Make Your Move 12: Now with accurate title! MYM12 is closed! MYM 13 is Open!

[MarthTrinity]

Bartz Klauser (Butz Klauser in the Japanese version) is the main protagonist of Final Fantasy V. He is the son of Dorgann, one of the original Warriors of Dawn, and a woman named Stella. His mother died from cardiac arrest when he was young, and his father died three years before the game begins. On advice from his father, Bartz decided to wander the world.

Bartz is unique in the sense that, in Final Fantasy V, a major part of the gameplay was the Job System. Essentially, you could have Bartz and his fellow party members be whatever class you want (ultimately being able to master up to twenty two different classes or "jobs!). As such, Bartz is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, being able to do a little bit of just about everything! In Smash, this translates to...well...you'll see...

***STATS***​

Bartz, statwise, is more or less identical to Marth. He's your average young human male who is quite quick on his feet and easy to move around. His weight is a bit less than average and...well...he's Marth's stats! You all know what Marth is like, no?

***SPECIALS***​

Neutral Special: Rebound Striker

Bartz signature move is one of his most playstyle relevant as well! Taking a pitching pose, Bartz forcefully hurls a small (about the size of a gooey bomb) pink baseball forward (or diagonally downward if used in midair) at the speed of Samus’ Neutral Special. This baseball will fly forward (or diagonally upward/downward if you tilt up or down slightly while using it) at the same speed until it hits a wall, an opponent or an opponent’s attack. If it hits an opponent, this move will deal a solid 6% and low knockback. Once it hits something it will do one of two things, both of which are -INCREDIBLY- important to keep in mind:

1.) If Bartz's Rebound Striker hits an opponent or an opponent’s attack, the Striker will automatically fly back towards Bartz’s direction with a 1/4th speed increase. The damage and knockback of the Rebound Striker will also increase by 1/4th.

2.) If Bartz’s Rebound Striker hits a wall or another stationary part of the stage the Striker will automatically ricochet off the wall diagonally up or down (at random) with a 1/4th speed increase. The damage and knockback of the Rebound Striker will also increase by 1/4th.

Regardless of whether or not the Striker hits an opponent or a part of the stage, there’s something of the utmost importance you need to know about this move; once the Rebound Striker hits ANYTHING, the hitbox becomes dangerous to you! So the hitbox is now active to you too huh…? Good thing this move has such low priority; you can smack it right back at your opponent! Yep, that’s right, funny that Bartz can play the ultimate game of dodgeball isn’t it? If you hit a Rebound Striker after it’s been reflected, the damage, knockback AND speed will be increased by ½ from its original stats, struck back by an opponent again and the move will be increased by ¾’s from its original stats. And of course, since it’s Bartz’s own move…of course he gets the final hit in! After being reflected for the fourth time, the Rebound Striker will now do DOUBLE the damage and knockback (killing at as low as 80% now!) it originally would’ve done AND it moves at twice the speed of a normal Rebound Striker! To sweeten the deal, the move now has infinite priority! That’s right, after the fourth rebound, the Rebound Striker is not only twice as deadly, but it’s impossible to knock back, hard as hell to dodge and will even shatter shields instantly! This is of course all assuming that the opponent plays your little game…but the alternative to that is dodging a flurry of Rebound Strikers or taking a repeated 6%…who knows? Maybe the foe will get lucky and Bartz will strike out? Keep in mind that the ball will always fly back at whoever hit it before you and cannot hurt or be hit again by the person who “threw it” last. If the stage “hits” it however, the hitbox will be active to anyone and everyone! Only four Rebound Strikers can be on stage at one time and will not vanish until they’ve flown off the stage.

Side Special: Sonic Rainboom

The Sonic Rainboom is Bartz's ultimate ability in which he actually breaks the sound barrier by flying at such an incredible speed that both a sonic boom and a rainbow are created at the same time. Needless to say this attack is quite potent...if used properly. Upon inputting the command for this attack, Bartz will pause in place momentarily before a giant rainbow ring appears around Bartz .75 seconds later. This ring is approximately a Ganondorf high over Bartz and about Marth's width (coming directly from Bartz's center). If anyone touches this ring, they'll take 16% and high knockback. Likewise, anyone behind Bartz as the Sonic Rainboom forms will be blown backwards a good distance but will take no damage.

Of course, that's just the initial effect. After using the Sonic Rainboom, Bartz will rocket forward with his arms extended at a speed slightly greater than Sonic. Anyone who is in the charging man's way as he rockets forward will take 18% and high knockback. Needless to say however, this makes Bartz a nightmare to control properly...

Up Special: Star Uppercut

This is where the stars from the Job System come from! Wait, what?! In Final Fantasy V, three golden stars signified that you had mastered a job, three golden stars would be next to said job (your abilities for each job got stronger as you leveled up but you also leveled up normally). In Brawl, Bartz levels up by, what else? Using moves! Using a move will cause a certain number of stars (or zero stars!) to appear over your head. If you use the move enough times, you'll slowly level it up. Leveling up moves typically just causes them to do more damage and deal more knockback, but certain moves (like the Up Special) are directly affected by how much you've mastered it! Leveling up carries over between stocks and won't revert to zero until the match is over, win or loss.

Anyway, Bartz's Up Special is a powerful spiraling uppercut to the jaw will send most anyone to the mat! In Smash, it’s also one of Bartz’s most flexible KO moves as well as his prime mode of recovery. The exact recovery height, damage and knockback is all variable depending on how many Stars Bartz has obtained via the Job System.

Zero Stars: Assuming Bartz hasn’t obtained ANY Stars from his opponent, Bartz’s basic uppercut will be incredibly weak, causing only 6% and very low-low knockback. In terms of recovery, it acts sort of like Zero Suit Samus’ Down B vertical distance with almost no horizontal recovery. Obviously this isn’t going to help you recover very well…

One Star: With one Star, Bartz’s sword will have a faint bronze aura around it. When activated, Bartz unleashes a moderately powerful uppercut, dealing 9% and low-medium knockback. In terms of recovery, Bartz will travel vertically about the distance of Bowser’s Up B and about a Kirby width of horizontal distance.

Two Stars: Bartz’s sword obtain a glowing silver aura with two Stars. Upon use of Bartz’s Up B with two Stars, Bartz’s uppercut will deal 11% and medium knockback. In terms of recovery, this uppercut will boost Bartz about the distance of Ganondorf’s Up B vertically, and Diddy Kong’s Side B horizontally.

Three Stars: With three Stars, Bartz’s Up B is nearly unmatched, plus his sword will glow an awesome gold color! This move will deal a whopping 15% and high knockback…providing you hit with it that is. In terms of recovery, Bartz is given an EXCELLENT recovery option here, vertical distance rivals that of King Dedede’s Up B (albeit a tad shorter…) with just as much air control as the penguin king for horizontal distance.

Down Special: Chaos Split

Essentially, Bartz begins to slowly duplicate, an illusionary image of him appearing behind him. This entire process takes about two seconds for Bartz to fully split in half and, once he has done so, a fully formed identical duplicate of Bartz will stand behind the original. This Bartz acts sort of like Nana of the Ice Climbers, following closely behind the original Bartz and performing any attacks he does with a slight delay. This Bartz clone has exactly 45% stamina and will vanish if this is depleted. Alternatively, the Bartz clone can also be defeated in the same way as any other Smash character.

When mastered, the Bartz clone will instead appear directly behind the foe instead of behind Bartz! This means that the opponent must now deal with the real Bartz and the clone possibly blitzing them! This also makes gimp KO’s much easier to achieve thanks to the fact that you have what is essentially another set of hitboxes coming at the foe at all times; you don’t even have to be close to hit them! The clone however does have some limitations. It can stay out for as long as you please…but as mentioned before, it can be KO’d through two different means. If the clone is knocked airborne, it will perform its aerial attacks regardless of whether or not the real Bartz is in the air when it attacks (IE: Side Tilt will automatically be fair/bair in this case).

***SMASHES***​

Up Smash: Earth Ripper

Bartz places a hand to the ground and his whole body begins to quake as he pumps his psychic energy into the floor beneath him. Once the Smash is released, a huge chunk of the stage will tear up before him, dealing 14-18% and medium-high knockback depending on the charge. The obvious disadvantage here is that…well, for an Up Smash, it doesn’t hit above him. This attack is fairly laggy on the start up but is has surprisingly little end lag.

The obvious benefit of this Smash is that it creates a thick wall of ground that’s as tall as Ganondorf (regardless of charge) directly before Bartz. This can be used to soak up quite a few projectiles/attacks (25% worth to be exact) or…it can be used to give Bartz a wall of his own. Used in combination with Bartz's Neutral Special, Bartz will have a wall to bounce Rebound Strikers off at his will. When mastered, you can have up to three chunks of wall at a time.

Down Smash: Acid Armor

As you charge the move, Bartz will glance raise his hand skyward as he channels magic energy! Once the charge is released; Bartz will be covered in a greenish film! This is his so called “Acid Armor.” Unlike a Pokemon, it’s actually a toxic slimy film that Bartz summoned up! Gross! The longer you charge the move the longer it lasts; at minimum charge it’ll last you two seconds, at maximum, it’ll last you six. This is not stackable. Nasty start up lag but little to no end lag.

So what does Acid Armor do for Bartz? Well…any physical move used against him, meaning punches, kicks, headbutts, licks, whatever; if the opponent makes physical contact with Bartz, their attack will still connect but they’ll also take 5%. This also makes Bartz impervious to grabs until the armor wears off; any grab attempts will be met with instant breakout and 5% to the grabber. Be aware though; this attack is quite misleading; it won’t actually protect you from damage or knockback, it’s more for making the score even. When mastered, Bartz will also gain super armor equal to the charge time!

Side Smash: Katamari Kick

Bartz pulls his leg back as a mysterious, bumpy orb of green energy appears before him. With a powerful kick, Bartz boots the orb forward with tremendous force! Depending on the charge time, the orb will travel between a Bowser width and half of Final Destination in distance. Enemies who make contact with this orb with take 12-22% damage and be stuck to it as if grabbed.

If Bartz masters this move, the grab hitbox will grow increasingly harder to escape out of, even at lower percents and such making it an effective move to not only gimp with but to trap opponents in place (especially if they're trapped between walls or worse; another Bartz clone!).

***STANDARDS***​

Neutral Combo: Pipe Dreams
Bartz swings his pipe to the right, then the left and finally swings it over his head and straight downwards onto his foe. (First hit: 3% Second hit: 2% Third hit: 5%)

Your basic three-hit-combo; the first two swings of Bartz's Neutral Combo should hold your foe in place for the final overhead strike which causes the foe to flinch. Has the range of about Marth’s sword and very little start up lag. Best used for adding up damage quickly.

Dash Attack: Bull Gore
Bartz begins at the ground, kicking up dirt and snorting. After a second, Bartz charges forward the distance of Fox’s Side B at the speed of Pikachu’s dash and then gores his opponent upwards delivering 14% and medium/high knockback. On the downside, if Bartz misses with this attack he’ll skid to a halt and shake his head adding about a second end lag to this move.

However, there’s more to this move than it originally seems; by holding the A button, Bartz will hold the charging stance, periodically bending at the knees. This can this be good for mindgames as a delayable attack, but if released at a certain moment, this attack will become all the more devastating. If the A button is released the MOMENT Bartz bends at the knees, he'll rear back and thrust his sword forward before dashing ¾’s of Final Destination forward. This makes the move considerably laggier, but it also increases the damage of the attack to 20% with high knockback and great priority (as opposed to the mediocre priority it previously had). This move in either form acts as one of Bartz’ better KO moves despite being incredibly hit or miss…make sure you can pull this off before attempting it and don’t forget that you can always stall it. Bull Gore KO’s Mario from the center of Final Destination at 65-95% depending on whether or not you use the more powerful version or not.

Up Tilt: Wrath of the Lasestrygonians
Bartz reaches down and pulls a rock from the ground, hoisting it above his head before dropping it and letting it shatter on the ground below.

Good range coupled with decent knockback and damage make up the positive side of the relatively slow tilt. It does also have the advantage of having a surprisingly long hitbox, lasting until the rock shatters on the ground. Unfortunately it doesn’t hit to the sides or anything so you’ll have to make sure your opponent is above you while using it. Hitting an opponent with this will deal 9% and put them into prone. Despite only dealing damage to those above you, this move will automatically trip any opponents on the ground when the rock smashes to pieces.

Side Tilt: Axe Raid
Bartz raises a fairly large axe over his head before swinging his arm back, then forward again, rolling the axe along the ground. The axe will roll the total distance of a Battlefield platform before rolling back to Bartz. This entire process takes about two seconds and, throughout the duration, Bartz is unable to walk or jump.

Fortunately, Bartz can use his Neutral Special during this attack. If the axe connects with a opponent, it will deal 2% per hit (from beginning to end the attack is six hits) and minimal knockback. However...unless the opponent is at high percentages, they'll be carried along with the axe, bringing them back to Bartz (or at least holding them on the axe to be pummeled with lances).

Down Tilt: Grinder
Oh man do you know this one's gonna be bad when you see the name of it...anyway...Bartz stamps forward with his right leg. If this hits an opponent, it'll deal a poor 4% damage and flinching. It's not very spammable either so there's really no reason to use this...or is there?

If this is used against a downed opponent however, like one who was tripped or perhaps a victim to one of your throws...Bartz will stamp down on their crotch, grinding the heel of his boot into the poor downed victim all whilst laughing manically! Ouch! This deals a more more respectable 10% damage and, more importantly, leaves them writhing on the ground in pain. While in this animation, you're unable to down tilt them again for -MORE- stun...but you can down tilt them while they're down for a bit of extra damage before they get up.

***AERIALS***​

Neutral Aerial: Tetris Summon
Bartz summons a Tetris block (either the square, the T, the line, L-block or that other weirdly shaped one). The other block then flies at his opponent. Start up is near instant and mastering this job will actually increase the size of the blocks from Pikmin size to the size of a Party Ball. Getting hit by a Tetris block deals from 8-15% damage with varying degrees of knockback (for instance, the line piece will auto-spike).

Up Aerial: Catch And Drag Down
Bartz reaches his left arm upwards in an attempt to grab the opponent by the legs. If Bartz makes contact with a foe with his right hand, he'll grab them instantly and rocket towards the ground at incredible speeds! Upon making contact with the ground, the foe will be pitfalled and receive 12%. Keep in mind that this attack forces Bartz into a freefall if he misses. Lag is minimal on both ends.

The real fun however comes from when you touch the stage. Upon touching down, Bartz will violently pull them from the ground at the tap of the A button and hurl the foe upward, much like a normal throw. And…that’s all there is to it really. This part of the attack surprisingly deals no damage as the opponent regains control of their character at the peek of the throw allowing them to land safely. It does however provide a good amount of safe time away from your opponent. It will be a tad harder on those stall-then-fall characters though…

Forward Aerial: Solanaceae Illusion
While this move may seem simple at first, it has a surprising layer of mindgames to it. Pressing the input for this move once causes Bartz to swing Graceful Dahlia once over his head. If he connects, he'll deal 9% damage. Pretty simple, no?

