Here is a video of me playing a peach at my home town local. Any feed back and critique is welcome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4arX7iJyeSY&feature=youtu.be
I'm going to highlight a few exchanges to underline some things I think are important in this match-up.
First exchange (beginning of the match):
- You start off by shooting Ice Blocks; Peach simultaneously pulls a turnip (which she's almost always going to do from that position), and then floats over both Ice Blocks. Remember that Peach has very little motivation to stay on the ground--that's the only way she can get grabbed, and ICs have trouble challenging her float. One interesting outcome is that she's forced to use her float early; you could've taken the opportunity to close some space so that you're potentially in a position to grab when she lands.
- When Peach throws the turnip, you WD backwards to avoid getting hit. This is dangerous because it puts your back right against the ledge. If Peach knows you can't retreat, she can easily cover both your jump and any movement forward with f-air. Furthermore, if you do get hit by f-air, you're sent off the stage and Nana is as good as dead. This situation could have been avoided either by catching the turnip or by moving forward sooner.
- Fortunately, you respond quickly with a slightly overshot dash attack. This is a great option, because it has the potential to launch her if she tries to call your movement forward, and because even if that doesn't happen, it places you back towards center stage, where you have more of a positional advantage. I like dash attack for similar reasons against Falcon, because if he overshoots his aerial you move straight past him, safely out of his range.
- Now, Peach has her back to the ledge. Personally, I might have gone for something like dash away -> dash towards -> Nana Blizzard (quick way to set up a Blizzard desynch without moving forward at all) to limit her ground options. A lot of Peach players will panic when you're near her on the ground and start spamming d-smash, so synched f-air and Blizzard are both safe ways to approach.
- You instead opt for sh b-air--and I can't really fault you for that, since it looked like it could have hit--but it misses, and you proceed to shield. If Peach had hit the panic button, you would be stuck shielding d-smash backwards. Now you
can punish her d-smash with WD out of shield... sometimes... but personally I would go for the option that has lower risk and easier execution. Another option would be to d-smash immediately after landing, so if the b-air misses or hits her shield you can stuff her next decision.
Second exchange (2:05):
- In neutral, you run forward and shield after you see Peach floating. This situation is fairly common and very disadvantageous for the IC player. You have all of FD behind you, so the risk isn't quite as high, but Peach can still do massive amounts of damage from a single float-cancelled aerial. My theory about this situation is that you're conditioned by other characters to shield when it looks like you're about to be hit by an aerial approach. But Peach hasn't actually committed to anything--she's just floating above you. Let's consider your options here...
- You can wait in shield for her to hit you. This is pretty much the worst option, because Peach has a 4 frame advantage when she f-airs your shield, and she'll always win as long as she doesn't mess up.
- You can wait in shield and try to react once she commits to an approach. This is what you end up doing, but it's also a losing scenario because the longer you wait, the more your shield drains and the less viable shielding becomes. So you're left with either attacking or retreating. If you roll, Nana becomes invulnerable on frame 10. Your only viable hitboxes in this situation come out on frame 10 (u-air) and frame 15 (u-smash). Peach's f-air comes out on frame 16. When you factor human reaction time, which is 12 frames on average, your chances aren't looking good...
- That leaves you with one option. Learn to recognize the situation, and end it as soon as possible. If you train yourself to stop shielding any time you see her floating above you, and immediately roll, wavedash away, or attack, your chances of getting out okay are much better. If you had rolled immediately in this instance, HomeStar's f-air wouldn't have clipped Nana, and you could have avoided the 50+ damage you took in the following sequence of attacks.
Overall key things to remember fighting Peach:
- Challenge her on the ground, not in the air.
- Try to maintain control of center stage, because the closer you are to the ledge, the fewer movement options you have and the easier it is for Peach to corner you.
Other notes:
- When Peach dash attacks your shield, you have a huge window to punish. Just grab or b-air depending on where she hits you.
- You got d-smashed almost every time you tried to land with d-air. D-air has fixed knockback and is easily crouch cancellable, but if it seems like the best option, try using right before you land to minimize your frame disadvantage. It's also much safer if you use it when your opponent is in the air.
- Final Destination is not necessarily your best stage in this match-up. The length (gives you some buffer room for being knocked off the stage) and ceiling height (u-smash kills at 80 or 90%) are nice, but the lack of platforms doesn't really help you. Platforms can give you an alternate means to regain stage control after being pushed to the ledge. Yoshi's and Pokemon Stadium make it easier to kill her, and Battlefield and Dreamland make it easier to run away. If you want to play the match-up on FD, you'll need to figure out a way to stop playing her game (dodging float-cancelled f-airs and going for low-reward trades) and start playing your own (putting her in uncomfortable situations on the ground where she's at risk to get grabbed if she chooses the wrong option).