Taokaka

Overview

Taokaka is a furiously aggressive Wild Swing character with a lot of movement, a lot of unpredictability, and some very silly attack names. If she can stay in her preferred ranges, she has a good chance of closing out the game with her solid combos, great mixups, and excellent ultras. If she CAN’T stay in her preferred range, she’ll burn out her resources trying to get there.

In order to play Taokaka, you get to R3 and throw cards off the top of your deck. That’s it. Thanks for reading my Taokaka guide, everyone!

Credits and Resources

I wrote this guide after an extensive conversation with DarkSightBlind on how to run Taokaka. You can find that conversation here. I’m not familiar with any other Taokaka guides out there, and not a lot of other people play her, but if you’re looking for other perspectives on the character you might ask Taxi. There’s plenty more experts over on the Breakfast Club Discord, so check there first.

No, Wait, Come Back

Taokaka is a Wild Swing character, and her character ability is a huge part of her gameplan. Putting Before movement onto every attack she initiates with can be extremely powerful - on-curve things become dramatically above-curve, and slow, guard-y options can become almost unavoidable. Because she can fix her positioning with her optional Retreat effect (at the cost of a force that, admittedly, might be difficult to spend), she’s not at risk of whiffing by getting too close. On top of that, the Before trigger means she can stack and order her movement effects to hit in odd positions and exert a surprising amount of control over where she lands … sometimes.

Taokaka’s ability only working on offense, combined with her ability to fling herself into odd positions that she doesn’t expect, means that it’s crucial to maintain defensive options for emergency situations. Her Exceed mode helps mitigate some of her positioning weirdness with its Overdrive trigger, and it allows her to use her Before movement on ANY strike she initiates, not just Wild Swings. However, her ultras are so strong that it’s tough to justify Exceeding. Use it if you don’t trust your Wild Swings or if you need to chase down a troublesome zoner, but if you play your positions well, you shouldn’t need it.

Range: Listen, we’re gonna be spending the rest of the guide talking about Taokaka’s ranges. If you need a shortcut, it’s “R3, but almost anywhere will do in the right board state”. It’s a LOT more complicated than that, of course. I didn’t just put the credits early in this guide as a joke - more than almost any other guide, it’s important that you have some visual examples of how Taokaka moves around. Please check the video so I don’t have to explain all the ways she can “do this and then this and then THIS” to land a Dive or something. One other note that’s actually useful to mention early on is that Taokaka thrives on a cornered opponent, because every single one of her attacks hit as long as she’s anywhere from R1 to R3.

Gauge and Force: Taokaka has incredible ultras, a reasonable Exceed mode, and consistent enough attacks that she can probably comfortably afford a couple payouts a game. Because of how strong your ultras are, your gauge is a precious resource, so you’re often going to be Changing Cards from hand. Conveniently, that’s not where your offense is coming from anyway. Change Cards when you need to swap out your BOOSTS, not your attacks.

Note: Almost all of your attacks work (and work better) as Wild Swings, which means it’s more important to know what they do and how they work than when exactly you would select them as attacks, because you probably aren’t “selecting” them. If you see one of these attacks in your hand, it’s a boost by default, although many of your attacks have utility from hand in the right circumstances. Learning these circumstances is important to good Taokaka play. In general, though, don’t fall into the trap of “this card is always an attack, this card is always a boost”. That doesn’t work for Wild Swing characters.

Note 2: I ask once again that you please check out the video guide that DarkSightBlind and I made, linked here. It REALLY doesn’t help to read about Taokaka’s positional play without visual examples. Do yourself a favor and see how they work on the board and use the guide as a reference after the interactions make sense to you.

