Board 8 > ~FIGHT!~ Crono, Juliet, Geese and Alice vs. Sonic, Tifa, Lara and Selvaria Bles

(+) Yeah! (+)

Between Sonic and Kirby I feel like every small creature that faces your team blindly attacks like a berserker
---

Again, Selvaria has no way at all to hit anyone from her starting location to my starting location. There's a reason why in her boss battle she has to start out at the temple and run closer to shoot you, there isn't a clear shot between the two.
---

well they are all furry animals.

Shh, know kirby isnt furry
---

No one on team alice really can pin him down. Like he wont take anyone down but hes a super juisance

Fuck i aint changing that typo
---

greengravy: confirmed anti-semite.
---

All he really has to do is get tripped up by anything (like Alice's ice wand, Geese's Reppukens, etc) and he's probably dead. Any of these guys except maybe Crono I guess are killing him in a flash once they get to him.
---

To say nothing of Alice's splash damage with the Blunderbuss. She only has one shot of that, but it makes a very large kaboom. That seems like it would screw up Sonic's day.
---

Sonic as disruption as a solid plan, but remember the point of that isn't how many ways Juliet & co can kill him (if they can tag him). It's all the free damage Lara and Selvaria are laying down from a distance whilst Sonic is zipping around them
---

Lara has a couple of pistols and a bow. If you look at the terrain and put my people up on the high ground, there is basically no way she has any sort of shot without more or less crowding up on them.
---

Her bow is basically her sniper weapon, so there's two fighters capable of accurate ranged damage, and in addition to her armour-piercing regular arrows, napalm and explosive arrows both have significant splash damage. The range probably isn't quite as long as Selvaria's, but if a melee heavy team still has to reach her, does it really matter? She's still getting several volleys off on fighters that aren't equipped to cope with it.
---

Because my team is starting out in more or less a fortified position up on the hill and there is zero reason to actually go anywhere that would even be open to a bow.
---

Well, I mean I know Selvaria's team are technically the attackers here, but they're not exactly under any obligation to march into a more convenient range for the enemy team either. Selvaria is the most tactically minded fighter here, and on her own terrain to boot; she won't be playing into the other team's hands. There may be more cover up the hill, but Lara can even flush them out with her aforementioned tech arrows if necessary.

I think if Juliet can get close enough to Selvaria to get the upper hand on her, and Alice wreaks enough havoc in range they can pull it off, but it requires too much on balance to go their way in the lead-up for it to be a likely outcome. It's far more likely that Selvaria just overpowers from range and Juliet never gets a chance to close the ground she needs to, in between guns and Sonic being a pest.
---

This is also ignoring that Juliet has feats of being able to parry a chaingun. So I *kinda* doubt Lara is getting anywhere near her with some pistols and a bow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozaQ55vFZpk&t=8m0s
---

And that's ignoring the fact she can't parry explosives. Or napalm.
---

I've played Lollipop Chainsaw, I know exactly what Juliet can do. She's acrobatic and has a fearsome chainsaw that she's capable of deflective automatic fire with. She's very good. But she has no feats dealing with grenades or napalm.
---

I'd argue she doesn't really have feats of dealing with a chaingun either based on that clip. Dodging one, maybe, but parrying only the very tail end of it based on sound effects + what she's doing, which while impressive is misleading considering the implications of parrying a chaingun.
---

He's shooting right at her, she's swatting at the bullets and they're going "Clink" while not hitting her. Dude
---

Flowchart is

- Guy comes flying down, shooting
- She does flippidoos, bullets shown hitting around her feet, no clangs
- She swings her chainsaw around a bit, you hear some clangs, dude stops shortly after

Only the very tail end of this could she be argued to be parrying it and at that point the guy's accuracy is already kinda dubious

Like she definitely parries some of it but it's not like the same kinda thing I think of when say, Ryu Hayabusa is cited parrying a chaingun.
---

