Thoughts about PP Armada Set
I think a lot of people in this thread went braindead and forgot how close PP's matches against Armada were despite the 3-1 set count. I first thought that PP did horribly in stagepicks, but when I finally thought through everything, stagestriking started making a lot more sense.
Yoshi's really limits falcos options, makes it harder for him to escape zoning, platforms let him get combo'd harder and shorter horizontal lets peach get falco offstage and edgeguard him much easier. On larger stages a CC d-smash for example at mid percents could be DI'd somewhat and teched on stage out of peach's immediate followup range. The only real advantage I see on Yoshi's for falco v. peach is the early shine kill, dair combo's from side platforms; I really don't believe that the impact of either of those advantages makes up for all those deficits, given how well Armada was DIing this tournament.
FD grants PP his movement options but no platforms to work with and Peach's CG that Armada's never really going to mess up.
With the neutrals at Apex, I honestly expected the stagestriking to end up putting 1st match on BF or Dreamland if Kevin strikes FD and FoD, but I guess Armada figured also that PP was going to like Yoshi's the least (if my analysis holds any water)
FD CP 3rd match was prbly b/c PP banned FoD and I see that as a reasonable decision as well.
4th match BF was a reasonable pick for PP as well given DSR for PS.
In terms of how this set differed from pound 5, it was obvious to me that Armada was more knowledgable about how to DI falco's combos. A lot of the time I felt like Armada knew what PP was going for and PP that was surprised that Armada wasn't DIing in a certain way.
Another thing that I think everyone can agree with is that Armada got cornered and baited far less in this set than in the P5 set. He often read when PP was doing movement off the laser to retain stage control and exert 'safe' pressure like laser DD and nairshine wd back and AC bair, and was getting baited very few times for it. Not only did he not fall for many of these safe baits, he often put himself in a better position off of a strong read. Armada read so many obvious AC bairs and punished with WD OOS back and dash attack to catch falco whiffing.
Random Side Note
One last insight that I can recall off the top of my head is that Europe had a much more refined shield game than US players do in general. I say this not just because a lot of their top players are great at handling falco's laser game without doing as many risky approaches(PS lasers etc.), but also b/c some of them like Armada have great shield DI and use of light shield in defense against spacies. Even in their OOS game, European sheiks seem to be more super frame tight in their nair-oos game. These top EU players really seem to make these details a huge focus in their game and I think would really pay off for some of our scene to focus more heavily on these aspects.
P