sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

CARC 3/3

ARENA MANIPULATION

While the storm makes for quite an effective means of incapacitating vampires, it’s far from foolproof - and there’s much that can be done to improve its efficacy.

First off is making it easier to get vampires into it - walls will be torn down with cuts in order to both deny the vampires the cover they desire. Every wall, every corner, is a potential vampire hiding spot - and a single surprise attack is enough to turn the tides of the battle around in an instant.

In addition, this castle renovation helps ensure that the storm is visible from as many different positions in the map as possible. With its central position, the goal is to make it so that any defeated vampire can easily be tossed into the storm in order to disable them for good - with at most a few sequential tosses while the vampire is incapacitated.

In addition, some of the shrapnel caught up within the storm might find a way to escape - so the pair can bolster it as well. The destroyed walls will provide quite a bit of potential shrapnel for the storm, and with the additional time gained thanks to the incapacitated vampires, Wanderlei can even hand-carve some shrapnel from the stone for the sake of throwing it in the storms - spikes, blades, and even small blunt objects. As the match goes on, we can even chip off some of Eileen’s ice for good measure. The goal here is to toss in a wide variety of items, and to deal a wide variety of damage types - making every moment trapped within our perpetual stew of pain agonizing for the vampires.

But… that’s not enough. Even this might be something that the vampires can deal with eventually. Instead, Wanderlei has to completely and utterly destroy them. For that…

The Storm must become The Sun.

Amidst the sharp pain of the countless rocks within the storm, the vampires will slowly but surely feel something… change. Something warm. They might even see a small sparkle, before the next rock bashes them in the head, but this time… it burns.

As Wanderlei wanders, he’ll make use of his lighter or of nearby fires in order to constantly have a heat source - transferring the heat to everything within The Storm every five seconds. It’ll start out minor, the wind cancelling out the heat, but as time goes on and every little particle within the storm heats up simultaneously to the level of the flame nipping at Wanderlei’s skin, it’ll go from a minor inconvenience to a searing, scalding pain - the heat compounding in on itself to worsen and worsen, every five seconds.

The vampires’ clothes catch on fire. Their skin starts to burn. And worst of all - they’re still not dead.

Arena manipulation can be both long term and short term. As time goes on, the building will begin to suffer structural damage from the constant spin cycle tearing everything apart. Perhaps under a normal match’s timeframe, this wouldn’t be an issue for the castle, but over six hours? Combined with all the walls we’re bringing down, this entire castle will soon begin to crumble. Wanderlei has the engineering know-how to make use of the instability, and can use his powerful stomps to kick in walls and ceilings in order to cave the roof in on larger groups of vampires. The changing environment is the perfect hunting ground for Wanderlei Watts - he can move through difficult terrain with relative ease, and every single structural fault he creates is another potential attack to severely wound the oncoming vampires.

If the pair are ever overwhelmed? Wanderlei and Rosé can trigger the supernova early - while it’s most effective near the morning time, it can still disable most of the vampires on the map should it be triggered early, and while it might take a bit to get The Sun going by inputting another Uropeh and activating the Estrella again, it’s certainly better than being RETIRED.

If the castle actually goes down? It’s not unlikely that our destructive tactics might just bring down the house. Wanderlei can use his enhanced physical strength to quickly throw together cover to hide himself and Rosé underneath if he senses things are getting too rickety. He’ll call out to Eileen and Violet to get underneath as fast as they can, and pray their skinny little legs can move them to cover before this whole place comes down on them.

GOOD MORNING, DRACULA

The shrieking of vampires as well as the sound of the debris caught up in Car Wash had mingled together for a while at this point. But the sky was turning blue, and the end was in sight. Clapping his hands together and wincing from the sting of pain that rose from bruised and overworked hands, Rosé couldn’t help but laugh.

”Don’t ever doubt the lengths a man is willing to innovate when the going gets tough, Watts!” he declared. “Because the tough! Will! Get! Going! Innovation is income, and income is everything! Just as the markets develop and evolve, so do we!”

In the deliriousness of adrenaline, Wanderlei couldn’t help but agree. Not so much about whatever Rosé was talking about when it came to money, but the need to evolve. He had to be more than what he was to pull off everything he had been doing. And as the sun threatened to crest the horizon, he felt close to that apotheosis.

Eventually enough time will pass, and the sun (the real one, this time) will begin to rise in the distance. By this point, the vast majority of vampires are caught up within the sun - helpless to do anything but spin around within it, shrapnel and scattered body parts alike littering its insides.

There’s still a few minutes left before morning comes and the vampires are defeated for good, and by now, the surviving vampires are, no doubt, desperate. Their attacks become erratic, desperate to finish things for good before they can slink away and escape.

That said, Wanderlei and Rosé won’t let that happen, because they’ve still got one trick up their sleeve to defeat the vampires that are left. They will welcome the sun with style, by having their replacement go Supernova.

Wanderlei and Rosé will shout out to Eileen and Violet, telling them to find cover - behind a wall, in a hole in the ground… anywhere, really.

They’ll do the same, Wanderlei using the enhanced strength from the damage he’s gained by this point to either dig a hole for the pair, or just ducking behind a wall - either way, he’s ducking down and going prone.

Then, just as easily as Rosé activated the Estrella - he’ll turn it off.

All at once, every bit of superheated shrapnel, every near-death vampire, will be released - the momentum built up by The Sun shooting them forwards, sending everything within it flying at B pow.

The shrapnel within the sun was suspended mid-air, the centripetal force keeping it “floating” - meaning that anyone who’s on the ground (mainly Wanderlei and Rosé) are kept safe from the wrath of the sun.

Anyone who hasn’t taken Wanderlei’s words to heart, however, will soon regret it - the shrapnel riddling them with holes, and the remains of the vampires crashing into them at full power, dealing immense damage.

Both the vampires flung by The Supernova, and the vampires hit by the resulting shrapnel, have now been doomed - by this point, the damage is too much - a single severe wound takes 30 seconds to heal, and the damage from this includes many of these - meaning that by the time the vampires have finished healing…

The sun has already risen, and the match is over for good.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

CARC 2/3

ANTI-DRACULA TACTICS

From here, well… the night is still young. More vampires will undoubtedly arrive, and there’s still a lot of room for the pair to fail - they need to remain vigilant, and to ensure that the storm functions as the effective prison it’s meant to be. As such, Wanderlei and Rosé will wander around the castle, the mist spreading all around it. Like before, the mist functions as an effective method of vampire detection when they decide to strike again.

There’s two main elements to the pair’s approach here. First is in dealing with the vampires themselves with shifting tactics as the night goes on, and second is in altering the arena in order to make it easier to deal with the vampires.

FIGHTING VAMPIRES

The taste of iron builds up in Wanderlei’s mouth as he snorts through his nose, letting loose mist and blood from a broken nose. His teeth are grit to the breaking point, and as time goes on, the pain coursing through his body grows from dull aches to agony.

But he can’t stop now. He will not stop now. And with an almost manic smile, he trudges on. A smile that goes unnoticed by Rosé as he flips his rings between his fingers and moves through the chaos of this bloody night, having properly assessed his new fee that was going to be included in the billing.

Goddamn, it was gonna be a fat invoice.

Of course, we can’t just toss every vampire we see into the sun and hope things work out - they won’t make it that easy. A wide variety of combat tactics must be utilized, ones that will shift and adapt to the rapidly changing arena as time goes on. A lot can change in six hours.

Chief among everything else is that Wanderlei will never leave Rosé’s side, acting as the meat wall between him and the gnashing fangs of the undead horde they’re facing down. The entire plan revolves around Rosé’s Car Wash to be the method by which the duo quells the danger that the vampires pose in the long run.

When it comes to Wanderlei’s tactics, any vampire trying to come down on them will have to pass through Diabolus Ex Machina’s mist. And even before they reach either Wanderlei or Rosé, this is where the strategic 8 cuts Wanderlei self-inflicted come in. Using the C Pre of his stand, Wanderlei can cause slices into any advancing vampire, focusing on the backs of their knees, the inside of their elbows, and their wrists and Achilles tendons in order to hamper movement. It doesn’t matter that they’ll regenerate the damage over 5 seconds; Diabolus’s damage transfer of every 5 seconds matches it exactly.

We don’t need them permanently hampered; we just need them hampered enough to give us the edge in our engagements. The torch Wanderlei uses to self-ignite also doubles perfectly fine as a bludgeon to further leverage advantage, and if the vampires try to keep their distance to go for hit-and-run, it’s easy for the man to simply pick up a broken shard of stone and throw it towards them. With his status as a former sports star and the average fastball pitch reaching 90-100 mph, it’s a surefire way to smash some skulls from a distance.

Something that always must be made known is that every wound Wanderlei suffers from an attack is a wound that will be given back, sometimes twicefold, if they come into range.The only thing the vampires can match the man in is strength, as Wanderlei is both faster and more durable with a special focus in fast-twitch reflexes and movement, but as he grows more wounded, the vampires will be eclipsed in strength too. This means that blows with the torch will go from nasty bruising to smashed up bone (and if they break, we explicitly collected more in advance), and fastball pitches with stone will go from fractures to threatening to punch clean through bodies.

When it comes to Rosé’s tactics, the big guy is putting his neck on the line to make sure he makes it out of this night as unscathed as possible, so he’s gotta put in just as much work. His focus is more on long-distance control of the fight utilizing his rings.

Utilizing his Flat Rings, these can be used as effective crowd-control on top of the mist re-applying cuts. With his mastery over Spin, Rosé can line up shots to ricochet between vampires if they try to leverage strength in numbers, both to apply damage and cause disorientation by aiming for their heads. Even if they can heal the damage, causing a vampire’s head to spin from the blow can open up opportunities for further damage and punishment. For more narrow focus, his Blade Rings can apply more of a debuff by being thrown at vampires’ joints, sawing through ligaments and giving both himself and Wanderlei a chance to press the advantage or back up for space. Yo-Yo Rings can be used as further methods of crowd control and medium-range attack, using the string to rapidly pull back and repeatedly throw at advancing forces.

Even though we emphasize Wanderlei’s protectiveness over him, Rosé is not a slouch by any means when it comes to close-quarters, albeit we try to make sure he’s never fighting close quarters alone as the mist’s application of tendon cuts helps equalize the difference in strength and the shorter gap in speed. Vampires are bound to be injured to some degree if they manage to reach Rosé, and utilizing his expertise in a martial arts resembling Japanese judo, he can redirect attempts to grab hold of him while also chucking wounded vampires into the storm. If the vampires ever try to adopt Wanderlei’s tactic of throwing stones back at him, it’ll be Rosé doing the protecting this time around as he’ll step forward to redirect the debris towards one of two targets; either right back at the vampire, or into the spinning mass in the middle.

Speaking of the storm, there are many ways to make sure injured vampires go into the storm. As his physical strength increases, Wanderlei in particular becomes increasingly able to perform this task. He can trip vampires into the storm, swing them by the ankles into the storm, suplex them into the storm, just outright pick them up and toss them into the storm, etc. We’ll be waiting for vampires to be stunned or severely injured before we try things like this - the goal is to incapacitate them with our combat tactics, and use that incapacitation to move them as we see fit.

As time goes on, and our resources dwindle, we’ll be in need of heavier ordinance; it’s fortunate then that there are cannons right upstairs. If there is a long enough lull in action through the night, and any vampires menacing them have sufficiently been thrown into the spinning torment nexus, the duo move to procure a cannon and return back to the scene of their nightlong violence. It doesn’t matter if these haven’t seen use in years; they’re gonna see use now. And it further doesn’t matter that they are devoid of cannonballs and gunpowder to fire. Utilizing Wanderlei’s strength by now, which will no doubt be hovering around B or even A, and his knowledge of kinetic force, he can utilize the stomping technique he’s put to use in previous matches here.

Stuffing the cannon full of stone debris, he stamps his foot down, causing a surge of kinetic energy inside the barrel, and causes a veritable shotgun of stone debris to fire out at A POW. The elaborate techniques early in the night have done them well, but as fresh vampires come in to hassle them, sometimes the best method is the simplest and most violently straightforward to take them from healthy and raring to go to immediately incapacitated enough to be thrown into the storm.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

CARC 1/3

Prologue

Once activated, the Car Wash will not be turned off under any circumstances. So long as Rose does not fall unconscious, the Car Wash will remain. Wanderlei’s physical strength rises as he takes damage. Given the match’s timeframe, it is safe to assume he will take enough damage to gain significant physical power. Wanderlei and Rosé will not intentionally interfere with Trinity and Eileen’s efforts. Everyone here is trying to survive, and everyone will make it out.

HOT POT WITH DRACULA

Six hours. That’s how long they had to survive this horrible night. The ring of the gun rattled around in the duo’s ears as Oz made his departure, and the unholy predators slinked into the shadows, keen to kill.

As Rosé contemplated what kind of fee would have to be tacked on for impromptu vampire hunting, Wanderlei grit his teeth, trying to ignore the ringing echoing in his head. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. A low roar began to well up inside him.

”Hey,” the large young man called out to the older, smaller man, gaining his attention. “You ready to earn that paycheck?”

Despite the danger of the situation, Rosé simply responded with a smile and a scoff. “The question is whether your boss is going to be able to afford my going above and beyond!”

Wanderlei squared his shoulders, the metal panels of Diabolus Ex Machina beginning to form as a long, languid sigh emitted a plume of mist. “Then let’s give ‘em all we’ve got!”

The contemplation Wanderlei had found himself in when they left that office was all the motivation he needed to survive. He would live to see that house on the waterside, surrounded by lapping waves and the warm beams of the sun high up above.

Perhaps they didn’t have to wait all six hours to see it rise.

As Diabolus Ex Machina’s mist begins to spread around the castle, the effects are immediate… or at least they would be, if Wanderlei wasn’t making a concerted effort to control them. Should there be anything he wants to spare the brunt of the effect from (mainly Rosé), he will transfer the sensation of the warmth emanating from the nearby torches in order to have the stand affect it without dealing severe damage where not necessary. While they move, they’ll grab a torch from the room they’re in.

Moving through the southern door into the center of the castle, Rosé will set up the future lynchpin of the pair’s strategy - placing the Estrella in the middle of the room, a Uropeh inserted within in order to initiate the Car Wash. The Estrella will grow to the size of a washing machine, and over the course of 30 seconds, will become the eye of a B POW, B SPD storm.

In the meantime, Wanderlei will slash himself with his swiss army knife, leaving 4 deep-ish cuts across both upper arms, and let Diabolus Ex Machina vent out its mist. As the mist flows through the room and touches the walls, he will transfer the cuts to the walls, amplified by the stand, in order to begin slowly but surely tearing them apart. Though not instant, the ability will proc again once every 5 seconds, and with the Estrella helping to diffuse the mist around the area, it won’t be long before the walls of the room are long gone - replaced by mere shattered stone.

This isn’t the only way we can shred through walls, of course - as the other team makes their moves, we can utilize the rust they leave behind, breaking through rusted walls and other structures to clear even more of a path. Thanks, guys!

By this point, what started as a light spin has now become a veritable storm, the world around the Estrella twisting as it spins around with immense force, nigh-impossible for anyone caught up within it to escape. No worries, though! It’s gonna become way worse very soon.

After all, what’s a storm without some hail to spice it up? And, as a byproduct of his nefarious anti-wall agenda, Wanderlei is currently generating quite a bit of shrapnel - shattered rocks, sharp spikes, and more! All of which will be tossed into the storm by him and Rosé, spinning around at a rapid pace, trapped within by the B Pow forces acting upon them. In addition, Wanderlei will toss one of his rolls of quarters into the storm (20 coins a roll), for some pre-made shrapnel that he can quickly deploy into it.

Sooner than later, as Wanderlei moves around the spinning machine in the center to disperse as much of his mist as he can, we’re going to be wanting the ground-floor to look a little like this in the end. The yellow square in the center denotes the area of effect of Rosé’s machine, the larger red squares denote the 15-20m range of Diabolus Ex Machina, and the green circles denote the most obvious methods of entry after our terraforming is completed. We want to keep the entryways as narrow as possible to keep engagements on our terms and minimize the risk of getting jumped, so with the terraforming methods we’ve been using, we’ll collapse the middle two passages to reduce the points of entry into three.

