Keep Cage the hell away from you, but stop zoning when he has meter, he will attempt Red Kick wich is subject to full combo punishment. Use a combo that ends with a knock back. Repeat.

Sindel is Cage Cryptonite.

Well, with Kitana you can keep away from him and throw gazillion of fans and when he gets close square wave boost to the other side of the screen.

Like Zero said, it's also good to bait his enhanced shadow kick and Kitana can punish it with massive meterless combos.

Finally, if you get caught into his block string game, Kitana's d+1 is a super good anti-pressure tool and it has a special hitbox too.

Finally, those gazillions of thrown fans will build you meter so you should have a breaker as an S.O.S. solution.

Thanks for the great advice and strategies guys, really appreciate you guys taking the time to offer some assistance.









I played this Cage player online when I picked Sheeva yesterday and even though I won, I felt powerless most of the fight. I had to rely exclusively on running, fireballs, and enhanced command grabs, I did combos here and there but he's took quick to go toe toe with for me when I have Sheeva.

I'm going to have to utilize your strategy a bit more, I don't usually play keepaway or zoner, but it seems to be the only way to cope with his madness.


Sindel is a good option now that you mention her, I might pick up Noob or Kano too, they seem like good counters for Johhny Cage as well. Out of all the girls, I think Sindel's the only one I haven't really gotten into that much, she's cool though.





For our rematch I ironically picked Kitana because I had previously learned some nasty stuff with her, I didn't run a lot but whenever he started trying to block stun I went back to doing that fan rage as I like to call it.




I only play keep away with Kitana when people have block stun combos or try to zone me out, I hate playing keep away to be honest, to get some space from my oppoent sure, but I don't like to rely on it too much, Cage is one of the only characters I don't bother going toe to toe with like I used to try a while ago and I actually stopped using him much because I'm not a fan of block stun combos, I just would like to be able to punish that nonsense with a full combo, pokes are nice, but it's just so tedious.


I just learned a 41% combo with Kitana the other day, it uses one bar of meter, but it's not bad. I didn't get to pull it off in that fight though, I swear Kitana's combos consist of 90% fans, 10% melee attacks


Thanks so much for the advice guys, you both are awesome

The fight with Cage is :

Keep him out and you win. Let him in and he wins.

Its that simple.His achilles heal is that he has no way to consistantly get in without doing very unsafe things.

Well, that's the thing, certain characters just force you to play differently and unless your character has a rushdown game as good as Mr. Sunglasses it's better to stay away.

Btw, it's a sin to use a meter with Kitana to get a 41% combo.

EDIT: Went way off topic so I erased the 2nd part of the post. Sorry!

I play Cage a lot and what gives me the most problems are low pokes that prevent me from getting in in the first place. Basically play Cage as IF you were using Mileena, just down 4 or use whatever is your characters best down poke (in terms of range and speed). If a Cage player starts up the forceball trap stuff just duck and uppercut after the first forceball wiffs. If u really wanna play dirty make sure you dont duck until he's about to do the force ball (so basically fuzzy guard here) because if you just sit there crouch blocking he can finish his F3, 3, B3 string which ends with an overhead and frame advantage for him. Also if he's doing the F3,3 or F3,2 and then down 1 or 3 trap after the down 1 or 3 I'm pretty sure you can jump out.

Of course avoiding him and zoning him out works too, but I agree thats not always the funnest way to play, but it is a legit strategy. Keep in mind tho if your back is near a corner EXPECT the red flash kick. Normally i won't just throw it out if its gonna knock the character out of the corner or across the screen because that doesn't help me.

And yeah Noob, Sub Zero, Kitana, Mileena, Sindel, and Reptile are all terrible match ups for johnny cage. Ermac can be pretty difficult too when played right, as can Cyber Sub and Kano. Also JC's force ball frame traps don't work on Reptile and Ermac for weird hit box reasons.

Hope this helps. Certain characters do seem to get dominated by him and Sheeva for sure has a hard time against him but kudos for playing through it.

The basic idea of Cage's pressure is that most of his moves on block leave him at either neutral or with minor frame advantage. So if you try to do much of anything like a standing jab his fast moves like f+3 will beat you out. The only thing you can do is a very fast move like a 6 frame d+1. The catch is that if he thinks you're going to poke out he'll do his d+1 or d+3 instead. However if you predict this you can continue to block, block his low poke, and now he's lost momentum.

