JJOCT7 R2M16 Quality

Judge Elihu Smails (Arch)

Well, it would seem like we have a calming, straightforward game of golf on our hands. Though of course, with our players, R.K. Viswanathan Ashok from Heart of the Rose, and David Jackson of the Dead City Haunts, things couldn’t stay so simple for long. Behind this rather mundane sport is a game of subterfuge and trickery. So, who out-golfs who?

Starting with Ashok, we have a fairly straightforward approach to the game. Ashok sets the expectation of making legal and unobtrusive moves whenever possible, such as analyzing the techniques of his teammates and chasing the balls so as not to elicit too much suspicion when they do it for driving/sabotage purposes. From there, Ashok presents a list of moves that can be applied throughout the match, giving them the flexibility to approach each hole and its challenges, be they natural or from an antagonistic force. One thing I’d like to note is that while Ashok presents a list of techniques with little writing to bridge them, I don’t believe this will affect their quality score, given the nature of the match environment. That being said, the techniques provided are organized into two categories: Drives and Sabotages. I’ll be analyzing their effectiveness individually.

The Drives mainly make use of Mandates on their own golf ball. There are buffs, like the JECHT SHOT, and the STONE SKIPPER that give the ball an extra boost in either speed or traversal, especially through hazards. Moves like the SPHERE SHOTs, BUMPER BARS, and the MARIONETTE give Ashok the versatility to alter the course of the ball into more favorable paths. I also appreciate the BLACK HOLE, making use of the Stand’s natural ability in order to pull the ball directly into the hole. This section covers a lot of its bases, making sure Ashok is able to have as much control over their shots as possible.

The Sabotages offer a subtle approach to their trickery. BAD LANDING and OVERDRIVE hides the sabotage through stage hazards and the player’s own perceived failures. SLOW ARC gives Ashok an opportunity to affect not only his opponent’s balls, but his own if need be, being a particularly flexible move. Similarly to the Drives, I’d argue that each Sabotage serves its purpose well, allowing Ashok to control the game to the best of their ability, though stealthily.

Overall, I’m going to give this strategy a 7. It’s a solid set of techniques that cover a lot of ground and make good use of Ashok’s abilities. Well done!

Onto David, we have a few parameters set for how he plans to play the game. These mainly boil down to using his friendliness to gain social grace from his peers so that when he asks favors, such as giving him around 20m of space, they have a better chance to be obliged. It also has the benefit of casting suspicion onto Ashok if he refuses these simple requests. It’s a cogent strategy, for sure, though it is one that David makes use of a little too often. He uses politeness as a passive shield against Ashok, one that doesn’t work for every occasion, and could even backfire in some cases. It can keep Ashok, and thus their portals away from David for a little bit, but David doesn’t go into how exactly Ashok refusing to listen negatively impacts them beyond committing a faux pas. Besides, if David is constantly asking for 20m of space everytime Ashok gets near, David could come across as more irritable than he intends to, potentially souring the moods of his fellow players, and thus making them less willing to meet David’s requests. It’s a good strategy, of course, just one that comes with inherent risks and mechanisms that could’ve been better defined.

Moving to Hole 4, David offers a simple gameplan, but one that works quite effectively. Using the Fine Print to boost his physical abilities, while making use of his own golfing skills, aims to shoot his ball farther than everyone else's. This gives him an opportunity to mess with Ashok’s ball while moving to get to his, transmuting the insides with uneven rock, giving the ball undue heft and instability. After this moment of sabotage, he uses the Fine Print to push the ball into the hole once he’s close enough. A solid section all around.

Once past this hole, David makes use of similar tactics throughout, using the transmutation trick with every ball on the field eventually, reverting every ball but the ones Ashok picks up. He even goes so far as to sabotage their clubs, replacing the solid inside with brittle modeling clay. He also makes great use of this transmutation to deal with hazards such as sand and tall grass to create optimal putting situations.

