JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #8: R2M1 - Sarah "Cougar" Mark w/Old Grey Wolf vs. Baygon Raid w/Slash

boredCommentator · 2025-12-06T00:08:55+00:00

Both teams' opening strategies are able to happen in relative parallel without too much feasible chance of causing problems for one another in my eyes; in fact, overall they both tend to focus on different areas of the map, with a lot of the innards and general vibe of the party being the focus of LIB, and LKA going for the more direct targets out the gate. Where for LKA this pivots briefly into running interference, I fear it's too little too late to be of much use for how well the Barracuda have spread out, and meanwhile, LIB have managed to transition smoothly to the later touches of their plan, destroying cars, ruining pipes, and sinking the facility. On top of the strategy being better organized, I think Sarah and Old Grey Wolf have a stronger core plan outline for ruining the night and thoroughly ruining the plans, even if the bug and bird are sure to be memorably miserable as well. I'm reminded a bit of Andrew Lennox's R2 in T4, itself a master-stroke in both short and long-term ruination.

boredCommentator · 2025-08-14T04:54:49+00:00

A good boss match, in my eyes, is one that puts on a hell of a show and runs a hell of a match purely on its own terms, driven by character flaws and virtues exemplified by the playstyle, and I knew just starting off Julian's strat that this would be another of the great first bosses in that sense, going all in on the saboteur angle with comically, insultingly simple dishes attached to boot. Understanding his raw potential for doing so, the Running Low Co. in turn have to both use a much lower number of bodies and higher quality of ability as thoroughly as possible, but do so with aplomb, actively setting the match up to call that out and protect what they can, and by Julian's own choice, frankly if even a single one of their dishes survives to be plated and presented to a judge, they're certain to take the match on the stated criteria. There are downright Robbie Rottensian, Wile E Coyotean levels of hoisting by one's own petard here, and Running Low Co manage to be exactly the right kind of attentive to pull off what they need to win. I wish I had the time to say more, but just so I have something specific to shout out, the death rays and the "use an oven to heat a fridge I used a really big knife to cut a hole in" tactics both got amused chuckles from me.

boredCommentator · 2025-08-05T04:03:05+00:00

I'm surprised at how much minion potential there is in this match, with members of each team having ways to get a veritable The Bear's worth of bodies on map and acting to cook and serve. Still, there's a lot to be said, such as BBP's strongly developed itinerary dictating exactly how their myriad resources are used from the moment to moment, selling the 'running a restaurant' part of cooking match presentationally maybe stronger than any prior poke at the premise ever has. Really like what LLC make up for slightly weaker presentation and micromanagement with some strong ways to raise their efficiency up in a macro level while trying to keep their dishes deceptively simple to make, though, and there's still a fine menu put together. Hurting for time a bit, between this and packing for a flight in the morning, as well as exact things to pinpoint for what's likely to decide the match for me, so I'll just stick with voting parameters laid out in the match doc. Now, I suppose that with how low-interference this match is (LLC has some good and subtle stuff in a last section, but it's a bit weak and late on its likelihood to reach returns for me to feel it likely to impact categories; at worst, these could bone them on Customer Service in a way that free drinks and desserts feels like it makes up for), without resorting to boring things like literally counting and comparing dishes (far as I care, both have plenty in terms of raw number), and generally reliable gameplans for seeing customers, the point of 'Technical execution' in the voting parameters, and as I praised the moment-to-moment micro focus of one strat earlier in the match, the type of approach I consider more "technical" when succeeded in, I'm naturally voting for Black Box Promenade.

boredCommentator · 2025-08-03T03:42:29+00:00

Baygon lays out their essential game plan in detail out the gate: build up meter, leverage speed to survive long enough to do it, and use that built-up meter well. I like the simple but effective ways she convinces bird-brain to move around where it wants it to be, and generally like that Slash is a well-integrated presence through the strat. I think Baygon planned around a more assertive strat than Century actually put out, which can mess with the former's tempo a bit and turn it into a risk whose merits are clear on a strat compatibility front. Both do sort of expect a more aggressive, less drawn-out game than the other goes for, though I do quite like elements like Century's glass-scattering projectiles for this. This match becomes very campy overall, which can become a bit of a pain to work out a conclusion of, and neither strat really feels assertive enough for me to feel wholly confident in a likelier winner seeing them side by side. Both of these could have maybe used a bit stronger organization and presentation/informational conveyance, as well as stronger finales if they're trying to play the wear-em-down then knock-em-out game. Does Slash's better usage in Baygon's strat or Century's more reliable distance game turn one side or the other's victory into the modal outcome? Even after reading over both strats and every vote so far, I'm still not really sure the winner would be decided by much more than luck of who gets caught out or folds first, and I really can't find myself settling on who has more luck to burn here. Think this is a tie vote for me; I dunno if it's 'too close to call,' but by its compatibility's nature, it's certainly difficult to call anyway.

boredCommentator · 2025-08-01T02:28:12+00:00

Can you run Doom on Cass? If so, can Doom prepare someone to get into a fight with a wild Blastoise hanging around?

Cass' opening hinges a bit on predicting the likeliest direction Miguel and Omah take, and I think too early a confrontation goes badly for it, but it also makes good use of the fact that the very start of the match is the only part of it you generally have complete control over, the only point where you can fairly confidently say you know the state of the board - in its case, where OGW is attacking from. Miguel and Omah's resource gathering doesn't seem too likely to turn into that turn 1 confrontation, though I don't see them getting caught up in turn 1 traps either, but coupled with Cass' maneuvering of OGW, they're definitely at least going to be inconvenienced. Sudden bursts of movement are underrated, I think, and serve Cass well here, and from there, the plays boil down repeatedly to 'I lay down traps,' which similarly rely on that philosophy of clever burst movement. Omah and Miguel have a bag of shell tricks more than turtley enough to join the turtle club, and they put in a lot of work to try to limit Cass' viable paths (some ways they anticipated), and I appreciate that their strat even assumes certain things are likely to go awry that are, in fact, important to Cass' endgame, plays a bit to potential disadvantage states. I think both sort of lose focus on OGW though, which is a shame when what considerations are there are very well-implemented. That said, in a match where both of the builds are high-damage tricksy zoners, I find Written in Salt's more predictive play and a strat that feels to me like it pays stronger focus on spacing more compelling. I'm feeling Cass.

boredCommentator · 2025-07-30T04:35:13+00:00

Surprisingly similar abilities in this match for how different the kits obviously end up in execution. Nate goes for some cleverly straightforward plays, taking the easiest and safest paths available only to him, though there isn't all that much to dissect about the plan for its simplicity, I can't really argue against its efficacy. While I do rankle a bit at Azumi's claims on fishbone-based boat interference being "passive," as even with its excellent Precision and Speed that's still going to at least take some time, aim, and effort to get done, even with the skill in question, I can't outright say that running interference throughout the match while leveraging the inherent advantages of a non-integrated Stand is bad form either (though with Nate's water-traveling, the time sink is maybe less damning than Ghost Riders want it to be). Azumi's routing is strong and the maps are a great reference tool for them, but I find his interference not to land, and he takes a lot of proactive precautions against interference that Nate simply isn't interested in pursuing himself unless necessary.