Specials

	Cat Spirit One!: A decent Cross-like that keeps you at a range you like. Also your only force special, which means you can invalidate it on a Wild Swing to dig for a different option. You’re unlikely to spend any force on its Hit effect unless you’re trying to break something with 3 Guard - they exist, but they’re not common. Otherwise, Cat Spirit One is expensive enough as-is. Feral Fury! is a solid tempo boost for a character who hits as reliably off a Wild Swing as Taokaka does. You generally aren’t digging for Cat Spirit One, and you’re perfectly happy to play it (or invalidate it) if it comes up in a Wild Swing, but if Feral Fury is in your hand you’re probably boosting it if you have nothing better to do. It’s actually only slightly card-positive because you’re striking, but seeing more of your deck is a good thing.
	Trick Edge!: One of your many ways to beat Sweep and Focus when used at R3 as a Wild Swing. Has some pretty crazy trigger-stacking tech - as long as you can get to the corner sometime during your character ability’s Before effect (often by crossing your opponent up and then retreating), you’re very likely going to be in range to hit. Also works perfectly fine at R1 from hand as a defensive callout. It’s situational, so if you need force this might be it. Surprise! is your preferred way to get away from scary R1 characters while still maintaining pressure. It’s a bit too expensive to be “force-efficient”, but the tempo afforded by getting back to your preferred range and striking before your opponent can respond can’t be underestimated. You’re bad on defense where you’re good on offense, so you need boosts like this.
	Kitty Litter Special!: A fairly safe above-curve option that refunds itself and gains Advantage. Be very careful throwing this from hand at range, because there’s nothing stopping your opponent from just mashing Sweep on defense at R4. If it comes up as a Wild Swing, you’re likely getting a refund and you might wind up in a slightly awkward position. Most valuable as a way to stay aggressive when you’re out at R5, which actually happens fairly regularly given your positional weirdness. Pounce! is a high-tempo positional fix to get you where you need to be to Wild Swing effectively. Usually, that’s R2 or R3, but depending on what’s left in your deck you could be Wild Swinging from anywhere. Also useful to confirm a higher-value play from hand if you have a setup that needs to go off right NOW.
	Double Paw Strike!: When used as a Wild Swing, it’s basically an Assault that hits really hard but still doesn’t beat Sweep. If you happen to Wild Swing it at R1, you still get the bonus Power because you can order your triggers. Not particularly useful if you happen to find it in your hand, but 6 damage is 6 damage. Cat Jump! is your only boost that DOESN’T cause a strike. It’s essentially a less-flexible Run, and is usually reserved for getting yourself out of the corner. Because you’re not striking, be sure to have something to defend with where you land - this has come up a couple of times, but you’re not great on defense in the positions you’re good on offense, so be very careful passing the turn at R3.
	Slashy Slashy!: An all-around great card that lets you dig for options, deal solid damage, and make space. Note that the Push effect is an After, so you don’t even need to hit your opponent, allowing you to dodge counterattacks when Wild Swinging at R3 by using your character ability to back up, whiff, and set R5 or R6. Very difficult to get away from when used as a Wild Swing at R1, and even useful as a defensive option from hand at R2 to deal with Sweep. Let’s Play! is a decent way to confirm a hit off a Wild Swing, but it’d need to be a pretty special Wild Swing to give up Slashy Slashy. Generally best outside your preferred range - giving yourself a second chance to hit an R4 I’mma Beat the Crap Outta You is definitely worth the risk if the odds are in your favor - say, both copies in your last ten cards?
	Hexa Edge!: An incredibly strong ultra that usually wins combat, shoves your opponent into the perfect position for Wild Swing offense, and gives you Advantage to capitalize on that positioning immediately. A hallmark of your kit, and a particularly powerful EX attack, on offense or defense. Meanwhile, if you’re not gunning for this attack anytime soon, it’s often a good source of force for Slashy Slashy. Almost Becoming Two! is something of a trap. If you’re maintaining your position well, you might not CARE what’s on top of your deck - especially not if it costs your strongest card, another force, AND another card from hand on a strike that would normally be free. If you need it to set up a different ultra at extreme range, it’s great, but if you’re already in a good position to Wild Swing, just Wild Swing and it’s more than likely to work out. Also has utility as a boost-denial tool to deal with your opponent’s extra Speed.
	Imma Beat the Crap Outta You!: A crushing midspeed that’s just slightly below curve and is even amazing at R1. Off a Wild Swing, this hits out to R5. Affordable enough to conceivably play in Exceed mode, where it’s often unbeatable. Situational, so feel free to use as force if needed. Meow I’m Serious! is a very expensive way to dramatically change the board when combined with your many Push effects. It’s also useful for dodging: odds are, whether you Wild Swung your attack or not, you can find a board state where you’re safe to land. Use it when you need space away from your opponent’s pressure to rebuild, Exceed, or set up a different payout. It’s pretty tough to justify playing this over the attack, but it has its uses. If you go for it, you’re probably looking to pair it with something specific from hand unless you’re looking for some CRAZY movement.
	Attack Meow Pow!: A bit more playable than some Astrals, but still requires setup to be useful. Has all the impracticalities of other Astrals - Taokaka isn’t usually going to take a turn off to manually reshuffle, and it can easily get Parried. Can’t be used as a Wild Swing without Almost Becoming Two, so if you’re looking to confirm it you’re going to need a cornered opponent or enough gauge to throw Attack Meow Pow during your Exceed mode. Don’t go into the game thinking you’re going to land this, but if the opportunity comes up you can often make it work. Burst is always a very strong boost if you happen to get Attack Meow Pow into your hand but don’t have the ability to land it, so go ahead and mash it if you’ve got it. Odds are, you won’t manually reshuffle in the first place, but it’s there if you do.

