GGST/Axl Low/Strategy

This section is still being written. It may be wildly inaccurate or missing significant data.

Please feel free to make edits, but include edit summaries and sources where applicable.

Overall Strategy

Gameplan

At mid-range, challenge the opponent's ground approach with 5P, 2P and 2H, and punish aerial approaches with 6K and 2S. j.5P and j.S can be used to challenge the opponent's aerial movement as well.

End combos with Snail to force the opponent to long-range, and threaten with Rensen, Rensen(8), Rensen(S) and Winter Mantis.

On Rensen(8) hit, the opponent is knocked down at point blank range for a close-range mix-up opportunity.

Neutral

Many of Axl's moves are high-commitment - a wrong guess can put you in an unsafe situation. Pay attention to whether your opponent tends to keep to the ground or take to the air, and cover ground approaches with 5P, 2P, and 2H, and air approaches with 6K and 2S.

j.S is a versatile attack that can be used as a keep-away tool while jumping back, or to keep the opponent locked down while jumping or air dashing forward for more pressure.

6H can be an aggressive ground tool to try to win a counterhit combo, but is more of a risk.

Snail, which can be used on the ground or in the air, has incredible range, but be careful of the long recovery.

Close Range

5K, 2K, and c.S should be your go-to close range starters. Axl is not a mix-up machine so the basic high-low and throw mix-ups apply here - 5K, 2K, or c.S into 5D or 2D, a tick throw such as 2K > Throw, or cancelling into command throw (i.e. c.S > f.S > Winter Mantis). A gatling into 6H can surprise the opponent with an overhead and grants a combo on counterhit, but it can be interrupted and is minus on normal hit and block. Ending with Rainwater can return you to a mid-range spacing, and also has the opportunity to catch the opponent in a counterhit (i.e. CH Rainwater > 5P > Rensen).

Axl has several frame traps such as 5K > 6P, 2P > 6K, 2K > 6K, and 2K > (delay) 2D which can lead to counterhit combos such as CH 2D > 5P > Rensen (8) > 5H (OTG).

With meter, c.S > jc > 66BRC can lead to some trickier strings such as c.S > jc > 66BRC > j.D > 2K, or c.S 66BRC > crossup j.D (requiring the 66BRC to be performed slightly later to allow air dashing over the opponent). On hit, c.S > jc > 66BRC > Axl Bomber > c.S > TKB is great corner carry that can lead to wall combo if close enough.

Okizeme/Setups

Rensen (8) and Axl Bomber are the two primary methods of creating an okizeme situation.

Rensen (8) knocks the opponent down at point blank range where you can start close range pressure. j.H can be used as a safejump starter, although it requires manual timing. Rensen (8) > c.S > IAD > j.H is a consistent safejump setup that works only against some character's invincible reversals. It is safe against May, Axl, Faust, Ramlethal, I-No's invincible supers, as well as Ky's meterless reversal. It does not work against invincible supers from Ky, Millia, Nagoriyuki, Giovanna, or Anji, or from meterless reversals from Sol, Chipp, or Leo.

Axl Bomber also causes a knockdown which allows enough time to move in for a setup, which is a reason to use TK Bomber as an ender rather than Snail if you want the okizeme opportunity. For example, c.S > TKB, or with meter, c.S > f.S > 2H > Snail > 66RC > c.S > TKB.

6H or IAD j.H are decent overhead meaties to use on opponent wakeup. On meaty hit, 6H becomes plus and can combo into c.S or 5K for example.

Defense

Use Yellow Roman Cancel (YRC) to stop opponent pressure. Use Faultless Defense to gain space.

The most important thing to do when cornered is to be patient and block. Make use of Faultless Defense to push the opponent back to find an opening to counterpoke with 5P, to jump and counter with j.H or j.S, or to jump and air dash out. Faultless Defense after jumping if you anticipate being challenged in the air and try again. Challenge the opponent's IAD attacks with 6P. Don't be predictable with how you try to escape corner pressure - you may block several strings before finding an opportunity to escape.

