R1M11 Quality Delibs

Judge Dante (Logic)

This is a matchup I was immediately excited for when we assigned it. Both Thomas and Gloss are incredibly capable, precise melee specialists who each bring a unique advantage to engagements. Thomas specializes in mobility, debuffing opponents’ to boost his own, and Shadowstep gives him burst mobility that gets him cleanly in and out of engagements. Gloss’s Holy Ground, however, makes for very interesting area denial by granting areas where Gloss can’t be harmed and by detonating.

Both characters have means of ranged harassment—Thomas’s Storm and Gloss’s Holy Grenades—but such harassment is resource gated by the number of Storm blades and Blessing's cast time, so both players are pressured into using their main means of damage are in close range.

Finally, the stage’s small size emphasizes the Stand body in the room, ｢Lady of the Ark｣. While it only has D SPD, its B POW and DUR make it a powerful positioning option. Similar to M7, this is a deathmatch where one side has positional advantage (Thomas) while the other has a combat advantage (Gloss).

The final part of this prestrat analysis is flower stage hazard. Positioning becomes doubly important, as picking where to fight and where to retreat can drastically influence the micro of any engagement. While both characters have means to disengage/mitigate the retaliation, if they’re caught unawares, their opponent can force them to take heavy damage. More than most matches, this one is a battle of inches.

I said this was DMC3, but I lied. Welcome to Moonsiders 1st.

Both strats sit at about 12k, which is to be expected given the comparative simplicity of the match, but the question remains whether they adequately address their challenges and what axes they excel at.

Thomas’s strategy looks to outfight using Storm initially, gathering kinetic energy from harassment and tearing up the ground to make for worse terrain. (Planning/Competency) I’m a bit skeptical of how quickly a few D POW 6 inch knives can tear up the ground into something difficult to walk through, but I quibble. (Competency/Technical) Similarly, I think a lot of the strat reads more as errant text when it would be improved if it was condensed, not even into marked sections necessarily, but not shuttling flavor and mechanical text. As is, flavor text often splits up text that focuses on the same mechanical idea. (Formatting)

More importantly, a lot of the detail of harassment, mobility, and Fury-Storm switching is left vague. Section 2 states you’ll switch between tactics, using the gained Fury boosts to remain unpredictable, but there’s little detail of the conditions you’ll switch under. (Planning/Logistics) Recall that Gloss can make herself invulnerable in Holy Ground, and impaling her with Storm is likely to result in a trade where she destroys the blade. These conditions can mean you may have no Storm blades to work with or she might not have taken the damage you expect. As a result, the midgame can be a little happy path, relying on Shadowstep to get out of engagements, but not detailing what engagements may look like.

Most damning is for all the discussion of targeting Lady of the Ark, the strat’s discussion of its potentially worst case—being grappled—only discusses being grabbed by one *or* the other, not discussing the likely 2v1 that would arise in that scenario. (Counterplay/Competency) While I might grant smart positioning and keep away prevent getting into such a position, the lack of detail in the aforementioned positioning and the rather thin tactics while in the grapple temper that deference.

Finally, the finisher looks to drag Gloss onto the flowers using Shadowstep having dealt sufficient damage. Not only do my earlier Counterplay comments bear here, but even granting Gloss looks to grapple you, given your more evasive maneuvering, I’m not sure how you get her to engage you near such dangerous terrain, especially when Holy Ground may prevent one from “stepping” on flowers. (Planning/Logistics/Counterplay) I give Narrative finishers more deference as a more stylish ending, but only if they’re sufficiently setup.

I see the high level Planning and understanding of the kit (Technical/Competency), but the lack of specificity and happy-path midgame (Logistics) with the lack of consideration for the 2v1 even when grappled (Counterplay) results in a low [5].

Gloss starts with a well considered approach, establishing some baseline techs for the match, namely the Drained Blessings (which I’ve referred to as Holy Grenades) and Decoy Drained Blessings to catch Thomas off guard or tossing them to cross him up. (Technical/Competency) I don’t think its reasonable for detonations to propagate even reduced force outside of their area of effect, but the specificity in how these basic projectiles will be used is appreciated. The Blessing time will affect the pace at which you can use these attacks (and thus their decoys) (Logistics), but the section remains cogent.