Well, if one is to hold in a direction and tap the standard button again, Bartz will vanish after the first hit and strike from the direction you pointed the control stick in shortly after the iniital strike. This allows Bartz to effectively chain his Forward Aerial repeatedly providing the player can predict which direction the opponent will spot dodge and when. This can be cancelled by either not pressing anything after a strike (which also leads into potential mindgames) or by simply tapping the standard button to perform your Neutral Aerial. Regardless, with proper reading, this move can properly chain the opponent for some massive damage and hits.

Back Aerial: Flame Thrusters
Seeing that Bartz's recovery is insanely limited until he masters his Up Special, Bartz needs a bit of assistance in the form of his aerials! Pressing Back Aerial will cause Bartz to forcefully fire a jet of flame from his palm behind him. This will push Bartz in the -OPPOSITE- direction that he used the move (IE: Use bair and fly forward). Contact with the flames will deal 11% damage and moderate horizontal knockback whereas contact with Bartz himself will deal 13% damage and higher knockback. The flame is only about as long as Bowser's Neutral Special and will push Bartz about the distance of Captain Falcon's Side Special.

Down Aerial: Goodbye Cruel World
Sticking his arms out to both sides, Bartz smashes his head with both fists, dealing a solid 2% to himself. He then rockets towards the ground in an unconscious state (he falls faster than a metal Ganondorf). Any opponent in the way of him as he falls receives 12% and high knockback...at least you're on the ground now, right? Right? Still useless though...

***GRAB GAME***​

Grab: Magnes
Bartz extends out his hand and pulls the opponent in using Magnes. This grab creates a giant sphere of magnetic magic around Bartz that can pull an enemy towards him from up to two Bowser widths away. While not exactly the fastest grab, it can easily catch enemies off guard. Pointing the control stick in any direction after grabbing a foe will cause Bartz to throw them in that direction, dealing 10% damage and moderate knockback. This can also catch thrown items if timed properly!

Grab Attack: Fulgur Shock
Bartz electrocutes his opponent with a brief blast of electricity dealing 3% per zap. This covers the entire area of Bartz's Magnes grab and can be performed multiple times in quick succession before throwing the foe.

***FINAL SMASH***
***MASTER MIME***​

Bartz imbues his friends' weapons with elemental energy and attacks his opponent eight times. In order for it to be perfectly executed, four pairs of Control Stick/D-Pad commands must be input correctly in quick succession (IE: press in the right direction). He finishes off the Final Smash by combining all his mimicry weapons into the Brave Blade for a final attack. This deals an instant ko if the inputs are performed correctly and manages to strike all opponents in the match. If the inputs are failed, it will deal considerably less damage and knockback.

***EXTRAS***​

Up Taunt: Hail Ilpalazzo!
Bartz raises his hand into a salute and cries out, “Hail Ilpalazzo!!” He then proceeds to cough once and goes back to his normal stance.

Side Taunt: Potato Chip
Bartz takes a potato chip...and eats it!

Down Taunt: SSStylish
Bartz crosses Ebony and Ivory before him and says, "Jackpot."

Victory Pose 1: YOU WON!
Bartz stands on the victory screen in his idle pose. A large window appears behind Bartz, displaying his “earned experience.” Various random (albeit, unimportant) stats will appear on the screen such as “You earned 5 Happy points!” “You earned 2 Friendship points!” etc.

Victory Pose 2: Crossing Addiction
Bartz's sitting on the ground with a huge beard playing Animal Crossing and says, "Why do I love it so much?!" as he begins to shake. (Awesome Crossing)

Victory Pose 3: Modest Victory
Bartz places his hands on his hips and jokingly states, "You sure gave me a run for my Gill."

Victory Theme: Final Fantasy Fanfare

Spoiler

Made in just over an hour...Bartz is obviously a conglomeration of all a huge amount of my sets. I'm well aware that many of the moves have no real changes when Mastered but what started out as a joke turned into something I had a lot of fun with. Bartz has...a weird playstyle and it seems mostly thrown together...but I'm sure you can see some clear interactions despite the goofiness. Just wanted to have a little fun, this obviously won't count as it's posted after the bell even so yeah, just enjoy it and don't take it super srsly as it's really not meant to be!

 

[ForwardArrow]

Set by n88, not me, who is unfortunately unable to post it himself

 

[Katapultar]

[collapse="Alice"]I had the liberty of previewing this set - it did not disappoint back then nor does it now (awesome picture at the bottom, by the way). In fact, it's a big improvement for your movesetting in my opinion, and a great way for you to end this long contest. Alice feels like a superior Zombie Master what with the mini movesets for the doll minions, she having a good functional moveset that supports them all the same - I do love the inner workings and interactions Alice's Smashes have with her dolls and the crazy possibilities opened up by the unique effects of the dolls themselves, D-Smash being among my favorite moves in the set for completely crushing foes with the right set-up (All the Smashes are great however). The only real complaint I can throw out to the playstyle is that the Neutral Special doll minions don't really flow all that well given how independent they are from Alice's interactive moves like her Smashes despite serving as defensive measures for Alice, and at times it can get a little confusing. You have a good, informative writing style with personality here, though there are times where I felt it can get a bit misleading when you mention Alice having good KO moves when another can do something similar or better, along with her melee attacks. Not attacking the set itself, nor does it deter me from it, but it's something that can be improved on a little.

Something I like about this set and especially marks the major improvement I spoke about earlier is just how relevant and interesting most the inputs are to set without going too overboard, keeping it all nice until around the still-relevant if meh aerials. The rest of the game is still great however, Alice and her dolls both being able to play off each other and wreck foes' shield despite that not being greatly pronounced in the set - still, with your explosive doll, D-Smash laser and the projectiles of your dolls let alone the explosive ones it's pretty easy to wreck up a foe's shield, and it doesn't feel too hard to KO a foe either when she has a fair amount of those moves for such a purpose. Alice comes very close to being an excellent set for me if aside from a few points, but is nonetheless a very good set and, need I say, a huge improvement for how far you've come in these 20 weeks. Great job, Froy.[/collapse]


[collapse="Bartz Klauser"]Surprised to see you suddenly post a set at the very end of the contest, even if it was deliberately too late for submission. You've always had a emotively fun writing style of which you can put to use here and do by having fun. The interesting thing about this set though, is how hilarious it is that Bartz just randomly rips off Rainbow Dash's signature attack and you call him a "she" in the move, and also just rip off other stuff of your moves like Big Mac's recovery...it all actually makes sense too, as Bartz gets to do a little bit of everything! All sorts of crazy stuff like using Shuma-Gorath's move for his Down Special, Silver's move for the U-Smash, and so on. No wonder you managed to make it so quickly - it's a fun little endeavor which I can't help but feel is supposed to be the mini for this contest which got no submissions (in which case you're a winner man!), but you managed to choose a character whom all those moves would feel not completely out-of-place for given the FF magic syndrome of which you probably could have very easily fooled some people had you not announced such at the end of the set. Nice to see you in action.[/collapse]


[collapse="Isamu"]If you keep this up in future contests, you're going to become well-known for making the last set of every contest as a Heroscape character, Nate. There's not much to say given the set was last-minute rush, but I'll comment it nonetheless albeit not too harshly, Isamu being a very basic ninja-y character with no real backstory. The Up Special is actually a pretty fun idea that takes a twist on generic recoveries, though its implementation does somewhat if massively hurt the set's playability without much to support it given foes can use it to their advantage to push this guy offstage - he can't be gimped this way given he'll go up if he's offstage, but he's in a hell of a lot of trouble on walk-offs and foes can exploit his helplessness to get a free attack given it's comparable to Shiek's Up Special. It doesn't necessarily make the character fun to use or fight, especially when all his attacks are close-range and it'll be triggered many times, especially when his fast attacking speed will actually work against him given he won't teleport during attacking durations. That said, you do have the grab if something that can hurt him when he has no way to reverse the effect aside from killing the foe. To be fair on all this however, this guy's just a tabletop figurine and his potential is bare at best when you have to be very open about the interpretation, and the idea is a very nice one, actually getting a bit of support with the grab if working together with the Neutral Special just a little. An extremely bare set, but alright for trying to get that last place in the contest - you've got 10 sets this contest man...[/collapse]

 

[Katapultar]

Doc Scratch
by ForwardArrow

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If there's one thing in the world that's overly satisfying, it's having power, which Doc Scratch has in the spades. Reality-warping characters have a ton of potential for great movesetting concepts, though they can be somewhat difficult to get a good grasp on without things getting out-of-hand, both in terms of execution and with the overall synergy of the character. In his set, Scratch manages to introduce a number of delicious concepts with his bullet hell and stage manipulation, of which are nigh-impossible to keep track of unless you decide to test the waters when fighting against him.

Doc Scratch has the base of an excellent set, and ForwardArrow never really oversteps his boundaries with him, but that hasn't protected him from various criticism, both necessary and trivial - not to mention they make the set work on a standpoint of characterization, a part in which the set manages to pass with flying colors, easily one of FA's best. Some complain about the idea of making over half the attacks similar in animation without any way for foes to identify move from move, but nobody can read the master, much like the ever-blank expression on his face - this also makes everything he does a surprise to his opponents, like a sudden plot-twist in a story. Others complain about Doc Scratch using a broom to make the stage slippery when he could just simply use his god-like powers to make it happen in a snap, but this is yet another portion of his character along with the series in which he comes from being showcased for what is possibly one of the most well-executed sets in terms of balancing comic-relief and seriousness into a workable package. And finally, the biggest part, many people complain about the D-throw and not only consider it irrelevant but also compare it to the Dutchman's Fly - this is the last move listed on the set, and it's probably one of the most important in the entire set from a characterizational standpoint as it showcases the very terrifying ability to open portals to other dimensions which would otherwise be absent from the rest of the set. This is also one of, if not the first moveset to implement grabbing multiple characters feasibly and actually makes it work for Doc Scratch's character despite he not having a Boss Moveset. And finally, the set is overpowered, which is perfect for giving Doc Scratch the feel of god which fits right at home with him.

Iced with masterful characterization previously seen in FA's other sets like his Praetors, along with concepts anyone can gape at (and be jealous that they weren't the first ones to implement into a set), this is a set one well worth your time to overlook and possibly cast a vote on - I for one, commend anyone who can make a working set for a character they love.

Ico & Yorda
by Violenceman

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You may think I'm returning to my old unjustified hipster route with the likes of Luffy and Sanders by me advertising this, and that is just another unflowy newcomer set not worth paying attention to amongst the big leagues, but...for once I can well and truly say my love for this set is fully justified. Hidden under the guise of a "plain" tag-team set is a unique experience you'll never forget, for Violenceman actually manages to make it FEEL as though you're in Ico's shoes, the actual need to protect your somewhat helpless partner Yorda through a brilliant mechanic that's presumably never been used before in tag-team sets: Ico doesn't take knockback or make you lose a stock upon being KO'ed, but his helpless partner Yorda does! You'd think that you could just be reckless via tanking with Ico without a care about the damage he takes, like a true protector, but his attacks are weak without the help of his partner - this is another gem to add to the already greatly established atmosphere to the set, as Ico's attacks are intentionally weak, harboring a great feeling of helplessness to them that makes you realize that Ico is not invincible and thus he's not as overpowered as his mechanic would suggest, and that players need to keep this in mind when using him. With more focus on protecting themselves rather than defeating their enemies, Ico and Yorda may not be the most exciting set to read if you want move interactions, especially regarding their mechanic, but the feeling you get from the set really goes to show that Violenceman knew what he was doing in all this set's design - if Junker Bot is the pinnacle of playstyle and flow of a newcomer set this is the one for characterization and set atmosphere. This is exactly what I was going for when making Yutaka - a different brawling, player-to-character interactive experience that lets you step into the shoes of the weak. Violenceman pulled this off for a tag-team of all possibilities, and did so with nigh perfection in that regard.

Alice Margatroid
by FrozenRoy

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You might know FrozenRoy as your friendly-neighborhood MYMer who popped in this contest and made himself right at home with the community, doing a bit of everything from posting many sets, comments and even participating in the minis along with chat activities. While some might end up liking Rattata just as much if not more, Alice is essentially a hallmark of just how far Froy's gotten this contest, a set that comes extremely close to going face-to-face with more major works seen by the big guns. Froy's always had a keen eye for detail and presence, using those talents of his to create a set that actually manages to have a great, interactive playstyle without ever going too overboard. In simple terms, Alice is a doll-maker who's able to summon either explosive dolls or ones that fire projectiles along with independent doll minions all of which she uses for her own protection yet at the same time being able to create elaborate schemes with them to obliterate foes stuck in the crossfire: the excitement really comes with the Smash attacks such as turning all your dolls into hitboxes or even sending a beam across them all that can hit foes multiple times and break their shields, all while taking the dolls' unique properties into account to create some lethal set-ups. What's more surprising is how Froy manages to keep adding spice to the set for a surprisingly good length of the set, very rarely creating a boring input or anything without its own stock value. Having moved into the community and adapted to it so well, seeing this great piece of work looked over would most certainly be a shame, especially given it's not only easily Froy's best set but a strong contender for the contest in its own rights.


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[ForwardArrow]

Old Man Geo​

Old Man Geo is my personal favorite Junahu set of the contest, for a fair variety of reasons:

The Geo Symbols may not be especially interesting on their own, though they can give Geo a wide variety of interesting and useful buffs and the dangerous cost of extending his hitbox. What truly sells them though, is that with use of the Geo Panels introduced in the Jab and Tilts, it turns them into an elaborate chain reaction trap the opponent doesn't want to set off. In conjunction with the afformentioned ability to use them for buffs, it creates an interesting and yet stressful decision of whether or not to attack the panels, one made scarier still by the fact that Geo can potentially create his own massively deadly chain reaction.

It's not like Geo's methods of manipulating this are boring either. He can swap around his position and the foe's position with Geo Panels, making it so he's not just straight setting up and then playing off that. Rather, he's constantly setting up, and always changing his plan until he fits his puzzle together and brings the foe to their demise. Plus, he can make the foe function as a Geo Panel too, which makes it impossible for them to attack Geo Panels of their same time, not to mention potentially making for a complete blast in FFAs.

Aside from that, Geo is very very true to character. He's all about creating wacky changes to the battlefield and then taking advantages of them in a similar way to how Geo Panels work in Disgaea. He's making his puzzles for the foe to solve, and all the while making things more challenging for them with his teleporting abilities. It's a very nice little blend of character and playstyle, and who can't appreciate that?

More or less, don't skip this set just because it was posted near the end of the contest and you want to vote, as it is both a unique and fun experience that's far from acceptable to miss.

