JJBA OCT #8 R1M19 Quality Deliberations

JUDGE SWITZ

LLC:

I find myself with little to explain for this delib: while the strat doesn’t do anything particularly shocking, I have few problems with the strat as is. To get the negative out of the way first, the one issue I have is with the Pull Call: Kenny attempts to use it as something of a tractor beam, pulling Heat all the way towards him with the force reversal. However, textually, the only force that the ball is undergoing is the A POW pitching force; strong, but resisting Heat’s own weight at the same time. Even if Heat doesn’t resist, I struggle to believe that the force generated by even an A POW pitch is enough to carry Heat all the way back. Ultimately, it's not too big a deal: Kenny’s aim isn’t necessarily to enter immediate CQC with Heat in the first place, just to get his attention.

In regards to everything else, I think this is fairly competent. The strat has a solid understanding of Logistics and value-to-time cost, many of the niche physics cases put forward by Compensation are unique and interesting, and the strat is varied enough to handle both Farah and Heat at multiple ranges. Outside of the small cases already presented, Compensation was explained fairly well, and to minimize explanation, tech often builds upon itself. While the strat’s big plays are fairly risky, I think they’re shored up by a strong understanding of the ranged game and the need to minimize Farah’s resources and time. Overall, I think things build up to a **7**.

BBP:

Farah’s strategy attempts to ward off offense for much of its runtime, demanding that Farah spend as much time as possible working on gathering Units while letting Heat do much of the work for her. The actual tech behind this is fairly clever: I like the varied uses of On the Wall that help to avoid repetition of illusion, important for a misdirection-based strategy. The finishing state that Farah works towards is ultimately very powerful, taking advantage of the incredibly potent defense of NYSM to leverage a nigh-unconquerable advantage state.

The main issue I have, however, is that the strat is slow: far slower than I think even it states itself. Getting Kenny & Heat into a favorable position is already a task that requires a great deal of investment to do reliably and for an extended period of time, and Farah respects this at least. The resource management is not something I have a problem with: I don’t feel as though Farah overextends and wastes the time she does spend. Rather, my issue is with her overextending her own Concentration skill throughout the strat. Many of her plays, especially on offense, are complicated, using 2 or 3 of her abilities in very quick succession and with very quick cycles. I struggle to imagine Farah is able to reliably manage her On the Walls while also putting pressure with Needles, switching to Guitar Solo occasionally. A character like Farah demands a great deal of commitment to operate properly: I would have liked to see more devotion to individual movements to sell Farah’s ability to properly focus on everything she puts out. This overtaxing of her concentration only adds to the slow feeling of the strategy: it's very possible that in trying to maintain offense before her finisher, she isn’t really able to scale to her finisher as fast as she needs. I don’t think this is instant damnation for the strategy: it’ll get to where it wants eventually, and it defends well enough when it's actually focused. It just leaves too many holes in its gameplan for me to give higher than a **6**.

JUDGE CLEVERRUSE

LLC

Very solid modular approach to the opening, Kenny choosing to either apply pressure in tandem with the NPC hazard or playing things more reserved if the pressure is on him. Outside of this, however, the early game is little more than a list of generic offensive tech without a framework for their application. The if/when approach is good to keep things loose, but there really should be something following up each option that better leads into the overall gameplan later in the strat. Which feels bizarre here, as the rest of the strat does quite well in handling positioning and accounting for what the opponent may be up to.

There’s some good real-world consideration at play in how Kenny aims to deal with the illusions: identifying the need for line of sight for most of the opponents tech, using water to see distortions in the air and even simply winging objects once in a while to see if they bounce. It takes a bit for the strat to remember that Heat is a concern but once it does he’s handled quite well. The Pull Call thing is a little bit of a stretch, I’m not seeing it as something that works on a thinking person more than once, but the general CQC presented is solid enough to keep Kenny safe, which is solid considering his reliance on the statue-zone making him likely to retrigger Heat’s aggro from staying in mostly one spot. The Pull Call Invert is clever in theory but as mentioned I doubt Heat will be willingly taking a ride on an enemy stand’s ability at any point, at the very least not without being tricked into it.

Once it comes to dealing with the enemy directly, I find it to be a bit of a mixed bag. The strat does well in selling the effectiveness of any given offensive effort on the musician, but much like the early game there isn’t a ton to go off of in regards to positioning and justifying these offensive efforts finding their target. It boils down to relying on Heat’s aggro to find her through her illusions, or hoping that the odd hail-mary thrown object knocks down a mirror long enough to trip her up. These feel like decent secondary options for locating her, opportunistic plays that could catch her out or pile on an already bad situation, but it doesn’t do much in creating that opening in the first place making them quite unreliable. Using the water as before in the strat would have done better here I think, and maybe more dedication to circling/searching the area instead of relying on the zone around the statue throughout would have been good to see.