Use of Tension

Note: This section is currently based on one Axl's conjecture - please contribute to the topic.

As mentioned in the previous sections, your Tension is best used for Yellow Roman Cancel (YRC) and even Sickle Storm (236236H), as your way of getting out of pressure. Yellow Roman Cancel (YRC) provides more of a positional advantage, while Sickle Storm (236236H) is best used on reaction to punish whiffs in neutral and on wake-up to punish reckless meaty attacks and okizeme setups. At a low level, it might be possible to mash Sickle Storm (236236H) on wake-up without seeing the opponent attempt a meaty, but this is strongly inadvisable, since they could react to the super freeze and block the initial hit instead, which leads to a punish with a full combo. There is a reason why the eternal Axl adage is "Whiff the first hit and hope they don't know about the second.". However, you shouldn't rely on this, as any self-respecting player will adapt after getting hit once.

There is something to be said about Blue Roman Cancel (RRC), Purple Roman Cancel (PRC) and Red Roman Cancel (RRC). Their uses are very situational and most of the time not worth the metre. The reason why they are this way, is mostly due to the nature of Axl's entire kit and his character archetype. Most of Axl's moves are intended to push the enemy character away, which seldom goes along with the new changes to Roman Cancels introduced with Strive. The slowdown and, for example, the follow-up knock-back effect from a Red Roman Cancel require you to be in close proximity to the opponent. In previous games from the Guilty Gear Series, such as AC+R and Xrd Rev2, the slowdown effect was quite long-lasting and also effected the entire screen, regardless of your proximity to the opponent, which meant that moves such as Rensen ([4]6S) could be Roman Cancelled meaningfully even at full range into entire ground-to-air combos. In Strive, however, Rensen ([4]6S) can't be cancelled into anything meaningful without a follow-up like Winter Cherry ([4]6S-S) or Soaring Chain Strike ([4]6S-8). Realistically, the only combo opportunity from Winter Cherry ([4]6S-S) is what the community affectionately calls The Double Cherry Sundae (as seen here). As you can probably see, any Rensen ([4]6S) combo, which costs you 50% of your Tension metre only nets you ~95 damage on average, which is almost half of what you would get from a generic starter c.S or 2K combo. The issue is twofold: Use of Roman Cancel as an offensive tool is very limited by range, and the damage proration (net combo damage reduction) from the act of Roman Cancelling only serves to make the use of metre completely and utterly pointless outside of very niche situations where you need just a little bit more damage to close off the round. At max-range, a useful "guard-breaking combo" is a Purple Roman Cancel (PRC) quickly after Rensen ([4]6S), which turns it into a projectile, with useful properties in neutral. The ability to cancel a Roman Cancel with a special move, allows for us to input a Winter Mantis (41236H), which will command grab anyone who blocks the projectile flying towards them, and with proper timing can even grab some attempts to Instant Air Dash (IAD) over the projectile. This is similar to using Xrd's Yellow Roman Cancel to do much the same, but with the added benefit of a command grab that comes from the back, rather than the front.

On the other hand, let us consider Roman Cancel as a mid-range option with a move such as Snail (214H). A sample combo would be: 5K > 2D > 214H > RRC > 5P > [4]6S-8 > c.S or c.S > f.S > 5H > 214H > RRC > 5P > [4]6S-8 > c.S. Both of these combos only work if one performs a so called Drift Roman Cancel (DRC) (more general info here), in this case a Drift Red Roman Cancel (DRRC) - in this case a 66RC, i.e a dash, towards the opponent, followed immediately by a Roman Cancel. Using a regular Red Roman Cancel (RRC) would result in the combo dropping, as the opponent would not be effected by any of the beneficial elements of a Red Roman Cancel (RRC). The reason why this may be an issue is that doing that after Snail (214H), which finishes in a 4 input, requires a somewhat unintuitive double tap forward (i.e a 466 motion). This may be somewhat alleviated by the use of the Dash macro in tandem with with the Roman Cancel macro, which you can now configure as their own separate buttons, as otherwise you would be forced to press the dash button as well as three other unique buttons to perform the motion. Let me remind you that you also need to begin charging for Rensen ([4]6S) immediately after in order to make the cancel worthwhile, effectively turning the input into 466[4]6. Needless to say, making effective use of metre while also pushing the offensive also requires somewhat good execution and dexterity. Some shorter permutations on the combo starters are possible in order to make use of the benefits of a regular Red Roman Cancel (RRC), but result in a net loss of damage, as you are effectively mission out on hits not effected by the Roman Cancel's damage proration, as they are prior to the cancel itself.

