JJOCT7 R2M12 Quality

Judge Barret (Logic)

LSM’s strat is eminently competent; create several tools to facilitate locking down IMPACT and then rushing them down with melee. (Planning) I’m not as convinced that the Crabscorpion is the most robust primary means of locking down Chase, especially if the match devolves into linear pursuit; further consideration of the positions and terrain would have highlighted both the rushdown and lockdown the strat goes for.  (Competency/Counterplay/Logistics) Nonetheless, I think the suite of defensive options for responding to IMPACT’s offensive options is well met. (Competency/Counterplay)

I have some quibbles about the time cost/prioritization of Crabobjects at the start (Logistics/Planning) and I’m skeptical that a singular instance of Anti-Noise counts as multiple actions and a cascading feedback loop of damage, but I think a 7 is reasonable on balance.

IMPACT focuses on establishing and reestablishing their position on the ferris wheel, using flippers and bumpers to disarm and repel opponents. Control strategies require resiliency and circumspect responses to situations and threats, and IMPACT displays both with aplomb, allocating Beetles and Combos to maintain their position and enable skirmish tactics. (Logistics/Competency)

The strat concludes with air-to-ground combat, effectively turning the corner from its responsive gameplay. I was originally dreading this strat when I saw its length and formatting, but I find it eminently readable and parisible. On the whole, I’m impressed: [8].

Judge N (Alpha)

This match had a lot of fun verticality to it; unless the players decided to get off of the ride in totality, they had a lot of ground to cover and maneuver through that wouldn’t be afforded to them on a flat plane.

With that said, let’s start with the team who’s not focusing on moving through it- Lotus Street Manifold! We have a very strong start of abandoning your opening position to find a temporary new home to terraform and abuse! From there, we move into what I like to call ‘the back half’, where the majority of the strat meat lives.

I have issues here. Not in terms of tech parsability, because I figured it out rather quickly, but in legibility of motion. The section starts with Grace and Emi! in close range, then ping-pongs tactics back and forth. Now, obviously, this is the combination of short and mid-to-long range tactics in the same paragraph, but the Narrative flow starts to drag when the characters don’t have easily parsable positions.

Separately, I feel that a lot of the pathing is very, ‘happy’. I understand that the strat is supposed to take place over a very short period of time, but running into no (your opponents sticking together) or little-to-no (your opponents easily caving into pressure) interference to make all of that possible is a bit far-fetched.

Shortly after the main bulk of the strat, it seems to end. The idea is to get it done as quickly as possible, and the strat is surely short, sweet, and simple, but with the narrative issues tabled, I’ll give this a **6**.

Moving on to IMPACT, there’s a lot to unpack here, character-count wise. While I appreciate both prefaces and summaries separately, I feel like having both constricts the character budget a bit. This is made a bit worse overall in the face of some of them not being summaries, but tech placement updates. Readability is king, yes, but consistency is key.

Starting from the top, we have the early bugs getting the plays. The constant annoyance front while you set up, which includes bottom-out deconstruction and general nuisancery is appreciated, the section also flows forward well.

From there, it’s a very robust approach to telling us a story, both in terms of the slotted narrative material focusing on Chase and Dawn’s banter and in terms of rope-swinging, rope-protecting, bug-protecting, bumper-busting, bumper balling… You know what you wrote, so I’ll stop.

The tech is placed very well, and their usages are brought up naturally as things come to pass. My one concern was that nothing really grabbed me, it was all very much ‘this is good, yes’. Sometimes, though, that’s all you really need to earn a high **7**.

Judge Susie (Extra)

Alright, we've got a fun little match on a ferris wheel, which means it's time for everybody's favorite complication: verticality! As you might expect, dealing with that vertical element is a critical facet of the match, and one that both teams approach in different ways.

Starting with IMPACT, you have a very fun strategy based around leveraging the scaffolding on the wheel to climb around, using your individual stands to provide inhuman grip strength and mobility to assist. It's a very well-thought plan, albeit a bit cluttered at times; as nice as summaries are, they're scarcely necessary. Most of the strategy (at least in my opinion) was digestible enough that those readability elements were somewhat wasted, and the strategy would have been more readable, on account of being shorter, without them.

That, however, does not deal with the content of the strategy itself, and for good reason - I just don't have a lot to critique here. You saw the assignment and delivered an excellent product in response. Everything is done with a clear purpose, you manage to play a slightly slower game without feeling passive, and you tackle the challenge presented by the vertical element in a way that cleanly plays to the strengths of both characters. The use of the rope to facilitate drive-by attacks without ever truly disengaging makes for some nasty pressure, and Dawn's ranged weaponry provides the requisite lockdown to let Chase go wild. Consider me suitably impressed enough to award this a **9.**

As for LSM, you have a similarly large bag of tricks, with Grace in particular making constructs of all sorts. Whereas IMPACT had a slight problem with wordiness, I feel as though you suffer the opposite evil. There are times in the strategy where it could have used a little more glue to really tie it all together. You present the best-case scenario here, which is quite reasonable. No strat survives contact with the enemy (usually because they summon a fish god or something else you didn't prepare), but when some things inevitably don't go as expected, a strat's robustness acts as "armor" in those situations, consideration that you lack in some places.

The Crabscorpion tech is very cool, and it is supposed to happen quickly, but Chase's Stand possesses a versatility that isn't really accounted for. As a duo, IMPACT has plenty of means to evade or intercept capture, and maintaining your grip is difficult. The recourse isn't explained as definitely, with the strategy moving directly into "now that we've kept IMPACT where we want them." Because of that somewhat reductive gameplan, I'm going to give this a **6.**