[Felyndiira]

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

Thus: Toki's technical skill < Kasumi's technical skill

This is entirely true; Toki would not have been included in Senriyama's lineup if it wasn't for her ability. If Kasumi had control over her powers (namely, in the form of being able to turn it on or off at will), her overall skill would be an important consideration.

However, Kasumi's powers are way too limited. Once she uses her suit magnet, she could no longer go back to her normal style of play; considering that suit magnet basically shuts down her interactions with other players altogether, as long as we can concede that Kasumi without her power could not beat Toki with her power (Toki's power has no drawbacks other than stamina, so she's more likely to have it active at all times), it makes technical skill a non-important consideration in a comparison between the two.

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

And at the risk of extending our debate again I would like to say sorry in advance, but I'll have to quibble with you on the overall result of Toki vs. Kasumi.

Oh, no, not at all. I am enjoying this discussion as well .

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

I do agree that there is an uncertainty of how many hands that Kasumi will be able to pull. But, given that Kasumi and Toki will have the same hand formation speed, then by nature of Kasumi's greater firepower she will be getting more points than Toki in 1:1 exchange. Beside that, since we assume that Toki will be calling a lot, her hand will have a lowered point value. Thus, to be able to even with Kasumi, Toki would need to win more perhaps a 2:1 or even a 3:1 ratio.

I'm still going to use the Kana vs. Koromo/Saki battle as a reference. Kana is somewhat like Kasumi in that she can get huge hands very quickly, but Koromo's and Saki's table control prevented her from winning a single hand that they did not decree that she could win. I'm not saying that Toki is anything close to Koromo level, but unless if we assume the worst interaction in the paradox, Toki should be able to really mitigate Kasumi's win potential, whether by calling on her own or dealing into other players' calls.

And plus, she can still complete her hands when she's not actively stopping Kasumi's tsumo. Kasumi's weakness with honor tiles also factors into account here: if other players (like Toki herself) start going for honor tile pair wins, it will make it difficult for her to discard honors in later discards. Having a single, say, chun in your hand is enough to mess up an otherwise flush draw, while Toki does not have the same weakness with any discard. Saki, for instance, was able to seal Kasumi's hands by making her afraid to deal honors into a potential rinshan.

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

Then, we have to take account of the paradox.

I don't think we'll ever be able to come to a conclusion on this one. I will agree that if the winning tile gets pushed back instead of reset, then Kasumi would have an advantage. I personally think that it's more plausible that the tile gets re-randomized, but since this is a paradox, nothing short of word of Ritz would be able to give any concrete conclusion to this =p.

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

P.S. I was rewatching the Toki's battles again in Achiga-hen and I would like to ask if you think that Toki's one turn precognition ability is always active or she has to consciously activate it. For the purpose of this debate, we assumed that it is always active but looking at the matches there is some evidence that it isn't so.

She has to consciously activate it. However, she seems to be doing that every turn just given how that match turned out (It would be implausible if she's only using the ability at select times and just happens to hit the riichi turns/important plot-central rounds that give her massive + points every round). We can't be 100% sure due to animation skips though - we're only shown some cases of Toki using her ability, while during all of the other turns we get the standard Ritz skip.

Oh, and I definitely agree. Saki vs. Kuro would result in Kuro getting Tanoshii'd very badly. With the Kasumi vs. Kuro situation, though - it seems to be implied that Kasumi's ability blocks her suit from becoming dora tiles as well, so that case should theoretically not ever happen. The only tiles that will never see play would be the red 5's of the blocked suit.

Originally Posted by The Green One

There have been some interesting debates lately. So in the interest of killing some time while we wait for the next chapters....

A question for you all. The ultimate Side A vs Side B setup.

In this scenario is a single game, vanguard, sergeant, lieutenant, vice captain, and captain battle. Each round has two Side A players and two Side B players. You can mix and match players from any team, they just have the be from the side in question and play the position in question. Example would be two Side A vanguards and two Side B vanguards.

What would be the ultimate match up you'd like to see? It's okay to include players from the defeated teams from the prefecture preliminaries.

For me, it would be this:

Vanguard: Mihoko, Satoha, Toki, ???
(Teru turns any match into a lopsided 1v3 massacre, so I'd rather have the good/ability hax players that can actually have a good game with each other).

Sergeant: Sumire, Yuu, Mako, (Rinkai/Usuzan Player)
(Izumi is not really that skilled; there's no evidence that Aislinn won't continue to just be sealed, as she seems to depend on her ideal table way too much).

Lieutenant: Hisa, Hiroe, Sera, Ako
(Didn't include sheep-san since we never saw much of what she can do. Haru and Kurumi could only mitigate Hisa when they were double-teaming her; didn't include Takami because it's either she doesn't get last dealer and everyone ignores her, or she gets last dealer and everyone gives up dealer turns on purpose - either is not fun to watch. Nagano's teams don't really have strong lieutenants also.)

Vice-Captain: Regular Touka (without Nodoka crush), Nodoka, FunaQ, Mairu
(Battle of the badass normal technical players ).

Captain: Saki, Koromo, Awai, Nel...Himeko
(Battle of the monsters + Himeko. Poor Himeko.)