JJOCT7 R2M20 Quality

Judge Big Boss (Logic)
A stealth based “trailing mission” for this one. Similar to M16, the balancing for this match manifests in shifting advantage states depending on the situation. Dirty Donuts’ advantages are readily apparent—tech manipulation and midrange illusions—while Disco has map breaking, close range manipulation, and 2 Opposable Thumbs on the basis of being a human in an environment built around humans. With the “open world” gameplay enabled by the map, players have a range of options, tactics, and arguments to make in how they prosecute the match.

In my time within the community, I’ve noticed a general shift in how Charisma plays are viewed: rather than requiring a Charisma stat (after all, unstated skills are assumed to be at “1.5”s, between a Weakness and Trained), Charisma plays need to be detailed and argued—“strats over stats,” to quote an old shibboleth. Here, Disco uses these strats to aplomb: using her map mobility to improve her spread of rumors which are particularized to the phase of the match, the location, and her opponent. (Planning/Competency/Counterplay)

While there is much less terraforming than I would have expected (eg, A PRE conveyor belt crowd control, especially while inside), it is an eminently Readable and Elegant strat that goes through its arguments. I think [9] is in order.

I find myself similarly impressed by DD’s strat, very Creatively framed as a CYOA to highlight the suite of tactics available at her disposal. (Planning/Competency) While the level of generalizability generally coheres, it does occasionally falter in its ellison over how DD interfaces with humans and the particulars of their environment. (Competency/Logistics; there is an argument over how literally “social skills of an antisocial teenager” should be taken, but it is relatively immaterial to my analysis)

Furthermore, while the camera play is well met, I think some of the more 3xtr4v4g4nt
hax push DD’s Computer Use 3. While I have minor quibbles of the ease of DD’s access to higher security systems (e.g., do such skills make finding what you are looking for easy and fast), some of the plays, such as tampering with the generator or messing with the fax machines do leave a noticeable trail, which could come back to bite you. (Logistics)

Similarly, while some amount of handwaving is reasonable, given Disco’s ability to affect terrain/architecture, movement between locations may not be as much of a given as implied, especially for indoor segments.

I waffled greatly on my scores, not just for DD's Quality, but for all of them. Ultimately, I return to the canons of deference and grace, which urge me to consider the highs when given a strong foundation. Thus, I think the strat coheres on the whole, especially given its fungibility in structure and prose, to the tune of a [8].

Judge Venom Snake (Coop)
We’ve got two interesting strats for the stealth match here, where one player chooses to remain “virtually” unseen and the other chooses to hide in plain sight with disguises. Starting with Disco, despite the lack of a Disguise or Charisma skill, I think you managed to pull both off pretty well here. The extensive amount of planning and pathing here to leverage the NPCs into suspecting DD’s shenanigans is impressive, and the angle of “spreading rumors amongst coworkers” works really well to offset said lacking Skills. To offer a bit of criticism to this approach though, first I think the speed at which the rumors are expected to spread (via employee gossip) in the strat is a bit too optimistic as it's going to take a while longer for those people to move around and start talking to other people about. Additionally, the strat heavily relying on a power outside of Disco’s direct control (NPCs being very indirectly told to do something) is a very risky move - though making a pit stop at the cafeteria definitely makes it a feasible plan still and Disco continuing to spread such rumors (coupled with the fact that they are actually things that are or will happen) mitigate a lot of the risk here, so well done!

Moving on to Disco’s disguises, both the collecting and disposal of them are well thought out, and the use of ｢King Silence｣ here to make adjustments and “quick changing” possible is really creative. Although walking about in the open (even in disguise) is an equally risky maneuver as the one stated earlier, again I think the planning here more than makes up for it and turns it into an excellent stratagem. The only disguise that doesn’t really work for me here is the army recruit one - although it probably has happened before, I don’t think a “mid-50’s” female new recruit is common enough to seamlessly blend in with the other soldiers. Granted, this particular section doesn’t directly interact with others very often, but it does stand out as the one point where “someone is not supposed to be here” is most at risk of being revealed and sticks out as a big misstep in the grander plan to me.

Once Disco reaches the end of the strat (the office building portion), she is able to make full use of her architecture knowledge and Stand ability to navigate the premises, further solidify her interception of Dried Donuts’ tactics, and offers her a fairly safe excuse to keep an eye on Zafar while still be out in the open. I think the ending here does really well to use the gossip/rumors built up over the course of the match (which despite me thinking your estimations were overly optimistic, I do think they would be in fuller effect by this point) and ties everything Disco has planned and prepared together in a neat, cohesive package (much like some of the discarded disguises). Overall, Disco is going to get a solid **8** from me.

