JJOCT7 R1M6 Quality

Judge MasterChef (Archerous)

What’s that smell? Why, I reckon its a cooking match! Blake Smith, the humble blacksmith hailing from the Heart of the Rose vs Moonchild "Moony" Lamoreaux, traveling chef whose recent actions have left us with a Cause for Concern! Two craftsmen are pitted against one another in a culinary clash. Their talent is undeniable, but can they handle the heat?

Starting with Blake, we spend our early game prepping the kitchen for use, including turning on the stoves and fryers and gathering the proper utensils. Once he blocks his kitchen window from onlookers, he flings the supplies from the northernmost truck towards him with the hammer, making for a quick retrieval with minimal effort. I enjoyed Blake’s use of his sword at this stage, creating extra space for cooking, maximizing the output of his kitchen. Another excellent piece of tech is the Spin Chop Supreme, making retrieval of ingredients and the preparing of said ingredients far more efficient than doing them by hand. Overall, this early section makes good use of the space Blake has to work with, and already makes strides towards efficiency.

Moving onto his menu, Blake quickly establishes a priority in what he cooks. The order of fast foods, slow foods, and then medium foods is particularly well thought out in terms of food choice, as well as keeping in mind what sort of preparation each dish requires. I also appreciated the efforts to diminish food waste by having alternative uses for the foods being cooked.

Blake also offers up some good counterplay against Moony’s potential shenanigans, creating illusions to both keep Mithra from taking plates from Moony’s windows, as well as discouraging Moony from taking ingredients from him. He also boasts a good few effective plays against Moony’s infections, allowing him to work as effectively as he can, even while under the weather.

One point of contention I do have about the strategy is the use of the hatchets throughout the match. While it's nothing egregious, I can see a case for overuse given their importance in the Spin Chop Supreme, as well as the Whirlpool Wash. While I definitely believe it's possible to use them for both food retrieval and prep, as well as washing, the efficiency of both processes could falter if mismanaged. This isn’t a failure of the strategy, just something that could hinder it if something were to go awry. Put another way, this is a risky play that could jeopardize the efficiency of Blake’s setup.

Despite that, we’re swiftly brought onto the last course, where Blake has prepared something special. The system Blake has created is a food machine, keeping Mithra busy while he prepares the final meal. It's admittedly a strange move, preparing a human heart for the crown jewel of the feast. But, given its significance to Blake, I think it's a touching way to close his time cooking, allowing him to make a masterpiece out of this new medium of expression.

Overall, I’m going to give this strategy a 7. Despite my concerns with the hatchets, this strategy goes to great lengths to cook a grand meal, worthy of legend, all while achieving maximum efficiency within the kitchen.

As for Moony, we open the game with a bit of mischief. After spending some time infecting her truck, she gets to grooving, embarrassing herself in front of the Co-Host to gain some extra supplies. All the while, she sends Anthrax on a stealth mission to get into the dumpster. Once puppets are produced, she begins laying traps for Blake around the supplies, making it overall difficult to retrieve supplies. It takes some set up, but its a strong start to achieve both early counterplay and minion creation for the remainder of the strat.

Moving to the menu, Moony lays out a gameplan for what she intends to cook, and then goes to cook it. While it seems fairly straightforward, this section is pieced together with careful planning and smooth usage of the different ingredients Moony has at her disposal. The process and end result of one item leads directly into the next, creating a consistent rhythm of creation, one that remains flavorful and varied. Moony ensures that she gets the supplies she needs from further humiliation and finishes the feast with her signature Choco-Coconut Cream Pie.

Overall, I’m going to give this strategy an 8. Its a shorter strategy that does a lot of heavy lifting in the first stage. However, this allows Moony to do what she does best. Its simple, yet very effective.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judge Great British Bake-off (Flamechar)

It’s time for a cookoff! The goal: feed Mithra, with Quantity being the aim (as well as food quality and variety).