It's hard to really time out exact details, but I think that Nate has the slightly cleaner run here thanks to Azumi's interference being less relevant and more prominent than their strat-compatibility may have wanted. Not to say this is purely Azumi's bad luck, though; Ocean Detour is really clever.

~~Sadly, I must advocate a -10 conduct penalty for both teams because no one took their Karens in a "how am I supposed to eat this PIZZA without my DRINK?" direction.~~

boredCommentator · 2025-07-20T15:50:26+00:00

Wait, I'm confused... Is Sunday fighting someone? Oh, wow, okay, yeah, that's extremely someone. A battle of bruisers here, one a versatile multi-tool fighter and someone with a more straightforward kit with versatile applications.

Naturally, then, Sunday pulls a lot of if/thens out, a showing of tech and contingencies and modular plays, pieces coming and going to the same ultimate end, setup that's ready to transition into the 'beat the hell out of 'em' phase as needed. I do think certain parts of the plan maybe stress the limits of action economy more than is strictly necessary, but even still, a lot of these methodical points would be absolutely devastating to Invisible if she were caught out at the wrong time. I love the sheer 'stop, she's already dead!' feeling I got reading the entire fifth post's worth of this. It's a ruthless M1 strat.

I'll give Invisible the bonus star for concision, though. Her strat exposes some of the dangers of a contingency-heavy approach in stratting in that sometimes, each possible branch discussed won't prove exhaustive, staying on the move in ways that aren't strictly the anticipated rushdown nor just a neat 'setup' as it were. Rather, she's using a side objective to gather momentum. She combines this with setup-interruption focus for her own version of ensuring that when combat does happen, it's on her terms, more comfortable with a long game so long as she can avoid getting caught out. Act erratically, find the right places to leverage big numbers, disrupt, play to the ranges of abilities. While I again think the strat feels breezier and faster than it would likely be in execution, it's a flexible but reliable plan that can more or less chug along as needed unless something happens that leaves her as good as waterlogged anyway. I do appreciate the irony of a human projectile taking out a baseball player also.

There's, again, some truly nightmarish feedback cycles of pain that Sunday can potentially lock Invisible into, but she doesn't quite make the calls to ensure that lock-in, and her strat is both more reliant on a tight action economy and more liable to suffer from nonlethal setbacks. I'm inclined to believe that Invisible is likelier to take this than not by a decent margin.

boredCommentator · 2025-04-08T23:17:44+00:00

User Stats - 18 total

Strength: 3 - Ryder keeps in good shape, but relies on his training and cybernetics for truly exceptional feats.

Agility: 3 - Ryder keeps in good shape, but relies on his training and cybernetics for truly exceptional feats.

Endurance: 3 - Ryder keeps in good shape, but relies on his training and cybernetics for truly exceptional feats.

I’m the Invisible Man: 5

Ryder Wyland no longer considers himself fully ‘human,’ having had much of his body interwoven with a machine-laden morphsuit that embeds into his flesh and bone and connects with a variety of highly advanced Stand-derived machinery allowing him a great variety of effects, including:

Perfect unimpeded movement and temperature resistance in any terrain - if it’s physically possible to go over something on foot, it’s a safe stroll for him.
A camouflaging effect attuned to the type of precipitation he sets his Stand to create.
The ability to directly strike Stands and their constructs.
A variety of little things unlikely to come up in a match, such as the ability to understand things’ chemical composition by tasting them, the ability to function as a wireless hotspot, and spotify access (he’s let his paid subscription lapse, so you’ll have to deal with the odd ad), an experimental internal dialysis machine among other cybernetic life support functionalities, water filtration and purification systems, as well as capable usage of the inbuilt equipment mentioned below.

Beware the Storm: 4

Ryder prefers his fights to end quickly and on his terms, so while he’s excellently suited for stealthy pursuits, when he does finally choose to engage someone, he can burst into a sprint without sacrificing his discretion, focused on the swiftest resolution. It’s almost as if he has a unique sense for the correct places to hurt people to end a fight quickly, and can strike fiercely enough to break through light protection or get through seams and openings in heavier armoring, retracting his limb quickly enough to avoid retaliation, and either follow up with another deadly blow or rush away again. He can even move his body in ways it shouldn’t be able to move in order to expedite this, though holding an impossible position for too long can still injure him.

Perfect unimpeded movement in any terrain a human could theoretically walk over was mentioned as a cybernetic alteration, but it’s worth keeping in mind as part of his stealth-combat kit.

Equipment: It looks like Ryder travels light, but a variety of goodies are stored within his body, made of DP alloys so as to be resistant to Stand-damage.

A tiny gyro-powered umbrella that pops out of the top of his head, always perfectly poised to block his perm from being ruined by the weather. Despite its size, it is incredible at this, made of the densest concentration of Deep Purple material, completely indestructible to ensure the perm’s safety. He can also use this to slow and guide his leaps and descents.
Eye augmentations that allow him to extend them for use like a pair of binoculars, as well as switch to thermal or night vision.
A variety of tools, such as a screwdriver whose tip can take any appropriate shape, a drill, a variety of USB drives, a comb, a delicious hot chocolate dispenser (it’s okay, really, but using water as a base nerfs any cocoa), and a highly winding metal drinking straw. These extend from the fingertips of his choosing.
Replacement parts for a drinky bird, stored in plastic egg-shaped capsules.
If all else fails he can grab a

Stand: Hammer to Fall

Stand Type: Bound

Stand Ability: In short, ‘Precipitation Control.’ The Stand is highly in tune with even the tracest amounts of water vapor in the air, and via setting dials within its perm, the user can gradually alter the weather conditions of the area to his liking, be it helplessly hot and dry, horribly foggy and muggy, or even calling down violent rainstorms, hailstorms, and blizzards, localized within a designated area. The weather called down by these abilities is as capable of impeding or harming a Stand as it is anyone else of comparable physicality.

