Star vs Ame judgement

Given that Hanno is ruled OOT, Ame obviously wins. However, I want to talk about why for a moment, because I don't think this was actually an easy thing to conclude lol.

For starters, Ame very nearly just shoots himself in the foot with the characterization that his VIP, Gordon, "will engage the enemy". I get the idea that this is going for (aha, my rounds are 2v1s!), but given that the Batmech kinda clearly sucks this essentially feels like arguing your VIP is itching to heroically sacrifice himself.

As Star points out, the "5000 degree" scan clearly and obviously says "maximum", and it's really easy to believe that Tariq's beams are substantially hotter than that. There's not even any given evidence that Superman *is* going all out in that scan, so by extension any scaling between that and any of the linked feats is inherently suspect regardless. From there, all you have to do to suppose Tariq wins is say that it's more likely than not that he'll be able to shoot Gordon.

The problem here comes on two fronts. The first, and more obvious one, is just that this is a 3v1, and it's not too hard to guess that Tariq will be distracted with the much faster and stronger bodyguards to notice that this *particular* tech-y superhero character is actually the one he's looking for.

The second is that, as good as Tariq is argued as aiming, Star pretty definitively rests his in-tierness on him being unable to hit Baymax, a 100 mph flier with human reaction times. Gordon is faster than this by half, and by virtue of equalization, has the exact same reaction as Baymax. If Baymax, whose heat resistance feats boil (haha) down to "can endure a flamethrower", is able to take grazing hits to engage with Tariq, then I think that Ame's team can do so as well.

To be like, completely clear though, I think Tariq would literally just win if the justification given was slightly different and if "Gordon has a negatively productive IC strat" was harped on a bit more. Maybe this is because Tariq is also OOT (ahh ohhh woahhh) but in this particular case, an old man fighting 3 guys with piercing options who are all fast-enough and just have to get through a shield with very few piercing durability feats at all is not a situation he's winning.