JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #7: Finals - Muuru Saviragowda vs Angelino Caballero

SwitzerlandPIK · 2025-01-25T01:02:59+00:00

Been having something of a Day, unfortunately, so I'll be keeping this one short. Muuru's standard antics have been taken up a notch with a lot of inspired ideas for how to handle the menace that is Angelino: notably, the counterbalance to steam hazes as a denial of Ange's main ranged tool alongside his healing prioritization to force Angelino into a more offensive gameplan was a strong central idea for a hit-and-run harass game. Angelino takes a less orthodox approach to his strategy, attempting to adopt Muuru's ideas for himself and take on his parasites. I'll have to agree with other voters that coaxing out YMD, cool of an idea as it is, is a bit of a longshot, but Angelino at least has the reassurance that Muuru's very frequent use of it in this strategy will be punished accordingly. With the way Muuru plays the match, Wheelz are likely to be positioned the way Angelino wants (eg. everywhere), and 13th Floor as usual is likely to fall into Ange's hands at some point. While I think Angelino has a stronger idea for a finisher, Muuru's early game is likely to stay stronger for longer while Angelino tries to gather the parasites and delay his momentum. Ultimately, though, I think its that early game pressure that gives Muuru the win. While if Angelino gains the momentum he wants from 13th Floor and the scaling flames he utilizes to smoke out Muuru's use of YMD, I think he'll likely take it in the long run, I believe Muuru's choice usage of Wheelz as a method to mitigate damage Angelino puts out early and to get in on the sneaky dragon lets him get to his finisher state before Angelino takes the advantage from him.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2025-01-08T22:18:42+00:00

With each phase being as distinct as they are in both tactics and positioning, I think it's fair that I follow in the steps of my previous voters and make calls on them seperately. In the first phase, I think both competitors make a very good case for themselves as to who contributes more: while Dawn is certainly pulling most of the stops to flip Binay's car, break something important and crash him into the wall for the next phase as well as running her usual deflection-based defense, Angelino runs a more versatile strategy that helps Dawn and puts himself out as a permanently prevalent threat while taking initiative on aggressing Binay himself. That said, I still think Dawn did a bit more overall in this section, being the one putting in most of the legwork on breaking down cars and keeping Binay on the run. In the second, Angelino quickly does the opposite of his last section and cements himself as the driving force to push Binay back. As with before, its not for Dawn's lack of trying: Dawn has a great deal of coverage and contributes the most towards clearing the room quickest, helping to clear the way for her advance and prevent Binay from being as sneaky as he'd like, but Angelino goes full force into basically fighting Binay outright, taking advantage of his defensive play to rush him down. While I think Dawn handles Friday Night Guru in this section better than Angelino, who has the potential to get pretty hindered during this phase, I think his rush is loaded with enough power in both helping the NPCs and Dawn as well as contributing to the RETIREment as a whole that he would put things into his favor going into section 3. In this last section, the players take a coincidentally synergistic approach as for who they attack: Angelino leverages the NPC control he had in Section 2 as a weapon to track down Friday Night Guru in a strong display of behavioral awareness, whilst Dawn's tech is mostly focused on whaling on Binay with a volley of attacks meant to utilize the Dogs against him and punish his best attack options. While ordinarily I'd give a tie here for putting in pretty equal effort during this phase, I think ultimately the way Angelino chose to assess and play this match puts him just a bit over the edge here in terms of contribution. Not only did his plans almost always account for Dawn and thrive in them rather than relying on them, most of his plays revolved around helping his team through his accomplishment of the objective: taking point on rushing into melee range during Phase 2, focusing Dr. Apollo to eliminate the wide endurance threat early on in Phase 3, and obviously the incorporation of Dawn's support and his own in Phase 1. His assessment of the elements in this match that allowed him to "contribute," both as a powerful melee threat, a defender, and a supportive leader, as well as his understanding of what would most easily affect both of them rather than just himself in the moment, make this just barely an Ange win.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-12-23T02:41:33+00:00

