GGACR/Sol Badguy/Strategy

General Tactics

As a rushdown character, you excel in close range. Therefore your gameplan is to get in, and stay in, where your normals reach and do their job. You can also play footsies and poke with your farther range normals. You want to be on the offense and use your lows and other normals in combination with Wild Throw to keep the opponent guessing. 5D should be used sparingly, as it ends your momentum if blocked, or have 50% tension to RC. 5K allows you anti air reliably, as well as Volcanic Viper. Since you generally don't need meter for your combos, you can feel free to use it to make unsafe plays safe, or for silly mixups. You can play Sol in a way where you punish your opponent for doing things, or you can play him in a very offensive, rushdown based way.

Tips and Tricks

Sidewinder

As mentioned, Sidewinder is the biggest part of Sol's combos and gameplan, with nearly every big combo revolving around it. Damage is affected by Clean Hits: the more you have in the combo already, the more damage each individual Sidewinder deals. Because you need to strike at a certain point of a character's hitbox in order to Clean Hit, Sol players have to practice hitting at different heights. In general, lightweights need to be hit in the head, certain heavy characters need to be hit in the gut, and most other characters need to be hit in the chest. Lightweights include May, Baiken, Jam, Bridget, and Kliff; heavyweights include Johnny and Robo-Ky.

If you have no idea whether you've landed a Clean Hit or not, when you do land a clean hit, there's a longer pause on hit, a big flash, and a notice on the side of the screen, in the same place where you get Counter Hit notices. If you've never practiced landing Sidewinders before, Axl, Eddie, and Testament are three very easy characters to Sidewinder, as they have large hitboxes. On the flip side, Dizzy, Ky, and Faust have some awkward hitboxes that can make it easy to screw up, and so may require character specific setups. If you practice against a lightweight, a heavyweight, one easy character, one hard character, and Pot specifically, you should be able to get a grasp of how to Sidewinder Loop the entire cast.

Sidewinder becomes harder to Clean Hit the more clean hits are already in the combo. The target's Clean Hit area shrinks the more Clean Hits you've landed already, to the point where it becomes nearly impossible to continue. This is why SW combos tend to only go for 2-3 reps.

Clean Hit Diagrams can be found here: Clean Hit Diagrams

Check the Combos section for more information on how to actually loop Sidewinder.

This video gives an explanation of Sidewinder and shows some useful tactics for loops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lyl-gavEn0&hd=1

Ground Viper

Ground Viper's Clean Hit allows Sol to start a Sidewinder Loop from nearly anywhere, as long as he's close enough to combo into it or can land it by going under something. In order to get a Clean Hit with Ground Viper, wiggle the joystick/dpad directions back and forth while pressing 2 buttons at the same time, and you'll usually have to stop mashing right before the uppercut in order to Clean Hit. The 7th hit will float the opponent so that the uppercut can land clean. If you're playing on a Pad, you'll have better luck if you hit diagonals (1 & 9 or 3 & 7) because the game will read it as two directions instead. Based on how many moves preceded GV in your combo, your mashing timing will have to alter slightly. Practice up and GV will become one of the most reliable tools in your arsenal. This video provides an in-depth tutorial on the attack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-N6XKcyKcA&hd=1

Reversal VV

In order to have a better shot at getting VV as a reversal, tap both S and H immediately following each other when performing your input on wakeup. Because Guilty Gear's engine will read specials by negative edging (on release of the button, not just on press), you can increase your chances of linking your wakeup into VV from 2 frames to 4.

Tick Throws

Because Sol lacks any truly reliable overheads, a lot of ways you'll open up the opponent is through scaring them into blocking and then using Wild Throw. Even normal throw in the corner is another option because you can combo out of it, and it starts faster and doesn't lose to other options (besides command throws).

Your best normals for going into Wild Throw are 5P, 2P, 2K, c.S, and all your jump in normals aside from j.D (which can still work if used sparingly). 5P and c.S are both even on block, so you can go into Wild Throw very quickly. 2K is one of your best bets, because even though it's -1, the opponent leaves their throw invulnerability out of blockstun quickly so that you can go into Wild Throw almost immediately. (In Guilty Gear, characters get a few extra frames of throw invincibility after blockstun ends, to prevent BS throw setups).

You can also do it out of blocked jump-ins because your air normals have no landing recovery, with the exception of j.D. If you have meter, you can also opt to RC things like 5H, 2H, Gun-Flame (Feint), and then dash in and WT instead. Even dashing in from far away and doing WT can work occasionally if the opponent is scared into expecting you to attack.

Frame Traps

Once they start trying to poke or jump out of your tick throw setups, you'll want to switch to frame traps to try and catch them hitting buttons.

