Mario Strikers Charged strategy discussion

[JaredL]

Pretty much all of my frivolous free time is spent playing this game. I'm rather addicted to it.

After the brag thread, I thought I would start a thread for strategy discussion.

Here's how I play:
Wario or Bowser Jr. up top, bones on each wing, toad in the back. My strategy changes by opponent but I usually have a quick-strike approach. I have 3 fast guys so I can often get hits and steals and quickly create a reasonable chance at the other end. I probably am about 50/50 on goals by bones mostly with the deke and wario with the shot. It depends of course on which stadium it is and the opponent.

By far the toughest opponent for me is someone who has a big shooter up top to whom they use the lob pass for the shot. I do fairly good job of getting into position to pass the ball clear when they do this, and when it works I often create a chance of my own, but I do frequently get caught out and they get good shots. Other than these guys and people who use a very similar style to mine, I tend to do ok. Guys who use the boo deke to score a lot do give me some headaches as well.

One exception is games at the Sand Tomb. I have a lot of problems there. I think it's by design. The sand tomb is pretty much the perfect counter to my strategy because you can't make runs down the wings with bones very well. That field is designed for teams with good passing and shooting. There I try to just charge the ball and get it to Wario to shoot or dry bones for the skill shot. The dump also sucks somewhat. I do ok there but I also hate playing at the wasteland. It's extremely frustrating.

I used to play with boo, bones, hammer, and luigi before getting completely destroyed by someone who used a power guy up top with 3 bones. I could get nothing going whatsoever and decided to try it out even though it felt gimmicky playing with 3 bones. I decided that Wario was the best option because of his passing ability in addition to the big shot. This would help the bones get deke goals. Later I switched in toad because most of my weakness in the back is the lob passes which toad does just as well with. Having a playmaker back there helps me hit them on the break better.

I'd be interesting in hearing thoughts from others on how they play and maybe we can share ideas on how to beat certain types of people.