I’ve been speaking in fairly abstract terms about how Marth “limits options” and needs to “manage space,” and although I’ve gone into some detail with examples, I haven’t really touched on HOW you go about executing this. Two essential concepts that assist in achieving this goal are zoning and threatening. Both of these concepts revolve around HOW you use your attacks strategically in order to create opportunities for yourself. A lot of newer players (and unfortunately, even a lot of not-so-new players) don’t grasp these concepts: when they throw out attacks, their only goal is to hit the opponent. Hitting the opponent isn’t bad, of course (Although, in Smash, sometimes hitting people is disadvantageous, which is all the more reason you should pay attention to me), but there’s a lot more strategy behind attacking than just that.
Let’s get into some definitions and discussion, shall we? Keep in mind, these are my own definitions, tailored to what I am trying to say. I’ve heard conflicting definitions for what “zoning” actually means in a traditional fighter sense, so if I am using the term improperly, try to just bear with me and understand what I’m trying to say, rather than how I say it.
Zoning: throwing out an attack with the intent of creating a zone of control that your opponent must respect
The major implication here is that you do not need to connect with an attack for it to be worth using. Attacks aren’t solely meant to hit the opponent, but rather, they can also be used to influence and control the opponent… by banking on the fact that they don’t want to get hit.
In order to zone with an attack, it is necessary to space it a little bit further away, so your opponent can’t easily punish you for whiffing. If you try to use a zoning attack and you space it too close to your opponent, it’s not called zoning, it’s called overextending, and it completely defeats the purpose of forcing your opponent’s hand safely. However, you still need to be close enough to your opponent so that your attack actually accomplishes something, otherwise you are just swinging at the air for no reason. It’s up to you to figure out what these spacings are.
When you try to zone, you shouldn’t obsess too much over the chances of the opponent getting hit by the attack. In fact, I almost feel that with zoning, it’s the opponent’s choice whether or not they get hit. Whenever you zone, you’re ideally forcing your opponent into a lose-lose where you either get a hit or you get stage control.
A good way to think of zoning is that you’re aiming your attack at your opponent’s options, rather than your opponent himself. Zoning is an extremely valuable tool because it allows you to SAFELY find and create opportunities with your attacks without overextending.
A great example of zoning is the use of Marth’s fair. It’s not a very spammable move because it doesn’t interact very well with grounded opponents (it can, usually whenever they run into it, which is why you have to zone with it), it’s hard to aim at an opponent because it’s pretty laggy on startup and needs to be hit with a precisely timed swinging hitbox, and it’s even fairly punishable after he throws it out. However, whenever he spaces the move so that it’s safe to throw out and abandons the urgency to actually LAND the fair, it becomes an amazing tool for limiting your opponent’s aerial options and a decent tool for limiting their ground options.
Zoning is particularly pertinent to Marth for two primary reasons: 1) he is VERY bad at overextending, and zoning helps prevent you from going too deep, and 2) his sword is extremely good at it because its huge disjointed range almost guarantees that he will not lose the direct exchange.
Threatening: conditioning and tricking the opponent into expecting a certain attack or option from you
The major implication here is that you do not need to even throw out an attack to be able to gain advantage from that attack. Just the fact that you HAVE the attack available to you will force your opponent to factor it into their decision-making. Whenever the opponent starts to respect your threats, you adapt and do something else. For (a very simple) example, let’s say your opponent has five options. You establish threat to scare them away from using three of them, and then you pick your choice of the remaining two to cover.
Threatening is extremely complicated because its a lot more tied into the RPS-style guessing games of conditioning and being able to read your opponent. You have to be able to get a feel for how much they actually respect your threat. There are too many different ways to threaten that I can’t even begin to describe them all. I will, however, point out two things to keep in mind:
Marth needs to learn how to effectively establish and capitalize on threat because it’s one of his best ways to get the ball rolling. Because Marth cannot brute-force his opportunities, he needs to be able to use the threat of his sword to set up traps for his opponent, otherwise he will need to rely on lucky guesses to land his initiation tools (e.g. grabs, strong attacks).