#Undercover Sorella Brella: an engineering miracle. A middling mediocre engineering miracle

[iri-scrublord]

Chill Season! 2!! Weapon Review!!!

Alright so I'm going to put my faith in the fact that this god-forsaken site is going to put most of my shit under a cut so your dash isn't inundated with my stuff, so here we go. I'll put my overall thoughts in the tags in case you can't be assed to read what's probably going to be a hell of a post.

I'm going to ramble for a bit about accessibility here so if you don't give a shit about that look for the next big heading.

If you know me at all, you know that I'm a weapons guy. I'm disabled, I've got dwarfism, which means I'm way shorter than the average inkling at 3' even. I've got shorter limbs and (importantly) smaller hands/shorter fingers than the average squid does.

Now anyone who knows Squidforce knows that at the best of times they can be kinda fuckin' ableist. Remember the fiasco with Kraken Poisoning seven years ago? Or, hell, to foreshadow my thoughts on the weapons now, the Splattercolor Screen?

I mod weapons. I do them in my garage, Mr. Grizz is my hero and role model. But unlike him, who just takes the safety off of literally anything he gets his hands on, I mod my weapons to be usable by squids with different body types (sometimes I also take the safety off for fun). And before the De-Recall era, where the pro leagues moved to Splatsville (represent), what I do was considered illegal for tournament rules.

And people are going to tell me that we have the Extra Leagues, and sure. I've participated in those. And honestly they're really cool, especially because all things considered I'm one of the lucky ones who has a splat's chance in hell to participate in Turf and Anarchy. Some squids and octos have ailments that make that literally impossible, but still want to compete. I'm not knocking the Extra Leagues here. Hell I make weapons for the damn things.

What I am saying is that I know modding weapons. I know how it works, I know how much of a pain in the fuckin' ass it is to get synergies to work right, and I lose my fucking MIND every time some drooling idiot goes "This weapon needs a Burst Bomb"

BITCH EVERY WEAPON NEEDS A BURST BOMB, YOU THINK EVERY WEAPON'S GOING TO TAKE ONE? SOME KITS ARE GARBAGE FOR A REASON

Anyway, accessibility and modification possibility are things that I rank pretty highly in weapons, and while SF's been cleaning up their act since the De-Recall FOR THE MOST PART, there's still a few stinkers in here I'm going to be docking points from.

Okay that shit's out of the way here we go.

Foil Squeezer (w/ Autobomb and Splattercolor Screen)

Right out the gate I alluded to something that I'm going to need to talk about right away. The special of this thing terrifies me. The hell was Squidforce thinking?? Sure, the structure of the thing's impressive. Throw a sippy cup and you've suddenly got a huge strangely shaped wall of liquid.

What's that liquid do? It gives you goddamn achromatopsia. Who thought this was okay??? Who the hell looked at something like that and said it was fine?? There's already been several complaints I've heard about it around my circles, and I wouldn't be surprised if this thing got banned or reworked in the coming months.

Anyway this is supposed to be about the Foil Squeezer not the Screen so.

The Squeezer is already a pretty solid weapon, two firing modes, hell of a mechanism in the thing to have two separate compartments for the different pressurization levels of the ink inside. Pain in the ass to mod. As far as kits go, we don't know how much it sucks to get the Splashdown or Screen onto them yet (haven't got my hands on a devkit yet) but autobombs are pretty reliable. In terms of synergy? You can throw the bitches through the screen to put pressure, so that's good. Pretty costly for an already ink-hungry weap, but I'll say it's decent, if with a scary scary scary special.

Nouveau's Snipewriter 5B (w/ Splash Wall and Ink Storm)

Remember when Snipewriter first came out and we thought it sucked

hahahaha

This thing's synergistic as all hell. A wall to protect it. A Storm for chip damage which Snipewriter thrives off of. And to top it off a nice red finish. I think they used a different type of wood for it too, which I can appreciate it. Softer.

Fun fact: the origin of the 5H and 5B for the Snipewriters are from the ancient rating system the humans used to use on pencils way back when. 5B uses a much softer graphite for the pencils than the 5H does - art more than writing. I'm not a huge history buff compared to some of my friends but I thought that was neat.

Anyway this weapon's horrifying but I still respect it more than the E-Liter.

Enperry Splat Dualies (w/ Curling Bomb and Triple Splashdown)

You're as beautiful as the day I left you.

In all seriousness I've got a soft spot for curling bombs. And like, not as a traversal tool which like yes it's very useful in that. I like killing with it it's fun

For Triple Splashdown...it's public knowledge that its daddy sucked. That it's one of the worst specials in history, rivalled only by the Reef Slider. So how is the Triple version? It's...

good I guess. I mean like, it's hard to shoot the guy down and not die yourself. So like that's cool. With the Enperries they've got okay synergy? I mean it's no Inkjet, but it's fun to roll in and then pop the special if you've got someone pinned up against a wall.

So like...passable! Which is good!

Undercover Sorella Brella (w/ Torpedo and Splattercolor Screen)

Alright, I'm going to address the mormyridae in the room and talk about the basic Undercover Brella kit. It's awful. Of course it's awful. But nobody really talks about why because nobody talks about the actual logistics for kits.

