TheBattleRifle here, I'm a Peach player from the UK. This is my detailed guide on how to edgeguard your opponent with Peach in Super Smash Bros Melee. I will cover tips and general overview, and even include some character specific edgeguards Peach can do. I will be adding to this guide over timeI hope this guide helps!
Character overview
Firstly, we need to establish what Peach can do, and what fields she is stronger or weaker in. What you should know is that she’s a light character, and has one of the best recoveries in the game. Peach has a bit more of a struggle with approaching, due to her slow speed, and as important as the neutral game is, your efforts in neutral won’t be useful if you don’t have decent punishes to back it up. Before we go deeper into the guide, let’s establish the differences between the two:
Neutral game - A stage in the game where neither player is interacting with one another, and are both scouting out for an opening.
Punish game - A stage in the game where one player has achieved a hit, and has an opportunity to choose what they do next. A player with a good punish game for example is able to take 1 hit as far as possible, leading to a lot of damage, putting them off stage, or both, potentially even leading to a kill.
One of the reasons Armada has managed to do so well with Peach is because he can find an opening, and will take it as far as possible with use of chaingrabbing, combos, gimps, kill setups and generally optimal edgeguarding, with years and years or trial and error. The neutral game is very mentally taxing, however the punish game is something that is a lot easier to practice from my experience, and you can gain knowledge by simply watching videos of players using your character, and making mental (or physical) notes of what they do in certain scenarios
Edgeguarding is an important thing to know how to do effectively with Peach. She has incredible edgeguarding tools, and is able to cover many options of recovery. Let’s get onto some of the basics you should bare in mind when edgeguarding:
Being aware of your opponent's options
When you have your opponent off-stage, there’s only so much they can do. You are in the advantageous position, and if they are off-stage and haven’t died in one of the blastzones, they are going to try and make it back so their current stock can live on for longer. Your goal is to prevent this from happening, or at least make it difficult for them to do so, and not let them get back for free. Sometimes different characters have more options than others, but you have to be aware and be prepared to cover most options, especially if you are playing against a top player that will mix up recoveries as much as possible to try and catch you off guard.
An example of character options for recovery: Fox’s up B he can angle any way to either recover high, low, sweetspot the ledge, or “Mangle”. Fox’s side B has a hitbox and comes out fast, but only travels horizontally. It can also be shortened to different lengths, which can sometimes catch you off guard if you don’t expect it.
Remember to pay attention to percentages too. The effectiveness of some of Peach's moves vary depending on what percentage your opponent is at, for example, Peach's Fair is stronger at low percents, Nair is stronger at higher percents.
Also, bare in mind that depending on the stage, your opponent can have more or less options available, for example on FD the absence of platforms means there’s no option for them to escape to a platform, and on Battlefield they can’t use the side of the stage to sweetspot the ledge.
Turnips
You’re Peach! You might as well use every tool Peach has to make the chances of your opponent returning to stage as low as possible. Turnips are a great tool for Peach when edgeguarding.
There are different types of throws you can do when holding a turnip:
Regular throw - To execute a regular throw, just gold a direction on the analog stick and press A. You can also do this and throw a turnip slightly farther when you are dashing (dash throw) and you can press A while holding shield to throw a turnip if you have one in hand.
Smash throw - To execute a smash throw, press down B again or press a direction on the C-stick while in midair or on the ground. This covers slightly more distance and does slightly more damage than a regular throw, so use them at your discretion.
Remember that you cannot throw a turnip while you're floating, and that when you are carrying a turnip you cannot do aerials unless you're floating.
Dropping and catching turnips
To catch a turnip while grounded, press A when it's near you (before you get hit by it). While airbourne, you can press Z or A to catch it.
To drop a turnip, press Z while you are in the falling or jumping state. If you're floating, pressing Z will make you do an aerial, so remember to release float or drop the turnip before floating.
Reading/ capitalizing on repeated recoveries
This is something that is more about adapting to how a specific player decides to try and get back to the stage every time they need to recover. This can get you a lot of mileage when playing against a lower level player, or “scrub” to get you a win because you simply use less mental power to close out each stock. Certain characters have many options of recovery, but some options are better than others. Some players, knowing that a certain recovery is theoretically supposed to give them a high chance of making it back to stage, they will make it bad by intentionally using the same recovery over and over again. In Smash, nothing is always good or always bad, it’s what you do with it that makes it good or bad.