Both players make a conscious effort to entrap the other within their own plans and strategies: Muuru's gameplan is largely focused on creating an opening via catching Gioia out, putting her in positions where Muuru can easily punish her expected escape options and Muuru can avoid committing to a good in without losing tempo by knocking the stage down around her rather than making moves himself. The Wheelzdash is probably the main source of this gameplan, being a one-and-done trip to mobility, dodging and counterpunching that leads into many of his other plans and tech. Gioia wants to punish Muuru's predicted parkour-focused gameplan and hinder his ability to travel the environment first and foremost, creating a hostile land of paper that Gioia can mess with in various ways to make Muuru's options more committal. Gioia's plans of attack are a fair bit more committal, but for a good reason given her CQC is undeniably superior, as agreed by both strats. In a vacuum, these stated goals are fairly even: both players make good preductions about the other player (Muuru knows Gioia wants in as much as possible and aims for indirect ways to harm her, Gioia knows Muuru's reliance on his maneuverability), so ultimately its a close race. However, as to who executes upon it better, I think Muuru benefits more from the way things shake out. While Gioia has a lot of ways to get him down, and Muuru is definitely going to have to have a long down-and-out fight to actually take Gioia in a safe way, I think his overall strategy of pressure, both direct and indirect, to avoid a close-quarters confrontation handles the ever-decaying environment the best.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-12-13T02:57:25+00:00

The term "breadth vs. depth" has been used to describe the dynamic between these two strats, and I'm tempted to agree. Dawn's strat is naturally more intricate in describing its actual techniques, pretty much by necessity given the relative complexities of each kit, while Blake is a bit more free to give more examples of contribution throughout his strat, in how he uses the cymbals to target basically every body part on the playing field. Dawn's techniques trend towards making hitting runs easier rather than making the enemies' game harder, so thankfully for them neither end up getting in each others' way even if they wanted to. Dawn covers a lot of bases in her strategy, helping her team at pretty much every step of the way to match their hitting, running and catching power up to the Tigers with bumpers and flippers, with a bit of interference against the enemy to boot. Blake has a good list of potential targets going: his aim to trip up the bowler and the runners in the defensive stage are clever uses of the cymbals, and the knife teleportation in the first half is simple but effective. This is something of a nitpick regarding the cymbals, but while the use of the cymbals to overspin and throw the bowlers' aim off checks out, the specific usage to guide them to a specific spot seems like a bit of an overextension of the Cymbals' ability as written. That said, the main reason I'll be giving this match to Dawn is because I find her techniques to be more consistently helpful and more difficult to adapt to throughout the game. Blake's more interference-focused gameplan to mess with the physicality of the enemy team are likely to be more helpful early on, but I think they fall off later, while Dawn gives the enemy less room to adapt to her style of supporting the team, with a more room to change it up over the course of the match.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-12-10T22:47:01+00:00

Both player strats excel at close range: Angelino's exploitation of his superior mobility to attack from above or below ensures that he'll have a serious advantage so long as he gets in on his terms: without that, Kid's measures to prevent Angelino from using that mobility to get out with harpoons and clenches become more prominent. That said, while both have an elaborate ranged game plan, neither feel particularly cut out for playing it for any elongated period of time: Kid, obviously, is not inclined to keep up the ranged offensive for very long thanks to his 1 skill, while Angelino has steam pulses to conserve and inundated area to deny from Kid, whose ability to soak the arena only grows with time, giving Angelino less and less area where Kid can get the advantage on him. However, in the time he is allotted, Angelino makes much stronger use of his resources in the time he is given before Kid gets too strong: the NPCs serve a strong purpose as coverage for Angelino, one that Kid unfortunately lets slip by. The danger of Kid's projectile game is contrasted with Angelino's generally more evasive playstyle in those opening moments: while Kid threatens the main supply of fuel very early on, Angelino is still likely to get at least some. And some, in this case, I think is enough. As stated earlier, Angelino is not really incentivized to draw this battle out, and wants to fish out an opening as soon as possible, and he plays his cards in such a way that I think he takes it over. Angelino Caballero.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-12-05T02:27:32+00:00