Kosiel (de)summoning at range was struck down in CMD, yet I will reiterate here. To desummon your Stand, you must withdraw into yourself at your position: you cannot (de)summon at range unless you specifically balance for it. I've said this three times already, and I do not like repeating myself. If I see this again and it isn't expressly permitted on the sheet, expect heavy demerits.

The second section is a good follow up, covering Gloss’s approach with Kosiel’s cloak, a DB, and a DDB and looking to get a checkmate to plant a Holy Grenade onto Thomas. (Competency) I really like it, but Section 1 and 2 seem to go down in a matter of seconds, with minimal consideration of what if the plan stalls out, much less goes wrong. (Planning) The first contingency says the strat reverts to a projectile game if Gloss is chipped out, but with the earlier Blessing time concerns, Gloss can majorly lose tempo. As an aside “getting beaned by an object thrown by a B-Power stand, which definitely will hurt” does contradict the “too small to be used as notably damaging projectiles” clause, but I’m interpreting the former as an owie more than an injury.

Moreover, the strat doesn’t mention Thomas’s ability to imbue himself with speed, giving him mobility beyond Shadowstep, potentially out of detonation range or out of grapples proper. Thomas is a capable, slippery combatant such that even if Gloss and Kosiel are within range, he is still capable of putting up a fight and changing its positioning. Getting minced by a swarm of summoned swords is still a concern. (Counterplay)

I don’t fully buy Section 3’s disclaimer to impute "necessary offensive and defensive tech"; I would have preferred a more circumspect integration (Competency/Logistics) of tech and narrative here to raise this from a Narrative finisher. Indeed, outside of Section 2-into-3’s grapple and the leg sweep, it mostly reads a “win more” finisher, stomping his chest and “non-lethally” detonating a Holy Grenade inside him. What tech can I assume you use here when this is the first the strat engages in this situation?

Gloss’s strat gets a [5] for not quite covering its bases. There's competency in what's written, but overestimation of its own tempo, underconsideration of alternate outcomes, and lack of detail in the actual melee weaken its structural thrust.

Judge Cereza (Ceep)

Starting with Thomas, this is fine. I don’t have much to say besides that things are kind of wooey. I think that overall, you were able to get across a basic gameplan, but I feel the issue with the strategy is that the central plays- namely the tearing up of the ground- is a bit messy. Thomas has blades to work with; while this could work with some proper setup, as is it seems like it’ll have minimal issue for Gloss, since it can just stomp over the broken ground.

That said, while the tactics of his midgame is happy path and a bit thin on the ground, the use of dashing for verticality is fine. I think that it does convince me Thomas can survive CQC with HotA, but I think he doesn’t handle Gloss well. I see the dash as clever, but a bit of something that only works as a finisher- what if he gets gripped by Gloss? I also think that Thomas is damn lucky Gloss didn’t have more reliable ranged game, since he deals poorly with the overall threat of big booms. That said, he plays the game.

I’m not entirely sure what to think on this, and while the overall effect is solid, I also am disappointed. The positioning, attack patterns, CQC processes, and overall plans seem to lean heavily on feats on the sheet to fill in the blanks, and while I see how Thomas gets this done and is overall competent enough, I’m going to give him a 5/10.

As for Gloss, I’m torn. On one hand, I adore the idea of mixing Thomas up with your use of big booms, and the more offensive, mixup-focused use of her ability is an interesting way to play Gloss as a character. The ideas here, I absolutely love, but I’m sad to say I think that there are massive improvements that could have been made.

First of all, positioning. Where does Gloss stay? I assume it intends for her not to be in the Zone of her big booms. When does she set them up? It takes time to set up Holy Zones, and setting them up gives up a massive amount of tempo. I’m aware she can Bless on the go, and this does help a little bit, but it’s still five seconds to do so. What are her options for when she gets interrupted? How does she position with regard to Thomas, and how does she manage when on the backfoot? The strategy doesn’t give me a lot of answers to these; I’m sure a few may be mentioned in some areas, but if so they’ve been lost in the mix.

Given she’s using Blessed objects for offense, I also have a lot of questions about Gloss’ defenses. I respect the choice to use Big Booms for a combo of offense and approach, and I think a bit of tuning defensively and positioning wise would do so, so much good to make me more confident in Gloss’ ability to do so. Since you can’t reliably have Holy Zones for the free defense, more needed to be put into work here.