If you're playing online it can be ridiculous. There's common "frame traps" that are really just lag strats. Like I always see online Cage's doing blocked d+3 into f+3 and blocked 2,1 into 2,1,2. That stuff is horseshit, you can d+1 interrupt that offline.

Another option are armored moves. Sheeva would be good at this with her armored low grab. Block f+3,3, if you expect a d+1 blow him up with EX low grab.

I feel as if Cage's projectiles are pretty powerful (Even the chip damage), so I would suggest keeping him at a mid range if possible. Try to stay out of shadow kick range but close enough that you can get in if you have to without being hit by a Ball.

So yea, I would say stay mid range and be very selective about picking your spots on which you move in and then move right back out.

I play Johnny a lot (it's a surprise for me in this game, since i hated him during all the series, but this game made me love him), and even when i'm not that good as him i'll tell you that the only charachter that terrifies me when i'm playing as him is Kano. Johnny has to work really really hard to get close to him.

I can't give you tips about escaping his block stun combos, because i really don't know how to, but trying to stay the hell away from him is good, but don't just spam proyectiles, use them a lot, but try to wait a little after each one, so you are able to block if he uses his red shadow kick. If fou knocked him down dash and block, he'll probably do a wake up attack, and then you'll be able to punish.

This are things that sometimes trick me when i play as Cage, but i'm not really high level player, (still learning a lot) . Still, i hope it may help you :)


PD: When playing as Sheeva, i always feel 100% powerless against Millena. There is just nothing i can do against her. Do you have any tips for facing her with Sheeva?

I'll address everyone responses later, so far some good advice, but since I'm running low on time, I'm just going to offer some quick advice to Zerosebaz and post my thoughts on the rest tomorrow



Aside from Kung Lao and Johnny Cage, I feel Mileena is one of Sheeva's worst match ups and the reason why? Mileena's teleport kick, this one move single handedly shuts down Sheeva's tele-stomp and her projectile right off the bat, two of her most effective tools because pulling off her low grab is very situational. She still has consistent use for her grab n punch, which is a great combo ended and her anti-air grab, I'd use it to punish her teleport kick instead of an uppercut, the damage is higher.

Sheeva can win this fight, but she has to play it so smart and she cannot rely on zoning because even the most novice Mileena playere quickly discovers just how potent her teleport kick is for anti-zoning.

Her best tools are rendered almose useless in this match up, unless the fireball is included in a combo, I don't recommend using it and the same goes for her ground pound.

This is a waiting game for Sheeva, she cannot effectively run away from Mileena and rushing Mileena down is ill advised as Mileena's mix ups and pokes are also better than Sheeva's.

Mileena likes to do pokes, if you can beat her to it, poke her a bit to get her blocking low, then throw out the anti-low grab and do Sheeva's back 2, 1+2, and fireball combo for around 40% damage, it's tricky, but if you can trick her, well worth it.


Mileena likes to poke a lot before she does her overhead kick combo start up, anticipate this and be ready to punish her combo attempt with an uppercut, this is a common pattern for most higher up Mileena players.

her back 3, back 4 combo is typical combo done by her, be ready after blocking the two hits to punish with any moves of your choice, but I recommend an uppercut, quickest and most probable way of punishing her.

If you can bait out her punishable kick and roll, drop your best combo on her and be extremely patient, take your shots when you can and then go back on hyper defensive mode.

Mileena will try to zone you out, duck underneath her projectiles to avoid chip damage, but be on your toes and ready to block when they inevitably try to bust out a tele-kick, assuming you will continue to not block.

Oh and stay out of the air at all times, Mileena has a tele-kick, sai, roll combo that brings the pain, Mileena owns the air in this fight.

It all comes down to how patient each player is, if Sheeva's more patient and can bait and read Mileena's tactics, this fight can be hers for the taking, but it's still an uphill battle and easily one of Sheeva's worst fights as Mileena makes 3 of Sheeva's specials ineffective most of the time(fireball, tele-stomp, ground pound).

This is just my opinion, but I hope this is helpful advice.

Thank you very much Espio! I did not expect such a detailed advice, but of course it is really really welcomed! I'm having a lot of trouble in getting good with Sheeva, but no matter what i'll keep trying because, even when it is hard to win as her, i love the charachter. I hope she will return in the next game with some buffs to her gameplay and a bigger role in the storymode :)


With that sayed, let's kick some butt with Sheeva! :P