(CR) Saki

[night_sentinel]

Hello everyone, just got hooked on Saki!

I think everyone is underestimating Nodoka... It's true that she doesn't have any obvious special powers, but I think it's been implied during her round that she has the "power" to nullify other player's special abilities. She's like kyrponite.
Her kryponite powers don't work on saki cause she actually believes Saki is like an angel or something, but I bet you if she played against Koromo that koromo would get mighty vexed when her haxor skills do nothing.

I think, I agree on quark-san, Nodoka should at least be at tier 2. But, I believe that Nodoka's ability is more like a neutralizing field that protects her from other players logic defying skill. It doesn't really neutralize the opposing player's special skill just protect her from it.

For ex.
When she was playing against Momo's stealth. Momo's ability still works against other players on the table, it just doesn't work on Nodoka since the ability directly affects Nodoka. In this case, it affects Nodoka's vision.

Contrast this instance with Saki's ability that does not seem to be affected when playing against Nodoka. I believe this is because Saki's ability to pull a tsumo after kong does not fall under Nodoka's neutralizing field. Saki isn't hiding her presence from Nodoka or doing anything to Nodoka's tiles, she just somehow knows what are the tiles in the dead wall. Thus, able to pull out the right tile everytime. Nodoka can't neutralize Saki's ability since it doesn't deal with herself.

On a battle against Koromo, I believe that Koromo's ability to keep the opposing player's hand in not reaching tenpai will not work. That ability to work need a bit of manipulation to the player's tile and mindset that Nodoka can ignore. But, Koromo's ability to do Haitei will be unaffected. I also believe Koromo's uncanny skill in hitting another player will be similarly unaffected, after all Koromo can hit the other 2 players even if it won't work on Nodoka.

[night_sentinel]

Since, I somehow double posted. I will just use this space to see if Nodoka can possibly neutralize any special ability.

Mihoko - since Mihoko's ability seems to be hiding in the flow and striking her opponent offguard when their guard is down. Mihoko's ability to hide won't work just like stealth Momo. It is still possible that Nodoka might dismiss her or think she is an ally but judging from Nodoka's personality- doubtful.

Jun- Nodoka can't do anything to this ability since its reading the flow of the game but similarly Jun can't affect the flow of the game as much since Nodoka will probably ignore her manipulations.

Hisa - hmm.... really hard to tell ... but, I think Hisa's ability will be unaffected since Hisa's bad waits doesn't really affect Nodoka's playing. Similarly, I don't think Hisa's strategy will work on Nodoka unless Nodoka thinks its a bluff... Anyway this battle will be a highly mental one since both players know each other playing style.

Suggested tier -
Tier 1 ( Monster )
Koromo, Saki

Tier 2 ( Pro)
Yumi, Nodoka, Hisa, Mihoko , Momoko, Touka (though Touka and Momoko can belong to tier 3 haven't impressed me much)
Kana? - I have no idea if she is Tier 2 or Tier 3 material.
Tier 3 ( Expert )
Hajime, Jun,

Tier 4 (skilled)
The rest

[Marina2]

Do you think Momoko's ability will affect Saki and Koromo?

[Fishbait]

We don't really know and probably never will

It's pretty much impossible to make an accurate tier list due to all the hax involved and Nodoka being immune to most of them

Also if an allstar team is made, Momo would not go before Yumi even if she is chosen by whoever is in charge, she'll obviously want Yumi to go instead

[Sindas]

I always thought Nodoka was one of the strongest...
Afterall, it's pretty much implied that she won most of the practice match at Kiyosumi before Saki came and that includes by default defeating Hisa repeatedly.

I didn't really mention tiers earlier but I still think Nodoka's the best after Saki & Koromo... close to Mihoko though...

About Kana... we will never know... she claims to be good but it could be either skill or belief in her own strength.
Problem is that with the other 3 at her table we can't really evaluate her.

Oh and night_sentinel there should be a "tier 5" (beginner) for the blond girl from Tsuruga.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

Hisa - hmm.... really hard to tell ... but, I think Hisa's ability will be unaffected since Hisa's bad waits doesn't really affect Nodoka's playing. Similarly, I don't think Hisa's strategy will work on Nodoka unless Nodoka thinks its a bluff... Anyway this battle will be a highly mental one since both players know each other playing style.

Nodoka's immune to mind games, but she might still play into Hisa's bad waits. However, almost by definition, it won't happen that often.

[Spectrum]

I'll take a shot!

