T4R2M11 Quality Delibs

The Magic Treehouse:
There's a sense of arrogance in tone I've noticed in Nowhere Man's strats, and while I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt that it's based in his character and not the players on his team, it combines with certain issues I've had with both of the character's matches to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Many people have treated this match as though Olivia's the clear underdog, which baffles me. Strange Attraction is equally as powerful as Nowhere Man, and it's foolish and disrespectful to pretend otherwise. The number one way to lose a fight in JoJo, time and time again, is to underestimate your opponent's Stand, and I worry that may have occurred with this fight. Strange Attraction is not Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Nowhere Man's strat claims that because his 5 Agility is faster than Strange Attraction's C Speed, he can dodge the lasers easily to the point that it's impossible for them to hit him if he can see them. That would be the equivalent to saying that a 5 Endurance user can completely no-sell a punch from a C Power Stand. Not only that, but CFR's strat treats the lasers as though they are coming from a single easily predictable direction, rather than the multiple-path ricochets an anime bullshit marksman with access to mirrors and a B Precision laser can actually accomplish. With how these strats are written, he will get hit. Plus, it's worth noting, these beams are only an inch or two wide, at that, making them even harder to react to to dodge.

That's not to say that either strat is just about how useful a laser is or is not. Nowhere Man's mobility tech is actually pretty fun to read, and I think that it's a fair method, but it definitely leaves him open to attack; Geometry is not enough to throw paper bills in a way that they can deflect a laser. The mirror room, however, is completely devastating and really clever if it works. On Olivia's end, the actual shots all feel perfectly timed, and the Gravity Balloon is a genius play. She gets an 8/10, but I want to discuss one last thing about Nowhere Man's strat before I score him.

The building arm was interpreted by all judges as a purely cosmetic change, rendering the rocket punch and the other building features spawned from it not entirely kosher. There are plenty of other methods of accomplishing its tasks in the strat, so it won't result in too many lost points, but the issue I had with it was just barely enough to knock this from a 7 to a 6/10 for Quality. (Mentally this strat was at a 6.5 I would normally round up for, but this was what made me decide to round down instead; it's not a problem worth a full point deduction.)

Swiss Family Robinson:
Starting with our favorite lovable little misogynist I have to give you props for the narrative portions of this strategy first and foremost. It's always enjoyable to read about how the character themselves is reacting throughout the course of a math and I think it was really well written. That aside, now for the meat of the strategy.

As has been mentioned by other judges I will say moving forward that it's not advisable to use the new arm as a mechanical piece. I won't be deducting any points for it but as I understood it, it was supposed to be a flavor addition with the same mechanics as a regular arm, rather than any meaningful mechanical change. Again, it's not a huge deal, but it would've been good to have mentioned this kind of usage of it or asked beforehand.

Onto the team's general plans of action, I notice a lot of Nowhere's plan is based of trying to corral Olivia to a specific area of the map, and for that I have to commend Olivia for pulling out a pretty neat and unexpected tech with regards to the gravity balloon. It's been somewhat contentious but, I do think it works, and I think it's a great counter to some of Nowhere's actions here.

The way both players' opening moves interact, I see Olivia being able to finish her plan to get to and trash the room before Nowhere makes it there himself, and I think she can even manage to execute the gravity balloon before he manages to smash the building.
From here it's pretty straightforward; it's sort of a cat and mouse. Olivia's using her gravity balloon to jump every which way while Nowhere's plan focuses on cornering her off. I think, though, that Nowhere Man's pretty forwardly focused plan of cornering her off is a downfall in a way. He doesn't prepare a lot of strategies to take her out from the sort of vantage point she has against him, and whereas it's always good to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that he'll attempt to take action against her anyway, Nowhere really could've prepared more in the event that cornering her off wasn't entirely an option.

Here I'll touch on a bit of another gripe I had. I don't think simply because Nowhere Man has high agility he can simply 'dance around' the lasers. They may be C speed, but there are many different factors to account for with regards to this. Whether or not you see it coming, the angle its coming from, how fast you can assess where its coming from. It won't always be a straight shot, and whereas I think you have a fair way of blocking it with your many mirrors, you could've done better to prepare further, because I don't think it's as black and white as being able to dodge them like they're nothing because it's C speed vs. 5 Agility.