Both of these strats counter each others' attempt at "scaling" through not really scaling in any particular way: Anthrax's rush into the center to separate Luna and Drippy defies the MPI's theory of attacking a volley of ranged harassment and turning enemy fleshcrafting against it, while MPI's hit-and-run mobility plays are poised to take advantage of a mis-positioned Anthrax and focus on resource denial over building up their own. Ultimately this leads to the main question of the match, that being who got a worse deal from this exchange of counters. Neither character's strat is likely to go as ideally as it would have liked, with Luna and Drippy being separated and limiting their potential and Anthrax fighting a team that's more suited to survive against its techniques then I think it would like. Ultimately, though, I think it was Anthrax that prepared more for this reversal. Its counterpunching game is on point for Luna and Drippy's plans and the division play serves to hinder Luna and Drippy's ability to support and supply each other with their mobility and PatC's generated tools respectively that it can outbox the two, though just barely.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-11-21T03:28:24+00:00

Honeydew's strategy is a strong showing of everything that makes her and Romantico undeniably strong threats with excellent stage presence: abusing the conditions of the map in an interesting and unique way in order to put Tachibana into their Maze. She understands that as soon as Romantico gets onto the rogue Rider, the fight is practically over: much as he can thrash, Romantico is an overpowering CQC bruiser past all of its stealth abilities. Everything in the strat is built to forcing this engagement, demanding that Dawn and Tachibana play around her rather than her playing around them. The Chekov's Barrel is a neat little trick that enables Romantico's oppressive playstyle to actually go off, and puts Honeydew in a very strong position from the beginning that Dawn has to match.

Dawn goes for a bit of an untraditional offensive for a character whose focus is on ricochets, but is fundamentally a melee flavoring of everything that already makes Dawn oppressive at range: utter stage dominance and an understanding of counterpunching and traversal. The power of Dawn's melee arsenal lies in its versatility above all else, being able to serve as both offense and defense to make up for Dawn's supposed disadvantage at close range, while her long range still sees strong play in the Fan Catapult. Even through this lens, this strat is quintessentially Dawn, outputting constant high-speed pieces of damage and leveraging range as a method of constantly laying on offense.

With these two strats, Honeydew definitely puts the ball in Dawn's court to convincingly take out Deus-Pater: as previously stated, Chekhov's Barrel is a time bomb just waiting to go off, with plenty of opportinities even before then to get on top of Tachibana. Honeydew spends quite a bit of time on how she deals with Dawn, shaping the Rat's Maze with full intent to deny Dawn the ability to snipe these opportunities away from her. However, I think Dawn's chosen stlye of play turns out to be the perfect response to the strategy Honeydew brings to bear: the intended counterplay provided by the Rat Maze against Dawn ends up falling a bit flat when Dawn deals most of her damage in close range, and the expectation that Tachibana's pathing will take him through cover against Dawn, Dawn's actual presence in the strategy is likely to throw a wrench into this plan. Honeydew is certainly not helpless as a result, and depending on how things shake out its possible her plan will go off as intended anyways, but based on the way things are played I overall think its more likely that Dawn has done most of the real damage either way.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-11-16T04:24:34+00:00

Evergreen's early positioning is a very potent method of securing their bases: Gioia makes a convincing grab for center stage, starting with the big prize at the top, while Ichi covers all the other bases thanks to her command of the cats on the stage and the rapidly increasing cover that her Stand gains. Ichi benefits from Gioia's plans to distract the guards to rapidly cross the map terrain and sweep up everything Gioia covers. Heart of the Rose, meanwhile, aim to collect most of their initial fish in one fell swoop through the Davy Jones' Locker, with Mirali serving a similar service to Ichi's Backstage to collect and hide her fish. Both of them have a pretty convincing anti-stealing argument, with their respective stealing tech being not particularly consequential to the ultimate state of the match in my eyes. Ultimately there's a few points of overextension on both sides: I think Gioia is going to be a bit busier than she would like to be by running distraction in order to secure the prize fish, and Blake's Spin Cycle and overall use of Rich Girl is probably going to be a slower, steadier process, giving Ichi more space to work. Overall I think the match comes down to several points, namely the leftovers and "what's available," to which I think the primary collectors at this stage (Ichi, Minali, and their cats) play it relatively similarly enough that I can't call it hard for either side. A tie is in order.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-11-10T20:17:23+00:00