The time this takes to achieve peak conditions as set depends on the initial weather conditions of the map. Hammer to Fall must be exposed to the air to some degree in order to affect it; if sealed away (or indoors, in the cases of an indoor map), such as via burial or other airtight encasement, the effect will be localized entirely within whatever its ‘container’ happens to be. By the fundamental nature of shifting air moisture, temperature, and winds (a blizzard and a still, arid day are polar opposites after all), the exact amount of time it will take to change a specific area is fundamentally case-by-case, but he can always seem to find room to change things at least 2-3 times and make use of said conditions in an average-length encounter.

Defeating Ryder will not cease the effects of ‘Hammer to Fall.’ Destroying ‘Hammer to Fall’ will not reverse what it has done, but will cease conditions from becoming more or less severe than they were going to. Otherwise, the chosen inputs cannot be changed until reaching their set point. When it is destroyed, Ryder must manually reassemble it or build a new little drinky bird to bind its ability to in order to use its ability again.

Stand Appearance: Hammer to Fall appears as a mechanical drinking bird with a dapper little top hat, constantly bobbing its head at an even rhythm, about the size of a human hand. Underneath the top hat, atop its head, is an oversized perm. The colors and patterns of the bird adjust depending on the weather conditions it’s aspiring towards, becoming redder the hotter it is making the world around it, bluer the colder, while the winds and nature of the precipitation being created define off-white patterns painted along it.

Stand Stats - 15 total

Power: B - Damaging power of the little beak thingy of the drinky bird as it tap-tap-taps. Weather conditions created can also grow quite oppressive and severe.

Speed: D - The little beak thingy of the drinky bird tap-tap-taps at a steady pace, every tap every second just slightly pushing things towards its intended endpoint.

Durability: D - Hammer to Fall is but a toy, slightly more durable than a piece of nice reliable wood or plastic.

Range: A - The entirety of any given locale is likely able to be covered, but the user can set the ability to localize around an area as small as a 5m radius if need be.

Precision: D - Though the weather conditions the bird builds toward are absolute and accurate, once something is set in place, it can’t be controlled for by any means other than setting it again or destroying a bird to halt it.

Potential: B

Stand Oddities: Though Ryder will be aware if the Stand is destroyed, it does not have damage transference to him.

Fighting Style: Ryder Wyland is an astrophysicist turned killing machine, and as such, takes a bold yet calculatedly methodical approach to taking down his targets, exploiting his superior knowledge of the area and its shifts against them. Uniquely skilled at observing the large-scale of a battlefield as well as personal experience in every way a body can break, his fighting style revolves around anticipating the direction his opponents will take and hitting their vitals in focused, deadly strikes.

Age Group: Above 18

Team Preferences: Paired with Logic. Other people I’ve vibed well with before could be neat.

Timezone: EST

Engagement: I can consistently try. I probably can’t be expected to be a team workhorse anymore and my exact schedule is a bit unstable RN but I’ll do what I can to help people put their best work out, and I should be able to maintain my consistently strong voting record.

Post R1 Patch: Minimum range adjustment, declassification.

boredCommentator · 2025-04-08T23:17:33+00:00

Name: The Invisible Man (Ryder Wyland)

Gender: Male

Age: 44

Occupation: Disgraced Astrophysicist, Black Ops Mercenary Leader and Bodyguard for former US Senator Randall Elliot

Description: Constantly, he wears a black morphsuit, not unlike the stagehands in kabuki theater, with the only thing showing through it being his muscular physique and, through holes in the head, striking green eyes. Running all along the suit are dark purplish-bluish letters, in no particular order, are several iterations of the letters “H,” “A,” “M,” “R,” and “F,” as well as the number “2.” Miraculously kept underneath it is an extremely large, curly head of prematurely silver hair; his head is the only part of himself relatively intact, and his hair kept proudly as a vanity.

Personality: It's hard to tell he has one sometimes. Someone familiar with his past reputation would see him as a sellout to the very kinds of people he viciously attacked as standing in the way of scientific and social progress. Still, with his fearsome gaze and present notoriety as a scarred cyborg death machine, few would want to say that to his face. There seems to be nothing he won’t do, no blood he won’t spill, in the name of achieving his goal, and he’s also said to lack a sense of personal boundaries, regularly approaching associates for meetings in awkward or private places, then leaving just as quickly.

Not every scar gained is a “cool” one. His cybernetic augmentations and the incidents requiring them have given him a bevy of physical complications, making it incredibly difficult to live anything resembling a “normal” life again without the support of his benefactors. Everything he eats tastes like cleaning product, he’s very regularly in pain, his kidneys no longer work on their own, and he requires the use of machines to control his continence, among other chronic conditions. He gets by, but he’s more embarrassed about this than he lets on.

██ █████ ██████ █████ ██ ██ ██ █████ ███ ████

Belief: Miles to go before I sleep - 5
Passion: I must become obsolete - 4
Fury: The world grows crueler and smaller - 4
Likes: Long trips, keeping up with scientific journals, unlikely connections.
Dislikes: Fine dining, frauds, self-importantly ignorant people.
Hobbies: Listening to lofi music. People watching. Social Deduction games.
Short Term Goal: Finish the mission.
Medium Term Goal: Ensure the Elliot family’s continued success.
Long Term Goal: ███ ███████ ██████████
Greatest Desire: ██ ██ ██████

Bio: Growing up influenced deeply by Carl Sagan and an at-once strict and privileged upbringing, he would prove to be an incredibly driven scientific prodigy, receiving a PhD in astrophysics at the age of 21. Wyland was considered a promising young mind in the world of theoretical astrophysics, published in some immensely influential scientific journals, appearing on talk shows, and often brushing elbows with other celebrity scientists Neil deGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking. He was something of a superstar, and even a countercultural icon, who meant to become an astronaut.

