R1M29 Quality Delibs

Judge Harvest Valley (Snek)

Hello everyone! It’s been a while, but I’m here to get in a couple more delibs in before the round is through. Now, let’s start with PINDROP and Arizona! At its core, this is a good plan with a variety of interesting approaches and uses of Arizona’s ability in order to exercise arena control. The log traps are fun, and [Fragrance] is a good way of deterring animal airdrops while setting up creative ways to take shots. The camouflaged pieces of water are also a fun piece of tech, showing an eye for counterplay as you build up your plan. Not only that, but you have a lot of good ways of dealing with the animal threats, including debilitating them instead of killing them to weaken Reese without resetting their timer. You even go for his animal remains, which is very clever! If all goes well, you have a cool and competent plan that uses your ability well in order to decimate that nerdy little academic.

But that leads me to my major issue with your strategy: I just don’t think you put enough emphasis on resource gathering. Now, to your credit, you are both on a map surrounded by water, and you do pay some mind to it by refilling your bottles and such. You also note the danger of gathering water, and so you time it out when Reese is spinning the hourglass. Yet, between the lilypad platforming, the pachinko machine, multiple shots for trees, and even shots needed to set up the ice wall that makes gathering water safer, this is a very resource intensive strat. For a character whose stand is built on resource management, I really feel like you don’t put quite enough focus on gathering resources, especially considering the amount of resources required for your plan to work. Still, you’ve got a strong core to your strategy, and it’s not like you’re utterly lacking any way to get more water. You are the monsoon, after all! It’s certainly not bad work, and there’s a lot to love (especially Arizona herself, who just shines throughout this strategy). I just could have used more logistical details in the areas that really count. Overall, I’ll give this a low [7].

Now it’s IMPACT! I find this strategy to be competent in a number of areas. The central plan with the cycling is strong and simple without overstepping the limits of Reese’s stand. The positioning and knowing when to engage and disengage shows a good use of logistics. There’s solid counterplay throughout, especially responding to the beginning of the strategy and Arizona’s various paths, as well as the ending contingency section.

However, I think where this strategy shines is in its Technical Understanding. Throughout the strat, Reese makes full use of his animals’ various abilities for navigation, offence, and defence. This strategy really brings out the full use of Reese’s kit, and it is well researched throughout! I also think that the formatting helps the readability instead of taking away from it, really drawing attention to each animal’s role within the strategy as part of the established cycle. I think it is elegant and efficient without going off on tangents, and found no real issues of note. As such, I think I would give this strat a low [9].

Judge Lake of Rot (Arch)

Nature can be a frightening force. This is only proven by the clash between our two combatants: Reese Mcguffin, I.M.P.A.C.T.’s own animal handler vs. Arizona Robbins, the chilling typhoon of P.I.N.D.R.O.P.! How do our fighters do?

Starting with Reese, he summons Doc to be his eye in the sky, while using Anna to help him climb the tree in front of him. This is a simple maneuver, but it accomplishes a lot within that short amount of time. Moving just slightly out of Arizona’s range, Reese forces her to make a choice, and all of them end up with her moving towards the adventurer. This not only gives Reese the time to set up, but gives him a good idea of where she’s going to be, allowing his team of animals to approach themselves.

From here, Reese plays an elaborate game of keepaway, letting his animals face off against the deadly cowgirl. While I won’t go over every play these animals can make, I appreciate the care that went into assigning their roles and tactics. The presentation is well-organized and allows for a modular take on the strat, fitting in the pieces wherever they’re needed, often forming deadly combos. Doc and Anna/Finn allowing Reese to attack her while hiding underwater, while Gumshoes goes in for the final takedown while Arizona is busy with Pieces. Reese manages his animals very well, keeping Arizona in a constant state of alertness. Though Magenta Mountain has a collective of eyes between them, Arizona only has two.

Ultimately, I’m giving this strategy an 8 out of 10. I think Reese’s strat is incredibly thorough, showing a strong understanding of his opponent and how best to exploit her weaknesses. It’s a surprisingly simple strat, but it has an incredible amount of depth all the same. Well done!

Onto Arizona, we begin with a careful approach. Storms don’t just happen out of nowhere. There’s a process, a build up. And that’s what the cowgirl spends her starting moments doing. She takes lily pads and rips them up for future resources, while heading towards the center island. She’s careful to make a safe passage using frozen lily pads and a tree, in order to avoid any dangerous aquatic beasts. From there, she freezes her lily pads in the air to act as a projectile shield, manages her resources and analyzes her opponent all from her fortified bunker in the middle of the river.

The beginning is predominantly resource gathering with a rush towards control over one part of the map, and the next section is all about keeping that control and removing options from Reese. Fragrance In The Air allows her to ricochet bullets, extending her reach if Reese steps out of line. Shooting down trees, as well as shooting patches of ground help to remove cover and create hazardous terrain, forcing him to watch his step or slip up. However, while this section is quite thorough, I find the tree destruction to be a bit brushed over. While I believe that with enough ice a tree can be vulnerable, I think it may take a little more effort to take something down as big or as tough as a tree. While not impossible, Arizona probably won’t have the entire forest cleared in the time it takes to beat Reese.

Next she takes the time to address how she deals with each animal, and the danger each one poses to her throughout the fight. I appreciate the detail put into this, from understanding the usefulness of the owl’s sight to ensuring she didn’t immediately kill the animals if it wasn’t necessary, as doing so would activate their cooldown timer. Arizona spends a lot of time analyzing her opponent, and it works wonders.

Finally, once she’s gathered all the info she can, leveled as many trees as she could, she’s ready to take Reese down. With a nonstop assault, she ensures that her opponent has nowhere to run, using the Fragrance In The Air to fire bullets all over the place, while ensuring that wherever he does run, it’ll be on a slick patch of ice, ready to take him out once he’s down.

Overall, I’m going to give this strategy a 7 out of 10. It was a thoughtful strategy, and despite a few questionable choices with the trees, I think it ultimately pays off, slowly removing any hope Reese may have had throughout the match, leaving him vulnerable to the oncoming storm. Well done!

Judge Blighttown (Coop)

Got us some fun strats here today. Arizona pulls out a bag of cool freezing and ricochet tricks to aid her pseudo-terraforming plan. As the map designer for this match, I intended the lily pads to be merely stepping stones for either player to make use of, so shredding them up to freeze them as midair bullet bumpers and as ice shields was a neat surprise. I was also not expecting anyone to knock the trees down. On that point though, while Big Iron certainly has the ability and numbers to do this, the trees are a couple meters thick so some more details into the exact technique or an acknowledgement of the potential time sink this imposes would've been nice to see.

After we accepted Reese during registration, I was a bit worried that a “Reese strat” would end up either bogged down by all of the active cooldowns or end up mismanaging time resources. So, I'm happy to report that this didn’t happen at all and that a major part of this strategy is how well the summons are streamlined through its summoning loops. Aiding this are robust sections for how each animal can be used so that Reese is prepared to contend with his opponent with any pair of animals. Perhaps some more detail on a scenario where Reese has lost all access to his ability would’ve been nice to see, but the succinct loop plan mitigates this enough to be an effective countermeasure.

Overall, both are solid and fun strategies, I’m gonna give Arizona and Reese both **8’s**.