R4M6 Quality Delibs

Judge Demyx (Rocket)

Quality:

Ah, the combat objective, a match type belloved by me and always a joy to delib. Matches like this really press players to go hard and not slip up. The match is long, the enemies unyielding, and the cost of getting knocked out early is loss. With that in mind, let's kick things off with 2095.

To begin with I think that the narrative that you all have cooked up in this match is truly wonderful! As someone who has spent more than a bit of my college career studying concepts of the self, the will, and its impact on historical and modern thought, your strategy does an excellent job of analyzing self actualization through an artistic form. In short: The will will's will, huh. In any case moving past that I think that your strategy evolves in a really excellent way. In a match like this it is easy to get bogged down in the relatively long time frame of the match and fall into some pitfalls related to it. By developing combat strategies that evolve as the perceived number of enemies and threat level increases is really nice and creates a clear throughline that really keeps the narrative and mechanical momentum of the strategy chugging along quite well.

Now as much as there is to love I do think some of your combat sections could have used a bit more defensive tech here and there to plug some gaps. In the vast majority of cases your offensive and approach tech more than covers you, but plugging some gaps around gettin surrounded or caught off guard could have done a bit more to shore things up. In any case that little gripe is not enough to keep me from giving you a solid 8/10 here. While the mechanics could have been cleaner, your excellent control of narrative momentum, flow, and solid offensive tactics more than make up for that.

Moving onto Jamir I really think you have outdone yourself here. It is the nature of delibbing that I search for “holes” in a strat. A defensive gap here, an overestimation there. In this case I think that this strategy is pretty much airtight. Offensively it is simple and effective. Defensively it understands its threats and addresses them efficiently. It understands how the match AI and its opponent interact and plays around them with a kind of elegance rare to see in the tournament.

Moving beyond the mechanical I think that this strategy has a wonderful sense of self, and builds a convincing narrative supported by its mechanics without overstaying its welcome or being clumsy or overbearing. Ultimately I don't think there is anything I can say that is negative about this strategy. This level of mechanical, narrative, and organizational coordination is rare to see, and an absolute blast to read and reread. I think that a 10/10 is totally earned here!

Moving past scoring, I think this has to be one of my favorite matches I have been able to delib during my time as a judge. Everyone involved in these strategies should be incredibly proud of the work that they have done on these and understand that matches like these are what have kept me here for the last five years. Awesome work all around!

Judge Lapis Lazuli (Dice)

2095:

First thing to note, the Rewind Network:

"Nine points on the dance floor the android can rapidly bring herself back to at three times her original sprinting speed. These can be triggered at any point during the rest of the match and in any order, always prioritizing routes containing the most active CE bodies to defeat along the way at triple speed."

As noted by sharp voters, the Stand does not work in the manner described or at least not in the way somebody reading this would understand it. As clarified, these 9 points serve as a visual aid of where 2095 would touch base with in order to be rewound at later as needed.

Now in another competitive setting, this could be seen as potentially angle shooting, but there have been more times where people misremember their character sheets or forget to clear something up about how their ability works or how/what they are doing in a strategy. At least this instance was caught by voters and clarified directly rather than most other times where Judges had to make note of any sort of infractions or ambiguity in the deliberations. In any case, this is not that big of an issue, just something that should be pointed out so the players take better care in the future.

Onto the strategy itself, we have an ensemble of techniques to take out various dancers, initial techniques being more general fighting/dodging, then with the weighted dress, then to more daring techniques utilizing information gained over the course of the match. Overall we have a good mix of simple, effective attacks and more flashy attacks with the finale being a bit of a mad rush with projectiles and cycling through the map effectively more than twice over by timing it with the final spawn ins.

The strategy itself can also be a bit chunky in its formatting, and it can be difficult to identify important information in the paragraphs and lists of attacks. For this match in particular, this is not a large concern, but it is something to consider in terms of highlighting and spacing information.

I’m going to give this a high **7/10**. The focus on various offensive techniques and defensive planning is well done, but your movements around the map are rather handwaved. While you have your Network broadly planned out, the moment to moment plan just is not quite there, rather it’s a plan to cover everything everywhere all at once, which is quite a lofty set up to maintain through the match. You do show stronger moment to moment planning right at the end by timing your attack to the fresh spawns, but the early to mid game can be a bit scattershot with this method.

Jamir:

I don’t have too much to say here on this strategy, you have a strong focus on taking the center and staying in that area with strong defensive and offensive measures, treating the dancers in more or less one on one scenarios. Overall the formatting of the strategy is very clear on the topics the mechanical section covers, though finding the parts entailed can be a bit more difficult.

Anyways, paying heed to your opponent’s ability, taking the center means that their most direct pathing options become either more unappealing or unusable, at least in the short term. As an early game move it’s a good play and as long as you keep the center cleared, it can dissuade them from ever approaching through the center. Ideally each wave you can manage to take on 6 or 7 dancers, so holding that lead while maintaining center consistently might not be that easy, but something to keep in mind if possible.