There is a route from mid-range which relies on a 66RRC after a successful Snail combo ender, after which a short dash is performed followed by 5P > 6H, which results in a wall bounce. With proper spacing the opponent can be hit with 5K > 6K > Snail, after which they will be stuck to the wall and you have a free choice of moves to wall-break with. The full string can be as follows: 5K > 6K > 214H > 66RRC > 66 > 5P > 6H > 5K > 6K > 214H > 5P (WB) [Video]

At close range, the common option is doing a Drift Roman Cancel (DRC) from a j.H, which necessitates a unsafe and fairly deep j.H confirm into a 22RRC, resulting in a downwards drift, which allows for any combo starter. The benefit here is that if the hit is blocked, the cancel will most likely result in a Purple Roman Cancel (PRC), which can allow you to get out of the messy situation you've gotten yourself into and try to reset into neutral. On hit, it can result in some of the most highly damaging Axl combos, such as the beginnings of a TK Bomber loop or a simple 5P > [4]6S ender.

Suffice to say, all of this should generally paint the picture that there are two, if not three, viable situations in which an aspiring Axl can, with great difficulty, utilise a Roman Cancel to some amount of success. Most other characters, except for perhaps Faust and Nagoryuki, seem to be spared from such considerations.

Frametraps

This section is still being written. It may be wildly inaccurate or missing significant data.

Please feel free to make edits, but include edit summaries and sources where applicable.

Blockstrings

This section is still being written. It may be wildly inaccurate or missing significant data.

Please feel free to make edits, but include edit summaries and sources where applicable.

Mixups

This section is still being written. It may be wildly inaccurate or missing significant data.

Please feel free to make edits, but include edit summaries and sources where applicable.

Move-specific Interactions

Rensen + Winter Mantis

There are several variations of this pairing, but the basic form is: [4]6S-8, 5H OTG > 63214H What this does is result in a difficult to react to close-range command grab, which becomes active as soon as the opponent wakes up. On hit, the close range Winter Mantis performs an automatic TK Bomber, which allows for a plethora of combo routes as a follow-up. It is also noteworthy that it works on every character with a micro-dash before the 5H OTG. [Video]

Another less common but still viable option is to use a Purple Roman Cancel at fullscreen to cancel the startup of Rensen, turning it into a projectile. With fast enough execution this can be done early, letting you cancel the RC before the projectile hits the opponent and perform a Winter Mantis (63214H), resulting in a grab if the opponent blocks the Rensen projectile.

Both of these options whiff if the opponent manages to see the grab and jump pre-emptively.

Matchups

Sol Badguy

Ky Kiske

If you can bait out his DP with a safejump setup, can punish with a 2D just as he's landing for a counterhit combo.

Potemkin

Throw Hammerfall. If he breaks, he loses armor and you can punish. 2P > 6K can be thrown in-between. Watch for 2P into Mega Fist.

Chipp Zanuff

Senshuu is not only unsafe for Chipp on block, but can be interrupted during the startup with 5K (https://twitter.com/nuttacon/status/1363179992977453063). Similarly, Genrouzan can be interrupted with 5K or air throw.

Nagoriyuki

Instant FD the second hit of his f.S > S string to push him out of range of throw mixup.
Use Winter Mantis (41236H) to punish the Blood Rage transformation - it leaves them bleeding out on the ground for a massive chunk of their health and forces them to be mindful of their blood gauge at a distance.