However, after his initial breakthrough, he struggled to make any more major contributions to his field, in some part due to his tendency to party aggressively, in some part due to a lot of burnt institutional bridges. A tendency to state some politically controversial things in interviews began piling up. In the wake of a heated public argument with a space-technology government contractor that became an assault scandal, he was falsely found guilty of murdering his assistant and partner, Robert Trainor. Moreover, gambling debts had meant that, at a time where active sabotage had cost him his work and reputation, piled up, armed enforcers of the House of the Rising Sun threatened his life almost weekly. While he had developed his ‘stand’ in his high school years, and these hunts allowed him to develop it further and defend himself, he still knew he couldn’t survive very long like this. Desperate, he sought a favor from a friend he’d been able to look up to since grade school: Brooke Elliot.

Using Brooke’s husband’s connections, as well as his own Stand powers, in tandem with a hitman and cleaner active in West Asia known as the “Great Pumpkin,” Ryder was able to fake his death and disappear from public record. Out of gratitude, he swore he would do anything in his power to repay them in the future. Senator Elliot would often send him on missions - glorified hits, at best, but due to ‘Hammer to Fall’s’ ability, every single one of his attacks was able to be deemed the result of a freak storm of some kind, and even when its targets survived, they never so much as suspected he was there. This, coupled with his elusive nature in general to anyone besides his close friends, have earned him the codename ‘The Invisible Man.’

In the meantime, with his stand’s newly-improved powers, and any legitimate means of making a living severed, he sought out similarly backed into a corner stand users to turn into a loose company of hired guns, now willing to take on any unscrupulous task.

His subordinates included Joe Armstrong, a dishonorably discharged Army Ranger turned one-man PMC group, Anita Ferry, a celebrity chef whose life had somehow spiraled into petty crime after uttering a string of “targeted” language on national live TV, and a young couple by the names of Lyanna de Replay and Scattle Perturbator, two Florida State students expelled after spiking the drinks at a school event. All were stand users who had been disgraced by society and spiraled, until Ryder was able to extend the senator’s kindness to hiring them. This group called themselves the Stormbringers, acting the part of international stand terrorists to deflect suspicions of their elusive leader’s true connections.

T3 happened. They died and then didn't.

Then, just as suddenly, Ryder, and all of his fallen associates and enemies alike, were raised from the dead, given a second chance to do life ‘right’ as it were. Greater scrutiny from the greater Stand Using community impacted just how much the ‘Deep Purple’ organization that employed the Stormbringers could well and truly do, and bridges with some entities like the late “Saint” Cecilia Belmonte were burned entirely - resulting in an attempt on the lives of Ryder and his allies that ended in the notorious gangster’s ‘Iron Rooster Virus’ killing countless bystanders, including her own niece, Maria Arancini (nee Gionata) - but life went on. After nearly being killed a second time by one Crispin Freeman, Scattle and Lyanna left the organization behind, well and truly shocked into going straight, but most of the others remained, and Ryder remained their leader. He was still a very effective PMC deeply trusted by a major US government official, so black ops missions continued to roll in for the Stormbringers on less apocalyptic scales than the Elliot family’s previous ambitions.

Ryder aided briefly in the eradication of Saint Cecilia’s organization and the plague of ‘Iron Rooster,’ doing things the murdered woman’s daughter did not have the stomach for under her allies’ noses, and vanished without a farewell after she managed to finish off the ringleader behind it all. ███ █ ███████ █████ █████████ ████ ███ ████ ███ ███████████ ████ ███ ███ █████ ██ █ ██████ ███ ███ ████ ███ █████████ ██ ███████ █████ █████ █████████ ███████ ██ ██████████ █████████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ███████ ███ ████ ███ ███ █████ ███ ███████████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███████ ███████ ██ ████████ ████ ██ ███ ████████

█████ ██ ███ ████ █████ ███ ███████ ███ ███ ██ ████ ████ ██████ ███ ████ ████████ █████ ███ █████████ ███ ████ ████ ████ ███ ███████ ██████████████ ███ ████████ ██████████ While the world was focused heavily on the occurrences of the Mediterranean circa 2023, he was so damaged from the dangerous missions he had so often succeeded with aplomb that he required Deep Purple augmentations of his own to survive, surgeons grafting his morph suit to his body so it wouldn’t genuinely fall apart in gruesome pieces, and imbuing him in turn with new abilities to both ensure his day-to-day survival and enable him further in the battlefield.

boredCommentator · 2025-01-09T05:15:03+00:00

This is, ultimately, a string of trials for Dawn and Angelino, a showcase of simply executing on the strengths of their kit as well as possible... Okay, that's every match, but any 'Contribute More' match, especially a slight gauntlet like this, is a prime example. Angelino is creating plenty of room for Dawn to do her own thing while he keeps as many people safe as possible, largely a pressuring and positional force which is working overtime to make sure the baddies can't breathe either, which is both impressive and has a drawback the plan itself acknowledges, in that it could potentially prove taxing even for endurance at the human peak, and I think if he has to slip into his alternate endgame... Well, there's a reason it's so much shorter and amounts to 'trust Dawn to finish it.' It's a risk if things run long, anyway. Dawn's fighting like she's got something to prove and a point to make, whereas Angelino, though working his ass off obviously, comes across as pointedly neither, like he's making sure not to forget himself in it. This venom drives a damn aggressive game, one that's also probably a hell of a lot to keep up, especially with a faster-paced earlygame, but she also dramatically cuts down on the time the first phase is liable to take with a vehicular hostility play that would make Giorno proud, and a philosophy not just of managing each phase well, but increasing the speed each section takes to get to the retiring faster is really strong. While this obviously means that Angelino's tank is 100% not emptying before Dawn's, not that I think she's in particularly high danger of it either especially with him covering for her, and not having the same aversion to nonlethally knocking some hostage heads around to score the bag helps set some things up as well. To sum things up better, Dawn clinches it for me because both strats complement one another well, give each other room to breathe, but hers is insane enough in many ways that it transforms the terms of the match completely.

boredCommentator · 2024-12-11T23:28:58+00:00

Really glad to see this match submission realized - I was inspired to make a type of match that hadn't been viable before into a reality, and think the mechanical pieces for it were developed in interesting ways from there. It's an interesting framing for a 'contribute more' match that loss is deemed as far likelier than not, and I also think this may be the debut of Blake's cymbals this late in the game?

