As we sit here comfortably in Street Fighter 6’s second season, we continue to learn more and more about Capcom’s latest fighting game offering. Pro players, lab monsters, and players everywhere continue to make discoveries, and our collective knowledge of counters, new tech, strategies, and combos continues to increase.
One of the best ways to find new tech is by watching the pros play, and in a recent clip from Evo 2024 runner up NASR|BigBird’s stream we saw an incredible counter to Rashid’s level 1 super. This counter, naturally, comes from the other professional “bird” competitor, NASR|AngryBird.
The two birds actively play against each other and train, which is why they know each others’ characters so well. This exceptional knowledge, plus AngryBird’s top notch skill, lead us to this awesome counter for Rashid’s level 1 super that surely the majority of us have never seen before.
In this clip, we see AngryBird’s Ken score a back throw on BigBird’s burnt out Rashid that puts him into the corner. After a quick sweep to catch BigBird on wake up (which is successful), AngryBird walks forward for a quick shimmy to bait a reversal.
In this scenario, BigBird’s Rashid feared a meaty Drive Impact that would put him into a stun state if landed. As a result, the Rashid player wakes up with a level 1 super to use its strike invincibility to counter AngryBird’s meaty pressure.
Instead of a meaty button or Drive Impact, though, AngryBird just waits, lets the super rock, and in tandem with Rashid flying into the air performs Ken’s light punch Dragon Punch. Doing so sees the player completely avoid the super despite Rashid making contact with Ken, and thanks to the recovery of both moves, the Ken player is able to perform a full jump in combo as a punish.
While this counter looks absolutely crazy on the surface, there is an explanation for why it works the way that it does. To put it simply, Rashid’s level 1 super is considered airborne from frames 10 – 36, while Ken’s LP Shoryuken is invincible to airborne attacks beginning on the first frame of the special move.
In this scenario, the way these two moves line up, frame-wise, make it so that AngryBird can fire off Ken’s DP and use its invincibility to airborne attacks just as Rashid’s super enters its airborne frames. This results in Rashid making contact with Ken, but never actually hitting him.
Of course @FGC_Angrybird would have this punish labbed out pic.twitter.com/7hqREkdkNJ
— incross (@crossknockout) July 29, 2024