 

[MasterWarlord]

BEAR HUGGER BOWSER

Junahu cap, Kat? Junahu does not like –Pummel KOs-, let alone characters who win by not interacting with the foe at all. Before you object and bring up Etranger, Etranger is still actually working to take foes to the blast zone – something Junahu is very adamant about. Pooh does not just win through an unconventional means, though, oh no, he does not interact with the foe in any way. Pooh is no better than those Late MYM 5/6 characters, like MYM 6 Gluttony or Ocon/Wizzerd Paper Mario, who want absolutely nothing to do with the foe and just want to win the game by racking up a mechanic. Whereas most characters rack up a mechanic to use to kill the foe, though, with the set-up being the boring part, the mechanic here directly takes you to the results screen once it is filled! No pay-off, just a long, boring match of ignoring the foe to rack up your mechanic. This is as flowcharty and un-interactive as movesetting gets.

The justification, of course, is that Pooh is a peaceful character/incapable of fighting, and thus should not fight. Guess what? Kat and Silver have to make sets for armies of worthless anime school girls who can’t/have no reason to fight, and they make them fight anyway, because we’re putting them into a fighting game. Some characters who can’t fight, like Von Karma, fight through unconventional means, but they still are ultimately fighting one way or another. Pooh Bear, here, isn’t fighting, and you make a point of the fact that none of his attacks do damage throughout the moveset. A shove from a bear that does a lot of knockback does no damage? A pummel that looks plenty as brutal as the other innocent brawl pummels does no damage? A 7/10 weight bear curling up into a ball, falling on you and knocking you into prone does no bloody damage?! If you’re willing to have him do actions like this, you pretty much have already killed the point of not having him fight.

Now, the next argument that can be made for this insta win mechanic is that Pooh has minimal potential, in which case I would still say he’s a better physical fighter than the likes of an anime school girl or an elderly lawyer, but none the less, you have introduced a source of nearly limitless potential with the narrator. Drawing trees, bees, giant honey pots, scarecrows, and –pitfall traps- of all possible things makes it practically feel as if the moveset should be entitled “Winnie the Pooh Narrator”. Pooh almost comes across as a minion to him in the moveset, what with how little he does and how useless those things are.

Also, David, if it wasn’t for you, this moveset would never have come to be. Good job.

LUDICOLO REMICKS

Filling the stage up with water is something we’ve very rarely seen, and the way you’ve done it in Jeanne even more rarely – leaving the engine largely the same underwater with but a handful of changes leads for plenty more potential for interactions, and you take full advantage of it here. Sword swipes that create ice sculptures over their hitboxes underwater is brilliant, and you take decent advantage of it here, especially with having the sculptures float up to the top of the water. I –really- like the ability to freeze yourself with the ftilt to increase your weight and float upwards underwater on demand, too. Undoubtedly, one of the strongest sets this contest conceptually.

Things could just flow better, given the potential of the stuff you introduce, and the set is too tacky (Bthrow, dthrow, ftilt, jab, dsmash, usmash. . .) to really go for that appeal Sayaka and Shana have with their simple yet wildly interesting sword slashes. FA really seems like the person who should’ve made this set, what with you not even seeing the potential of such an approach what with your hatred/incompetency at doing more in-smash stuff. While number cruncherish, the set is also pretty broken, with the dair seing a 1.5 platform wide solid projectile downwards that spikes and cannot be broken without dealing more than 15% to it. Freezing yourself underwater, as amazing as it is, is also pretty broken, given it makes you almost infinitely heavy and gives you a perfect, nigh ungimpable recovery. (Just make a dair platform below you) I also feel her game before she gets her water up is rather boring and not enough thought was put into it, given how much of her MUs will depend on whether or not she can get it up.

This also feels like yet another set with a thrown in shapeshifting aspect because of it being baggage that comes with the character, and I again don’t feel it particularly succeeds or contributes much to the moveset. As such, I do not particularly like the boss mode either.

TRAVIS

This set does enough unique things that it feels a bit demeaning to put it in this genre, but it’s the best way to talk about it – I’m talking about that Dirty Bubble/Swalot/Victreebel thing where you use your body as a solid cage to contain the foe. Travis has this, but he does not utterly destroy foes inside of him like the others, largely due to not dedicating his entire moveset to this and him actually being quite vulnerable himself in this situation due to his size inside the jars. In any case, even with his more limited actions here, they’re among the more interesting, and if you count Jarvis’ options to use on a jar from outside it they get even more varied. He doesn’t feel nearly as flowcharty and uninteractive as his brethren – the large stage inside the jar with the 3 platforms foes must climb up helps significantly.

I think the thing that helps him stand out even more than that, though, is his game to get the foe inside the jar, which is possibly even more interesting. While normally these sorts of chars have little to no flow for this part of the game and it’s just a boring balancing factor, Jarvis can teleport about between vases, making himself and/or his vases invisisble while flinging them about. While the concept of invisible projectiles isn’t entirely new, it takes on a whole new meaning with upside down jars as foes just suddenly trigger their landing lag unexpectedly, or more importantly fall down an invisible jar when tiny. Jarvis really is able to make the foe afraid of things that aren’t there more than pretty much any other invisibility character, and how the jars double as objects for him to teleport to, enabling him to continue his campy nature, is just gold. To think, I came into this expecting a simplistic minion set. . .

HOWARD THE DUCK

Do you want to know the reason why we put the Specials first? It’s so we can reference them in other moves, and not have nothing but a couple of generic melee moves to go off of. Darkwing’s standards, smashes, and aerials have almost nothing to do with his real gameplan, even by account of the playstyle summary. Literally all of the playstyle flow comes from the glue bomb, the gas, and the grab/side throw. Nothing else from the set comes across as particularly memorable, save for perhaps the Meta Knight-esque Down B that lets him dodge and attack/go to the foe’s other side when a foe is trapped in a glue bomb. In any case, what you do introduce with the Neutral/Side B and the grab-game is entertaining stuff, dragging foes into/out of/through gas with the gun, and obscuring the glue traps with the gas. The many types of gas are also quite interesting and help to make up slightly for the other playstyle irrelevant moves. There’s definitely a very strong base for a playstyle there, and if the standards/smashes/aerials built on this base rather than being carelessly tossed away this could be a pretty good set. As is, it’s still a very large step in your evolutionary process.

UNIMAGINATIVE FINAL BOSS FROM DATING SIM GAME

Ameno Sagiri is a boss character that not only dwarfs Valozarg, but also the first to be killed via stamina and the first to be incapable of movement. This gives him a very unique feel immediately, and despite this you still manage to avoid the obvious limitations of this by letting him move another eye to a location of his choosing with the shield button. He has plenty of typical ranged magicy boss attacks to assault foes with, but the real highlight comes from something that we discovered with TAC in FFA match-ups, in just crafting a dream moveset by combining those of the other three foes. The Shadow clones are undoubtedly the highlight of the set, and when you can also buff the shadow clones with the shield buttons it’s a very fun create a super soldier sort of boss. Ameno himself doesn’t take backseat, though, and I very much like the varied options with the taunts you employ to let him attack alongside the clone – it makes a lot of sense for control scheme, given Ameno doesn’t move. This is really refreshing stuff, as nobody has bothered to take on a mind control focused boss ever since bloody Valozarg, the genre starter, back in the day. Your interpretation of this stupid boss battle and actually giving him his canon powers rather than generic magic syndrome is also something that should not go without mention, as while this char has plenty of power, it could easily have ended up as a generic elemental set or have been downsized to Bowser size, had Twilt or somebody got their grubby hands on this character.

WADDLE DOO

Red Tornado has a decent base. Use tornados to push people into other tornados. You yourself are a tornado, can turn your tornado into a non-sentient tornado, or can take over random tornados. That’s all good, but the moveset severely suffers from that meme-esque “Every move is Water Gun” from Kingdra, in how little moves are differentiated from each other. Almost the entire moveset counts as filler, and what’s most shocking of all is that the Specials even are clones of each other. This definitely feels like the rushed set that it is, as the decent base is ruined by the rushed execution. Given more time, this feels like it could’ve been one of your more Warlordian sets, especially when the character has no shortage of potential and there’s no real excuse for this execution outside arbitrarily rushed this set out for no real reason.

ADULT SWIM + TF2 = HAT

The main thing I was worried about with this character going in was that he would not differentiate himself from other pure set-up characters enough for capture the flag. You try to prevent this to a degree, by making his gear take up too much space in the base and giving him the teleporter as a way to move forward, though other characters with portal recoveries exist. The point that sold me is the fact that his single best quality, his dispenser’s healing, is fairly useless on people in the base, though, and with his fairly adaptive toolset he makes sense to go in on the attack as a support character. His flash grenade, which at first glance has questionable playstyle relevance, gives him a chance to cause some chaos and get some set-up outside the base, especially in tandem with his platform. While the sentries are a nice bonus, their main purpose is to try to stop foes who are attempting to reach allies healing by your dispensers. While there is some more situational stuff in there like using a metal hand in tandem with Spy’s fake flags, versatility comes across much better in Capture the Flag, when there’s so many more possibilities for what to do, nevermind how unexplored they are. It’s easier to forgive the occasional lack of focus because of this, though at the same time the lack of CTF sets means this set has very limited competition (And thus has very easy going), similar to Hazama in the boss genre back in the day. None the less, I was pleasantly surprised by this set and glad you avoided the obvious pitfalls. That playstyle summary was even half-decent. Better than what FA does.

WINNIE THE POOH: GIMPING EDITION

I came into this set expecting horrible, horrible things with a glance at the tagline, a set with no attacks that do damage or knockback (And does not win via some arbitrary mechanic). Doing this via gimping and defensive moves seems even more challenging, considering how heavily those have been focused upon in MYM. But somehow, you manage to make it work. Or rather, we both know exactly how – that Larxene-esque duplicate you make of the foe is the solution FA so blatantly ignored and is the most important piece of the puzzle. You can separate the duplicate from the foe via your many, many, many defensive moves or the grab, and from there all you have to do is to prevent a stupid AI from getting back to the foe as you gimp it horribly. This is far from un-interactive, though, as the real foe will be going out of their way to try to kill you while you deal with their incompetent duplicate. For a simple gimping moveset, this would be a death sentence, but Etranger has enough tools to deal with the foe attacking her. While her many defensive options may seem like overkill in a normal match, one must keep in mind that if she just focuses on defending herself in a 1v1 she still won’t be doing any actual harm, just delaying the inevitable. They’re actually necessary to defend herself from two foes constantly generating hitboxes, presumably one on either side, what with her wanting to drag one off the blast zone to their deaths. Duplicating the foe has almost never been touched on, and it doesn’t really need to be touched on again when it was used so well here.

Spoiler

Oh, and I actually enjoy you being self referential in your work. Arche’s Final Smash indeed. Let’s get a sense of continuity going, shall we? Not so sure how much the mainstream will, though, especially those that weren’t around back then.

JIMMY

Fuka’s the first set aside from –Swalot- to try a fly after the Dutchman, and it contributes something not in making a less generic arena, but in making the stage inside the fly completely customizable. Making the stage here customizable makes for more organic terraforming for the engine, yes, but it also makes more sense for a not super-exaggerated HMA, as the terraforming here is simply inside her mind, there’s reason behind it and it actually works with your bizarre internal logic and common complaints for a change. It has a decent sandbox EED Soldier feel to it with the terraforming, though it’s given more actual purpose thanks to the Warlordian spike through the stage stuff you have in it, even having a mechanic that was scorned in the bloody Prospector with foes digging up through the stage once spiked into it. The baseballs give some more reason for more varied set-ups, and the tacky effects FA talks about make sense largely because of the character – tackiness makes sense when it’s just a child’s imagination, and it didn’t seem particularly jarring to me anyway.

The main issue that killed this set for FA was becoming invincible by terraforming the stage to get to an inaccessible location before spam killing prinnies, something encouraged by the playstyle summary. While this would be terribly imbalanced and definitively unfun for the foe, this is not the case, as the blocks go back to their initial position once Fuka moves them. She can try to move them back into place to keep them there longer, but it’s rather hard to do that and kill prinnies at the same time, yes? While it’s great that you thought up a way to prevent this exploit before FA ever noticed it, the solution hurts the set in a way in that it makes it difficult to make nearly as many interesting set-ups as you’d want, as the stage rapidly deconstructing itself to default form is rather a pain. I suppose it could stay out for a while, since foes shouldn’t really let Fuka go off into an inaccessible location to start with (Though it should still obviously not be an insta loss), though it takes away from the (Very-well characterized) theme of the set a bit with just letting her imagination go wild in the dream world.

OMG

Thank you for that.

Old Man Geo is indeed a pretty amusing moveset. The elaborate systems you’ve created sound very fun to tinker with in this MYM playground sort of set you’ve skillfully crafted – lots of thought clearly went into how these elaborate systems interact, much less how they function on their own. Such a set is suited for your style of leading anything and everything up to the MYMer’s imagination, but with such a complex set more of this would be useful. In any case, I find the Smashes worse offenders than the throws, as the smashes and aerials are essentially “Oh, he has a juggling game” and nothing else. Now, I can obviously see where you’re coming from with how complicated the rest of the set is, but if you’re going to make those attacks more simplistic after the hellish complications you went through, give a better playstyle summary. That and. . .The smashes and aerials, especially the smashes, still feel very MYMish with awkward hitboxes and such, despite not contributing much of anything beyond juggling, so I don’t think you particularly succeeded in giving a more simplistic break to –players- with those moves. To readers, a much needed one, of course.

STILL NO ROOL SET WHOLE CONTEST

I’ve already told you most of what I was going to about Negi. The Down Special is the only thing that really sticks out as a criticism beyond general blandless/lack of focus. A move that does nothing other than a hard move interaction with another single move comes across very strongly against your movesetting style. If you don’t want to relegate it to the taunts or something, I think something you could have done if you wanted to keep the idea to make it more stomchable is just to simply have it affect more moves. Making the Down Special less awkward would be the main point, but it would simultaneously serve as a way to give the moveset some much needed spice without sacrificing any of the moveset’s vision statement.

Now, Negi’s comboing itself is fairly sparse, to the point that I think including a true combos section might be a mistake in how misleading it could be, but it feels at home in this sort of more technical moveset intended for direct implantation. In any case, Negi has more –potential- combos, AKA combos that aren’t actually combos, and this goes well with his ability to space himself and the foe. The teleport is the most important link to take note of in it transitioning him from his more long ranged combat into the short range, as well as his slow moving projectiles to aid his approach. Aside from teleporting as this is done, gliding forward gives some alternative.

It is certainly a much more well crafted moveset than other recent stuff you’ve made – there is an actual hand of intelligent design in it. None the less, this moveset is still too unfocused for my tastes, and it seems essentially to be a more toned down version of movesets like Gallade and Marluxia due to the vision statement. I find those two movesets more than simplistic enough to fit in, so I can’t say I’m a fan of this.