While David employs a solid strategy for taking the victory, there are some minor, yet crucial missteps he takes while golfing. I had previously brought up the shakiness of his “politeness shield” when dealing with Ashok’s sabotage. In addition, I find that David offers very little against the Mandates laid out by Puppet Loosely Strung beyond swiping the chains away with goo. I also would’ve preferred to see at least a small portion of the strategy acknowledge the water hazard on Hole 13.

That all being said, I’m going to give this strategy a 5. Despite the issues I’ve laid out, I do think this is a solid strategy. David makes excellent use of his punchghost throughout the match, though I believe some more counterplay would’ve helped to round out the strategy.

Judge Billy Madison (Alpha)

Ah yes, Golf Match! At one point my father, in a bid to get me to do ‘rich man’ activities once brought me to a country club to learn to play golf. I’d learned that day that Golf was once an acronym meaning, ‘Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden’. I also learned that I suck at golf that day, but that’s neither here nor there!

Rather than ‘ruining the field’, as seen in previous tournaments, today’s match involves actually playing the sport! Thankfully, we didn’t make eighteen holes to play, or the match would’ve taken at least a week…

With those tidbits out of the way, let’s start with Dead City Haunt’s David! I’ll say that a lot of David’s playing to the crowd is weird at best and off-putting at worst, with some more egregious things being the ability to convince people to move twenty meters off of the green. Sure, it’s reasonable to get people to step back and step off to give someone space, but as a for-instance, the 40 meter circle that these people would be at the edge of stretches so about 1/5th the maximum length of the first course, based on golf’s league standard. More or less, you’re asking people to get so far back that they may as well be on the previous course, which is a hard ask. [After rechecking the map, it fluctuates around 2/5ths for the first two holes, as the first hole is 100m away from the start green, the second is 110, while the third is the only one at 1/5th.]

This is to say nothing of your green play, which amounts to pushing it in with your stand. While functional, and useful given the potential interference of stands on the green, I feel like the act of putting, the coup de grace of any given golf hole, deserves more than what could be described as, ‘I spend a while making it look like I’m going to do something awesome, then I have my stand push the ball in’.

Moving on, the bulk of the strat relies on The Fine Print’s stats for hammering the balls in specific directions. This is palatable and reasonable, as TPF is significantly higher statted than David, as your strat is quick to remind, so I’ll leave that be.  I will admit that I did like your final hole play, as it was the most detailed and detail-oriented portion of the strat.

The remaining corner goes to your sabotage plays. Changing the weights of balls and making the opponent’s equipment fragile is definitely usable, but it practically stops there.

That inevitability became the main point of contention I have with this strat- everything is very one-and-done, it is the path. If it is not the path, the adjustment to it is a paragraph or less. Every time I felt something more was coming or could be done, it simply ended. That is what it is, that is where it stops, this is what we do. Even in that inevitability, even with a thin veneer of confidence behind it, I felt that uncertain lack of ‘oomph’ to drive your points home.

I’ve said my piece, and I believe this strat deserves a **5**.

Now, let’s move on to Ashok! I have some experience with Heat of the Roment’s usage of Ashok from my last go-round, so let's see if that helps any!

I’ll admit that golf might not’ve been the absolute best idea for a match, not because it isn’t fun, but because of the many rules and regulations that often get overlooked in tournament play. As someone who has been on the receiving end of sports matches, and rulebook checking thereof, I empathize.

Separately, I feel that some of the plays here somewhat mirror David’s outing, at least in terms of green approaches. However, with far more described options at your disposal, I feel that problems on the green are more easily accounted for.

That said, I will say that the tech sheet half of your strat, while helpful, could’ve been truncated a bit better. A table or other kind of formatting, for ease-of-snipping tool, would let a reader carry that through the strat and cross-check it. I know this can be done with the text, but the separation is easier to parse when divided than not, at least for me.

There’s a lot of good to say about your play on the green, with chains, mandates, and gates being used for different drain-putting at every available hole, and I appreciate the detail.

