Cable-A:

The basic game plan for Cable is to never give ground and slowly chip away with viper beams and Spiral assists. This will force most characters to get close to Cable. This is where Cyclops comes in to protect Cable and to give him AHVB opportunities. Call Cyclops out when needed and if the assist hits, you have a few hits to respond and AHVB. If Cyclops is blocked, you can follow up with viper beams or grenades so that Cyclops can recover safely. Since the opponent will be chipped to death if far away or risk getting hit by Cyclops if up close, most characters will have to figure out a way to either use delayed moves or assists to attack from either 2 or more quadrants of the screen or two or more sectors of the screen. The sectors are well known: far air, near air and ground. This concept of a quadrant is a little more complex. Imagine if you will, a giant X drawn through Cable. Cable can only protect the frontal quadrant, where he's facing. Cyclops will only go towards as well. It would be VERY unwise to try and fight Cable head on usually, but you can if you manage to get something behind him. Example: Strider/Doom v. Cable/Cyclops. Strider drops Doom and teleports behind Cable. Doom and his rocks are still swirling around and Strider is now facing Cable. If Cable wants to use the AHVB, he'll have to jump backwards and try to keep Doom in front of him, or else the super will be aborted and Strider will have succeeded in wasting Cable's meter and starting to gain momentum for an offense.

Cyclops-B:

Now, even with everything that the other two characters have, Cyclops is probably the most crucial and most important part of this team. Since this is a Cable-based team, Cyclops's health has to be monitored constantly so that he can live on to assist Cable. At some point, Cable is going to have to pass the baton and Cyclops is a great character to hand off to. He can deal out considerable amounts of block damage with his MOB super and makes an excellent secondary battery character. You can also use the following Alpha Counter combo to bring him into battle rather safely provided you have 2 levels of super: Alpha Counter into super (Super Optic Blast aimed straight up after a few hits of Gene Splice). If your prime goal is to make him live long enough to get Cable back in, he can Super Jump Roundhouse x 4, Double Jump Roundhouse x 2 and build considerable amounts of meter. If Cyclops succeeds in his task of building meter and/or giving Cable enough time to heal, he can try to bring Cable in with the following combo of Jump in Roundhouse, Short, Roundhouse x 2, Cyclone Kick (both hits), cancel into Super Optic Blast super, Delay Hyper Cancel into Hyper Viper Beam (ground version) super. It's not exactly the safest thing in the world, but in close matches when Cyclops actually gets to be a point character, this will usually be enough to kill.

Counters to the team:

Attacking Spiral: Spiral always has a potential weakness because it takes time for her to reload knives. Having Storm as the next character on the team and DHCing into her Hail Storm while Spiral is reloading knives would give you control of the match and will deal out lots of damage (bonus damage is Spiral called Cable assist while trying to reload). You can also use assists that will clear out Spiral knives so that she will not be able to get her knife trap going. Storm-A and Ruby's Sublimation are just some of these.

Attacking Cable: There are few things that bother Cable. Remember the quadrants example, and you can see how Strider/Doom or a teleport happy Spiral would give him problems. Spiral's teleport is instant so you can afford to throw out assists and teleport behind Cable's AHVB attempts.

Attacking Cyclops: Since he's going to spend the vast majority of time as a helper, why not try and take the team down from the bottom up. Heavy DHC combos that kill or significantly wound Cyclops (such as Juggernaut headcrush into Storm's hail) are major steps in taking him away. Also, since this team was designed for Spiral and Cable to be point characters and Cyclops as an assist, it might be worth considering using a snapback to bring him in to throw off the team dynamics. Since he is the most important piece of this team, it would greatly increase your odds of winning the match if you can take him out first.

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