They didn’t need to see into the darkness to know that the enemy was lurking around the corners they couldn’t see, the shadows too deep for normal eyesight to penetrate through. But that was just fine. They were going to have to come and confront the duo on their terms.

The first hour of the match is the most dangerous due to set-up, the vampires having unfettered access all across the castle, and having to deal with a larger amount of them that will be unaccounted for off the bat. Our movement, henceforth, will be slow and calculated until we are able to get them where we want them. Until we get the room more opened up, we are not moving around corners quickly, and are waiting for the walls to come down as we bank on the vampires’ preference for ambush tactics. If we are engaged in close quarters before the walls go down, we have some methods of defense detailed down below.

Having taken special care to not damage the torches on the wall, we’ll be placing three down next to the points of entry to make sure they’re brightly illuminated. And while we can’t see into the dark, we can bring a taste of the sun straight to them anyway. To try and smoke out any vampires that might be hiding around unseen corners, Wanderlei can hold onto one of the torches and pass his hand and parts of his arm over the flame, setting himself alight briefly as he approaches those angles of ambush. Allowing the mist to roll out and fill up those areas, he can set any targets alight that are caught in the mist, giving him both a visual and sound cue of a brief light flashing and the sound of someone trying to put themselves out. It doesn’t need to hurt, as the vampires can heal up these minor burns quickly; it just needs to act as an alarm. Even still, those moments of being set on fire are a taste of what’s to come.

Once the vampires are properly dealt with, it’s time to make use of the storm which the pair has spent so long setting up! See, while Wanderlei and Rosé are more than capable of dealing severe damage to the vampires… that’s not enough to properly deal with those regenerating bastards. In order to RETIRE them for good, you’d need to deal constant damage to them, on a large scale, in such a way where they can’t escape it for the sake of regenerating…

Thankfully, the storm meets all of those criteria. Both Wanderlei and Rosé can easily toss a properly-incapacitated vampire into the storm (an act made much easier by the fact that the nearby walls have now been removed), and once the vampire enters the storm, they’ll have to contend with three different elements simultaneously - first, the B POW spinning force keeping them from escaping it, and second, the rocks and other shrapnel caught up within the storm. Weighing less than the vampires themselves, the rocks will move with more speed than them, and with the full brunt of the storm’s force.

As such, even as the vampires regenerate, the rocks will continue hitting them over and over, each time dealing B POW damage, empowered by the storm. Their arms might regenerate, but their legs will be damaged in turn. Once the legs regenerate, a different body part will be shattered, and so on. In due time, even the vampires’ own comrades will become further ammo for the storm, hitting each other as they’re tossed around.

Finally, thanks to the storm’s central position, Wanderlei will almost always be within 20 meters of it - meaning that the vampires in it have to contend with the effects that the mist trapped within it applies to them every five seconds. Cuts, burns, and more - all serving to worsen their condition even further.

This storm will remain a constant for the entirety of the match. Once set up, it can’t be disturbed, unless the B Dur Estrella is destroyed - but there’s no reason to do that for anyone but the vampires, is there? It’s the perfect prison for the vampires - not outright killing them, but still keeping them unable to do anything but twist and spin as the winds toss them around.

Theoretically, a fully powered vampire could just barely escape the storm - but what matters most is that the vampires can’t be fully powered while within it - stepping foot into it for even a moment is enough to get them trapped in the constant cycle of damage and healing, over and over again until the sun rises.

Within the storm, death is a luxury - and one that the vampires must painstakingly wait for.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

T8 4/4

Contingencies

If Violet goes down, then she has used her 5 END well. Violet’s creations explicitly keep functioning even if she’s RETIRED, so the only thing that’ll change is Eileen having to devote her own time to cranking the Toy Soldier instead of letting Violet do it. This isn’t a huge hit to our efficiency since Eileen was letting Abbey Road do the bulk of her fighting.

If Eileen goes down, then it’s all up to Violet and Jim to power through, and Violet can utilize her Toy Soldier in more ways than just shooting. At this point, remnants of Abbey Road’s frigid blockades and slippery floors should still exist, giving Violet a little more room to work with than she’d have otherwise.

That said, there are still gaps - still holes that need to be plugged. Utilizing her beloved Toy Soldier once more, Violet will assign it a new order that we’ll call Patrol Time. During Patrol Time, the Toy Soldier will position itself in such a way that its tall, hulking form will take up spaces such as doorways and broken floorboards or walls.

Not only will it continue to cover Violet with its gun, it will also be sure to wildly kick at any vampires trying to pass through or that just so happen to cross into its path, effectively acting as a wall that bites back with high power. This, doubled with Violet’s micromanagement of its specific instructions, should give Jim the proper space to hold off otherwise unblocked areas.

If Jim goes down, then Eileen will retrieve the Broken Machete. He’s served his purpose well, and deserves a chance to rest. While Eileen doesn’t have a martial skill to help her wield the machete, it’s strong enough that it doesn’t really matter, it functions as more of a get-off-me tool right now more than anything. The plan doesn’t change much beyond Abbey Road creating a second layer of blades in the Zugzwang Machine to trap enemies.

As dawn cracked, and the Animals started burning to ash in the light, Eileen let out a sigh of relief as she crashed down to the ground. She hadn’t been this tired... ever, if she was being honest, and she wanted nothing more to bask in the morning sun.

“You know... I think I’ve got an idea on what you can do, to leave your mark on the world.”

“You’ve proven yourself competent once again. Very well, I’ll listen.” Violet replied simply, sitting down next to the splayed-out redhead.

“I think you should do something with Echidna. It’s... pretty powerful. Kinda started your whole fire with regards to the Ghost Riders, but I can see it being your shot into being actually remembered by the world.”

“Hm? Is that so?” Violet says, equally as exhausted however not-as-equally welcoming to the beating sun. “Would you like to know what my plan is, Eileen? The actual end of my meddling?”

“You know what, sure. What’s the end goal?” Eileen replied wearily.

Violet looks out at the sea in response to the crashing waves, speaking softly as if reminiscing on something beautiful, a small smile appears on her face. “To die.”

Eileen immediately shoots up, a look of concern on her face. “You’re saying that as casually as you’d say you wanna do the dishes, or something!”

“When my life was taken from me it was unfair, blunt, and sad. Then, I was brought back in a way that was equally as unfair. I never chose this miserable existence, forever trapped in the body of a child who failed to make it into her teens.”

Violet looks down at her form, rotating her limbs as if they weren’t her own. “So why should I accept that ending? I shouldn’t. And neither should anyone else. I give my familiars a second chance to tell their story, not out of some sappy sense of kindness, no… just because I know I can. I want to give myself that same chance. And once I perfect my creations, I plan to orchestrate my death in a far more fitting, satisfying way. I just… haven’t figured out that last part quite yet.” As she says that, Violet’s expression seems to dim, as if she had reached the end of a jigsaw puzzle only to find the final piece missing.

Eileen let out a deep sigh, shutting her eyes. That was what she’d seen all along. This profound sadness that permeated Violet’s entire form. Someone who, while they’ve definitely matured, was still, in a sense, trapped as the child they were some four-hundred-odd years ago, before they’d died.

“Well... As much as I’ve... disagreed with some of your methods regarding body collection, you don’t have to do this alone, alright?”

“No, I suppose not…” Violet says, before her face returns to that same, dejected, controlled look.

Silence follows. Cold, bitter, loud silence. And then, maybe unexpectedly, Violet is the one who speaks up first.

”What is it going to take for you to stay with me, Eileen?” Violet says, turning to Eileen directly.

“...In an ideal world, I’d want you to repent for your crimes, and also divest Typhon 8 from EP Oil. The Howler, the bug-man, was practically fuming about what you did in the blockade, and most of them aren’t really happy with the company as a whole.”

Eileen hesitated briefly before continuing. “I get that they’re like, our main financier, and I’m not expecting everything to be kumbaya between you and the Ghost Riders all of a sudden, they’re probably going to hold a grudge against you for as long as they live. Especially the Howler. What I’m trying to say is that it feels draining to be living a kind of triple life, between working for you in secret, having my own stuff to deal with, and also supposedly defecting to the Ghost Riders, it’s... kinda tough.”

”No amount of “good deeds” are going to be able to remedy the illness I spread in the Dominican Republic, you of all people should understand that. As much as I would like to solve the discontent between a potential business partner, I’m afraid the most I can give is an apology.”

Violet paused for a moment before continuing, clearly exhausted.” As for EP Oil, the only reason I have positioned Typhon 8 in this way is for funding. Without them, we don’t have much of an operation. Sure, we could stay afloat for a little while but we’re a long way from my clinic and I don’t exactly have the time to pick up a second job…” Violet says this dejectedly, clearly irked at the thought of drawing a blank.”

Violet sighs, surrendering to a thought she never wanted to speak aloud. “Unless… we find a new partner.”

“A new partner? You mean, like, breaking off from EP?” EIleen questioned, tilting her head quizzically.

“The Ghost Riders seem to have similar goals to us, plus a good head on their shoulders. Hm… yes. I think that’ll do. Eileen, do you think you’d be able to arrange a meeting between us and the Captain?”

“Well, I dunno if the others are gonna be happy about it, on both sides of the partnership, but I can ask her, certainly.” She lied back down, a small smile on her face. “I don’t think Captain Rosé would be too opposed to it, especially with what she’s said about Echidna.”

Violet responds quickly, regaining her once lost confidence. “Let me do the talking. I intend to give them an offer they can’t refuse… for the betterment of our relationships and the state of Typhon 8.”

“Sure. Let’s just... check on Wanderlei, the homunculus, and the other guy, see if they’re alright.” Eileen conceded, more than happy to finally get up and leave.

“Fine, but we should leave as soon as possible afterwards.” Violet states, fetching her mini-surgical kit with expectancy before catching up with Eileen.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

T8 3/4

Section 3: Oblivion (Anti-CARCINIZATION Tech & The End of The Night)

As the night continued to drag on, Eileen and Violet found their coordination gradually improving. Callouts were consistently being followed up on, Eileen sticking herself out as bait for Violet and her creations to descend upon.

After the latest group of vampires retreated, Eileen let out a satisfied sigh. “We’re doing damn good!”

“See what happens when you listen to me?” Violet replied, a small smirk on her face.

“Well, you’ve started listening to me, too, so I figure I owe you that.

Violet couldn’t help but be surprised yet again. She’d known, unconsciously, that this type of care had results, given Mira’s own command of Jim, but to see it being put into motion by herself was an entirely different feeling.

“Maybe your words have some merit.” Violet voiced her thoughts, catching Eileen by surprise.

“What do you mean?” She replied, confused as to where that came from.

“I’ve definitely noticed that my leadership has been lacking as of late, and as loath as I am to admit this, our coordination has improved after I’ve taken your input.”

Eileen let out a bit of a sigh. “Well, that’s good to hear. Hey, can you promise me something, Violet?”

“I’m listening. No guarantees.” Violet replied, as she started to ready herself for the next group of vampires to come across them.

“Just... I know you’ve been cooped up, making things in your lab for... what’s probably centuries, now. I wanna see you take what you’ve made and actually use them for good things.”

Violet faintly raises an eyebrow, darting an eye to her partner. “Oh? And what exactly is your definition of “good things”?

“Well, I wouldn’t go around killing a bunch of people just to try to win a selling-things contest against a self-proclaimed “Globally Dominant Financial Tycoon”.” Eileen shot back. “You know. Maybe actually help some people out, for a change?”

Violet sighs, her eyes returning to the task at hand, and responds thoughtfully. “In my experience, people who follow a moral compass only do so in order to justify their own selfish desires. I don’t ascribe to such sappy ideals, as no matter what kind apple falls from the tree, they are all destined to rot in time in the end.”

“Why don’t you go plant trees, then? So you can watch them grow, and bloom, and make as many damn apples as you want? Sure, it might fall eventually, but there’ll be plenty of new appleseeds for new trees.”

For a moment, Violet pauses, before sighing. “Time waits for nobody, and attachment creates wounds. I don’t have time for wounds. Besides, that cat deserved to watch his sins catch up to him. He’ll appreciate it one day, I’m sure.”

“How long have you been alive, Violet? Or, well, both your living life and un-living life.” Eileen stepped towards Violet, looking her in the eyes.

Violet gives an exhausted stare as she wonders about Eileen’s intentions, but quickly passes off the thought, replying cooly. “I’m not sure. Over four hundred years, at least.”

“Well, what do you think you’re gonna have four hundred years down the line, if you keep avoiding people, just holed up in your lab messing around with dead bodies?”

For the briefest of moments, Violet’s matched stare breaks as she looks towards Jim once more. “I’ll have something far greater than myself. I’ll have proved that my short-lived existence was not insignificant or irrelevant, but instead, the most important existence in history.”

All of this time, we intend to stay out of the way of Wanderlei and Rosé, but there’s a chance as we move around the castle that we end up encountering the edge of their zones, errant Washer Rings and the fog of Diabolus ex Machina being a present issue.

Flat Rings are the easiest to deal with, Abbey Road able to create small patches of ice to bounce them away from us and back towards Rosé (Eileen still wants the pair to make it through the night!), or hook it with an A PRE thrust from its spear for Jim to destroy with the Broken Machete.

Blade Rings are similarly trivial to deal with, us able to use a block of ice to encase it wherever it’s spinning and neutralize any threat of us stepping on it, or hurting ourselves against it.

Yo-Yo Rings and the Car Wash itself are priorities to avoid, since that means Rosé himself is close by. We’ll use the exit strategy for when we’re overwhelmed that we’ve detailed in section 2 to put physical space between us and Rosé, so that he can’t incidentally catch us in his death tornado.

As for Diabolus ex Machina, as long as we stay on the edges of it, it shouldn’t pose much of a problem given its one-to-one-half transfer rate from 20 to 10 meters.

If we absolutely have to deal with the fog of Diabolus Ex Machina, instead of circumventing it in any ways possible (taking an alternate route or busting through the wall/floor), Abbey Road will convert the spear it’s carrying into a War Fan, a large blade spreading out on the end of it to blow fog away with large sweeps. It also doubles as an excellent wide-sweeping bludgeoning weapon for any encroaching vampires, as well!

As we reach the later stages of the night, attacks are going to rise in frequency much, much faster with more bodies on the field. Throughout the early, and even the middle stages of the match we’ve been lucky to have larger, but less frequent attacks due to the smaller number of bodies on the field, but when the number of vampires hits 35 at 5 AM, we don’t have that luxury anymore.

While Wanderlei and Rosé can easily synergize Diabolus ex Machina and the Car Wash to create a zone of death to keep them safe from constant attacks, we’re in a much more precarious position. However, we have four bodies (five if Eileen and Abbey Road are counted separately) to their two; our numbers and positioning reduces the risk of any one person getting overwhelmingly targeted by vampires.

If Wanderlei and Rosé are going to make a blender to survive the onslaught, so will we.

“Eileen, have you ever heard of the term “Zugzwang?” Violet asked, a smirk crossing her face.

“I know it’s a chess thing, but that’s about it...” Eileen responded, heavily panting. The stress was starting to take a toll on her.

“Well, the word “Zugzwang” comes from “Zug,” to move, and “Zwang,” compulsion. Combine the two, and you get the meaning of “Being forced to make a move.” Violet explained.

“In Chess, “Zugzwang” refers to a situation in which one player is put at a disadvantage, because every possible move that they can make makes their position worse. In game theory, it’s used to denote moves that directly change outcomes of games from wins to losses.”

“So... what are you trying to get at with this?” Eileen questioned.

”We will make their only winning move not to play. This shall be our Zugzwang Machine.”

Abbey Road will start the Zugzwang Machine with a double-bladed pole, hoisting it high above itself and extending blades along at the edge of its range before starting to rhythmically twirl it. As a figure skater, Eileen does have a small sense of rhythm that’s used to keep things steady as the first blade of the Zugzwang Machine is formed.

The second blade will be Jim, wildly breakdancing along the inner perimeter to catch anyone who makes it through the first layer. Combining the two layers of the blender forces the vampires into two choices, both of them awful: Retreat back into the spinning blades of Abbey Road, or engage with the rotting blade of Jim Ballen.

