Archerous' R3M5 Delib

Quality

We’ve got a fun, not-at-all-life-threatening race on our hands. In the first corner we have murder aficionado, Helena Beats from the Lotus Street Manifold. In the second, we have park ranger Dawn Hu from IMPACT! This track is admittedly quite perilous, but both teams brought their running shoes. How do their running strategies hold up?

Helena starts with a rush, both to attack the animatronics with Cemetery Drive and to boost herself with the biomass gained from these attacks. She comes out the gate firing in an aggressive bid to out-pace Dawn. From there, Helena uses her limbs to platform over difficult, dense terrain filled with animatronics and beetles, using this combination of tools to increase her mobility throughout the race, making her hard to stop once she’s started. In terms of Speed, It’s a solid strategy, but we’re looking into two other distinctive categories for this trial. How does she do?

For Integrity, I think Helena makes a proper effort to ensure she takes as little damage as she can. She’s constantly looking out for Dawn and any traps she might be setting up, but vigilance alone isn’t enough to protect yourself. That’s why she also picks up scraps of metal to act as makeshift armor under her clothes, to protect her that much more. I do have some questions about the viability of splint armor that isn’t at least fastened, but I do note it as a creative use of the environment all the same. In terms of integrity, I’d argue Helena is coming out with very little more than some bruising from the metal.

In terms of Interference, I find this strategy to be a little lacking. What it does do is effective, certainly. Attacking Dawn’s beetles when given the opportunity is a good form of resource denial, and creating limb traps are quite effective in stalling an opponent, but I feel like more attention to Dawn’s own mobile potential would have been preferred.

All this being said, I’m going to give this strategy a 7! Despite a few nitpicky areas, I think it gets Helena from point A to B in a very efficient manner. Well done!

Moving onto Dawn, she opens with a barricade setup to immediately slow down Helena (while potentially throwing her in the way of deadly animatronics. She then equips herself with bumpers to increase her mobility and defense. Then, once she has her rope set up, Dawn slings herself throughout the match, keeping pace with her beetles and yanking the ones that can’t keep up. Dawn plays cautiously, setting up bumpers around pillars, clearing out paths for her to land, but its worth it once she sets her machine into motion, with her in it. Much like Helena, once she gets her mobility going, its hard to stop her, which bodes well in a race of Speed. Unfortunately for Helena, this setup allows for more than pure speed.

Dawn has quite a defensive strategy despite all the movement she’s doing. Equipping herself with bumper hats to headbutt problems away, springing away from danger that she can’t, and even carrying a few beetles on her person for support. She is prepared to avoid conflict at any costs, even going so far as to fling that conflict over to her opponent, which is a good way to segway into her Interference plays. I talk about both Integrity and Interference in the same section because they’re kind of interwoven (an argument can be made for Speed and Interference as well). Using her pinball prowess, Dawn is able to both slow down Helena, as well as pull danger into her way, keeping Cemetery Drive busy. She even makes sure to keep resources from Helena by not killing the animatronics, a small gesture, but one that could pay off given the rest of her setup. Add her offensive ball bearing attacks towards Cemetery Drive’s gravestone, and Helena is most certainly getting debilitated by Dawn’s efforts.

With all that said, I’m going to give this strategy an 8! I think Dawn is able to achieve all three merits remarkably well with this strategy, with the added bonus of being able to weave these aspects almost seamlessly together. Well done!

Jojolity

As for Jojolities, I’ll keep it short. Helena had a lot of fun plays, between her limb platforming, her limb swatting, and the crafting of makeshift armor. However, while I found this strategy to be incredibly efficient, that comes at the cost of variety. Thus, I’m giving this Jojolity a 7!

With Dawn, we have a plethora of methods to do effectively the same thing: knockback. Thus is the nature of her Stand ability, which is what makes it all the more impressive at the variety of ways she’s able to use it throughout the race. Using her lasso to both redirect animatronics and to real in her beetles, using her spring shoes for dodging and tripping her opponents, to using a variety of marble attacks to keep Helena on her feet. These plays are not only varied, but even serve multiple purposes, thus I’m giving this Jojolity an 9!