Tournament review: Ramza/Crowe vs. Beatrix/Nil

Due to excellent use of defensive abilities there was not a whole lot of damage going out over the course of the fight, but it was clear the Beatrix and Nil had an overwhelming aggressive advantage in the fight. The majority of Crowe's actions were used for buffing, and due to the pressure kept on them by the opposing team she didn't personally get a chance to put them to much use. The pressure was so strong that Crowe felt the need to use a defensive limit break. Ramza and crow had good teamwork, but didn't have the opportunity to exercise it in a meaningful, offensive way because it took them too long to build up their defenses, and even with that Nil and Beatrix were still putting out damage. Ramza used the opportunities given by Crowe well, but even then he was forced to take the assaults of both Beatrix and Nil head on, and while they may have pulled briefly ahead when everything was ready, I feel they would have been quickly overwhelmed had the fight continued to its conclusion.

This category was a tough call. Beatrix and Nil fought skillfully and appropriately with their available movesets, but so did Ramza and Crowe. I feel like while Beatrix and Nil clearly controlled the fight, that was partially due to a power advantage rather than a skill gap. Ramza and Crowe both displayed excellent and creative use of their skills to stall the overwhelming incoming damage from the opposing team. Great attempts were made on the part of Ramza to counter incoming attacks and help control the flow of battle. I can't help but feel that if they'd had more power reliably available to them they could have used that skill and creativity displayed to overcome the oncoming tide.

Beatrix is the star of this category, her writing was excellent, descriptive, I could picture everything she was doing and had no problems with any of her actions. I didn't have a moment where I thought "Well that's a little weird." or "Boy I sure wish I knew what that looked like." No complaints there. Nil and Ramza both worked equally well in descriptive writing and while I feel they both lag slightly behind Beatrix in that respect I was more than happy with what I was reading. With Crowe however, while I have seen the film from which she originates I have not played Brave Exvius and I shouldn't have to. Every time she used a reinforcement ability other than her limit break I found myself thinking that I really wish I knew what that looked or sounded like.

There were a couple of real sticking points for for me in regard to the match's sportsmanship from an OOC perspective. The first was Ramza's use of Stone Throw to detonate Holy early. This is not listed as a use of the ability in the profile and I have no reason to believe that even being imbued with magic they'd be able to do so, in addition, I have been told the ruling is that each stone throw counts as an action, meaning he dodged, used three actions, then countered, for a total of five actions. I feel a better use, a more reasonable one, would have been to go for the eyes or the arm with it, throw off the spell's targeting as they are explicitly used to harass and otherwise control opponent behavior.

The second was Nil's use of Ecliptic Meteor at the end of the fight. As written, if the spells Ultima or Meteor are 'Cast' it locks out use of Ecliptic Meteor. Wave of mutilation was used to produce both of these spells, and is explicitly written as a doublecast and not a spell-like ability. I don't have a problem with Meteor and Ultima being cast through wave of mutilation itself, because they are both mechanically treated as tier three (heavy) spells rather than specialty magic, and are not what I would consider to be 'true' versions of those spells, but imitations. I'm given to understand the player was under different impressions about Wave of Mutilation via discussions with staff and it needs to be clarified in the profile.

Crowe did not seem to properly acknowledge the function of reflect, which as listed in Beatrix's profile seems to be to reduce the spell's damage tier and bounce it back to the source. Aeroga would not detonate on it, it would move back to her and detonate on her instead of the intended location but due to confusion from the post I'm going to assume this was simply unclear writing on her part and she acted accordingly.

Nil's behavior in the thread is out of line with the personality as listed in the profile which is portrayed as meek, but it is in line with what was displayed in the previous tournament thread and I feel it was appropriately in character, clearly intended to be a character trait and should also be clarified in the profile. Both sides had failings but I definitely had more fun reading Beatrix and Nil's posts and I do feel like there's a slight imbalance in fairness due to Crowe's mistake, and with both sides have used abilities outside their listed used in profiles, so I have to give this category to Beatrix and Nil.