About the Author
My name is Aliphant. I have been playing BattleCON since 2016 and have played BattleCON Online since closed alpha. My winrate as of the writing of this guide is 82.33%. I have won four out of the seven tournaments I have participated in and placed Top 3 in the others. I main Seth in the paper version, and Shekhtur and Luc in BCO. (You can check out my beginner's Luc guide here.)

Overview
One of the most common reasons for BCO ladder players to lose games is their failure to understand the matchup they are playing. Many times, they will use the same strategy or even the same attack pairs against multiple different fighters. In order to win more games, it is essential to be able to adapt your strategy to the fighter you are facing rather than sticking to pre-conceived plans. Even if the matchup is bad for you, if you are playing it well and your opponent is not, you will mitigate most of the advantages they have and shift the game in your favor.

To do this, you must have a strong knowledge of the matchup. Analyzing a matchup to find out what the proper strategy is for both sides, as well as determining who the matchup favors and by how much, is known as matchup evaluation. Matchup evaluation has many uses. Outside of informing your strategy when playing games, it can also be used to help you decide bans or create tournament teams with as few weaknesses as possible.

In this guide, I will break matchup evaluation down into a step by step system. After that, I'll provide a practical example by walking you through how I evaluate an example matchup.

When evaluating a matchup, the first step to take is to identify the game plan of each individual fighter. A "game plan" describes how a fighter intends to win a game. For instance, Cadenza's game plan might be to use his high Power and Soak values to outtrade his opponents. It is important to know how the game plans of each fighter interact with each other, but that will come later. For now, we just want to identify their game plans in a vacuum to understand how they work.

Although most experienced players will already know the game plans for each fighter, new players might not. If you don't know what a fighter's game plan is, don't worry. There are a few ways to analyze a fighter's kit that tell you what their game plan is.

The most basic step is to check their fighter archetype. As of the time of writing, fighters in BCO are divided into four separate categories.

Brawlers (indicated by a fist symbol) tend to be more balanced, aiming to use a mixture of decent stats, high mobility and good hit confirm to make safe, effective trades with their opponents.

Heavies (indicated by a shield symbol) tend to have very high Power and Stun Guard values, and sometimes Soak as well. Their game plan is to overwhelm their opponent with massive stats.

Specialists (indicated by dot bracketed by four petals) are wild cards who have unorthodox game plans.

Tacticians (indicated by a map marker symbol) tend to care about controlling board positioning. They often have high mobility, and their game plan is to win via setting up for their powerful positional effects.

But the fighter archetype doesn't tell you everything. Even within the same archetype, fighters can have wildly different game plans. The next step is to check the fighter's Unique Ability (UA). Because every fighter's UA represents their signature identity, they are often "designed around" their UA and it is commonly a core part of their game plan. By looking at what tools their UA gives them or what play patterns it encourages, you can often figure out a fighter's game plan. Here are some common indications to keep an eye out for.

- A fighter with a resource defined in their UA will probably have to manage that resource as a part of their game plan.

- A fighter whose UA makes them stronger over time should try to stall for time.

- A fighter with a marker is usually positioning-oriented.

- A fighter whose UA gives them stat bonuses should try to trigger those bonuses as often as possible and overwhelm the opponent with stats.

- A fighter with different forms or dynamic bonuses will generally want to focus on configuring it to counter their opponent.

After checking their UA, the last thing you want to do is to comb through their Styles for clues as to their game plan. For instance...

- A fighter with a lot of Power or Soak generally wants to make trades.

- A fighter with a lot of Priority (or ways to decrease opponent Priority) generally wants to disrupt their opponents.

- A fighter with very little hit confirm generally wants to stay close.

- A fighter with a lot of minimum Range generally wants to stay far away.

- A fighter with a lot of effects that prevent the opponent from hitting generally wants to focus on controlling their opponent's options.

When you examine a fighter's kit, you should also look for patterns. A fighter's kit isn't just a collection of random cards - it has a theme and a direction to it. Try to find that direction by identifying situations or cases where many Styles in the kit tend to be more effective, even if it's against that fighter's archetype. For instance, Alexian is a Heavy, and Heavies usually want to stick close. But if you look at his kit, you'll notice a recurring pattern where many of his Styles (Stalwart, Steeled, and Mighty) are actually most effective when he starts the beat far away from his opponents. Thus, you can see that part of Alexian's game plan is to set up for such situations.

After you have finished weighing up all the different factors of a fighter's kit, you should aim to try to generate a simple one or two sentence game plan. Look for cohesion - where the factors are similar, where they generate similar strategies and lines of play. If a fighter's kit seems all over the place, that's a clue that maybe their game plan is to have a bunch of different options and pick the one that's most effective, while forcing their enemies to guess which one they're going to use.