Once he gets in, Kenny undoubtedly handles the beat-for-beat combat quite well, but the problem is locating the target to get in on. Enough care is given to Heat that I can see him having enough open time to get this search done, but the strat relies on very shaky means to track the enemy down given the bag of tricks at her disposal. The individual techs on display are well planned and creative, the problem being how it all flows into a convincing, connected gameplan. Very fun to read, to its credit; big fan of framing the entire thing like a night at a very dangerous casino. Great characterization comes through even if the narrative was a little light.
Seven.

BBP

The main goal of Farah’s plan is ultimately to keep the enemy tied up with Heat while making aggro onto herself as inconvenient as possible for both other parties long enough to build into a winstate. The management of resources to these ends is never a problem in my eyes, BBP does well in never overplaying the production of glitter for what’s needed at any point, though time is something I think might be against the musician. NYSM is capable of pretty frightening output, which is put into practice quite quickly with the use of varied Now You Don’ts to keep illusions unpredictable and some early needle use to dissuade early aggression, but my concern lies in how much multitasking is being done by a user with a stated weakness in concentration. I don’t doubt she can do anything stated, but I think she is going to stumble in places when trying to get it all done as fast as stated which will lead to some inefficiencies. And without an early wall in between her and the two powerhouses she shares a swamp with, things can get very painful. Misdirection with Off The Wall combined with defensive positioning and specific consideration of navigating the waters does well here. Glitter bangs are reserved for a last-ditch effort, wise against a stand that can reverse their effects if the attack is seen coming.

Offensively, needles are used with the intent of hindering the enemy instead of straight-up damage, again playing into the plan of having Heat do a lot of the heavy lifting. The House of Mirrors aims to keep the two toe-to-toe while this happens, with clever use of OTW to trick Kenny into a false sense of security by surrounding him with seemingly empty air before striking. With such a huge onslaught of needles and the stated requirement of Heat being in the vicinity as well, I think there’s a level of risk here in aggroing Heat herself with all the flying Needles going on (again playing back into the Concentration penalty on precision). If Farah has to deal with both at once she’s immediately in an awful position and will take some time and potentially a lot of pain before the situation reverses itself again, especially without a dedicated contingency for redirecting that Heat aggro.

The finale is quite the showstopper, a strong display of what this build is capable of once it really gets its scaling together. While there is obviously an inherent risk in making herself a sitting duck during, especially against two builds more than keen on throwing high powered objects at anything that moves, it does serve as some deserved catharsis for a build that throughout has needed to play things very carefully and reserved to justify the position needed for such a grand send-off. Overall a strat that I quite like, despite some handwaving to Farah’s own stated weakness as it applies to the overwhelming amount of different pieces at play at any given time. There’s nothing wrong in relying on a stage hazard to do the lifting for you as long as it’s well planned around, and outside of the lack of a fallback in case she becomes the target, I think Farah does well in arguing her control over Heat’s aggro throughout. The plan flows well, has some very creative application of a very broad skillset, and never overplays its own scaling potential. Seven.

JUDGE DSO

I’ll kick things off here by discussing LLC’s plan. I’ll start by saying that I think your general game plan and offensive measures are both good. Farah is a resource-based scaler, so the core idea of forcing her to burn through those resources as much as possible is a good approach, both by trying to nail down her position and force her to constantly upkeep her stealth and by forcing her to immediately deal with Heat’s aggro. I also appreciate that you’re careful to accommodate for Heat’s position in your strat given his importance, and both Normal Shots and Hold Delays struck me as good methods of targeting Farah with projectiles without risking hitting Heat. Recalls are also a good bit of projectile dodging tech, though not everything in here is a winner—I really don’t think Buy Low Sell High is going to get you any meaningful movement boosts, for instance.

In general, your whole strategy does a good job of capitalizing on the weird, janky hitboxes and disorientation that Compensation can put out as a Stand. You can see this in both in your CQC plans for if Heat gets on you, and for towards the end when you lock Farah down between Kenny and Heat. Overall, I think this strat makes a pretty convincing argument for how Kenny is able to seal the deal if he gets Farah where he wants her, but I’ll also state that I think it’s the “getting her where he wants her” part where most of the flaws with the strat show up.

Defensively, I think you guys undersell Farah’s capabilities a little bit. Farah’s needles aren’t especially threatening with their E Power, but she can make a lot of them, and I think the solution of just batting away her needles will probably work for some, but doesn’t read to me as adequately respecting this part of her kit. There’s a similar issue with Glitter Bangs, which are written off with a vague “Kenny protects his eyes” explanation. You guys continually hammer on the point of how Farah has less control over her glitter constructs when she lacks line of sight, which is true, and playing around this is smart, but I also feel that you overstate how effective this will be. I’ll point out that the exact wording on Farah’s sheet here is that she has “limited, but still notable” control when lacking line of sight. All this suggests to me is that she controls them with “less an B Precision” which doesn’t automatically mean she’s clumsy or firing blindly. I think a little more respect paid to the threat Farah can provide with her constructs would have gone a long way.