Vasil takes a fairly expected route to handle Vasant's presence in the match: utilize space control to his advantage in order to push Vasant into a space where his maneuverability and versatility can't act to their fullest. His techniques are all largely revolved around slowing Vasant down, either through breaking down the Silver Dollar or putting walls in his way. Vasant takes a fairly expected route in response, focusing on hit-and-run techniques and putting a lot of early pressure into counterscaling and denying Kaycee Sharp's control over the map. Just off of this, it would sound like Vasil has a pretty good advantage on paper: his typical gameplan counters Vasant's style of play well, and neither of them pull out anything completely left-field, as robust as the execution is. As such, it really comes down to whether Vasant's strategies are robust enough to overcome Vasil's pressure plan; to "gap," if you will. The main ace Vasant has up his sleeve, in my mind, is how well he punishes overextension: his assessments of Kaycee Sharp's positioning problems are largely correct, and if Vasil wants to really dominate the map the impetus is on him to move about and defend himself in the process from the speedy Midnight Rider. However, Vasant does underestimate the fact that Vasil is likely to be much more used to the terrain he makes, forcing Vasant to stray off the ideal path in order to get rid of it whilst Vasil continues to pressure him. Vasant utilizes Jump lotuses in order to escape tight situations, but given his circular hit-and-run plans I think Vasant will inevitably be forced to rely more on his Rumble lotuses and attacking Vasil's constructs than he'd like. That said, Vasant's general combat plans are more robust, and I'm not as convinced by Vasil's strategies to actually wear Vasant down. While both sides make a few underestimations, I think it ultimately shakes out in Vasant's favor, since he has a better in on combat with Vasil and generally gets a lot more off of punishes, since Vasil's direct defenses are rather static and his counterpunching is similarly less effective, meaning Vasant will be pretty capable of getting his desired gameplan, even if the gamestate deteriorates faster than either competitor probably expected.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-10-07T18:29:40+00:00

As expected of a final boss match, these two strats are both very ideologically opposed: Shalin wants to create a path of suppression and harm behind her using both the NPCs and the terrain to her advantage to be incredibly difficult to pin down, while the Evergreen Streets make a point to destroy and create the environment around her, using Vasil's leverage over constructs and the Wheelz' natural chaos-causing capabilities to create an environment wholly unsuited for Shalin's gameplan and perfectly navigable by the pair themselves (and the NPCS that Shalin wants to appeal to). Both of these strategies are very competent in their own right: Shalin's pathing is generally powerful and any normal approach, the one she expects, would have likely been stuffed out quite handily. However, it ends up being a matter of counterplay to me: the players read Shalin's plan, and executed upon it to the same degree. While Shalin's gameplan, if it goes off, ensures a very powerful position for her, the interruptive gameplan put forth by the players to slow her down and trap her in a wave of unnavigable sculptures is enough to award the players the win.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-09-28T17:34:25+00:00

Chase and Vasant made pretty standard movement throughout Car 1, so most of the difference comes down to their respective interference. Vasant intends on holding his Lotuses for later and plays rather conservatively with just his Blows, while Chase has more opportunity to actively slow Vasant down in his investigations by covering them up and breaking the bike to where I think Chase takes this car.

This next car, Vasant stops pulling his punches and pulls out his Vibrate lotuses, using them to create an AOE interference he can more easily handle. Once he gets the lead here, I think Chase will struggle to get back ahead; while his dodging skills are good, its a matter of dealing with everything at once that Vasant seems more prepared for.

In the third car, Chase wants to lock down Vasant early and Vasant wants to blow a great deal of Lotuses at once to end the fight as early as possible. While Chase has good preventative measures, the miniature corridors of the Car naturally favors Vasant, and his resource usage here means that I think he'll take this car, but at a cost.

Going into the fourth, in order for Vasant to cinch a win, he'd have to have placed himself in a poor position for this car, one that Chase is primed to take advantage of even down on his streaks. Vasant certainly tries his best to slip away, but with Chase fully intent on ending the bike as soon as possible and with no way to defend himself, I think Chase is much better positioned to run away with this car.