Once you have figured out a fighter's game plan, it's time to proceed to the next step. which is to compare their game plan with their opponent's and see how it affects the dynamic between the two of them.

When you begin to compare the game plans of two fighters in a matchup, you should already have the game plans of both fighters, taken individually, firmly in mind. The first step after that is to identify your roles. This is an important concept, so let's break it down a little.

In card games such as Magic: The Gathering, there's the concept of the beatdown[www.starcitygames.com]. The simple rundown is that in such games, decks usually tend to run on a spectrum from fast (able to do things quickly and proactively, but having weak cards) to slow (having very powerful cards that take some time to come online). Fast decks want to use their speed to kill slow decks before slow decks can bring their more powerful cards to bear. The key insight that the article had was that the role of being "the beatdown" (the one trying to kill your opponent as fast as possible) was a relative one - that is, a deck that is normally very fast should play to slow the game down and control the battlefield against a deck that is even faster.

BattleCON Online isn't the same as Magic: The Gathering. But it can take from the insights of Magic and apply it to its own play. Just like how the roles of decks in MtG are relative, so are the game plans and strategies of your fighter. For example, Kimbhe's game plan is to use her superior statline and Power bonus from her Staff to effectively trade with her opponent. But against Cadenza, this is not something that she wants to be doing, because Cadenza trades even better than her. A stolid trader like Kimbhe needs to start playing evasively and positionally against someone who can beat her at her own game like Cadenza. (You can find a video about how this matchup plays out with commentary here[www.level99games.com].)

Identifying when you need to be playing "off-role" - or changing your usual game plan up to suit the matchup - is the first step to comparing game plans. So without already knowing the matchup, how do you come to the difficult realization that you need to play your fighter in a totally different style than usual? It's simple - you find the similarities in your game plans and identify which parts of it they can do better than you.

The first step to this is to figure out what is it that both fighters want to do. In the majority of matchups, you'll usually have at least one similarity. There are cases where the game plans of both fighters are totally different, but most of the time, you'll find at least one thing that they both try to do in their games. That can be trading, trying to disrupt the opponent's attacks or pressuring them at melee range.

If your fighter is better at it, then good! Press your advantage in that area as much as possible and bully your opponent from being able to execute that part of their game plan. If the similarity is "press into melee range", and you're better at melee, then you should stick as close as you can to them to flex your superiority in that area. When you dominate that sphere of the game, you make it harder for them to do whatever they would normally do at melee range, because you're already taking over the game there.

If your fighter is worse at it, then you have to play off-role. While this seems counter-intuitive after spending so much time identifying your game plan, you have to actually do the opposite of what your game plan says you should do. Going back to the melee example, if you normally want to stick close but you realize your opponent is better at it, then you have to play at range as much as possible. This is because if your opponent will definitely win against you when you are at melee, then the only way for you to win is to go to range. At least then both fighters will struggle instead of just you. (If your opponent is better at both melee and range, then just sit in the range that they have the least advantage in and try to outplay them with other advantages.)

As for the parts of your game plan that are completely different from your opponent's, I would suggest dividing them into two categories, differences that are absolutely opposed and differences that are not. An absolutely opposed difference in game plan means one that directly contradicts a part of your opponent's game plan. Let's take Hikaru vs Rukyuk. Hikaru's game plan is to move towards his opponent, while Rukyuk's game plan is to move away. This means when Hikaru moves closer to Rukyuk, he's actually killing two birds with one stone - he's supporting his own game plan while foiling Rukyuk's. When you identify a portion of your game plan that also destroys your opponent's game plan, it should be one of your top concerns when thinking about what to play, because it has double the impact whenever you succeed in fulfilling it. This effect is quite similar to what I wrote about earlier, about how you're preventing your opponent from performing their game plan by doing the same thing as them but better. Both of these things are efficient ways to get an advantage because you disable your opponent's game plan while doing what you were going to do anyway.

Lastly, there are facets of your game plan that don't directly interfere with your opponent's. Those facets should be not be as prioritized as heavily, but they're good ways to press your advantage nevertheless. In many situations, you will have to choose between pressing your own game plan and taking action to stymie your opponent's game plan. Of course you'd like to do both at once, but if you can only do one, which do you choose? The answer is that it depends on whether your fighter is better at playing proactively or reactively.

Any intermediate level player will be able to see that a move that helps them and screws over their opponent is a good thing. But one of the things that separates a high level player from an intermediate player is their ability to know when they should push their advantage and when they should simply play safely and cut off the opponent's ability to respond. This requires a lot of experience. To understand whether your fighter is best served being proactive or reactive, you should look at what cards your fighter wants to play the most in that matchup. By doing so, you can identify whether the strongest options you have in hand are offensive or defensive in nature.

