Spinal is by far my best and favorite character to play. Some things that make tough wins for me are larger characters like Agnos and Eye doll primarily because most successful blocks against them puts me out of range to easily punish, and any player who decides they want to jump the entire game.
I tend to believe that a good player will never have a bad character match up, how ever Agnos and Eye Doll are definitely a challenge.
Spinal also seems to me to struggle against any character that wants to jump the entire match, even a button masher can pose a huge threat. It seems that Spinals air to air is a little shy of par and without a capture, the best method I find is to carefully time anti air, skull Tele and pressure as much as possible.
As the resident Sadira main, your goal as Spinal is to keep her on the ground. Spinal has a few very effective tools to do this. At mid range Spinal can use jumping HP. It has incredible reach and is very good at knocking a jumping player out of the air.
If the other player is jumping at a distance… Use HK Skull. You want to release it right before they jump. They get hit. They get cursed. You can warp to close the distance.
Use Spinal’s skeleports. If an opponent is pressuring you, warp across the screen to reset the neutral game and give yourself an advantage.
You can also use crouching HP. It’s not the best anti-air, but it works.
Your best option is to pressure your opponent into a corner. Spinal + Skulls + Corner = OP.
It all comes down to anticipating your jumper. Most people who use jumping for the sake of jumping are quite predictable. Watch their patterns and then use that to your advantage. Make them play Spinal’s game and Spinal’s game is good.
Playing defensive with Sadira is always a bad option. Her strength is her relentless air assault. Her greatest weakness is that she doesn’t do well under pressure. In fact if you get her cornered and keep her grounded with jumping HP (if she jumps). Standing HP or standing MP (both are sword attacks) on her wake up, you can pretty much murder her.
Of course, as a Sadira main, I will do everything in my power to prevent that from happening.
