I don't care much about the milling... but that included, how do we beat Zangief and what symbols work best against his life gain, damage reduction, milling, and trhows?

Please respond... preferably before worlds.

I'm tempted to say Fire -- access to Intimidating Presence, Yoga Adept, and Ira Spinta help to keep him from building an insurmountable wall in his staging area, and the myraid speed/damage pumps will let you do the actual killing work [although you'll almost certainly have to do it incrementally over a few turns]. Fire also has access to a few very strong characters for this kind of thing: Leona would give you a 2 card advantage on Gief every turn and a possible instant-kill damage pump; and Akuma effectively turns Zangief into a 5HS character until he gets a bunch of filler foundations out.

Aside from that, you're probably best off by using a OHK strategy, using your choice of committing or removal effects to deal with his foundations (Order is a strong choice for this) and setting up for a few very large attacks. One possibility along these lines would be Order Guy**, who has plenty of commit effects in his bag of tricks, several very good Multiple attacks (Kuzuryu Reppa, Lunar Slash), and easy momentum generation.

jasco games said:

Stop draw/recursion and commit him when you attack - to commit a character...

Evil/Fire/Death - manifest destiny/zi mei

Fire/Order/All - pommel smash

Void/Order/All - psycho style

Good/Life/Void/Air - heel snipe

All/Death/Void - dan

Order/Air/Water - omnidirectional

'Maybe' there is more... Note the fact that I can't come up with a chaos/earth one is why these symbols aren't agressive enough to be run solo symbol and expect to win (and one of earth's weaknesses...) Of course earth has tag along... Chaos cannot (should not imo) be run as a solo symbol deck, and this is primarily why.

- dut

Create your own earth tank using Bishamon, and make him check all his good cards away. You dont even need to hurt him.

Looping attacks works pretty well..

Remove his hand and OTK.

Personally I dislike Zangief's presence in the environment, he's a charcter that promotes one shotting too much, his very existence will mean that you ahve to One shot or be bogged down by insane reduction, tacked on to 32 health and he quite simply becomes the best tank in the game.

And then there's the entire situation when you do need to OTK, by that time unless it's turn2 or ( Good luck dropping him turn 2, seriously) you can exhaust him out he can reduce your winner into a weiner. As i believe Shinji said Zangief's reduce would be fine it had had the clause (Minimum 1) attached, sadly I just don't feel it's that simple.

Me and my bro (Who plays THAT gief religiously) agreed to paly two matches with and without the suggested eratta. One match each for my OTK Sagat and then my aggro Leona.

Match one without errata.

Sagat versus Gief.

We Go back and forth and I eventually just tank it up, strip hsi hand via TWOP and OTK'd his ass, no problems.

2-0 to Sagat

Match two without errata.

Leona builds turn 1with some protection in place and goes all out turn 2, flinging 5 throws. Damage dealt, 13. To anyone else, 27.

Every game in this match he just tanked behind gief and inhuman perception, my attacsk were repelled too easy and he just proceeded to kill and mill.

3-0 to Gief ( we palyed a third game for the lolz)

Match one with Errata.

Made no difference, still one shotted him anyway.

2-0 to Sagat

Match two with errata.

At least some attacks went through this time, but to no avail. Still proceeds to roll me. ¬_¬

2-0 to Gief

Sorry if that seemed whiny or uncontrsuctive, I just feel that strongly on this gief. A well piloted Zangief is nigh on unbeatable.

But as Dut pointed out the best way to defeat earth (as I imagine Gief would use Earth) is constant pressure and denial of resources, it doesn't have everything

Hang in there, and remeber multiple attacking doesn't viably exist in standard, thought you'dve learned that by now

Cheers

An anti russian

From what i've seen the best version of gief is being run off of All and not Earth. I could be wrong (tends to happen alot).

The Gief that I build to practice against for worlds is actualls tri symbol Void/all/earth.... he's really good... but I don't want to use him, even though he kicks my ass. I just want to find out good stratagies against him. You guys have helped, and I will keep looking for ways to stop him. What do you think is the best anti life gain out there? I might just side board in something...

