R2E1 Jojolity

Judge Kyoshi (Logic)

Saisei’s “control” is embodied with writing the strat narrative from the position as its antagonist, which is an interesting set up, but framing it as setting Winona as dancing within his palm: wasting her time, drawing out the match, and beating her in her own CQC is a creative conceit and execution of the Jojolity. I see and underline Dice’s concerns about presuming how your opponent will act—and commented accordingly in my Quality delibs—but I think that even when taking them into account, the Jojolity plays are robust and the thesis is creatively conceived and executed. A low, but respectable 8!

Winona’s definition of freedom is a bit hard to glean at first blush. The flavor text doesn’t deeply explore a particular idea or have a strong arc to stand out to the level of “material narrative” and the more generalist play precludes the ludonarrative synergy that can be seen in more detailed tactics. My general criticism is this lack of cohesion; there’s no unified answer to what does freedom mean to Winona and the strat and the answer delivered would seem to be a general “defeating Daichi.”

It took me a few readthroughs and discussions, but the call of destroying the stage to destroy Daichi’s hold on the place is cogent, my Logistic concerns above notwithstanding. Starting with freeing the pigs and going through the stage is enough of a throughline which I think could have been more strongly fortified and integrated through the strat with robust mechanics or narrative, but one that nets a 6.

Judge Roku (Dice)

Saisei:

I’m going to give this a high **7/10**, attempting to manipulate Winona’s movements with decoy pagodas, forcing a lack of control on your opponent with dust clouds and “guessing” game, and personally going for the kill are pretty good stand outs in my eyes. All pretty strong contenders along with the narrative you build, however overall they do lack fine control and are a bit reliant on how much you can use your Stand moment to moment which can be bad if/when your set ups get too broken or too out of position. I could see giving this an eight, but I think doing so would reward a notable degree of “overconfidence” for the lack of a better term. In a few key spots the strategy relies on knowing and controlling Winona’s future actions, and while predicting makes sense in context of a strategy here it's acting less as prediction and more as assuming their actions and progressing the strategy as if said assumptions are always correct.

Winona:

A slash and raze method of revolutionary freedom, freeing pigs, burning houses, and reclaiming control over the ground from Daichi. The way the strategy integrates these forms a loose, but understandable game plan and end goal. The firecracker finisher and narrative used is also well in service to how you are setting your jojolity. That said, I’m giving this a **7/10**, your actions do work in service to the jojolity, but are overall vague and rather loosely in service to the match itself at times.

Judge Aang (Bri)

As far as Saisei’s jojolity goes, I felt like you had a very strong emphasis on ‘control’, whether it’s from flavor to the match itself. The narrative with Mara and the Buddha is a great way of juxtaposing your relationship with your opponent, and you definitely seem like a god in a pretty creative and neat manner. As far as the scoring goes, I feel like it warrants a clean 7/10. It’s straightforward, robust and entertaining-- however, I personally don’t think you went above and beyond to meet the necessary requirements for an 8.

For Winona, I think that you should earn a 7/10 as well. You make less of a concerted attempt towards achieving the Jojolity, and I think that the concept of ‘destroying Saisei’s creations’ as freedom could have been reified better and made more robust throughout the match. That said, what is here falls into the ‘pretty good’ category-- a few creative plays such as releasing the farm animals or using gelled ground to remove the tyrant’s stated control pushes this out of the ‘decent’ territory enough to warrant this score.