M23Q

Frank Sahwit

Well, this was the deathmatchiest of the round's objective fights, at the end of the day, so I sort of have to judge it like such. For the mission at hand, though, this is another case of 'the perfect stand for the job straight-up' vs 'stand whose trickery actually stands a fair chance against that.' Aside from the prisoners, each person in this match is made of absolute paper, too, which I'll be keeping in mind as I weigh both strategies against each other qualitywise.

Topaz has a very drawn-out game plan, while Onyx has an extremely direct one, both perhaps influenced by their respective JoJolities, but more on that later. The water trick to read through the illusions is interesting, and while Topaz has discussed that they read and countered this... How does one 'avoid water?' They just say that they do, and leave it at that, expecting us to take how they do so at face value, and meanwhile Hero's aggressive opening play hits its mark pretty well, running an extremely high chance of RETIREing a few of the Chloes. In a war of attrition, meanwhile, Tyler's contingency about protecting himself hits its mark pretty well despite their expectations, and without the raw killing power to defeat Kangol without Tyler out of commission first. It's not often that I favor the simpler strategy in my deliberations, but with everything, despite Topaz putting up a good fight and getting a few decent reads off, they fail to follow through and Onyx wins out. They get an 8/10 to Topaz' 5/10



Richard Wellington

QUALITY

Starting with the Cosmic Fire strategy for this round, I am extremely impressed with this one, making use of what I perceive as a pretty bog-standard visual-illusion based Stand in a myriad of fun and creative ways, from dis-placing objects into the cells to the 'crowds' making it hard to discern the real positions, to the use of rapid visual teleportation to guarantee an offense that lands; this strategy was extremely good, but it also wasn't without a few issues. Firstly, while it does call out Tyler Bonnie's puddle-plan, the method given to avoid it (That being, literally, "We avoid it") doesn't really hold up with the sheer volume that the Good Vibrations Member brings to the table. That being said, I have a few issues of my own with that part of Tyler's strategy, but we'll get to that in the Onyx Team portion. Another couple issues, I feel like it doesn't have any particularly amazing retirement plans; none of them are particularly bad per say, but only the Exercise Room plan stands out to me as being particularly deep or multi-layered. I'm also not completely enthused with the defensive maneuvers (If Holding Out for a Hero already has a grip on someone, it would be able to tell that they weren't really moving), and I'm not in complete agreement that the numerous 'Crowd Illusion' type plans used in the strategy will be quite as effective as the Chloes hope they will be. That being said, these few issues don't really take away from the main good-ness of the strategy, using a Stand I personally pinned as kinda boring in a bunch of very fun ways. Jay, Kay, and Elle get a solid 8/10 from me; ironing out a few of the defensive issues and putting the same effort into the rest of the RETIRE-ment strategies as was put into the Exercise Room would have netted this a 9, and maybe a 10. Still, very well done.
Onto Tyler's plan, and while it is pretty short, it has a pretty solid method of early retirement involving thrown prison bars and massive water puddles that aims to take out the Chloes and their new best friend before they even make it out of the opening hallway. Simple, brutal efficiency is a different take than Cosmic Fire's perhaps slightly more elegant illusion-based mixup approach, but it is far from without merit. However, this strategy really, extremely falters if the Users of Hey Soul Sister and their new ally manage to make it out of the opening hallway, with an absolutely pitiful amount of contingencies surrounding that gaping hole. Focusing entirely on a plan for winning and not planning around it going a different way is bold and typically not advised, but it can work if the strategy you're planning around is air-tight. However, this comes to the massive issue I have with the Good Vibration's plan; it uses out-of-character knowledge of what HSS is able to do, and the strategy completely falls apart without knowledge of its ability. Making puddles of water doesn't really make sense to do unless you know your opponent can mask their appearance in some way, and blind-throwing javelins only makes sense if you know that there's something there that you can't see. This is a massive no-go; for simpler abilities it may be more acceptable, but for a Stand based entirely on misdirection and subterfuge like Hey Soul Sister, this is pretty unacceptable. Even if you can accept that, I still don't think the early-retirement method is quite sound enough in execution to warrant the complete abandoning of anything else, but that's sort of null and void because Stand knowledge like that is, at least from this Judge's point of view, kinda unacceptable. 4/10

Dahlia Hawthorne

Onyx - This starts off with a good, effective, creative, and brutal opening play. Honestly, I’d vote for you if I were a mere voter.

However, I’m a judge, and, as such, I must judge it on its quality. And, in the quality department...it falters.

The biggest problem with it is a glaring omission. You don’t take into account what happens if they go into another room. This whole thing anticipates the entire battle going on in the hallway. What if they, in some way, escape the hallway? With three of them, an illusion stand, and a prisoner running around, it’s possible that they could be lost in the confusion. You have NOTHING, and considering their jojolity it’s a glaring omission.

Also, is Kangol supposed to be dragging you throughout the match? This could use elaboration.


The glaring omission made your strat seem incomplete and costed you greatly.

5/10



Topaz - This is a good strategy. It has a good amount of defense via creative use of your stands. You use the fact that there’s four of you (counting Borsalino) to your advantage in both the defense and trickery. You had successful prediction of your opponents actions (even if “we avoid it” could be elaborated upon)

One problem. Where’s the execution? Where’s the part where you go in an kill Kangol? Where you gang up on the duo with your partner and your stands, killing either Tyler or Borsalino depending on who or what’s protected? It’s the end game of the strategy...where is it?


6/10