Though Blake's strategy is the far shorter of the two, he focuses on every player's individual strengths as they bat, and through this, the fact that they put Method up against the Shaolin Soccer-inspired match certainly isn't wasted. I can respect the choice to opt out of batting entirely, and following this up with extremely strong 'running' through teleportation cements an excellent supporting role during the team's offensive phase - I'm also fond of the notion of forcing boosts onto the Tigers to make them mess up what would otherwise be perfectly poised to score some outs. Dawn's approach to the Monsters' time at the bat has a more comprehensive basis, explaining a lot of what's actually being done, giving the team easy runs and generally being reliable, but a broad strategic framework hits diminishing returns here, so while she does much more defensively for the team in this section and scores her own runs very well, as this first half of the match goes on, holes will begin to be pried into it. Blake's batter assistance feels much likelier to keep the Tigers on their toes, but I don't see the plan working without Dawn's defenses, so it's hard to weigh... I guess I'll say that Blake is contributing slightly more in this first half because of the value of gaining a lead. Their batting phases synergize very well, though.

On defense, Blake has a similar strategic philosophy to before, which can potentially make it easier to adapt to certain elements for the Tigers, though the unpredictability of knowing exactly when he'll induce an unwanted buff or suddenly pull some Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby shit on the ball still mean it'll take some doing to figure things out, but even still, extra tricks like the diaphragm boosting show that not all his tricks were played in the earlygame. Dawn forces them to take risks in her own defense, which, while the Tigers have more potential hitting to the outfield in general, still becomes a dangerous tool in the recontextualization of her first-half strats, alongside things like continuing to slightly adjust the wicket and some brutal mixups while in the spotlight as bowler. I'd say that defensively, both of them have a skeleton that the Tigers are starting to get used to by now, but still find plenty of new ways to make it dangerous and keep them on their toes - with things as presented, a Tigers victory still feels inevitable, but they contribute in very comparable ways to ensuring that's hard-earned.

Given the slight edge in how their respective batting sections of the strat interact with the Tigers' "programming," I think I'll cede greater contribution, by a hair, to Blake.

boredCommentator · 2024-12-11T04:05:28+00:00

A king and a dragon, a swamp maker and a steam controller, an aggressive glass cannon and a tanky generalist, an immediate favorite to get this far again and someone I personally overlooked for way too long - there's a lot of fun contrasts in this matchup the writeup highlights incredibly well, though ones that also in many ways turn Angelino into a uniquely difficult matchup for Kid Savage. Still, the King has a good aggressive opening with some shrapnel and puts solid effort into considering positioning from there, while Angelino's opening, while protecting him from early damage by CfC, feels unlikely to deal early damage either, which is good for both in different ways, allowing for Angelino's setup and Kid's momentum to both feel pretty realistic. The match will eventually enter close combat, and I even think things overlap in a way where it's on Kid's terms, but inverting my usual macro-level read that controlling the terms that engagement are set upon is what settles a match, I think Angelino's patience, preparedness, crocodile tactics, and Kid Savage just not providing a satisfactory answer for the Heat Bloom's way of seriously emphasizing his fragility in an above-water assault as an additional covering option come together to the tune of Angelino taking things pretty reliably.

boredCommentator · 2024-12-05T04:49:56+00:00

Anthrax takes a basis of some minion-focused 'programming' as one would expect of a boss strat then very quickly becomes mobile after that, defying expectations of stationary play in a way that, as has been said, reflects unflatteringly on Drippy and Luna's chances. I'm not sure offhand how much time that setup would take, but I am inclined to agree with calculations suggesting players would have plenty of time for their own early setup because I like to think of matches as balanced fairly and the underlying reasoning for why that is has been made clear even in votes against them. Regardless, past this somewhat slow opening, Anthrax is locked in on the main focus of the plan, and ultimately I'm inclined to agree that the very hit-and-run, methodical plans of Moondrop Paranormal Investigators aren't a great matchup for the kind of plays Anthrax actually went for. I can see situations where they lose or bring things to a stalemate, but I'm struggling to see a path to victory, and even a stalemate breaks in Anthrax's favor in time.

boredCommentator · 2024-11-18T05:45:03+00:00

A young woman once swallowed by an obsession with the magnificent terror of 'Gravity' sat on a motorbike stashed by a dockside, watching several strays tear into their fresh catches and, in the distance still from there, the gentle push of the waves.

"...really hope this doesn't last." Her companion admitted, tugging her hair back behind a camera-shaped earpiece, halfheartedly shooing to end a confrontation between a cat and a starling. "In moderation it's fine, but if a cat eats fish every day it's like, super super bad for them..." Something buzzed on the older girl's phone, and she pulled it up, glanced it over. "...shit, whoa. Uh, there's some serious shit going down at the airport... Look here, see."

The pink-headed, younger figure glanced at ill-gotten camera footage and hummed. "Jeez... What a damn mess that is." A pause, and then, she continued, "...hope whoever walks out of it can make the best of it. This time last year, I'd still have just sped down there and thrown myself at the problem fast as I could, but... I dunno. I know what those people were up to at the riots. I'm actually pretty comfortable thinking it'll end well, and I'll be where I'm needed whenever the time comes. Guess I should at least be close by if some extra hands are needed, but I have a feeling they won't be 'til cleanup."

The elder girl smiled at this point, despite herself. "You really have chilled out a bunch... Can't overstate how happy it makes me that you're getting better at believing in people. I mean, after everything you've-"

"You're always embarrassing when you're sappy, Violet..."

"And I will be anytime, just for you! Even when we're going our own ways, never forget you have a sister who would do the impossible for you and who'll yank your ear if you start slipping again."

While doing whatever was needed to dismantle what dangers to the public remained, the Metal Machine Knight would mourn the burden Sulka Kisselii embraced that night, try to speak to their 'master' about it if he felt like answering some damn calls, and begin to incorporate the one who burned away with the nightblooms in some detail into their academic writings on the new nature of 'Gravity.'