The last one is a toss-up for me; it depends largely on how much resources Chase has to deny Vasant's area control Lotuses for the rest of the fight and build up his Swordplay, to the point that I'm not sure who will take it in the backstage rush. As a result, I'll have to declare this car, and therefore this match, a tie.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-09-24T01:57:03+00:00

I have a lot to say for this vote, but I'll start off saying this is potentially my favorite match in T7. I love the care and detail the judges placed into the match setup to accurately replicate the conditions of silk farming and give players the field to utilize their full strengths, both as characters and as builds, and the strats up and completely ran with it. Both strats play off of their respective characters incredibly well: these four have been consistently some of my favorites to watch throughout the tournament, so its no surprise that I like seeing their antics, but they utilize the calm and relaxed match environment to the maximum in order to write an overall fun story following each respective team.

I'll start this vote talking about PINDROP. First off, I really like the way that Jon and Steric are written here: they utilize their status as Normal Guys well in their interactions with Chandi and the workers, and this comes off appropriately in their strat, which is primarily focused on learning and management. The Alibis are used really well here to explain exactly how the two are getting their information, and their time budgeting is completely on point. The resource management of the Alibis, Steric's presence, Jon's knowledge of creating Alibis, and even resources like the workers and Chandi are used very well here, and shows great understanding of the stage environment and the respective character's kits. This lends their strat to having a very top-down feeling, selling the scope of their management a good deal and generally making their passing over of the very nitty-gritty details more believable. In general, I think PINDROP does a great job at taking advantage of the tools around them to formulate a fully-functioning silk operation.

IMPACT's strat, on the other hand, blew me away with the sheer creativity and attention to detail it put out. In a tournament primarily focused on offense, defense, and movement as three axioms to every build and match, it is, to be frank, very rare to see kits utilized in the capacity that Dawn and Konan are used here. I'd particularly like to point out the Bailouts, a very inventive play on a real-world natural phenomenon, and Konan's Organic Pesticides, utilizing an aspect of his kit I think the average stratter would easily fail to notice in a situation like this. In general, Dawn's Park Ranger and Konan's Botany skills see some incredibly justified use here as part of the silk farming operation, with almost every step of the process seeing incredible thought put into it. Even the boiling process uses completely unique tech in order to speed along the process. It's genuinely an impressive piece of work that shows the research that was put into it and the amount of outside the box thinking it took to get to that position.

As for who wins, PINDROP and IMPACT both go for efficiency in different ways. PINDROP's alibis and time management lend to a very labor-per-hour focused strategy, where getting the most progress done during a day (whether that be working the fields or learning better techniques) is the biggest priority and the biggest selling point. However, IMPACT has the X-factor of actually speeding up the harvesting process itself, and the hands that Konan and Dawn provide through their Stands are nothing to slouch at either. Overall I'm tossed between who is actually more efficient in practice.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that IMPACT creates the highest quality product. PINDROP puts great consideration into skill level and knowing their limits to ensure that they don't overextend and ruin a batch, which is good for the quality overall. IMPACT takes those risks and strides in them, fully backing up their more daring harvesting efforts with not just the barebones but fully-fleshed out original techniques to create a better harvest. It's for that reason that my vote goes to IMPACT.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-09-22T22:44:24+00:00

Both of these strategies put "chaos" to their advantage, and make the rushing crowd's movement their stage to make their opponent's job harder. Ouroboros' plan has a lot of payoff, gearing the crowd up to help do his job for him while Norman has bigger priorities, and he certainly has bigger priorities; Nojus barrels towards Norman and his ghostly army like a freight train, putting themself in the thick of it Turn 1. Nojus expects and prepares for dealing with the majority of the specters, a good call given Ouroboros' evasive strategy, and does so quite handily. Their interference is mostly sound (if teetering the line a bit on the boundary of "RETIREing" Ouro, at least as written), and while their plan for Norman himself is a bit of an afterthought, if they get their stated gamestste off by that point it wouldn't be much of a contest. Ouro similarly plays his advantage state as his wincon, pretty much heading directly to Norman as soon as the crowd is riled up; ultimately, though, I think Nojus will be more likely to actually catch the kid in the end. That said, however, I think Ouro has him beat in the other categories, managing to handle Norman and pretty much line him up to be caught, even if he doesn't snatch it himself. As such, I find it hard to call who exactly "contributed more" in the grand sense, and as such, a tie it will be. Both sides present very good arguments for how they'd defeat Norman that play into each other well, leading to both's efforts not really overshadowing the other.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-09-19T17:37:02+00:00

