R2M14 Quality Delibs

Judge Spartacus (Discloud)

I’ll start with Harvest Moon Boulevard because I have a little less to say in terms of specifics, and also I read it first due to the order reddit presented the strats to me.

This is something I’ll say for COLOSSI as well, but I absolutely loved the Narrative on display here, with June immediately taking advantage of the additional resources at their disposal for the match - replaying one of Cerise’s lowest moments as a fighter in a way that draws notable parallels to his current situation is about as convincing a reason to bet against him as I could ask for, especially when Cerise starts genuinely doing worse as a result! Hitting his Heroic Second Wind when all seems lost is a really good narrative beat that made me feel things and also does a reasonably good job of convincing me of Cerise’s ability to win the fight in the end. I’d spend more time gushing about it but I’m kinda strapped for both time and space in this delib, so I’ll move on to the rest of June’s work.

Immediately calling out Solsbury’s constructs whenever they spot them is a good Counterplay on June’s part, with the occasional destruction slowing down Solsbury’s overall production capacity on top of that. I would have liked some greater degree of specificity with regard to the sidebets with the highrollers, but I do see their work sprinkled in throughout, and ultimately I’m willing to just barely give HMB a low **9/10**.

I’m going to be pretty critical of COLOSSI in this delib, so I want to start by saying that I did thoroughly enjoy reading through it. The Creativity and Narrative here is genuinely excellent, making for an entertaining read that I thoroughly enjoyed. I think that Aristi was very well-written and Aristi’s role in the fight accomplishes just about everything it needs to - very few twists, just well-played fundamentals and character beats. All of that was great, as was Solsbury’s character writing, that slime.

However, I have a few issues with how Big Time is used. To start with, I feel that the strat makes ineffective use of Solsbury’s chosen genre - Greek Myth, a la Clash of the Titans given as an example. Ultimately, both the narrative and the mechanics hew much closer to the space of an Athenian Tragedy Play as opposed to a film epic based on Greek Mythology as the genre announcement led us to believe. It’s not a huge problem, in the end, as the strat remains internally consistent, but I ultimately saw a lot more Agammemnon and Aeneid than I saw Clash of the Titans and Hercules. Even accepting those altered parameters for the genre, there are some relatively complex constructs that have no relevance to Greek Mythology - the flashpaper doves, for example, aren’t helped by the genre of choice, and even clash with the strong aesthetic on display. (Especially odd, as a pyrotechnic styled after Zeus’s lightning or Apollo’s chariot would have been a more.)

The effectiveness of the fake voting booths also feels overblown, especially since Solsbury’s constructs don’t instantly spring into being where he wants them - people are quite likely to see him in the process of making the booths (though with the ways that all four players draw focus to the fight itself means they won’t be a total failure), and anyone who catches this play will seriously undermine Solsbury’s credibility in general.

The additional effort spent on making the human constructs sufficiently realistic to look like June killed a person should they destroy them doesn’t feel like it pays out much, though it was still a really clever and creative Counterplay option. Ultimately, though, while there are some notable flaws, most of those flaws are mitigated by being a Narrative strategy with strong character writing, and several of these flubs being plausibly explained by being told from Solsbury’s perspective. Therefore the really strong Narrative is enough to comfortably land in a high **7/10**.

Judge Ben-Hur (Dice)

Going to have to go through things rather quickly, mostly going to look at key details and work my way back from there.

COLOSSI:

This strategy has a lot of narrative I’m going to skim past for now and get back to on jojolity.. For overall narrative quality though it can be a bit blocky, particularly sections pertaining to the fight and what Aristi does, but it’s also notable with how long the italicized sections go. The pacing is slow due to how long certain sections and descriptions go, sometimes that is used deliberately to go effect, but in other sections it feels very lacking in its pacing where descriptions could have been better trimmed or made more concise.

On Solsbury, on theatrics and props I’d say the Greek Chorus being audible across the full amphitheater is a bit iffy, it feels a bit handwaved where their voice needs to travel a 30 meter radius semi-circle. You can adjust this by adding more and stationing them in specific locations, but their numbers are already vague. The tablets are woefully undescribed in what they are supposed to do for you and how they function, little programming of their AI and how they go about their goal. They have a reason for why they are used, but how they are supposed to work, get distributed, etc is seemingly missing. Overall the rest are explained better, although the AIs and how they work or what they do in certain situations can be more comprehensive because a number of them are left pretty vague.