Normals

The strangest thing about Taokaka’s normals is that they all hit at R3 when she Wild Swings them on offense in most board states (even if you have to do some weird trigger ordering or spend a force - watch the video, guys). Dive in particular can get pretty wacky - you can usually hit with it anywhere from R1 to R6 (if for some reason you’re out that far and are still okay Wild Swinging), but you might have to count a couple times to make sure the board supports it. Not only will Dive likely hit, but you’ll likely be able to choose which side of the opponent you end up on, too.

Other fun Taokaka Wild Swing plays include R1 to R5 Spike that will land even if the opponent plays Grasp, R1 to R5 Sweeps, and R4 Focuses that dodge Sweep to win cleanly. Sweep, Focus, and Block are often things Taokaka plays from hand on defense, so if you happen to draw into any of them, think about reserving them for situations where your random positioning has disrupted your plan. Block in particular is something you’re more than willing to aggressively mulligan for - you really don’t want it in your deck, so you’ll often have it in your hand.

As for those cards’ boosts, Defend should really be reserved to confirm I’mma Beat the Crap Outta You at R1 - in every other situation, Spike is too useful as a mixup option. Light is surprisingly hard to justify as Taokaka - Sweep is a great defensive option, and in most situations her attacks are either safe enough without Light or so unsafe that Light wouldn’t confirm them - like Trick Edge. Use it if the bonus Speed will matter on your opponent’s turn; otherwise, if you’re at R2 or R3, you should probably just be Wild Swinging.

Tech, Parry, and Reading are Tech, Parry, and Reading. They’re good when they’re good. Consider Reading Spike or Grasp in the late game and then Wild Swinging - in most situations, you’ll either outspeed or underspeed them and get an easy combat win.

Assault is a solid card on everybody, but Taokaka in particular loves it. It’s a great Wild Swing on offense, but it can also be a very valuable defensive option at R3 to filter for Dives and Spikes. Backstep is fine, but you might not need it in most matchups - if you’re ever in a position you don’t want to be, retreating probably isn’t going to help you.

Cross is sort of positioning negative for you, but you frequently like to give yourself a bit of space to jump back in again, so odds are you have a variety of follow-ups available that make Crossing out very safe. Run is a useful positioning tool, but you have enough movement in your kit that it may be redundant with one or more of them. You’re not the biggest fan of being in the corner, but you can often Wild Swing your way out.

Generally, if you throw down bonus Power with Fierce, you’re looking to confirm something specific (maybe that EX Hexa Edge) from your hand - passing turn at your preferred attacking range is risky unless you have a reason to know you’re going to hit on defense. Grasp can be a solid defensive option at R1, and works very well with Almost Becoming Two to maintain R3 with Advantage.

How to Move

Your character ability has endless applications, from going above-curve to under-slowing a Sweep to deciding to whiff on purpose to dodge an important counterattack from your opponent. If you’re at R3, you should expect any attack you pull off the top of your deck (barring Block) to hit - although confirming that hit might require you to order your triggers carefully or pay a force to back up in the middle of your Before effect. One incredibly important thing to remember is that when you’re doing all that Taokaka math, you’ve already seen your opponent’s card.

Taokaka makes a remarkable amount of crucial decisions at points in the game where decisions don’t tend to happen at all. Most characters choose an attack and then follow the scripted sequence of triggers to resolve whatever interaction occurs. Taokaka breaks that flow by being able to act on more information than other characters, but only when she Wild Swings. In other words, many of the decisions she’s making are about where she’s going to land for her NEXT turn.

All of Taokaka’s attacks move either her or her opponent even before factoring in her character ability. Add in the fact that her opponent’s attack may ALSO have movement on it, and you realize how exceedingly rare it is for Taokaka to stay at R3 to throw an ideal mixup for very long. That means that many of her turns will be spent getting back to her preferred range. But remember, her character ability doesn’t work on defense, and her kit isn’t actually very good at DEFENDING at R3.

To keep this problem from compounding itself, learn to use your opponent’s turns to get back to your preferred range. Throw a defensive Grasp or R1 Dive, a Slashy Slashy, a Cross, or a Cat Spirit One to get back to where you want to be on YOUR turn so you can maintain your offense.