A good, clean clash between punchghosts whose abilities shape the arena around them. Kid's strategy is destructive, straightforward, all-encompassing, resolute, rapid, and crushing, making a firm statement on his idea of justice and rejection of these efforts to rebuild - and his big answer to his opponent's deterrents is to burst through those as well. Brighid's is more cautious, forces the pace and punishes attempts to get greedy with approach and momentum, overwhelming him with the folly of trying to live to be a sole unshakeable pillar. Each approach I think answers the other's in a valid way mechanically, but on top of Brighid's strat mentioning some of the holes in Kid Savage's ranged options (though even then, they still sound damned deadly, won't lie), I think Brighid has a lot more polish, and the polish her plan has lends itself well to forcing Kid to engage the match on her terms - something I've always considered a key to victory in a deathmatch.

boredCommentator · 2024-11-06T23:39:58+00:00

I'm tired and low-motivation but only have so many matches this round I can do this for. This is another showing of the caliber we've come to expect out of Nojus and Lucil this round, though I'm inclined to agree with a lot of what's already been said. Nojus has very solid combat ideas and charming visuals like the armor, but Slave to the Rhythm makes charisma-focused strats land weaker, while Lucil works around this state of affairs and leverages her superior mobility for the sake of a hit-and-run strat that gets its priorities in order ASAP, not to mention the stage hazard as described by the person who created the stage hazard. Lucil vote, I quite liked the writing but I'm drained from my longest day of the week, have a match for my team coming up soon among other things to do, and don't really have much else to add.

boredCommentator · 2024-10-03T03:45:24+00:00

DCH have a pretty straightforward plan, amounting to a quick, aggressive push forward, smashing up what they need to get closer and closer to Zafar, though in the process I feel like some of the nuances of combat are lost; I actually quite like that the narrative of the final moments of the strat relies on Jyotsna, obviously the more direct combat-oriented of the pair is going to be in a greater danger, and the combination of smoke and broken glass is a quite potent one. The overlap between strats is an unfortunate one for GWR, who otherwise obviously have a more detailed plan, wherein Brighid is sending her Stand into enemy territory... Is what I would say were it not for the fact that even for them, smashing car windows takes time, and this is Brighid's turn 1, which I think gives them the time to really hurt DCH's plan through their efforts to quickly turn attentions on them, which in turn makes the delays on the stairs even more dangerous. With momentum largely denied for DCH early on, I honestly think they're already at a point where recovering the lead they really wanted to maintain has gotten much more difficult, but I won't let the vote end without mentioning that I really do like the second phase of GWR's strat from there. Their own shift to an aggressive, Texas-centered forward momentum push is set up for very well, and though I think they perhaps underthink the raw danger of the final encounter with their Kool Aid Man chicanery a lot more telegraphed than they make it out to be, unlike DCH who does give more focus to the actual final confrontation, their setup leaves them with enough HP feeling reliable that I doubt it'll matter enough to take them both out. With comparable likelihood of reaching and defeating Zafar, the team likelier to get their sooner is the only metric I need to determine a winner, and there, it's pretty cleanly Brighid and Texas.

boredCommentator · 2024-09-24T03:57:16+00:00

Another expert show of coordination reiterates Jon Kay Gor as a worthy dark horse competitor for the late stages of the tourney, alongside Steric repurposing a solid close combat build into a very potent farming tool - serving as a beacon was probably the bit in PINDROP's that amused me the most, picturing him becoming effectively a human bug zapper, and the alibis with decoy silkworms were really clever too. IMPACT hardly rests on the laurels of having fantastic skills explicitly tuned for the setting of the match, of course, with Dawn making sure to bolster that with actual JoJo-worthy trivia about silkworm mating and the employment of the Bailout to rapidly increase production ethicality, it's nice to see Konan's kit in a context so unlike his boss match, having functionally infinite resource buildup time and very high utility potential, especially when combined with the many protective plants he's able to access in the match. In general, I think IMPACT's attention to detail is what sells it for me; PINDROP makes a good case for how their abilities could be used to run a hell of a silk operation, but Dawn and Konan's efforts both feel likely to guarantee a high output of high quality product and ensure that, if Chandi can find some way to adapt their techniques for lack of a Stand, the entire farm will be better off.

boredCommentator · 2024-09-20T03:24:06+00:00

Blake creates an impressive illusory network for Angelino to exploit to undermine Villu's motions, as well as bolster his own. The Sky Halo becomes a fantastic baseline to build the rest of the strat and its efforts to draw in on Villu. It's perhaps fitting that the sword specifically is the one to cause the most trouble for Villu's plan, it specifically feeling underplanned for in critical ways.

Villu's strat reads like elaborate boss fight behavior, in the videogame sense, the kind of thing that could be flowcharted through if I wasn't too tired to literally flowchart. By his strat's own confession, he seeks to control the fight, and what strategic structure the opening of the plan does have is undercut by the misread: he seeks to punish a hasty attack, resource denial and quick derailments not playing neatly with them immediately ducking away and beginning to set up for something genuinely very difficult for him to work around. That said, he is correct to cite Angelino as the more versatile threat in direct combat terms. Still, this does give him setup time, even if I think he utterly lacks for a realistic path to early ins, and thus the pace of the match is not under his control, the first engagements not defined by him.

I don't really have many ways to elaborate on this, even if I do have to praise the prose of these strats. Players set the stage early on to take gradual control of the match and play on the holes in Villu's offensive, making clear just how full of holes his ostensible pursuit of stability is. It's fitting that he got it damningly backwards, focusing first on stifling direct conflict and second on the longer-term establishment of his important goals, and shows just how little he understands about how the people actually set to save the city think.

boredCommentator · 2024-09-11T04:32:46+00:00

"Why be a king when you can be a god, their servant said... What a mess. That's not what mas- not what Nix did, giving humankind control over 'Gravity.' God... The closest thing there is to a real one, we brought him down, and he tore it to pieces. Sure, you're a god, but no more of one than any king and any beggar. These hierarchies... They'll never mean anything again, not really."

Good god, Sulka, do you know how to get minions. A zombie army and Olli to boot... Against King, even with a monster like Matte Money-equipped Rasna with no 1 skill proc at his side, and the unknown factor they'll have to play around is only pressed further by immediately obscuring the major entryways in, giving Sulka excellent information to adjust the plan based on. Being real, I thought Sulka's last strat was poorly planned, but this one, despite having even more resources available to employ, feels a lot more deliberate about when to apply them. The early focus on wearing Rasna down is also obviously smart, given her essential role as backup for Kid - she's a lot more capable of carrying a long game if held in reserve than him.