If you have been following along with the guide, you should now have a good understanding of what both fighters want to do in the matchup you are analyzing, both in general and in the context of that specific matchup. In fact, you should have updated the general game plans that you identified in the first phase into matchup-specific game plans that highlight what you want to do against this particular fighter.

But you also need to understand how the fighter achieves those goals. If you have been carefully studying the fighter when you were identifying their game plan, you have probably already noticed that they have a wide range of tools that they can use to help them win the game. (Some fighters have a wider range than others.) Not all of these tools are relevant towards securing their game plan in that particular matchup. Hikaru has a lot of defensive power, but this is less relevant in his matchup with Marmelee, where he should be focusing on acquiring more hit confirm instead. We must thus break down this goal into specific cards that allow Hikaru to achieve his goal of "getting more hit confirm".

When I write this, it appears as though I'm going backwards. First, I asked you to take a bunch of disparate cards and tie them together to see how they cooperate to allow you to generate advantages. Out of those advantages, I asked you to focus on the ones that were most effective against your opponent. But now I'm reversing the process by asking you to take the advantages that would tilt the game most in your favor and break them down again into the individual cards that allow you to accumulate that advantage.

However, there is a difference. Before, you had basically the whole of a character's kit. Now, the cards that you are identifying are focused and narrow-minded in what they intend to do, and what they intend to do will be (if you have done your job from last section right) singularly devastating towards the opponent. What you will therefore obtain is a guarantee that whenever you use these cards, you will make your opponent cry. I call these "key cards".

Play these cards as often as you reasonably can. I believe that the essence of proper matchup handling is abuse. You should abuse the few cards that have maximum effectiveness against your opponent, and you should do it over and over and over again. This is a risky strategy in face-to-face play, because you will lose a lot of friends and will no longer be invited to future board game nights. Now that you are on the internet, you have nothing holding you back from making your opponent cry as much as you can.

If you are effective at doing this, your opponent has no choice but to hard read you, because the Styles you are using repeatedly are so strong against them that they can't beat you with conventional attacks. If they slip up even a little bit, or if you manage to throw in a tiny mixup into your rotation, they can often fall very far behind as you punish their read attempt, and then use the attack they were trying to counter last beat while the counter is in discards.

You should obviously still play to the situation. If Brand is the key card for Shekhtur against Cesar because it breaks his Stun Guard, while Grasp is comparatively weak because it doesn't do much against him, you should still play Grasp if it wins you the beat or the game. What I am trying to say is that when you start out trying to decide what attack pair to play, your first thought should be how to bully Cesar by using Brand, or to evaluate if Cesar is going to try to counter it (for example by using Fueled to trigger Stun Immunity). Only when you have calculated that Brand isn't effective should you move on to other options. Often, you can simply press the abusive card button and allow it to win the beat for you for free. (If you have played a lot of Marmelee, you will understand this very well.)

One of the main mistakes I see newbies making is in playing cards that are weaker or not as suited to the matchup simply because they want to "mix things up". While occasionally adding in variance to your attacks to keep your opponents on your toes is fine, there is no shame in repeating the same unbeatable attack until your opponent drops dead. To do this, you have to understand what attacks are the most effective.

You should not just play your key cards, but also play to them. Even when you're not actually using Brand as Shekhtur, you should be trying to set it up so that Brand can punish your opponent for carelessly throwing away their Stun Immunity. Setting up undodgeable Brands, or putting yourself in a position such that your opponent has to fear its threat 24/7, is a big part of effective Shekhtur piloting in matchups against Heavies. Similarly, you want to play away from cards that are relatively weak in the matchup, trying to avoid positions where you have no choice but to use them. If you can pair these cards with Dodge, or otherwise force a null beat with them, that's even better. Having weak cards in your discard piles means that your strong cards are in your hand to actually kill your opponent with. I will frequently play two null beats in a row with weaker styles, then set up for a beat in which all my good cards can be brought to bear against my opponent. It's very difficult for them to avoid a bad outcome in such a situation. The converse applies for your opponent's key cards - you should be trying to nullify their impact as much as possible and punish your opponent for playing them in order to discourage them from doing so.