Fundamentally, I think that if Gloss gets a bomb off near Thomas, there’s a very, very easy argument for her to win the match. Even just a bit more into the exact mechanics of how she sets up the bombs and paths would make this strategy far stronger. I think as well, there was opportunity for her to focus in on trades. She has a high Durability Stand body, able to soak up damage for her from explosions while forcing Thomas into a situation where he has to Never Get Close Or He Loses to LotA, and accepting certain drawbacks for positive situations would have added both style and massive substance to its overall plans.

The bones of an excellent strategy are here, and while I’m giving a 4/10 I want to say I thought that this strategy’s ideas I found absolutely fascinating. Onwards and upwards!

Judge Raiden (Coop)

So, the core of both of these strats are fine. Gloss wants to use her ranged AoE blasts to snipe at Thomas in air or on ground, and use her invulnerability field to negate any CQC sword stuff he tries. Thomas, on the other hand, tries to rough up the terrain and dismember his robot opponent, eventually to the point where he can use his schmovement to bait Gloss into the flowers to be blasted away by the stage hazard. These core plans are fine, but I feel that both lack the muscle to pull through and punch out their opponent, and I am ultimately underwhelmed by this match as a whole.

Gloss has a pretty good idea going with her mix of holy hand grenades and decoys - as well as targeting his Storm blades to hinder him. That being said, this and the rest of this strategy either heavily underestimates the damage and ability Thomas is capable of or overestimates her stand's own ability to be anywhere at once and always having a holy ground ready if Thomas closes in with his Fury. First, with how the creation of Blessed objects is described, it seems like it should take quite a bit to actually make these (which is why we had you start with one ready) yet Gloss just tosses these around like it's candy from a Halloween bucket. Not only does your strat assume you will have plenty of these to use a weapons, but always have one on hand to prevent Thomas from rushing in with his sword or Storm blades - as the process for Blessing an object and making Holy Ground takes 5 seconds a pop, Gloss is almost certainly going to be caught without a blast/protection zone at some point. As for the AoE blasts from these, while it certainly is a good plan to use this to wall out Thomas’ escape routes, you still need to account for the fact that he has really good movement options. You just sort of throw these out and assume he can't avoid them.

Granted, you do kind of have a method around this, but frankly it's entirely invalid. Being able to summon and desummon your stand body anywhere in range (outside of something like E Range) has rarely if ever been allowed in any tournament, let alone this being used in the context of making a D Speed stand zip around to any point of the field just because one sentence vaguely mentioning this was your intention was included on your character sheet (a sentence that was not even in the Stand section of the sheet). The ability to do this is very powerful, and would probably just have to be the main ability of stand to be allowed.

Moving on to Thomas, we see similar underestimations of opponent abilities and overestimation of his own. First, while the fact that Gloss and her stand are two separate entities that Thomas needs to watch out for is certainly acknowledged in this strat, rarely does the strat appropriately respond to this. For a plan that is wary of being grappled by either Gloss or the Lady, it never seems to occur that being attacked by both simultaneously is an option that should be accounted for. This also presents a problem for the finishing act of this strategy - how will Lady’s stand body get in the way of baiting Gloss into the flowers to take a Cross Blast to the face? This type of tactic usually only works once, what if it doesn’t finish her off? How could you use the fact that Gloss physically has more of herself on the battlefield that is to the stand body to improve your chances at this succeeding?

When it comes to Thomas attacking here, it feels as though it is always working under a best case scenario without really solidifying that scenario in place. Trying to dismember or damage Gloss with a swarm of blades is a good way to stay out of her grappling range, but leaves your blades vulnerable to being shattered by her or her stand if going through Holy Ground. Planning around the inevitable gaps in her invulnerability to strike or utilizing Fury’s knock back to throw her out of safe zones would’ve done wonders with increasing the viability of this plan rather than constantly blitzing and wasting time resources on doing little to no actual damage.

While both strategies here have decent ideas, neither really does enough to support them and consist mainly of throwing their big attacks at each other with little regard for planning or logistics. These both are gonna get a **4** from me.