On Aristi, I think the fighting sections while technically sound can be a bit repetitive and fall more or less into a sort of list of contingencies and general tactics. The perspective being from Solsbury doesn’t really help in that regard and a lot of potentially key tactics or contingencies lack emphasis and it can be difficult to tell at times what measures are employed and how they link together.

In terms of overall betting, painting a picture of why/what participants should be voting on can be a bit vague. It’s a lot about investing them into the story as you put it, however that is very vague especially in regards to the high rollers. The chat-bot style patreons you send to the high rollers have “basic conversational abilities” to make vague bets pertaining to “whether the story can stay on path”. The persuasive strategy there is lacking and the bet itself can mean a lot of things and I don’t know how to even quantify how much the value of these bets are even worth or how much the high rollers should be interested in it. You have points in your story that could be interesting to bet on, but you both need to plan these bets before those actions fully take place and prompt them to want to make the bets. The final high roller bet is also questionable at best, the coffin = death thing is strange, treating this as a stage play more than a fight to be bet on and the vague terms of the bet leaves little incentive for it to be something to make a bet on.

Overall I’m giving this strategy a **7/10**, both on Aristi and Solsbury I think there are a number of either unanswered questions or answers that were very obscured by the nature of the narrative of the strategy or just by the length/formatting of the strategy. The questionable use of the high rollers is more or less don’t matter as much given the plays made to incentivise the general betting, but it is something that I will make note of here for future reference. Aristi’s fighting between the chair armor and defensive phalanx is serviceable, but the flow of combat feels very disjointed and off putting at times in a way I can’t really describe in words.

HMB:

This was a pretty compelling narrative with June playing the inverse of hype man (inverse of a hype person?, a heckler?) with some interesting pulls and commentary for any scene of the fight. Causing Cerise to go through an evolution and showing off the capabilities of his ability here.

The general plays to incentives bets are solid and pretty much around what I’d expect with June’s capabilities for this match. The high rollers though go pretty underutilized besides generally betting on general actions by Cerise and the transformation he goes through. A bit surprised no bet was made about Cerise’s sword breaking since that would have been something that could catch the high rollers’ interest.

The combat tricks Cerise uses overall are explained pretty well and highlighted decently, although I think there is a lack of prioritization on what he’ll be dealing with at any given moment. It seems like a more defensive strategy in that regard, but the general summary and the formatting of the combat section is clean enough where you cover most of the individual options. Accounting for the swarm nature of the opponent though is a bit vague though.

I’m going to give this strategy an **8/10**. The bolding and formatting are good, the strategies are decently elaborative, and the narrative throughline is very solid. I could see some more being done, but all the general options are covered pretty well and the strategy is actually fairly easy to go through despite its length.

Judge Maximus (Logic)

This is the highest skill ceiling match in T6, maybe in tournament history.

‘Skill Floor’ is the concept of the minimum threshold in order to be competent—contrast  running a 100m dash and running a 100m hurdle race. By contrast, ‘Skill Ceiling’ is the ‘maximum’ efficacy one can display or ‘express’—contrast playing a toy piano and playing a grand piano.

This match has a surprisingly low skill floor—look like you’re losing until you’re winning, bet that crazy cool things will happen and you’ll do fine—but the skill expression comes from how one may interact with the three systems available. “Look like you’re losing until you’re winning” lends itself a clear Narrative arc; sidebets give opportunities to show off Creative, Competency, and Technical; managing the betting booths displays Logistics; interfering with the opponents’ Bookie-ing gives Counterplay; and balancing all these systems can flaunt Formatting, Elegance, and Planning. And these are only some of the strategies that this simple yet deep match enables.

There’s a universe where I grade both strats more on the execution of the betting proper. That clearly wasn’t the intent or execution, but many of the persuasions and especially sidebets were made either grandly or in passing. It is feasible to articulate them and in an objective where the emphasis is on the money made—or any objective, really—signposting and calling back can be incredibly helpful, especially for Pop. (Formatting/Logistics/Competency) Of course, both strats took Narrative and ran with them, in unique and really impressive ways, so let’s get into them individually!