Cards that further your matchup-specific game plan are one half of your fighter's key cards. The other half are the cards that line up well against your opponent's threats. In most fair matchups, your opponent will have a number of powerful threats that they can deploy against you which should counter a lot of the "standard" pairs that you would like to play. This is especially true for control characters which have a lot of restrictive effects. Eternal, Implosion, Barrier, Bulwark and Brand are all example of such threats which require very specialized answers to deal with, since your usual good pairs will fold to the disruption that they are putting out. Very likely they will be key cards that the opponent holds against you. You should treasure the answers that you have to them very highly. Not only are you able to counter your opponent with those answers, but you can also deter them from playing their most powerful effects by holding them in hand. This locks them out of playing their most potent moves even if they technically could. That deterrance goes both ways as well - if they carelessly slam it down every time they can, you can counter it, and then in the future they will be frightened of playing it and getting countered again. (Being blown out by your opponent's answers is one thing you need to watch out for when you are eager to rotate your best cards like I suggested.)

Once you have identified your fighter's key cards - both their most effective ones and their answers to their opponent's key cards - you can start evaluating which fighter has the advantage.

After you have finished tallying up all the different aspects of the matchup, you should evaluate it in order to see which fighter has the advantage. All this stuff about game plans and key cards is useful for teaching someone how to play the matchup, but you also want to understand which fighter has the advantage and by how much.

It's up to you which evaluation or scoring system you want to use to quantify the matchup. Some people prefer to use verbal evaluations - "this matchup is heavily advantageous for fighter X". In my Discard and Matchup Reference Sheet, I use simple color coding to show if a matchup is good, bad or even. There are even people who prefer to give a score on how much variance a matchup has; that is, if it consistently ends up going a certain way or if one good beat can render all the theorycrafting irrelevant. (Marmelee vs Mikhail is a good example of this.)

For me, outside of my reference sheet, I usually pay homage to BattleCON's fighting game roots by using the traditional fighting game matchup evaluation system. Under this notation, matchups are expressed in numbers like 6-4. That simply means that if two expert players were to play 10 games in that matchup, the fighter with the advantage would win about 6 of them, and the other would win 4. It's not a super precise system, but I think it is quite useful for expressing how I feel about the chances that each fighter has in various matchups.

Translating all your knowledge about a matchup to a quantified number is often tricky and there is no set way to do it. It requires a degree of experience with the matchup. It also requires some experience with the game to know how often X card will be realistically likely to threaten your opponent or how often you can pull off Y perfect positioning that they have no answer for. Here are some factors that you should look at when you think about what a matchup's evaluation is.

- Which fighter is stronger in general? (in terms of winrate, tier lists, etc.)
- Which fighter's game plan is more powerful, consistent, or easy to pull off?
- Which fighter has an advantage when it comes to the similarities of their game plan?
- Which fighter is better at playing off-role when it comes to similarities where they have a disadvantage?
- Which fighter has an easier time achieving parts of their game plan that are absolutely opposed to their opponent's? For example, if it's a ranger vs a melee fighter, is the ability of the ranger to create space or the ability of the melee fighter to gapclose superior?
- Which fighter is playing proactively in the matchup, and which fighter is playing reactively?
- Which fighter is better at playing their assigned role in that matchup? (eg. does a fighter have to pursue a game plan that their Styles are not good at helping them achieve?)
- Which fighter has more key cards?
- Which fighter's key cards are more devastating, consistent or difficult to evade?
- Which fighter has more answers to their opponent's threats?
- Which answers are more consistent, suppressive or easy to weave into normal play rather than being played as a last resort hail-mary move?

It can be easy to fall into the trap of "counting up the counters" and assuming that each fighter knows the other fighter's play at all times. Remember that in a real match, you won't know what exactly your opponent is doing, and thus you can't rely on countering them every single time. Think about how safe each fighter's counters and key cards are are, how punishing they are if they connect, and how easy it is to bait them out.

It can be hard to understand how to do matchup evaluation just by looking at abstract theory alone. In order to ground what we've learned in practical reality, let's do a step-by-step walkthrough of an example matchup evaluation between Shekhtur and Marmelee. We're going to do this from square one, assuming that we know nothing about either of these fighters. We will start by identifying both fighter's game plans.

Let's take a look at Shekhtur's kit to figure out what sort of game plan she has. The first thing that immediately pops out at me is her Unique Ability. She gets Malice tokens whenver she deals damage, and those Malice tokens make her go faster. So right from the beginning, we can guess that her game plan is going to involve dealing a lot of damage, and going fast. And because she needs to spend those Malice tokens, it means that she needs a constant supply of them. This means that she doesn't just have to hit hard, but also keep hitting the opponent.

What else about her kit stands out? For once, there's the utter lack of defensive or Start of Beat options. If she wants to get anything done, she is forced to go first, since she can't do much going second. But with the exception of Jugular, her Styles don't actually have a high Priority. So if she has to go first, she has to use her Malice tokens. This means that running out of Malice tokens would be very bad for her, suggesting that careful maintenance and management of her Malice pool is a key part of her game plan.

