Introduction
Aikido is the greatest mod ever and anyone who disagrees is wrong. Hi I'm Fear, you know me. Some people say they want me to show them how to play this here mod, well here you go.

Point 1 - Openers

People don't appreciate the effect openers have on a game of aikido. Though the effect is diminished with increased dojo size, it is by no means negligible. Dismemberments, inside grabs, setups, lifts and fractures all tend to happen because of openers chosen by each player.
As you play, you'll encounter many types of opener. Some are aggressive, some defensive, some stupid and some smart. Obviously it's not wise to fall into this third category!
"but feer my open is so gud it kool and it win me a whoole game"
NO

What makes a good opener?
If you stand back and consider it, there are only a few factors that make an opener viable and not dumb..
An opener needs to be reliable. That spinning headkick super hyper combo probably won't work every game. Usually you'll end up in a big ball of fractures and maybe your wrist will come off. Your opener needs to be repeatable and have repeatably good results.
An opener needs to be safe. Cool, you have a decap opener that's been ripping some heads lately. But oh no! Your exposed shoulder is your downfall as it's ripped clean off by someone who can play!
An opener needs to have potential. That is, potential to follow up with a lift or a suplex or perhaps a pressure fracture.
An opener needs to be flexible. If your opener is unable to adapt to counter your opponents opener, you're gonna get screwed over an awful lot by openers that counter yours.

If you consider these points, it's no wonder that some moves are so prevalent. What better example of an opener that suits all these criteria than the good old clap! Some people despise this opener. I have no idea why.

This move is reliable. You can remember it easily and 99% of the time, nothing bad will happen to you if you use it!

This move is safe. It will intercept your opponents hands if they use them aggressively. Kicks can be countered by lowering the same shoulder as the kicking leg and contracting the elbow. (Other joints may be required per kick.)

This move has potential! The most versatile move to date! Look at all the stuff you can do!

All the above moves were from a standard clap.

This move is flexible! As demonstrated in previous screenshots, this move has limitless potential to mess your opponent up or stop his dumb kick from extending his streak.
So clapping is good. Is it the only good move? No. Any move that fulfills the above criteria is a good move.


How to stop kicks from dismembering/fraccing you:



How to counter common decapitation openers (also how to punish people for having stupid vulnerabilities in their openers):
There are two methods you can employ here. You can either counter aggressively (high risk, high reward), or defensively (low risk, often results in standard play).
Aggressive counter: You are aiming to dismember or fracture your opponent by exploiting openings provided by their move. In a decap opener your opponents neck and attacking shoulder/pec are both (usually) open and with enough momentum you can tear peoples arms clean off. Because there are so many decap openers, aggressive counters will require you to improvise per opener; there is no universal counter if you're playing like this.

Here's one example of me aggressively countering my opponent:

I've attached a couple of replays regarding this.
Defensive counter: Maybe you're dueling for 100k and you'd rather not risk it. Maybe you just want to stop your opponent from getting 60,000 points on turn two. No problem. If your opener is a viable one, you can negate your opponents blow in a number of ways. Sometimes it's a simple as grabbing their arm mid-swing, or maybe you'll want to raise your shoulder to block their strike. Your main priority here is to stop them from getting a huge advantage over you, whether that's by points or by fracture/dismemberment. To play successfully like this, you'll need to be able to predict where your opponent is going to hit you. Are they aiming for your neck? Have you tried simply leaning backwards?

Point 2 - Lifts

So you stopped their decap. You're still in trouble though: looks like this guy is about to lift you hard. Do we:
A) SPAM THEIR ASS, LIFTERS ARE NO LIFER NOOBS LOLO
B) Stay calm, look at how you're being lifted and counter it
If you said A, then please look out for a future guide I'll write about your mental state and winning games. For those who called B - hopefully you chose this option because you understand its reasoning (not just because you're pretending that you'd never consider option A).
The mechanics of a lift are simple: manipulate your opponent so their center of gravity is so high they can't even touch the floor. This is a good tactic, it's smart. It works. I advocate lifting strongly. (However, I find myself not lifting because of the community's attitude towards it!)
How to play with lifts then. We'll take a look at both POVs.
If you're the lifter: Good job! You're actually playing Toribash, not a silly made up game created by people who like to pretend they're kung-fu masters... in Toribash... Anyway, Once you get the lift going, the majority of people will crumple into a ball and likely fracture themselves, not stopping your lift at all. For the chance that you meet the minority, remember that a lift (in the earlygame) usually has two components:

The Lift: This is where you manipulate your opponent to make your center of gravity lower than theirs, usually resulting in them losing contact with the floor. This bit can be very easy to pretty hard depending on how you opened (where the grabs are etc.), but as a framework you can look at how the shovel works and use aspects from that. The shovel is so strong because it not only grabs the opponent in their center of mass, it gives you complete control over where their tori goes as your tori takes the weight of both players. So that means if you grab your opponents torso, you'll usually have a lot of leverage, so lifts are viable. What if you were both smart clappers? Well at this point there are two ways you can lift. you can extend your body backwards while contracting your wrists, sort of scooping them onto you:

There is also the forward lift, like this:


The Push: This is the part after you got beneath em, and they have little control over the situation. It'd be pointless to just lift them and put them down right? (no) You want to make this count, so you're going to need to disturb the equilibrium. Pushing straight forward is easiest as extending hips and ankles is often enough, but you can really lift in any direction at any stage of the game. Lifting to the side probably requires you to take one foot off the ground so you 'fall' in that direction.
This is a pretty big topic but it's generally intuitive, so now I'll talk about something most people want to know the most.
If you're being lifted! Oh dear, you got outplayed. Their center of gravity is beneath you and your feet and dangling helplessly above the floor, all the while the edge of the dojo is racing toward you. Well ok, most of the time there is one thing you can do which will end most lifts instantly. This:

This works by bringing your toris so close together and in-line that the lifters arm's just aren't long enough. During this, you can often extend your elbows to lower your center of gravity back down, and sometimes reverse the lift completely! Actually, this move is extremely wonderful, but it does have a few painful downsides which you'll see when I get to grabs swaps.

THIS GUIDE IS A WIP, I NEED SLEEP.