Dried Donuts, in opposition, has a strategy focused on being completely unseen and makes full use of her panther speed and Fiber Optic cables to invisibly sprint about the compound. Although this invisibility is by no means perfect (as its heat-shimmering effect is leveraged by Disco), this is adequately acknowledged by DD and occasionally uses it to her advantage by making her “Shimmering Decoys” to throw NPCs off her trail if they choose to investigate these (points for Counter-Counterplay?). DD also has some decent NPC manipulation when it comes to being investigated by transferring her “dizziness” from rolling around to the soldiers with Ethernet cables to make it appear that the Shimmers are a symptom of exhaustion or heat stroke instead (in addition to using cables as physical objects to trip these people as well). During the office portion, Donuts is also able to cleverly use camera footage to make “looped footage” of doors and such to pass through rooms without worrying about invisibly opening a door.

With all this tech and more at her disposal, Dried Donuts has a decently solid plan in place - though there are some questionable gaps in logic here that takes it down a few points for me. First, a lot of this strat feels “reactive” in a way that ends up shooting itself in its paw more than it does to actually aid DD in being undetected. Most of the earlier portions here seem to move forward in response to “almost being spotted”, choosing to lure NPCs into investigating falsehoods created by your abilities (which will in turn makes them more wary of what you can do) rather than taking careful pathing into account to simply avoid this all together. To quickly compare this to your opponent, while Disco’s strategy “hinges” on pointing out the immediate evidence of your presence, your strat seems to support and validate that approach and unintentionally increase suspicion on DD by choosing to be more reckless with her invisibility (which benefits your opponent more by making them pay less attention to any door-based shenanigans left behind by Disco). Granted, it is way easier for DD to remove herself from locations of immediate danger in the first half of the match (given her innate speed and panther mobility) so I don’t think being physically caught here is a high possibility, but it does raise the alert levels higher than I think you would want them to be. Another big concern I have is with the latter half of the match in the office building, where the fact that DD is a large jungle cat moving through tight spaces with other people roaming about seems to be overlooked in favor of “being invisible”. DD is still physically there and some contingency or planning into making sure she doesn’t bump into people would’ve been appreciated.

Although the lack of Dried Donuts’ own “self-awareness” (maybe not the right word for this) puts her in a worse spot than anticipated, even before taking Disco’s strategy into account, I do think the given plan is more than capable at tailing Zafar and remaining hidden despite the increasing difficulty to do so. I’m gonna give DD a **7** for this match. Also, I didn’t find a spot to mention this earlier, but I liked the format of the strat and it’s nice to know that emojis can be used without fucking up old reddit formatting.

Judge Solid Snake (Alpha)
Alright, a stealth match! This may come as no surprise, but I’ve always hated optional stealth missions. Why give me the option if I have a rocket launcher in my inventory? Sure, I could go in quiety and- just do my delibs? Ok, fine!

We’ll start with IMPACT, which is a team not named after the good old-fashioned grenade that goes boom the moment it touches something! I hope I’ll be able to contain myself from this point forward, because otherwise, this will read less like a critique of your work and more like me being mad that this wasn’t an Arcade lobby in Halo Reach.

I’ll say it: I dig the aesthetic. The little textboxes as a callback to post-Todd Fallout were riveting, and the plays that followed actually using those textboxes was nice! It gave the strat a rather breezy feel.

With that said, I think you have a good bead on keeping tabs on Zafar, what with being in his general area, or at the very least able to keep a bead on him throughout the match. The nagging thing to me was the lack of movement after going to certain places; while the idea is covered sufficiently, with tactics to distract or avoid being seen, the problem lies in sticking to the same general spot or spots. There’s a piece in additional information advising against that, as disguises will fail after a while. The time isn’t specified, but it’s brought up to keep the motion flowing.

Moving on from the singular nitpick, I feel like the rest of your bases and optional objectives are sufficiently covered! I feel at ease giving this a **7**.

Now let’s move onto Evergreen, where I don’t have an explosion based joke handy, but I’m sure that there’s a missile named after a tree in a military somewhere on this earth, so I’ll refrain from saying the joke can’t exist.

I do like that Disco here is very much using the doors for just about every purpose she can think of, from the obvious wallhacks and speedhacks to the more subtle tactics of hiding within surfaces, to say nothing of the constant pressure applied through every single conversation she has with base personnel.

I’ll be a thousand here, the amount of times she switches clothes and throws the blame onto others reminded me of a good Snake Eater run; you’re constantly on the move, using every bit of intel you can to get further, and finally, keeping close enough to get the drop on the target. You definitely have different motives and methods than snake here, since Kojima didn’t have infinite money when making Snake Eater, but I digress: This is very good information gathering and stealth play.

From beneath, from above, from beside, Disco doesn’t lose Zafar from start to finish, even when tailing him through floors, by sheer stand ability and peephole power. Surely, these tactics will net you what you want, surely!

One minor nitpick I do have is that there is very much one path, one gear, one direction forward. You have a singular goal in mind, and that singular goal is surreptitiously padded with an incredible amount of legwork to make it work, but one wrong gear stopping in the joint and it’s over.

With that nitpick floated, I’ll leave you with a low **8**.