The Strike/Throw Mixup: creating pressure on block
As The Clash once said, “Should I strike or should I throw now…”
Blocking is one of the strongest tools in the fighting game genre. If your turtling is immaculate, you can wait your turn forever and take barely any damage, sometimes even disregarding chip. Therefore, learning how and when to use throws is extremely important when developing your offense. Throws develop an informal rock-paper-scissors relationship with regular attacks and blocks: if normals and most specials lose to block, block loses to throws. (Whether throws beat attacks or not will be case-by-case, but you can usually exploit things like throw-whiff or throw invulnerability.) The strategy of making your opponent guess between whether to block your attack or avoid your grab is aptly named ‘strike/throw,’ and is the crux of many games’ and characters’ offense.
Before picking up Under Night and Guilty Gear, I was a strong Pokkén Tournament player in my region. In Pokkén, while moves have overhead, mid, and low properties (and sometimes quirky combinations of each,) blocking is a button-press tool that guards against every option. It even has cross-up protection, meaning that if you manage to switch sides against your opponent, usually from the air, then the block would automatically switch and guard against their mixup. This, combined with the existing Attack Triangle mechanic (a hyper-emphasized version of the previously described RPS) means that the only mixup in the game is strike/throw. (There are other edge-case mixups, usually involving attacks with overhead or low-profile properties interacting, but despite it being crucial to Pokkén offense, it isn’t inherently unique to that game. Blazblue, for instance, gives its moves head, body, and foot invulnerability in a similar way.) This was balanced by chip damage being high and blocking being Guard Breakable, meaning that defenders would eventually need to escape blockstrings, thus opening themselves up to the mixup during their reversal or abare mash.
In most other fighting games, high/low mixups on block are possible and common, and the attack-block-throw RPS tends to be balanced in other ways. Games like Street Fighter and Under Night will give throws a two-button input with a throw whiff animation, meaning you can be punished for guessing ‘wrong’ on your opponent’s decision out of block or for misspacing your throw attempt. On the other hand, games like Marvel vs. Capcom and older Guilty Gears have one-button, proximity-based throws, meaning they activate on frame 1, won’t whiff at all, and will only throw your opponent if they’re in the correct range of your 4/6H. Of course, this also means that if you end up pressing your big H command normal on accident, you might whiff that or be extremely unsafe on block and get counter hit anyway. The main strength of frame 1 proximity throws in Guilty Gear is that, if your opponent misspaces their meaty after knocking you down, you can throw them on reversal. In Strive, throws are now frame 2, performed on 4/6D, and no longer a proximity action. This means that while they are still the fastest moves in the game, they can whiff and can no longer be option-selected by simultaneously pressing a command normal with a faster startup than your 6H.
The reason why strike/throw is so important, as previously explained, is because ideally it forces your opponent to stop blocking all the time. In a reductive sense, strike/throw is the only mixup in every game, not just Pokkén- either you’re hitting your opponent in pressure or you’re not. Once you’ve put the fear of a quick, unblockable option into your opponent’s mental stack, they’re forced to change their options while playing defense, and potentially play riskier. If your opponent stops blocking on defense, you then get the opportunity to open them up or punish with your own offense, thus converting into bigger damage than you could off the throw. Or… they could just keep blocking and you could keep throwing them. Even if their defensive option manages to beat you, you’ve at least moved on to the next layer of gameplay between you and them, and you’ve still gotten them to stop holding down back.
Learning how to run strike/throw mix will take some time, but it’s useful when figuring out how to layer your offensive pressure. Since standing or grounded overheads in most games are usually reactable, and jump-ins are prone to being anti-aired, it’s often safer to make your opponent block a quick and safe mid or low on the ground and then throw them while they continue to defend. The defender keeps blocking in the first place because they’re expecting you to keep pressing buttons- either you like to continue your bread-and-butter or your blockstring with little variance or they’re making a read and expecting you to go high this time. A good tick-throw setup usually relies on using a move that is plus enough on block where you can continue approaching your opponent, but not plus enough that you will whiff your throw on them. (Remember that blockstun usually gives your opponent throw protection for the duration.) You can also achieve this by making your opponent hold a setplay option, like a projectile, and then throwing them before the projectile hits them or connects with their block. In Pokkén, Scizor has a variation of this where he can dash cancel his meaty 4X into a grab. If he doesn’t cancel 4X, it’s extremely plus on block and knocks down again on hit. If he does, but the opponent is still afraid of the disjointed meaty, they wake up and get thrown.