S-Rank (God Tier)
Koromo (duh)
Saki (duh)
Nodoka (yes. she has bad matchups with the other S-Rank, but she can still wreck pretty much anyone else)

AA-Rank (Best of the normals)
Hisa (overall very strong)
Yumi (we don't know for sure whether she's here or A-rank, but given that they're in the finals and how she's viewed, we'll give her the benefit of the doubt)
Mihoko (first round destruction, repeated observations, etc etc etc)
Touka (bad matchup against Momoko and being distracted by Nodoka doesn't change that she's usually a good player)

A-Rank (Elites)
Kana (yes. she's just outmatched by the monsters at the table right now because she's getting her 50/50s wrong and Koromo is dust-looping her )
Hajime (debated putting her in AA but didn't think she was quite that good)
Jun (debated dropping her to B tbh, but we have evidence of prior round destruction and Mihoko took her seriously enough to play first)
Momoko (Stealth Momo! Well, that and good enough normal play)

B-Rank (above average)
Mako
Kanbara (benefit of the doubt given she's the president)

C-Rank (and everyone else)
Yuuki
Tsuyumi
Tomoki
the three 'normal' Kazekoshi girls...although whoever was in Round 4 might deserve a B-Rank

D-Rank (what the hell are you doing here?)
Kaori ()

Really, could collapse B and C without issue.

[Bambi]

- "Vegeta, what does the scouter says about his power level?"
- "It's over nine thousaaaaaaand!!!"

I love power charts

[Proto]

Nodoka (yes. she has bad matchups with the other S-Rank, but she can still wreck pretty much anyone else)

As mentioned earlier, in terms of points gathered she lost to Momoko in the vice captain round. To be truthful, as said as they were all stable, good defensive players you would have needed a good number of matches to determine who was better, since all 4 actually demonstrated solid play.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by Proto

As mentioned earlier, in terms of points gathered she lost to Momoko in the vice captain round. To be truthful, as said as they were all stable, good defensive players you would have needed a good number of matches to determine who was better, since all 4 actually demonstrated solid play.

I think that's more indicative of Touka's specific matchup weakness against Momoko rather than saying that Momoko outperforming Nodoka point-wise means that she doesn't deserve to be up there.

The only reason Momoko gathered more is because she feasted on Touka completely not paying any attention at all to her and walking right into her riichi multiple times.

[emauser]

night_sentinel summed it nicely enough I think. The problem with evaluating some players is that they go against much stronger rivals. Jun went against Mihoko who's definitely the best Kazekoshi player and that's why she had very hard time. The same could be said about Kana. Not only she is against Koromo and Saki, she has to worry about Yumi as well and is not playing her normal style because she is so concentrated on disrupting Koromo's play. That's why it's really hard guess how strong she really is.

As for my ranking:
1st Tier - S-rank
Saki, Koromo

2nd Tier - A-rank
Nodoka (bordering top line but not just yet S-rank), Mihoko, Yumi, Touka, Hisa

3rd Tier - B-rank
Jun, Hajime, Miharun

4th Tier - C-rank
the rest

To be frank I have no idea where to put Momoko. While her "power" makes her dangerous even to S-rank players(at least at times) she's definitely not good enough to compete with them. I would put her in separate category: Special A-rank.

[tjalorak]

Originally Posted by FateAnomaly

And thats all because of her one trick-stealth mode. No?

No. Before she went stealth, she was just as good defensively as the rest. She only got off two hits on Touka from stealth and one of them was only 2.3k and the other can basically be nullified by Momoko playing into Nodoka's hand. After the start of the second and she realized that stealth didn't work on Nodoka, she played it straight for the rest of the way and was STILL mentioned on the same "world-class" level as Nodoka.

[paraalso]

I'd think it would be better to separate normal playing strength, and hax strength. Something like this:

Name, Hax strength/Normal strength
Koromo S/C
Saki S/C
Nodoka D/S
Hisa B/A
Mihoko B/A
Yumi B/A
Momo A/B
Touka B/ B
Jun B/C
etc.

[Fishbait]

Come to think of it. If Nodoka can bypass Momo's ability because she ignores presence, wouldn't Saki be affected by it a lot worse since she's suppose to be the opposite of computer-nodoka

Originally Posted by emauser

To be frank I have no idea where to put Momoko. While her "power" makes her dangerous even to S-rank players(at least at times) she's definitely not good enough to compete with them. I would put her in separate category: Special A-rank.

Except she played without relying on stealth near the end and still got the most points. tjalorak explained it pretty well

Originally Posted by Spectrum

I think that's more indicative of Touka's specific matchup weakness against Momoko rather than saying that Momoko outperforming Nodoka point-wise means that she doesn't deserve to be up there.

The only reason Momoko gathered more is because she feasted on Touka completely not paying any attention at all to her and walking right into her riichi multiple times.