Some characters like Captain Falcon don’t really have much choice in how they recover, which makes it easier to cover, however characters like Falco have many more options. Through my own personal experience, Falcos that I have played against choose to side B more often than up B. If they are side B-ing to the ledge constantly, you can cover this relatively easily with a dropdown float Nair or a turnip. Of course, this is just an example, and not all Falcos will do this, but it’s something to bare in mind.
Being aware of Peach's advantages and disadvantages while edgeguarding
Kind of linking to the first point I made, but again this is something that’s important to consider. One of the main problems Peach has while edgeguarding is her speed. Sometimes, you hit someone the wrong way but they still end up off-stage, which means you will have to travel the entire length of the stage to reach the other side before you can even start to edgeguard your opponent. This of course depends on the stage, for example on FD or Dreamland it will take longer, and on Yoshi’s it will take less time. Sometimes, if you’re not gonna be able to get the edgeguard in time, take what you can get and get set up for a good stage position for when they get back on stage.
As your opponent, if they are a good enough player they are going to try and abuse what Peach is bad for. Take Fox for example. Say for example you’re on Battlefield, and Fox is off-stage where you have the opportunity to edgeguard him. If he’s able to reach it, Fox can actually up B to the top platform, and abuse the fact that Peach is slow and won’t be able to cover that option, unless she can predict it and start moving to the top platform anticipating this option. Armada is very good at predicting this, but at the same time when he does punish it, he is barely able to punish it with a Nair or something.
Character-specific edgeguarding
Now for guides on how to edgeguard specific characters. I will mainly focus on edgeguarding top tiers, but I will be adding to this list over time and will eventually add more characters going down the tier list.
Fox
Fox is personally my most favourite character to edgeguard. The thing that makes Fox’s recovery good is that he has so many options, however Peach definitely has the tools at her disposal to cover most/ all of them, and sometimes you HAVE to predict his recovery which makes it fun.
Here are a few textbook examples of different ways Fox can make it back to stage:
- Sweetspot side B to ledge
- Side B on stage
- Side B onto a platform
- Shortened side B
- Up B straight onto stage
- Up B downwards to ledge
- Up B high and fall to ledge (Mang0 angle)
- Up B high to a platform
These are some examples I can think of off the top of my head. In my opinion, to edgeguard Fox effectively you need to set everything up correctly and maintain good stage position while narrowing down their options/ make an educated guess as to which option they will choose.
REMEMBER: The PAL and NTSC version differences effect Fox edgeguards, because in NTSC Fox's up B travels faster and covers more distance, while in PAL it was nerfed and is slightly shorter.
Generally, when edgeguarding Fox, the farther away and lower down he is while recovering, the easier he is to kill. The closer and higher he is, the harder it makes him to kill. I will list a few scenarios with screenshots and explain this more in detail, as the above statements correlate to how many options Fox has while in those situations.
You might need to come back to these images multiple times.
See this situation for example. Fox is currently off stage, at medium distance, at high percentage. Here is a new image, with numbered routes that Fox can take IF he has a double jump, and how you can go about covering them.
1 - Instant sweetspot side B
2 - Double jump side B to platform
3 - Double jump, up B high, fall to platform/ stage/ ledge
4 - Double jump, up B straight in to stage/ platform
5 - Double jump, up B to ledge
There are many situations you can be in, whether it be like the image above, if you're further away, putting out an attack, have a turnip in hand, they all change. However for argument's sake, let's assess this situation overall, then get into more depth about how to cover each of Fox's options when he commits to them.
Peach's stage position is in my opinion the most effective, as you can cover most of Fox's options from here. Options like 2, 3 and 4 are going to evade Peach, but the amount of time it takes for those options to happen, Peach has time to jump up and punish them. If peach was stood any closer to the ledge, it would mean she is at risk of getting caught by Fox's side B. While you can just shield this, it might mean you miss the edgeguard and let Fox back to stage. If peach is stood any further away, then she won't be able to reach the ledge in time and you will miss the edgeguard.
Such a situation can be seen in this gif, where Mango knows Peach isn't able to cover this option in time and picks it to get back to the stage.
Armada does commit to the jump and gives the ledge up, but this is just an example of how Fox can incorporate this recovery against Peach.
Another reason this position is good is because if they commit to a side B, you can react and punish accordingly. Side B on stage is less common, but it's still an option to look out for.
