Identifying Key Cards

If you have been following along with the guide, you should now have a good understanding of what both fighters want to do in the matchup you are analyzing, both in general and in the context of that specific matchup. In fact, you should have updated the general game plans that you identified in the first phase into matchup-specific game plans that highlight what you want to doBut you also need to understand how the fighter achieves those goals. If you have been carefully studying the fighter when you were identifying their game plan, you have probably already noticed that they have a wide range of tools that they can use to help them win the game. (Some fighters have a wider range than others.) Not all of these tools are relevant towards securing their game plan in that particular matchup. Hikaru has a lot of defensive power, but this is less relevant in his matchup with Marmelee, where he should be focusing on acquiring more hit confirm instead. We must thus break down this goal into specific cards that allow Hikaru to achieve his goal of "getting more hit confirm".When I write this, it appears as though I'm going backwards. First, I asked you to take a bunch of disparate cards and tie them together to see how they cooperate to allow you to generate advantages. Out of those advantages, I asked you to focus on the ones that were most effective against your opponent. But now I'm reversing the process by asking you to take the advantages that would tilt the game most in your favor and break them down again into the individual cards that allow you to accumulate that advantage.However, there is a difference. Before, you had basically the whole of a character's kit. Now, the cards that you are identifying are focused and narrow-minded in what they intend to do, and what they intend to do will be (if you have done your job from last section right) singularly devastating towards the opponent. What you will therefore obtain is a guarantee that whenever you use these cards, you will make your opponent cry. I call these "key cards".I believe that the essence of proper matchup handling is abuse. You should abuse the few cards that have maximum effectiveness against your opponent, and you should do itagain. This is a risky strategy in face-to-face play, because you will lose a lot of friends and will no longer be invited to future board game nights. Now that you are on the internet, you have nothing holding you back from making your opponent cry as much as you can.If you are effective at doing this, your opponent has no choice but to hard read you, because the Styles you are using repeatedly are so strong against them that they can't beat you with conventional attacks. If they slip up even a little bit, or if you manage to throw in a tiny mixup into your rotation, they can often fall very far behind as you punish their read attempt, and then use the attack they were trying to counter last beat while the counter is in discards.You should obviously still play to the situation. If Brand is the key card for Shekhtur against Cesar because it breaks his Stun Guard, while Grasp is comparatively weak because it doesn't do much against him, you should still play Grasp if it wins you the beat or the game. What I am trying to say is that when you start out trying to decide what attack pair to play, your first thought should be how to bully Cesar by using Brand, or to evaluate if Cesar is going to try to counter it (for example by using Fueled to trigger Stun Immunity). Only when you have calculated that Brand isn't effective should you move on to other options. Often, you can simply press the abusive card button and allow it to win the beat for you for free. (If you have played a lot of Marmelee, you will understand this very well.)One of the main mistakes I see newbies making is in playing cards that are weaker or not as suited to the matchup simply because they want to "mix things up". While occasionally adding in variance to your attacks to keep your opponents on your toes is fine, there is no shame in repeating the same unbeatable attack until your opponent drops dead. To do this, you have to understand what attacks are the most effective.You should not just play your key cards, but alsothem. Even when you're not actually using Brand as Shekhtur, you should be trying to set it up so that Brand can punish your opponent for carelessly throwing away their Stun Immunity. Setting up undodgeable Brands, or putting yourself in a position such that your opponent has to fear its threat 24/7, is a big part of effective Shekhtur piloting in matchups against Heavies. Similarly, you want to play away from cards that are relatively weak in the matchup, trying to avoid positions where you have no choice but to use them. If you can pair these cards with Dodge, or otherwise force a null beat with them, that's even better. Having weak cards in your discard piles means that your strong cards are in your hand to actually kill your opponent with. I will frequently play two null beats in a row with weaker styles, then set up for a beat in which all my good cards can be brought to bear against my opponent. It's very difficult for them to avoid a bad outcome in such a situation. The converse applies for your opponent's key cards - you should be trying to nullify their impact as much as possible and punish your opponent for playing them in order to discourage them from doing so.Cards that further your matchup-specific game plan are one half of your fighter's key cards. The other half are the cards that line up well against your opponent's threats. In most fair matchups, your opponent will have a number of powerful threats that they can deploy against you which should counter a lot of the "standard" pairs that you would like to play. This is especially true for control characters which have a lot of restrictive effects. Eternal, Implosion, Barrier, Bulwark and Brand are all example of such threats which require very specialized answers to deal with, since your usual good pairs will fold to the disruption that they are putting out. Very likely they will be key cards that the opponent holds against you. You should treasure the answers that you have to them very highly. Not only are you able to counter your opponent with those answers, but you can also deter them from playing their most powerful effects by holding them in hand. This locks them out of playing their most potent moves even if they technically could. That deterrance goes both ways as well - if they carelessly slam it down every time they can, you can counter it, and then in the future they will be frightened of playing it and getting countered again. (Being blown out by your opponent's answers is one thing you need to watch out for when you are eager to rotate your best cards like I suggested.)Once you have identified your fighter's key cards - both their most effective ones and their answers to their opponent's key cards - you can start evaluating which fighter has the advantage.