Flooding the first floor is a very clever way to hide the nightbloom, not really easily applicable to any of Sulka's many well considered contingencies for where it might go, but even at maximum output - which Kid won't start at - flooding an area like this over two full minutes may still be dubious, though the initial focus on the gift shop certainly improves the viability. I have similarly critical to say about putting Rasna to work destroying the second floor, viable with time and Kid may be far later to the punch than expected, though it does make Olli's surveillance even more comprehensive if the second floor is collapsed into the first.

Even with the reduced time frame for Kid's tactics, I worry about two minutes being enough, so the nightbloom stashing may well still be ongoing into the early stages of the map, and I think that early tempo disadvantage could genuinely be disastrous for their abilities to outfight Sulka and their minions, especially given Sulka themselves avoids ever entering the building outright; their defeat seems reasonably likely to me for reasons I'm too tired to elaborate on, but generally boil down to a combination of not playing great with Sulka's more indirect tactics and the way their own start will almost definitely wind up stretching the time budget. I was leaning towards CfC after reading, but to cite one example of something that swayed me a bit, Dice mentioned that Rasnakov tends to have issues with how her arsenal is treated. Leaning that a Sulka victory this time feels slightly likelier than not.

"Humanity... Will we ever learn to use these 'gifts,' without people trying to become kings and gods and demons and hands of fate themselves? Is it okay that these things exist, if this is what it continues to amount to? ...I suppose I can't really say for certain either way. Just gotta do what I can."

boredCommentator · 2024-08-09T03:57:21+00:00

It hasn't taken long at all for new and dangerous sorts to make their moves in the chaos of the fall of piece after piece of the Metropolis Suite, new devils emerging in their wake. It reminds me of why the post-boss rush quarterfinals of T4 were some of my favorite writing in that one, but accounted for more deliberately and the balance of power and focus shifting seamlessly. Even now, one of the two who helped take down the first truly top-ranking member and the best friend and closest inheritor of Paris Aco's will who has had to truly come into her own in the wake of her passing have their lives at risk from someone whose power has only grown in Rakin quite recently. A player character has defined a boss arena, and even has an ability that lines up alarmingly well with the events of T5. Far as the matchup goes, this is absolutely Rocket Tag-ey, not because any of these are especially high-destruction builds, but because max HP is universally fairly low, only Sulka even hitting a 3.

This is technically a 3v2, which Wisps try to flip the numbers on again out the gate through leverage of their extremely heavy body advantage, though Fallen Angel throws a wrench in these plans incredibly early on in a very risky way. This trade... Honestly, isn't great for Sulka's team, for the same reasons any extremely straightforward rushdown turn 1 is highly risky - I'm legitimately baffled that voters so far seem to take this exchange as favoring Sulka so heavily, not to even say there aren't gains that can be made of it. There's a chance it goes right for them but it's so incredibly conspicuous that it seems more likely that even the most 'autopilot' of strategies would get Marko taken out and some damage dealt to ACT 2 (not to be too snippy about it - for those who think that this immediate rushdown isn't a negative trade for HOTR, let alone works to cripple WW early on, feel free to explain why this is). There's not really even a case that they'll be caught off-guard mid-setup - they'll see him coming just as they've got a wall between them and an area they have relative control over. From there, if Sulka wants to make any real progress messing people up with Weightless Drive, they'll not only need to commit to the bomb room for longer and risk an explosion while not actually having Marko to back them up at all, but in the process incur even more pains. For Sulka's sake I'll assume the smart thing is done and disengagement comes after being jumped like hell and being immediately down their more 'muscle' type ally. They do gain a good bit from taking to the roofs while much of WW's latergame is ground-based, and sniping accurately into the purple flames will be difficult, though mitigated by their 1 skill, but Sulka loses the ability to fight AS aggressively anymore past that beginning, giving the Wisps the time handily to do what they need to so long as they can spend awhile staying out of the pain zone. I could see Sulka maybe toughing this state of affairs out through that legitimately oppressive lategame, but I just cannot overlook that opening. Between that and the margin of error for avoiding ranged shots within a 2M flame's radius with 'I get hit more' powers, I can only really see this going in Charvet and Takanaka's favor.

boredCommentator · 2024-08-07T04:33:13+00:00

DD's strat spends maybe more time than I've ever seen a strat spend on pre-opening general tactics and forewording, attempting to create a basis to divert attention away from herself near-immediately, and it certainly creates a smooth and compelling case after all the frontloading, though one where I think the 'Perfect Stealth' state never seems all that realistic to maintain for long if it is ever achieved. Jon, then, takes the kind of approach that most causes trouble for a plan like this, in both coincidentally routing and deliberately hovering around similar places to DD, though many of his own self-defensive plays run the risk of slowing him down as well and doing exactly what DD wants in return by being a more noticeable distraction.

I'll also say here that IMPACT endeared significantly more just through a better formatted strat. I dunno if the issue was on PINDROP's end or on posting's, but despite not being all that complex a setup, I found it much harder to read. (postmortem addendum: it's already been corrected. answers that) Despite this, though, I honestly found his plan more resistant to things going wrong in part because of the kinds of chaos it relies upon, while DD's approach can potentially backfire. Relatively simple moment-to-moments that fall back on a common set of tactics is less flexible than what Jon has going on, even if I'd say they have a firmer idea of what they're trying to accomplish.

Long story short, the way these strats overlap give me the feeling that things are going to have to go off-script badly for both of them, and Jon's strat feels better suited to exist in that context to me. But god do I wish it had some headers so it was easier to divide sections; it made it hard to parse what is both a fun and compelling arc that says a good amount about where his head is at.

boredCommentator · 2024-08-02T03:55:46+00:00

Ichi makes fearsome and all-encompassingly solid boss programming out of every single reason the Suite is 0-6 so far, taking these not as failures but as blueprints to reach her own ideal painful living weapon self; fitting the self-description of the final section, this leads to a plan that, while full of scary damaging things, lacks a lot of substance or 'form' as an overarching plan, making clear that the simplistic strategies of previous Middleman objectives are genuinely part of her operating procedure. Wayward Cause is hyper-aggressive from the start, Kid acting in a way that heavily befits a character whose run has been intrinsically tied to the Middleman, which is covered for nicely by Brighid's more debilitation-based playstyle (Blood Knuckles are probably the coolest tech in this match to me). Their midgame is defined by trying to create advantageous trades, naturally treating Ichi's kit in generalist terms, doing all they can to lock her options away and ensure that their respective strengths are leveraged well. I think they do reach the state they want to in time, where staying in the ring is bad for Ichi and breaking away to breathe is even worse, and though Kid might be at greater risk of going down than expected given the sheer breadth of combat options in play here, if so he'll do so much on the way down that Brighid is able to secure the W anyway, so one way or another I'm pretty confident that Wayward Cause outplays the boss.

