Iron Man•Tony Stark

Most MARVEL Tōkon characters have a gameplan. Iron Man has a movement system that his gameplan hangs off. Free Flight (hold up in the air) and Multi-Dash (a fast directional air dash) are the two things every other move in his kit points at, and once you internalise that, the character stops feeling like a zoner and starts feeling like a rushdown character who happens to shoot.

That is also why he is a difficulty spike. Every Iron Man decision is really two decisions — what to press, and what to cancel it into. New Iron Man players throw Unibeam and wait. Good Iron Man players throw Unibeam, cancel into flight before it even finishes, and are already somewhere else when the opponent reacts to the beam.

Iron Man does not want a range. He wants an angle. The whole point of Free Flight is that no position is committed, so play him as a character constantly relocating rather than one holding ground.

Neutral. Open with Smart Missiles. They track, and — crucially — Iron Man can keep moving while they travel, so the missiles do the work of pinning the opponent while you take a better angle. Follow with Unibeam as the straight-line threat and Repulsor Shot as the chip that builds pressure; repeating the Repulsor Shot button adds shots, and it cancels into flight like everything else.

Offense. Iron Man's pressure is not a blockstring, it is a series of approaches. Come in behind Smart Missiles, land a normal, cancel a Skill into Multi-Dash to cross up or reset your position, then start again. Because the cancel is what ends the sequence rather than the move's own recovery, the opponent rarely gets a clean turn back.

Defense. Iron Flash is the reversal — invincible on the rise, and it cancels into flight, so even a blocked one can be escaped from rather than punished. That combination is unusual and it is the main reason Iron Man survives pressure at all. Outside of it, use Guard Cancel Dodge to buy space and get back to the air, which is where he actually functions.

Resource. The Ultimate is a two-stage decision. Champion Buster calls in the armour, and holding attack spends 50 more Skill Gauge for Unibeam Overdrive, an enormous beam that only exists after that Ultimate. So 100 gauge is the entry price and 150 is the full cash-out — check the gauge before you commit, because a Champion Buster you cannot follow up is a fraction of the payoff.

Iron Man has fourteen entries in his command list, but five of them decide the character.

One practical warning for team building in MARVEL Tōkon: the Vital Gauge is shared, so Iron Man's fragility is your whole team's fragility. If he is on point, have a character behind him with a reliable reversal — an incoming Grounded Tag-In against a strong offensive team is where a lot of Iron Man rounds actually end.