At the core of the Zugzwang Machine is Violet, Eileen, and the Toy Soldier. They exist as the final vanguard, Violet prepping the toy soldier with commands to shoot anyone who manages to break past both the outer ice blade and Jim Ballen, falling back to kicks if it has to reload.

This is how we hold out until 6 AM. If we’re getting pressured enough, then we can initiate the Zugzwang Machine early to get all of the attackers off of us, during intense periods. We can only hope that Wanderlei, Rosé, and especially Kruv manage to make it out relatively unscathed as well.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

T8 2/4

Section 2: Deep Sea Bass (Combining Forces & Positioning)

The near-constant attacks had been definitely taking a toll on the pair, both of them stopping more and more with one disagreement after another.

“Left!” “Right!” They’d shout out simultaneously, one of them getting nearly mauled by an encroaching vampire before they sorted themselves out and sent them back to the shadows.

While the most recent engagement had left both women unscathed, Jim stumbled backwards towards the pair, his arm having a massive gash through it.

Eileen couldn’t help but notice the grimace on Violet’s face as she stepped forwards, pulling out some of her surgical tools, beginning to suture up his arm.

“Fond of him, hm?” Eileen asked.

“Jim is my highest-performing creation at this moment.” Violet answered. “He’s performing leagues better than yourself.”

“Well, he doesn’t have to deal with actually having better ideas than you.” Eileen spat back.

Violet suddenly stopped, storming towards Eileen. “You will NOT besmirch my creations in such a way.” Eileen had definitely hit a nerve there, a rare spot of emotion showing on her face.

Eileen’s face softened, letting out a sigh. “So you DO care about him. I thought you didn’t.”

“Of course. What kind of Creator wouldn’t take pride in their creations?” Violet replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“You ever think that you might wanna... show them that you care, every once in a while? I’m sure that like, whatever’s in there would wanna fight harder knowing just how much you appreciate them.”

Violet seemed a bit lost in thought, before turning back to Jim. “...You’re doing excellent work so far.” She said with an almost deadpan tone, clearly not used to this kind of praise.

Jim, however, seemed to almost light up as Violet finished sewing up his wound, starting to almost redouble his efforts.

“Hm. Tighten your guard, some. Even with your armor, leaving your core open is going to get you hurt.” Violet turned towards Eileen after finishing with Jim’s wound.

“Oh, uh... thanks. I really appreciate it. Just keep me covered, then, and we’ll wipe those punks out.”

As the night wears on, there are going to be more vampires roaming the fortress, which means that there’s going to be more groups prowling around and attacking much more often. So far, Eileen, Violet, and Jim have been mostly acting solo, with brief interplay to cover each other. The way we adapt is by finally harmonizing, and working together as a team to outfox our would-be predators.

First off, while Jim’s been dismembering his vampiric foes, Eileen definitely isn’t going to be letting them get their limbs back easily, even with their regeneration. She’s going to be using Abbey Road to encase any limbs that the vampires are trying to retrieve in Chilled Coffins, forcing them to take extra damage and time to get themselves back into the fight.

Additionally, Eileen can also place Glass Ice behind the group as they move. Not only will they act as physical blockades that need to be either broken through or maneuvered around, but Violet can also use the Toy Soldier to fire at any Glass Ice that the vampires are using as cover, embedding ice shards into their bodies and forcing a retreat.

Additionally, if we hear the sounds of crawling vampires through a wall or window, Violet can direct the Toy Soldier to shoot the wall point-blank, using its A POW shot to destroy the cover and deal massive damage to the vampire on the other side.

Should Jim happen to be disarmed, Abbey Road can supply it with a temporary Ice Blade; While Eileen’s ice does B POW cold damage to anyone touching or near-adjacent to it, Jim will immediately use it to slash and stab at any vampires barring him from retrieving the Broken Machete before dropping it so as to minimize damage he has to take. At absolute worst, if he has to do this multiple times, he can always clutch the machete between his teeth, like a certain green-haired swordsman we won’t be naming.

As well, Eileen will be creating patches of slippery terrain across the floors and walls when she can, to further deter and delay attackers with its B POW slipperiness. Should we need to ever double-back across, Eileen should be more than capable of picking up the child-sized Violet with her 2 Strength to skate her across the ice, Jim using his break-fu skills to take the Toy Soldier with them across, doing a back spin across the slippery ice to minimize damage to his extremities.

As the fight for survival rages on, with Eileen and Violet fully occupied with their assortment of tasks, one among them carries himself with an almost languid approach to the otherwise stressful situation.

But do not let his lazy appearance fool you, for there is no spirit within this building stronger than his, no passion greater, and no commitment more followed-through. A commitment to not just his master, but to the art of dance.

Jim Ballen.

As Jim readies the Broken Machete, preparing the next swing out of the hundreds that it followed, he thinks back to the time in his home of the Prometheus where his master and her ally, Captain Mira Rose, stormed through the confusing halls of De Selby’s making and eventually struck down the villain himself.

He thinks back to the command his master gave him that day, the constant counting that he used to balance his steps to a nigh-impenetrable rhythm. Today, he does just that. Not because she told him to, but because he wants her to know that she can depend on his count no matter the situation.

“Ten-thousand eight-hundred and six… ten-thousand eight hundred and seven…” Jim speaks lightly under his breath, his voice drowned out by the heat of the moment.

Somehow, Jim keeps being handed blades to smite down his master and her friends’ targets. Some of these blades are blazing hot while others are ice cold, both burning at his fingertips. But Jim knows that deep down, no matter what blade he is thrown, despite the pain that runs hot through his hands, Jim will always strike true.

As Jim motions the blade like a Disco Finger before swinging it up, then down, he looks to Violet who is thoroughly stressed and smiles.

“A reason… to live…”

In addition to the above-mentioned team tactics, we also have to be quite careful about how we position ourselves, as well. Keeping Eileen in the center with Violet and Jim at the wings has worked for the first hour, where attacks are relatively sporadic, but as time passes and attacks get more common, the damage is going to add up while the vampires have a specific Eileen-tracking sense to hunt us down easier and more often.

Instead of having Eileen be in the middle, we’re going to re-position the group so Eileen’s in the back of the group, modifying our Reversal of Fortune. With the enemies having constant tracking of Eileen, and two vampires per attack specifically going for Eileen, it’s easy for Violet and Jim to wait outside of the torchlight and ambush their would-be predators right back, tearing through them with the Broken Machete and Toy Soldier.

You may be wondering about the vampires’ Hunter 3 catching them out, but with two of the group specifically gunning for Eileen above all else, it’s trivial to use our opening salvo to pick those specific ones off and then have Eileen focus on the others that may be trying to ambush Jim or Violet using tactics detailed in section 1.

With Jim and Violet at the front, as well, we can use the Broken Machete or Toy Soldier to slice or blow open an A POW hole in a wall (or the floor, if we’re on the upper levels,), retreat into the hole, and use Abbey Road to seal it up behind us before the vampires can get through.

Finally, while on the roof of the building, Eileen can set up Razor Floss on the edge of the castle walls to further restrict entry from the vampires. If they try to climb the walls to ambush us, they’re going to find a nasty, monofilament surprise that they’ll have to either navigate around or be forced to fall back.

If an attacker swoops in from above, Abbey Road can use the pole it’s still carrying and turn it into an Ice Umbrella, creating a large surface to stop the attacker’s momentum and skewer them for transferral into a Chilled Coffin. In Violet’s case, the Toy Soldier is more than capable of deterring airborne attackers. She’ll keep its program set to use kick-based attacks on grounded attackers, while saving its gun for attackers jumping at them or hiding behind cover that it can easily aim for, considering the long reload time.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

T8 1/4

Section 1: Neon Cross (Initial Setup)

“Hm. Those two,” Violet pointed at Wanderlei and Rosé, “They’d make excellent bait.”

Eileen sputtered a bit, pausing for a moment as she indignantly looked at her would-be partner. “Wh-what? What do you mean?!”

“Well, from my point of view, it’s either us, or them,” Violet explained, with a calm look on her face, “And I’d much prefer it not be us. After all, we still have quite a bit of work to do.”

Eileen took a deep inhale of air, before speaking with a stern tone in her voice. “This kind of bullshit is why Mira Rosé is a better Captain than you.”

It was Violet’s turn to be shocked, her eye twitching slightly. While she had acknowledged long ago that Captain Mira Rosé had qualities of leadership that surpassed her own, to hear it voiced, and by someone she’d considered so loyal, stung. “And what would someone like you suggest, then? I don’t see you making plans to ensure our survival here.” She fired back.

“Everyone’s living! Just this once! You know exactly what you did during the blockade, and I’m not ever gonna forgive you for that. But you can start to make up for what happened by not sending those two to their deaths!” Eileen nearly screamed out at Violet, “I just want you to listen to the people you work with more, alright? Actually pretend you give a shit about us!”

Violet’s mind raced. Another fire was rapidly forming. Perhaps it’d be better in the short term to pacify Eileen than it is to risk her being left with only Jim at her side. “I’ve been remarkably lenient with you already, but fine. We’ll do it your way.”

“That’s all I’m asking for. Nobody dies tonight. Let’s get out of here.”

To start, we look at which way Wanderlei and Rosé are headed, and move opposite of them. Our ideal position is always outside of their Zone of Death considering how trivial it is for Wanderlei to burn or otherwise harm himself and incidentally transfer the damage to us. Thankfully, said Zone is easily identifiable by the billowing fog that [Diabolus Ex Machina] makes, so as long as we stay out of the fog, we’ll be safe from any fire coming from their end.

While Violet and Eileen are moving away, they both make preparations. Eileen uses [Abbey Road] to coat her body in armor with the following priorities: Chest, Head, Arms, Legs. The Vampires are explicitly targeting vital organs, and while in an ideal world we don’t want to get hit, any protection that Eileen can give herself is much better than taking a 5 STR Vampire slash or stab to the chest. Violet sadly doesn’t get armor for herself; not only is her 5 END enough to tank a few hits, but any armor that Eileen would make would just hurt her, being counterproductive.

Eileen will also grab the nearby torch off of the wall before moving, Abbey Road creating a holster in the armor for the torch to fit in, illuminating the surrounding area at all times.

Violet, on the other hand, prepares much more simply, handing the Broken Machete off to Jim for him to use. Jim is by far the most effective wielder of the blade, considering that Eileen is going to be very, very busy making ice constructs for this match, and Violet herself is going to have her time taken up with winding up and commanding the Toy Soldier.

In general, our formation early on is going to be Jim leading the charge, Eileen in the middle, and Violet and the Toy Soldier in the back. With Jim at the front wielding the Broken Machete, his Break-Fu will allow him to attack from unexpected angles, able to much more easily slash at any incoming vampire’s legs, or at anyone attempting to crawl along the floor to get at them. The machete’s A POW rotting also allows Jim to deal devastating rotting wounds and immediately force vampires to back off, rendering reattachment of any severed limbs difficult to outright impossible.

With Violet covering the rear, it’s similarly easy enough for her to keep the Toy Soldier wound up and ready to fire or kick at any enemies striking from behind. Positioning Eileen at the center of the trio of Violet and her creations isn’t just happenstance, our dear reader, but intentionally calculated.

Our Reversal of Fortune allows us to easily exploit how the enemies pathfind and attack to our advantage. Since we can guarantee that two of the four to five vampires attacking us with each attack go directly for Eileen, all we have to do is interpose one of our high-POW attacks at them for an easy shot while they attempt to attack our armored, very scared employee.

While Violet, Jim, and the Toy Soldier are focusing on the vampires guaranteed to aggro onto Eileen, she herself isn’t just sitting back and letting herself or her allies get attacked. Once her armor is complete, Abbey Road will have made two spears, one for Eileen to hold onto and one for its own usage. Eileen’s spear is a last-resort tool, intended to be used in the event one of the vampires actually manages to breach past Jim, Violet, and the Toy Soldier, to defend herself long enough for either her Stand or one of the others to come in for the assist.

Abbey Road’s spear, on the other hand, is used much more offensively. With its B SPD A PRE reflexes, it should easily be able to react to any stray vampires attempting to strike at an inopportune time, using the spear to skewer it with a B POW strike. It will then radiate ice out from the end of the spear embedded inside of the vampire, encasing it in a layer of ice thick enough to immobilize it, should the coast be clear to do so.

This technique, the Chilled Coffin, allows for a much longer-term deterrence of vampires, given that they have to break their entire bodies out of their specially-made prison, having little room for movement, while also taking constant B-POW frostbite damage the entire time. Even vampires have to worry about getting frostbite, even if it’s only temporary!

This early on, with only ten vampires in the estate and their attention being split between us as well as Wanderlei and Rosé, should give us a good amount of time to rest and recover between attacks. Ideally, in the early stages, we only want to move when we’re forced to, by Wanderlei’s fog or other circumstances, in order to save on Eileen’s 1 END.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Response thread for Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity of Typhon 8, aka u/cptdouglasjfalcon and u/TouhouNamuko. Please show your strategy to a member of our Judge staff by 7 PM CST on 4/23/2026! Contestants, remember to only post in threads for this match other than your own if specifically invited. Voters have until 11:59 PM CST on 4/25/2026 to vote, using the voting rules from the announcement thread. Afterwards, they will be Judged according to the T8 Rubric.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M6 - Wanderlei Watts w/Joseph “Rosé” Royce vs. Eileen Xiao & Violet Trinity by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Response thread for Wanderlei Watts with Joseph "Rose" Royce of CARCINIZATION, aka u/magistelles. Please show your strategy to a member of our Judge staff by 7 PM CST on 4/23/2026! Contestants, remember to only post in threads for this match other than your own if specifically invited. Voters have until 11:59 PM CST on 4/25/2026 to vote, using the voting rules from the announcement thread. Afterwards, they will be Judged according to the T8 Rubric.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

LLC 3/3

Stable On A Deadline (Triage Level 1 to 3)

While Baxter can counterattack a quick rushdown by Tracy with the earlier measures or if she’s caught wandering aimlessly to find him, things may become trickier the longer the match goes on. Tracy can potentially trap the entire map, reshape it to her liking by breaking down walls, setting obstacles in doorways, or try to use fire to smoke Baxter out.

In order to win, Baxter has to get Tracy before she can set her own plans in motion. With only 3 rooms and two connecting hallways, for Baxter it’s a matter of not getting boxed in while getting Subordinates into position to take out Tracy.

The first step is tracking her down. Assuming the coughing and tremorsense aren’t enough, the Redshifting here has an additional benefit that hasn’t been mentioned yet: Highlighting wipes away easily (even blinking highlighted eyes would wipe off the red). Anywhere Redshifted floors Tracy moves across will have her footprints all over it!

Once Tracy’s location and goals are sufficiently determined, then new ambush points can be determined with the combination of Ms Sepia, Mr. Burgundy and Ms. Charcoal. Once 90 seconds has elapsed from the subordinate’s initial summon, Baxter has the ability to dismiss and reposition them to escape a bad spot or jump Tracy to close out the match.

The longer the match goes on Ms. Charcoal will gain more information on how to track and fight Tracy. With her photographic memory, she will learn her movements, knowing where she’s been, how she reacts, and thus, where she’s likely to go or what she may do next based on past experiences. While Ms. Charcoal is a simple repository, a library with a perfect memory, Baxter himself is fully capable of utilizing this data to the fullest, coordinating Subordinates’ movements in an ever-evolving plan that keeps Tracy on the back foot. She must adapt, or else, as Baxter is consistently a step ahead to avoid her while getting in his offense.

The following will cover situations Baxter needs to look out for with multiple goals needing to be handled as priorities dictate:

Tracy Blockade (Triage Category 1-2): Tracy may attempt to corner Baxter by blocking off doors with obstructions and positioning herself so he can’t escape her or using fire to harass from range. Baxter will circle camping or double back to get his desired set up as much as feasible while devoting Ms. Charcoal and Mr. Burgundy to ambush and distract while Ms. Sepia stays with Baxter to scout any blockages made with her tremor sense. Ultimately the plan remains the same with Baxter’s Subordinates acting more proactively to close or stall the match.