Moving onto who I think wins this game of cat and mouse, I think Olivia comes out the victor here. I believe that Nowhere Man not only underestimated her mobility, but also the potential strength and method of her offense. A lot of the strat reads like he expected her to be unable to navigate around his obstructions as well as that she'd not be capable of striking Nowhere Man because of simple number differences. As such, I don't feel that Nowhere Man prepared himself adequately enough for the ways in which his foe would attack, and how they would approach him.
Olivia's plans of forgoing any traditional methods of navigating the map leave Nowhere Man's main method of getting her into his hands for a final play less than stellar, and Olivia's constant repositioning and usage of her marksmanship in combination with her mirrors to fire on Nowhere Man from unexpected and potentially unseen angles, the indirect plan of attack with setting the treehouse on fire and feeding off the smoke (While not a great method of mass attainment, is certainly better than nothing and helps idly give a bit of a nudge while she consumes things from her goodie bags.), I think, in the end, leave Olivia in a better position than Nowhere to come out of this match the victor.

I'm going to give a 6/10 to Nowhere and a 9/10 to Olivia. To reiterate, I definitely think Nowhere could have planned better for the methods of which his opponent would navigate and attack, and put too much stock in what I see as a too easily circumvented plan without too much in the way of offensive or defensive meat.

Drake and Josh:
I'll be frank. Nowhere's strategy did not impress me. Starting off, his opening moves were alright and he had some interesting defensive maneuvers, but some underlying assumptions really killed some of its effectiveness in my eyes. I've seen talk about this being an easy win for him, but frankly I don't see it being like as everyone says. The absolute first one is that he assumes she has no mobility tech, something shot in the foot by Gravity Balloon. I've heard a few arguments about it being a risky tech for Olivia (and frankly I think that using it on her clothes would have been a better way to use it), but it solidly deals with a fair chunk of his strategy.

Nowhere's early offense is, honestly, not something I was much a fan of. Cornering Olivia to take care of her at range seems decent on paper, as with his defenses for the bills. But his method of transport, being the launching via buildings, fell flat in my eyes. It leaves him open  to being intercepted by lasers (don't forget your cooldowns!) and puts him in the unenviable position of having to either deal with the laser or make the landing building. I can see him dodging a few lasers here and there, with the confirmation the lasers travel at C Speed. But only in certain situations, with one coming at him straight on, and with predictable patterns. He has a high Geometry stat, which is the only reason I'm frankly even considering dodging the likes of it.

There's potential of early harm to Olivia in destroying the hut and trying to trap her, though I think that there is a much more likely possibility that she just escapes. Her staying mobile is something I think CFR outright did not plan for whatsoever, though they had decent tracking for her.

Olivia had a few areas I think could have been worked on as well. She is left pretty open by the Balloon and Nowhere could have easily forced her into a situation where she had to go to him. Gravity Balloon was something I felt worked, but was really risky if he so much as nudged her. She didn’t have quite the stats to hang on, 2 STR meaning that even a bit of force could send her into an easy RETIRE, although Nowhere’s assumption of her being more or less stationary meant this was not as much of a weakness.

Olivia overall really impressed. She turned a situation that could have lead to Nowhere cornering her with little respite into leveraging her own abilities to hunt him. I especially felt that her finishers and focus on removing area for Nowhere to build on were solid, even if the finishers were a little on the risky side.

Nowhere had a few things that I really liked. The mirror ball was a terrifying finisher, that if he managed to get off would absolutely kill any chances of an Olivia win. The narrative was really fun to me, and it’s mostly off the strength of the narrative that I’ll be nice and not take any points off for using the arm in an actual mechanical way (PLEASE clear this with judges in the future, personally I would have been alright with making sure your opponent knew it was on the table.) On its own the building punch is another way that he could get a potential RETIRE, but….

A lot of the CFR strategy relies on maybes. Maybe Olivia will get caught in the Mirror Ball. Maybe he can dodge all of the lasers. Maybe he can get a hit early on. Maybe Olivia loses her grip. But the path to a victory for him is too full of these maybes for my liking, while Olivia has a solid beginning to end plan, if not without some flaws of its own. An impressive showing on one end, and a mildly disappointing one on the other.

I will give Nowhere Man a 5/10 for Quality, and Olivia an 8/10.