COLOSSI has been a titan of a team, and its strats have generally been similarly plodding. I’ve consistently appreciated their emphasis on systems play, but this has come at the cost of digestibility, as readers have had to process multiple objectives and tactics in series. (Formatting) (Wait, don’t go! I have nice things to say too!) That this strat is wholly written from Solsbury’s perspective is a bold Narrative decision that I agree ultimately pays off, but introduces a common snag for 1st Person Strats: discerning Mechanics from Narrative.

What pushes this out from a Formatting concern to a Logistical one is a point I raised in Solsbury’s R1, that Constructs must be Managed, but this is all done from Solsbury’s perspective so he wouldn’t be as explicit IC as I would like and think is necessary OOC. This tension speaks to the Execution vs Intent dilemma I’ve spoken about in delibs past: if something is insufficiently stated, should we see that as an Intended choice or an Executory lapse? Despite some precedentory worries, I’m willing to read this as Intent given the totalizing effect of Solsbury’s distinct voice. I think that you can have your Narrative cake and save Logistics too, so those reading, COL and beyond, look to do both.

Having ultimately spent two paragraphs on quibbles, I can focus on Solsbury’s systems play. (Planning/Competency/Logistics) Having stated my concerns for Programming in R1, there is noted and appreciated improvement here. I think Genre could be better minded (What's a Tablet? Like an iPad? Did Zagreus FaceTime Than with one of those?), but the Fake Voting Booths warrant some more discussion. Discloud is more willing to call that a “generic” construct, a mass with some decoration, but ‘Voting Booth’ does raise an eyebrow for what would appear in a Greek Epic. More particularly, while I think it’s plausible for crowd control, I raise an eyebrow as to whether an audience member would go to a booth where it hadn’t existed before. Nonetheless, there’s a veritable suite of tactics (Competency/Counterplay) here that I think cover my more material concerns.

With all the ink on Solsbury out of the way, I preface my discussion of Aristi with some formatting concerns a la those above since we’re given Solsbury’s depiction of Aristi’s tactics, 2 degrees of separation. Yet, I find these to be well setup, albeit a bit harder to read. The emphasis on armor and defense minding “A POW Grisp” and “D POW Is Enough To Slit Ya Neck” with more disengage options than you can shake a gladius at. (Logistics/Competency) It all comes to ahead with the climax of the tragedy (which I’ll discuss in Jojolity), where the Audience Bets and the smaller Sidebets from earlier (whose specificity I lamented) are hedged with a Bet on a “Narratively Satisfying Ending” with two Endings depending on the Prize Fight’s winner.

Such a sidebet I think summarizes my opinion of the strat. Could have been a bit more particular on the details, but has enough in there to shore up that complaint and when you have such a strong Narrative buoyed by the fighter in the Pit, I can’t complain too much. Ultimately, COLOSSI gets an 8 on balance; a competent score from a competent team.

HMB may not have been as ambitious as going entirely 1st-Person, but don’t mistake that for a lack of Narrative. Being given more access to the Internet than usual, June goes for system play (that maybe could have been more explained and detailed (Logistics)) that looks to gain and keep audience control and ding CALLOSI with a COL out post. Of particular note are the bets June makes *against* Cerise—“whether he’ll run away, manage to overcome some of the stand units, land a hit on Aristi”—leveraging June’s Timing, but lacking a specificity that could extract even more wealth from the high-rollers.

But the highlight is June channeling their inner Twitter User and finding a Main Character Of The Day in their partner, Cerise. They use the full might of Cancel Culture to Doxx this man for being Being Cringe On Main; rather than pumping up their opponent, they look to get into Cerise’s head and make look as bad as possible which has interesting Counterplay(/Competency) potential given the expected strategy of this match.

Speaking of Main Characters, Cerise goes through a full character arc that had me belting the second verse of the OP despite (or even due to) June’s machinations. While Aristi plays around defense and debilitation, Cerise’s goes for setplay and offense that gradually introduces mobility and defense before blooming into a synergistic Stem Slam to send this scoundrel six feet subsoil. Although the addressing Aristi directly is more general tactics than forward Planning(/Logistics), Technical/Competency are woven with Narrative in a way that I've found to be the peak of strat writing, and Ron continues to be firing on all cylinders for this tourney.

While I think the betting and combat could use a bit more specificity to leverage the great work done, for telling its own tale with a competency (no caps this time) and a focus that I have no major complaints for, HMB gets a high 8.