Reviewing Shekhtur's kit, we can see that she has an extraordinarily large number of effects that control positioning. Unleashed, Jugular, Reaver and Spiral all manipulate her positioning, while Combination is dependent on having close positioning to function. So mobility is a huge part of Shekhtur's game plan as well - which makes sense. If she's very dependent on hitting the opponent consistently (as we deduced in our previous analysis), then she obviously can't let them escape from her. Her ranges are nothing to brag about, so she has to rely on good mobility to stick close to them.

Next we come to Shekhtur's Unique Base, Brand. Right away we notice that it requires 6 Priority to turn on its main effect, Ignore Stun Guard. With a base Priority of 2, this is realistically only achievable with some form of Malice investment, which further cements our earlier theory that Shekhtur is very dependent on having a healthy Malice pool. But we can also see something else. Brand's Ignore Stun Guard seems like a very powerful disruptive tool. If it's going fast, and it automatically stuns the opponent through any amount of Stun Guard, then it becomes very difficult for them to respond to Shekhtur's attack.

Looking through the rest of the kit, we see a similar pattern of disruptive effects encoded in her cards. For example, a Style like Reaver on a ranger fighter might try to push the opponent far away. But here Reaver, is paired with an End of Beat advance to close the gap created. This indicates that the function of Reaver is not necessarily to create range - since it closes it again afterwards - but rather to create temporary range. This means that it attempts to put the opponent out of range for the rest of the beat, so that they can't retaliate against Shekhtur, before entering into her preferred range again. With the ability to push up to 3, that's a powerful form of disruption. Similarly, Combination's ability to Ignore Soak and Unleashed's ability to dodge away from opponent's attacks by moving backwards are both ways that Shekhtur has to disrupt her opponents.

So, putting all of these things together, we can identify Shekhtur's basic game plan as "use mobility and speed to set up situations where your opponent can't avoid you, before going first with high speed and preventing retaliation with a range of disruptive effects. By chaining several such hits in a row, you are thus able to stunlock your opponent and keep your Malice pool healthy." That's a bit of a rough way of put it, but it works! Let's take a look at Marmelee next.

Marmelee's UA tells us straight away that she loves null beats. Every beat that goes by without something happening is a beat that she gains extra resources at no cost to her. It also tells us that she really wants to avoid getting stunned. Which means she should play very defensive, Stun Guard heavy moves, right? Unfortunately, a quick glance at her cards shows that none of them have Stun Guard at all. So she doesn't have a very strong ability to resist stuns if she gets hit, yet she wants to avoid getting stunned - which means that she probably wants to avoid getting hit at all.

Now, avoiding getting hit at all seems like an intimidating task, but luckily, Marmelee's kit is more than well equipped to accomplish this. She has a variety of effects that allow her to dodge her opponent, such as Barrier, or disrupt them from using their attacks, such as Petrifying. In addition, she has ways to reposition herself to a safe range with Magnificent or Nullifying, and Meditation allows her to play defensively (her one way to do so) which reduces her ability to get stunned, as well as act as recovery for her if she does get knocked out.

One big thing that jumps out about her kit is that all her strong effects require large amounts of Concentration. We can therefore deduce that she needs to maintain her Concentration counters very effectively and carefully, because a lot of her Styles simply become blank once she goes down to a low number. That probably means she should avoid wasting too much Concentration on moving a space with Sorceress' End of Beat or pushing a couple of points of extra damage with Magnificent. Unless she can convert those effects into something with a significant impact on the game, they're much better used when hoarded to enable useful effects the next beat.

With all of these factors considered, we take a rough stab at Marmelee's game plan. Something like "accumulate Concentration counters with as many null beats as possible. Try to keep as many in reserve as you can, spending them as efficiently and conservatively as possible, while avoiding getting hit by the opponent using your disruptive control effects."

We've managed to start from nothing and derive the game plans for two fighters from scratch, just by looking over their kit. Next, we'll move on to comparing the game plans that they have against each other and see what tweaks each fighter has to make to their strategy to accomodate the matchup.

Let's start comparing the game plans of Shekhtur and Marmelee by looking at what they would both like to do. Both fighters are extremely disruptive, and both of them have a game plan of trying to prevent their opponents from retaliating completely. As such, they're probably among the easiest fighters in the current BCO cast to 20-0 someone with. Given that both fighters want to disrupt each other, who is better at it? A quick glance shows that Marmelee's effects are clearly more potent than Shekhtur's. Reaver's push and Brand's Ignore Stun Guard are cute, but both pale in comparison to Barrier and Petrifying. Marmelee sacrifices a lot of the raw damage and power that Shekhtur has in exchange for dumping all of her potential into focusing entirely on control. Therefore, if both fighters seek to play very disruptively, Marmelee will definitely win as Shekhtur will be autododged, stunned, or simply whiff to a Nullifying Burst before she can deploy any of her disruption.

