[MATCH-UP] Nightmare

Heaton

A Soul in the Purgatory
Discuss the Nightmare match-up here. A guide can be found here, and the string defense guide can be found here.
 
Nightmare is a highly damaging character, but slow and unsafe. He relies on long ranged attacks to open his opponent up for his rushdown game, which is where he gets his crazy damage from. To compensate for his lack of speed and unsafeness, his attacks usually have good pushback, which fortunately won't stop Raph from punishing them. This isn't the best matchup for Night, because if he trades blows at long range he will lose, to get any damage he has to be very agressive and rushdown without making use of his long ranged tools.

On close range, like any other slow character, he strugles with Raph's fast interrupters like 6BB, 2A, 2K etc. Everytime he tries retreating, he risks eating 6BB BE on CH. From mid to close range, his iaga is his most threatening move, but it's a high. I'd say this matchup is about even, would be in Raph's favour if Night didn't get much bigger rewards for his correct moves and reads.
 
Nightmare is a highly damaging character, but slow and unsafe. He relies on long ranged attacks to open his opponent up for his rushdown game, which is where he gets his crazy damage from. To compensate for his lack of speed and unsafeness, his attacks usually have good pushback, which fortunately won't stop Raph from punishing them. This isn't the best matchup for Night, because if he trades blows at long range he will lose, to get any damage he has to be very agressive and rushdown without making use of his long ranged tools.

On close range, like any other slow character, he strugles with Raph's fast interrupters like 6BB, 2A, 2K etc. Everytime he tries retreating, he risks eating 6BB BE on CH. From mid to close range, his iaga is his most threatening move, but it's a high. I'd say this matchup is about even, would be in Raph's favour if Night didn't get much bigger rewards for his correct moves and reads.

Pretty accurate summary. As long as you keep punishing, interrupting, and killing his stance entries, you should do fine. I will say, however, that a life lead is CRUCIAL to this MU (NM's CE lol) to provide Raph a safety net in case your normal strategies don't work as well as you planned. Also, you cannot just play the spacing and punishing game. Even if you prevent Nightmare from rushing you, he is still dangerous with long range horizontals and verticals that are very strong on block and can be trouble to inexperienced people. Miscalculate the range and you will eat quite an amount of damage. They are very slow though; therefore, the more experience you gain, the easier it becomes to recognize those moves, stay out of range, duck, or step them.

Do not attempt to punish 3A. He does have a low mid mixup but just stay still and wait to see which one he does and block and punish accordingly. Train yourself to recognize 1A starting animation and duck. If you see a ball of lightning, tech jump it. If does 1aK, he will whiff and you can punish. Whether he does 1A with or without GS entry, any move i15 or faster will hit him.

Do not let him have GS A as it can lead to a big damage combo. Block and punish or stuff the stance entry without activating the GI.

Learn to duck and punish the second hit of 4KK.
 
Be wary of WS B - your WS B. Very high risk, little reward. Don't use it. If you punish, don't get ahead of yourself.
Goes double for FC 3B outside of punishment.

These are two characters who can't start aggression at their own pace, but only one of them has 'oops you're dead' combos. Be perfect. Be consistent.
 
Oh and about 22B: Unfortunately, Raphael can't punish it that hard in SCV nor will his B+K attack land since Nightmare is crouched after performing the move. Just avoiding throwing out too many verticals and block it. You can force NM to block your 236B as he has no i12 move to punish it and suffers guard meter dmg.
 
2A against GS, 1K/FC 3B against NSS.

2A works for all stance entries but you might have to delay it since NM is sometimes out of range for a second. For NSS, you need to be more careful. Those moves could fail if NM does NSS bA, which has TC and TS. The safest way to clear NSS (at least for 3B) is FCB.
 
2A works for all stance entries but you might have to delay it since NM is sometimes out of range for a second. For NSS, you need to be more careful. Those moves could fail if NM does NSS bA, which has TC and TS. The safest way to clear NSS (at least for 3B) is FCB.

yep. You'll TC under NSS b:A in that setup and STILL have enough time to score a 4(B) combo before NM recovers.
 
Oh and about 3AA. 3B Prep BB does not work consistently here since the second hit pushes Raph back and can cause the Prep BB to whiff after 3B. 66K is my preferred punisher here since it looks boss and is easy to buffer. Blocking 3AA is a good opportunity to knock NM down and land some mixups from wakeup. You may only do 24 dmg but 3B only does 18 if the followup hits whiff. There are other options such as 236B but they are harder to input quickly.
 
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