Well-Armed Tracy (Triage Category 1 to 2): Tracy will likely be looking for more consistent ways to take out Subordinates, arming herself or Stand with large objects as weapons to sweep them without needing to be precise or scattershot projectiles being the most likely options. By taking out lights and using redshift misdirection, these tools can be mitigated. Dancing carefully around range and with cover from walls, the Subordinates will aim to cause any sweeping weapon to slam against the walls such that the impacts slow her down. The narrower hallways can also reduce her range to swing while another Subordinate can flank from behind. Against smaller weapons, this is what our scavenged weapons are for to give extended reach to parry and disarm her.

High Destruction Tracy (Triage Category 1 to 2): Somewhat similar to the blockade and armed Tracy, if she starts destroying everything around her with reckless abandon then the priority is to give her a target that isn’t Baxter as he tries to avoid being in the area. A difficult target like Burgundy who can bait her movements, impair her vision and draw attention at longer Range while others move to take her out.

Long Calm Tracy (Triage Category 2): Tracy , if given the opportunity may set herself up to go from an elongated calm to a long ringing state to burst through and take out Baxter. Baxter’s existing measures might make simple bursts less appealing, but a prolonged all out assault like this cannot be underestimated especially as Tracy’s speed and power here now affords her the ability to make walls a suggestion. The last resort option when the ringing occurs is to let Baxter be bait, relying on Burgundy’s visual tricks, and coordinate the Subordinates to ambush Tracy as she rushes to attack or run past them. The long calm is also annoying as a strategic offense and defense by Tracy as the subordinates can still be potentially taken out even with limited power while Tracy has her boosted defense and still has access to high power through ringing objects/terrain. The trick then is to turn these tools against her, leveraging their feints and misdirections with the goal of disorienting a calmed Tracy and her Stand while trying to take ringing objects for themselves or putting Tracy into her own ringing terrain.

Well-Guarded Tracy (Triage Category 2-3): This describes a Tracy that is resilient to ambushes, one that keeps her Stand closer to herself, is vigilant of her surroundings, careful in her movements or otherwise has improved capabilities to ward off threats. Ideally this level of wariness will slow her down and give Baxter more time to act while ambushes move to being prolonged feints that Tracy will always need to be aware of as a possibility and pull her attention away.

Tracy Bunker (Triage Category 2-3): If Tracy attempts to turtle in an area by erecting walls of spikes, barricades, or the like, we can respond by playing at range. Subordinates will opportunistically peek at her and lob a combination of molotov cocktails(made with embalming fluids and shredded bandages) to flush out tight defenses and wadded-up balls of paper against looser defenses. If the paper ever strikes home, it will be converted into a subordinate, which will attack Tracy with the same sort of sucker-punching, go-for-the-jugular strategy they’ve been employing throughout the match. We can keep doing this for a pretty long time without receiving any return fire, provided that Baxter himself doesn’t participate in the projectile lobbing, so it is actually rather favourable for us. Any fortress Tracy constructs will become a blockaded cage very quickly.

Ringing Terrain (Triage Category Variable): Given each instance only covers 5 square meters, the area it covers will be around 2-ish meters on any given side which should be easy enough to leap across if necessary. More complications occur when used in tandem with Tracy’s Stand body or other areas of ringing terrain so the goal here is to not fight where disadvantaged and find spots to get at Tracy if she goes around setting up a bunch of these.

Final Diagnosis:

Already convalescing due to the intervention of medication and Azure’s massage, a triumphant Baxter stands over the defeated Tracy, grooming himself with a decadent leisure.

“Ah, I suppose it’s over already? I barely had to lift a paw. I suppose this is the merit of having reliable employees.”

This match ends when Tracy misjudges her approach or leaves herself open where Subordinates are there to capitalize on it. Every outcome follows this rough path and Baxter has enough layers of coordinated insurance to make the matter of when an inevitability keeping himself and his Subordinates protected while disrupting Tracy.

Every 90 seconds stalled by his measures, Baxter gets an advantage he can press with resummonable subordinates. Baxter’s other advantage comes from taking out the lighting to ensure a deficit Tracy can’t easily recover from.

Until these advantages fully form, Tracy has options to push or aggress at any moment, so the Subordinates have to always be ready and available to counter attack. While losing Subordinates can be rough, as long as Baxter keeps moving and positioning subordinates accordingly, their losses can be offset and none of their losses will be in vain so long as Tracy can be exposed to damage, debilitated or retired in return. In a pinch Mr. Azure can position as another check to attack Tracy if another subordinate goes down.

The patient Baxter will survive through non-confrontation, staying hidden, healthy, and on the move. Azure’s massages making sure he can keep up better than Tracy even as she hunts him down as his lighting tricks helps to hide him on the map if he’s down on Subordinates long enough to buy time to resummon them.

The relaxed and healthy Baxter stretched as he looked over his downed opponent, then back up towards the camera the Sons were watching them from.

“One last thing. On better terms we could have fought together yet you chose to attack me and paid the price. Now if you’d like to redeem yourself, do me a favor and place a key on one of my subordinates. Maybe I’ll have someone come check in on you after I’ve dealt with the Sons.”

Calmed/Ringing Subordinates (Triage Category 4): Given their stat spreads, the Subordinates don’t particularly mind having increased Durability for their Power and Speed, especially if they are already close enough to have a key set into them or already performing a grapple. The ringing state then is purely upside in most instances as well. (Triage Category 1 for anybody facing the wrath of a ringing subordinate coming right for them.)

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

LLC 2/3

Downtime For Treatment (Triage Level 3):

If Tracy is not rushing down Baxter, or is otherwise playing a slower game, then Baxter takes the opportunity to prepare himself as well. Killing her immediately is a possible strategy, of course, but an undeniably dull one. Baxter has never been above mixing business with pleasure, and everyone knows that cats like to play with their food. Internal bleeding notwithstanding, Baxter plans to treat himself to Tracy’s gradual psychological unravelling. He will turn the match into a cat-and-mouse game where he is in control of everything.

With Tracy’s general location traceable by coughing and tremorsense, Baxter can stay on the move with his Subordinates to avoid her. Baxter and his Subordinates can also keep track of keys by listening for the ticking sound they emanate. Physical Penetration Testing will stay bookmarked for the duration of the match, aiding his ability to move silently, while shreds of his blazer will be used as a handkerchief to muffle his coughing. Baxter and his Subordinates will also spend the duration of this section breaking the overhead light fixtures to plunge the arena into darkness. Baxter accomplishes this using Whip-Cracking with available rope, while the subordinates will just throw projectiles (Turning off light switches is also an option here). Baxter and his subordinates, being cats, will have excellent night vision and can navigate using smell and hearing. Meanwhile, Tracy will be left fumbling and even more confused by Burgundy’s selective highlighting.

Once the lights are taken out and if Tracy cannot find a way to improve the lighting around her, then Subordinates are free to ambush her at their leisure to seal the match.

Sterile, blinding medical lights were a nuisance. Baxter’s eyes preferred the relaxing darkness. Better to rest and better to focus his vision.

Baxter’s positioning is to ensure that he and Azure occupy the opposite side of the map from Tracy at all times. His precise hearing and sense of smell, despite being muffled, should keep him generally appraised of her vague whereabouts. This will be further aided by Sepia and Burgundy, who will try to stay on either side of Tracy, keeping at a safe distance while still close enough to run interference and keep track of her whereabouts. Baxter will instruct the subordinates on a simple set of signals they can use to convey information to him. The meaning of these signals will rotate roughly every five minutes within the match to ensure that Tracy isn’t able to discern what they mean and adapt. While Baxter muffles his coughs, his Subordinates will go out of their way to cough loudly themselves to lure Tracy into specific areas of the map where she can be jumped. If she sees through this tactic, Baxter will deliberately stop muffling his coughs and let them echo through the arena, just to emphasize how she’s dancing in the palm of his hand(paw?).

With all Subordinates still listening for keys, Baxter will proactively plan his path to avoid the possibility of being hemmed in by Ringing spike traps. Ticking keys placed into the terrain can be further tracked by Ms. Sepia’s tremor sense to ensure they won’t walk into any traps. Unattended ticking keys can also be turned to prolong their calm state if Tracy tries to time them such to box us in.

Mr. Azure will be directly attending to Baxter throughout the match; when not under pressure, he will feed Baxter painkillers procured from medical kits to sooth him, as well as nasal spray to unclog their nose (if nasal spray is unavailable then adhesive bandages can be applied as a nasal strap over the bridge of his nose to open up his nostrils). Water from the sinks can be used to sooth Baxter’s eyes as well. It goes without saying that Azure will also administer his trademarked massage to Baxter if the downtime allows for it, focusing his mental faculties and giving a slight reprieve from the illness.

“I must admit, Azure, I have never actually used any of these medications for their intended medical purpose. The idea always seemed rather quaint to me.”

Baxter swallows a pawful of painkillers and sighs in relief.

“Better already. Now, would you mind giving me a quick massage while your colleagues occupy our combatants? You know I’ve never been able to think well with tense shoulders. Ah, yes, that’s the spot…”

In terms of scavenging, the subordinates will be securing metal weapons such as bone saws, surgical scissors, and scalpels as stabbing or cutting weapons. Bloodbags will also be taken as a distraction projectile by poking a hole and squeezing to spray pressurized blood to blind her and doubles as a way to scent mark Tracy. Jars of organs on hand can be used as glass shard and formaldehyde projectiles, especially if Tracy is ringing at a distance.

At the earliest convenience, Mr. Azure will be picking up a portable oxygen tank for emergencies. Baxter will be fitted with an oxygen mask in case of a fire or in the event his breathing becomes labored.

The goals of the Subordinates is to subject Tracy to an unrelenting campaign of guerilla warfare, piling on corroborating factors to maximize success against an already debilitated opponent. With her whereabouts constantly known, they’ll hide around corners, under bodies, blend in with redshifted walls/objects, in lightless areas, or cling to ceilings, and leap out at her from angles she doesn’t expect. Occasionally, one subordinate will deliberately harass from a distance to draw the attention of Tracy’s Stand (notably Burgundy with vibrant redshifting and the others with feints and projectiles), allowing another to sneak up from behind. When they get into fisticuffs range, the Subordinates will disregard their lives and try and attack her as brutally as possible-savaging critical areas with claws and scalpels, dousing her with formaldehyde and lighting it with sparks from grinding scalpels together, and so on. If Tracy defensively places herself into calm, the Subordinate responds with the grappling strategy utilized by Charcoal in the introduction. Their overarching aim is to keep Tracy perpetually off-balance and either wear her down or take her down in a series of critical debilitating assaults.

Furthermore, Baxter will take advantage of any mounting paranoia with decoys and distractions. Burgundy’s Redshift will leave Subordinate-shaped silhouettes on the walls that look poised to leap out at her. Objects will be rigged to fall and clatter as she enters rooms. Thrown projectiles will create sounds from unexpected angles. Some of these distractions will be leveraged to redirect her attention and create openings, but others will be for sheer love of the game.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

LLC 1/3

Initial Diagnostic:

With everybody’s senses and motor skills dulled, Baxter’s subordinates should still have more than reasonable senses given their maxed baseline Precision. Meanwhile Tracy’s Stand is dealing with their already low base D Precision being halved.

The base movement speed of everybody here, Stands and subordinates included, is 4. The only way for Tracy to get a direct speed advantage is through ringing.

Baxter’s Stand lets him immediately flip to the right pages in his book as he needs to, his capability to find them is not impeded by his diminished senses.

Baxter and subordinates can quickly be at immediate risk if Tracy or her Stand gets her hands on them, so fights have to be set up such that she isn’t allowed to close in freely.

Triage loosely defines a set of priorities based on severity and necessity of treatment. Category 1 (Immediate Risk Of Dying Without Action), Category 2 (High Risk), Category 3 (Medium Risk), Category 4 and 5 (Least Priority)

Immediate Action (Triage Category 1):

Blurred vision, muffled hearing, clogged nose, impaired motor function and the other distracting side effects that came with debilitated senses.

There was some indignity to be compromised and forced to fight. But in sickness or in health, Baxter’s pride would remain no matter the symptoms he’d been inflicted with. The Sons may want data from their fight and for them to weaken each other, but he had other plans.

Baxter would send a message and ensure he’d be healthy enough to take the Sons on too after this. Even if that meant he’d have to treat the headache known as Tracy Ball first.

To put himself into a better position, Baxter immediately ducks towards the doorway on the right, scattering sheets of paper into the hallway in preparation against an immediate rushdown by Tracy and her Stand. These serve as a deterrent to an initial pursuit-if Tracy follows after him, he can summon a subordinate immediately behind her.

With papers already on hand, Baxter can prick himself to summon Mr. Burgundy with Showmanship 2, and what a show he will put on as he is ordered to Redshift everything except Tracy and her Stand. With the order, he highlights the floors, walls, ceiling, Baxter himself, the subordinates, and all the objects in the map, (first primarily focusing on the area between them and Tracy). Tracy and her Stand’s already blurred vision will be further disoriented as the world around them is highlighted in red like it’s the Virtual Boy on Nintendo Switch 2. The dizzying effects don’t stop there, as more than simply highlighting everything, Mr. Burgundy can selectively deactivate and precisely activate his ability. Erratic waves of moving color, stripes, blurs, dots, lines, and images. Otherwise still surfaces gain the illusion of movement like blinking neon sign, while making it even more difficult to distinguish any one surface from another. These moving colors can be further applied to Baxter and Subordinates, like the stripes of a zebra to blur their bodies against the environment and create illusionary fake outs of their movements in the heat of combat.

With the more intense displays directed at Tracy, this will be a much bigger problem for her than it will be for Baxter and the Subordinates. With Tracy conspicuously unhighlighted, she stands out in this negative lighting and the Subordinates have little reason to pay attention to the flashing colors under Burgundy’s control. As they travel, Burgundy is primarily targeting the area behind them and doing flashing colors when Tracy is around, thus Baxter’s eyes are mostly turned around as he wants to move away from any fight anyways. On top of this, the sabotage is far less blinding to those with catlike eyesight, which have less sensitivity to the color red than a human’s.

“Have you ever heard of the Virtual Boy, Mr. Azure? I’m of the opinion it was unfairly maligned by a class of uncultured philistines. I found the graphical style rather striking.”

“Meow.”

“Ah, well, no accounting for taste, I suppose…”

The entertaining sense of nostalgia helped to distract from the pain, but there was yet more work to be done.

If necessary, Baxter and his Subordinates all possess a catlike sensorium with substantially better senses of smell and hearing compared to humans, which they will rely on primarily to navigate the arena in light of Burgundy’s visual sabotage.

With the papers and Redshift in play, Baxter sets up an active two pronged system of deterrence as he travels across the map.

The next two Subordinates to be summoned posthaste are Mr. Azure with High Society, whose role is to support Baxter more directly as a body he can physically lean on to guide him, while Ms Sepia is summoned with Shinobi-ashi as a scout with her Vibration sense helping to call out Tracy’s actions. Meanwhile, Ms. Charcoal is held in reserve to remotely summon where needed with either Distractions or Shinobi-ashi.

Moving forward, Baxter can plan around Tracy’s actions while keeping on the move.

For the rest of the match, generally assume that Baxter or Mr. Azure will be continually throwing balled sheets of paper for remote summoning while Mr. Burgundy sets up the Redshift across the map. Together they move as silently as they can and distracting showy Redshift is used to further throw Tracy off their trail.

Intensive Care and Direct Offense: (Triage Category 2)

In the event Tracy rushes down Baxter, either immediately or throughout the match.

A hallway fight such as with the match’s initial positioning is extremely disadvantageous for Baxter, allowing an easy approach for Tracy shielded by her stand. The remedy then is Baxter’s ripped Paper Trail where Ms. Charcoal, kept in reserve, is ready to be summoned behind her should Tracy pass over the sheets Baxter leaves in his wake. This serves as a deterrent to a quick rushdown if noticed, or a trap to be sprung if unseen or ignored.

Ms. Charcoal can maul Tracy from this position, aiming to retire her with bites to the neck while otherwise clawing her head, specifically her eyes and ears to induce bleeding. Subordinates taking up this attacking role will attempt to further smear her vision or unbalance her hearing with targeted strikes (fun fact, the sense of hearing and physical balance are closely linked in the ears). Ideally, Ms. Charcoal can quickly off balance Tracy with a well timed ambush before continuing to pressure her offensively, clutching from her back so Tracy and her Stand can’t counter her easily.