That means Shekhtur has to play off-role, while Marmelee wants to continue playing disruptively as usual to keep Shekhtur from being able to deploy something like Brand and ruin her day. Remember, when you play off-role, you try to do the opposite of what you normally do. So instead of going for her usual style of playing fast and aggressive, Shekhtur should actually slow down and focus more on tanking Marmelee's hits and using hit confirm. Moves like Reaver Shot make it very difficult for Marmelee to Magnificent or Nullifying out of range, while if Marmelee is below 5 Concentration, then playing a moderately fast Strike against Petrifying forces her to waste all her Concentration on going first so she doesn't get stunned. Then Shekhtur can retaliate with a hard Strike that trades even and drains all of Marmlee's counters. Playing slow, defensive Shots and going second with a Strike isn't something Shekhtur wants to usually do, but now that she's playing off-role, they're actually the most effective way to punish what Marmelee wants to do rather than stick to her usual strategy which is not as likely to work. It may seem like heresy to completely ignore a super strong card like Brand, but the truth is that it's simply not effective against Marmelee.

Note that this is true only as long as Marmelee is superior at disruption. Remember, a lot of Marmelee's disruption requires Concentration counters to activate. If something goes disastrously, and Marmelee ends up with too few counters to disrupt Shekhtur, then that analysis is turned on its head. Now Shekhtur is the one with the advantage in the similarity of their game plan. She needs to have the ability to re-evaluate the matchup on the spot and realize that with the game state as it is, she suddenly has a superior disruption ability, and should thus push it as hard as possible to prevent Marmelee from doing the same. (This is in accordance with the concept of "dominating the territory" that I talked about in the Comparing Game Plans section.) So that means that if Marmelee ends up too low on Concentration counters to disrupt Shekhtur, Shekhtur should switch to aggressive moves like Jugular Drive, knowing that it can't be countered with Petrifying since Marmelee can't afford it. She wants to deal as much damage as possible to keep stunning Marmelee and constantly keep her on the back foot. Brand suddenly becomes strong again because it denies the use of Strike as a Concentration recovery tool. Shekhtur should strive to maintain this high-disruption barrage of attacks so that Marmelee cannot recover her Concentration. In contrast, with Marmelee suddenly thrust into the off-role, she has to try to get back on her feet as fast as possible with defensive recovery moves such as Dodge, Sorceress Strike and Meditation. Again, playing a slow, plodding defensive game is the opposite of what she usually wants to do, but with her Concentration counters too low to give her the disruption she needs to contest Shekhtur, this is the most effective way to get back into her driver's seat and take over the game. Having the ability to recognize when the game plan of each fighter has to change due to the context of the ongoing game is what separates a good player from a great one, because the latter is far more adaptable to the current situation.

What about the areas in which they are different? We see that Shekhtur and Marmelee have some absolutely opposed differences in game plan. Shekhtur wants to hit every beat, Marmelee wants to null every beat. Shekhtur wants to get in close and personal, while Marmelee wants to stay more at range so that both fighters miss each other. These, too, are the important turning points of each fighter's game plan that they should be focusing on. It's a lot more easy for Shekhtur to focus on doing things like getting close against Marmelee than it is to try to out-disrupt her, because compared to Marmelee, Shekhtur has more mobility options. So this is an advantage that Shekhtur has against Marmelee, which she should leverage as often as possible by frequently playing moves such as Reaver Drive or Shot. At the same time, however, she should also be aware that being "on-role" when it comes to similarities in game plan is a huge advantage, and being off-role is a huge disadvantage. Thus, even as she tries to push the few advantages in mobility in power that she has against Marmelee's superior disruption, she should also be on the lookout for opportunities to turn the disruptive tables and take away Marmelee's Concentration counters with a single good swing beat.

Putting all this in context, we can see that Shekhtur's matchup-specific game plan might be something like "Play defensively in order to force Marmelee to invest the maximum number of Concentration counters to disrupt you, and try to tax her counters every turn if possible. Constantly move into her face in order to exert pressure on her, and try to look out for a swing turn to bankrupt her of counters. Once that happens, play as aggressively as possible and never give her a single moment to breathe for the rest of the game."