I’ll also touch on your plans for tracking Farah down. I almost feel a little bad criticizing what you guys have here because it’s not like this section is halfbaked. You have many different plans for tracking down Farah here, but unfortunately I just was not super convinced by them. I think the root of many of them is that this is a somewhat big map (50x50m) and Farah’s Stand allows her to effectively hide anywhere. Tossing out projectiles in every direction hoping to hit her definitely plays into Kenny’s gambler JoJolity, but without any way to narrow down where to look, I don’t see this being likely to pay off. Using the boat to toss water around has a similar issue. Trying to rely on where Heat is headed is also not infallible, since Heat is also vulnerable to getting fooled by Farah’s illusions and might not know where she is, either. To be honest, I think the most effective tool you might have here is relying on Compensation’s admittedly high Precision senses, but I also don’t feel like your Stand being able to passively hear good is sufficient to shut down Farah’s stealth/illusion build. I will give you credit, however, that even by doing all of this, you are still playing towards your goal of forcing Farah to burn through her resources to upkeep her stealth, which will slow her scaling and potentially even limit how much glitter she can spend on creating illusions on the field. This might still end up paying off for you, even if it’s not as effective as you would have hoped it to be.

Overall, I still think your strategy is pretty good, despite a few flaws here and there. Most of the tech here is feasible, I don’t feel like you ever risk overextending your resources, it reads very easily, and your core offensive plans are solid. Had your own defensive plans been a bit more fleshed out and your plans for narrowing down Farah struck me as more effective, I could see myself giving this a higher score, but for now I will still give this strat a confident **7**.

Now on to BBP, I think you guys have the makings of a pretty decent stealth-based gameplan here. I got the impression that your strategy was conscious of your major weak points here, that being Farah’s 1 skill and the anti-camping clause with regards to Heat, which I appreciated seeing. NYSM is a very low Power Stand, so I like that Farah ends up taking a similar approach to Kenny by trying to leverage Heat into proxy battles against him while Farah hides in her illusions, and I think she makes a convincing case for why she can do both of these.

There is some really good misdirection here, like creating illusions that create a fake image of Farah getting “caught” to trick Kenny off of her trail or using the House of Mirrors to continually direct Heat and Kenny into each other’s paths so they can fight. I also like that you’re careful not to blow your stealth when you need to cross the water in the center of the map and have plans to float safely over it without risking creating ripples that might give away your position. All the while, I think you do a good job of making up for your Stand’s low Power by playing as a Precision-based attacker, directing your needles towards Kenny’s limbs while he’s busy in combat with Heat, making it harder for him to move effectively and thus get away from or defend himself from the stage hazard. On the whole, I’m pretty happy with what you have here.

All that said, the strat isn’t without its flaws. With any stealth-based strat, you need to be able to answer a few questions. The first one, “How do I keep myself from getting caught?” is answered pretty convincingly, as I discussed in the previous paragraph. However, the second but equally important question of “What do I do if I DO get caught?” is much less so. Farah’s strategy strikes me as severely lacking a good response for what she does if she gets spotted and either Kenny or Heat (or potentially both at the same time) get in her face. The best she has is saving some glitter to burn to make some more instances of Now You Don’t and On the Wall to block sightlines and let Farah slip back into stealth. However, I really doubt that she’ll be able to easily pull these plans off if her opponents are right on top of her, and if that does happen, I think the strat as written leaves Farah in an exceedingly bad position.

On another note, I think for a Stand that generates and spends a resource to do anything, I would like to have seen a little more effort put towards tracking that resource. Farah’s strategy is pretty vague with how much glitter she has access to at any given time, which can lead to moments like towards the end where she can create anywhere between “27-42 glitter needles,” which is a pretty big range. This isn’t enough to sink the strategy by any means, but it’s a significant enough Logistics issue that I felt was worth pointing out and discussing, as clearer resource tracking could make it easier to read the strat and determine how effective plays such as the House of Mirrors (How many illusions is Farah able to create and how much does that set her back resource-wise?) end up being.

After thinking on it, I think I’ll give this strategy a **6**. It’s definitely good, and like I stated before, I was very happy with your stealth plans and the approach you took to combat. In order to end up scoring higher, I would have liked to see those stealth plans supplemented by more thorough defensive measures for if your cover gets blown, and perhaps also a little more attention paid in writing towards your resource management.