JJOCT7 R3M7 Quality

Judge Asura (Logic)

I’d like to give this one the full Logic treatment, but I’m gonna be brief due to other commitments. I’ve been a fan of “Thousand Heartless Challenge” matches since m.A.A.d. City back in T4, and I’ve been excited for this one since the start of T7. Can’t say I’m not bummed by the paltry voter turn out, but here we are.

Multi-man melees are opportunities for players to pop off with respect to Competency, Technical, and Creative, pulling out the most stylish tech without having to worry too much about Counterplay. I’ll note that I think both sides could have been a bit more mindful of getting chipped out by return fire, but the generalist nature of the map and the Dynasty Warriors inspiration means I’m not too fussed about that.

Calabasas gets a [7] for adequate performance on multiple axes. While the Planning and more modular nature of the strat with respect to the terrains is well met (Logistics), much the strategy for dealing with soldiers is a generalist use of projectiles (Competency). Again, due to the generalist nature of the match, this isn’t a problem with respect to happy pathing (Logistics), but it does limit its performance under the aforementioned axes.

There were individual instances of unique setups, and while I wanted more in line with those ideas, what is here clearly coheres!

Blake gets a [7] for adequate performance on multiple axes, but ones more complementary to Calabasas’s. My jurisprudence has spoken against provisions such as “if the situation calls for it, he can and will repeat a more effective previous or future strategy in any area” for a lack of specifying and providing the conditions for using such tactics (Planning/Logistics), but it is more permissible here, *and* Blake does a good job of making such tactics generalizable. Blake focuses on setting up and executing killboxes and defensible positions, which with a little bit of Formatting could have been readily abstractable.

Otherwise, the strat is primarily Narrative by its linearity, focusing on individual tactics (Competency) at the arguable cost of some robustness. (Planning/Logistics) The strat works!

Judge Yasha (Flame)

Dynasty Warriors match time!

Starting with Calabasas, their gameplan is to first clear out the village to protect civilians before going in a circular path across all the biomes hoping to keep close to Blake’s own pathing—with sections split for how to tackle each biome (Logistics/Formatting). The Bismuth Promenades returns to aid in movement to help conserve their stamina across the match, and to provide access to Light for their ranged attacks (Tech/Logistics) — these are primarily focused towards the soldiers with little chance to hit the village’s civilians in the crossfire, but outside of the village, more options have been explored such as using spent pillars to create shrapnel blasts (either by a Light blast or a new pillar tearing it apart from below (Creativity)) or electromagnetic distortions to throw off enemies both metaphorically and literally into some spikier bismuth.

Where the farmlands and jungle differ is that the latter comes with free cover which Cal takes advantage of, also using the trees as weapons by toppling them down onto soldiers or as somewhere to slam them into — and they also have the idea of turning an area into a clearing to bait soldiers into.

…and that is pretty much everything in the Strategy, barring the narrative/jojolity flavor. Granted, it definitely is a good strategy (and does really well in regards to Elegance), but it does have a broad feeling of sameness throughout the mechanics portion of the strat: the main standouts being a tech to enable the use of tactics from a different section and the final almost flavor attack to protect Blake. Overall giving this one a low **7**.

Moving onto Blake, he instead works with the village as the endpoint — going counterclockwise, with sections split up into different segments of the path taken.

Each weapon finds use throughout the strategy: the Knives once again becoming a great movement tool by using leather straps to teleport mid flight, enabling Blake to scout out the area as well as close in towards enemies; the Hammer (my favourite) is used to create walls which can be used for both cover as well as an avenue of attack, while also using its terraforming capabilities to create traps; the Sword finds use blinding foes with static Halos (while their initial usage read as if the one made could move along with Blake, the later uses show that this wasn’t intended to be the case — which is good as the light constructs cannot move, but it was something I noted while reading), as well as to create illusions for misdirection (such as by covering traps or platforms); his crossbow used to dispatch distracted enemies or weaken the bases of the walls so that the spear can grab and rotate them; and the cymbals used to attract the attention of more soldiers by increasing the sound of nearby gunfire. Even the enemy rifles are used, taken off of defeated foes and used to work alongside his traps — primarily, to create a first shot to distract the soldiers so that he can teleport elsewhere to utilize his other weapons. And this is just what’s introduced in the first segment!

The various uses of Blake’s arsenal are blended in a fun and effective manner, with no single squad tackled with a singular weapon: the introduction of remixed versions of some of the pre-existing tech alongside newer ideas such as the Archer Platforms. (Tech/Creativity) And with a finisher combining a heroic speech with each of the main stratagems throughout the strat (Red Bandana Ruse/Archer Platforms/Foxholes) to make a dramatic finish! Giving this one an **8**!

Judge Mithra (Alpha)

Ah yes, the good ol’ mook match! The flavor of the month is… hold on, I’m watching the wheel spin… Dynasty Warriors! Man, I played an hour of like two of those. Do Not Engage Lu Bu, am I right fellas?

Anyway, let’s talk about the strats! I’ll start with the Mellow Boom Raiders, who opted for a more modular approach to the strat. Given the way that the map itself was deliberately cut into three unique sections, this was a solid approach from the outset.

To briefly discuss what was in each major section, we have Cal starting off with how tech works in confined areas, and defining how Cal will try to keep near Blake when possible. The next defines how Cal can move in more open terrain, and what effect Cal’s stats have on mobility. The last major section covers the jungle, and its restrictions on Cal- minus the space within the ‘death zones’ - before we move onto cleanup.

This is enough, as it is. Cal’s movement, abilities, and restrictions are covered adequately by each major section.

Moving on to Heat of the Roment, There were a fair number of little grammatical things that dug into me while I was parsing the strat, so I’m calling it out first to let the team know.

That said, Blake, was pretty much ready to move from the word go, and did not stop. There were almost no breaks in the flow of the strat, for better or worse, and it was really hard to tell if there were any ‘narrative-only’ bits in the runup.

Blake, had a very fun strat, that said. We have a pile of moves- well, four or five moves with some extra variables tied in- that get used from the word go, and are fully fleshed out, for better or worse.

While I can’t offer means on how to tidy things up, as I feel like most of the problems I have with the way it flows are *me* problems, I will note that they may impact others.

Now, with all of that tabled, the reason why I haven’t given either team a score yet is because THEY GOT THE SAME, ONE, A **7**! Good jorb all around.