That's quite a sharp difference from Shekhtur's usual gameplay; playing defensively and trying to grind out opponents aren't usually things that Shekhtur players are used to doing. On the other hand, Marmelee's game plan is far more similar to her usual one, since she's able to press advantages in the main clash of their game plans. This indicates that she has the advantage, because she doesn't have to force her Styles to do things that they weren't designed to do. Her game plan would be something like "Constantly disrupt Shekhtur to keep her on her toes, dodge all her attacks and try to make her whiff so she spends Malice on nothing. This lessens the pressure on you, and prevents her from turning the tables. Force her to spend all her time trying to move closer to you rather than actually hit you. This starves her of Malice, and severely weakens the pressure on you, while also lessening the burden on your Concentration counters as you don't have to spend as many to deal with sharp attacks. Her attacks can be then countered with a simple Meditation 2 or 3 counter spend with a recovery afterwards, rather than an awkward Barrier that leaves you short of Concentration for the next few beats. If she does manage to turn the tables, play defensively with Dodge and Strike until you're back on your feet, then continue with the previous game plan."

By looking at this analysis, you will gain a better insight into how to handle the Shekhtur vs Marmelee matchup than many players. Key aspects of the texture of the matchup, such as how important pressure, resource taxing, and the "big swing beat" are have already made themselves clear to you.

Now that we know how to play out the matchup, let's take a look at what key cards both fighters have to use. We'll start by first examining what key cards they have for pushing their game plan forward, then we'll examine what key cards they have as answers to their opponent's most powerful threats.

Shekhtur
1) Jugular
In a matchup based around resource taxation and the application of pressure, Jugular allows Shekhtur to exert a large deal of pressure on Marmelee without having to spend many Malice tokens of her own. While it may not be guaranteed that Jugular connects, Marmelee has no clean answer to Jugular that costs less than 3 Concentration (with Petrifying X) - Meditation soaking costs 4, and so does Barrier, while any cheaper effects don't work. She can try a Strike, but Jugular can also be paired with Brand to mitigate this weakness. The attack itself may or may not land, but it will definitely leave Marmelee to be a bit low on Concentration counters the next beat. It is thus an ideal attack to play after Marmelee uses Dodge, as then the beat after, when she's low on counters, she won't have Dodge to reset and you can punish her with a massive inescapable Combination Drive or similar.

2) Spiral
It may seem surprising to see Spiral here since it's commonly regarded as one of Shekhtur's worst styles, but in this particular matchup, it provides everything that Shekhtur wants - mobility, hit confirm and the ability to chase Dodges that try to escape from her. If Marmelee corner crosses Shekhtur with a Dodge, Spiral allows her to move in close and start the next beat in her face. Note that while I've already described the usage of Strike as a way to beat Petrifying, Marmelee can still avoid many Strikes with a simple Petrifying Burst. Spiral's advance allows for Spiral Strike to beat Petrifying Burst, and therefore continue keeping on the pressure against Marmelee by reducing her Concentration counters to 0 immediately (-3 counters to become active, then -3 counters for the stun).

3) Strike
Strike is one of Shekhtur's most powerful all-around tools against Marmelee. It's safe on Dodge with Unleashed and Reaver to chase, and forces huge resource taxes against Petrifying and Meditation. Its only weakness is something like Nullifying Burst, which you should be careful to bait out before using a Strike.

4) Shot
Marmelee has a lot of range and evasion, and Shot provides both the Stun Guard to defend against her low power values as well as the sheer hit confirm to ensure that she can't do anything against you. Be careful against Petrifying, but in most other circumstances, with the appropriate Malice ante you should force Marmelee to either take a hit and possibly get stunned or spend a huge amount of Concentration to try to dodge your Shot.

Marmelee
1) Petrifying
In the matchup against Shekhtur, Petrifying is the most powerful. Since Shekhtur is so dependent on going first, Petrifying's ability to become active becomes immensely disruptive against her. She is forced to constantly play around it, and she has a limited number of answers. Because of her low Stun Guard, the only thing that can stop a Petrifying hit from stunning her is Strike.

2) Barrier
Barrier is a key card in most matchups because there are very few fighters whose game plans do not get stopped short by having their attack become unable to hit. The push effect can also be very relevant against Shekhtur - for example, if Marmelee plays a Barrier Burst and Shekhtur whiffs, she doesn't have to pay 4 counters for the dodge and can invest the extra counters towards pushing Shekhtur very far away, setting her up for a whiff the next beat as well.