Strike/throw is usually only one facet of a character’s offense and block pressure, but if they struggle to open up their opponent in other ways, it can often be their main mixup strategy. For instance, in XXAC+R, Jam’s grounded overheads consist of 214K Gekirin and its carded version, FRC Choujin into an air button, and 5D. She can also jump cancel her Slash buttons and 2D. Unfortunately, due to her 5D being 26 frames, her better overhead options either being unsafe or requiring meter to confirm or make safe, and no other overhead tools out of her Bakushuu command dash, her high-low mix is very limited in most situations. She instead relies on cross-ups using Choujin and Bakushuu-Mawarikomi, both of which she can special cancel into after a blockstring to get a throw after the side switch. She can also set up tick throws after her fast standing low 5K frame traps. In Xrd Rev2, tools like YRC j.2K, kara cancelling Bakushuu-Hamonkyaku into Gekirin, and generally better pressure into 5D give her much better high-low, but she can still employ strike/throw with Mawarikomi and 5K like before.
Grapplers are characters who take strike/throw to the logical extreme. While they do often have some high-low mix, it runs secondary to the main threat of their various command grabs. That being said, their command grabs are not themselves guaranteed and will often have big whiff animations or be extremely telegraphed, meaning grapplers will open themselves up to be punished whenever going for big damage. On top of that, they’re often slow big bodies and have limited mobility, making actually getting in to enforce their big damage plays difficult. In exchange, they tend to have big health bars or tools like super armor that let them tank hits. As a result, grapplers like Potemkin have to play differently than other characters that operate in the same range.
Potemkin must find openings in his opponent’s pokes or committal offense to move forward with Hammer Fall, using armor to soak any attempts at stopping him. Once he’s in, he can alternate between sweeps and Mega Fist to make his opponent fearful of high/low mix, and then when they’re blocking for too long, they’ll eat a Potemkin Buster. Likewise, if they try to jump out of the pressure, they’ll still get thrown by Heat Knuckle or Heavenly Potemkin Buster. Even at further ranges, Potemkin can make his opponents block their own projectile pokes with FDB or fear a fullscreen knockdown with Slide Head, both of which cover his approach and let him run offense. More infamously, Strive gives him Garuda Impact, an incredibly powerful meaty option that basically gives him a guaranteed Potemkin Buster on hit or block.
Sometimes we refer to characters as ‘pseudograpplers’ if they also have a command grab that makes their mixups threatening, but otherwise don’t follow the other properties of the archetype, such as not having poor mobility or a large hurtbox. Sol has historically been considered a psuedograppler due to his ability to make his opponents fear overhead options like Bandit Bringer and strong okizeme tools like FRC/YRC/now PRC Gunflame, only to run up and Wild Throw them while they’re continuing to block. In GGST, I-No’s Megalomania is a command throw with instant startup after the superflash, giving her another level of pressure beyond her instant overheads and Stroke the Big Tree. Because these psuedograpplers have other mixup options and pressure tools like projectiles or fast movement, their strike/throw is only one small part of their highly flavorful offense. There’s also characters in other games, like Laura, R. Mika, and Shermie who may rely on throws or ‘hitgrabs’ (attacks that can be blocked but have command throw properties, and can thus be comboed into) but don’t solely rely on strike/throw mixups and can move around the screen easily.
Due to the caveats involved with using throws, such as blockstun throw protection and being punished for whiffing, adding that layer to your pressure can be tricky. Even grapplers have to deal with higher-than-average execution on their command grabs, with the need to buffer into 360s or learning 632146 super inputs for their big damage. It’s still worth learning how to do no matter what character you play. If you play a character with poor high/low or left/right mix, you might find yourself relying on strike/throw whenever your opponent refuses to be opened up or frame-trapped. If your character doesn’t necessarily struggle with offense, but you have problems with opponents that down-back the whole match anyway, learning how to force them not to do that will help create those openings. Creating situations and setups for throwing your opponent can be safer and less telegraphed than standing overheads or big air buttons, and if you lack those good tools then it can often be your only option anyway. If fighting games are about making sure the other guy doesn’t get to play as much as possible, then limiting their options on defense and forcing them to take risks or make mistakes is the first step to achieving that.