I am specifically noting the third bit of that, yes. His accuracy clearly can't be that in question if he's shooting and getting deflected right in front of Juliet (ergo his bullets would be hitting her if she wasn't going all Jedi on them)
---

nice lopen conceded his point

this makes me happy.

anyway i feel like range really does super matter here. like i kinda see selvaria one shotting everyone on the enemy team with the lance. if it connects. alice's not gonna be hit i think, but the rest are kinda sitting ducks. on a more neutral terrain i think alice super fucks up selvaria and it isnt even close.

abstaining until i take a look at the terrain but i vaguely remember watching selvaria vs gunther and the goon squad behind a tank but its been a while.
---

She literally *can't* one-shot Alice, mind. That will just set her off into Hysteria, then she gets 20 seconds to regen her health by hitting things with her hammer
---

oh yeah hysteria mode is a thing too huh
---

Alice just seems like a really hard counter to Selvaria in general here. She's never going to be hit with the big charge lasers, she'd teleport clear pretty easily. She can stuff up the Ruhm with ice barriers, at least temporarily. She can shrink herself to make herself a really small target.

In the event she does get killed, she doesn't really get killed, she just gets a half minute or so to whomp whoever is unfortunate enough to be close
---

having actually looked at the terrain theres actually cover who the heck lied to me??????

i mean its cover here and there but it does exist <_<
---

I said that way back in my initial post. This terrain is pretty much set up to give *Selvaria* a hard time since it's where her boss battle happens and they don't want you to get murdered that badly. So you get lots of places to duck and avoid her shots.
---

to be fair i actually never read opening posts and i really skim most leaders actual content because lets face it we're all liars when we wanna WIN

"The Answer Lies in the Heart of Battle"

now it really comes down to: can alice and juliet kill selvaria and lara with sonic being annoying

(my crono and geesuuuuuuuu respect are low, and unknown so i presume geesuuuuuu sucks here)

i have no answer right now. sorry
---

I feel like Crono could actually kill anyone on the other team not named Selvaria if he got a Luminaire off. Not a one of them are exactly sporting beefy magic defense and that shit hits like a ton of bricks. Plus AoE lightning seems like a nice enough way to screw over Sonic.
---

Geese, well. Depends on if Selvaria decides to get stupid and melee like she did here. Her swings are utterly PREDICTABOO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YzzdjSR5sM&t=1m50s
---

I don't think I conceded my point as much as clarified it! Like I said in the original post that she parried at the tail end-- but to me that's not very impressive nor does it imply she could do it for a sustained period. Dodge, maybe. But maybe not against a better gunner.
---

So why's the opening post say DC's team are the attackers?
---

KJH posted...

So why's the opening post say DC's team are the attackers?

This is a combination of M4's terrain bidding system and Draft Mercs giving defined starting positions, so it's never really come up before. I'm the designated attacker and I also won the terrain bid, so despite it being Selvaria's terrain, she's starting in the attacker position. It probably makes a difference here, but not to a match-turning degree.

To summarise, Alice's team really wants to get into melee range, but for them to do so without sustaining serious damage, or even getting outright wiped, requires Selvaria's team to essentially march up the slope and walk right up to them, which is clearly an illogical thing to do. They may not know who's on the other team, but there's no way they'd sacrifice the range they know they have by gambling on the unknown.

Where Alice starts is somewhat fortified, but they can't stay there forever; and there simply isn't enough cover on the map for them to safely approach without taking fire. Juliet is her team's best bet of beating Selvaria, but she needs to get into melee range first, and whilst she's capable of deflecting bullets, there's nothing she can do about lasers, napalm or explosive-tipped arrows. Crono and Geese are in the same boat. Alice has a lot more tricks up her sleeve, but dodging fire on the approach to Selvaria whilst simultaneously trying to keep her teammates alive is too great an ask. She'll have her brief period of invincibility, but by then it's likely too late for her to accomplish much with it.

