Bryan counterplay (Tekken 7)

General Counter Gameplay

Bryan’s gameplan revolves around fishing for CHs. Every good Bryan player will try to mixup their timing and exploit your tendency to press should they find it. Although many moves leave him at minus frames, the threat of a CH follow up keeps people still and allows Bryan to continue pressing even at a disadvantage. The general strategy against Bryan is to know when to press and when not to. It’s generally hard for a Bryan player to sustain a pressure playstyle because he severely lacks poking tools that leave him only at a small disadvantage on block. In many of his moves, it’s going to be your turn after you block something that has a follow up because many of these moves often leave him at -5 on block or greater.

After blocking a first hit, he is left at a heavy disadvantage and have you gain the opportunity to do the mix up. If they don’t adjust immediately, you will have a lot of free mixup opportunities until they have enough. For instance, if he stops at df2 and does not commit to the follow up, he will be left at -6. You can then do a low, slow + on block move, or do a mid check that would leave you at a small disadvantage so you could sidestep after. In this situation, the moves he can sidestep are limited and most of his panic moves are too slow to come out. If he does ff2 after for example, moves up to 14f will stop him but anything further will be armored. If he does orbital, many mids will net you a float combo. Try to observe what he does next time you block df2 because they might try to follow up with the extension. If we still aren’t sure if he will commit and want to be a bit safer, it’s a good idea to sidestep guard or delay our moves. This will change the timing of your moves, beat some of his options, and make it harder for the Bryan player to get a counter. If we only decide to play his guessing game, we become predictable and the risk reward goes in his favor because he only needs to CH once to deal massive amounts of damage. If you followed everything so far, Bryan will be forced to constantly take risks, try to constantly time his moves, and have him back off on times he won’t need to. Very good players will adjust to each other quickly but at that point, it’s a matter of adjusting to the adjustment and so on.