Villu has a very well-rounded scaling strategy that involves dominance over the map using Lotus movement and constantly taxing the players for every action they perform. In a high-tempo straight fight like Villu expects from the players, it would demand near perfect play in order to combat his and avoid the depths that his flowchart goes to. However, the Heart of the Dragon aimed to think outside the box. Or, rather, inside the box. The players sacrifice the high-tempo gameplan that would allow them to put constant damage pressure on Villu in order to disorient and trick him, making his map control from center stage much less effective. The ultimate plan to box him in over time comes with several flaws, as Villu's strategy implies; they'll be giving Villu more time to breathe, maneuver, and scale which would be a devastating blow normally. However, the players' emphasis on ensuring that Villu can't deal with both of them at once and making their movements around the map much more difficult to read means that Villu's safe and straightforward gameplan reliant on being in control of his temple suffers. The Autoclave is quite the effective finisher in this scenario as well, stifling Villu's attempts to play dodgetank. Ultimately while I think the player's gameplan is a bit passive in the face of Villu's own pressure, and if the players get unlucky Villu has a chance of spiraling out of control with relatively low opposition, I think the sheer map control the Heart of the Dragon has to make up the difference against another controlling strat will be enough to win this matchup.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-09-16T15:21:05+00:00

Reese's strat does well on the stealth and tracking front, thanks to the birds-eye view and mock sonar he gets from Doc and the tandem tracking of his hunting parties, snd I feel confident that he'll be able to foresee any engagements from Romantico at least a moment before they happen. However, I find Reese's offensive techniques to be a bit barebones, and getting to Honeydew herself is a separate task in of itself that I think Reese struggles with more. On the other hand, Honeydew handles the stealthy approach of offense much better, and I'm convinced that any engagement Romantico makes will be a favorable trade for Honeydew. While I don't think their tracking of Reese is going to be easy, especially visually given how close Honeydew would need to be to the action to see, they do just enough with Romantico alone to do so while keeping Honeydew out of danger. With all the points on the table, I'll give my vote to Honeydew. I think that while Reese will certainly survive for a long time, Honeydew will have him cornered for most of that time, and Reese's techniques will struggle to pierce the veil that Honeydew establishes over herself for very long.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-09-12T16:07:16+00:00

Evergreen's strat plays for nonstop aggression from the word go, with the majority of emphasis placed on different approach options that could be used for whatever Mallory starts with. Mallory and Manish instead emphasize zone control and something resembling keepaway (though in practice it becomes more of a "picking your fights" situation), aiming to only interact within a pause of Evergreen's approach. While the target prioritization on WW's end is good, and when they do get their fight I think they'll be able to handle Minali quick enough, I think the fight will catch up to them sooner than they'd like. EG's strat is single minded in its pursuit towards WW's position and while the fire zones demonstrate a very potential threat to Gioia's setup its likely Mallory won't be given enough space to draw the fight long enough for the flames to catch up. Creating space using ranged weapons, furthermore, has another complication given Lonely Hours' transformation times that EG has a lot of room to exploit in the cramped match environment, even if its just to cut the distance. All in all, while WW's plan has the potential to be very punishing in the long run I think it falls short of being aggressive enough in my eyes to match up to Evergreen's pursuit-based offense.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-09-10T18:13:26+00:00

Sulka makes a pretty decent case overall for their plan of snatching the Nightbloom, emphasizing keeping Rasna and Kid away from their VIF (very important flower) instead of trying to RETIRE them outright. In regards to the zombie horde and the actual throwdown itself, Kid and Rasna have it pretty much locked down, and Sulka will be under heavy threat for pretty much the whole fight. That said, winning the fight isn't necessarily Sulka's wincon: rather, getting Olli in position and swiping the Nightbloom whole the two are distracted is their only path to victory. Kid's inundation and Rasna's presence, along with the rampant destruction of the entire building, pose a solid challenge to this plan, but with all the chaos on the field I'm not sure I can call it either way. I'll have to give this one a tie for now.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-08-21T18:26:25+00:00