I only grab in this instance, but you can see that I had a lot of options open for punishes.
Another thing you can do to cover a sweetspot side B is to drop down and float a tiny bit in front of the ledge. This covers sweetspot side B and can actually lose to a side B on stage, so be careful, and it's more effective if their side B can sweetspot only. In this scenario for example, I cover that option, the Fox doesn't choose the option, but I still have time to waveland back on stage and punish the option that is chosen.
This clip is a perfect example that just your mere presence of a certain area is enough to force your opponent to choose 1 option, and you're still able to kill them if they choose another option.
Turnips
If a turnip hits Fox off stage, it's most likely lights out for him, especially if he uses his double jump just before getting hit by it. More specifically, you can use turnips to cover side B/ sweetspot side B to ledge. If you have time to pull a turnip then there's no reason not to. Against Fox you can usually pull at least 1 turnip per edgeguard attempt.
If you have to travel across a large portion of the stage and won't have time to aerial to cover that option, then doing a dash throw with a turnip is a pretty good option and will hit Fox most of the time if he chooses to sweetspot to the ledge.
Here are a couple of examples of me doing so.
Yes this IS Falco, but in this scenario, turnips can be used equally effectively against both space animals.
Turnips can also be used against Fox's up B, to either knock them far enough away that they can't recover, or into another follow up that will lead to death. If you master this, you can get kills at lower percents and it can get you an early lead.
My personal favourite, the Armada classic turnip Fthrow into float Nair kill.
Fox specific things to be careful of
When trying to hit Fox out of his up B, remember that the fire hitbox is fairly large and becomes active slightly after you see the flames. With Peach it's possible to hit Fox out of it with a well spaced Fair and sometimes Nair, but be careful of this if you are going to do so. This is different from Falco's up B, which only has a hitbox when he starts travelling.
When Fox's side B hits you, it sends you straight up.
If you let Fox back to stage, respect his options and be ready for an attack/ be ready to set up for advantageous neutral game. If he goes to the ledge, remember that Fox can do an invincible ledgedash into many things, but this is hard to execute so you will see higher level players do this more often.
Thanks for reading my guide! I will be adding more characters to this soon, and updating this over time. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me either on here, or on Twitter (@TheBattleRifle) and I'll be happy to answer
Hope this helped! Good luck edgeguarding
Character overview Firstly, we need to establish what Peach can do, and what fields she is stronger or weaker in. What you should know is that she’s a light character, and has one of the best recoveries in the game. Peach has a bit more of a struggle with approaching, due to her slow speed, and as important as the neutral game is, your efforts in neutral won’t be useful if you don’t have decent punishes to back it up. Before we go deeper into the guide, let’s establish the differences between the two:
Neutral game - A stage in the game where neither player is interacting with one another, and are both scouting out for an opening.
Punish game - A stage in the game where one player has achieved a hit, and has an opportunity to choose what they do next. A player with a good punish game for example is able to take 1 hit as far as possible, leading to a lot of damage, putting them off stage, or both, potentially even leading to a kill.
One of the reasons Armada has managed to do so well with Peach is because he can find an opening, and will take it as far as possible with use of chaingrabbing, combos, gimps, kill setups and generally optimal edgeguarding, with years and years or trial and error. The neutral game is very mentally taxing, however the punish game is something that is a lot easier to practice from my experience, and you can gain knowledge by simply watching videos of players using your character, and making mental (or physical) notes of what they do in certain scenarios
Edgeguarding is an important thing to know how to do effectively with Peach. She has incredible edgeguarding tools, and is able to cover many options of recovery. Let’s get onto some of the basics you should bare in mind when edgeguarding:
Being aware of your opponent's options
When you have your opponent off-stage, there’s only so much they can do. You are in the advantageous position, and if they are off-stage and haven’t died in one of the blastzones, they are going to try and make it back so their current stock can live on for longer. Your goal is to prevent this from happening, or at least make it difficult for them to do so, and not let them get back for free. Sometimes different characters have more options than others, but you have to be aware and be prepared to cover most options, especially if you are playing against a top player that will mix up recoveries as much as possible to try and catch you off guard.
An example of character options for recovery: Fox’s up B he can angle any way to either recover high, low, sweetspot the ledge, or “Mangle”. Fox’s side B has a hitbox and comes out fast, but only travels horizontally. It can also be shortened to different lengths, which can sometimes catch you off guard if you don’t expect it.