Basically, DC's argument is predicated too much on the "if" factor. IF Crono gets close Luminaire will do work. IF Juliet gets close enough she can out-melee Selvaria. IF Alice plays perfectly she can close on Lara mostly unscathed whilst still having a team to back her up. IF Selvaria decides to be an idiot she could give up her team's biggest strength and willingly close the gap between the two of them. IF Sonic and Tifa's support work buffing, disrupting and scouting achieves nothing whatsoever then they're more or less dead weight.

The most likely scenario is simply a case of a team with strong range whittling down a melee focused team on a terrain with not enough cover for the latter to safely approach. Alice is the best fighter on her team with the most ways of coping with projectiles, but in between all that as well as Sonic being a nuisance trying to put off her dodging and ice-casting, what good does it do if her team is all dead, even with 20-30 seconds of invincibility near death?
---

While your argument is predicated on my team beginning up on a well fortified hill, yet deciding it's a good idea to leave that hill and march down into a far less cover-prone valley. We can play the Stupid Team game both ways.
---

Although as Gravy noted, the valley isn't even nearly as open as arguments would have it out to be. There are buildings, trenches and generally things to get in the way of bullets. Not enough to justify actually leaving the hill/temple/bunker area, but it's there.
---

It isn't stupid, it's necessity. How is Alice's team ever going to win if they don't move from where they start? She has her team's only ranged attacks, and if she's peeking out to see where the enemy is, she's open to being hit herself.

I think the trench warfare "wait things out to a stalemate" scenario is silly, so if it's between a team with strong range walking into melee range, or a melee oriented team walking into the only range they can be effective from, the latter is much more likely.
---

She really doesn't have to "peek" out of anywhere, given A) she can literally make herself tiny enough to fit in a keyhole, so if she wants to play scout and see where the other team is from the hill they aren't likely to spot her, and B) she's armed with two types of grenades, the Catnip and the Eye Staff's vertical laser rain. If they're below and she's high up, she's capable of hitting them from a position where she isn't standing in the way of a machine gun.
---

She can't attack whilst shrunken though, so are you claiming she'll be looking for them whilst tiny and then shooting blind with a rough idea of where they are (if she spots them)? Because if that's the strategy, Lara and Selvaria can just concentrate fire on where the shots are coming from. Cover isn't indestructible in a realtime environment, and Lara/Selvaria can rain explosives/napalm a lot easier than Alice can, given the large drain on her willpower (MP) caused by the Eye Staff. Tea meanwhile, isn't destroying anything.
---

I'll also point out that if we're playing a team waiting game, I would bet heavily on Sonic breaking first. Geese has a proven track record of patiently waiting in high places for people to show up. Juliet knows enough of strategy to whip up a plan on the fly to invade Zombie HQ that involved drawing the enemy out with herself as bait, having her sister lay down sniper fire so that plan would not involve her getting killed, and meanwhile she had her father sneak in from an entirely opposite direction to do the real work.

Sonic meanwhile has games where you can straight up get a game over by leaving him idle, for he will get bored and abandon the game.
---

I don't think anyone is suggesting Sonic is going to be idle. He's actually a pretty great scout on a terrain that allows him to do so, such as this, so he'll be able to get a read on the enemy and then relay that to his team. Alice can't even prevent him from doing so, her weapons just don't fire quickly enough. Even the Octo-grinder does pretty piddly damage that requires sustained fire to kill anything in Madness Returns. Sonic isn't that squishy that he'd die from getting tagged by that if Alice manages to hit him. Even then he could return to Tifa for healing.
---

I'm thinking more that if Sonic decides to go roaming all the way uphill on his own to scout, it isn't just Alice he's going to be meeting. There's range up there to deal with between Crono's lightning, Geese's ki bullcrap, Alice's Catnip (Yeah, don't even try playing the "It's tea!" game. Alice's weapons operate on dream logic where that 'tea' somehow melts armor).