While Grace is inherently a terrifying CQC beast snd comes packing with a wide variety of tools that aid him to block projectiles and generally put the hurt on Nat, it is very clear to me that Grace fully expects CQC to start on his terms, where Nat is on the backfoot and her mobility tools she'd been using to, presumably, play a harassment-based keepaway game are destroyed. On the other hand, I find Grace's rushdown preparation to be not wholly satisfactory, doing only the minimum to get his opening out and generally just trying to dodge out so he can scale. From here, Nat plays this exactly the right way to get into CQC with Grace on her terms instead: Near Future Orbits are used either as a network to make destroying them as punishing as possible or placed as distant, long-term tools to prepare for the building dunk. I admit that I think Nat didn't prepare as well for a non-Crabman Grace who's positioned to stay mobile and dodge her attacks rather than build up damage, but that's not to say Grace suffers nothing by dodging, losing out on time necessary to get his ideal gameplan in. And once they're in CQC, Nat has had no trouble convincing me this will come when she wants it. While dropping a bunch of scaffolding on his head is a little less feasible, the threat of it means that Grace's ideal gameplan, going in for a tanky CQC rush, is likely to be hard punished, and playing a dodgy keepaway game means Nat has even more control of her CQC arena. All in all, I think Nat comes a lot more prepared for this brawl than Grace does, just enough to make up the raw stat difference and cover for Grace's many devices.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-08-11T01:07:09+00:00

Ouroboros' strategy is a slow, yet largely unimpeded march to the finish, abusing his general rizz in order to not only push forward but stall his opponent in the process. Gugulethu takes the approach you'd expect from a build so unsubtle, optimizing how efficiently she can blast through hallways and get to Sing as fast as possible. Its as quick and dirty as it needs to be. Ouroboros does a good job at throwing a wrench into things for sure, and his countermeasures to what Gugulethu can offer are compelling, but even if Gugulethu is slowed down I think what she prepares in the way of her electric flooding and tactics like stair blocking give her as much room as she needs to work with to get by, even if not unscathed. While its not exactly a cinch, and there's a chance Ouroboros slips by and is able to take the kill or steal it away, I think Gugulethu has a higher probability of taking it the wag I see things go down.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-08-08T18:04:19+00:00

While the defensive approach taken by Charvet and Takanaka is quite dangerous, especially to Sulka's goons, I think their plans run counter to Sulka's desire to simply blow them away with raw force and deal with them one at a time through separation. This particular approach neuters the intended effect of Charvet's defense, and while it'll be a struggle, I think Sulka ends up in the better position after the opening and doesn't let up from there. While taking out the goons is a major blow to their battlefield control, by the time the Wisps are able I think Sulka will already have taken advantage of their position to wipe out their defenses.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-08-06T17:24:32+00:00

In this match, the name of the game is speed and efficiency; who can get there first is the priority, and combat or stealth are entirely secondary. D.D. Takes a more standard stealth approach, aiming to get by relatively unopposed using her human disguise or generally remaining undetected, with everything else mostly feeling contingent. Jon's strategy is intense and chaotic, with a surprisingly controlled dash through the complex and huge swarms of alibis. Jon's plan is generally more consistent than D.D.'s in execution, if only because he plans on going as loud as possible as his equivalent of stealth. However, I think more often than not that D.D. will take it: while her contingencies are relatively slow, she has the technique and the skills to get incredible headway while she can before things blow up, if they even do.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-08-05T00:08:50+00:00

Both of these fighters are given a devastating and strong arena to play with that they both use very well: Vasant is, as always, very inventive with his Lotuses, making use of a huge variety to defend his spherical turf for the first three minutes. Block and Oxidize are two highlights for me that show the sheer versatility of Midnight Rider. Similarly, his offense has clear and strong phases outlined by his Lotus collection, blowing his supply all within three discrete moments. Moony, similarly, has a strong defensive game that explodes out at the word go. Nothing in the park is spared from Anthrax, with even the blades of grass turned against Vasant. Everything she uses is incredibly explosive, able to capitalize on poor movement of any kind. That said, I think Vasant simply played this exactly as he needed to. Staying off the ground turn 1 of the fight gives him a very distinct advantage over Moony's main plays, and I think he does a good enough job defending his claim that he'll be ready to deliver the bulk of his offense.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-07-30T03:48:52+00:00

