SSBM/Marth/Matchups

Overview Combos Matchups Strategy Resources VODs Discord Cookbook

Summaries

Character Strategy pages generally have at least some basic counterplay.

Bowser

	Bowser
	(Unknown)

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Key bullet points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Captain Falcon

	Captain Falcon
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Donkey Kong

	Donkey Kong
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Dr. Mario

	Dr. Mario
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Falco

	Falco
	(Unknown)

Placeholder; this box serves as a match-up primer
Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

Lasers

Neutral in the Falco matchup is defined by lasers and as a result laser counterplay is among the first things you should work on in the matchup. Marth has very strong counterplay to lasers due to his excellent grounded movement and good hitboxes.

Take Laser Dashback

Falco's lasers feel like a movement-destroying nightmare at first, but they're actually not that bad.
Under most circumstances, being hit by a laser will incur 3 frames of hitlag and 9 frames of hitstun for a total of 12 frames of being inactionable. This sucks, but once these 12 frames end you are grounded and actionable giving you access to Marth's excellent grounded movement and hence the ability to dashback and whiff punish with grab, probably Marth's most potent combo starter in the matchup.

Take Laser fAir

Oh No! You're in the air! You can't dashback!
Thankfully Marth has a massive, pretty fast, very obnoxious fAir. When hit by a laser in the air Marth can fAir after laser lag and put out a wall in front of him. In addition to being a good way to deter approaches, fAir can also be very rewarding on hit as the fAir comes out while Marth is falling and can give him a huge frame advantage if not crouch cancelled.

Powershield

Marth's really stupid animations grant him easy powershields against high lasers. While very powerful, this option isn't a panacea as low lasers are still difficult or impossible (?) to powershield.

The Corner

Maintaining stage control in the Falco matchup is probably the most important thing to master after dealing with lasers. When cornered Marth has an extremely tough time in neutral due to having no space to abuse his grounded movement and Falco is able to kill at very low % with his dAir and strong edgeguards. In the opposite case, Marth is able to get kills at barely above 0 by winning one or two edgeguard mixups after a grab when Falco is cornered and the lack of space makes Falco struggle in neutral.

Abusing The Corner

Cornered Falco has limited options to escape or punish Marth's attempts to keep him cornered. Fadeback autocancel nAir punishes approaches and is very safe against Falco moving on side platforms and when Falco runs out of space Marth's obnoxious hitboxes become even more obnoxious. Take laser fSmash and take laser fTilt put Falco offstage for an edgeguard and grab puts them offstage and lets you execution test their DI with fThrow dTilt.

Escaping The Corner

When cornered against Falco you are mostly looking for an opportunity to dash through into centre stage and reset to neutral. Walling aerials are extremely committal and unsafe due to Falco being able to hit you offstage with a single hit and a lack of space to dashback to make aerials safe.

Buttons idk

Marth's nAir and fAir are as per usual indispensible neutral tools, but dTilt takes something of a back seat due to Falco's lack of grounded approach options and threatening grounded movement. Due to Falco's dAir being his primary approaching tool, CC isn't massively useful for reversals but it does reduce hitstun from lasers.

Advantage

Comboing

Similarly to fellow space animal Fox, Falco is brutally comboed by Marth. The spacies chaingrab is still an effective and fairly consistent tool to rack up damage, though susceptible to devastating reversals if messed up.

Edgeguards

Falco kinda sucks offstage.
His upB is short and doesn't have hitboxes on startup making it trivial to swat with weak fAir, sideB, or upB if you're feeling fancy.
His sideB is more difficult to deal with due to its range and short startup. Jab is good to cover sideB to ledge and above ledge, and double jab covers shortened sideB. Further above stage you can fAir his sideB or opt to grab or otherwise punish the 19f of landing lag incurred by sideB. Hitting Falco out of sideB is a fairly difficult reaction so prepare to be execution tested, especially in online games.

Disadvantage

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Fox

	Fox
	(Unknown)

Placeholder; this box serves as a match-up primer
Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Ganondorf

	Ganondorf
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Ice Climbers

	Ice Climbers
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Jigglypuff

	Jigglypuff
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Kirby

	Kirby
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Link

	Link
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Luigi

	Luigi
	(Unknown)

Placeholder; this box serves as a match-up primer
Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Mario

	Mario
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Marth

	Marth
	(Unknown)

Placeholder; this box serves as a match-up primer
Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

Marth being the only character in the game that can truly match his own range, makes for a mu that feels very unusual compared anything else one might face. Movement and feints become extremely important, even for a character that abuses them as much as Marth.

When playing passively simply dashdancing and throwing out jump back occasionally allows for covering common approach options with relatively hard punishes. Though the risk/reward of callouts with fSmash/s.6A or d.A aren't necessarily great, overly passive play is often punished by an observant opponent.

Feints to bait out options are generally played fairly similarly to any other mu. (should probably link to general strategy here)

If intending to approach CC and asdi down become ever more important, given grab is a go-to option and usually puts Marth within sourspot range.

Advantage

Punish

Edgeguarding

Juggling

Marth has no good hitboxes below him making the juggle state extremely oppressive in the ditto. fAir and uAir can keep someone in the air forever and leave the juggled Marth with almost no recourse.
It is generally advisable to stay mostly grounded at an angle to prevent direct counter attacks and allowing for reactively punishing most options while keeping yourself very safe, and also allowing them to use their mid-air jump. After getting rid of their resources you are more free to hit them without directly reacting to anything, which can make for allow for a better juggle ender.
To end juggles using weak fair, nair, or bair to, for example, catch 6B recovery or an attempt to reversal which then either sends the other Marth offstage, or allows for a further combo into j.5B, which sends even further offstage, or after a tipper j.6A, simply a kill off the top with j.8A if theyre at a high enough percent.

Disadvantage

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Mewtwo

	Mewtwo
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Mr. Game and Watch

	Mr. Game and Watch
	(Unknown)

Placeholder; this box serves as a match-up primer
Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Ness

	Ness
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Peach

	Peach
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Pichu

	Pichu
	(Unknown)

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Key points of a match-up go here, and elaboration goes in the sections underneath

Neutral

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Advantage

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Disadvantage

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Pikachu

	Pikachu
	(Unknown)

Pikachu has poor counterplay against ASDI down

Neutral

They say Pikachu is just worse Fox, so one would expect dashdancing to be an integral part of the mu. However, relatively stationary pokes with dTilt/t.2a can let you deny approaches very safely, given Pikachu's overall best aerial approach option is their nAir/j.5a. When spaced further out setting up empty jumps to allow for better punishes on approaches can be very fruitful.

Another perhaps unexpected part of the matchup is how nAir/j.5a is used rarely in neutral due to Pikachu being able to hit Marth from underneath with relative ease.

Neutral can feel like a war of attrition, big openings don't come often. Nevertheless safe, slow neutral exposes Pikachu's lack of anti-asdi down tools and swings a large swathe of neutral into Marth's favor.