Again, this is the problem with facing a team tucked away on the high ground when the other team is not. Kinda have to make yourself open here to accomplish anything, barring the assumption that the other team is a bunch of mindless baboons and will make themselves vulnerable because ???
---

He'd be up there to have a look, not shake hands. You don't need to be within arm's length for that. I didn't mention any non-Alice combatants because they were never in the equation for hitting a Sonic that isn't there to fight.

I wasn't downplaying the damage her cannon can do either, just saying it isn't destroying solid stone terrain like explosives can.
---

I'm thinking Crono alone can probably tag him readily enough. For all the weird disrespect he gets, he really has some pretty good "You aren't realistically dodging this" stuff.

https://lparchive.org/Chrono-Trigger-(by-Leavemywife)/Update%2031/19-image020.gif
---

Perhaps, but I also don't think Lightning II is Crono's immediate go-to spell of choice for hitting a single target. Even giving him credit to consider it sooner rather than later, Sonic's already been and gone by that point.

But anyway, I think we're getting sidetracked by a relatively trivial matter. Battle knowledge is useful, and Sonic is better at getting it than Alice shrinking and observing from a distance, but it's hardly crucial. I still maintain Alice attacking from range is not a fight-winning strategy, especially when the other team is better at it, albeit from a less advantageous position.
---

They really aren't all that better at it is the thing. In a binary "Selvaria's gun is better than Alice's" sense I'd actually agree, but the problem is that at least two of my guys here between Alice and Juliet have the chops to stuff up automatic fire. Alice has ice walls, a reflector shield for the lasers, and essentially having to be killed twice. Juliet's block-fu can stuff up a chaingun (I firmly believe that video speaks for itself on that end).
---

In hindsight I also feel like Selvaria's skill as a general is greatly overhyped. She gets a lot of credit in-story, but it mainly seems to be for the way she can sweep up the pseudo-WWII soldiers in Valkyria Chronicles. Then she does things like walk into a trap by comic relief villain General Damon and nearly gets herself killed. I don't think she was so great at the strategy thing all told.
---

I don't really get how this terrain provides "cover" against Selvaria. Like... it's explicitly made up of materials we know her weapon completely shreds.

https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/valkyria/images/9/96/Barious.png/revision/latest?cb=20110308080530

Every one of those trenches is a result of Valkyrur lasers. As for a view from below straight to the temple:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QE3PoQd65qA/maxresdefault.jpg

They'd have to head forward to reach any cover, and even then, that's relying on half-destroyed adobe walls, trenches that got dug out by the weapon they're defending against, or bundling behind a single stone pillar that conventional explosives destroy in the map. The most they can hope for is that they obscure themselves from her sight, but defensively there's nothing going for them there.
---

And you really aren't seeing how it is physically impossible for someone on the far left of that shot (keeping in mind that the opposing team's starting location is actually *much* further to the left, down by the start of the map) to shoot anyone to the right of the temple, where my team begins? They would need a magic bullet that goes up, over the hills and then back down to them.
---

I mean I could see it if Selvaria were like, lobbing grenades from the position where she is in that helpful screenshot, but all of her weapons are straight ahead or bust. Draw yourself an imaginary line from where she is there in that picture and what she's going to hit unless she moves to somewhere better (and this is assuming she already has knowledge of where exactly the other team is. Which she doesn't). She will hit...nothing.
---

Or, you know, shoot through this cover. Seriously, how is it stopping the lasers when all over the field you have evidence they tore through it like butter?
---

Team Selvaria

- Sounds like a great terrain for Selvaria and scout Sonic
- Selvaria's WWII service might be exaggerated but it still sounds like she is the best squad leader on either side
- Tifa brings buffs and curing, almost always crucial
- I think Selvaria's squad has the raw power advantage to begin with
---

I'm actually playing that level *right now* and she can't shoot through any of this cover, at least not with the gatling lasers. She never uses the bigger charged shots, either because gameplay mechanics or because she never actually employs smart strategies in the game. Take your pick.
---