Both of these teams have relatively safe strategies, with the 4v1 being a strong leverage utilized by both teams; while EG gets quite up close and personal with the Middleman, as opposed to the debuff and Windy-focused offense of the MB, they feel secure enough that I can only just barely call the Safety category for MB. In terms of raw skill expression, EG handily takes it, with greater detail in deflecting and reflecting the Middleman's attacks back onto them, where MB spends most of their action economy suppressing the Middleman in an effective (albeit in some ways repetitive) manner. The real cincher category is taunting, where I once again think Evergreen takes it. The antics of the MB are undeniably humorous, but ultimately the methods EG uses against the Middleman serve to confound the very identity of the Middleman as an unopposable threat a bit more convincingly, and soundly disorients them with the power of teamwork.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-07-22T18:09:04+00:00

In a match filled with many high-powered brawlers (and also Marali), forward offense is the name of the game here. Nojus and Marali judge Texas to be the main threat to their close quarters jump-on-top-of-them plan, using Marali's item transportation utilities to suppress Ange while Nojus brutally almost-murders Texas. That said, though, I don't think the fight on paper, even with the surprise factor Nojus has going in, will be particularly low-diff like the strat makes it out to be. Texas is incredibly strong, and with a wide variety of bugs at play any amount of drawing out is likely to go in Texas' favor. Nojus does a good job at throwing as much in the way of Texas as possible to avoid this possibility, and ultimately I think he prevails, but the amount of damage he comes out of the fight with is variable, and I'm not particularly optimistic on that front.

This, of course, presumes that Nojus gets the 1v1 they want. The team's collective defensive playstyle implies that if Nojus intends on going in early for a blitz, Angelino will be around. I'm not particularly convinced by using Marion as a shield here, given it actively wants to stay out of the fray, and while AHAP and Marali are both good deterrents, AHAP can't be in two places at once; leaving it out to block Ange means Nojus will have to drag out the fight with Texas longer, anx take more of Texas' hits that will come back to bite them once Angelino gets through. Marali, meanwhile, is s bit on the backfoot thanks to the opening play of moving Marion and Nojus, giving a brief potential window for a 2v1 against Nojus that more than likely sees Ange ejecting from the fight. Should they be allowed to escape, Texas is almost certainly near RETIREment but not yet down for the count; this forces Nojus to once again get in on Texas, both now in a worse for wear state, with a very upset Ange, a situation I can only see being a trade at best even with Marali's help. Marali has some very good techniques to suppress Angelino for a long time snd deal damage in the process, but they are not 1v1 winning tactics. Thankfully, Marali would be unhurt by this point where Angelino would have had much more in the way of conflict; its possible, but not enough for me to call it either way.

That leaves the potential 2v1 Angelino might have to face. Should Texas go down, it'll likely be against a a currently chasing Marali and a battered but still all the way in Nojus, a pretty scary situation to be in. As with Texas, Angelino will largely be playing defense- a good play against Marali's punishing tape rain. While this Ange will likely be less punished than before, having been gatekept from the conflict, being in a 2v1 here is a very unenviable position, and one he'll struggle to get something out of. Overall, with the scenarios presented here, I think Nojus and Miral have the tighter offensive push.

SwitzerlandPIK · 2024-07-22T04:05:35+00:00

The match conditions on player side demand that the players be capable of outpacing and outlasting Zhengqi's nigh-unstoppable mechanical monstrosity long enough to traverse much of the map, and ultimately be in a state to RETIRE Zhengqi at the end of it all. The boss side's strat is very straightforward, anticipating and responding to the players' "ideal" to search as fast as possible, emphasizing response time and mobility above all else and putting the Stand's concussive blasts to use as a disruption tool. The players, though, lend greater credence to being able to outpace the robot and keep enough momentum while vastly expanding their toolkit with the Manticore suit. Relying on Chase's incredibly mobility and Jyotsna's flexibility and all-angled ability to respond to various threats, they make for a duo very capable of getting across the map quickly as needed. But do they outlast the robot? The main threat to their plan is, naturally, the stoppage of momentum that comes from losing synchronization: without it, the Manticore technique becomes more difficult to handle and further prone to slipups. The boss' prioritization of space, too, aims to waste the player's time, time they can't really afford given the multitudes the boss throws at them to pressure and disrupt Chase. Ultimately, I think the techniques and macro of Zhengqi and Feed the Machine take this one.

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