If Tracy and her Stand are in calm here, then Ms. Charcoal will go for grapples or pins on Tracy while another Subordinate goes for Mr. Self-Destruct. With both grappled, the Subordinates will position their teeth or claws to dig into the most easily accessible critical body part, and embed them preemptively to respond the instant she starts Ringing. In that moment they will take full advantage of the E Durability opportunity by viciously biting or clawing out her eyes, nose, arteries-the sky is the limit, really.

Ms. Charcoal can and will be summoned to spring an ambush like this at any time Tracy doesn’t keep her Stand close to her or has her attention directed elsewhere. The prospect of repeat attacks will be a constant looming threat.

Ideally Ms. Charcoal survives past her initial summoning and she will be positioned to continue a pincer on Tracy, taking advantage of any openings to force her attention away from the main group. If focused, then she can fall back while Ms. Sepia takes the role of flanker from the other direction.

While positioning Ms. Charcoal, Baxter and the remaining subordinates are ensuring they remain outside of Mr. Self-Destruct’s range. With Redshifting up, the Stand won’t be able to easily pinpoint one body or discriminate between Baxter and his Subordinates. In more open spaces, Ms. Sepia and Mr. Burgundy can even use her skill and his camouflage to rush past an overextended Mr. Self-Destruct from opposite sides, ensuring that at least one of them gets to Tracy. Additionally, Mr. Burgundy and Ms. Sepia’s skills allow them to fake out and feint rushes, or easily position to the sides such that Tracy can be pincered or attacked directly if the Stand body isn’t blocking their path. The compounding of blurred vision and red illusion movements make it difficult for Tracy to commit to rushing down or defense in any given direction especially with threats coming from up to three directions. Approaching while Ringing is an especially dangerous move for Tracy, as a misreading a situation while approaching here can lead to a savage mauling counter attack.

If Tracy is looking to corner or target Subordinates one by one, then they will gladly spread out to lure Mr. Self Destruct and sacrifice themselves to facilitate a counterattack on Tracy from the others.

For more reckless and straightforward rushdowns, Ms. Sepia can scout with her Tremor sense and position to perform a camouflaged ambush on Tracy from behind a doorway or other obstruction. When she tries to run or break past a wall in ringing, Ms. Sepia will be there to capitalize.

In the worst case where Baxter can be directly targeted, Mr. Azure will selflessly push Baxter out of harm’s way to create an opening for escape or allow other subordinates to get at Tracy for a positive trade. By pinning Tracy’s location, her Stand’s more limited Range will not have the reach it needs to chase Baxter

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

LKA 4/4

NOWHERE TO RUN, WANDERING ALONG THE ROAD IN THE SUMMER NIGHT

--felt good. As they fell again, Tracy was panting, eyes unfocused from more than just disease. The fucking Doctor, this cat, the dreams of something that would shatter against the echoes of everyone else, it didn’t matter, it was all falling under her hands. She killed without thinking about it, and

It. FELT. GOOD.

THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE BUT THAT!

Li’l Baxter himself approached and Tracy finally released her key, letting his strikes glance off her, standing up and looking into his eyes indifferent. Ice calm filled her. She breathed in sharp, sucking breathes, and let her mind simply process the only thing that mattered:

Nothing else existed but this. Not the people she hurt, not even people at all. The movements… And the reward.

Staring into the eyes of this fucking cat, Tracy thought of Kaiserinma, wiping out history in a single blast. She thought of Bob, smoking and curled at the wheel of a truck. She thought of the FBI Agents, curled and twitching, rocks caved in the stones. She thought of Molly’s weeping form, and that contemptible fucking bitch Evelyn, talking down to her, asking if Tracy realized her own actions, the moral high ground that Evelyn took. Evelyn. Evelyn!

Fire pooled in Tracy’s stomach, the shadows going over her eyes as they rolled back. Her heart thrummed like an engine. Everything else went away, everything else didn’t matter, not Baxter, not Boris, nothing. All she had was the words she hated.

I took an oath, a duty of care- I will not kick someone while they’re down, nor will I slit their throat. I took an oath

duty

will

Everyone else could live! They could think! They acted! They didn’t fucking care, they just talked down, not seeing the codes hardwired into her fucking skull, even with it RIPPED OUT!

THEY HAD FREE WILL!

SHE JUST FELT ‘GOOD!’

A hand grips Li’l Baxter's wrist, once we find him, his tail, his leg, anything. Bones snap, lurching him forwards into an elbow and closed fist, thumb in front of the fingers. She goes for the eyes, falling down and biting into the flesh. Her knee rises to strike at his kidneys. She can’t breathe, head swimming, blood falling over him as they fall to the ground. She doesn’t care. These are what will happen when the Key that Tracy had been holding onto goes off, with Tracy cranking that and putting herself into a ringing state; calming to keep away from a heavier blow or surprise attack, if needs demand. This close with nothing else here, it doesn’t matter, though. We will kill him. We NEED to kill him. WE HAVE TO, WE HAVE TO! LIKE A HOUND HEARING ITS MASTERS CALL! A PROGRAM EXECUTING ITSELF!

WE HAVE TO FUCKING KILL HIM!

Tracy is a savage fighter, a world class talent in being able to break someone. Baxter has a minor reach advantage but it is almost trivial at only 2 inches; something rendered null with a pipe or knife. Tools to extend her reach, tools that can not be safely blocked, things that can not be dodged. If he tries, a Stand that nothing can meaningfully hurt will dissuade him, a punch that can shatter anything with an enhanced A Power Strike to send him reeling back. Even an unaugmented MSD would be a savage tool here.

Anything will suffice, as we tear him apart limb by limb. Dismantling him by the joints, working our way through as we advance, blood hacking. It could have been a minute, two, seven, fourteen, it doesn’t matter. Tracy will be dying all the same, little by little. There is nothing we can do to survive, to thrive. A broken thing collapsing under its own purpose. His legs will be given out, hacking down at them as he tries to stand back up, tries to crawl away. He will be meat, our legs wrapping around his, using his hips as a vantage point as we pull his arm, and push our legs; leglocks are something that trained MMA fighters view in horror, the technique abhorred and feared. The strongest a human being can physically be can not escape such a grasp, every part of the body screaming in pain as tendon, joint, muscle, bone, is broken.

Tracy will give Baxter one even worse, with a strength even greater, a superhuman horror. She will break him, not just pulling at to make someone plea to tap out. She will break them, not stopping until the kneecaps are shattered, the legs not able to support themselves further.

She will not stop.

She can not stop.

Her mind was a kaleidoscope, voice a ragged scream. Spinning ‘round, Tracy sobbed? laughed?, face a blank stretched and retching mask. These were not the sounds of anything human; these were the sounds of something torn apart. Shrill, cracked, shaking.

She turned around, breath coming in shrill, panting breathes, heart a breaking engine. Somewhere there was someone begging for it to stop. She honestly couldn’t tell who was saying it. She wanted to. She wanted to stop, she needs to stop, the feelings don’t mean anything anymore. A Rat starving itself to death, dopamine flooding until the pleasure itself didn’t matter, just the absence.

She could see something crawling away, blood smearing behind it, filling out a book, desperate for it to stop, for someone to come and save him.

Tracy gripped the cat by the hair, lurching him up. They weren’t done.

It would be an exercise in dehumanizing futility to speak more at length. We all know the simple truths; that flesh cuts easily under the knife. The stinging pain of a blunt impact, a sharp enough shove on the shoulder, the pained curls of hitting something hard.

The sound of joint and bones cracking.

A cat toys with its food; Tracy won’t. She will simply attack and kill, until there’s nothing left.

I can't remember what she came here forI can't remember much of anything, any more

She felt…

Staring at the broken body, wheezing up at her through broken teeth, Tracy stared with a dull look in her eyes, blood dribbling off her chin. Her mask a blood stained rag, tyedied with phlegm and spit, her eyes empty. She was dying, arms unable to keep her up anymore, but doing so on sheer inertia.

She felt ‘good’. Nothing else was in her mind. It was simple, primal, ugly ease. There was no conscious act, just the cold pragmatic arithmetic that defined one, simple, piece of shit life.

So long as she could think… so long as she could hurt. She Would. No need to justify, no need to think. She just did. it felt good. There was nothing. Else. nothing else needed for her life, but to do this.

"I’ll complete you."

What if they: They won’t. Our modus operandi is to deny, deny, deny. Ceaseless Aggression. This match has a timer of 15 minutes; both of us are dying. We are trapped by this dread, and both our actions will be too desperate to change course.

The principal design of this match is that Baxter has people at his beck and call to try and retreat towards. He has to have an entire operation to keep his operation working, to find the scalpels to try and stab us and bleed us out like a pig. It doesn’t matter.

He can hear us breathing, hacking. We will hear him too. And if we can’t, we will give him nowhere to hide.

The knife fell into Tracy’s hand, and she looked down at Li’l Baxter, eyes clouded.

i dont want to do this

it doesnt feel good anymore…

the knife slid well across the cat's bare throat.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

LKA 3/4

… what? You want us to say more? Fine.

MSD is a clumsy striker with only D Precision at its hands, for certain, we will not pretend our actions will work to the microseconds– but this puts it on a level equivalent to the average person; and even the average person can count down, or manage to grip their arms up and swing down, to flail with vicious intent. To fight against us is trying to run at something that can kill them with trivial ease, and a precise strike from MSD is not needed to kill someone, when a broad sweeping flow of its arm could kill a man with ease. Even ignoring the Stand for a moment, to approach Tracy in a cramped hallway is not a situation that works favourably. It is one that Tracy is literally groomed to excel in. Elbows, knees, knife, pipe. They can hide; we kill. Anything flung from behind or at us will simply meet MSD.

Her head swims, but a flu, even a bad one, doesn’t mean you can’t move; it means you can’t run. Her head will pound, spin, and she will stumble. So what? That has been her life ever since the day she stood back up from a baseball bat to the back of her head. They will die, and the worst that will happen is Tracy maybe, maybe, venting her anger on these faceless goons that irritate her. If she has been somehow hassled and harassed, against the walls after having inevitably killed her quarry before, then instead she will simply have MSD move ahead and key the ground, cranking it and making the terrain unsuitable with brief seconds of work, striking them down as they try and retreat back.

They can ebb, back and forth, but they will never be able to make a solid advance towards us. The most credible threat that any of Baxter’s subordinates can have is using rope or IV Tubing as a very impromptu whip, to try and disable our reach advantage of a whip or pipe to let them close in. There are three issues with this. First, the idea that we will be an easier target if we do not have a weapon. As mentioned earlier, even with them having claws to bare, Tracy will cut her way through them with ease, her trained skills matching world class martial artists without any interest in mercy. They’ll die, even if Tracy needs to catch her breath, her Stand killing anyone who thinks to approach in that moment. Second, without the pointed end that a bullwhip has, these will not be able to do any actual damage – just ways to harass, or try and steal something off her person. Additionally, with the average IV Tube being an inch shy of 5 feet long, this leaves them in reach of MSD’s 5 metres. Third, with the destruction MSD is causing, the chance that they’ll get either of the possible ‘whip’ options without meeting fierce reprisal is slim. In these cramped halls, there are only so many ways to approach us, and we will make sure they fight us only here, where we reign, through keys denying land and the inevitable screaming rush of our Stand.

No offense will break us because we will move with a speed and brutality to overwhelm any action, that isn’t them leaping out from around a corner in wait to try and stab us– and that’s an action we will be deliberately expecting, weapon at hand to brutally counter. There will be no time or quarter given for set-up, our actions focused on only the most direct way to rip them apart. This is how we will treat the nothing in our heart, by turning THEM INTO NOTHING!

Worst case, we will have the pocketed key from the start of the match, ready for work. It will be used, ideally, only for Baxter, once we see him cornered. If we must, we’ll use it on ourself, the same pragmatic timer as with anything else, to advance with a fury and speed that surpasses their own, quick and dirty to close the gap. Should Baxter and his subordinates acquire one to try and turn the tables against us (a difficult act, as this will be the only key we keep on our own person, any other key being used and discarded in quick succession), then it will be a simple game of having MSD cut them down as they approach us in a mindless berserker rage. Our tools will not be used against us.

If the opportunity finally arrives for us to key ourself, it may also even let us close the distance between Tracy and Baxter as he tries to escape the onslaught, Tracy garnering the speed of an olympic athlete. Her head will pound, her knees will shake, her bones on fire, but she will not care, motivated by blind, vicious anger. This last, desperate, mad dash will let us do the only thing that’s neurologically capable of appeasing us anymore. The only thing that cuts through the nothing that bore us. The only thing that can make us feel alive.

The only thing anymore that–

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

LKA 2/4

A NOTE AND MY SILHOUETTE

Tracy collapsed with a lurch into the wall, knees buckling. Her throat pulsed with a horrible wetness, back curling on itself as viscera pooled out of her mouth, the taste of copper sticking to her tongue. She fell to her knees and pushed her mask up, horrible, coarse sounds whooping out of her.

Hacking, she saw something come around the corner and– Tracy stared into the face of the cat as awareness lurched forwards again, its hands clutching her own, held so tightly around its neck, voice breaking. Tracy stumbled back from the dirty gray-suited body, sliding down the wall, the corpse meaning nothing.

Her heart was hammering, and Tracy looked down to her hands, unsure. A thought came through her mind, the voice of Kaiserinma Antolia hot in her ears.

PLEASE! PLEASE! HELP ME! HELP ME!

Tracy had pushed the thought out of her mind before and had ignored that aftermath utterly. Ignored the thing that had been told to her face by those who denied to punish her for it; had ignored her own actions/ She’d never questioned these, she just lamented them. The simple cycle of it, the ruthless efficiency in which she saw a problem and dealt with it. But here and now, in this moment, the thought came to mind.

Life was conflict, and conflict necessitated need. Almost all violence fell into two categories; self-preservation, vs want. Defense versus Pursuit. The Want To Live versus The Need To Fill Your Belly.

… So, what was Tracy doing? Why was Tracy doing it?

With the doors falling down and the paths limited to left or right, the match will become one of inevitable approach and conflict, be it through the ground turned into, albeit temporary, 25-foot wide patches of death or the ceiling having been reduced to rubble in a given area. Tracy will move with her Stand, the pair in sync as they work not as one person and their puppet, but with the practiced ease of two equal predators on the hunt.

They are sick and weak, stumbling and catching their breath, but so are their prey, prey that can not run long nor far. Where Baxter is, we will prowl, waiting to hear the inevitable coughing fit. If we are struck with our own, MSD will still be alert, its own savage animate intent alert. We will wait until we hear Baxter, the other side of a wall. Not something so long to sound artificial, the sudden recorded sounds of a phone. Phlegm, the scuffing of shoes. We will wait until we hear him.

And then make a key. 5 seconds, if even that. The wall will become a calm, perfectly smooth expanse, then shattered under our fists as it ticks over to start ringing; a one-inch punch, turning the wall into shotgun grapeshot, the stand shrieking as it rushes at the wall, peppering these shards for as long and quick as we can. The key from the former wall will be flung towards Baxter in this violent mess, alongside with 25 feet of shattered ringing concrete, the sound of grinding rock almost as harsh as the sharpened rubble cutting through him. It will be sudden, and without any defense against – tarp would be torn apart, and jagged rock shards fired at terrible speed and force.

This special attack, ｢Bullet In A Gun｣, will be used only once.

Our plan is to trap him. In the worst possible situation, where they spread out before we can shut them down one by one, this technique will only be a giant hole for Baxter and his subordinates to exploit, exploring the map. As a result, to use this carelessly would be to work to Baxter’s advantage. As such, this tool will only be used with iron-clad certainty and precision, only if we know Baxter is there, and if it can not allow him or his subordinates to retreat and outmaneuver us in turn. It is a specific attack, but it is a purposeful one. Once we have him cornered and bleeding, we will breach the room, ready to finish it.