My one question is how we make the stone-skipping-ball a guarantee. I can assume from previous sections that Ashok is running along the bridges nearby to keep it out of the water, but the ball has to make a significant drop before it reaches the water, making the play a little harder to parse without something else to keep it moving.

With that behind us, let’s talk about the strat overall. It’s very put together, if the cracks of manuals and misplaced location details show in certain places. I did have a few head-scratchers in certain cases, where I had to reference a map and say, ‘oh, they started from over here’ or ‘oh, they mean over there’ before making a final decision. I feel like this deserves a **6**.

Judge Tiger Woods (Flame)

This match is a battle of sabotage and cheating over the game of golf! While Logic isn’t deliberating, he does have some thoughts on the match as a whole:

> This match is divided into three holes (to represent the usual 18 holes), and each hole into two phases for six subdivisions total where the players' relative advantages ebb and flow.
>
> Ashok is a projectile-based, control mage, more capable when he can fire chains off at targets: he performs better when he has a clear shot, such as during the Driving phases when the ball sails through the air or the second hole with its wide expanses of water. David, by contrast, has a tighter area of influence, but can affect the terrain more readily through manipulation and molding of textures and materials, giving him an advantage on the Putting phase with its particular topography, and the third whole with the more obtrusive terrain.
>
> Managing the aforementioned shifting advantage and disadvantage (Planning) as well as minding the macro and micro elements of the match (Competency) are the key to victory. Finally, as with any sabotage based match, knowing how and when to accept and overcome your opponents options (e.g., when to break Mandates, when to advance along the course, or when to replace equipment) can reduce your opponents' highs and your own lows. It's all in the swing...

Starting with David, his strategy largely focuses on how he tackles each hole, with some good Flavor and the sections flowing quite well [Layout]. The method for finishing each hole is also robust - in using his Stand to simply shove it in and modifying said tactic as needed (moving closer, subtly changing the terrain, aerial trickshot) - and there is some fun sabotage methods such as by affecting the golf balls with irregularly spread stone Goo to make them both heavier and harder to control, as well as making the clubs of the opposing team fragile [Technical Usage].

However, David’s defenses against Ashok’s potential sabotage are limited. While tanking the penalties is an effective manner of dealing with any chains placed on him (and using Goo as a shield is a neat defense), David’s plans against any chains being placed upon his ball is to - for all intents and purposes - ask him to stop. Utilising the other golfers to your advantage would have been a really fun path to messing with Ashok, but the exploration of this is lacking and largely focused on the questionable tactic of relying on your opponent to act due to emotions or similar (in this case, in response to peer pressure). In the end, I’m going to have to give a high **5** for this one - David had a lot more options at his disposal across the match (to give an example that builds upon the tech that did work, using your Stand to bodyblock Ashok from hitting the ball while it moves it to the hole) and while the core of what he did is good and a fun read the lacking defense really weakens the strategy as a whole.

Moving onto Ashok, his Layout is smooth and split into three main sections: a Tech list for golfing and sabotage; the approach to each of the 3 holes the match focuses on; and a Contingency list against potential sabotages. I really like the Formatting choice to also use link descriptions (I cannot remember if they have an official name) in order to highlight which Mandate is being used and thus save space [Elegance] - though this sadly doesn’t work on new Reddit, which probably does hinder the help it gives. The Tech on the other hand don’t have this advantage, and could have benefitted with at the very least more indication of which one a reader has to go to check (whether underlining or using italics): though the techs themselves are well thought out and build nicely both on the mechanics of the Stand but also upon other techs (such as Sphere Shot -> Double Sphere Shot, and Black Hole -> Bullseye).

The approaches to the holes themselves are straightforward, with the base strategy often relying on only one or two pieces of tech before Blackhole is used to put it into the hole - very much going on a ‘happy path’, especially notable with the Stone Skipper for Hole 13, with nothing in place in the scenario it cannot reach far enough into land to not fall back in. While there’s plenty of Counterplay against problems caused by David’s sabotage, there’s practically nothing against if Ashok’s own plays don’t work as planned. Still a fun read though, **6**.