character, and is safe on block. A good example of this type of attack is Ken’s low forward kick in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.

low_forward

“But wait!” you’re thinking, “What’s the point of learning the ground game just for the sake of the ground game? Last time I checked, the whole point of the game is to win, so how in the world do I attain an advantageous position?” When poking, there are 2 main ways to score an advantage: pushing the opponent to the corner and/or knocking the opponent down.

To push the opponent to the corner, your attacks must actually come into contact with the opponent. I know that sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people try apply pressure with placed attacks, only to be counterpoked into a high-damage combo. When you put the opponent into impact freeze (doesn’t matter if it’s hitstun or blockstun), they get pushed back. Once you start putting them in blockstun, then you can walk towards them and begin using pokes that have shorter range but are much quicker to more effectively maintain the pressure you have just established. This strategy is known as rushdown.

Knocking the opponent down provides a much greater advantage than easing said opponent into the corner but is also much riskier. There are 2 main tools 99.9% of all 2D fighting game characters have: sweeps and throws. A sweep is a crouching attack that likely has very long range (for some characters, it is their longest range normal) but also has very long recovery. Thus, sweeps are not safe on block, so they’re best used as counterpokes or, in some circumstances, as placed attacks (for example, if you know the opponent is going to try to dash in). I talked about throws in the previous article, but allow me to elaborate. In the context of trying to get into a more advantageous position, throws strengthen the poking pressure game by punishing passive opponents for blocking too much. For example, if I’m pressuring my opponent with fast, short-range jabs and he continues to block them, I can simply walk up and throw him to score my knockdown. This set-up is commonly referred to as a tick-throw because you “tick” your blocking opponents with your quick attack and then walk up and throw them when they expect you to attack again.

Next week, we’ll be investigating the fundamentals of rushdown.

Image Source: 3S Frame Data

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