3) Dodge
Dodge is one of Marmelee's most liked cards, and it's twice as powerful in the matchup against Shekhtur because it both helps Marmelee's game plan - accumulating Concentration safely - and at the same time sabotages Shekhtur's, by making it difficult for her to chain multiple hits together. Even when you don't use it, it prevents Shekhtur from overcommitting her Malice, and thus allows you to threaten to either contest priority or force her to spend more Malice than she's comfortable with while you have your Dodge up.

4) Meditation
Meditation is a flexible base against Shekhtur, because it performs a number of important functions. It's a great recovery base to help you win back the game if you end up with little Concentration against her and she's punishing you, since the recovery is unconditional. In addition, it denies her Malice by reducing the amount of damage she deals. Lastly, it's an excellent defensive base that can often stop Brand from ignoring your Stun Guard by simply reducing its damage to 0.

So these are the cards that each fighter is going to be using the most throughout the game. In addition, we'll add the answers that most effectively line up against the opponent's key cards for each fighter.

Shekhtur
1) Combination
Combination's ability to Ignore Soak allows it to crush Meditation. Its high attack value can also let it sometimes surprise stun Strike.

Marmelee
1) Strike
The ability of Strike to answer Jugular without losing any resources is very effective. It allows Marmelee to trade even while gaining a Concentration for free, which is something that she wants. In addition, if she can pressure Shekhtur into avoiding playing Brand by having many answers to Brand in hand (perhaps even paired with Strike, just to cover all your bases) then Strike is quite safe.

2) Burst
Since Shekhtur often wants to stick close to Marmelee while making defensive trades, Burst allows Marmelee to juke Strike and get away. Paired with Petrifying, it even beats a Shekhtur Shot, and can sometimes allow Marmelee to get away with a free beat without paying any Concentration if Burst would beat Shekhtur's pair anyway. Burst is very important against Shekhtur because it answers a lot of her options and prevents her from creating effective setups.

Now comes the trickiest part, trying to figure out who has the upper hand in that mess of counters and plans. Ideally you'd want to play the matchup a couple of times first, but sometimes that simply isn't possible, and you'll have to play it by ear. There's no methodical or objective way to do this, and there's going to be a lot of disagreements at this stage, even between two people who understand the matchup well.

Personally, I'd say that Marmelee has an advantage in this matchup due to her ability to answer everything Shekhtur can do with multiple options, whereas Shekhtur is quite limited in her own answers to Marmelee's threats. The Dodge base is far too powerful a swing in favor of Marmelee's game plan, and it's easy enough to maintain 3 Concentration (eg. with Meditation into Dodge) that Shekhtur has to constantly be aware of Petrifying. In addition, Marmelee also has an advantage in each fighter's main role, disruption, and has the initiative at the start of the game with the onus being on Shekhtur to turn the fight in her favor. Shekhtur wants to catch people who play unsafely with huge punishes, and Marmelee is rarely caught out in that way. Let's take a look at the factors I suggested that players considering when evaluating matchups.

- Which fighter is stronger in general? (in terms of winrate, tier lists, etc.) Shekhtur
- Which fighter's game plan is more powerful, consistent, or easy to pull off? Neither has a clear advantage.
- Which fighter has an advantage when it comes to the similarities of their game plan? Marmelee
- Which fighter is better at playing off-role when it comes to similarities where they have a disadvantage? Shekhtur
- Which fighter has an easier time achieving parts of their game plan that are absolutely opposed to their opponent's? For example, if it's a ranger vs a melee fighter, is the ability of the ranger to create space or the ability of the melee fighter to gapclose superior? Shekhtur
- Which fighter is playing proactively in the matchup, and which fighter is playing reactively? Shekhtur proactive, Marmelee reactive
- Which fighter is better at playing their assigned role in that matchup? (eg. does a fighter have to pursue a game plan that their Styles are not good at helping them achieve?) Marmelee
- Which fighter has more key cards? Marmelee
- Which fighter's key cards are more devastating, consistent or difficult to evade? Marmelee
- Which fighter has more answers to their opponent's threats? Marmelee
- Which answers are more consistent, suppressive or easy to weave into normal play rather than being played as a last resort hail-mary move? Marmelee

Considering everything we've discussed so far, I think I'd give Marmelee a 6-4 advantage over Shekhtur here. With that, I've taken you from step 1, knowing absolutely nothing about those two characters, all the way to being able to confidently think about how to play both sides of the matchup, special features of the matchup to keep in mind as well as give a quick evaluation of which side the matchup is advantaged towards, and by how much.

Thank you for taking the time to read this guide. I hope it has helped you improve your BattleCON play and is useful to you when playing BattleCON Online. Any feedback on this guide is highly appreciated, and can be submitted to me at A/I/R#4694 on Discord.

Good luck, and have fun outplaying opponents on ladder with your superior matchup knowledge!