Remember to pay attention to percentages too. The effectiveness of some of Peach's moves vary depending on what percentage your opponent is at, for example, Peach's Fair is stronger at low percents, Nair is stronger at higher percents.
Also, bare in mind that depending on the stage, your opponent can have more or less options available, for example on FD the absence of platforms means there’s no option for them to escape to a platform, and on Battlefield they can’t use the side of the stage to sweetspot the ledge.
Turnips
You’re Peach! You might as well use every tool Peach has to make the chances of your opponent returning to stage as low as possible. Turnips are a great tool for Peach when edgeguarding.
There are different types of throws you can do when holding a turnip:
Regular throw - To execute a regular throw, just gold a direction on the analog stick and press A. You can also do this and throw a turnip slightly farther when you are dashing (dash throw) and you can press A while holding shield to throw a turnip if you have one in hand.
Smash throw - To execute a smash throw, press down B again or press a direction on the C-stick while in midair or on the ground. This covers slightly more distance and does slightly more damage than a regular throw, so use them at your discretion.
Remember that you cannot throw a turnip while you're floating, and that when you are carrying a turnip you cannot do aerials unless you're floating.
Dropping and catching turnips
To catch a turnip while grounded, press A when it's near you (before you get hit by it). While airbourne, you can press Z or A to catch it.
To drop a turnip, press Z while you are in the falling or jumping state. If you're floating, pressing Z will make you do an aerial, so remember to release float or drop the turnip before floating.
Reading/ capitalizing on repeated recoveries
This is something that is more about adapting to how a specific player decides to try and get back to the stage every time they need to recover. This can get you a lot of mileage when playing against a lower level player, or “scrub” to get you a win because you simply use less mental power to close out each stock. Certain characters have many options of recovery, but some options are better than others. Some players, knowing that a certain recovery is theoretically supposed to give them a high chance of making it back to stage, they will make it bad by intentionally using the same recovery over and over again. In Smash, nothing is always good or always bad, it’s what you do with it that makes it good or bad.
Some characters like Captain Falcon don’t really have much choice in how they recover, which makes it easier to cover, however characters like Falco have many more options. Through my own personal experience, Falcos that I have played against choose to side B more often than up B. If they are side B-ing to the ledge constantly, you can cover this relatively easily with a dropdown float Nair or a turnip. Of course, this is just an example, and not all Falcos will do this, but it’s something to bare in mind.
Being aware of Peach's advantages and disadvantages while edgeguarding
Kind of linking to the first point I made, but again this is something that’s important to consider. One of the main problems Peach has while edgeguarding is her speed. Sometimes, you hit someone the wrong way but they still end up off-stage, which means you will have to travel the entire length of the stage to reach the other side before you can even start to edgeguard your opponent. This of course depends on the stage, for example on FD or Dreamland it will take longer, and on Yoshi’s it will take less time. Sometimes, if you’re not gonna be able to get the edgeguard in time, take what you can get and get set up for a good stage position for when they get back on stage.
As your opponent, if they are a good enough player they are going to try and abuse what Peach is bad for. Take Fox for example. Say for example you’re on Battlefield, and Fox is off-stage where you have the opportunity to edgeguard him. If he’s able to reach it, Fox can actually up B to the top platform, and abuse the fact that Peach is slow and won’t be able to cover that option, unless she can predict it and start moving to the top platform anticipating this option. Armada is very good at predicting this, but at the same time when he does punish it, he is barely able to punish it with a Nair or something.
Character-specific edgeguarding
Now for guides on how to edgeguard specific characters. I will mainly focus on edgeguarding top tiers, but I will be adding to this list over time and will eventually add more characters going down the tier list.
Fox
Fox is personally my most favourite character to edgeguard. The thing that makes Fox’s recovery good is that he has so many options, however Peach definitely has the tools at her disposal to cover most/ all of them, and sometimes you HAVE to predict his recovery which makes it fun.
Here are a few textbook examples of different ways Fox can make it back to stage:
- Sweetspot side B to ledge
- Side B on stage
- Side B onto a platform
- Shortened side B
- Up B straight onto stage
- Up B downwards to ledge
- Up B high and fall to ledge (Mang0 angle)
- Up B high to a platform
These are some examples I can think of off the top of my head. In my opinion, to edgeguard Fox effectively you need to set everything up correctly and maintain good stage position while narrowing down their options/ make an educated guess as to which option they will choose.
