R3E2 Quality Delibs

Judge Mishima (Logic)

It might not be on an ‘infinitely’ flat saltplain, but I’ll take what I can get: MOONSIDERS 1ST MATCH! Cerise and Ravee are two incredibly capable CQC specialists, the former boasting incredible power with DEATHCAMP along with the END and Garden Shed providing defense and tankiness to enable the brutal trades that put Cerise on the map in R1. Ravee, by contrast, is incredibly mobile with some of the best parry and tank tech with ACTs 1 and 2, with ACT3 providing stopping power with hadoukens and an A SPD punchghost to quickly mill down her opponent. I didn’t know Kengan Association doubled as an ACT Thunderdrome!

Cerise starts up this match by armoring up on turn one and shifting into a more reactive fighting style as he litters the arena with tripping hazards to enable him to use his grappling based techniques.

I generally take a more holistic approach to my delibs, so I’m loathe to go through each tech and my reading on its viability; generally I think the anti-ACT1 and ACT2 tech cohere (I’m unsure if a glass bottle would shatter on impact in a way to impale the pieces into the target), but I wonder if they needed to be their own sections given how they follow from general setup play.

Ron’s fear of Karma is made very clear in the two sections dedicated to it, and it results in very competent fighting around the Stand in both its punchghost and its suit forms, using a combination of positioning, tech, and setup to work around Ravee’s strengths. Maybe the strat didn’t need all 30k characters, but otherwise I don’t have much to say: 8/10.

Now to Ravee, a major point of Readability/Technical comes up in the use of kata and technique names: namely I don’t know them on first blush or how they use your Stand abilities, which is especially problematic as someone who delibbed and read your previous outings. If these are references to names from earlier matches, then linking to them would be nice, if not, then it is even more imperative you describe or define the technique. You do so Swar Kata [Shadja] and Vadi Kata [Vilambit], but not for Laya Kata [Drut] which I can infer is some kind of mobility boost from ACT1, but not much more detail.

After an initial rushdown attempt to discombobulate Cerise, Ravee switches to set up and chip-based attacks from a distance to zone him out. While I think the hidden potholes are a fun use of ACT3, my concerns for Technical crop up here. I can begrudgingly accept ACT1 being enough to make someone blink and moving fast enough to move while someone blinks as stylization, but rotational-terminal velocity projectiles are in direct conflict with ACT3’s stated ability being to “[essentially] make an object slow down and spin around [...by changing] the direction of the projectile by putting enough spin on it to curve its path, doing so weakens the projectile by 1 level of power.” Maybe there was concern whether Karma could just throw the debris (the text says “empowers strikes”, so a more literalist interpretation would read it as exclusively referring to strikes), but there were ways to create projectiles without contradicting ability description.

Fortunately, Ravee’s transition to offense is the Technical play I’ve been excited for since Ravee was confirmed. With defensive tactics established, elaborating on [Meend] (which seems to be based on Newton’s Third Law applied to ACT3) to launch Ravee into a spiraling mortar shell of death is a very fun play that might rush a bit headlong into a capable CQCombatant, but given Ravee’s mobility this isn’t a major concern.

This headlong rush results in a more cinematic finisher, which I’ve often waved as narrative, but given Cerise’s physicals and skill as a grappler, I think you need to give a bit more to how you actually contend with him beyond a combo string if you make a committed engagement. I see the Narrative achievement of Nirvana in the final section, but I think the path to it has been elided over, especially in comparison to the midrange/engagement sections prior. I see much good here, but I think the cloudy Readability and the underestimation of Cerise as a brawler in the final scramble warrant a high 6, sufficiently covering its core plan but not the key engagement.

Judge Hanma (Flame)

This is a simple deathmatch: nothing of note except players themselves.

Starting with Ravee, the first mechanical paragraph of the strat does not read well—the length of the paragraph harming the readability of the technique descriptions in the middle. In fact, quite a few paragraphs read as if they could have been split up into multiple paragraphs or some (such as the Counterplay focused paragraph in ‘Smoke on the Water’) being made into lists. Except for the middle paragraph in ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’, that one’s fine.

As I mentioned Counterplay earlier, I might as well praise the breadth of options/scenarios you considered as well as how well integrated into the main strategy most of them are, with only the first section of mechanics having a separate Contingency section. For Technical Understanding, I second Logic on the projectile tech not working from the current wording of ACT 3, but I also agree that there are fun applications of the stand that does work (such as Meend and Mattatal)

Moving onto the finisher, there is a lessened focus on Counterplay compared to the rest of the strat, with no real assumption that the finisher’s attacks could fail—notable as the final blow is just a single strong punch. There’s also the fact that Ravee’s dislocated her body and essentially turning of Everything (further distinction would have helped: the heart and brain are both muscles but even then I don’t know if you’re excluding them from Raga). Ultimately, I feel this gets a **6**: “Essentially a plan that covers the central core of what it wants to a sufficient degree, but doesn’t cover things that could back it up sufficiently or makes some notable missteps.”

Moving onto Cerise, he suits up into a petal armor before moving into a midgame largely focused around Counterplay: my favourite thing to talk about! I don’t think that will let me talk about 4 entire sections worth, but I will point out anything that notably doesn’t work—that said, everything is coming off as solid. Of the enemy stands, Cerise focuses the most attention on Karma with it being Terrifying and ‘Very Scary’.

The general gameplan is to control Ravee’s movement to lead into grapple attacks, generally aiming to Disable her from using her ACTs to their full potential (or at all for ACT 3). The Narrative is very nicely done as well, and while it certainly could have been condensed this still gets a solid 8. Not much else to say that isn’t describing all the tech.

Also, sorry for the late delibs. I briefly forgot I was British when looking at when strats were posted, so I saw them as being posted 13th due 16th, not 12th due 15th.

Judge Tokita (Cory)

(Apologies for late delibs, It Has Been A Week)

Starting with Ravee, I'm a big fan of how this reads as a whole. Well-written flavor and theming sprinkled across this strat makes for a snappy and fun read, and while I will echo other judges and warn that this starts to edge into confusing readers with tech names that don't necessarily share continuity with past strats, I feel this more blunts the points you might have gotten from well-done flavor as opposed to subtracting points in and of itself. Still, something to keep in mind.

Moving onto actual play here, there's more than a sound foundation here. Orbwalking around Cerise is certainly well done, if expected given your past matches, but it's the moves into CQC that I really dig. Fighting Cerise with a specific plan helps a good deal when it comes to dealing with such a strong up-close opponent, though I think some extra variation here may have helped a good deal. Still, do a pretty good job here, and this strat nets a 7 - a low 7, but a 7 nonetheless!

Focusing on Cerise, what you've got here is a far more reactive strat to go along with Ravee's precise hit-and-run tactics; always funny when two strats happen to line up perfectly like that. I'll bring up one issue right away by stating that the sections in here could stand some breaking up, with larger techs being dedicated to subsections perhaps. As is, it can be a little hard to read these very big bites of stratwriting.

Beyond that, however, I really don't have too much negative to say here. This is a well-thought out and executed strat, aiming to restrict mobility  and counter everything that Ravee can hypothetically throw at you, an admittedly daunting task at the outset. Everything here coheres well enough; while some of the strat may have been a bit hard to read, it all very much works, and an 8 feels just perfect!