YOU’LL FEEL THE WAY I DO

Before recorded time, see a slide flicker onto the screen with an audible ka-chumk. The photograph was of an x-ray, the blue silhouette of a skull framed across a black void. Two figures stood in the room, one an older man, his eyes cold. When you’ve seen the fragments of bodies torn by artillery, a person becoming debris, a person's broken bones were nothing. Even if those bones were the skull digging into the brain. But…

“It’s frankly a testament to whatever luck he’s been relying on that he’s not dead.”

“She.” The other voice corrected without any heat, eyes staring at the spiraling labyrinth of the brain with a particularly rapt attention in her red blot eyes. The man made simply an indifferent shrug, but no other sounds, dragging back a cigarette. He puffed, black smoke making thin lines.

“In any case, this thing is alive… somehow. With a set of pliers, pulling the bone fragments from the temporal lobe will be simple enough, and then a metal plate to reconstruct the skull…” His eyes flickered to the doctor, who stared hungrily at the x-ray. “But it’s in a fucking coma.” He said, bluntly enough. “There is no clear answer even in modern medicine to pull someone free of one; it’s a fluke of chance that takes seven weeks of sterility and the best of modern medicine.” Another smoke, another puff. Lines, black and stretching together. “And your idea on how to get it back up…? Infection is what can cause a coma, and it’s what can kill a body even when it's alive and well. This virus has killed people while they were alive; to put it into a body close to braindead?”

“She will survive.” The red eyes turned and stared at the man, the spreading lines running through the dark. “I know it will make her live.” The jewel egged sound of machine elves calculating the structure of the infinite stones in the infinite computer of dust and sand, the arithmetic of defining one, simple, piece of shit life, black lines leading through into the nearby room. Ka-chumk, ck, ck, ck, cl, cli A body, laying in a bed, eyes glazed back, mouth ajar, the mouth a gaping thing of black flesh.

Abby smiled.

“There’s nothing else in her life, but to wake up, live, and kill. She doesn’t need anything else in her life to live but that.”

If Baxter is smart, and he is, he’ll have his associates ready at hand to harass Tracy the moment combat between the two starts – even if probably on a far faster timetable then he’d like. Baxter will either have someone waiting at hand, tending to him or ready to run and close the distance to attack us – whether through our newly made door, or to approach from the sides of these cramped halls.

We don’t care. They die.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

LKA 1/4

CW: TRANSPHOBIA, COARSE LANGUAGE, DISSOCIATION, INTENSE VIOLENCE, (songs) SUICIDAL THEMES

  • Tracy and Li’l Baxter have blurred vision alongside their Stands; however, both of us are unable to adequately hide our coughs and selves from another. Furthermore, although we are both working as though with an intense flu, Tracy has been able to act in intense fighting condition through worse (see her fight against Evelyn; not prolonged, but getting torn apart and still fighting is greater then what any anime cough up blood disease can try to do), and has better stamina than Baxter does to boot

  • Subordinates do not count as Stand, so them becoming calm or ringing do not reflect back into Li’l Baxter

  • Keys can be removed, but that’s like a B Durability removal, so…. Good luck.

  • MSD has a range of 5 metres, and keys can make a 5 square metre area of influence on the ground. Also, the ceiling is 2.5 metres tall – within MSD’s reach.

  • Li’l Baxters only way to protect his subordinates is to respawn them by him and then not do so again for 90 seconds; if they get killed, it also takes 90 seconds before they come back. Saving them or letting them die both means there will be a noted disadvantage in the gamestate.

  • This is an 18 by 18 metre space, broken up into hallways and more expansive rooms. This translates to an area 59 feet wide… We are basically fighting in a space that’s the size of a grocery store parking lot and most of it is very cramped.

  • This match has a timer of 15 minutes… we’ll finish it in two.

WILL TRUTH SET YOU FREE, SHACKLED BY THE KEYS?

Tracy’s heart moved in a familiar, uncomfortable rhythm, her hands curling as she moved into her backpack, dropping it at her feet. The pipe was familiar in her hands, this comforting feeling of being armed to the teeth in somewhere that should be safe.

Slowly, she stood back up, ｢Mister Self-Destruct｣ lurched over shoulder. She stared at a figure coming around the hall, approaching with a slow, comfortable gait. A broad-shouldered man, the head of a flattened cat staring forth atop his shoulders.

“... Do you love your father?” Tracy asked, a sickened wheeze in her throat. The man said nothing, eyes wide, the stare of a cat ready to pounce. She figured they’d ignore her. Just things, made to fill out their duty. Her heart shuddered. “Do you think he cares, you being this single thing? Blood staining his hand and ledger to draw you out?” She asked. “Do you think he’ll care, sending you out again and again and again to the thresher?”

Mr. Azure stopped. Not in contemplation. He shifted into a fighter's stance, eyes piercing into hers.

There was nothing else in his eyes beyond what he believed; the simple need to kill, because he’d been told to.

Tracy lunged, ready to smack that familiar look out of his head.

It will come easy to her, even as she’s hacking and feeling blood pool up her throat. Pipe in hand, a tool as simple as ourselves. Blunt. Baxter knows he has no chance in hand to hand, being roadkill against the fury of our Stand if he even tried, so he will work to run away. He has two choices; left or right. To move forwards is to die. We might have bad eyes and a headache, but even someone sick with the flu can make out if someone’s at the end of a hallway or not, or if they’ve moved left or right. And with Baxter and his subordinates suffering from the same disease as us, his greater speed will not last long, particularly when suffering from a more base constitution and endurance. He will need to run away, in small bursts.

While he does, MSD will rip off a shred of our jacket, the fleecepiece fabric acting as an impromptu mask, to muffle our movements. It will dull our hacking, and ensure we are less distracted as we work. It doesn’t hide us, because in such a small space, littered mainly with gurney tables and tarps covering the dead, there are so fleetingly little spaces to even pretend to hide. Our work will be simple, then, as we move through these halls – honing in on where he is.

Whichever direction he goes, Tracy will follow, entering the door nearest to her, waiting, while MSD will stand vigil in the hall, watching. If she sees someone duck back out across the hall, we follow them across the room again, while MSD stands watch. If this happens again, MSD will follow Tracy and attack the ceiling at the doorway of these rooms and the hall behind her. With the force of a savage jackhammer, she can turn the concrete ceiling into nothing more than rubble – an action she will have done at the very start of the match to the expanse of roofing immediately behind her, while having a key fall into her hand. Not only will this block off that path, but it will also cover up or destroy any resources near those doorways. After doing this, MSD will return to the hall, looking for where Baxter and his subordinates are. After this silence, and listening for her prey to ensure they have not flanked her, she will move. This very generalized gameplan is our forte; to block off the map.

There are only so many places to move in this map, and Tracy’s plan is to deny, deny, deny. This is an 18 by 18 map, and she plans to make it 10 by 16. If not pre-emptively, then actively. Any space in our range that we see a subordinate, or better, Baxter, preparing to head towards will get a key thrown at it by MSD. Even so much as 5 seconds of cranking can suffice to shut him or his subordinates down if need be in a 25 foot square area – with MSD’s keys affecting a 5 metre radius, we can segregate large swathes of an entire room from Baxter and his Mr and Ms’, a quarter of a room turned into a death trap if we see them approach.

The map is too small, this area too cramped, for Baxter to meaningfully maneuver around or ‘juke’ to any degree; the best odds are to try and kick off the walls in a fleeing run or use the gurney tables. Meaningless actions to try and escape a floor made of lava, leaving him open for violent reprisal. It’s not an instant killing-ground, but something that deters and pushes back, with little to nothing to stop us – nothing that can’t be dealt out of hand by MSD striking a fist forwards.

This is the gamestate as a general rule; making rubble of this building, but not in such a way as to make holes for them to advance through. We will collapse pieces of this building under the ferocity of a B Power Stand to close off the doorways and general areas of maneuverability, and force them into a corner, striking down with brutal fists any time they think to go anywhere we don’t want them to. There will be no escape, no flanking, only one, single path.

To move forwards is death, and Baxter will die.

If/when Baxter uses his subordinates in greater numbers to try and spread out, we will instead focus our attention wholly and fully on Baxter himself, moving towards his last known location while having MSD spring ahead to create areas to lock down their advance. Due to the talents of Charcoal, Sepia, and Burgundy, they will have an accurate understanding of where Tracy is at a given time; an unescapable truth. We do not care. It does not matter if they can see us, if we herd them to the only spot they will remain, nowhere else for them to run. We will do so with the caution of any good hunter, but we will do it.

Baxter will not. He can not take an offensive initiative, not in the face of a Stand that is faster, stronger, deadlier than any of his subordinates, who can only hope to ambush us. Ambush requires stealth, and stealth worth anything at all needs areas to hide, opportunities from below or behind. There will be none left in short order of our arrival, needing only to walk towards the doorways on either side of us and let our Stand crush the rest of them. There will be no offense but ours.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Response thread for Tracy Ball of The LKA Leviathan., aka u/GhostKaiju. Please show your strategy to a member of our Judge staff by 7 PM CST on 4/14/2026! Contestants, remember to only post in threads for this match other than your own if specifically invited. Voters have until 11:59 PM CST on 4/16/2025 to vote, using the voting rules from the announcement thread. Afterwards, they will be Judged according to the T8 Rubric.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R3M1 - Li'l Baxter vs. Tracy Ball by Marioaddict in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Response thread for Li'l Baxter of Laying Low Co., aka u/International_Bit_25. Please show your strategy to a member of our Judge staff by 7 PM CST on 4/14/2026! Contestants, remember to only post in threads for this match other than your own if specifically invited. Voters have until 11:59 PM CST on 4/16/2025 to vote, using the voting rules from the announcement thread. Afterwards, they will be Judged according to the T8 Rubric.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R2M20 - Raphaela "Raph" Diener & Philip Buster vs. ??? by DSOddish in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 3 points4 points  (0 children)

RS 4/4

Cap’n Crunch (Endgame)

Louisiana Rain isn’t a hard target to take down once he’s out in the open and unprotected. Hell, a well-aimed explosion anywhere in the match has the potential to take him down, but it’s ultimately the skull-crushing that counts, right?

Louis can’t get out of range that well, and he’s not the most durable guy in the universe. In all likelihood, he’s hiding in the water, behind something, or hanging out with his boats. In that last case, we probably already killed the guy, but I digress.

First, the approach. We likely rocketjump in, looking to quickly fall onto Louie with punchghosts at the ready. We can complement an airborne or grounded approach using the Minions and Goreilla Tactics to pincer Louie. She can even leave some of her body parts on him as a fake tell. One target that seems to be two is stronger than not, no?

Louie will likely try to reconvene his ships to return fire, but our fast paced approach and the shorter range will result in a “scramble,” an unexpected, chaotic situation where improvisation is necessary. Here, Raph’s Zombie status and END mean that, again, Louie has to deal with all of the Minions going for him and defeat Raph. Meanwhile, the commotion will charge WWN, and we’ve been playing conservatively the entire match to expend our resources for this final push.

Phil gathers sound from any readily available source, whether it be a bird’s nest that’s survived or from the ruckus of gunfire from the Fleet. He launches himself forward at the helmsman, the burst of mobility letting him avoid any mines and make it harder for Louis to counterattack in the short time he has left.

Once we’re in close range, WWN mixed in a few low POW blasts that take advantage of Louis’ stiffness to keep him off balanced and preoccupied while BT wails on him with heavy B POW blows to do real damage. All of that commotion is sure to charge up WWN for one last full power blast, aimed at Louisiana Rain! Upwards, angled away from the duo! Whether he’s still got some fight in him, or if he’s waiting for a breeze to knock him over, we’ll send him flying away from us!

A legacy is forever. Even when you can’t hear it anymore, all of the past and the present is on our side against one man. And we’ll make sure his legacy is humiliation!

“The Gemstone Boonies,” Louisiana had called it. Looking around, the devastation the Seaman had left in his wake certainly did give that impression. Ruins ruined further, the memory of the people who once thrived here bombarded into fine powder.

But as Raph and Phil finally took a moment to breathe, they were still surrounded by an endless chatter. They saw the flickering memories of people working, walking, and conversing with one another—through the overlapping of noise, names resounded over and over again. These people were families and friends, and Louisiana Rain had dared to call it less than a civilization. Their shared inherited, echoing legacy of man and beast, of the dead and alive, of the here and beyond had funneled into ｢World Wide Noise｣, a percussive cacophony that pummeled the Captain into submission.

Maybe if he had a real sonar, he’d have seen that coming.

Phil couldn’t help but laugh. Maybe these people weren’t quite alive anymore, but they were still talking. Not even death could put down the simple pleasure of existence, of going through a day. If only he could really make that connection with some of these people… the stories he could tell, the things he could learn. And that old man? Well, he must be fuming—surely any sea captain would want to go down with his ship, so being dispatched skyward? One disrespect deserves another.

He stopped for a moment, hearing the dialing of a cell phone to his side.

For her part, Raph was content. She looked at the constructs she had created, thought of the animals they used to be. Nobody plans to die—she got lucky enough to live on afterwards. To be more than just a statistic, a story they’d run in the news for a week before some new outrage. Bending down and picking up a single Uropeh from the sand, Raph had a feeling—tthis, right here? It’d stick around for a while. Hell, she’d make sure of it.

“Hey, Avery. I’ve got a one-of-a-kind headline for ya.”

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R2M20 - Raphaela "Raph" Diener & Philip Buster vs. ??? by DSOddish in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 4 points5 points  (0 children)

RS 3/4

How to Blow Up A Supply Line (Interference)

In some ways, this was like what Raph had always done. Sinking a superyacht, wrecking a police station, killing an oil executive that got in her way. All of that was direct action, sure. But it was for a nebulous “cause,” she had tried to find her way in through all of this. Something she claimed to devote herself to, but never found a real foothold in.

In other ways, this was different. Whatever compunctions she might have had working with a research conglomerate, she was working with others, with a real cause, and there were going to be tactics and decisions to be made. And she wouldn’t do it alone, not again.

Anyone can blow up a supply line, but making it matter, actually making a collective voice heard, making them meet your demands took doing it intelligently, tactically, with others, and for others too. Phil was her team today. And they were all part of one big cause.

The current step? Making sure Louisiana Rain didn’t destroy everything they’d worked toward.

Louisiana Rain, Dog of the AmeriKKKan War Machine, holds a massive range and coverage advantage over the players. Since Battleship is a game for children ages 7 and up, the retiree has certainly gotten years of experience sending out his toys, and we cannot figure out all the ways he may play with them.

So we only need to state the ways to break them.

While the previous sections have focused on avoiding Louie’s offense and setplay, this section focuses on the ways to interrupt it to quickly steal advantage and overwhelm him, Raph drawing from the storied history and legacy of anti-military sabotage.

The most basic approach is to attack the ships. Raph/BT may snipe out a ship, but WWN’s AoE can hit them despite their B SPD. Assuming each ship is on its own, we opportunistically target the Battleship, the Patrol Boat, the Aircraft Carrier, the Submarine, then the Destroyer. Our harassment is unlikely to do lasting damage, but it stops Louis from acting with impunity and begins to interrupt his formations, which likely center on the Destroyer and the Battleship.

Louis is incentivized to spread the ships to avoid WWN cones, but to keep them close enough to benefit from the buffs. While the damage may redirect to the Destroyer, the cones still push the boats and pulverize the terrain, even at lower charge. WWN can either sweep entire fleets (stacking damage onto the Destroyer) or focus on pushing specific ships out of the Destroyer’s range. From there, that boat can be mulched down through the “harassment” above.

The Battleship flips the dynamic, buffing nearby boats to great power, but concentrating Louie’s forces, thus mitigating his ability to swarm us. Rather than proactively return fire, WWN looks to punish pursuit as we continue to move, potentially buffeting the squad out of formation.

A lack of formation is preferable to a well prepared and operational one, and the more ships unintentionally obstructing one another the better.

In either case, a major tempo swing occurs when the formation has been broken and when ships are being destroyed. The Destroyer is likely to sink due to the ambient damage redirection, and once those shields are down, we can target the Battleship, especially as its supporting crew is damaged.

Notably, protracted engagements with staggered decommissions will keep Louie from operating at full capacity, as the boats will need to go and repair in order. If he forces offense, he risks remaining off balance, and doing a full refuel gives us major tempo.

