ShoutoutJFK
Smash Rookie
What's good? I'm fairly new to melee's competitive scene, and I haven't been able to get to tournaments much because there haven't been many in the nearby DC area until tonight. Anyway, I got to play a whole bunch of frendlies against DoH, and I lost in tournament to a pretty good peach player named MC Dave iirc. I want to discuss some aspects of the matchup I noted, and I would love any criticism/comments about my observations.
As someone with no real peach experience, the biggest issue I faced was shutting down her approaches. I actually felt I had a tougher time against MC Dave with this than against DoH. The reason being, MC Dave wrecked me with his turnip game. When we played on FD and he had a turnip, he would float at around fh height with a turnip in hand. If I tried to be aggressive with an upair or something, I got shut down by her nair/dair which come out madd quick. Peach's approach consisted of dropping the turnip in my vicinity, then immediately coming down with an aerial. From a positional perspective, if falcon were below and in front of her, she would throw the turnip forward (or z-drop) while falling and try to fair or something. If I attempted to crossup, I would get a turnip to the face because my opponent would just throw the turnip behind him. Or worse, I would shield the turnip --> have to deal with an incoming aerial --> get wrecked by downsmash/ get grabbed and chain-thrown to oblivion.
The most viable solution to stopping this approach would just be to pick a stage with platforms. High float height get shut down on battlefield especially with the wide platforms, relatively large space, and lack of gaps between the platforms that peach can use to fall through (as she would on dreamland). Also, this gives opportunities to counter-approach which I will discuss in a later post because it is late as ballz. The only other way I can think of defending against this would be to catch/powersheild the turnips and attempt to disrupt peach's aerial without giving her too much stage control or sheild pressure opportunities. Now this is all assuming that peach has already pulled a turnip and is floating towards you. After my match, MC Dave kindly told me about how I played too defensively and that I should constantly be aggressive towards peach so that she can't set up approaches such as this. Effectively, you can't let her pull turnips (easier said than done).
Moving on to my matches with DoH: they were a little closer than I expected. Granted he was consistently 2-3 stocking me, I was still pretty happy. The issue I felt I had was my inadequate response to pressure. Those float-cancelled aerials all came out extra quick and in rapid succession. Once I got stuck in my shield, that stock was gone. This wasn't too often the case in the beginning of matches, I realized, because my neutral game was okay. I stayed relatively safe, and I even went up a stock early on on a few occasions. But peach with invincibility is super tough to deal with because she covers areas so quickly with her aerials. DoH especially threw out lots of attacks very fast which led to my inevitable shielding and subsequent loss of stock. Then, things only went downhill once I lost the momentum of the match. Momentum of course being falcon's greatest asset.
Things that worked for me in these matches was a lot of wavedash in --> grab. This was the easiest and most effective way to punish the lag after peach's attacks, but I got stuffed quite often if he cancelled it into a jab (practically the only fast move peach has on the ground). My combo game is not that great yet but I got some decent ones off of grabs. I'm not going to talk too much about tech-skill, comboing, and the likes because there's tons of crap about that in the guides. The other useful tools were back-airs and spontaneous knees. I'm emphasizing these specifically because I talked about how upair got stuffed often by peach's super fast aerials. Knee and back-air don't share this issue because knee is deadly and back-air just hits at an angle that peach has a tough time dealing with. Wavelanding off of platforms and landing a back-air is almost as sweet as hitting a stomp. Falcon's just like "taste my forearm yo". Punishing aerials with this was cool, but obviously do it too much and you'll get read. Personally, I wish I had used back-air more in this matchup because what is peach going to do? Trading with a nair is not so bad, and if you space it so that falcon's fist bops her right in the dome, she's going to have to upair or forward air. These both have lots-o-lag that you can punish. The longer I spend writing this, the more I feel my language deteriorating. On that note, thanks for reading this, and if you have any input on this matchup, I'd appreciate it. Shouts out to y'all.
As someone with no real peach experience, the biggest issue I faced was shutting down her approaches. I actually felt I had a tougher time against MC Dave with this than against DoH. The reason being, MC Dave wrecked me with his turnip game. When we played on FD and he had a turnip, he would float at around fh height with a turnip in hand. If I tried to be aggressive with an upair or something, I got shut down by her nair/dair which come out madd quick. Peach's approach consisted of dropping the turnip in my vicinity, then immediately coming down with an aerial. From a positional perspective, if falcon were below and in front of her, she would throw the turnip forward (or z-drop) while falling and try to fair or something. If I attempted to crossup, I would get a turnip to the face because my opponent would just throw the turnip behind him. Or worse, I would shield the turnip --> have to deal with an incoming aerial --> get wrecked by downsmash/ get grabbed and chain-thrown to oblivion.
The most viable solution to stopping this approach would just be to pick a stage with platforms. High float height get shut down on battlefield especially with the wide platforms, relatively large space, and lack of gaps between the platforms that peach can use to fall through (as she would on dreamland). Also, this gives opportunities to counter-approach which I will discuss in a later post because it is late as ballz. The only other way I can think of defending against this would be to catch/powersheild the turnips and attempt to disrupt peach's aerial without giving her too much stage control or sheild pressure opportunities. Now this is all assuming that peach has already pulled a turnip and is floating towards you. After my match, MC Dave kindly told me about how I played too defensively and that I should constantly be aggressive towards peach so that she can't set up approaches such as this. Effectively, you can't let her pull turnips (easier said than done).
Moving on to my matches with DoH: they were a little closer than I expected. Granted he was consistently 2-3 stocking me, I was still pretty happy. The issue I felt I had was my inadequate response to pressure. Those float-cancelled aerials all came out extra quick and in rapid succession. Once I got stuck in my shield, that stock was gone. This wasn't too often the case in the beginning of matches, I realized, because my neutral game was okay. I stayed relatively safe, and I even went up a stock early on on a few occasions. But peach with invincibility is super tough to deal with because she covers areas so quickly with her aerials. DoH especially threw out lots of attacks very fast which led to my inevitable shielding and subsequent loss of stock. Then, things only went downhill once I lost the momentum of the match. Momentum of course being falcon's greatest asset.
Things that worked for me in these matches was a lot of wavedash in --> grab. This was the easiest and most effective way to punish the lag after peach's attacks, but I got stuffed quite often if he cancelled it into a jab (practically the only fast move peach has on the ground). My combo game is not that great yet but I got some decent ones off of grabs. I'm not going to talk too much about tech-skill, comboing, and the likes because there's tons of crap about that in the guides. The other useful tools were back-airs and spontaneous knees. I'm emphasizing these specifically because I talked about how upair got stuffed often by peach's super fast aerials. Knee and back-air don't share this issue because knee is deadly and back-air just hits at an angle that peach has a tough time dealing with. Wavelanding off of platforms and landing a back-air is almost as sweet as hitting a stomp. Falcon's just like "taste my forearm yo". Punishing aerials with this was cool, but obviously do it too much and you'll get read. Personally, I wish I had used back-air more in this matchup because what is peach going to do? Trading with a nair is not so bad, and if you space it so that falcon's fist bops her right in the dome, she's going to have to upair or forward air. These both have lots-o-lag that you can punish. The longer I spend writing this, the more I feel my language deteriorating. On that note, thanks for reading this, and if you have any input on this matchup, I'd appreciate it. Shouts out to y'all.