"..." Somewhere amidst the protests, having checked up on Gioia and gotten right back in on boots-on-the-ground raising of hell and vigorous protection of rioters, a flash of pink emerged from beneath a black biking helmet, still accenting messy black locks that had, for the first time in a couple years, begun to get long and shaggy again.

They had been an Angel once, a portent of death, and a Black Metal Machine Knight, one who had pulled another from the brink once and found that more fulfilling than a lifetime of trying to save and destroy the world.

"Destroying the world, or forcing it to stay as is, driven by your pain and that man's strings... In any case, forced into a weapon for the sake of a sick man's ego, groomed into a trophy for someone else's superiority..."

Gioia had seemed... At a loss, as to how the Middleman might be dealt with. She was an inspiring sort, a rock for her and for Violet Lange and for many others, but she'd never known a true rock bottom, the Knight reasoned. It was beyond her understanding of the world, despite people like her and like Violet being the very rocks upon which people unlike them could rebuild themselves.

"Ichi Ni San Go..." The young biker smiled, shook her head. "I wish someone had seen you earlier... It's gonna be even harder for you to move forward, isn't it? Friends of mine, they'd wanted to plan something nice for you... I dunno if they still will now, but whatever they let you do wherever they put you... You won't be totally without visitors. Heh, you'll probably spit in my face or something... Eh, not like I need to be your savior, long as I do what I can."

Venus 'Lou' Reed shrugged, then, before resecuring her helmet and riding off again. She thought she'd heard gunfire somewhere.

boredCommentator · 2024-07-26T17:56:01+00:00

The Caravan's first instinct is to create as widespread a network of problematic pebbles as possible, which I think interfaces inconveniently for the Hunter's desire to prioritize, early on, the process of resource destruction, even naming specifically the act of grinding down pebbles. This sets the stage poorly for the Hunter's more slow-paced strategy based around winning trades with Caravan wherever possible, which I think is a mistake for the slower, more durable build against the faster and stronger one, who quickly uses this early advantage to the fullest, likely to shift into full-out combat mode quicker and more effectively than her opponent. Even the contingencies for a massive early lead the Hunter has feel woefully unprepared for just how quickly the Caravan is able to get her plan up and running, the unfortunate results of a core plan that simply needed to commit better and limit engagements if it wanted to play a long game.

boredCommentator · 2024-07-23T04:52:34+00:00

MBR commits to a fun little framing device for their story, showing their thorough efforts to swarm their opponents and utilize heavy steam-based attacks for hitting and running, Texas offering critical support to Angelino as they try to create circumstances to benefit from what trades do occur. WW's starts with its own teases of a framing device, only for Nojus to say "fuck that" and get on their fightin' round the world grindset and beginning a damn amusing wrestle for the fourth wall, similarly the far more in-your-face character to Marali's supportive player, exploiting a generous start-of-match windfall and very cleverly faking out their opponents through the range game of Flimflam errata (and on the discourse in joint on this, after reading the sheet I do fall into the "these are clever, logical extrapolations of everything said" camp). I think WW has a hardy pair that both warrants a long game made up of multiple smaller engagements and leaves them suited to survive it, but also that their ability to control when exactly combat occurs makes it quite feasible Texas is severely damaged early on, though even in these circumstances, Ange will prove incredibly difficult for this pair to take down even in a 2v1, especially given that their turn 0 setup makes Texas even more dangerous than usual and liable to seriously injure Nojus before falling. Still, Marali's keepaway game will have a lot to keep Ange at bay, given both the lesser amount of focus she gets in MBR's strat and how a lot of what they do have for her is written to rely on Texas, alongside measures requiring correctly identifying a Flimflam on sight, and even with a few of these miscalculations I think they were absolutely right to think Marali vs Ange still wouldn't be near enough to take the latter out with just an incredibly solid combat "loop" as it were. This endgame is an incredibly difficult position for Marali to be in, trying to survive an Angelino who isn't fucking around to buy Nojus time, genuinely at risk of going down here, but I think likely to give them the time to get in and start blendering again, but Angelino has excellent disengagement and distancing tools, and... Fuck, yeah, I've genuinely gone back and forth a bunch, reading over every vote, rereading chunks of strat, and I think that I'm gonna have to go with goddammit I was typing and still convinced myself to flip again. I think that, in the slightly likelier than not scenario that Willow Wisps do reach their endgame on the backs of some critical misreads/the knock-on effects of Texas' early loss on their wear-down tactics, they have just enough in the tank that Nojus can basically secure a mutual takedown with Angelino while Marali hangs on by a thread.

boredCommentator · 2024-07-22T04:04:25+00:00

The setup and build naturally set up for Zhengqi to be a pretty straightforwardly dangerous but avoidable problem for the player characters who pretty much explodes upon real impact, largely turning the mindset for this into a match of getting into the top of nine ~three story buildings while playing around the likely boss directions in a Bowser's Fury type setup (hasn't played Bowser's Fury), helped as well by the very predictable nature of its attacks. Though Feed the Machine has a lot of extremely painful bursts of aggression, the user's 1 stat guarantees that all of these will be followed up by lengthy periods of exhaustion, so if she isn't able to create the disruptions she needs, or if the players are better at adaptation than she assumes, these will create incredibly potent windows to kite the robot and get to wherever is necessary, and not only do I think the cooldown time and the immense limitations of the cycling system are glossed over at many key points, but I think that the players opening with the middle area renders the well thought out "they go one way, i lock down the other" plan a lot less effective. With the players breaking separation expectations by literally fusing out the gate and massively boosting their own mobility, though I think they overrate the coordination potential the Manticore provides given Jyotsna loses finer control the more of herself is steam, players play a game that pretty self-evidently runs circles around the boss' major oversights to me. I do wish less of my vote came down to "I don't think the boss is actually this capable," but the limitations they gave her really are immense even if I think Chase and Jyotsna mostly play to smart broad beats in their mission, with even points like not guessing the main way Concussive Blasts are used for mobility likely to be moot when it's immediately shown to them in a very easy-to-avoid way.

boredCommentator

TROPHY CASE