OKAY SO
Falcon v Snake
Falcon's main combo starters are grabs and aerials, typically nair or u-air but also fair and dair as well as bair on occasion
crouch already basically invalidates grab in that falcon has to dash grab to even hope of getting snake iirc, which is a considerable nerf to say the least
so aerials become the main concern here


I'm checking frame data to be explicit here
so assuming they're perfect with stomp, it's -3 on shield, which means you can at the very least trade jab with Cypher and get a techchase
considering you can react to jump with shield, this is entirely reasonable
bair and nair have similar data but longer reach
but inevitably you can go for shield grab to beat falcon's, and then option select an ASDI down on the jab
Venom did the same thing to my jabs which really got me thinking about that
moreover CC can do some work on nair, uair, and bair
so REALLY knee is the only aerial you should worry about
but again, you can react to knee, and then you're in a shield pressure scenario, which is bad, but it's not a combo
and more importantly, the falcon begins to realize how important it is to throw a knee out, since crouch shield does a number on most of the other options here
since he has to hit the knee at a specific time due to how low your hurtbox is, the timing for a perfect shield on the knee is pretty easy, as is the timing for a u-tilt to stuff the knee
u-tilt has really good anti-air hitboxes and starts a techchase on falcon, which is HUGE
this is what I mean by conditioning, baiting, and punishing aerials from falcon with crouch
it's well within your reaction time to see a jump from the falcon and shield
if he doesn't do anything and baits this from you, grenade pull makes him afraid of you again
so SH grenade pull OOS
from there you can roll it, lob it, throw it at him, or hold it
and the mixups there are versatile and so you can cater it to your situation
you can also Cypher OOS if he's invading your space for a grab, then Cancel Cypher with nair dair or grenade since they're all relatively fast and safe options
like yes, Falcon's movement is really good against Snake but he has super limited options in neutral which you can quantify and abuse really easily
his combos also aren't as good as yours since he doesn't have a chaingrab
throw into throw is better than throw into aerial
and while he gets combos on you, you can DI and SDI them whereas he can't do that on chaingrab
SDI on nair actually invalidates it; SDI on u-air makes the followups really tricky, SDI on knee can help you survive it a lot better, SDI on stomp can put you where he doesn't expect you to be
and yeah he has mixups and they're crazy but the fact he can't just do an airtight, guaranteed combo is a big thing
and the fact he only has a handful of options in neutral, and that Snake can react to all of them, is a big thing
is it this easy in practice? no. That's why Snake doesn't win the MU
but it's doable and it makes Falcon have to play smarter than otherwise, which asks quite a bit
so recap: condition falcon by punishing everything on shield but knee, where you play passive and try to escape the pressure until they develop a habit of going for the knee more often
at that point, you eliminate the likelihood of them using other tools, which means you can start covering knee harder via stuffing it or forcing a whiff or even perfect shield f-tilt (in an ideal world)
and I guess in a sense doing that as a falcon would be considered a "mistake" but in the moment the falcon probably would believe it to be the right call, which is playing directly into the Snake's hand
if he does something else, Snake has answers for that, too
THE END