Resources

A core part of Exceed’s engine is that striking tends to be resource-negative. This is a bit less true for Wild Swing characters, who typically don’t diminish their hand size when they strike (although they still don’t draw for end of turn). Taokaka, like many Wild Swing characters, tends to pressure her opponent’s resources when she strikes - unless they’re willing to trust in their (likely worse) Wild Swings on defense, every Taokaka strike is going to diminish her opponent’s cards in hand while maintaining her own. To maintain that pressure, the vast majority of Taokaka’s time should be spent striking or getting back to a position where she can strike, and the vast majority of her strikes should come from her deck. That means Taokaka’s hand is for:

Paying force costs if needed
Striking with purpose-built attacks in the correct position (EX attacks, ultras, boosted setups)
Striking when you don’t want to move (the R3 mixup is still the R3 mixup)
Defensive options to deal with her opponent’s aggression
Boosts to play neutral with

Again, don’t think of your cards in an “attack vs. boost” binary - if they’re in your deck, they’re attacks by default because you’ll be Wild Swinging them and you’ll probably be happy with the result. If they’re in your hand, they’re boosts if the boosts would be useful, attacks if the attacks would be better than what you’d get Wild Swinging, and force if you need to spend force (and you often will).

Aggressively mulligan for defensive options (especially Block, which you don’t want to Wild Swing) and R1 options that won’t hit from opening positions. The more of them you have in hand, the more confident you can be in your Wild Swings connecting, and the more confident you can be in your ability to fight your way out of the weird positions you’ll end up in.

Remember that depending on what your opponent is threatening and where you are, “defensive option” can be pretty broad. Grasp works just fine if all you want is to set R3, and Slashy Slashy (at R2) or Trick Edge (at R1) is great if you’re only worried about dodging Sweep. Remember, you’re bad on defense at R3, so whiffing Cross or Cat Spirit One is sometimes the best option you have there. Intentionally whiffing is often the right choice as Taokaka if it means avoiding damage - you build gauge easily and have strong ultra payouts, so you’re not so starved for damage that you’ll accept trading down if you don’t need to.

Offense

Depending on the matchup, you’re likely Wild Swinging on turn 1 if you have a lot of R1 options in your hand, or playing Pounce in order to get to your preferred range and THEN Wild Swing. Your ability often works just fine at R1 and R2, so don’t worry too much about maintaining the absolute perfect position if you have reason to believe your opponent can’t stand up to pressure at a certain range - just remember that you need to have a plan for where you end up.

You have the privilege of having mixups from a variety of positions, but many of them only work as Wild Swings. If you’re initiating from hand, make absolutely sure you’re not telegraphing too strongly. If your opponent sees you throw a card from hand at R4, they know for sure they can Sweep you unless you’re playing to evade and waste their options. Throwing that same card from hand at R4 in the corner suddenly becomes much scarier because Trick Edge is online. Trick Edge enables similar mixups from hand with Grasp at R1. Because Taokaka will frequently be forced to strike in less-than-ideal positions, it’s extremely important to conserve your cards that enable mixups in those positions: you never know when you might wind up there.

Take a look at what your opponent can do with their gauge versus what you can do with yours, and evaluate which of you trading would benefit more. Among the many decisions Taokaka is sometimes allowed to make after cards are revealed during a strike is whether she even wants to hit: do not be afraid to intentionally whiff a Wild Swing in order to dodge an important attack, stay out of a scary position, or deprive your opponent of resources. It’s not something you want to be doing often, but having the choice is very powerful.

When you get three gauge, start evaluating what payout you want to go for. If you have an ultra in your hand (or better yet, an EX), the decision is sort of made for you. However, if you haven’t seen an ultra yet, it’s still in your deck to be used as a Wild Swing, so the decision may STILL sort of be made for you. Exceed if the cards you currently have in your hand would benefit immensely from the positioning advantage that your Exceed mode gives you, if you invalidated your ultras on unlucky Wild Swings early on, or if you absolutely need to stay away from a threatening part of the board. Otherwise, your ultras are usually better buys.

Counterplay

Most of the counterplay to Taokaka involves either outstatting her with strong boosts that make her hesitant to strike, or taking advantage when she lands somewhere she isn’t expecting. For the former, Taokaka can always strike evasively to limit the value her opponent can get out of their boosts, forcing them to either risk whiffing or accepting minimal value for their investment. Speed boosts in particular give Taokaka trouble - if you have Tech or Parry available, those are your targets.

For the latter, Taokaka always has another way out of a bad position - a boost, a strike, or a combination of both might not always get her where she wants to go, but they’ll almost always get her somewhere different. Where she struggles is when her opponent positions themselves in a way that preemptively limits her escape options before she’s even IN a bad spot.

There’s a specific board state that Taokaka really struggles with, and it’s when she’s near an opponent who’s one or two spaces away from the corner. Backing up even slightly with Pounce before moving in fixes the issue, as does striking with Slashy Slashy, but maintaining aggression into an almost-cornered opponent can be difficult.

Preserve your movement options (both strikes and boosts) that will allow you to escape the corner that you’ll occasionally wind up in accidentally. It happens, and it’s not the end of the world, but don’t wind up there without a way to escape. If an opponent is forcing you into those bad spots because they know where your kit will land you, that’s information you can use to inform your mixup.

Credits and Resources (This Time for Real)