UNIMAGINITIVE FINAL BOSS FROM TERRIBLE ANIME

The game with the swords and preventing foes from dodging them reminds me a tad of Marluxia’s combos preventing foes from dodging the final hit, in hindsight, with Chakravartin attempting to knock the foe into the many swords (Fair) and prevent them from dodging the hit (Uair), but also being able to save them for later via his gigantic orbs and his time stopping abilities, obviously something not seen in that set. The set is fairly well executed with several different branches of flow, but these branches do not link quite as strongly as I would like on such an easy character. The terraforming in particular just seems absolutely bizarre to put on a character who is seen to have a lot more melee oriented abilities. When he already does so bloody much, do you really need to throw in some token terraforming into the mix? You don’t play with it all that much in the set anyway. Not to say that’s outright bad, as it still does lead to some interesting things in the set. The character in general is the main complaint, as he dwarfs even Amengo Sagiri in being such a no-brainer character – one would expect something a tad more ambitious or an overall goal, rather than using his potential as a crutch for the execution.

 

[The Warrior of Many Faces]

[collapse="Calvin and Hobbes"]A very odd character choice for you given your last two characters - it's a good improvement for you still when you're getting a grasp on these interesting ideas with the Specials. The moveset is also a surprisingly long read given how far you've gone in terms of having 2 sets in this one and multiple applications to the Down Special which transform Calvin.

I'd say this set showcases some breakthroughs for you in terms of movesetting when you have some legitimately decent ideas spread across the entire set, though they do come at a cost: although they can be argued to help the character, the extreme nature of Calvin's moves leave a negatively awkward taste in my mouth when you do stuff like duplication and transmogrification, but craziest of all turn the opponent into a frog to get eaten by a velociraptor! I can definitely understand the luck factor for characterizational point of view and large amount of things Calvin can do (I realize this was your intention when I got to the playstyle section), though it does drain a lot of synergy from the set when certain requirements for different things have to be obtained by spamming a move over and over. On the note of character, I do feel you put quite a bit of effort into this set given how lengthy it is and how many moves feel as if they're referencing incidents in the series (something quite habitual in your movesets), and you do have a sense of humor (even if it gets in the way when posting pictures for the Side and Up Specials and misguiding readers).

If I wasn't completely aware of it up until now all your sets have had good traces of characterization to them, if at times coming at a few too many costs to the natural flow of the set - not that you absolutely need such a thing given that didn't seem to be your focus in making this set. but rather adhere to what it means to play as Calvin and Hobbes in which I felt most of the elements you brought into the set fitted with their nature very well. This is a surprisingly good set for you I must say, almost easily your best in many departments (I'll take Doomsday over him though) and something you ought to be pretty proud of.[/collapse]

Oops. Maybe I did go a tad overboard with the extra pictures. XP
Well, I kinda went into this set expecting no synergy at all, since this is Calvin we’re talking about; the fact that this set actually ended up with some synergy rather surprised me. It was pretty much a characterization choice, because I didn’t think I could do Calvin and Hobbes justice otherwise. Okay, I couldn’t do Calvin justice that way. Hobbes would have worked, although that risked the trap of being too bland in MYM. Overall, I am pretty proud of this set, although there are issues with it that FA pointed out. Speaking of which…

Calvin and Hobbes
I must say, this was a set I am very excited to see, given the fact that... well, I freaking love Calvin and Hobbes. Have a ton of the written collections(not sure if I have -ALL- of them but that's absolutely possible) and the series was a huge part of my childhood. Unfortunately, this also requires me to be hyper critical of this set because I want this amazing character choice to be done justice.

I'm not sure I like Hobbes being controlled by an AI to begin with, though you give us a method of controlling him... but I'm not entirely sure I like this method. Calvin just being able to freely manipulate Hobbes and pretty much use his as a personal servant feels kind of wrong. It's not an easy relationship to translate into Smash, but it almost feels like it's master and dog here, which isn't really true to their relationship in the comic at all. They don't seem to care much about each other here too, given that Hobbes will stick around should Calvin die without so much as a glance and Calvin doesn't seem too reluctant to put Hobbes in line of fire while he sets up his own machinations. I mean... Calvin, when it comes down to it, is pretty protective of Hobbes based on the times when they do get separated. At the very least, the Up Special feels very right for both characters involved, as does Hobbes not wanting to get into the duplicator.

On the continued subject of Hobbes, I do not mind how he's handled on some level, given that he's not player controlled and wouldn't need a complex moveset as such. Calvin's plenty wacky as is. If I had to nitpick his set though, Hobbes always grabs Calvin by pouncing on him first, not lazily picking the foe up in his mouth. Aside from being an awkward animation, it feels... wrong to see Hobbes without a bloody pounce grab. You put the pounces in there, but even still. Very nitpicky but it's such a character staple I'm surprised you missed it. In terms of the actual set, while he serves as a useful bodyguard early on I'm highly disappointed you basically relegate him to the role of a minion once things start getting more chaotic. I mean, with velociraptors, leaf monsters, UFOs, T-Rexes and dulpicates flooding the stage, Hobbes himself becomes kind of irrelevant, save perhaps as a tool to fend off said monsters. Given how much I like Hobbes I'm a bit saddened to see him lessened to such a role while Calvin gets all the glory. That's not a good representation of him at all.

My mass characterization nitpicks out of the way, Calvin's set is where we start to see a lot of the set's good qualities as well. You have duplicates, wacky minions, transformations, and that sort of stuff feels suited to Calvin's deranged imagination. I also very, very much appreciate how all this stuff can backfire on him. If they served as straightforward minions that would never hurt Calvin, that'd be a huge mistake, given Calvin's tendancy to be undermined by his own plans. Plus it makes him stand out a bit more from your standard issue minion character, given there aren't too many others who make the minions lethal to the user. The input placement for some of these minions is awkward though. Randomly having a velociraptor cling to the time machine, while appropriate for the characters, feels more than a little ridiculous on a recovery move... and then you have another minion on the UP AERIAL. That is like the last place to put a minion, and that's something I could see you complaining about yourself. I do feel the duplicates here are a bit more fun than Kanade's replicas from way back when, in the set's defense, due to the fact that they are also massing armies that are dangerous to everyone involved, including themselves. It's incredibly appropriate too.

What I am not as much of a fan of is the transmogrifier. Yes, I appreciate you trying to fit in both that awesome little instrument and Calvin's 3 alter egos(my goodness looking at all the references you have, I must say I'm impressed), but they aren't really relevant to each other in story. The transmogrifier just changes people into animals, which is represented by the frog... which just feels awkwardly broken in conjunction with the velociraptors. But on Calvin, having it turn him into his alter egos isn't really true to how either of those things work in comic, and the random chance plus the fact that the transformations are unfortunately bland ultimately drags down the move quite a bit. Not to mention it's playstyle relevance is relegated to the role of a finisher... That aside, I do like the fact that you include Tiger Calvin, as both an ability to play directly as Hobbes and a reference to the comic, not to mention the fact that he comes up the most often.

I'm a bit mixed on the treehouse, given it functions pretty nicely as a camping platform and it's not completely safe if you want the maximum level of chaos. Aside from the fact that it does admittedly take away from a lot of the tension of having hostile minions(though at least you can't just casually spawn them up there), I think it's a bit preposterous to just randomly let him summon UFOs on that input instead once he has the treehouse out, absolutely no logic there. I kind of enjoy that the other Calvins get their own treehouses though, creating treehouse balloon wars or potentially spawning high up UFOs to screw with you, not to mention creating yet more annoyance for the opponent. On that note, it's kind of tacky that Calvin can spawn treehouses himself for no reason... but if you want really tacky, the Forward Smash is for you. Awesome tribute to the character to have such a wacky, non-sensical attack involving the Calvinball? Yes. Is the fact that it can create literally any status effect in MYM Brawl okay? I... would not say that. The random factor is too big, while it wasn't too unforgivable with the Transmogrifier or Time Machine velociraptor, but this can do basically anything and nobody has any idea what. Admittedly, that's the point of Calvinball, but this isn't going to translate well into actual gameplay, particularly competitive gameplay.

I sort of question if you could've interacted with the minions a bit more at points too. There's no way to create snowballs or snow goons without having snowy terrain... which Calvin really has no way to create, and I very much wish those minions weren't restricted to snowy stages. Speaking of awkward restrictions, while a nice characterization point Hobbes not attacking female foes is the kind of match-up screwing effect I can't say I like. You do have a lot of blander moves in here too, such as the grab game and aerials, which are admittedly hard to work off but at the same time could've made the minions themselves a tad more interesting. Then again, you do say you just want to make chaos in this set, but I find it awkward how you have all these extremely wacky creative moves and then a fairly bland grab game and aerial game.

As a final complaint, because I have not rambled enough already, the duplicates which I admit to otherwise appreciating have one key problem. You see, Calvin is already creating a lot to occupy the stage, between his own minor traps and mass minions spam, plus a humongous treehouse. With several Calvins running around... the stage isn't going to be able to handle it. You'll have every Calvin creating minions, dropping traps, taking away Hobbes' attention, building their own treehouse... it reaches a point where the match just devolves into complete and utter chaos with no room for anyone to breath, which while hilarious on the surface ultimately ends up not being fun for any party involved, plus being kind of game breaking. I mean, when the air is flooded with 12 F-15's and several UFOs and the ground has mass Leaf Piles, velociraptors and traps occupying it, there is basically nowhere for anyone to go save the treehouses, which are in constant water balloon wars and are still pestered by UFOs. It's frankly too much.

And I suppose when it comes down to it, I'm not fully satisfied with the playstyle itself either, given the awkward characterization involved and that it doesn't feel nearly as deep as a lot of other set-up characters manage too due to the lack of interaction and such. I think what it comes down too is that you tried to just cram too much into the set, putting in every iconic thing you possibly could from the comics to create a set almost overflowing with creativity, but it ends up kind of hurting itself in the end. None-the-less, I like what you were trying to do here, create something more ambitious and do everything you could to make a tribute to the character. I admit all these references brought back a lot of nostalgia. I don't like this set, but there's a lot in here that you tried to do which I found enjoyable, and all things considered the sheer wackiness of it is extremely appropriate for Calvin. That said, next time I'd advise you tone it down a lot, given that this seems to have been a bit too much for you.

You’re absolutely right on the way I handled the Calvin and Hobbes relationship in here; on reflection, it doesn’t feel much like them, although to be honest I can’t think of anything better. The tuna was my best idea for that. However, Hobbes serves to try to balance Calvin’s chaos… and never really succeeds. The fact that he’s less useful later on in the match is a reflection of that, although I probably could have done that better. In any event, though, Hobbes is still very useful for KOs, moreso than I had emphasized in the set. My mistake.
As for the random inputs bringing in minions, I have no regrets. There are only so many inputs, and since I refuse to put anything horribly complicated on a tilt… Yes, this probably could have been done better, but I like the way I did it here. And with the Transmogrification… well, yes, the frog is broken in conjunction with velociraptors. Perhaps I shouldn’t have given the velociraptors the insta-eat mechanic. The alter-egos, though, I still like, because I don’t think there really is a good way to translate these particular alter-egos into Brawl terms any other way.
The treehouse? Sure, him spawning one is random, but in Brawl, he warps reality. It might help to think of this as a fanfiction, one where he warps reality, because that was the mindset I seemed to have when I made this thing. The Calvinball? Tribute to the character was all I was going for; I honestly don’t expect anyone to use this to play, on account of that very good point you made concerning the overwhelming chaos involved when Calvin gets duplicated even once.
About the difficulty in getting Snow Goons… you’re right once again. Considering that stages like New Pork City don’t make sense for either leaves or snow, I should have given Snow Goons more opportunity to shine. And about the lack of a pounce grab… yeah, I probably coulda done that, although I still like what I have.
In conclusion, I’ll agree that this was probably a bit too ambitious for me at this point in time (if only because creating the set took for-freaking-ever). Still, I quite like it. Definitely my best set yet, if only in my self-estimation.

Set advertisements coming tomorrow, with any luck.

 

[BladeKnight420]

Well, if I ever had a chance to comment, now's the time.

​

The Weird Rider is a set you should read for his fun stuff with his shield generator. He can bounce around projectiles inside of it when his projectiles aren't strong enough to just camp with, and he can even throw himself into the mix by kicking off the shield. An apparent criticism of this set is that the aerials were just "filler" melee moves, but don't you think he'd need something to actually defend himself with when he's locking himself in close combat with somebody else?

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Xaldin has a great dynamic of leaving his lances behind him, floating in place, but then gains the ability to make them attack as if he was holding them! This is balanced by the fact that Xaldin without that many lances is much weaker, and his smashes and grab require extensive use of his quantity of lances. He also has some moves where he can pick up his spears on the fly, not having to painstakingly go and re-add it to his moveset. This gives him some more versatility, and lets him easily use both the ranged and melee aspects of his playstyle.

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Ameno Sagiri is a great boss and all, but Bouldergeist brings the ability to be KO'd by stamina to 1v1. With his difficulty in moving and resistance to being stunned, he may seem overpowered at first, but your real target is his hands. Once one hand falls, Bouldergeist is already quite crippled, and without either of them he'll be reduced to his sniveling true form in no time. Bouldergeist isn't going to take this sitting down, though, as he makes his stalagmites before throwing or stabbing you with them for a stage control game that's more than just some walls or a trap. Once Bouldergeist has no more use for it, it's gone, and he moves on to bigger and better things, such as his Bomb Boos. Using the Bomb Boos directly is quite useful, but should characters make the mistake of grabbing them Bouldergeist can attack them while they spin them around. Sometimes he's more simple when he gets down to business, but he needs these attacks when he's so slow for some more proper defense.

While these are not my favorite sets of the contest, these are some which I feel have been very overlooked.

 

[The Warrior of Many Faces]

TROPIUS
-By Professor Peanut

It’d be a shame if this set was forgotten, considering the awesome synergy here. Tropius is, first and foremost, a camper, and he’s darn good at it. Wind hitboxes help him keep foes off him, even without the possibility of throwing leaf storms or seedlings into them to further discourage approaches. Plus, he’s capable of healing himself with those bananas of his, which further help charge Tropius’s most likely kill move: that frankly ridiculous OHKO Solarbeam. Tropius is admirable because he knows exactly what he wants, but has a few different ways of getting there, keeping foes guessing as to which one he’s using. If nothing else, give this set a reread for some chuckles, because the good Professor took care to make the set humorous to read, poking fun at reader, set, and self alike.

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14184073&postcount=175

KERORO PLATOON

-By Katapultar

Easily one of Kat’s better sets in terms of characterization. I didn’t know these characters before the set, but I came out of it knowing them so very well based on their roles within the team and the general strategy. Well, except that random ninja frog. Actually, if anything’s bad about this set, it’s Dororo the ninja, since he feels shoehorned into the otherwise excellent flow of this set. The flow is, in a nutshell, organized chaos, since you have five little space frogs running around trying to win but managing to trip over each other in the process more often than not. I won’t deny that these guys would be hard to play as: lose even one guy (except the Dororo and maybe Kululu the mad scientist), and you find yourself crippled, deprived of some of the most basic attacks. On the other hand, this really feels like a group of closely-knit but undeniably insane space frogs, which is the real appeal of the set.

