The first basic concept we need to master to be able to beat Peach’s recovery is that letting her get the ledge is 100% fine. This is because Marth can always cover every ledge option in a way that forces Peach either back to the ledge or to lose a stock. We are not trying to edge guard Peach so much as stage guard her, but I will refer to it as edge guarding for simplicity's sake.

Ledge Trapping

Let us start with ledge trapping, since Peach will sometimes be able to get ledge no matter what you do. If Peach has no float, she will not regain it until she lands back on stage. This tutorial will assume that she is on ledge without a float.

So, I will go over how to cover the normal 4 ledge options, and briefly talk about what to do if she has a turnip. The 4 options she can do from ledge are Regular getup, roll, getup attack and tournament winner. (Important to note is that she can drop then double jump. This is the easiest to react to due to the audio queue and clear animation. Hitting Peach out of it should just mean death every time)

The frame data and animations can be found here: https://smashboards.com/threads/peach-hitboxes-and-frame-data-thread-remastered.425917/

This is the spacing this guide is based upon. It is just outside of under 100 percent get up attack. This will allow you to cover all of Peach’s options on reaction if she is under 100 percent. After that the spacing changes but we will go over that later. Each stage has a good way to indicate that you have the right spacing.

FoD. You want your back leg to be just next to the water beam holding up the platform. If the water beam is down then there is no great way to get the perfect spacing.

YS. After the slant there is a small flat area before the center of the stage. You want to be in the middle of this flat area.

PS. You want your front foot to be on the black line. Not the very edge, but almost. As long as you can see the black line in front of your foot the spacing should be correct.

BF. You want your front foot to be on the grey thing hanging out from BF’s side.

FD. Imagine a line going from the white arrow behind Marth to the white arrow in front of him. You want your front foot to just be on that line.

DL. A little hard due to how the perspective changes. But if she is on the ledge then you should be just to the right of the fence. If she is off stage then the best way to line yourself up is for your front foot to just be in the little gab of two of the flower patches.

Regular Getup

This one is by far the hardest to react to and can be weird to punish at low percent. Regular get up has 2 frames of end lag which can make it hard to punish if you are not used to the timing. Try learning to see and react to the first few frames of regular get up. At low percent you should just grab and forward throw Peach every time. If you are at the perfect spacing then you should be able to just do standing grab. If you are a bit too far away you can simply dash jc grab. Just be careful of her DI as she can mix you up and DI in. That is however very reactable with regrab at low percent, jump down air at mid percent and forward smash at high percent. On any DI that is not down and away or up and in at low percent you regrab, above 7 and up until around 60 percent you do dash attack. Above 60 percent on small stages you do forward smash to kill. On bigger stages you should wave dash forward and down tilt or do dash attack to get them off stage. This forces her to either go back to ledge or go high.

If you do mess this up Peach has a few options she is likely to go for:

Shield (frame 1)

Jab (frame 2)

Down Smash (frame 5)

Roll (frame 4)

Spotdodge (frame 2)

Note! Most players buffer spotdodge and roll with C-stick and shield and that will make them go through one frame of shield which makes this reaction a lot easier.

Tournament winner/jump from ledge

This one is easy to react to and punish but getting the right hit to get her back off stage can be hard especially at low percent. There is a position where you can just forward smash her no matter the drift which is fine but she gets more height than you want if it does not kill.

The options you are looking to get are forward air to either another forward air or just wait. This is because at low percent she can neutral air or air dodge out from a weak forward air if you go for another one. But if the first forward air tippers then it should combo into another one unless she does hard DI away which is fine because then she still has to jump or air dodge to get back to ledge. At higher percent she can no longer neutral air or air dodge out. So now just doing weak forward air is what you are looking for. Above 100 percent her tournament winner is so slow that you can tipper forward smash it on reaction which should kill. Otherwise just keep on doing weak forward air, jab or down tilt to not let her land on stage.

Here are two examples of what the situation might look like:

High percent: Low percent:

Get up attack

This is the easiest one to punish as all you do is grab to forward throw at low and mid percent. The options after forward throw is the almost the same as before so here are the options that was mentioned in the regular get up option:

At low percent you should just grab and forward throw Peach every time. Just be careful of her DI as she can mix you up and DI in. That is however very reactable with regrab at low percent, jump down air at mid percent and forward smash at high percent.

On mid DI at low percent you regrab, above 7 and up until around 60 percent you do dash attack. Above 60 percent on small stages you do forward smash to kill. On bigger stages you should wave dash forward and down tilt or do dash attack to get them off stage. This forces her to either go back to ledge or go high.

DI away will always get her out but she will always have to go back to ledge or do a very committal mix-up. Here are two examples of what the situation might look like:

Roll from Ledge

Again, this one is very easy to punish as you will have a lot of time to react. Peach’s roll has 11 frames of end lag so it is not a hard timing at all. If you are standing in the right position than simply turn around grab. If your positioning is a bit off then you might have to do a pivot grab. Always just down throw Peach because it gives her no real counter play. If she is DIing in then just forward smash her. If she DI down and away then she will either end up back to ledge, she will have to burn her jump or up B if she wishes to get back on stage, both of which you can punish easily by just hitting her off again.

At high percent you can just up tilt as she will roll into the strongest hitbox of the up tilt.

Here is the percent Peach dies at with perfect DI on the up tilt before the up tilt connects.