Best anti-life gain there is...

KawaiiMistress said:

Not really, ma'am. Your opponent need only play a terrain into their card pool.

Not many people run terrains... that said, there is a LOT of other life gain hate that may be more viable for you.

- dut

If your opponent isn't packing other terrains or asset hate its quite easy to stop their life gain. There aren't THAT many useful terrains at the minute and asset hate is far and few in between. Plus most answers to assets right now is either cancelling is ability or committing it, where as this is just a static ability. Prominent Noblewoman is just a foundation and we know how many ways there are to stop foundations.

KawaiiMistress said:

If. If. If.

If only I had a dime for responses like that. All I was saying is that you said it was the best. It's not. It's good, but it's not "the best" anti-life gain available.

No terrain can be considered the best at almost anything because they are so fragile against other terrains. To the best of my knowledge, and I could be wrong, terrains are the only card that can destroy a card in your opponents staging area without playing an ability, therefore making it similar to a constant ability in that such destruction cannot be responded to.

Cage Arena, US Air Base, Sailor's Rest, Sacred Temple, Ring of Fame, Pigeon Games, and FSCaG all see play from time to time. I know for our group, I'd run them more if I saw others run them often, but collectively we don't have that many at our disposal.

On a side note, how is PATH of the Master NOT a terrain? It's a path.

The best way to defeat Zangief is to hand him a book and ask him to read it.

PaulBittner said:

yeah we all know that he can handle polar bears pretty easily

Paul wins thread.

@ Sagat/Leona v. Zangief...how is that possible? I realize I've only been messing around with Leona for about a month, but from what I've seen she should be able to rip through Zangief like nobody's business. He's only going to have a hand for so long to redux the damage - even less of one if Leona is played off of Earth with TWoP. With just Sardine's and Genocide, I'm easily able to rack up 20+ damage attacks with two enhances, and it also happens to commit a lot of my resources to get around silly reduxgief. (plus he has no hand when I TWoP + KoF/Glare him).

And Hungry for Dinner variant should be able to play around him simply because there's no foundations in play to redux off of...

But I've yet to play against a real Zangief with her, so I could certainly be wrong.

Rashotep! Blank 'Gief, and use his support (either off of Earth/Death) to blank the rest of the key cards.

MegaGeese said:

Thanks for being the only one to actually respond to my post geese

+1 to you.

Funny thing is though, half of the time in those matches when I was leona I could Handle zangief, but hsi other support cards stopped me. Still he's a tank true and through, his E is just nasty.

I Haven't built the hungry for dinner variant though. I'll get back to you on that.

Cheers

Hanzo

We should just call this the how to beat omar thread, since he is about the only one playing gief in the tourney. Main cause: who the hell really wants to fight omar in diversity, not me.

ROTBI said:

...Ok...and Kawaii already said that Terrains effectively do NOT see play (and she's right; they don't). Because it's a static (thus cannot be negated) and it stops ALL life gains from even being played, I'm gonna have to agree that makes it best.

Of course, it doesn't really matter. It's a sideboard only card, should only be ran in 2s IMO due to it being a Terrain, and has arguably "mediocre" symbols.

I think it's been mentioned, but has anybody said *Zi Mei*? She's the antithesis to ANY character that works on her turn, I'd say.

tannerface said:

there is so much truth contained right here that i nearly went blind from the purity of its light.

gief in sf. gief in ufs. i <3 russia. and canadian ketchup

GouHadou said:

That's what I thought when first seeing the thread, but I didn't mention it because it was 'too obvious' lol.

You strike fear into the hearts of south easterners on a regular basis I see!

Seriously though, the way you guys talk about Canadian ketchup I might just bring some to distract you if we ever match-up... Zangief's weak spot, red liquid sugar ^^

- dut

Just like that one episode of pokemon where pikachu couldn't stop eating ketchup ? Does Omar = Pikachu?

Hayamachop said:

Yes omar is a pikachu, gotta catch'em all.

here is pikachu eating ketchup