Starting with Blake, I really enjoyed how the tools have been used, especially the Sword: creating more cooking spaces, toasting multiple sides at once, as well as varied usage of barriers. And then there are the illusions - good plays, but hampered by the sword’s range, with the window illusion only being within range if Blake is in an area equal to less than half of the kitchen (rough workings have been posted here https://imgur.com/a/CUjVTt7). This does affect how I’m scoring for Technical Understanding, but I do think in the end the positives here outweigh this flaw.
Speaking of Counterplay (ooh boy, my favourite!), I do think your plays to protect yourself from sabotage are well written - I do find it curious you didn’t go for the masks or equipment we gave you, but enough thought has been put into reducing the impact of Infection (both in getting into you as well as the symptoms) that I would not consider docking points.
Now onto the main course: you have a Very good variety of foods, with Logistics put in to organize them by ease of preparation and prioritizing ‘fast’ foods, with slow foods cooking throughout the match and ‘medium’ food (or rather, Meatloaf) cooked when possible. Various methods of preparing each meal is also present to provide further variety. The main topic is your [Heart of a Hero] stir fry - Judges have ruled that it would not cause a loss condition, and mechanic-wise Mithra’s opinion on cannibalism will not affect your score. As for the heart itself, it’ll be seen whether or not it’ll stay in your inventory (given we don’t usually remove items destroyed in a match from inventory - this is a special case given the circumstances, but I personally think magic heart that returns to thee after a match would be funny)
Overall a high **7**!

Moving onto Kobeni—sorry, I meant Moony. She also has good Usage of her Stand: the different Cooking tasks have been assigned to a minion each, with a sixth meant to spy on Blake. Spare slots are used to bombard her opponent whenever possible with the hopes of infecting him - the only other Counterplay being to make ingredients harder for him to collect, with Moony herself dancing for them.
As such, the rest of the strat is provided for the cooking: foods cooked are varied and plentiful, with paragraphs of details on preparing them split into 3 courses, with Logistics represented by estimated cooking times. Of note are the many burgers, of which are also varied themselves with 5 different methods of preparing them differently; as is the stuffed chicken, which is prepared and sent into the oven at the middle of the strat before the remaining biscuits made for it being used as an additional meal. All in all a very well written strategy with nothing much else to comment on! **8**


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judge Hell's Kitchen (CPU)

Starting with Blake. Overall, I really liked this strategy! I feel that Blake had a solidly wide amount of dishes to bring to bear, and I want to especially shout out his use of You Make My Dreams for extra cooking surfaces and space. While Mithra would deeply dislike being served human heart, I don’t mind it personally and am ticking it up for the overall ‘variety’ as it’s well cooked and not a part of the loss condition. Funny.

As for the overall strategy, I have refreshingly little to say; overall, this is very solidly concepted and executed upon. The overall quality of the meals seem good, but I will note that there are some areas I feel that Blake has some stumbling blocks. While the axes’ cutting midair would be enough for a few rough cuts, chopping that has to be fine or a certain way seems a bit much for their C Power. I feel that their overall effectiveness is only a light benefit; in some situations it could even be a downside. Additionally, while Blake was able to account for Ichor somewhat, I feel that his actual accounting of managing the Infection was lacking.

Overall, I’d normally give a low 8/10. WHile the issues I had with the chopping were minor, the strategy is still damn solid. I think, that said, I’m going to ‘only’ give the strategy a high 7/10. The flavor of the strategy really was excellent, and I feel that Blake’s personality was executed upon very well. That said, while I think cutting flavor text isn’t the answer, I can’t help but feel that at points the flow of the strategy was a bit off; some of the mechanical sections felt a bit more wordy than they had to be, and I believe that the strategy could have been tighter despite an overall great showing. Onwards and upwards!

As for Moony, great work. I have admittedly very little to say here; I think this was a smash outta the park in regards to the match. The decision to move the car over was a great one for efficiency, and I think that the description of Moony’s kitchen in terms of logistics was absolutely on point. I tried to find flaws in the logistics, and it all seemed about right to me, as someone who tends to be suspect of similarly complex setups if not solidly managed.

Overall, I think that you didn’t overstep your bounds when it came to interference; enough to make a dent in his workflow while not slowing her down nearly at all. I think you could be dinged on not handling interference from him as well, but between the two meme dances and the descriptiveness there, I feel you aren’t harmed significantly.

I’m surprised myself but I’ll give T7’s first 10/10 here. It’s not just that there’s clear love and attention put into every dish, but also the character writing is extremely tight, making me feel like it’s just what Moony would do in this situation, less a ‘game’ and more her having to ply her trade under bizarre circumstances. I think that the strategy as a whole feels like nothing is wasted, basically everything is necessary, and there’s nothing that really, truly needs to be added or subtracted.

I will state that I feel the gaps between the strategies are less than the scores might say; I may have voted a tie or even for Blake as a voter. Overall, this is really exceptional work from both teams!