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14349765&postcount=420

LEXAEUS
-By Professor Peanut

Yes, it’s another Peanut set. This one’s appeal comes from the deceptively simple way you play Lexaeus. Basically, you use stone walls to limit where people can go, and then smash them with that enormous claymore. Alternatively, wall yourself off with said stone walls and give yourself the four seconds needed to give yourself a massive buff… and then smash them. The simplicity of it is its genius, however, because even more than Tropius, this set knows what it wants and is entirely focused on it. Heck, even the apparently random shockwave traps serve a purpose: once you’re ready to KO, they give you an excellent opportunity to do so. Either the foe runs into one and trips, giving Lexaeus time to smash them, or they avoid it and thus limit where they can go, which will eventually lead to Lexaeus smashing them. It’s exceptionally well-crafted and holds its own against most sets even without the complexity of say, Kang, Agiri, or Doc Scratch.

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14331956&postcount=386

 

[majora_787]

DOC SCRATCH

A set for an omnipotent being. Hooray. Okay, so. I like the way this set works out. Being heavily reliant on spatial shenanigans with distance-charged projectiles, stage expansions, and teleporting alongside tampering with traction, a weird grab game, and even sending opponents to a different stage... It's sort of a crazy set in its own way, and I like it.



MEDUSA

There's a lot going on in this set, I won't lie. I can see a lot of various uses for these things and it feels to me that if you were good enough, you could almost win matches exclusively with one individual special. Especially the Vector Plates. This is probably one of my personal favorite sets this contest, just for all of the crazy attack patterns you can pick up on a whim.



SMOT

... Oh boy. A Smady poison set. It seems pretty good for something relatively simplistic in concept, and I guess I have a soft spot for poison-spewing tank-blobs. Welp. I think it's pretty good for something that isn't doing anything too horribly out there.

 

[ForwardArrow]

[GLOW]Zasalamel[/GLOW]
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You could argue Zasalamel is on some level fairly basic prone abuse, but unlike with Warlord's other sets this contest it's not just a subtheme, there's a legitimate focus around it. What makes it far more interesting is Zasalamel's scythe's ability to function as a pseudo projectile, which isn't so much using to camp so much as it allows his body to function as an additional wall to abuse them with. More important though is Zasalamel's cog, which makes the prone abuse immensely more interesting as it contributes to a game of King of the Hill on a large, rotating object. This works enormously well with the scythe's ability to disjoint itself from Zasalamel, making it a bit less problematic if the foe steals your scythe as Zass teleports all around his cog. Not to mention that you can manipulate the momentum of it and perform all sorts of cool tricks off it with your Up and Down Smashes, possibly even going for a gimp KO as the cog rolls off the side.

What is certainly the set's selling point is the boss mode however. Prone abuse too uncomfortably lockdown oriented for you? Well try it when you have 3 foes to deal with, although Zass' advanced options for it in the context of the new, far more powerful cog as well as the ability to spread mass fire manage to make him plenty viable as a boss. You even have some fairly cool new exploits of how he works, such as the special Forward Smash, an orb which ricochets around and builds up power by either being hit or smacking into a wall, very useful in the context of Abyss' spiked ball of death. It also makes some neat use of concepts more limited in the base set, such as the fire on the Up Smash which is now available on every move, while that particular attack is replaced with something new. It's actually pretty unique once you look past the prone abuse and while not necessarily Warlord's best set this contest, it is still more than worthy of a spot on your vote list, and a fairly high one at that.

 

[Davidreamcatcha]

PROFESSOR RATIGAN

Ratigan is comparable to numerous MYM5/6 sets in that the vast majority of his moves are loaded with nothing but traps, to the point where Kupa creates special smashes for the sole purpose of creating more traps. However, Kupa prevents Ratigan falling into that crowd of sets by giving him loads upon loads of stuff he can use to manipulate his traps, stuffing them into a bottle to have some chain reactions set up as soon as the bottle breaks, as well as attaching them to his record player to set off multiple traps at once. This enhances his already-versatile traps, to the point where he is able to form mind-numbing chain reactions and evil plots against specific foes with ease. One of the highlights of the set comes from his minions forming the basis of his grab game, giving him a near-infinite ranges as his minions cover the background, allowing him to seize foes trapped in close corners due to his traps. His minions can stack effects that can benefit Ratigan and his plans immensely, using cartoony weapons such as cement shoes and balloons. Despite the massive amount of good stuff seen in this set, the choice to have Ratigan's Inner Rat transformation be solely restricted to the standard attacks, and the implementation of it in general, comes off as a tad questionable. Despite this, the set expands upon the chain-reaction trap concept that has been set up in sets like Strangelove and Marvin, finally making it a centerpiece. For this quality alone, the set deserves some praise. Perhaps you should sing your praises? After all, you wouldn't want to upset him. You know what happens when someone upsets him...​

 

[Rychu]

Rattata

Rattata is a set by our own MYM12 newcomer FrozenRoy, and of course it's for the lovable rodent that we all saw as our first wild Pokemon. Rattata is a set based around hit and run, but not because he's a coward, oh no, it's because he literally cannot take the foe head on. If he did, he'd be at risk of losing his poor little life. It's a great set, and one that really should be commended. Definitely a moveset in the top percentage.​

 

[FrozenRoy]

Comments!

The Sweet Fog of Illusion

First off, a minor nitpick: All smash attacks take exactly two seconds to charge, so it is not necessary to specify it charging as fast as a specify one.

Secondly, I am very amused that the team we came up for ultimate Ameno beating...was Yutaka, Rattata and Demyx.

Anyway, this set does a LOT of cool stuff. Bewildering Fog is probably my favorite move in the set, despite the fact it is not likely the best, for being an awesome representation of the move and the fog in the game. God's Judgment is also awesome placed in here. Indeed, more than the good gameplay, I think the characterization is my favorite part of the set. Ameno-Sagiri is a very hard character to make an actual GOOD set for and you pull it off brilliantly, obscuring the truth behind thick fog and things like remaking your shadows to truly bewilder your foes.

The gameplay brings a lot of fun things to the table as well. Not only can your summoned shadows copy the foe, but by purifying merely parts of them with God's Judgment, you can mix and match movesets of all your various foes, creating an analmaglation Shadow. You also get some other cool stuff, though Nebula Oculus seems a bit...strong. It seems a lot like a OHKO dragging foes to the sides, really. And a few of the attacks have some rather large charge times, all things considered, though that is pretty small...also the minor nitpick from earlier.

Still, it's undeniable that the set is quite cool, though also quite thick, but mostly on necessary details. It is definitely one of the Top 10 sets of this contest, I feel, and makes a good case for many for being the best. Kudos.

The Chilly Academic

Commenting a set this old? Sure, why not. Mostly because I decided to read it and I comment most everyfin I read.

As with all of your Organization XIII sets, the organization and coloring and so on of the set is quite superb, such as the blue text's slow chill. I do like to see good organization.

The set itself isn't bad, either. The Replica forms a pretty solid base for a set and the shield is actually a nice little mechanic that fits perfectly with how his shield works. The set itself is a tad basic, though you know I'm generally for that, but I will admit it could have probably used a bit of pizzaz to go with the specials...and really, the grab should have been the Neutral Special and the Neutral Special moved elsewhere to allow Vexen a full grab game and still keep the cool deep freeze. Still, at least the deep freeze works well as a grab replacement for the same purposes as a grab. Down Smash is also pretty cool.

Overall, I wouldn't call it really good or anything, but it's a nice set, though with the sudden influx of major sets I don't know if it's got enough space to chill on my vote list.

The Lone Etranger

Okay, I don't know how any set with that Back Aerial gets a nine.

Etranger is a set with what is actually, I think, a neat if hard to actually execute concept of having no actual damaging or knockbacking attacks. Junahu goes the smartest way one can really go with this: Gimping. Unfortunately, Etranger runs into one key issue. She's reeeeeeally bad at gimping.

Yes, she can summon a CPU duplicate of the foe to gimp. She needs too, to, because she is going to have a hard time gimping even a computer with this moveset. Etranger has one move that can legitimately gimp the foe in her entire moveset and that's Down Tilt. Forward Tilt would be a good gimping tool, but it means you can't reasonably use Down Tilt to impede the foe due to the way the tilts work, which makes it more than useless. Etranger's tether isn't too good at gimping either, because A. Etranger needs to keep setting up against grabs to hope to gimp the computer because they screw her up so much and B. Etranger has a really hard way of getting anyone off stage far enough to actually legitimately gimp them, as most of the ways she has to get foes off the stage do not send them near far enough to actually gimp them, especially when they can just use their second jump to grab the ledge, so you can't even try to Down Tilt it.

Your method for using the jab to cover the ledge to stop people does not work, as the only way it makes sense for you is if you were trying to use the clash to do so...but when an aerial attack clashes with an attack, it simply continues, meaning the jab won't stop the attack and you'll still sweetspot the ledge. You could grab the ledge, but since it's on the jab, you need to use it first, go through the animations and lag, then grab the ledge before the foe gets on...oh, also, they can just recover high. You can read the SSBwiki's priority explanation to see that I am correct.

This isn't even getting into characters with glides, floats or multiple jumps, who sh*t all over Entranger. Also, back aerial is baaad, Up Smash's higher charges as totally useless and it's not mentioned how high you go with no charge. Just to put this somewhere, don't forget that the non-duplicate character still exists, and can still mess around with Etranger's attempted and failed gimping of the computer. Really, Etranger cannot gimp most of the Brawl cast(Even as CPUs most of the time), and it feels less because the set is meant to be UP and more because it just does not work.

Actually, wait, I lied. Forward Tilt can be used to gimp by tethering and teleporting...if you managed to not get grabbed at all because she has no passive way to stop grabs. It might be a bit more likely to work than the Down Tilt one, but it still fails against most of the Brawl cast.

In short, reeeeally cool idea...reeeeeeeeeeeeally crappy execution. I don't like it.

Jarvis Jouchdown

Now this, this is a set I like. The jars have a ton of fun yet logical interactions, the game trapping them inside is cool and, most importantly, the game getting them inside is good. One thing I especially like is the use of a Poison Mushroom that remains perfectly in-character due to the nature of the boss fight.

The invisibility is also handled nicely, as it is not too hard to actually find invisible stuff or destroy it, yet hard enough to remain useful, and the multitude of tricks Jarvis has up his sleeves is quite impressive. I do somewhat agree with the sentiment that F-Smash to D-Air might be a bit strong, but that is partially because we don't know how strong the DAir spike is.

Ultimately, though, the set is good.

 

[FrozenRoy]

1. Karkat(majora_787)
​

Karkat is an early posted set by our resident Majora, not exactly a big name in our community, but surely someone you've heard of. But let's discuss the set here and not who made it.

Karkat is not a particularly high concept set, with few move standing out as "special" or "unique", but the primary moves that do give the set layers upon layers of playstyle choices. This is done primarily via his bleeding damage, which not only slows the foe down, but adds in a small amount of damage in the way of 2% per second. It also makes the foe take more knockback, deal less knockback and overall just makes them that tad bit worse, which the foe is going to be dissapointed by due to the fact Karkat can repeatedly refresh it with his variety of bleeding attacks. But I'm sure that even you would agree that is merely a base.

No, the real fun comes in the form of two of Karkat's specials, specifically the Blood Pact(Down Special) and Knight of Blood(Up Special) move. Down Special takes Karkat's self-damage moves, many of which exist in the set especially when bleeding is involved, and causes the foe to take the self-damage you do. While it doesn't remove it, it's status as an equalizer cannot be overlooked, and it forms the core of Karkat's playstyle, along with the Up Special...although it also serves as his recovery, one which must be used carefully due to the absurd 16% self-damage, by holding down the Special button, you can summon a Quest Cocoon. These work very similiarly to Quest Beds/Cocoons in Homestuck, allowing you to ascend to God Tier(Essentially a superpowered mode) for a sacrifice of your life, here seen by the fact that you lose one stock in the process. This removes you actually taking damage(Okay, you take 1%) or other negatives from your self bleed, although you can still inflict them upon the foe if you Blood Pact them. Of course, the Quest Cocoon only has 30 HP, so they can destroy it or camp before you get there...

All the same, combining the Quest Cocoon and Blood Pact forms the basis of the set, as Karkat is easily able to switch up how he plays on the fly and become either a camper or a hyper-aggressive character. Down Tilt, Throws, Neutral Aerial and Side Tilt are all examples of moves that contribute to an aggressive assault, throwing in quick damaging attacks with bleeding or, via throws, possibly even double and triple bleeding! On the flipside, you can instead only carefully bleed the foe, letting them more easily remove the status in exchange for being more campy, Blood Pacting the foe to damage them regardless via moves like, say, Down Smash, Forward Aerial, Neutral Special and Up Special, allowing you to pile on the damage without even technically "hitting" the foe. Melding them together is the Forward Smash, which is effective both for camping due to it's 14% self-damage that can be inflicted to the foe via Blood Pact or produce an amazing 28% damage outlet by hitting with it and having Blood Pact out, making it a great move to use when attacking the opponent. By combining this versatility with simple attacks and switching them up, Karkat produces a fun playstyle for friend and foe alike that changes in minor or major ways by matchup, all without needing to ever go overboard.

This is combined with an excellent characterization, both in the fact that it is written in the style Karkat talks marvelously, but also in the way the attacks go. Befitting of the fact that Karkat often screws himself over by accident due to rushing in or his own anger, this set is easy to accidentally screw yourself over with the self-damage, the stock taking on the Quest Cocoon and so on, giving a good blend of character and moveset into one. Very nice!

Finally, it's organization is nice yet simple and, all things considered, it is very low on the tacky. Although I doubt many will consider it as highly as I do(It is my second favorite this contest), I do hope that you all give the set a nice read, consider the points I have made and throw Karkat on to your vote list, because this is a set that deserves a good placing.

 

[BKupa666]

OOGIE BOOGIE

Now here’s a set containing a delicious hodge-podge of concepts for players to toy around with and adapt to mid-match. Right away, this set by Katapultar opens up with a die mechanic, which he uses to gamble about how many sneaky traps he’ll be able to lay during combat. Staying true to character, however, Oogie can essentially determine their outcome if he so chooses through underhanded methods such as inhaling or exhaling to change the number they land on or placing them overtop a pit of soup to defend them from opponent.. Though Oogie has little depth with his traps themselves, he can spin the traps he does have in and out of the foreground with a roulette wheel or pound them into the air with a D-Air slam, having a handful of peculiar, yet fascinating ways to manipulate them. Despite this, perhaps my favorite aspect of the set is Oogie’s control over his own hurtbox. The massive character can quickly shrink down to size if he’s attacked too much, losing bugs around the stage to a point where his body can be KOed, but he also has the option to enlarge himself by inhaling lost bugs, projectiles, and his own soup (which a large body allows him to stand upon without being KOed immediately). Though Luxord has certainly had its fair share of attention, it is time for Oogie Boogie to gain a slot in Kat’s upper echelon of sets as well; what better way to ensure this than to write this boogeyman's name down during election week?