Sol's main frame traps start with 5P/2P/2K and go into 6P. The gap between these moves is very small, so opponents who try and mash out are likely to get counter hit by 6P, which leads to very high damage regardless of where you are on screen. You'll generally want to delay your 6P at first, so that opponents can see a pause and think that it's safe to react. Over time, they'll start to see the pattern, and begin mashing faster if they expect a throw. Using this frame trap in conjunction with WT setups can make up a big part of Sol's game.

Sol can also choose to go into other moves with bigger gaps or other moves, such as doing 5P/2P/2K into 2S, 5H, VV(best if RC'd), Fafnir, or even Tyrant Rave ver.Beta if you feel like taking a big risk. Although Sol can be very free flowing, you may get into a habit of doing similar blockstrings. Mix it up, screw around, mess with the opponent's head.

Negative Edge Gun-Flame FRC

A neat trick you can pull off is to do Gun-Flame up close, then FRC and negative edge in a Wild Throw (Gun-Flame, then 623 P+K+S), which will throw the opponent before the Gun-Flame goes active. If the throw misses or they jump, the flame will cover your recovery. You can also FRC with K+S+H, which will give you Volcanic Viper instead and catch people trying to hit you or jump away, creating a very nasty mixup situation indeed.

Fuzzy Guard

Sol has a few ways of doing fuzzy guard setups, some of which are character specific, others which are universal but range in difficulty based on character height.

The first is j.H. Since this move has absolutely no recovery frames, It is actually possible to airdash after the last active frames for a fuzzy guard 50/50 on most standing characters. You have to perform j.H so that the move connects (blocked) near the end of its active time, and then buffer in the airdash following it. Done properly, you'll airdash relatively close to the ground and be able to connect with j.S (> j.H/j.D) and land into whatever you want. The shorter the character, the harder this is to do.

The second involves Bandit Revolver and Bandit Bringer. Both moves can be Roman Cancelled and airdashed afterwards, but under certain conditions. You can generally only airdash after RC'ing a blocked Bandit Revolver (2nd hit) if the opponent was standing, but many players instinctively block BR high because Sol goes airborne, and it's also easier for them to punish if blocked that way. Bandit Bringer, MUST be blocked high, but because of this you can make opponents attempt to punish the landing or Slashback the hit, and RC'ing BB will allow you to go for another overhead, or land into a low. You can also airdash after a blocked BB, if you jump installed it first.

Third, Anji, Eddie, Justice, and Potemkin all have large enough hitboxes (while blocking) that some character specific fuzzy guards works on them. For Anji and Eddie, Sol can dash in and do a late j.S/j.D, and then immediately double jump into j.D. This will connect and give you ample time to go into Sidewinder. On Pot, in the corner, you can do the same setup, but instead go into double jump j.S > j.H, then land into whatever. In +R, using FB SW, you can actually use these fuzzy guards from non-dash jumps midscreen as well.

This video demonstrates this fuzzy guard and some example combos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqxDK-OB-go&hd=1

And lastly, Force Break Sidewinder can work in very clutch situations, such as after an airdash jumping normal such as j.S or j.D. This is the least likely to work, but hey, you never know. Sidewinder is pretty safe, so it can be worth a shot.

Instant Kill

Occasionally you'll dizzy an opponent for long enough to land an IK. This applies to most characters in the game in nearly every instance, with a few exceptions. Sol is one of them. When in their dizzy animations, Sol, Ky, Chipp, Axl, Dizzy, Jam, and Order-Sol all crouch down. Napalm Death misses against crouching opponents. So if you get a dizzy on any of those seven characters, save your tension and your dignity and do something else. Anything. Please.

However, Napalm Death does have its uses in some cases. Against ABA, the only character notable for being notoriously vulnerable to IKs, you can IK her pretty easily out of her Moroha mode with Wild Throw or Bandit Revolver. When her Moroha meter empties, ABA goes into a completely vulnerable recovery animation, giving you ample time to run up and murder her. Wild Throw is the best option for this, because it gives you more than enough time to prepare, and it prevents ABA from bursting out.

Against Chipp, simply blocking either of his overdrives gives you a free IK setup. If he does Banki Messai (42 hit combo), use Faultless Defense to push him out, backdash, IK mode, and end the game. Be careful if Chipp has full tension when he does this, though. If a single hit of Banki Messai is blocked, Chipp can RC the move at any time whatsoever. If Chipp does Zansai Rouga instead, block the first five hits while grounded, then go into IK mode. The sixth hit will whiff because Sol takes a step back when he goes into his IK preparation stance. If Chipp doesn't RC or FRC any time before he does the dive, you're in the clear.