I kind of alluded to this earlier but one of my pet peeves is like when someone goes "bluuuh why don't they just give this burst bomb" "weh weh Inkstrike would be way better" "why don't you give this thing a wall why does it have a mineeeee"

Giving a weapon a kit isn't as simple as 'This weapon would be good with this sub and this special'. A weapon's infrastructure has to support the sub and special. Think of them like puzzle pieces - the more you try and shove the Suction Bomb piece into a Bamboozler, the more you're going to have to mod it to make it fit.

And as we've been over, Squidforce fucking hates modding.

Put more seriously, tournament regs say that for a weapon alt to be legal, the base weapon itself's gotta perform exactly like the vanilla variant. No differences in ink efficiency, accuracy, spread, ink calibre, nothing like that. So the more you mod a weapon to fit a heavy sub like a Suction Bomb, the less likely you'll get it to work exactly like the base weapon.

That being said: the reason the vanilla Undercover's kit sucks is because it's literally just an umbrella. It's not even a heavy duty one it's one you can pick up at the dollar store for 500G. Weighs five pounds at most, and they shoved an ink chamber into the shaft. Ink Mine and Reef Slider are light as hell additions, and frankly out of the ones that we've got tournament standard are the only ones I would bet you could actually be fitted onto the weapon to begin with.

Which makes the Undercover Sorella an engineering miracle. A middling, mediocre engineering miracle.

Custom Blaster (w/ Point Sensor and Triple Splashdown)

Keeping it short and simple, don't have a lot to say about this one. The Point Sensor's a good support weapon for a blaster, but makes it lack a good poking tool to make people move once they're marked, meaning you're more reliant on your team to poke for you by basically saying 'over there!' Not necessarily a bad thing, but makes it hurt for inking power.

Triple Splashdown....I dunno. I don't see anything for it? It's alright as a panic button, I guess, but the Blaster doesn't have the tools to corner someone, which is where the Splashdown excels.

Special ain't great for it, but the sub changes the weapon's role in an interesting way.

Nintendo's S-BLAST '91 (w/ Burst Bomb and Booyah Bomb)

I went off on how amazing the base weapon is on this a while ago, before I forgot to review the Dread Wringer and the Heavy Edit. I'm not reviewing those until/unless they get alt kits. Fuck you.

I went off on how tough Burst Bombs are to get onto kits a while ago, which...I mean if you asked me before this season I would have told you you were INSANE for saying that something as complex as the S-Blast would get a Burst. But here we are. Some-fucking-how Nintendo worked a goddamn miracle.

Is it effective?

...kinda? Kinda.

Booyah's Booyah, not much to say about it. It's decent on basically everything that gets it as far as I'm concerned.

Painbrush Nouveau (w/ Point Sensor and Tenta Missiles)

Painbrush is another weapon I never really got around to reviewing the base of. It's a scary thing. The Dynamo of brushes except it's actually pretty effective because it only takes a week to come out swinging instead of seven happy years of marriage. I can't imagine a time you'd actually be skating with the thing unless you're in a bad spot, and if you're in a bad spot you're dead anyway.

Unlike with the Custom Blaster, I really like the Point Sensor on this thing. Brushes are meant to be annoying little bastards, and constantly marking people with a weapon that has three times as much range as you think it does makes you the biggest little bastard on the map at any given time.

And if it wasn't bastard enough, you have Missiles for extra bastard.

Painbrush Nouveau - a weapon for the bastard in you.

REEF-LUX 450 Deco (w/ Splash Wall and Reef Slider)

*fucking chokes and dies*

Nouveau's Neo Splatana Stamper (w/ Toxic Mist and Crab Tank)

Probably one of the more interesting kits we got. The original Stamper's got the Burst Bomb and Zipcaster. And as everyone knows before the Burst got its infamous capacity nerf, this thing is FEARSOME with the damn things. So when we saw the new kit with Toxic Mist all the Burst Chuds lost their goddamn minds.

What are they going to do, give it Burst Bomb again? Get over yourself.

This version of the weapon's definitely more support based - sensing a theme with a few of the kits this season honestly - but not as much as you might think. Toxic Mist is important soft area denial, but more than that, it makes landing your Vert-Hori combo a LOT easier, because anyone moving through it will be moving slower than your vertical slash, which is saying something because that thing's nearly as bad as the Grizzco Slosher.

This leads the weapon to a much more thoughtful, methodical style compared to its hopped up brother, which I ended up really liking while testing the weapon out. You're not going to be getting quad after quad like Pro Bigboy Chara or something, but with Mist and Crab you're going to be doing your team a service by playing this weapon well.

And that's it. This is the first time I've actually done a real-ass weapon review on tumblr, so...if anyone other than Astral sees this I'll be happy.

Maybe I'll do another one next season? Who knows.

Feel free to shoot me asks or reply in the comments if you've got any questions or dissenting opinions. I love talking shop about weapon shit with anyone who isn't Astral because her opinions fucking suck.

Please someone give me other opinions to go off of I only have hers someone help

#Foil Squeezer: decent with a scary special #Snipewriter 5B: horrifying but I still respect it more than the E-Liter #Enperry Splat Dualies: passable! which is good! #Undercover Sorella Brella: an engineering miracle. A middling mediocre engineering miracle #Custom Blaster: special ain't great for it but the sub changes the weapon's role in an interesting way #S-BLAST '91: Is it effective?...kinda? Kinda. #Painbrush Nouveau: a weapon for the bastard in you #REEF-LUX 450 Deco: *fucking chokes and dies* #Neo Splatana Stamper: you won't be getting quad after quad...[but you'll] be doing your team a service by playing the weapon well.