 

[ForwardArrow]

Shana
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I confess, Half Silver has never been a favorite set designer of mine in past contests, though judging by his work this contest(given the character Hanako and Lilly had some shockingly good aspects) I think he actually could become a favorite were he willing to set-make more often. This might explain why I'm so impressed with Shana, given the set doesn't start off in the most exciting direction. A sword charge mechanic, a fairly basic fire trap... not exactly stuff to get excited over on the surface. This is definitely a set you have to read further into to start to get, Shana's options pretty much blowing open as Silver starts to reveal new possibilities throughout the set. For one, you've got the somewhat tricky to use, yet awesome Nair fire triangles, which all Shana to both expand the mass of fire she's developing across the stage and attack from all sorts of crazy angles, giving her an impressive and interesting degree of zoning.

Aside from that, this is a fully blown aggressive stage control character the likes of which we've seen before in Houndoom, but not expanded on nearly as much as here. You see, Shana actually is a shield breaker which we've seen in the past, and utilizes it far better than sets like Mr. Mime or Gooper Blooper in that she's not ham fisting it with weird magic on shields while at the same time making it far more interesting than what Super Macho Man offers in that she instead focuses on pushing shields and punishing incorrect use of them, while giving foes plenty of reason too in the context of her fire making roll dodges useless if their happens to be a large patch in the direction the foe needs to roll. Her fire is more versatile than just that though, as she can bring it along with her towards the blast zone along with the fire triangles, giving her a surprisingly cool and functional gimping game. What probably impresses me most about the set is that Silver managed to make such a deep and interesting set for a character who is about merely swordfighting and fire usage... and yet it all makes not only sense of her, it gives a better sense for the character than a standard mediocre combo set would anyway.

I do recognize this set's gotten exposure, but none-the-less, it's one very worth talking about given it's one of my favorites in the contest, with most of it's flaws coming down to some fairly basic number crunching. Silver's not the biggest name designer in the contest, but he's really pulled together something special here and it would be a shame not to see this place highly.

 

[Davidreamcatcha]

MANFRED VON KARMA

Many comparisons can be drawn between Manfred and a much earlier Warlord set, Inspector Lunge. The main comparison, of course, comes with the similar premises of the movesets - you are attempting to prove that the foe commuted a crime. Though even with this mechanic in-place, Manfred actually manages to stay relatively in-smash and doesn't stray far from how the character would feasibly attack, unlike our dear Inspector friend. While Lunge's mechanic forced the foe to commit a murder of a generic NPC, the NPC this time around is murdered by another NPC, leaving murder weapons and a bloodied corpse in his wake. With this comes a court mechanic, of which the majority of Lunge is based around taking advantage of - as well as a slew of many, many smaller mechanics. By proving the foe is "guilty" by getting witnesses to testify against the foe, photographing them with the corpse or with the murder weapons in their hands or even covering them in blood, Manfred can summon police officers to create massive destruction about the stage. While he is plenty good at being defensive and zoning while he has officers onstage, Manfred can even bribe them to give them a Nana-like AI that will attack when you do, rather than a needlessly stupid one. In fact: why even bother advertising it? He doesn't need any help. The other sets in this competition? They're like bugs to him. Needless things to be crushed.​

 

[MasterWarlord]

WIZARD BOWSER (Smady)​

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http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14500776&postcount=590

Wizard Bowser is largely overlooked because of how wildly popular Smady’s other 2 sets are, and the fact that this is Smady’s only other set this contest. Bowser plays heavily with invisibility, but rather than making himself invisible like every single other invisibility based set, he does so to his minions and his minions only, the Boos. The Boos leech life (Represented by the Mario Party stealing of coins) before returning it back to Bowser, and Bowser can influence their paths while they’re invisible. Foes can steal the coins back from boos to get back life the Boos have leeched, but Bowser has methods of dealing with this beyond simply using positioning moves to get the coins faster. He can turn the Boo into stone, making it invulnerable and storing the coin for later, or he can put the Boo into –that- vat of boiling hot lava, turning the coins into red coins that damage those who touch them, at which point Bowser can order the Boos to go back at foes. Despite having so much magic syndrome, it comes across very well for the flavor of the board and even Mario Party in general, what with it representing the key aspect of the Boos so heavily.

KANG (n88_2004)​

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http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14022004&postcount=695

Largely dismissed just because of overhype, what with it being that one antagonistic set posted at the start of the contest that people felt obligated to dethrone. Kang still is a very entertaining read, as while it’s unsmash it is very self aware. Father Time has done unsmash time travel in the past, but Kang includes all the potential loopholes associated with time travel – most notably and obviously, the fact that if you travel back in time, you’ll encounter yourself. This largely turns the boss into a 6v2 set, and with Kang’s playstyle of chaos and bullet hell this is quite convenient, especially if you assume team attack is on as this moveset does.

The complaint that seems to have largely dragged this moveset down is just that once you go back and meet up with your past self, you will go back to the future and just leave your past self as a distraction while you build up an army in the future. While it’s a good complaint, you have to realize that if you’re leaving your past self behind, it has to deal with 6 enemies all by itself. You also have no influence over your cpu controlled past self, so this is an incredibly risky gambit. While there is merit in this strategy, it is far from the only way to play him, considering the more obvious benefits of fighting alongside him.

MANFRED VON KARMA (Smady)​

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http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14436613&postcount=526

Manfred Von Karma is an astounding moveset. What makes him good? Not his vision statement of having his elaborate mechanic being passive or unobtrustive, nor the fact that he cannot be compared to any other set in MYM, unlike most other sets occupying SV lists. What makes Von Karma as good as he is, specifically, are the utilt, where Von Karma brilliantly flings papers into the air for perhaps the single most fillerish move in the set, the uair which gives Von Karma the token ability to reflect projectiles, and the fair. While the fair was not entirely his doing, the best part of it was – a hitbox in front of him that does 1% and flinching.

 

[Rychu]

Junker Bot

Junker Bot is a newcomer set that has much more to it than meets the eye, for intwined in the rather scarce and occasionally vague move descriptions is a playstyle that works it's way naturally and flowingly. This set's been ignored, whish isn't fair to it at all, it's an entertaining little gem that deserves more love.

 

[ForwardArrow]

Notice: Advertisements will be allowed during the voting period, which has been extended from ending on the 17th to ending on the 20th. So you don't have to rush them out now.​

 

[FrozenRoy]

★ ★ ★ Yutaka Kobayakawa ★ ★ ★

Ah, Yutaka...a set you all know I consider my favorite this contest, I am sure.

So what does Kat bring to the table with Yutaka? Tons of things. First off is the excellent characterization, focused upon Yutaka's illness in the series as a starting point. Yutaka is exactly what you would expect from an ill schoolgirl with no powers, weak without buffs, but within her tiny heart beats the the blood of a champion! By pushing her body past it's limit, giving 120% and going all out, Yutaka is able to up her damage and become a bit of a little monster or soak up any damage and just laugh it off. Of course, this comes with the expected downside of pushing a fragile, ill girl to let out all their power, and here it comes in the form of Yutaka taking massive damage back.

Of course, she can perservere, much like many people have in such cases...but it is quite hard, even with her shield, her protection. It is all very good stuff and combined with the writing style, gives a true sense of character.

Her playstyle is simple and yet fun, being all about confidence and Yutaka's buffs. She can raise her damage racking to absurd percents, but this gives you absurdly high tripping, though it goes down the more you trip. And with the Side Special giving you such an attack resistance, you will have plenty of time to get those trips out of you...except for that nasty recoil, huh? And as Yutaka's confidence goes up, so does her shield, allowing you to stave off the recoil some...of course, to build up your confidence, you need to damage your opponent, which is risky without a big shield. Get the idea? Aside from that, Yutaka offers some moves that aren't too interesting on their own, but provide a solid playstyle of multiple hit attacks to abuse your buffs, quickness, that sort of thing, packaged in a sleek little present with a bow on top. I think it is fabutagious.

Yutaka has been accused of being extremely tacky...I wouldn't agree with extremely, but yes, it does have some tacky. Most notably, the Up Special is insanely tacky, though I do not understand how anyone can call the shield mechanic "tacky". Easily observable, logical enough given there is no established precedent for what a shield is.

As an added bonus, the set is very pretty, with attack headers which I blatantly stole for this advertisement's header and easy to read yet somewhat colorful text. Needless to say, as my favorite set, it is a solid SV for me. While you might not agree with that height, why don't you take a look at what's in the book and see if she makes your list? I'm sure it will help little Yutaka's confidence!

 

[Violenceman]

Regarding Darkwing:
[COLLAPSE="Commence Brown Nosing"]Thanks for all the input and feedback to everyone who replied! Your advice is really helping me figure out how to create a more complete and cohesive moveset around the ideas and playstyles I am devising. I plan to do some research studying some of the nominees for top 50 to get some ideas from how their sets are composed, so I can apply it to my next set and really incorporate all the different move types into one flowing concept and give it a more solid descriptive nature.[/COLLAPSE]

 

[Junahu]

[COLLAPSE="generic response about Etranger"]

The Lone Etranger

Okay, I don't know how any set with that Back Aerial gets a nine.

Against my better judgement, I've now altered Etranger slightly;

• Additional wording on Jab... because "any hitbox" apparantly wasn't clear enough.
• Forward Smash falls offstage
• Fair now on Nair, and also capes foes
• New Fair involves generic wind hitbox (making this change hurt me so so much). Shotgun blast of air that pushes foes away slightly, and works better at close range.
• Additional wording given to the Up-Air
• Grab tether lengthened to 1.1 stagebuilder units

Back air remains the same as always. Partly out of spite, but mostly because it's actually useful.[/COLLAPSE]

Brief couple of announcements regarding the MYminis;
MYmini#0 will continue until the beginning of MYM13.
MYmini#0, in which old movesets are refurbished with a new coat of paint (new presentation, writing, or alterations to attacks in keeping with the original moveset's focus) has not finished yet. If you were planning on entering, you still have plenty of time to get it done.

The MYminis are undergoing a "shift in focus"
Weekly contests with deadlines and objectives has proven time and again, that it simply doesn't work. It's a chore on my end, a chore on your end. It's a chore all around. It even managed to fail in its original intent: to encourage people to make more extras for movesets.
Actual MYminis (and the MYmini#0) will still be around, though they will have much longer durations (2-3 weeks). More importantly, I'll be keeping better track of Extras that are posted outside of MYminis, along with those added to the movesets themselves.

 

[FrozenRoy]

You missed my point on the jab. My point was that if an aerial recovery clangs against it, the recovery should continue, so the jab cannot be used to gimp(Which is it's only really good potential use except for not working).

 

[Junahu]

[COLLAPSE="the continuing adventures of Junahu answering FR"]

You missed my point on the jab. My point was that if an aerial recovery clangs against it, the recovery should continue, so the jab cannot be used to gimp(Which is it's only really good potential use except for not working).

I see your point, but you're enforcing Brawl's mechanical logic on an attack that has no precedent within Brawl, and makes no sense within those constraints.
It's a barrier that is beyond priority and explicitly clanks/stops everything with a hitbox. Brawl simply does not have that kind of attack anywhere in its roster, so its unfair to quote aerial priority as a reason for the attack not working correctly.

Just to answer your concern; the jab stops aerials and halts momentum from recovery specials, and it does these things because I say so.[/COLLAPSE]

 

[Katapultar]

I'll be keeping better track of Extras that are posted outside of MYminis, along with those added to the movesets themselves.

That's good man, especially when a handful of people still do extras for their sets (even if they're occasional for some). In my case, I do have a set ready for the next competition that has a handful of extras, so getting those acknowledged would make them all the more worthwhile. They've always been fun to make.

 

[Hyper_Ridley]

My first MYM13 plan has extras...including an extra that only 1 set in MYM history has ever attempted...(smirk)

 

[ForwardArrow]

The Voting Period Has Now Begun​

If you have advertised 3 sets, you are now allowed to vote. If not, get advertising. However, I would recommend you catch up on reading any well liked sets you may have missed before doing so. A better reader is a better voter.

Now that aside, voting will go down like this. You have 6 Super Votes, which are worth the most of any of your votes. Use them on sets you consider a notch above the rest and really want to succeed. Then you have 15 Regular Votes and 15 Weak Votes. Regular Votes are worth more than Weak Votes, so naturally, you should give them to set you care more for than the ones you are Weak Voting. You can choose to vote less than the maximum number of sets, though it is not recommended. Once you decide on what you are voting for, you will send your votes to both MasterWarlord and myself via PM.

The values for each vote are as follows:
Super Vote- 3 points
Regular Vote- 1.75 points
Weak Vote- 1.25 points

Aside from that, votes will be posted on the Stadium after the voting is over. If you would prefer not to have your name attached, you can specify so. If you do not specify, your name will be shown along with your votes.

Now happy voting everyone.

 

[Deleted member]

Did not realise how late I am on commenting Shana, wow. To get right into it, the set is pretty exciting factoring in how she's both a generic sword user, and has some strange symmetry to Roy (she has fire and moves employ Marth's moveset as guidance). In spite of this, it's able to set itself not only apart from Brawl, but shed new light on the boring old swordsman archetype to which everyone has familiarity. Mainly I mean the use of the fire trap we all previewed in David's Dutchman, creating a singularity to funnel moves through or simply allowing you to pressure opponents as you place traps strategically around the opponent to stop them escaping. It isn't a complex playstyle, nonetheless it makes Shana play uniquely and has a certain nuance, given the various moves that deal damage, knockback or stun to shields and open-ended flow means it doesn't get bogged down in a chart. There are great mix-ups that use the triangular projectile aerial and the combos only get better when there's wall to ram opponents into, plus I loved the figurative momentum of launching yourself through fire trails or using a move that takes advantage of the leftover fire to give Shana an advantage. The way the set handles set-up is a double-edged sword, being that the set-up is deeply indented into moves that also work as her standard attacks. You're not always going to want to re-position your flames as the move wants, nor do you necessarily want to mess Shana's mechanics up, so in that sense it can be unwelcome. At the same time, it's never that intrusive onto the actual move and isn't too widespread. Shana isn't a character who you'd imagine conjuring fire to a location as opposed to doing it alongside a sword swing or other offensive move, therefore setting up using regular attacks may be the only way to pull the interactions off well in terms of characterisation. The levels of your flaming sword also aren't played off as much as I'd like and I'm sure you could have found inputs for great moves like the fire triangle not in the aerials, especially when the rest of the set is focused on making the actual physical attacks realistic for Brawl. Mostly minor niggles, this set was really quite impressive.

