The Min Min Counter?

by Doc – Owner, Founder, Lacks the Ability to Parry Unless Caffeinated

I’ve trained four Pit amiibo over the course of my time with Smash Ultimate. The first three were miserable failures, and each of them insisted on throwing out attacks when no opponents were nearby. I cry everytime.

But last night, while I was procrastinating on studying for my Criminal Law final, I trained my fourth Pit. I trained this Pit differently than the rest: I used the Moonwalk Method on the ground with some Upperdash Arm and Down Tilt, and focused on Up Air juggling in the air. Admittedly, I didn’t bother to reference our Pit guide. It’s a lot more fun for me if I train the amiibo blind.

The result was a hyper-aggressive Pit who, like most Pit amiibo, tends to chain together his aerials very effectively. If he gets one hit in, he’ll get two more off the original. He’s an up-close fighter who sometimes has a hard time closing the gap between him and his opponent (which is why I slotted in Upperdash Arm) but can capitalize on any opportunity once he gets in. He’s a pretty normal Pit, as far as I can tell.

The Min Min Theorycraft

Concurrently, I’ve been theorycrafting about what will bring down Min Min. Most trainers seem to think that she’ll be an automatic high tier, and she certainly seems to give the super-heavies at the top of the amiibo tier list a hard time. Min Min is a frightening threat towards the ground-based amiibo opponents that dominate the meta because she’s the one character designed to dominate the ground more than anyone else (except for, say, Little Mac, but his frame data is so poor he’s a non-issue). It’s fair to think that she’ll put up a hard matchup for high tiers down the line like Kazuya, Bowser and King K. Rool.

I think, personally, that Min Min is going to have a hard time against more low-tiers because of their archetypes. Low tiers are typically faster and more aerial, and combo-based. If they get in, they can capitalize on at least a few hits. They’re typically low tiers because they don’t survive as long as heavies, and their AI has other shortcomings that keep them from KOing easily.

Pit fits into that box, but doesn’t have the drawbacks of other low tiers. He’s the second-most aerial high tier (behind Lucas), and his kit allows him to evade Min Min’s attacks effectively. He KOs off of many of his aerials, and his repeated multihits can break most defenses. In theory, this is exactly what would be needed to give Min Min a hard time.

I’ve been testing this, too: as of right now, of the 18 matches I’ve been running against various Min Mins that I have access to including my own and the ones submitted for Amiibo Analysis, every single match has gone down to either last-hit with a Min Min victory, or a victory for my Pit. When the Min Min is consistently parrying nearly everything, she tends to go last hit and win about two-thirds of the time (shout-out to Leeya’s Chatime, who beat me on Amiibots). When she doesn’t have that uber-defensive parrying, she loses because Pit’s multihits chop up her shields and force her into the air where she’s weakest.

This is obviously a small data set, and it’s only my Pit. I might have a good or unique Pit, or the pool of ~5 Min Mins that I’ve tested against may not be varied enough to derive results from. I could go get more Min Mins, but I do still have that Criminal Law final to study for.

Testing the Theory

To further test my theory on the low tiers, I’m running a tournament in the Amiibo Patients Discord server that’ll use the “Baton Pass” tournament structure:

“Baton Pass” maximizes the likelihood that we’ll see Min Mins going up against low tiers by requiring low tiers be used in the first match, and the loser will be allowed to have a Min Min in the second and third match. This guarantees that for every set containing a Min Min submission we’ll get at least one match with a Min Min against a low tier amiibo. It’s the ideal situation for prototyping matchups (although Pit isn’t legal in the tournament), and it’ll make for a more interesting tournament video.

What do you think? Does Pit have a chance at being the Min Min counter we’ve been looking for?