JJOCT7 R2M8 Quality

Judge Baseball Furies (Ceep)

Starting out with Vasil, absolutely stellar work on this one! The strategy starts out with clear goals for the setup and prepares an early trap without overextending. While the wall doesn't have a massive amount of bearing on the fight, I think that Vasil treats it as an opening more for killing off a stragglers.

Speaking of, Vasil recognizes he has to just KO five enemy goons and his plan works great within that framework. Going for ambushes while having a strong suite of options to keep Chandra from steamroller is great, and is absurdly punishing to any sloppiness from Chandra.

The use of Minions was great. The recognition that Vasil can output threat constantly is used to handle the massive pressure Chandra puts on. I don't really have a lot of things to point out here. It's all well organized and very slick. I especially like the part of leaning on his Crowded Space to handle if she keeps all her squad nearby.

As for Chandra, again this is a really solid piece of work. Blowing open the containers gets you half of the way there, and the slow, steady preparation is well done. I think that you can keep the survivability of the units surprisingly high. The call to keep minions close keeps you from being blown out by Vasil's preparations to jump anyone on their own.

I don't have too much to say about this, actually! It's damn good, it's damn solid, and there's nothing that's offbeat or out of place.

I think I'll give Vasil a 9 and Chandra an 8. Both had great strategies that didn't have anything out of place, but Vasil had a bit extra… it's difficult to say, but it all cohered in a way that pushed it a little bit over the edge to a 9.

Judge Lizzies (Yuri)

Hi! Judge Yuri here! This match was my baby mechanically, which is pretty rare. Normally I either just suggest deathmatches or leave the concepting to the other guys - but the idea for this one popped into my mind one day and I knew I had to go with it. Pleased to report that I was absolutely not disappointed in the results. This might just wind up being my favorite match of the round! Let’s get into it!

One of the most important things any strat can achieve properly is confidence. Confidence is key in tournament. The ability to properly sell your tactics and present your strategy as something that *will* win is an extremely useful tool - but, at the same time, trying to oversell yourself can result in a ‘happy path’ strat that can put off the reader. Confidence in stratting is an extremely thin line.

What immediately stood out to me about Vasil’s strat was how effectively he walked that line. Vasil’s tactics are smart and well played, but also sold well. He gives a strong case for everything he pulls working well, but doesn’t put too much faith in success, either. He knows his strengths and plays to them from the word go; given his toolkit, aiming to debilitate and slow down the enemies in order to time them out is an extremely effective way to go about the match, and no punches are pulled in getting there.

Selectively animating constructs in order to skirt the limits of the Stand is pretty clever, and The Wall is also just a really solid way to immediately put an opponent on the backfoot if they’re not able to respond to it. I’d worry about using all the headstart time on One Thing, but that one thing is backed up by an immediate show of firepower that makes it easier for Vasil to skirt away and set up elsewhere, which makes it a lot more workable.

Taking a moment to describe all your stuff is very very appreciated, and it makes the rest of the strat a breeze to read when you get all the terms in your head from the get-go. I’m also a fan of how much the strat focuses on positioning. It’s easy to lose it compared to the Big Epic Stand Moves, but there’s a very clear care put into making sure everyone is as safe as they should be. Also smart is the decision to just. Not bother fighting Bloodmoney. Good call! It’s scary!

Solid finisher as well. Leans fully into the focus on distracting and burning time by giving Chandra a Big Ass Thing to deal with and playing that hand as best as Vasil can. Ultimately I have no complaints. This was very enjoyable, well written and realized, and read like a breeze - you get a **9!**

As for Chandra, I have similarly high praise. I gotta commend the character writing right off the bat. Gets her across *very* well, and immediately establishes the tone for the rest of the strat. Chandra does a similar exploitation to Vasil, utilizing the starting positions to immediately start up some panic, and maybe even take out a guy right off the bat. Something that immediately stuck out to me, and is done very well throughout the entire strat, is the leverage of Bloodmoney’s high power. It isn’t just used for “I punch you hard and strong”, but for movement and other such things as well. It’s just as much of an all purpose tool as Vasil’s minions, and the strat knows this *very* well. The bunker buster and door shields are both solid examples of this. Turtle formation is a *really* good call here. Gets rid of a lot of the problems in moving together - mainly, Vasil’s guys just firing on all of you at once.

I commended Vasil’s strat for putting a lot of care into positioning and micromanaging, and I have similar praise to give her. Chandra makes damn sure not to slip up at the little things. Everything is tailor made to make slip ups easier to avoid, too - one centralized path makes it all the more easier to limit the angles of attack the opponents can utilize, while also making it so that Chandra can freely cause chaos without jeopardizing her own movement. If you only have one path to take, that’s the only path that has to stay clear.

Your finisher is solid as well. Understanding when to cut losses and go all in is a very good thing for a match like this, and appropriate care and respect is given to the home stretch to ensure a clean finish. I have no complaints here, either. Super solid character work, very well written and easy to get through, and extremely tactically sound. You played perfectly to what the match required, and for that, a **10** is well deserved. Excellent work to both sides.

Judge Electric Eliminators (Surface)

This strat has made me realize that Vasil reminds me a lot of my own T6 character, Solsbury Hill- just, well...Better executed.

Straight **8s** for both Quality and Jojolity. I don't have much to say- it's just a very good and well-put together strat. While nothing really made me jump out of seat or drop my jaw, it's very thoughtfully put together and well-executed. The jojolity had a lot of fun and important moments, and it's a good example of how the ideal "base" Vasil strat ought to be done.

I think what pushed it over from a 7 for me is just that everything has this extra bit of effort put into it- thinking about the weight of minions, how they're shaped, and just how everything will actually act on the field that shows that the weaknesses of individual pieces of the whole were accounted for.

For Chandra, I've elected to give straight **7 Qual, 6 Joj**. For this strat, I feel a lot of the way I did about Vasil's; if you put Chandra in a situation, this resembles a lot of what I would expect her gameplan to be in a well organised and efficient state. That's also where I think this strat falters a bit; I don't see anything within it that I wouldn't really be surprised to see her do in any other match. I think the basic thrust of it was fun with keeping the goons together, but the sort of go-to gameplan led to a jojolity I had difficulty seeing in the strat at points.

I do want to emphasise that I don't want to put this strat down- Quality is a measure of a kind of "objective" (as much as it can be) expression, but in terms of acting in opposite to Vasil's strat I think it's more than done what it set out to do- the closeness of these scores should be a testament to that. Both teams should pat themselves on the back for a fantastic preformance: this is one of T7's winners.