Between the shortlist of reactive and situational countermeasures, general defense and general offense, you have a flexible core to your strategy. That said, I’m only going to give a high **7/10** here. The strategy feels a bit inconclusive, the focus on the center is fine, but I think you overestimate your coverage and the way the strategy reads, it’s hard to determine how far Jamir is willing to wander out from the center to clean up stragglers or how to fill dead time between dancers. It leaves broad movement on the reader to fill in the blanks and while it is serviceable, some more precise explanation and better highlighting could have helped at a few points.

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Additional note to both teams: To be clear that while both of these strategies are strong in how they tackle their main focus, I think both suffer slightly from how they are structured on a deeper reading and can be a bit lacking in support to their tenants. The narrative aspects here, while they serve to fill out the strategies, feel unbalanced with the mechanics of the strategy in a way that is hard for me to explain. The narrative clashes with the cohesion of the strategies, not quite how they are integrated or framed, but more the ordering and structure at scale where you have long narrative sections and flourishes within the strategy that fight for space with the strategies rather than complementing understanding of the strategy. Both tend to run on in certain descriptions that would be long in a traditional written medium, but in a strategy filled with those, it can be a bit difficult to highlight what is meaningfully important and what is an elaborate flourish. And having to reread or scroll through to find exact pieces of information to make these deliberations only compounds the issues.

Judge Zabuza (Flamechar)

This match has been a hard one to delib: I would like to preface that both stratters have done wonderfully and I would give out both 10s if I felt I could, and it came down to a wire I did not feel great with whichever side I would land. I am however looking forward to seeing more of both characters in the future - carrying on or otherwise!

Starting with 2095, the opening notes and first section hold some impressive Logistics and Technical Understanding: the former through mentioning before any mechanics how the tentacles of Yours Truly are allocated; the latter through Turn To Stone, a disposable shield/gauntlet from using tentacles that have hardened from being detached from the main stand body. She opens with an aim of efficiency - timed footfalls, either dispatching foes with one hit or not at all, with a matador flair - focusing on covering as much floor space as fast as possible to create a network of Rewind points.

In the second section she begins in earnest the puddle slaughter, where she starts to add more rhythmic patterns to her arsenal such as tap dancing or a pirouette dodge. As she starts scaling up eliminations, 2095 also acquires herself a Creative bludgeoning weapon in a soaking table-sheet ‘dress’ which she uses with Remixed spins and flourishes along with a list of techniques to put it to use.

For the last third 2095 overclocks and overheats, discarding the dress and some instances of her T2S to commit to bolder and faster moves as she lets emotion fly: a cumulation of the Narrative of the strat, one aided by the Formatting, as 2095 realizes she should express her ideal self (and perhaps, has found it while doing so). She abandons the original purpose of each of the tentacles as she trades any direct defense for more damage, these tentacles finding new use in the finale: a double trouble of dinner platters that cut through one set of foes and are recalled to shatter against the last in a passionate ending.

I will note that the slow sections do feel relatively unmentioned - largely being mentioned once throughout the entire strat. Despite that, to recap: impressive Logistics and Technical Understanding through the Rewind Network; a Competent Plan to set up and scale in enemy eliminations; and a Narrative that drives and compliments the strategy’s Format and Plan with a scaling increase with Creative options as the passion rises! ¡Es magnífico! **9**!

Moving onto Jamir, who opens with a stand leap forwards into the center and uses his stand’s overwhelming power to deal with the immediate enemies: a Logistical approach intending to hinder 2095’s kill count by disincentivizing the quick path across the map while also lessening effort by sticking in the middle of the dancers’ aggro zones - and using Planet Home’s main body to draw that of dancers further away.

Jamir makes a contract…and a brief Narrative break starts - a flashback…or flash forward? It has just occurred to me that both characters this match are from the future. Huh. Anyways, the memory ties into the overall Narrative of Jamir giving his definition of ‘dance’ - abrupt in its placement, and splitting up what could have been easier to Read together. Back to the mechanics: Jamir makes a contract to assign stand limbs to items, making them attack wildly and return to the stand body - either instantly or at a delay depending on verbal commands.

The next section brings out overview notes at the beginning, which carries on into most of the remaining Format: presumably omitted from the first and last segments to make the strategy flow well, which it does. This section focuses on combat, using Knowledge on Flamenco dance to bait the dancers and preempt their attacks, parrying them with his stand wings while Planet Home tears into the attackers on the beat and embedding those contracted items inside of them. The next section details interference with ranged objects towards dancers that aren’t in melee with Jamir’s DO technique, as well as other scenarios for the ranged RE tech and some Counterplay against 2095’s efforts.

And now the finale: the lack of MI as he calls out Carmelita, after (presumptively) getting enough kills to win. He then focuses the rest of his efforts assisting 2095…and then giving her the thumbdrive of memory that is the strategy. Overall a really Creative and fun strategy! I do not believe it covers everything this approach needs to, however: as I bring up once more the abrupt flashback could have been better positioned does hamper the readability of the respective section, and like 2095 the slow dancing is largely passed over - as is the extent that he will pursue the dancers during that part due to his minimal movement plan. Nonetheless a wonderful strategy, befitting a greatly high **8**!