Battlefield 116%

Fountain of Dreams 117%

Yoshi’s Story 104%

Pokémon Stadium 109%

Final Destination 112%

Dream Land 133%

Closing out the Stock

This is the spacing you want to be at. Peach’s get up attack will not reach but your forward smash will reach her even if she does regular get up. Some of this will just be repeating what I wrote earlier but I wanted it all in one place. Here you simply forward smash regular get up and tournament winner. You can up B get up attack, you could go for double down air if you read their DI in. We already went over how you should up tilt the roll. This is the spacing you want to be at when doing the up tilt. You should wait for the last few frames of peach’s roll to do the up tilt. You want to hit her as she stands up to get the strong hit.

Turnips

The last thing to think about when ledge trapping Peach is if she is holding a turnip or not. The ledge trapping does not change that much but if she ever has enough height to throw it at you then you should be ready to crouch powershield it. This makes it easier due to where the powershield is in relation to his hurtbox.

Edge Guarding

Well that was ledge trapping, easy, right? Well in truth that was the hard part. Edge guarding Peach is based upon two relatively simple concepts.

1. Get rid of her resources. Those being float and double jump.

2. Never let her gain enough height to where she can do real mix ups.

I will start by going over three recovery situations. High, mid and low recovery.

• High, above the stage

When she is recovering high and has her float or double jump your main goal should be to stay right below her. She has to either come down with an attack, air dodge, empty land or float/jump/up B to stall for time. You should aim to fall down with her and as soon as she commits you hit her with a double jump forward, back or down air. You continue doing this to make her lose her resources and then you push her off stage.

• Mid, can land on stage but also take ledge

This is the most common situation by far. You either want to be as close to the ledge as possible here or be on the edge of the side platform on platform stages if she is a bit higher. From here you try to forward air her float if she is too close. If she double jumps and floats above the stage, then just look at the previous paragraph. If she does however double jump to close to stage, just forward air her. You can jump in the air and use side B to stall to make her float run out or make her lose height if she is in her up B. Just make sure you do not go off stage since she can then airdodge on if she reads your timing. Using jab (you might need multiple if they do not DI out) and forward air is great to make her lose height and take away her resources.

If she starts to up B and just drift towards the stage just weak forward air her off stage. This does not give her enough height to do a high up B so the situation should just reset. If she is in her up B at a mid-height and starts to drop down to ledge just do run off weak forward air from platform to hit her off again. If you are grounded just use jab(s) or down tilt to force her to up B again.

If she is floating just above the ledge then make sure you are standing by the ledge and jab her out of her float if she gets too close. She might try to air dodge through you, but as long as you use a jab to force her to either get hit by the jab or air dodge in, the jab should reset the situation and you can just grab her after the air dodge. If she is floating at just above ledge just threaten to hit her with down tilt. Either way if the jab or down tilt miss the jump back. This is because she either has to air dodge on to stage or take ledge, both of which are covered by jumping back to the ledge trapping position and waiting. At some point she will either jump, then you just hit her back off stage, or she drops down which we will talk about more in the next paragraph. If she just decides to try to float under down tilt and sweet spot ledge, just go out and hit her before she can air dodge back to stage.

• Low, can only go to ledge

Here there are two possible situations. Either she up B low and tries to sweetspot the ledge from below, or she does a high up B and then tries to drift to sweetspot the ledge. If she does the up B from below just hit her with tipper down tilt. Here there are only two outcomes. She can tech and recover low again. She can also tech wall jump, but she still has to either air dodge back or up B to get back. Air dodge is covered by just hitting her off again, you can just down air her up B since it is so laggy.

If she hits the sweet spot then just ledge trap her. The other outcome is that she takes the down tilt and gets sent away. Here she can either up B high or low. At low percent when she goes low or at higher percent where she does not hit the tech, just down tilt her until you can grab ledge before her if she can not land on stage.

If she starts her up B at a distance after getting hit and can only grab ledge then just grab ledge if you have time and roll up. If you do not have time to do that and she drifts to ledge, just down tilt her and do the turnaround back air flowchart. If she does the drift to get around down tilt, then just do run off weak forward air to reset the situation.

If you are not in position, let us say that you got her off stage, but you are at ledge then you have a few options. If she goes for ledge or tries to barely land on stage, then just do ledge jump back air or down air. Back air should lead to a kill if you get the weak hit. Down air should just kill. If they go above those options then just to ledge jump up air to start a juggle as you cannot force her off stage.

The reverse down air edge guard

This is how most of my edge guards against Peach going low end. If you hit the down tilt at mid percent then just do turn around and short hop or full hop depending on their DI, then just drift out and do double jump down air. This will beat high up B and kill her every time.

At higher percent she gets sent out too far for you to be able to just turn around jump out down air like before. Here you simply jump out with full momentum and do a turn around with full hop back air. This should position yourself to hit the double jump down air like before and you should live without any problem. The reason we do the back air is to turn us around so we can grab ledge, but also because down air’s highest and easiest hitbox that spikes is behind Marth.

Now is there any counterplay Peach can do here? Not really. We now know how to make Peach lose height to force a low recovery. Marth must start his jump out after the down tilt or jab before Peach starts her up B to reach her in time, so you might think that Peach can just delay her up B or DI the down tilt away so Marth cannot reach so she can get back. This is wrong because Marth only needs to do the jump back air preemptively. You can then wait with the double jump down air until she does her up B. There will of course be a point where you no longer can live if you wait for her to up B and she waits too long. This is also not a problem since you simply can drift to the ledge after your back air if she decides to wait.

The one last mix-up Peach has is to up B in the other direction. This is just a gimmick but can work if you do not react to the direction of the up B and still go for the double jump down air at a spacing where it no longer works. Peach can however not grab the ledge when facing the wrong direction, so you have a very easy edge guard with down air, down tilt or forward smash.