But the tournament here is all we have to base things off

If we're going to start ignoring some of the "feats" and start trying to rationalize everything, then you might as well say Mihoko wasn't very good either for feasting on the "bad" players in round 1 and tricking Jun

If we start doing this then the only clear cut tier list is Saki and Koromo at the top, and everybody else pretty much impossible to place, completely kills the fun

Another problem with these lists is that people are obviously placing a little (or maybe a lot) of their own character preference over actual skills into them

[paraalso]

Originally Posted by Fishbait

Except she played without relying on stealth near the end and still got the most points. tjalorak explained it pretty well

There's no reason for her to have turned off her stealth completely. Being in stealth mode against 2 players is still a massive advantage, even if she must be careful about discarding to Nodoka's hand. So she must play seriously against one player in the game, while everyone else needs to play against 3 other players. While I agree that Momo isn't a bad player without her powers, you can't make any judgements based on the point situation. For the point situation to end up the way it did at the end, Momo must have won some offscreen wins, and we don't know if those were stealth wins or normal wins.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by Fishbait

But the tournament here is all we have to base things off

If we're going to start ignoring some of the "feats" and start trying to rationalize everything, then you might as well say Mihoko wasn't very good either for feasting on the "bad" players in round 1 and tricking Jun

If we start doing this then the only clear cut tier list is Saki and Koromo at the top, and everybody else pretty much impossible to place, completely kills the fun

Another problem with these lists is that people are obviously placing a little (or maybe a lot) of their own character preference over actual skills into them

Except that Tier lists are always based on overall matchups rather than any given individual performance.

You don't say Noel is bottom tier just because she gets wrecked by Tager, for example (to borrow from BlazBlue).

Because, yes, most of our on-screen data is the final round, that means we have to/should place a non-trivial weight to some of the Informed Abilities, such as Touka.

[Sindas]

Lol, if you only look at the results and not at information shouldn't Kaori be at least an A-rank?

We all know she only had dumb luck and not hax luck if that makes any senses...

[technomo12]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

I'll take a shot!

S-Rank (God Tier)
Koromo (duh)
Saki (duh)
Nodoka (yes. she has bad matchups with the other S-Rank, but she can still wreck pretty much anyone else)

AA-Rank (Best of the normals)
Hisa (overall very strong)
Yumi (we don't know for sure whether she's here or A-rank, but given that they're in the finals and how she's viewed, we'll give her the benefit of the doubt)
Mihoko (first round destruction, repeated observations, etc etc etc)
Touka (bad matchup against Momoko and being distracted by Nodoka doesn't change that she's usually a good player)

A-Rank (Elites)
Kana (yes. she's just outmatched by the monsters at the table right now because she's getting her 50/50s wrong and Koromo is dust-looping her )
Hajime (debated putting her in AA but didn't think she was quite that good)
Jun (debated dropping her to B tbh, but we have evidence of prior round destruction and Mihoko took her seriously enough to play first)
Momoko (Stealth Momo! Well, that and good enough normal play)

B-Rank (above average)
Mako
Kanbara (benefit of the doubt given she's the president)

C-Rank (and everyone else)
Yuuki
Tsuyumi
Tomoki
the three 'normal' Kazekoshi girls...although whoever was in Round 4 might deserve a B-Rank

D-Rank (what the hell are you doing here?)
Kaori ()

Really, could collapse B and C without issue.

i kinda agree with spectrum here and he has more options hehehheh:

[Spectrum]

Aw, come on, someone gave me negative rep for that tier list post? Really? Tough crowd lol... (That is the gray, right? I don't get rep like ever.)

[4Tran]

A grey rep point is a neutral point, which means that the person giving it to you doesn't have the power to award either positive or negative rep. Hence, it can either be positive or negative - the person leaving it should have left a remark as to which it is. You can read more about Reputation in the Reputation FAQ. Please note the following from the Forum Rules:

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I'm going to let it pass this time since you're just looking for information, but please keep the rule in mind.

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On to Saki itself:

I'm still enjoying this show enormously - all of the actual play has been riveting in the last few episodes. It's really too bad that Yumi isn't her club president as that would be a whole set of all four as my list of the most amusing characters in the show. As for the play in general, I guess it was inevitable, but it's finally time for supernatural powers to finally show up. I'd have preferred it if the show could have stayed in the domain of real play, but I suppose the onset of "powers" was inevitable.

I don't normally feel sorry for characters, but I have to feel for poor Kana - she's just been beaten silly by the rest of the table and she's just about to let everyone down. Won't someone think of the catgirls? Oh well, onwards to more Kana abuse! (Actually, I expect her to make a bit of a comeback).