Stage Strikes Against Marth

[Jimmymacklein]

Is it better to strike to battlefield or fountain against Marth? Assuming you ban FD, and they ban yoshis and dreamland. I feel like battlefield isn't the best because Marth has an easier time edgeguarding and he can tech your upthrow at low percents onto the side platforms as well as your upthrow at high percents on the top platform. (I understand you can tech chase with up air when he techs). He can tech the top platform on fountain, but not at high percents, and you can full hop up air to reach it at mid/low percents. He can also set up tippers on techs on platforms on battlefield really easily. Am I missing something big? Which stage do you guys prefer to strike to and why?

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Personal preference. Besides the platforms, the two stages are almost identical.

Another strat is allowing Marth to choose FD for game 1. Win or lose, his best stage is gone, and you still have an extra ban available. I use the first game to feel out the opponent and understand their strengths and habits, and doing it on their best stage kills two birds with 1 stone and puts me in a good position later on. As opposed to playing BF game 1 and feeling him out but losing to a random fsmash or something, then having to come back game 3 on FD (hard).

 

[ike¥]

Personal preference. Besides the platforms, the two stages are almost identical.

Another strat is allowing Marth to choose FD for game 1. Win or lose, his best stage is gone, and you still have an extra ban available. I use the first game to feel out the opponent and understand their strengths and habits, and doing it on their best stage kills two birds with 1 stone and puts me in a good position later on. As opposed to playing BF game 1 and feeling him out but losing to a random fsmash or something, then having to come back game 3 on FD (hard).

damn i never thought about it like that imma start doing that

 

[krazyzyko]

Going to FD is like giving away game 1 if his cg is on point. Why give up the set lead if you can avoid it?

l think bf is the better than FoD because u have a bit more space to run around so he controls less stage with his sword. Plud you don't have to deal with FD mode.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

FD isnt as awful as people think. Marth gets chaingrabs everywhere, yes, but marth no longer has platforms to escape from Fox's combos. You can uthrow uair him and then shark him, force him to double jump, then hit him off without his jump to take his stock.

The main reason I would strike to FD game 1 is because of how I think about a set as a whole. Even if both players know each other well, game 1 is about feeling each other out. I find that I (personally) often lose game 1, then adapt to the opponent in game 2 and 3 to win the set. If game 1 is FD and I lose, then the best Marth can pick for game 3 is something other than FD. If I am already expecting to lose game 1, then i should cross out marth's best stage in the process. And if I am wrong, then I have won the game and his CP doesn't matter.

I write (personally) because this isn't for everyone. In many cases I don't even try to "win" game 1, instead I simply try to make my opponent reveal as much information as possible. Then in game 2 and 3 I know how he will react to situations and I can use that information to win. My opinion is that game 3 is the most important of the set, and games 1 and 2 are less important. I would rather have FD played on the least important game of the set, rather than the most important.

tl;dr If you are confident you will bring the set to last game, it is smart to get the opponent's best stages out at the start of the set, which leaves more good stages for you at the end of the set.

 

[Wall Of SPain]

That is an interesting view, but in a Bo3 scenario I don´t believe your opponent should be allowed their best stage at all (FD in this case, unless bad marth then just techskill till they die).

Lets first analyze something if we were to play first game in FD and lose, here there are two ways you can go about beating this guy, assuming he bans Dream Land, as most marths do:

If in the first game you see he enjoys running around, and is very centered in moving around you will probably strike to Yoshis and probably win. If so, you will then ban FoD, and probably get counterpicked to PS, which can be considered a stage towards fox, but plays right into the enemies comfort zone.

If in the first game you see he is a more static and as I call them RPS marth, you will want to outrun them, and will strike PS, assuming you win, the marth will take you to BF/Yoshis, as you banned FoD, which again plays into their comfort zone. A smaller stage to where the RPS solution is more leaned towards the bigger hitbox.

So in both occasions you actually play towards the opponents strenghts in the end, which will not happen if you win game 1 in any other scenario.

Now let´s picture the supposedly worse scenario, but before this lets ask something, how bad really is FoD for Fox vs Marth? Here is where I believe there are a lot of problems in this mu, it is true that against marth platform camping in the side platforms is null, and that he lives longer in this stage but other than that this stage is actually not that bad at all. Here are the reasons why:

-Stage is vertically long, allowing for Fox to actually live a bit longer if he was getting gimped, it also has a wall to tech with and walljump, giving you mixups around gimps.

-When stage has no platform or one platform, it still isnt fd, with proper di towards the platform and away from the fairs, (sometimes cant be both) it will always give you a 50 50 escape towards top platform.

-Stage is both long for Fox dash dance and short for a Marth that also dash dances, straight up giving you the advantage to bait him out.

-Stage being big isnt really as important compared to other mus such as peach and puff, because marth´s recovery is lineal and easy to react to, if you practice edgeguards, there should not be any marth that escapes (other than top level ones, those are harder).

Considering these, if supposedly you lose game 1 in BF and then strike to one of the other stages accordangly and win, banning FD, and Marth picking FoD, you really should still have a big advantage, I do not know why this stage is considered to be annoying for spacies, other than tradition and other floatie matchups.

In conclusion, trying to win all games is the most optimal way to beat a player, it is true that we need to feel them out for a bit to adapt to them, but we should aim for that being only 1 stock or 2, and then still winning the first game, such as most top players do.

This is all my experience and knowledge that are meant to benefit me, if you believe this analysis was the correct one, then try to expand on it and put it to play, if not, then you probably see the game differently, this game is not meant to be played the same.

Love, a guy with a cool Spanish accent.