Gooper Blooper's another set I've been meaning to read for some time now. It takes the atmosphere of a three-on-one fight in its stride and presents developed ideas, like the Dirty Bubble and brilliant shield manipulation. Importantly, this makes Blooper feel like a boss, necessitated when in the source material he is focused solely on Mario and his FLUDD. Mechanically, this is accomplished by taking advantage of shields, dodging and rolling – the three primary escape routes employed on the micro levels of Brawl, significant areas to consider in a boss when foes running away can simply be handled by having screen-filling hitboxes. There's sophisticated play here, as you have plenty of ways to bait an opponent into attack mode [shield stealing, the tentacles or boss itself] while having the up special and constant distractions in the likely event you need to run yourself, giving the minion king a nicely-characterised focus on survivability. It's great to see a boss who plays well as a normal character and has its own strengths and weaknesses, usually what people do is build a stock titan who barely has to move, not taking advantage of the three-on-one archetype. Gooper Blooper is constantly changing his gameplan and positioning himself around the opponents; you'll find a treasure trove of depth hidden away that gives the boss versatility hard to find on a character of his size. Though maybe it's more that Blooper is original, than that he does the concept complete justice – it's the only one out there! Hopefully next contest, we see more of those, but for now, this set was a very enjoyable read, good job.

I'll be honest, I laughed when I initially imagined G-Man capturing projectiles in his briefcase. Kills the enigmatic vibe, don't you think? Anyway, it works great for the characterisation in combination with Booberry's mechanic, a good fit for G-Man and adds the needed depth for his projectile hoarding. The portals are another part of the jigsaw that allow the long-ranged projectiles to make any sense as you teleport over to the other side of the stage and capture them that way. The set almost gets away with tackiness from Iron Tail – moves that inexplicably space the foe or G-Man or have some subtle forced effect – though there are just so many of these kinds of attacks that the credibility lent to them is truly worn out, again. I'm not going to say G-Man should have mass projectiles (though it could possibly be more fitting than some random moves that did make it in) but it is weird how stacked in his favour match-ups against characters that have those projectiles would be. That character already exists, though, it's Game & Watch... I don't know, it just doesn't seem right that he is so shallow that this has to be brought up. As is usually the case in your recent sets, this one is bursting with moves that are barely attacks. Pumping the set's playstyle with constant versatility ends up making it far blander than it was before, as you have all these moves as situational end-alls. Game & Watch from earlier, imagine playing him when he has the bucket and nearly every other move does no damage or knockback, plus some token projectiles and a teleport: you now have how everyone would play G-Man. Thankfully, this is fairly close to how the character would act in a fight, and doesn't come across as completely yellow considering he can passively be offensive with the Booberry transparency. I will never understand your affinity for unsmash moves when there are more acceptable and easier choices, but in this case it isn't completely illogical. In a basic sense, it is pretty remarkable that you could make a set for G-Man and that he doesn't lose his trademark atmosphere when he enters the Brawl.

Time to phone in my Negi comment, heh heh heh... I have absolutely no idea what's going on. Well, let's give it a try. It's executed smartly, self-aware and fun to play, it actually focuses a bit on cancelling out of a specific move for once, not a concept I've seen before. At first this appeared cheap for a mindgame, but it is treated with enough care and precision that it ends up relatively in-smash. I was pessimistic that the playstyle wouldn't be this open-ended, and I agree with Warlord that the 'combo' section is misplaced, the set is much better when imagining the gameplay being run down in a match, the natural flow is the selling point. Versatility here alongside playability are the real focuses, as Negi comes across as fun to pick up and play while having plenty of depth, I'm sure in spite of what many would call serious blandness. I do actually like the approach here, the set rarely missteps into moves that serve little or no purpose. There are spots of overly generic moves, notably near the literal end of the set, perhaps intended to help roll right into the aforementioned combos. I have to jump on the down special bandwagon too, it stands out like a sore thumb amidst the other central specials. Creative duplication in an aerial and the surprising amount of flashy magic at Negi's fingertips, amongst other things, are big parts of what convince me this is a step beyond the Brawl cast in simple rushdown terms. You aren't one to highlight the character's easiness, I'm going to assume this character is overloaded with potential in its source and that I should be in awe that the set is able to stave off being pure chaos; the implementation is very smooth. It's not going to change the world and Negi may be a bit too well-rounded for his own good. Nevertheless, I can respect the supporting philosophy, and think the set deserves a thumbs up.

A moveset that deals no knockback or damage is not appealing to me in the slightest, Etranger had to impress with the apparent focus of the set, duplicates. The foe being the victim of said duplication hasn't been attempted much before, here it is done straightforwardly, copying and pasting Larxene. You gimp the AI, and the foe has to babysit them or simply comply as you barge them around, Etranger's focus not being on the match but on accomplishing something artificial to win, though it at least resembles Smash gameplay. The fact that all you're doing to the actual foe is guessing where they're going to attack, countering them and running away is frankly very annoying to imagine in a game, when it is this mindless. What is worse is many of these attacks – explosions, barges, the barriers aren't far-fetched – are easy to just put the damage and knockback on, and lets you dump the ridiculous tag line. What is lost is the forced gimping due to the nature of Larxene's duplicates and yes, the whole set falls apart – getting past the gimmick, the playstyle is flimsy and comes across as a convenience to fit the niché. I cannot stand counters on aerials, huge GTFO hitboxes on tilts and a [tether] grab with no throws. Toss in all the teleports and you have a character that would compel me to snap the game disc in half if Etranger was playable in an online setting, due to all the prediction-based inputs and AI shenanigans built into how the set works. It's far from the best way to execute the concept of duplicating the foe, it's the most infuriatingly simplistic. Roy made a great comment on how the set doesn't approach Brawl's mechanics realistically either, when there are sets as ambitious that do not use flash or tackiness as this set does. If you consider that originally I didn't plan on even reading the set, though, it's hardly a disappointment, and I predict the two other sets in this project are more my style.

This is only the third legitimate Fly set, and Fuka is actually the second after Swalot to try customising the inner stage. Compared to the others, this plays it as straight as possible, the Fly summoning move being a simple absorption over anything fancy. This places impetus on the Fly itself to be the main focus. It's bizarre that after Etranger copied Larxene's duplicates, Fuka rips content wholesale from Mummy Men and does the unbelievable, letting you craft a stage out of the building blocks. The lack of imagination and ironing is delicious, as this becomes more than a joke – the process of creating a stage is in aid of pure defence, as you are free to kill minions for a buff, and she inherits the power of block collision. She doesn't have to approach the foe whatsoever, just hit the blocks for pressure and if they hit, or for that matter she kills the foe at all in the stage, she gains a free hit that may win the match. Having it be customisable to such an extent is a bonus in of itself, plus there is fun to be had in the characterisation of the set because of all the playful interactions with Item World... or not. The blocks conveniently go back to where they were, killing much of the fun to generically balance the set, if I were to guess how this vague yet important detail works. There's not enough to make me like the set when the stage is so boring and the ways Fuka has to KO come down to throwing a Prinny or gimping through the stage, another concept that totally fits into a set priding itself on generic bat swings and an in-smash Fly. Unlike the other two sets in the project [Geo I read out of order due to a coin flip] Fuka at least has a moveset that allows for simple satisfaction in thrashing opponents against blocks or having fun by messing with the systems it introduces. What cheapens this is that the best parts I already saw in Mummy Men. I'm usually a fan of minions, dropping explosive ones from a height is a tempting proposal, sadly ruined by the automatic deconstruction of Lego. When Fuka is a Brawl set without Item World, I'm neither super psyched about her versatility. It is functional, I will give it that.

Puzzles... yay! Old Man Geo has not what I'd call a fun game of chain reacting traps and set-up, though it is executed okay. It rekindles memories of playing Bejewelled, though I find it kind of stupid. The concept of passive buffing and nerfing are apparently so confusing, that they have to be hyped up to an insane level. Aerials, throws and smashes become a side show, sections of moves focused on specific generic purposes that Sakurai would frown upon as forced. Once I got my head around the complicated way the patterns explode and Old Man Geo's ability to put them... wherever he wants, I was expecting further puzzlement. It's all very underwhelming. The whole point of this set is to create a chain reaction of traps as simple as Snake's and juggling foes or stalling for time. The smashes destroying the pyramids is a clinical abuse, there was something in that relationship of chain links and taking their damage, all vanquished at once. Oh, this hasn't been done before, right? True, the chain reaction playstyle skipped a generation and went straight to Strangelove originally, then much later to Ratigan. This set is an ancestor to that pair in execution, which didn't need to be a bad thing because it could develop on the concept from a basic level, but is content sitting safely next to Snake and Strangelove, Ratigan not answering the RVSP (it is light years ahead). It fails to make interesting puzzles or take advantage of them beyond simplistic trap manipulation. If you love the way the panels and symbols work, maybe this is all appealing as it doesn't overload the foundation, but that doesn't justify excessive filler on top of that weighing it all down. This is the best example I can think of where a set kicks inputs under a bus solely to appeal to the reader.

Tubba Blubba is insanely derivative coming from you, Warlord. I could name about ten movesets that this moveset rips off immediately, many of which are my own. I'm not sure if that was intentional... it actually works very well for the character and steals from a wide enough selection of source materials, it creates something wholly new! What is often overlooked on this set is the fantastic implementation of the heart on the shield input – the realisation that Tubba Blubba doesn't need his shield when invincible, thus can attack two-on-one, frankly is a stroke of genius. The heart does not do anything too blindingly amazing, it does what it would logically do – back up Tubba Blubba by using its moves from the game, a handful of magic spells and bullies foes with its tiny assaulting hitboxes. That is the full extent of what is possible, I don't agree on the sentiment that this invalidates what is a fascinating duo. Puke is another point of contention, a misguided grievance, when I found the terraforming to be the real trouble spot. The set does touch on some truly deafening generic concepts with making pits, rolling out into pits and shooting goop up into the air from a pit. However, the great way the drowning works and its expansion on a concept rarely acknowledged, alongside the set referencing other sets in a way that helps to appreciate the attention-seeking character, means this is a problem that is quickly squished between two great points in the set's favour. Criminally underrated – Warlord supports the meta playstyles, but now Rool is dead, rotting in the ground and gone forever, no one is looking out for a meta execution.

Okay, Jarvis, first of all the writing style, I have to doff my hat to you in delivering an absolutely brilliantly read moveset and one that absolutely needed that element to work. A set that has invisibility, invisible projectiles, shape-shifting and a stage-changing mechanic is not easy to make succinct. Secondly, you again show that you have a great head for conjuring up the slighter inputs that don't lose the lustre of the initial specials, every move adds to a thrilling playground and the simple way the jars work, for once makes this aspect a strong connecting link in the playstyle. That's the most impressive part of the moveset, as Warlord already mentioned. It's not something we've seen in this exact form before, and as with the writing style the mesh of form is handled delicately, Jarvis harbouring uniquely potent pressure when the foe is avoiding invisible projectiles, then immediately plunged into a jar. I'm not sold on the trickery as I am the open-ended, deceptively deep playstyle. I prefer to consider Jarvis a versatile glass cannon who has the odd shining moment when a foe is duped, not a character who is stalling and baiting as he procedurally creates two-faced traps. Invisibility is a good option, it shouldn't be the whole appeal. My one real criticism is shockingly about the otherwise excellent writing style, as it never mentions beyond a token move or two what giant Jarvis plays like when he's fighting a miniature foe inside the jar. It's a missed opportunity when ostensibly it all transitions neatly due to the simplicity of a giant character in this environment. That's hardly a qualm, this is an excellent addition to the Kupa Kollection and Make Your Move 12.

I don't dislike Capture the Flag, neither do I dislike Engineer. It has been an age since Spy was released, and while I can't rate the set highly, it's for completely different reasons now, whereas my opinion on the mode has lightened up immensely. Engineer is able to carve out a small, yet significant part of the metagame for himself, playing as a pure support and in this mode that is a viable strategy. Individual moves are where I find myself respecting the set, as there are a handful that reinvent the wheel on Capture the Flag – neutral special, for example – while the use of mass buildings helps out to an extent, given their buffing properties on a large team. Being able to move your set-ups and upgrade them in tandem gives Engineer a not so passive playstyle. As far as Engineer is concerned on managing his buildings – especially when he has that special building grab game – it's all good stuff. However, in a brawl, he starts to feel somewhat crippled. Up tilt and forward aerial are two moves that are awkward as buildings or at bare minimum, should be attacks; Engineer generally comes across as too vulnerable in the simplest close-range fight. The grab game's awkward in this regard when it only has three throws and one is dedicated to spacing Engineer over the foe (as an aside, was jarring that you don't explain how the animations change on allies, unless you wanted to infer Engineer holds a gun to their heads when there is no Spy on the enemy team). Smashes, special and not, are nearly all creating new buildings, a fine decision, my problem is that many of his other inputs are too focused on macro management or are situational when they do get a use in a fight. Yes, yes, this is all easier to forgive in the context of Capture the Flag – Engineer doesn't need to be this gimped when the fighting game starts. Still, I must commend you on bringing back a concept this ambitious, it was mostly a success, and it's obvious that you're passionate about the mode. I couldn't be happier that you're trying out new things, that's precisely what I wanted you to see you do.

Chandelure has its fair share of problems alongside its most appealing aspects, the best being its great writing style and organisation. Rarely do sets pull off an atmosphere well, and this set is at the top in sustaining a gloomy and murky feel throughout, though it's to be expected from a Peanut set, you're a master at this and it's always fun to read your sets. The playstyle itself carries across the message of the Pokémon: hide in the Smog, use your chandelier swinging to place versatile traps on the stage, littering or plotting the embers, fires and flames so that an opponent has no approach. Not that you shut them down completely, as you're practically feeding the foe an approach from the beginning by using the Wisps, though that of course makes it easy to bait them, and devices like Chandelier Ball likewise make him good at subtly pressuring foes. When you use Chandelier Ball to leave yourself hanging and potentially flood the stage with invisible projectiles, or not, due to Smog, the set has a quirky, appropriate finesse about how it plays. On the other hand, the grab game is confusing and as best I can understand, acts as a way to zone the foe within a circular area. I wish you had better described that part about “relocating” the grab's circle, it's a shame that it reads as awkwardly as it does. Hitting a foe with Wisps is a great pressuring tool, but that the projectiles only charge your smashes is underwhelming... especially when the smashes have little connection to that move creating Wisps, largely standing on their own (though not to say they are bad moves). There's no real focus from the breaking of melee games down to the hiding in Smog, the pieces are fairly scattered. The Pokémon's characterisation benefits from a playstyle breaking the opponent down and doing it in a strange way at that, but it's neither breaking new ground nor bringing together these very tired ideas strongly.

I've observed your evolution, Roy, and Alice is the real proof of that; unlike Rattata, it doesn't play off of the character, it creates a distinct one before the player's eyes in a simple, but distinguished minion moveset. It's nothing overtly fresh in the archetype, except in the ability to micromanage your minions effectively and the manual nature of her set-up – actually spacing the dolls is made a significant part of her playstyle because of all the mindgames you can play. It's a slick and easily-imagined execution of minions and fits the character well, not lacking moves like down and up smash that take real advantage of her unique playstyle, though never getting too crazy that Brawl implementation isn't plausible. There's a strong sense of playing off Olimar in the moveset, which is something we have not seen before despite being so obvious. Where the set goes above and beyond is in the non-vacuous interactions that let you play on the aspects of the dolls and set zoning, traps or a generic spacing move up, the inner logic being tight enough that even these basic moves stand alone surprisingly well, and again, don't betray your simple design philosophy. More than Rattata, this set tells us who you are as a set maker – making moves that require dolls already out, while not entirely wise in my opinion, is a respectable and illuminating idea. My only complaints are I don't like randomising your dolls on that one special [I like my control], nor the somewhat confusing limit on certain dolls, though the latter is not a big problem. I'll enjoy watching where your set making goes in the future.