REMEMBER: The PAL and NTSC version differences effect Fox edgeguards, because in NTSC Fox's up B travels faster and covers more distance, while in PAL it was nerfed and is slightly shorter.
Generally, when edgeguarding Fox, the farther away and lower down he is while recovering, the easier he is to kill. The closer and higher he is, the harder it makes him to kill. I will list a few scenarios with screenshots and explain this more in detail, as the above statements correlate to how many options Fox has while in those situations.
You might need to come back to these images multiple times.
See this situation for example. Fox is currently off stage, at medium distance, at high percentage. Here is a new image, with numbered routes that Fox can take IF he has a double jump, and how you can go about covering them.
1 - Instant sweetspot side B
2 - Double jump side B to platform
3 - Double jump, up B high, fall to platform/ stage/ ledge
4 - Double jump, up B straight in to stage/ platform
5 - Double jump, up B to ledge
There are many situations you can be in, whether it be like the image above, if you're further away, putting out an attack, have a turnip in hand, they all change. However for argument's sake, let's assess this situation overall, then get into more depth about how to cover each of Fox's options when he commits to them.
Peach's stage position is in my opinion the most effective, as you can cover most of Fox's options from here. Options like 2, 3 and 4 are going to evade Peach, but the amount of time it takes for those options to happen, Peach has time to jump up and punish them. If peach was stood any closer to the ledge, it would mean she is at risk of getting caught by Fox's side B. While you can just shield this, it might mean you miss the edgeguard and let Fox back to stage. If peach is stood any further away, then she won't be able to reach the ledge in time and you will miss the edgeguard.
Such a situation can be seen in this gif, where Mango knows Peach isn't able to cover this option in time and picks it to get back to the stage.
Armada does commit to the jump and gives the ledge up, but this is just an example of how Fox can incorporate this recovery against Peach.
Another reason this position is good is because if they commit to a side B, you can react and punish accordingly. Side B on stage is less common, but it's still an option to look out for.
I only grab in this instance, but you can see that I had a lot of options open for punishes.
Another thing you can do to cover a sweetspot side B is to drop down and float a tiny bit in front of the ledge. This covers sweetspot side B and can actually lose to a side B on stage, so be careful, and it's more effective if their side B can sweetspot only. In this scenario for example, I cover that option, the Fox doesn't choose the option, but I still have time to waveland back on stage and punish the option that is chosen.
This clip is a perfect example that just your mere presence of a certain area is enough to force your opponent to choose 1 option, and you're still able to kill them if they choose another option.
Turnips
If a turnip hits Fox off stage, it's most likely lights out for him, especially if he uses his double jump just before getting hit by it. More specifically, you can use turnips to cover side B/ sweetspot side B to ledge. If you have time to pull a turnip then there's no reason not to. Against Fox you can usually pull at least 1 turnip per edgeguard attempt.
If you have to travel across a large portion of the stage and won't have time to aerial to cover that option, then doing a dash throw with a turnip is a pretty good option and will hit Fox most of the time if he chooses to sweetspot to the ledge.
Here are a couple of examples of me doing so.
Yes this IS Falco, but in this scenario, turnips can be used equally effectively against both space animals.
Turnips can also be used against Fox's up B, to either knock them far enough away that they can't recover, or into another follow up that will lead to death. If you master this, you can get kills at lower percents and it can get you an early lead.
My personal favourite, the Armada classic turnip Fthrow into float Nair kill.
Fox specific things to be careful of
When trying to hit Fox out of his up B, remember that the fire hitbox is fairly large and becomes active slightly after you see the flames. With Peach it's possible to hit Fox out of it with a well spaced Fair and sometimes Nair, but be careful of this if you are going to do so. This is different from Falco's up B, which only has a hitbox when he starts travelling.
When Fox's side B hits you, it sends you straight up.
If you let Fox back to stage, respect his options and be ready for an attack/ be ready to set up for advantageous neutral game. If he goes to the ledge, remember that Fox can do an invincible ledgedash into many things, but this is hard to execute so you will see higher level players do this more often.
Thanks for reading my guide! I will be adding more characters to this soon, and updating this over time. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me either on here, or on Twitter (@TheBattleRifle) and I'll be happy to answer
Hope this helped! Good luck edgeguarding