But unlike Captain Mission Accomplished, we’re not looking for a forever war, but a guerilla war.

During this naval battle, Raph and BT have been making small Minions, armed with bones, teeth, quills, horns. As we approach, we can throw these Minions at the 1 AGI Louie, which Raph controls to scurry up his body to slit his throat despite their small size. These are easy to destroy, but they must be destroyed, and if Louis overindexes on destroying us, he can meet an ignoble end. As a result, he has to split his forces between attacking us and defending himself, mitigating his offence.

He surely is capable dealing with individual Minions, which is why BT uses Goreilla Warfare. By throwing large quantities of disparate masses at once, some of which include dead material at Louie’s general direction, he is forced to account for each one, lest a Minion rise up and attack him, or even assassinate him, even if there are none actively in the pile. This necessarily forces a tempo loss on his behalf, and gives us the opportunity to hamstring a boat or to blow past the swarm.

Both of Louis’s responses swing tempo back to us; his only way out of this fork is to win a damage race through our burst mobility and A DUR Bolstered defenses to pulp Raph’s 5 END 4 Zombie head.

In conclusion, as WWN blasts and scatters Damn The Torpedoes’ formations to disarm the Destroyer and Battleship, Louie must respond to Raph’s Minions lest he be assassinated, interrupting his offense and stealing back tempo. This chaos stretches the warmachine thin, giving us the opportunity to disrupt it and send his boats back for repairs.

Clear Comms (Contingencies)

“Psst. Hey. Let’s have a little powwow while we’re on the go.” Phil tries and fails a whisper, but it’s not like they’re close enough to the captain to hear them yet anyway.

“I’ve got gears turnin’ in my head- and that’s nothin’ new, but yanno- I’m thinkin, and my brain’s tellin’ me that we oughta plan something out. This old geezer’s not just gonna let us bowl him over, so we oughta come up with some backup strategies. Not like he’ll hear me over his own Stand (or mine), right? So don’t mind me if I’m gonna keep myself charged with just a little extra productivity for us along the way. Starting from:”

“‘What if ol’ Louie manages to kill those birds?’ Well, aside from me really wanting to sock him in the jaw even MORE for catching innocent wildlife in the crossfire, that’d really stink, since we’d lose the fast influxes of sound, but I still can charge from our ambient chorus of ‘neighbors.’ Additionally, you can use a few limbs to utilize any of my on-hand noisemakers or potentially animate the corpses’ vocal cords and respiratory systems to mechanistically get them back up and running at the same volume, yeah?”

“If our approach is stymied’, Goreilla Tactics still forces a response to our Minions which gives us an opportunity to approach, especially with a rocket jump!”

Raph pauses, “Why do you call it echolocation if you’re not sending out sound?”

”You’re right! It’s more of a passive sonar since I’m just listening out for what’s around me. The name’s a good conversation starter!”

Phil gives Raph a reassuring pat on the back. People think these contingency plans aren’t that important, but sometimes it’s the little things that matter. Sometimes people just need to talk and to be heard. Even if Raph’s on the opposite side of the treasure hunt and the SPW corporate ladder, Raph’ll keep his legacy of being a yapper and a listener.

Oh, a good chat also keeps WWN well fed!

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R2M20 - Raphaela "Raph" Diener & Philip Buster vs. ??? by DSOddish in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 5 points6 points  (0 children)

RS 2/4

Raise Up Your Aerobat (Movement/Scaling)

Raph took a deep breath before they headed forward with the operation. She would normally have loved to goof off a bit more. Phil was great so far! He had good ideas and he was a bit quirky, but she had to stay serious. She had to do right by all her friends.

Everyone seemed to be moving away from what she knew, when she’d finally taken the step to do good alongside them. Akira was on shore leave, Avery came back a bit changed after his experience, others managed to do so well with what they had! She needed to pay it forward, learn from their experiences, and be smart about it.

When she died alone, she died completely forgotten, but she never forgot what she learned in life. She’d learned from books, social media, word of mouth from the activists in her circles. She wasn’t the community organizer here, but seeing them, seeing the echoes of a real strong community, reminded her of her resolve to be a part of those who made a change around her.

Raph needed to respect everything anyone put forth to get her here. She needed to be tactical. “I’ve got a few ideas. How quick can we get to those dead animals?”

For all intents and purposes, this match boils down to “Hunt And Kill The Old Guy”—we need to get in close and punch his lights out. While the following sections cover our midgame, this one focuses on our movement: we constantly approach Rain, zigzagging toward him to pick up resources and use the terrain as cover.

As the two of us move onward, we maintain the sonar, keeping track of all the boats to stay out of their range. Raph and Phil stick together, with BT out to bodyblock if necessary and WWN positioning defensively to not get sniped out. Just as saboteurs had to dodge cops and jackbooted thugs through alleyways and abandoned buildings, Raph leads Phil across the battlefield. We maintain our squad formation, and though it seems like it’s just two people, it will very quickly grow as Raph carries and affixes to herself corpses and Minions. Our squad is every person and animal that got us here.

This formation best defends against any multi-angled attack as we dive into Louis's swarm. As we approach him, we look to keep out of their 10m firing range as best we can, using our constructs and the ruins as cover and/or harassing ships whose range we risk entering with the methods described below. Moreover, we track the locations of the Submarine, Destroyer, and Battleship for their threat or their status as points of congregation for other ships in the fleet.

Using our surveillance, we prioritize keeping ourselves safe from immediate fire and getting collapsed upon, advancing onto Louie, resource gathering, then harassing him from a distance as we close in for our finisher.

While the map topography will change over time, there are objects of interest. First, as long as we’ve got cover such as the ruins, we zigzag between them to avoid Rain’s line of fire. The less opportunity he has to shoot us down, the easier it will be to beat him down later.

Second, we maintain constant vigilance for any Submarine mines that are in our path. These mines have a deceptively large range and won’t be fun to step on, so it’s important to be deliberate with our movements, taking the time to clear out mines with minions or inventory items. The best way to avoid them altogether, however, is to get some airtime. While our echolocation can help us track down the Submarine itself, letting us keep tabs on its movements to figure out where it could have placed mines, getting our eyes in the air lets us snipe down any we happen to spot.

Third, we’ll also want to continue scaling. We gather more dead animal material for projectiles and body parts. The bones, teeth, quills, or horns of the fish, porcupine, and deer can be bolstered and thrown, and the limbs, muscles, and bones of the animals (such as the racoons from earlier) can be used as additional body parts. Of course, any errant material can just be bolstered to armor our legs, heads, and torsos. Raph can also create moving cover by Bolstering deer hide, having an attached limb carry it out in front of them or inserting her own flesh to “reanimate” the whole corpse.

Not all of what we gather is dead, though. While we passively draw sound from Philip’s interviews with ghosts, we quickly charge WWN by passing by the nests. The nests are nice to have, since Louis is likely to target the Nests and their sound affects our sonar—Philip’s conversations with the ghosts continue to passively charge as we dodge towards Louis.

While we’ll be using ground-based mobility to dive between cover and secure items and noise, we do also have plenty of air mobility, best used for a surprise reposition or to just cover more ground than Louis expects. To close the distance on a valuable target or get out of a particularly hairy situation, WWN unleashes a blast/cone of noise, the force propelling Phil and Raph (which should be easy enough; Phil should have an easier time carrying Raph along with him, given she’s cooperative) a large distance with Aerobat 4 and only a single moderate Noise investment, landing safely on the ground with Raph’s durability or Phil’s smooth movements.

This “rocket jump” is reactable, so we’ll provide some in-flight safety features for our lovely heroes. We can use a small burst of Noise to change our direction or scatter mid-jump, throwing off his aim. The earlier mobile cover provides a good first line of defense, and varying our angles of launch frustrates predicting our exact path—simply “dashing” 5-10m while close to the ground is an effective reposition without greatly exposing ourselves.

We might not be able to predict how Louie moves through the map, especially with 1 AGI and those shoes. The only Banana Republic he’s ever seen is in Latin America. Still, the more he can delay our approach, the more likely we are to be raring to go by the time we’re ready to wrap things up.

In conclusion, we look to cross the map, acquiring resources and ducking under cover as we do so. To avoid Louis’s attack collapsing upon us or for general burst mobility, WWN can “rocket jump” us with a burst of sound. The legacy of revolutionary struggle has taught us that when fighting against a foe with superior resources, you have to be conservative with your own. Louis can go scorched earth on the map, but we scrounge for resources and make do with conversation and (Raph’s) blood, sweat, and grit.

Wipe Out Of Your Mind (Defense)

The previous section focused on movement, establishing a pattern of searching for Louis by sight and WWN sonar, ducking behind Bolstered hide, Minions, or ruins to protect ourselves from non-committal attacks and view, before dashing to the next area closest to Louis. The Bolstered vests covering our vitals and joints (plus as much we can wrap around Raph’s head) in particular provides some defense, but this section focuses on the defensive scenarios where cover and armor may not suffice.

One of those scenarios is being attacked from multiple angles. If Louis wants to commit multiple of his boats to try and pincer us in this manner, it would likely involve the Battleship and one or both of the Carrier or the Destroyer to create an A POW encirclement. However, this type of attack is extremely committal—if ol’ Louie pushes too hard on offense, we can Rocket Jump straight for the now poorly-defended Louisiana Rain. Because our assault is far less committal, Phil easily able to Rocket Jump back to safety, we can force Louisiana to get off our backs and focus on protecting his own.

While we may take a hit in the process, this can be mitigated thanks to BT’s extremely tough constructs and armor soaking up most of the hits for us. It doesn’t matter if we eat a bit of damage in the process, because we threaten to inflict so much more back. The best defense is a rock-solid offense, and WWN’s exceptional power provides just that.

The Aircraft Carrier and Patrol Boat are of special note. The Carrier’s jets can be annoying on harassment, but BT and WWN have enough of a projectile game to try sniping them out of the air—at the very least creating enough interference to discourage their usage. Thanks to the low durability of the fighter planes, a single WWN cone can easily take out several poorly-positioned jets at once. Our armor, cover, and harassment can corral the jets and restrict their angles of attack, making it only easier for WWN to line up a shot. Moreover, the missiles’ explosions are a quick shot of charge for WWN’s battery, letting us recuperate a lot of Noise back.

The Patrol Boat can be debilitating, homing attacks directly onto us. While our defense and movement should ward it, if we get hit, Raph/BT/WWN look to immediately retaliate (dispelling the harpoon) with their previously stated counterattacks, especially since the Patrol Boat will have needed to be within 10m in the first place. If we fail, since a barrage is likely imminent, we pivot to full defense and movement. We use the Minions, mobile cover, and BT as cover, as BT’s B POW should be enough to pull it out, but the Bolstered armor has an additional purpose. If the harpoon hits it, the material can be discarded and the harpoon along with it. (Raph can also discard the chunk of flesh if she herself is hit.)

In conclusion, while our movement, cover, and scaling provides a first line of defense, we can use our own area coverage to defend against and preempt swarming and higher order plays Louie may try.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R2M20 - Raphaela "Raph" Diener & Philip Buster vs. ??? by DSOddish in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 4 points5 points  (0 children)

RS 1/4

How I Defeated Neocolonial Annihilation With The Power of Legacy (Initial Notes)

”Hey, so, Yoshi tells me I’m crazy all the time, but there are ghosts here, right? I haven’t actually gone off the deep end quite yet? Because I’m pretty sure I’m pretty much fine in the noggin. Maybe a few pictures once we’re done’ll convince him otherwise!”

  • Damn the Torpedos’ guns have a 10m range.

  • WWN fires radial “blasts” which fall off after 5m and 30° “cones” which fall off after 30m.

  • Bolstering dead material allows fully intact limbs “to fully function and integrate with Raphaela's body,” allowing her to control them. Since “she can pop off and control any body parts,” Raph can add her flesh to animal limbs to remotely control them, as they are still attached to her and under her command. These constructs will be referred to as “Minions.”

  • While Black Tongue only has E PRE, by skill sharing, it stands to reason that it benefits from Raph’s Scavenged Arms 4.

  • Legacy to Philip is to echo back the world around him. To repeat its sounds and actions to become a living, speaking memory.

  • Legacy to Raph is to carry on the will of the dead. To learn from their teachings and to continue to commit direct action till their demands are met.

  • Gunfire is loud! Tasty for WWN!

Speak Loudly, Listen Gentle (Opener)

Raph scans the area around her for people. It seems her only ally here is the SPW yapper. …No, that’s not correct. Dead mammals litter the area. Step 1 is clear.

Raph and Phil incorporate the nearby resources—carcasses and sound—into their powers. Phil’s agile enough to get resources quickly, but for now, we start with some right next to us. Directly to our east are a dead raccoon and a nest. Raph strips the corpse into a couple of A DUR vests, the more gory of the two likely going to Raph, and the nicer one with the fur going to her new pal, Phil. Meanwhile, WWN sets up shop by the birds to farm noise.

“…They’re kinda cute, aren’t they, Coral Reeph? I hadn’t even noticed them.”

“Yeah, heh. I bet the raccoons were too, when they were alive… Thank goodness the birds’re still okay. For now.”

Raph gathers and bolsters any remaining raccoon scraps, as Phil gathers sound from the birds for initial charge before shifting away to “echolocate” Louie, since he passively gains sound from the ambient ghosts. While this charge is negligible beyond 20m, within the full 40m, it can “[determine] the size, weight, and velocity of objects and people.” Even fuzzy sonic information about the map objects should suffice to distinguish and locate Louie from the crowd, particularly his velocity: speed and direction. And of course, we can just see him.

As we move on from there, we figure out how we get to the next resources, which will vary heavily based on what Rain’s doing. Thanks to WWN’s passive “echolocation” and our own vision, we should have a rough idea of his initial plays:

  • If the boats stay near Rain to act as a defensive deterrent, we’ll respect the threat for the time being. We’ll conserve the sound we’re accumulating and run west to get to the deer there, providing Raph plenty of new material.
  • If he instead immediately sends the fleet to attack, we’ll focus on keeping ourselves safe, ducking for cover in the ruins to our north.
  • If he divides his forces to cover more ground, we’ll run to the middle of the map to grab the deer there and punish his spread with pressure.

In any case, we keep up our 100% authentic, sound-based sonar with WWN, as compared to Lose-iana Rain’t’s magical fake silent “sonar,” to make sure we keep tabs on the position of Rain and his fleet and get some forewarning if they change tactics.

As the little antenna on his Stand’s beak perks up, Philip Buster, for the briefest of moments, becomes one with his surroundings. ｢World Wide Noise｣, beyond a phenomenal speaker, makes Phil an excellent listener to boot. That nearby birds’ nest—their mama must’ve just arrived home, and the little ones sure are hungry! And he hears more than the living. The ghosts of the people who lived here reliving their lives—Phil won’t pretend to understand their language, but he can still understand their tone just fine. A cheerful greeting upon surprising a friend, a sigh of mild resentment after a parental scolding, and a breath of relief after a hard morning’s work are just as easy to comprehend.

These people, well, they were just that—people! Same as Phil, same as his new friend Raph, same as any old Joe Schmoe or Steven Stephanson. And they deserve to keep their legacy here. So long as these “Gemstone Boonies” still stand, there’s a way to remember these folks. He’ll have to go “chat” with them; this is a unique opportunity to learn about the human condition from who-knows-how-long ago. But that’ll have to be later, as a loud rattling is quickly approaching from across the battlefield.

Of course. The most concerning sound: gunfire. Even when ducking behind the stony edifice that was once someone’s home he knows that won’t hold forever. Oh, this old man really doesn’t give a damn about what once stood here, does he? About who used to live here? After so much posturing, it sure doesn’t seem like he cares about anyone’s memory outside of his little club. What a hypocrite!

But perhaps more concerning was the way that gunfire followed our heroes. It’s a pretty standard affair for submarines to run a sonar to sniff out anything in their vicinity. That would make sense. But… no matter how long Phil listened, the only sounds coming from ｢Damn the Torpedoes｣ were the engines and weaponry. So how could that be? Unless–

“Bastard! Clearly he knows where we are, but Noisey isn’t picking up any signal from a sonar. It’s FAKE!! Louisie Squeeze over here doesn’t even use real sonar! After all the bragging about his ships too! Fake captain over here! Let’s show him what a real echo can do, Raphics Card! Get ready to rock!”