 

[Rychu]

Pimpin' ain't easy

The G-SpotMan

The G-Man is a set by Dave that keeps the feel of the mysterious character going through the entire set. You see the G-Man is there but...he's not, as he can pass through characters like nothing, and also capture projectiles in his mysterious and fanfic-worthy briefcase. The set, while weak at points, is especially strong in it's atmosphere and strong central mechanic. By the TIME the votes all come around, the G-Man should be high up on any list.

 

[FrozenRoy]

3. Hockey Man(UserShadow7989)

Hockey Man is the lone set made by UserShadow during his brief and yet triumphant return and a set I think you should know about.

This is a set that I am always a bit excited to read and this time is no different. Just like Yutaka and Karkat, at the core, this is a very basic set, as Hockey Man is largely just a heavyweight, but he combines this with some fun traits to mix it up. His ice shield provides a way to turn him from lumbering target to ever-advancing wall, while the Down Special allows him excellent movement at the cost of larger starting lag. Combined with his neat Slapshot projectile, something I really like and made sufficently different from other similiar projectiles. This is combined with simple yet effective standards, which give Hockey Man a clear yet simple and distinct playstyle, augmenting the offensive nature of the shield and movement with the fact that when it falls, his lag means he will need to go on the defensive until he can get the shield up, unless the foe is already indisposed.

Something I like is that despite the fact that Hockey Man screams "Don't go into the air with this character!", he actually has a really nice aerial game, especially the cool Neutral Aerial, which essentially allows him to move his hockey stick around like a wall, plus a sweet drag-down Up Aerial. Thus, Hockey Man has a pretty interesting game both in the air and on the ground.

Despite being a (fan-made) Robot Master, Hockey Man is oozing with character, as he plays the game of hockey in a grand way, with Slashing and Slapshots and cheering and checks and puck control, it is all some very neat stuff right here. When combined with a fine and effective playstyle and some neat concepts, it is a set worth checking out and maybe marking down on your votelist.

 

[BKupa666]

THE NECROMANCER

This is essentially one of my favorite playground sets to date, as well as one that excellently exemplifies the use of minions. Channeling a glitch from his source material, Necromancer is a character centered around spreading his most dangerous asset around the stage, a 'stage occupation' character, if you will. While this is all fine and dandy, his actual interactions with his minions are the set's real meat and potatoes. Necromancer himself is a rather underwhelming character who won't be handling his foes nearly as much as he will be strengthening an army of minions to overwhelm his opponents once he has been sent offscreen (he won't lose a stock until every last underling has been destroyed). Among the more memorable of his abilities include inflating the zombies with blood to weigh them down onstage, herding them around inside a 3D 'ring of fighters,' and even freezing foes in their tracks before encasing them in a pit of zombies with rock walls.

Oh, and the bloody (literally bloody) giant balls of fat created after a fat zombie loses its head.

The few times Necromancer directly attacks foes, he is able to mind control them with his grab-game, forcing them to shoulder charge into masses of zombies to reposition them in their own path or dig their own grave, which can later become home to the undead as well. Necromancer would work well with a lesser focus on minions, as he still has the versatile options of terraforming and freezing projectiles, but the way his minion army is woven into so many of his unique strategies really pushes this set over the top. He's easily one of the best first sets thus far, and deserves as much, if not more praise than von Karma, not to mention the rest of MW's MYM12 menagerie.

 

[Deleted member]

TUBBA BLUBBA​

Tubba Blubba is a set I gassed on about for a fair amount of time in my comment, let's touch on new ground. It is overlooked, and for a number of reasons. Foremost, arguably, is the wide array of quality Warlord sets on offer, though what personally impresses me about the set is its approach to characterisation, earning one of my super votes. Similar to JJJ last contest, Warlord throws all established logic out of the window, simply picking and choosing whatever is needed to represent the character at its truest. There is no longer the sense that he's trying to dazzle the reader, no surreptitious hand holding to highlight design strengths [there are many], what you do have is a graceful and elegant service to the character. This is no more nor no less than exactly what you'd want out of a Tubba Blubba moveset. What is saddening about the set's reception is that it mirrors a likewise glossed over aspect of Warlord's career, always analysing the game that Make Your Move's sets are creating as we progress. Designing around this analysis, but not in the oblique technical sense that authors may abuse to get their shoddy movesets past the censors. This is a set where the execution of Make Your Move is played upon and Tubba Blubba is a fantastic conduit to play devil's advocate, simply mocking the boundaries by taking a direct path to playstyle. This would all be for naught if there wasn't a great moveset festering below all the false ego and immature behaviour. It's shallow on the surface, complex on the inside; I have not seen the doubles concept pulled off in this way before, if it was, I'm willing to stake all my credibility that it wasn't done as thoughtfully. Neither complicated or simplistic, the playstyle leaves the moveset open-ended for players to appreciate and does not step on the toes of its already wonderfully-crafted characterisation. The only true obfuscation here seems to be that it's too obscure, unfathomable to the casual reader when it's at its best. Dig deep enough, and you're sure to find something that makes the set worth a place on your vote list.

 

[smashbot226]

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Rhyperior

Rhyperior is what may be the single most dividing set of the contest, which is saying something. Some despise it while others enjoy it for what it is; a set that reeks with power and lovingly written to fit that archetype. Even his movement tramples and crushes his opponents under his weight/bulk, and that's not even taking his actual moveset into account. Everything about Rhyperior's set oozes pure power that combines his monstrous killing potential with his intuitive Solid Rock mechanic and built-in defensive aspects of several moves. And of course, the writing style emulating the "Goddamn Aggron" style of PSAs is just plain fun to read. In short, this is one of those sets that you truly need to read for yourself to form an opinion: it's just that divisive. However, this intrepid commenter enjoyed it.

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[Davidreamcatcha]

3-2-1!
DARKWING DUCK

Much like the actual character, Darkwing Duck's moveset consists of Batman-like mindgames mixed in with more comical traps and weapons. Among his more notable tricks is his trademark gas gun, with which he can load different types of gas canisters in to, each dealing different damage/inflicting a different status effect to foes who come into contact with him. Some even create obscuring gas, of which Darkwing can hide in and assault foes with weapons such as plunger guns from afar, even using his shield mechanic to reflect things with his cape in an attempt to camp. Adding on to this, he can teleport across the stage with his smoke bombs, acting like a devilish master of surprise. The potential also exists for him to toss a glue grenade at the foes to hold them down for a beating, even holding them in a gas cloud to further their pain. It's no masterpiece, of course, but this set should in no way be passed over simply because of its being made by a newcomer - and it definitely proves that Violenceman could be a force-to-be-reckoned with in coming contests.​

 

[half_silver28]

It's that time again Make Your Move: time for the MYM Awards! You can choose up to 5 nominees for each category. I've already put in the nominees for Best Leader, Best One-Hit Wonder, Best New Designer, and Best Mario and Organization XIII sets. While Best Leader is pretty much set in stone, feel free to nominate something I may have forgotten in the other categories. You don't have to nominate the full amount for each category, nor are you required to nominate for each one. Just private message me your list of nominees by 11:59 pm US Eastern Time on Saturday, the 21st. Once the nominees are finalized, I will post the awards for official voting. Have fun!

Spoiler

As a side note, the long-running Best Pokemon Set category had to be cut this time around, since there were only 10 pokemon sets this contest. And half of them were made by ProfPeanut as well. The category will likely be back next contest, unless MYM is just that sick of pokesets.

Best Moveset Designer


Best New Designer
FrozenRoy
PostmortemMessiah
The Warrior of Many Faces
Lucidthought
Violenceman
Conren
Bionichute

Best One-Hit Wonder
Heroes of the Trine by LegendofLink
Vergil by Hyper_Ridley and TWILTHERO
Poison Ivy by BladeKnight420
Shiftry by agidius
Naoto Shirogane by WorkingClassHero
Junker Bot by Lucidthought
Elemental Knight Regulus by Koric
Hockey Man by UserShadow7989
Marluxia by MarthTrinity
The Fighter by tirkaro
Negi Springfield by darth_meanie
Rayman by Bionichute

Best Organization XIII Moveset
Marluxia by MarthTrinity
Luxord by Katapultar
Larxene by Junahu
Xaldin by ProfPeanut
Zexion by ProfPeanut
Laxaeus by ProfPeanut
Vexen by Kholdstare
Saix by Kholdstare
Axel by Kholdstare
Roxas by Kholdstare
Xemnas by smashbot226
Xigbar by smashbot226
Demyx by FrozenRoy
Perches Poxtrot (The Prospector) by MasterWarlord
Toxinrial (Iron Tail) by Davidreamcatcha

Best Mario Series Moveset
Jarvis by Bkupa666
Gooper Blooper by Bkupa666
Tubba Blubba by MasterWarlord
Black Hole Bowser by MasterWarlord
Bowser Sphinx by n88_2004
Amps by n88_2004
Cap'n Bowser by Junahu
Dry Bones by Junahu
Wizard Bowser by Smash Daddy
Junker Bot by Lucidthought
Bowser the Brash by Davidreamcatcha
Bouldergeist by getocoolaid
Count Bleck by majora_787
X-Naut by Waver

Best Moveset Mechanic


Best Playstyle


Funniest Moveset


Most Improved Designer


Most Helpful MYMer


Funniest MYMer


Best Commenter


Best Leader
MasterWarlord
Smash Daddy
Bkupa666
LegendofLink
Katapultar
ForwardArrow

MYM12 WINRAR



Special Award: Most Missed MYMer

 

[MasterWarlord]

IRON TAIL

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http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14333306&postcount=398​

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14333306&postcount=398http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14333306&postcount=398http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=14333306&postcount=398

Iron Tail is a set that was largely ignored because of it being posted to troll a movement. Ironically, though, the set was made to counter the trolling done by a -certain- individual, whom lied to David about doing this set. In any case, Iron Tail is a miniature Hugo set. Iron Tail himself mostly has defensive moves, while his minions do the meat of the attacking. His minions are only vulnerable while attacking, making them very good tools to defend Iron Tail. Defending Iron Tail is essential, as foes will be on a mad dash to reach him to get the cure to their poison that Iron Tail has inflicted upon them with their Green Eggs. Iron Tail is a rather stallish character, though if he prefers he can defend eggs in a web or bury them rather than keeping them on his person, if he wants to engage in more direct combat. Unlike other stall-based characters, though, it's just for poison damage, and he has more than enough ways to actually kill them once their damage goes up - even some early kill methods if one wants to play Iron Tail more pro-actively, with the bat's wind hitboxes and Iron Tail's position swapping teleport aerial being good for gimping.

The main accusation brought against this set seems to be tackiness, which completely and utterly astounds me. The likes of Doc Scratch gets a free pass on tackiness with his nonsense broom/mop garbage and having next to no attacks, while Iron Tail is shunned when his source material actually justifies his (significantly less) tackiness in many ways? The main reason I assume people somehow mislabel this set with tackiness is the lack of attacks on Iron Tail himself, with them being few and far between. While he still has some without his bat and spider at all, the bat in particular may as well count as Iron Tail, as he can stand on the bat's solid back and essentially move about as one character, simply getting occasional aid from the spider. Iron Tail's evasive moves serve even more purpose here, as they enable him to abandon ship from the bat if things start looking back, such as in the instance of the MYM 12 voting period.

 

[Deleted member]

Zexion
Zexion
Zexion
Zexion​

It may shock you to know, the pretentious organisation is relevant to this advertisement! Zexion is the latest in an excessively-popular genre, duplication, and the apple does not fall far from the tree. Copying yourself is an easy practice that you will be doing throughout the match, what is profoundly significant is the way you go about handling your doppelgänger brethren. To this end, the set achieves new heights solely focusing on this concept, as usually duplication is distilled in invisibility or another big name archetype to get the intended effect. No, Peanut plays it by the books, having a full grasp of how the character works in a match and creates a thorough method of control for Zexion, keeping a lid on the set's creativity. Your copies can be directly controlled, or left to mimic your actions. They cannot be killed easily - the opponent has to be cautious, as if they attack foolhardy, not only is the copy left undeterred, the opponent has no better idea if it's the real Zexion. 'Illusory damage' is an area no one has explored, full advantage being taken to fully extract all potential from this non-plus'd villain. It's a cold and calculating playstyle that for once, puts the pressure on the opponent to juggle the hard facts of your mechanic, though doesn't sacrifice the set's playability or force the opponent into an annoying mini game. Not afraid to get his hands dirty, Peanut makes this a very enjoyable journey through his easy-going writing style. In one word, it's painstaking. Being the set maker he is, he approaches movesets wanting to keep the reader at his side, every step that he takes - when given a character who can do practically anything, the result is spectacular. The playstyle doesn't end up an amalgamation of moves that constitute a halfway playground, but the player is given the freedom to experiment endlessly, emphasizing mindgames in a way that the earliest beginner can understand. There is structure here, for a set largely made in one-night, its self-awareness is extraordinary. A deserving candidate for your support and a high spot on your vote list.

 

[Conren]

[collapse="Tiki"]You're pretty persistent, man - another Fire Emblem set, and on the same page as your second nonetheless! The dragon transformation is pretty cool, though it feels that Tiki might as well always be in it since even if she's knocked into the air or so she can just recover again. The dragon form itself does feel a little underwhelming (are dragons really that small in the FE Universe?) and could possibly do with a buff - if you're worried about balance simply have Tiki require a time limit or something before she can transform again.

I unfortunately feel that Tiki is somewhat the weakest of your 3 sets. Her playstyle doesn't feel quite up to scratch when most of the moves are overly simplistic and serve to drag a foe into another, also feeling too reminiscent to Charizard's from Brawl (her physique and attack similarities do take away a lot of excitement). I don't think this is the best possible or most fitting path you could have taken for Tiki given she's a -dragon- (I'm not sure whether giving EVERY FE character a counter is suitable), though to be fair you're still learning. There's really quite a lot more you could have brought out and delivered with this interesting character choice rather than making her a Charizard "clone" - don't be afraid to be a bit more daring with your movesetting and the abilities your character possesses (reading a whole bunch of sets might help you for that), for thinking outside the box tends to be very rewarding. If you want to continue making movesets the way you are however I won't stop you. [/collapse]

It's a bit late, but I thought I'd comment on some of my choices. Yes, FE dragons are a lot bigger than that, but I shrunk her down in order to avoid awkwardness. It's kind of like how Bowser and Sentinel were shrunk down when making fighting game appearances. I was looking at it on a game play perspective. Other than that, I'm not sure what makes her underwhelming. Damage-wise, she's on par with Bowser, which is nothing to scoff at. Bowser can lift thousands of tons. >.>

I do agree that I could have done more with the moveset. Maybe on a latter contest I'll revamp her. (: