JJBA OCT #8 R1M22 Quality Deliberations

Judge Rocketllama

The survival match is, in my humble opinion, one of the most interesting matches of every tournament it shows up in. Given plenty of time and a blank sandbox with plentiful materials and limited key resources, creativity and research is the barrier between good and excellent. Both teams put up valiant efforts, so while these delibs may come off as a bit nitpicky it is necessary to make a solid judgement.

Starting with Mahogany I think that your plans are decently well conceived with some notable high points and a few notable flubs in execution. Starting with the high points I think that your understanding of your scaling potential over the days and your general construction of your home base are both well done. Focusing on interlocking the area and setting it up well to both attract and trap food are great ways to go about things, and your defensive plays set you up to be both well protected and have a sanctum that will stand come hell or high winds. I also want to say that creating a giant wacky waving arm flailing inflatable tube man was a fun take on drawing attention! Moves like that are the unique points that make these kinds of objectives so fun.

There are a few pain points for me however that I feel the need to bring up. One is your water filtration. First off, Mahogany does not wear socks. You would not have them, and it feels like a funny oversight to use them for filtration. Beyond that you use a big metal pot made of the sailboat to collect water, but never boil it. You handwave the germs that could be in the water, but the filter is just one small part of making water safe. Even water collected from the trees in your rain cups should still have probably been boiled to sanitize, as bird droppings and other contaminants can end up on many of those surfaces. It feels like a weird oversight generally, and I would hazard there is a decent chance that Mahogany gets sick due to this oversight.

Beyond that I also just feel that there was significantly more room to do more with the resources you had. Could you have not made more WWAFITMs? Are there ways you could have varied your diet more? What about the beautification of your space and furniture for sleeping/lounging. It is the fact that I see all of this room for more and the water blunder that leads me to believe that a decent 7/10 is a fair score here. What you have is solidly good, but it shows enough room for growth that I think that the central thesis you go with isn't as well executed as it could be. Otherwise though this is a solid showing with far more highs than lows. Good work here!

Moving on to Ella I think that what you lack in output compared to your opponent you make up for with a significant amount of detail! The fact that you include little lego style instructions is an incredibly nice touch, and overall your plans are laid out in a way that really does a good job of painting the picture of how Ella’s survival plans stack on each other and get her through the ordeal. I also think that you pace out your energy well, and do an excellent job of being pragmatic about resource accrual without forsaking being surprising and creative.
I also think that you focus on staying clean is an angle I did not consider but adds a lot to your strategy. Being able to avoid getting sick or contaminating food is a big plus.

There are a few gripes to bring up. First and foremost, you take a long time to gather up water early, and I cannot understand why if you have the ability to boil all of your water why you don't. Beyond that I think that your signalling efforts are a little underwhelming, if serviceable. But beyond that I have little to say. You do a great job of taking a relatively low output kit and maximizing what you can do to keep yourself safe and sated with a huge amount of creativity. In my mind that deserves a high 7/10.

Judge Stream

SSG:

Starting with an overall sense of the strategy before I get into the play-by-play, I think it was overall elegantly put together, flowed well and each day had their actions clearly divided in a nice way.

Day 1 starts off with a strong push for the boat. All things considered, I think it was good that you went for this when you did, because your agility and capabilities of bolstering your own movement give you a slight edge here. With that, you get some good starting supplies and head off to start forming your shelter.

A general throughline here is taking advantage of the absolute spread and influence of your Stand to make wide-reaching, multi-purpose tools without much effort. When conserving energy is vital, you do well to rely on your ever-growing network of tendrils for shelter and hunting. Utilizing and bolstering the natural cover of the forest canopy is a solid way of getting yourself some shelter quickly. I do think at times you’re pushing the limits of your C Pre with how much you’re trying to do at once with the sheer quantity of tendrils, but I think with the proper prioritization of activities this doesn’t end up hurting you too much.

I have to say there are some moments in the strategy where I feel like the way certain things are done are handwaved in an unsatisfying way. For example, the only mentioned method of starting fires is by rubbing two vines together to “create a spark hot enough to light up a fire”. Now, I realize there are some ways you can use sticks and friction to start a fire, but they have pretty specific methodology, and given that this is the only method you mention, I would have liked to have seen more detail here as to just how this is a viable firestarting strategy. Especially when you’re consistently reusing certain tactics over a long time span, I think it pays to be more detailed in their initial usage of how they would be viable.

Another point in this regard is the passing mention that Mahogany has socks for the sock filter. I didn’t think I’d be arguing in my delib about whether a character owns socks or not, but it explicitly mentions on their sheet that Mahogany doesn’t wear shoes or even have feet. Normally I wouldn’t mind if something used isn’t in the inventory if it’s something described as on their person, but given that Mahogany is explicitly described as NOT having these, it seemed like an oversight.

With regards to your general signalling strategy, I think Loonboon serves as a good central tool, improved further by bolstering visibility with kites and (maybe) fires. A large humanoid object that is colorful and moving a lot seems like a good way to get the attention of a ship. I think you could have bolstered this strategy by dispersing some more about the shore to increase your likelihood of getting seen, but generally I think it’s adequate.

In terms of general environmental hazards, you do a good job of respecting their danger. The heat on day 2 was mitigated well with additional shade and some active cooling, though I think on this day in particular, some more precise pathing to conserve energy as opposed to the general roaming would have made it even better. On day 3, you really batten down your shelter against the hurricane, and the sheer density of your defenses makes me think you come out of this fine.

Not too much to say on the last day, you wrap things up pretty nicely and still make sure that you pay attention to your survival needs for the morning as well.

My final specific note will be that I think you pushed into overaggression territory at times with how you interacted with Ella. I don’t know if it ever pushes fully into direct combat, but it certainly gets close, actively seeking to debilitate her if you even cross paths. It feels like a waste of energy when you’re already pretty solid on your resource gathering, and leaves you more open to a valid counterattack.

Overall, I think your survival strategy was sound. You prioritized your needs properly, sufficiently defended yourself against the environmental hazards, did a solid job of signalling for help, and just overall made a solid case for the effectiveness of your survival. My main gripes were with some handwaved tactics that seemed rather important to core survival elements, even if I think they could reasonably be achieved by other means, and a sense of overaggressiveness throughout the strat. I’m going to give this a **7/10**.


LLC:

Starting off, I thought this strategy was also laid out elegantly and well organized, and seemed overall logistically sound.

You also go for the ship at the start of Day 1, and while I’m not really sure you’re likely to reach the ship first given the difference in agility and that you need to take the time to make a bridge, but at the very least you’re more in it for the boat materials than the supplies, and I think those will still be quite available. Establishing the bridge and paddleboards also helps you with getting this stuff to the mainland, and serves as a good foundation for your shelter.

I appreciated the amount of detail for each aspect of how your shelter is constructed, and it felt like all the elements of your survival came together in a very cohesive way. Your shelter seems sturdy, and the slanted roof to collect rainwater was a clever choice. The barrel storage gives you a pretty reliable source of fresh water without having to expend too much effort on filtering. That said, I think this leaves you with a bit of a gap on the first day in terms of water access. Relying on the rain for the most part is fine, but without the canteen from the ship or another early source, you’re expending a lot of effort early on in the period when you have the least water, which has the potential to hurt you. I do think the efforts that you put in to build methods to take some of the load off during your construction does help a bit here, but still, getting water for this important early period would’ve been good.

As far as food gathering, taking care of this last is probably the right call, but I do think not going for the fruits probably wasn’t the best call. Being cautious of Mahogany is good, but with a reliable source of food in the center, it feels that with expending more effort on less reliable hunting and foraging, it wouldn’t have hurt to at least see what you could’ve gotten. That said, I think with your combined sources, you probably manage to get enough food even if it might have taken a bit more effort. As far as cooking goes, the stick and board method to start the fire seems sound, no big notes there.

Your signalling strategies are generally good, but could have been improved. The signal fire and the flags are decent and classic ways of getting attention, but I think with the amount of time you had to make yourself amenities and comforts, some more effort could have expended on a flashier or more eye-catching method of signalling. I do think that what you have is sufficient to be seen, but it could have been punched up a bit, especially with the potential for constructs your Stand provides you.

Your heat mitigation strategy is solid, improving your shade as well as using damp clothes and some clever water cooling tech, and using seawater to help with this to preserve your drinking water was a good call.

As for the hurricane, I think you do a sufficient job of reinforcing your base, improving its stability as well as relying on being more inland helping by the trees breaking up wind. I think you successfully weather this one out.

I think as far as interacting with Mahogany, remaining cautious and largely defensive is a good call. You have solid answers to what you do if pursued, and are sufficiently careful of places that they have been.

Overall, I thought you made a great survival effort. You had a lot of good detail for your various constructions and methods, and just generally had a solid handle on how to get out of things safely. The biggest weaknesses I saw were a gap in your early water collection in the period where you were probably expending the most effort, as well as somewhat lackluster signalling efforts. I think broadly this strategy excels, but considering those are some pretty weighty pitfalls, I’m going to give this a high **7/10**.

Judge Cleverruse

SSG

Solid showing overall, I think! Mahogany is right in their element and the strat does a good job showcasing that sense of ease and belonging in both how well they handle their needs day-to-day as well as making sure they don’t overexert themselves doing so.

Dashing for the boat immediately is a good call, it secures the easiest source of water on the island as well as sets up some resource denial against the opponent. This does lead straight into one of the few minor gripes I had with the overall plan in that Mahogany does play things uncomfortably aggressive at times. While most of the efforts in this regard are under the banner of ‘counter’ sabotage, which is perfectly fair, there are some that push that concept quite far. Littering areas of the island not actively settled by Mahogany with what are effectively caltrops as well as bathing the entire island with pollen feel more malicious in intent than defensive. In addition, this insistence on spreading the interference across the whole island does call into question Mahogany’s ability to do anything with most of it given their C Precision. Not quite enough to warrant the harsh punishment for out-and-out attacking the opponent, but something worth mention all the same.

Survival efforts are handled quite well overall. Food, water, shelter, and signaling for help are what’s being graded here and I think Mahogany does adequately in all four at the bare minimum. Fishing and bird catching are done well thanks to some clever tendril use, storage of said food is done well and keeps the need for active hunting as low as possible, and snacking on bugs serves as a great supplementary source of energy throughout. The shelter is more than sturdy enough to stand up to the hurricane in Day 3, and made shady enough to withstand the dead head of Day 2. Water is debatably the most important of the four categories and while I do not buy that Mahogany keeps socks on them at all times given their cloven feet and natural way of life, the rush to secure that early canteen paired with the rain-catching flowers does well enough to make up for the tech that I don’t see working. The real standout here is the signaling for help; I was fully expecting some SOS signs and smoke signals but was not expecting the 15m tall wacky waving braided arm flailing vine man. Loonboon is an extremely effective signaling method that I doubt anyone within a few miles of the island is capable of not seeing.

All told, while I do think some closer attention to the detail work of some survival efforts could have bumped things to the next level, I think Mahogany does very well for themselves on the island. There’s solid resource management and an extremely effective signaling method that stands strong against some minor hiccups with water management, overall aggression, and stretching the build’s Precision to its limits. Just eeks out an Eight from me.

LLC

I was really excited to see this strat going in, I think the setup plays very well with Ella as a character and was glad to see a ton of that come through from LLC.

The major misstep in the plan comes quite early on, unfortunately: Ella aims to get a ton of work done building her shelter and resource gathering immediately on the first day for an easier time when the weather hits. Perfectly sound plan, but my problem comes with just how much strenuous work she is doing and how little water she has access to during. She makes a point of taking her time clearing an area for her shelter on her way to the wrecked boat and even builds a full bridge to it instead of simply swimming, meaning that she is quite slow to get to one of the easy sources of water early game and likely misses it in the process. She even chooses to not bother at all with the second source of hydration on the map: the fruit in the center of the island. This can spell a bad case of dehydration for the aristocrat early doors, which can snowball into an absolutely terrible next few days.

Assuming she can soldier through a thirsty first half of a day, I think Ella does fantastically well with her construction and resource gathering as a whole. Minor note but I am absolutely in love with the lego diagrams included, they made picturing what is intended with most of her power use easy to follow while the ‘Ella’ replacing the logo in particular got a genuine laugh out of me. The shelter is well constructed with particular attention made to customizing it to each day’s needs (rainproof day 1, breezy day 2, windproof day 3), and the rain barrels are done well enough to make up for the lack of water early on. The distillation barrel in particular is a great application of real-world physics into the strat and assuming it's taken care of can almost permanently solve her water problems.

Food is done well, identifying the presence of eggs is clever and spear fishing serves its purpose. Shelter is done very well and water is eventually done well, while I think the effort toward signalling was a little on the underwhelming side. The reflective signs are perfectly serviceable, as is the SOS on the beach and smoke signals, but I was expecting something a lot more extravagant and attention grabbing given Ella’s ability and proficiency with construction. Overall, one major misstep early on with water management and a simply ‘adequate’ effort toward signaling for help aside, I think LLC does well keeping the young lady alive. There’s some fantastic detail work in most of the mechanical effort on display, which shows just how much thought was put into almost every aspect of her time on the island. Seven.