JJOCT7 R2M21 Quality

Judge Haruka Mizusawa (Ceep)

Starting with Mahimit, I think this is a pretty solid overall strategy. Setting up the sniper, making things ever more overbearing for the players and wear them down through a constant layering of projectiles. I think that the choice to overall focus on Sonika is one that works out very well for you; leveraging the more equal stats of your physical Stand bodies and her lower Endurance does numbers for your overall plan to keep the players on the back foot, and by forcing her to move around rather than Windy, it creates a larger, somewhat less directly mobile target for the sniper.

I do think this strategy does run into some issues from generalization of tactics; besides the positions taken north and south of the map and some preparations for moving around it, the tactics are all agnostic of the precise location that Mahimit has set up; especially when they try to set up in two particular locations and bounce between them. That said, the more detailed melee tactics were fairly solid, and understand well the tools Mahimit has to bear on the players. I really liked the note of using their gun to knock back Windy out of close range to jump on Sonika.

On the other hand, it’s short, sweet, doesn’t waste time with fiddling around too much and presents a solid threat. Overall, I think this is worth a solid 7/10; good work!

Starting with the players, the first thing I noted was that the armor that you use seems to hinder you significantly. The bedding made by Antonymph are stated to be fairly heavy; Sonika and Windy both have 1 Strength. Given the two would try and be draped in bedding, to the point it’d be able to deflect sniper bullets, I think it would slow the duo down significantly with their own movement. Sonika’s ability to move them around the arena otherwise does mitigate this and given the dampening ability I would believe that the bedding could disperse a fair amount of the force, I still think that the overall effect slows you down to a fairly significant degree.

I think that overall past this, the tactics used are solid. The Poisoned Pill-ows are cute, and effective against Mahimit to a nasty degree if you get them off. I feel like there is a bit of overestimation of how often you’ll be able to do these, but Poisoned Pill-ows are also a nice protection against Mahimit trying to leverage making too many holes. A lot of the combat tricks you have, the surprise blankets and yarn bolas in particular, I found quite charming and effective.

I think overall, the strategy is solid, there’s just… not quite enough to handle the sniper. While I buy Windy being able to hide behind cover more since she’s less focused on by Mahimit, I feel that Sonika is significantly more open, and Sonika herself doesn’t quite put the text into handling a 1v1 with Mahimit; even if Mahimit’s Stand is strictly on par with Chain of Prospit, I also feel that between pressure from the sniper and Sonika’s lower agility and speed, she’d be under significant threat if Mahimit engages her while Chain of Prospit is handled by Young Lives.

Offensively the strategy does what it needs to and despite the text I’ve written, while I would want far more specificity throughout I think that overall this does what you want it too. The tricks done with Windy and Sonika’s duo can easily get Mahimit into a no-win clusterhug, and that’s worth a lot in this matchup. This is an overall good strategy, and one I’m happy to give a 6/10!

Judge Jin Takayama (Alpha)

I’m going to do my best to be as brief as humanly possible. This probably won’t work, as I’ve demonstrated repeatedly in the past.

I’ll start with the boss strat, which is breathtakingly short. While it isn’t rare of late, I do appreciate its levity. I will, however, mention the more minor notes early- you use a gun before mentioning that you have it in the final section; the strat feels like it would read infinitely better as a comic than as a piece of writing, which isn’t to its detriment, but I figured was worth mentioning; The contingencies in the first section reference tools and tech used in the immediate following section.

I’ll be going a bit more in depth on the writing in the JoJolity delib, but I do find that it is written well. The strat knows what it’s going for and sticks to it, much like the boss sticks directly on top of whatever clue it can conceivably hang out on top of, and take potshots at the players from. A lot of the strat is colored by this lens, where it’s very much the boss playing denial or making sets and moves almost explicitly for the offsides sniper- again, will be brought up in more detail in JoJolity- while going in for destructive or killing blows when possible.

While this is bread, it lacks butter. You have a very solid strat grounding and useful tactics on display, but there’s no flash in the pan to latch onto. It’s good, toast is always appreciated, but it left me wanting something more. I can see giving this a **7**.

Moving onto the players strat…

After asking a question in the judge's chat, I had to step aside when I got home to discuss things with my roommate. It was two parts discussion on word choice in your strat, and two parts tirade about the intricacies of the English language and interplay with what humans are capable of, and how many tasks can be feasibly balanced, let alone accomplished simultaneously.

The first thing that stuck out to me was the Poison Pillow Pill. I didn’t realize it was leftover bedding attaching to limbs on strike, and thought, based on the name, that it was a cloth burr or a piece of tech from a previous strat. Alright, it’s extensible, it’s feasible to think that if the opponent makes a habit of hitting you, he’ll hit your targets and get bedding attached to him.

The next thing that stuck out to me was that all named techniques were brought up, named once, and given a sentence or two of detail with the side tag of being used ‘whenever possible’. That’s all well and dandy, but, given the amount of overhead that’s being put into the strat left right and center (tech on tech on tech on movement on movement on movement) any sort of notarization, like a table or chart, would’ve been greatly appreciated.

The biggest kicker out of all of this is the location of the majority of all this: The Middle! The middle of the strat is not only the longest overall section, it’s the most topheavy. Between the fact that it is exceedingly hard to tell what is and isn’t narrative or tech- which can be done well, mind- I had to take a few extra glances every paragraph or so to understand what was and wasn’t tech.

With that finally out of the way, I can say that your earmarked narrative sections were pretty good! I did enjoy reading about you guys getting to the sniper.

While the bases were covered, I can’t help but give this strat a **5**. Readability is king, people.

Judge Jun Maehara (Extra)

Starting with the boss, the strategy feels slightly one-note in a way that I think detracts from the overall mechanics. Denying the player team access to the backhoe clue is quite helpful for keeping up the constant pressure of the sniper, which helps keep Mahi's offense rolling. The main issue I see is that there's an element of discontinuity to it - much time is (wisely) spent on the opening, but the midgame and endgame are both quite short. Brevity can be a powerful weapon, but here it leads to the strategy feeling a bit abrupt and clunky. It's hard for me to envision how all of the individual pieces fit together into a cohesive whole, and it feels like certain issues aren't addressed thoroughly enough (the one that comes to mind is dealing with Windy - the old grab and throw is less effective when you have to fight six arms to do it.) The substance of the strategy itself is solid and well-considered, but there's an issue of quantity that leaves it feeling slightly choppy and at times inconsistent. I think this is a **6,** though I could easily see a 7 with only minor tweaks.

As for the players, a concern I will echo is the weight of bedding thick enough to reasonably stop bullets - this would definitely encumber the two unless they were willing to sacrifice some level of defense, which doesn't seem to be the intent. There's a similar yet opposite issue here compared to the boss - the substance itself is quite solid, but it's somewhat bogged down by bloat. There's the issue of the opening "we use tech wherever possible," which, when combined with the quantity of tech and the lack of qualitative "programming" as to when each is used, similarly makes visualizing a coherent strategy difficult. Due to the raw amount of stuff Windy and Sonika are doing, the strategy is just kinda hectic at places, with several techs theoretically capable of being used and no clear way to necessarily distinguish which takes priority. I think you handle everything you need to do, it's just a matter of sorting it all out, which nets you a similarly high **6.**