JJJ's Unorthodox MVC3 Team

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As seen at UFGT7, player JJJ (see 24:00) has an interesting Morrigan/Storm/Felicia team. Morrigan and Felicia are often overlooked in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but they do have a lot of potent abilities. Morrigan can cancel any of her specials into flight, then launch another special immediately. This allows her to plaster the screen with projectiles more efficiently than probably any other character. Felicia has several options when rushing down the opponent. She has a command throw, she has a side-switching command-dash, and she has quick overhead specials. In X-Factor, she has a simple loop that can be repeated until the opposing character is KO'd. The real strength of the team is the DHC glitch. From Storm's Elemental Rage super, JJJ can DHC to either Morrigan or Felicia and kill most characters in a single combo.

Another amazing trick JJJ uses is his setup with Morrigan on an entering opponent. I had to rewind the video several times to figure out what was happening: hard fireball, cancel into flight, air medium fireball, land, jump, airdash + call Felicia assist, air command throw. It looks nearly inescapable, regardless of what the entering character does. Of course, Sentinel could just Hard Drive to stay safe, but he's often the exception due to that super's almost total invincibility. Regardless, JJJ reminds us how every character in MVC3 can be deadly.

My MvC3 Experience

I had done a bit of drinking in Vegas before I first picked up Marvel vs Capcom 3. For the first few seconds of my first match, I had extreme trouble defending properly and landing any hits on my opponent. Within a short time, however, I completely got the hang of it. In fact, I'll take this opportunity to brag that I went on a seven- or eight-game win streak. I eventually lost to a little kid who was no more than ten years old, because I picked some characters that I'd never used before and took it easy on him... or at least that's what I tell myself.

Anyway, you can find all sorts of details about the game system on Shoryuken. I really liked the way that combos strung together fairly easily. The combo system is similar to Tastunoko vs Capcom, but I couldn't really get combos like A, c.A, B, c.B, C, c.C to work. I'm pretty sure I was just timing my inputs improperly. Launchers were a little finicky as well. Some characters seemed to consistently land launchers only after a sweep, while other characters could not do so. With more practice, I'm sure it will become clear as to what combos work consistently.

As for characters, my favorites were Felicia, Morrigan, and Hulk. Once I got over my constant urge to do Felicia's MvC2 "Sand Kick" super (which she doesn't have in this game), I started to do really well with her. She can chain into a sweep, then combo that into a multi-hit rushing super. Her launcher works really well after a sweep, as well. She has a super that summons a fellow catwoman who attacks randomly, like Yatterman-2's robot in TvC.

I found Morrigan's arcing dashes really useful and tricky, much like in TvC. Her jumping Exchange is her aerial multi-hit drill attack. She had a Level 3 Super that did a ton of damage and could even be comboed into in mid air.

Hulk had some nasty tricks. He could air combo into a final hit that would bounce the opponent off the ground. Hulk could then land and OTG with a Super. His standing C had super armor and canceled into his launcher, which could then be canceled into his falling rocks Super. Though he wasn't very mobile, he did some serious damage.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game and found the characters to all feel unique and fun. I had a bit of difficulty mounting an offense with the many characters that had no air dashes, but as Hulk showed, mobility was not totally necessary to be dangerous on offense. I'm actually hoping to see another slow/strong character and a true grappler in the game. There were some brutal grab-Super resets in TvC that might also work well here. Obviously, I'm really looking forward to this game, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for GGPO online code.