Overview
Boss Ice is a heavily crippled character, there's not exactly much you can really do with him in terms of winning matches. He has to really work around a lot of his unique disadvantages but also really try and cash in on his unique advantages. He's a really weird character since he is intended to act like a video game boss and not a fighting game character. Similar to other low tiers of the game he has to really outsmart the opponent and take a fair amount of risks that can net him big rewards.
Basic Gameplan
Bice's main gameplan is to play neutral until he can whiff punish or poke with a stand on move that can confirm into a huge damage combo. Bice's unique advantage that he has is his basic combos doing insane damage, however the unique disadvantage is his stand on is incredibly hard to use since you have to find the right moment where the opponent is not crouching to land your blow. Plus, his pokes can be punished by any crouching move, even if he chooses to approach with s.66A. You have to be really unpredictable on both offense and defense by using his insane dashes, and maybe even using his specials at random points to confuse the opponent. Patience is the key here. You have to just wait until you or the opponent creates an opening you can capitalize upon.
Offense
Bice has very strong offense due to the nature of his dashes and normals. Stand Off is where you will be using moves like 66C and 66A/B to pressure. It's a surprisingly effective high/low mixup that can be applied from almost half screen due to his dash. He doesn't have any real "blockstrings." He just hits you with certain moves until the defense crumbles. Stand On can apply good pressure with his looping s.5A s.5A s.6B, but again that's only useful if the opponent is not crouching.
Neutral
WIP
Mix-Ups & Okizeme
Bice has some oddly useful mixups thanks to having a low and two highs he can use, and this can be applied to his okizeme game. His mixups can be compared to someone like Khan, who just has to rely on his jump move and his crouch move to create mixups, and this also applies to his oki as well. He kind of just has to mix up whatever he will do next from any subtle movements like empty hops, deadbody crossovers, etc.
Anti-Airing & Tech-Chasing
Anti Airing and Tech Chasing are Bice's greatest feature. His hitboxes are huge on a majority of his moves, so anti airing is easy. If someone is teching, this is a good time to go s.ON and try a pressure move like s.6C to lock down on them. If Bice can land multiple s.5C/6C's he gets big rewards, and because the hitbox is so large it's hard to consistently tech out of it.
Crouchers Using s.ON
Bice's main weakness is that s.ON is near useless against opponents who are crouching, but there are exceptions. Here is a chart showing what s.ON will whiff against and what it will hit against:
Crouchers s.ON Can Damage
- Jotaro (s.ON only)
- Kakyoins (s.ON only)
- Polnareff (s.ON only)
- Avdol (s.ON only)
- DIO (s.ON only)
- Midler (s.ON only)
Despite having an active stand that makes their hitbox significantly larger, Iggy, Devo and Vice avoid Bice s.ON while they are crouching in s.ON.
Characters s.ON Whiffs Against Standing
This is a chart showing what characters can completely avoid s.ON without crouching at all. As you can guess, these are the matchups that are hell for Bice.
- Alessi
- Khan
- Iggy (s.OFF Only)
