Tough Love Arena/Garlic/Matchups

Garlic

Overview

Combos

Strategy / Counterstrategy

Matchups

Full Frame Data

Disclaimer: This is a community written page and may contain opinions that not all players may agree with. Use at your own discretion.

Noodle

Neutral

• Mix up how you deal with Soup.
• Loop for habits with Whip.

Offense

• Try to keep the corner for as long as possible.
• Sweep Dash can beat Frenzy alone a large amount of the time.
• Pay attention to what Noodle does after a spaced Sweep.

Defense

• Dash is a useful wakeup option versus Soup oki that can force Noodle to go for more honest setplay.

Beef

Neutral

• Use the threat of Sweep as a whiff punish to Heavy Punch to get closer to Beef.
• Dashis a relatively noncommital answer to Lemon as long a Beef doesn’t have meter or if Garlic is far enough away.
• Mixup when you try to walk in on Beef, when you try to whiff punish with Sweep, and when you try to make hard callouts with Jump and Roundhouse.

Offense

• Keep your offense as varied as possible.
• Stagger pressure is useful for beating out Parry.

Defense

• Be ready to react to Gutpunch > Lemon.

Onion

Neutral

• Play footsies well.
• Don’t use Jump very much if at all.

Offense

• Keep your offense as varied as possible.
• Stagger pressure is useful for beating out Parry.

Defense

• Sweep is a useful counterpoke versus overextensions.

Rice

Neutral

• Walk and block to push Rice to the corner.
• Jump is useful if you can space it right outside of Rice’s 5L range.

Offense

• Be use pressure that can keep you in even if Rice Teleports out or play to cover Teleport itself
• Pay attention to what Rice does after a spaced Sweep.
• During a corner knockdown, you can Dash into the corner to make Teleport irrelevant.

Defense

• Look for when they try to use frametraps and punish with Backflip.

Pork

Neutral

• Use the threat of Sweep as a whiff punish to Heavy Punch to get closer to Pork.
• Mixup when you try to walk in on Pork, when you try to whiff punish with Sweep, and when you try to make hard callouts with Jump and Roundhouse.

Offense

• Use tight frame traps and cross ups to limit Pork’s ability to reliably Chop out of pressure.

Defense

• Be unpredictable when you have to guess.
• Leverage Backflip RC and your walk speed to get out of block pressure.

Garlic

• It's a mirror match.

Neutral

• Having good footsies will be important.
• Don’t use Jump very much if at all.

Offense

• Stagger pressure can be useful for beating out Backflip as a whole.
• Keep your pressure varied.

Defense

• Be unpredictable to make getting control easier.
• Sweep is useful for stuffing out most options involving Dash as long as Garlic is spaced out.

Resources

Garlic: The Way of the Dab

Garlic Combo Guide

How to Play Garlic - Tough Love Arena