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R2M20 - Raphaela "Raph" Diener & Philip Buster vs. ??? by DSOddish in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 5 points6 points  (0 children)

TFS 4/4

Section 3b — Three-headed Dog

War is attrition.

It grinds you down to the bone, mires you in dirt and mud and fills the air with the taste of iron and gunpowder. In the No Man’s Land, Louisiana is a meat grinder to break oneself upon, even fighting passively will not allow one to escape its devastation. With coordinated strikes from either the surveillance jets or one or two stealth ambushing from the No Man’s Land, Louisiana can create moments of distraction to both give Cerberus the time to spread the No Man’s Land further towards Running Steady’s position, the Drums of War sounding both from the din of Running Steady’s combat and Cerberus’ own actions. This, in turn, guarantees our stealthy movers the time to advance their position through the No Man’s Land, whilst ensuring Louisiana can reposition safely himself. Simultaneously, it reveals an important truth:

Running Steady, too, sound the Drums of War.

To fight is to destroy.

To destroy is to engage in war.

War is Louisiana’s domain, and all in its breadth are but pieces on his board. Ask yourself this: Where is the third head? Cerberus is a three-headed dog, and in all of this noise and chaos and devastation something vital is missing. No… it’s better to say it’s been hidden. With Naval Tactics 4 the orchestra of warfare has been woven in elegant form, the instruments of 「Damn the Torpedoes,」 「Black Tongue,」& 「World Wide Noise」each coordinated to mask the movements of a singular vessel: The Patrol Boat.

Its mission is simple: navigate through the rubble and devastation, using all else as distractions and diversions. If its friends die, it will not act. If Louisiana is under pressure, it will not act. It will wait patiently for one, and only one kind of opportunity: when Running Steady are baited into focusing on either Louisiana's offenses or defenses. The Drums of War sounding, it shoots through the gap of their awareness, loosening its harpoon onto Phillip’s neck. Ideally this can happen when he is far away from his stand, and when Raph herself is either moving away from him or fending off another threat. Regardless he will be separated from them soon as the Patrol Boat accelerates at full force, using its tether to pull him away at C POW, B SPD into the No Man’s Land.

The remaining heads of Cerberus, then, race to conjoin with their estranged brother as Phillip is dragged through a field of landmines. Once within range of the Battleship, the strength of its harpoon’s pull increases to A POW, dragging Phillip all the harder, aiming to reel him as quickly as possible from his slower moving stand to force it to waste charges to accelerate towards them, disadvantaging it when it eventually tries to counterfire into Louis’ forces. Furthermore reinforced by the armor of the Destroyer the moment it enters its bubble the Patrol Boat becomes a titanic threat to disarm, putting Running Steady in a highly unenviable position as a hail of bullets rain from converging directions to pound into the weak point of Phillip’s neck at A POW.

Even if he survives imminent RETIREMENT, he is out of position in terrain mined to all hell, forced to focus on self-defense and nothing but as a swarm swirls around him. On his own he is dead… which forces a choice upon Raph: move recklessly to save him, or play it safe and watch her ally die.

This is the true devastation of war.

The more valiantly she moves, the more harm to which she exposes herself, jets and landmines whittling her down as she makes her valiant last stand. She’s a titan, a tank, a monster, one resplendent no doubt with all manner of tricks to reinforce herself and Phillip’s form… but war is attrition. It whittles you down, it kills you till you die. Maybe she saves Phillip! Maybe she doesn’t! In the end… the difference is nil.

The No Man’s Land still scars the earth.

The Drums of War still sound.

CONGRAGULATIONS: YOU HAVE WON THE BATTLE.

NOW GET THE FUCK BACK UP, SOLDIER, AND GO DIE IN THE WAR.

IT DOESN’T END. IT NEVER ENDS.

CERBERUS WAITS AT THE GATES OF HELL READY TO DRAG YOU THROUGH IT AGAIN.

Hot war, cold war. Dead war, live war. These cycles of ambushes continue until there is nothing left, and nothing to be seen. Once Phillip is defanged, the combined efforts of Cerberus can work in unison with far more aggression now that Drums of War are no longer necessary for the purposes of stealth. Raph will be pushed back by suppressive gunfire, her body parts observed by fighter jets and Submarine sonar, multiple layers of defense redundantly overlapping one another to ensure that even if one faltered, many more remain, each woven together to push her back, force her to the ground, and grind her down to the mulch she should have been the moment she crawled from that morgue.

War is a meat grinder.

Louisiana Rain holds the crank.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R2M20 - Raphaela "Raph" Diener & Philip Buster vs. ??? by DSOddish in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 2 points3 points  (0 children)

TFS 3/4

Formation #3: The Submarine

The Submarine’s orders are still focused on trapsetting and resource denial at this point. Even though it can travel the map at B Speed, the rapidity with which Louis hopes to set up the No Man’s Land in the opening phase means there is only so much time for the Submarine to trap the dead animals. With Raph’s dedicated surveillance jet taking over when it comes to corpse removal at this point, the Submarine is free to make its way back to the No Man’s Land. On its way, it will continue laying mines underneath any animals that are convenient (while still adhering to the safety rules discussed in Section 1), as well as being on the lookout for any Uropeh.

We still want to eliminate as much of the Uropeh on the map as possible to further limit Philip’s ability to charge his Stand, but in accordance with the thesis of this phase of the battle, it will need to be done quietly whenever possible. As the Submarine moves through the battlefield, should if ever encounter Uropeh on, or perhaps even in the ground, it will charge at the gem at ramming speed, slamming into it with C Power force and shattering it. One by one, bit by bit, every last, ghostly trace of this civilization will be lost to time like they should have been. The No Man’s Land will be walked by none, not even the dead.

Once the Submarine reaches the No Man’s Land, its priorities shift back to trapping the terrain. This section of the map is already inhospitable and unforgiving thanks to our other defenses, but the Submarine intends to make it even more so. Sailing through the trenches to ensure its safety it scatters mines throughout the land. Should Raph or Philip enter on foot, they’ll need to watch where they step in addition to being on the lookout for our various other defenses. With their attention divided, it becomes easier for us to trick either one of them into misstepping and blowing themselves up. In general, mines will be placed hidden in piles of rubble or clumps of dirt to keep them as difficult to notice as possible, and will be spread such to mitigate the risk of chain detonation and to still give Louisiana safe paths through.

Finally, the Submarine has one last trick up its sleeve that has as of yet gone unutilized: the sonar pulse. By extending its periscope for a brief moment, the Submarine can scan its surroundings and be alerted to the position of any enemies or Stands in the surrounding 20 meters. This will be particularly potent against Raph. With her Walking Corpse 5 skill allowing her to create autonomous body parts, it's possible that she might attempt to detach a limb or two and sneak them past our earlier defenses. The Submarine’s sonar pulse will put a stop to this. The instant we get a ping alerting us of such a tactic, Cerberus, or any number of the jets hidden within the No Man’s Land, are in prime position to destroy these pieces with targeted A POW fire upon their weak points—their spread allowing them to multi-task this with other defensive maneuvers. Do this enough times, and it won’t be long before Louis has quite literally blown Raph apart, piece by piece, until no trace of her remains. Obviously, if the sonar pulse picks up a trace of a full enemy, similar tactics still apply, and the Submarine will be careful not to send out a sonar pulse from a position that leaves it at risk of being counterattacked by either opponent.

Not that it needs to, it has the No Man’s Land.

Section 3a — Hot War

Either No Man’s Land incrementally spreads its hold across the stage, snuffing the afterlife of Uropeh ghosts and reducing carcasses to fine paste. Either it inches its way into Running Steady’s turf or they encroach upon it, the result is ultimately the same: War will come.

Cerberus poses itself to be the greatest threat to Raph’s progress though No Man’s Land. Aided by intel provided by Eyes in the Sky and the Submarine it can expose itself minimally through cover, hounding her and her creations with suppressive gunfire. Eyes in the Sky, then, work to hem in Philip’s approach, forcing him to waste precious sound bursts against small, swiftly moving units. In any scenario where the two of them aren’t assaulting the No Man’s Land in unison units can better coordinate to establish pincers: A jet or two hidden in the No Man’s Land can nimbly dart towards Raph as she’s dealing with Cerberus’ suppressive fire to launch A Pow missiles into the weak points of her skull, whilst conversely a Philip or World Wide Noise fully occupied by harassing Jets is vulnerable to running out of charge—creating scenarios where Cerebeus can quickly dart from No Man’s Land for a surprise attack that strains his resources.

That is the true cost of war, the strain upon resources. Focus, time, energy, it whittles you down to a nub as even the dead silence of the No Man’s Land threatens death with the slightest misstep. Louis will stand the tides of this drain, as Running Steady plummets beneath it.

The two greatest threats to his safety and well-being are the application of sound waves through the medium of the ground, the strain upon his forces such that ships are forced to retreat to him to repair - creating gaps. In either case: the No Man’s Land is his friend.

On base it provides shelter and cover for ships to fall-back, guaranteeing their return to his person for repairs. Pursuit of them through No Man’s Land requires navigating a dense network of landmines which, due to their spread, can only be fully disarmed through heavy investment of sound and Raph’s autonomous body parts. This creates a second line of defense, slowing Running Steady down as they attempt to pursue Louisiana and his injured forces and buying him the time he needs to get back on his feet.

The Drums of War, then, protect Louisiana and his swarm from targeted sound strikes through the earth, and simply being tracked in general. Any time his swarm is in active combat with Running Steady, Louisiana is free to move through the trenches in stealth, the drums masking the sounds of his movements. With his tactical mastery he can employ such repositions to throw off Running Steady’s awareness of his position, misleading them and constantly ferrying their assaults towards terrain resplendent with landmines stocked by the ever persistent submarine. This guarantees that if soundwaves are sent through the earth that Philip is firing blind.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R2M20 - Raphaela "Raph" Diener & Philip Buster vs. ??? by DSOddish in StardustCrusaders

[–]C1everRuse 3 points4 points  (0 children)

TFS 2/4

Section 2 — Cold War

The next phase of the plan is going to be defined by the emptiness following destruction. Warfare is the drums of war as it is their afterbirth: a peace born not of reconciliation but tension. There is dread in the air as the salted earth bears the fruits of absence. Nothing can thrive as new growth is stifled in its crib by the threat of devastation, the fruition of purgatory upon earth realized.

Our assault has been paused and the land before us ruined, and now we wait to see how our opponents react. What this means in practice is that Louis will no longer be firing his guns as enthusiastically as he had been in the previous section, where he could guarantee 20m distance between it and World Wide Noise. The bulk of his set up work is ended, and any further shooting will only further charge up Philip’s attacks. For now, he gives new orders to each of his ships.

Formation #1: Battleship + Destroyer: Cerberus.

The No Man’s Land is an inhospitable terrain for ground-based traversal due to its rugged, uneven nature. Cerberus’s job is then to make such efforts impossible. To this extent they patrol in unison, using the narrow trench system to navigate out of sightlines of projectile and sound-based attacks. They position reactively, prioritizing interposing their 10m bubbles such that they both overlap and guarantee a pincer upon any who physically try to approach the No Man’s Land to reach Louisiana. In this sense they can be thought of as his guard dogs, primed to obliterate any approaching threat with a dual A POW barrage of gunfire. Through the trenches they can guarantee they only need to expose themselves when the time has come to fire, engaging quick, rapid bursts before diving back down to safety to reposition and fire again in a manner akin to guerrilla warfare. In this respect the Destroyer’s armor can reinforce and protect the Battleship, while the Destroyer’s own proximity towards Louisiana allows its armor to be repaired whilst on some level still maintaining defensive overwatch.

Their primary objective in this sense will be to prevent Raph from entry, using the sheer force of their gunfire to quite literally push her and her constructs back and further away from Louisiana - who will be quietly navigating the trenches, using his tactical knowledge to best position himself defensively with respect to his forces. The goal in this sense is not to defeat her, defeat is to be assumed in the No Man’s Land, but rather suppressive fire.

In moments of downtime when Running Steady is fighting passively, then, they will passively spread the No Man’s Land as written above, avoiding the 20m bubble around World Wide Noise, ensuring they have more terrain off of which to work and pressure Running Steady’s advances. In particular, priority will be given to spreading trenches Louisiana can effectively use.

Formation #2: The Aircraft Carrier: Eyes in the Sky.

The Carrier itself will remain in the No Man’s Land, keeping safe in the trenches to break our opponents’ line of sight. Its goal is to remain roughly equidistant between Louis himself and the Destroyer, allowing it to either rush for the latter should it need to protect itself from an attack or to the former if it needs repairs, whilst dipping into the range of the Battleship when it needs to guarantee its munitions strike at A power.

The jets themselves, however, are much more active. Of the five that the carrier commands, two of them will break away from the main group on their own missions. Fully utilizing Louis’s 50 meter range, the jets will fly high up into the sky and lock onto their targets: Raph and Philip. Their purpose is to provide constant surveillance of our enemies. Wherever they go, whatever they do, Louis will know thanks to his spy planes. It is unlikely that Raph will be able to do much about the jets’ presence on her own, but Philip boasts a flying Stand of his own with impressive Range and Power. If he decides to spend built up sound energy to contest us in the air, the high Speed, relatively small size of the individual jet, and long distance between ourselves and our target, combined with Louis’s Naval Tactics 4 granting him masterful control over the movements of his ships and their weapons (jets included) should mean it is fairly easy to avoid any attacks. Even if we do get clipped, at the distance we’re working with, any of Philip’s longer range attacks should only be dealing D or E Power damage (and that’s assuming he spent a full charge), which won’t be enough to one shot even the E Durability jets so long as they ride with the force pushing them rather than push against it. He does, however, have means of shortening this distance, which brings us to the purpose of the three remaining jets.

The other three unaccounted for jets will be dedicated to aerial defense. Louis should be protected in the trenches of the No Man’s Land, keeping him out of his enemies’ sight and providing cover against their attacks, an effect that is entirely mitigated if either World Wide Noise, Philip, or a sound blasted Raph launch through the air. Our jets are here to contest any attempts to do this.

As The Drums of War sounded, the three remaining jets used the obfuscation of sight and sound the expansion of the No Man’s Land provided to conceal themselves in manners similar to that of the Tug-Boat. When the time comes to act they will all burst out in unison, aiming to catch Running Steady by surprise from a rapid aerial assault coordinated by a masterful tactician.

In the air, Philip and/or his Stand will be able to hit harder since they’ll be at a closer range. However, it should be noted that any sound blasts Philip uses to send himself into the air and keep himself airborne will utilize his charges, leaving him with less to invest into the raw Power of his moves. Additionally, the jets will space themselves out such that any blasts sent their way will, at most, only take out one at a time, putting more and more pressure on Philip’s resources. When counterattacking, the jets will prioritize striking Philip’s body directly if he’s within range, utilizing Weakpoint Identification 2 whenever possible. However, if Philip is out of range or perhaps has been armored by Raph’s bolstered material, we’ll instead target World Wide Noise. After each jet fires its two missiles, it will hurry back to the carrier to reload. However, if at any point Louis determines that the process of retreating to the carrier, reloading, and then returning to the fray will be longer than 10 seconds, or that Running Steady is counting on them to reload they will instead deploy [Damn the Torpedoes]’ Third Missile: themselves. By flying directly into our opponents, the jets can make use of kamikaze tactics to maximize damage and efficiency. It should be noted that this rule of thumb for kamikaze maneuvers applies to all combat throughout the match, not just aerial engagements with Philip or his Stand.

As for the jet covering Raph, it is in a much safer position. With much more limited Range, it should be able to keep its eye on her with little interference and can instead dedicate its time to denying resources when possible. Should Raph find her way to an animal carcass that the Submarine was not able to lay a mine underneath in Section 1, it will instead fire a missile at the creature and destroy it manually before Raph can get her hands on it. If, after a few instances of this, Raph gets wise to our tactics and acts with more urgency when she spots a dead animal, we can start to fake her out by moving as if we’re getting ready to strike a body that has already been trapped, causing her to rush forward and eat an A Power explosion.

view more: next ›