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A slow moving class, Cut generally wants to trade time for risk, and thrives on controlling space.

Depending on your distance from the other player, Cut's initialization (when it drops its "anchor") will vary in length. If directly beside the opponent, laying your anchor costs a significant reduction in momentum and movement speed for several frames. If distant, however, there is virtually no cost to dropping the cutline anchor.

Bear in mind, the distance you move from your anchor point inversely affects your speed. The further you move, the slower you move, and the closer, the faster. While an overall slight effect, it cannot be totally ignored.

As Cut, you should not necessarily aim to turn over possession of the ball with your cutline every time. Instead, think of Cut as a tool for shepherding. When drawing a cutline you will move, at most, an equal speed to a player who has just picked up the ball. Your anchor, however, is stationary. Therefore, the speed any given point along your cutline moves correlates linearly to its distance between you and the anchor. That is to say, the majority of your cutline will always move much slower than the defender. You cannot simply drop anchor, expect to catch up to them and take the ball for free. An effective cutline requires cleverness.

My first advice is to never drop your anchor in the middle of open space. It should be placed beside a wall or another cutline, giving yourself a surface to squeeze the opponent against. If you place it in open space, the opponent can simply run toward your anchor, circling it indefinitely. When anchored beside a wall, however, the opponent cannot bypass your cutline, creating an inescapable "checkmate" situation.

Now, a good opponent will foresee these checkmates and know to avoid them. There is no good way to hide your intentions when attempting to catch your opponent in such a checkmate, so it is in the opponent’s favor to move to a place where you cannot trap them. This allows you to essentially mark whole sections of the level as "off-limits" to the other player. The benefit of this may not be immediately obvious, but consider the effects of your opponent scoring one zone's worth of points in one zone versus the same amount spread across two zones. In the former situation, you've lost a zone, and potentially the match, but in the latter each of these zones remain available for your capture. Cut allows you to dissipate the point accumulation of your opponent while concentrating your own.

Cut also increases in power toward the end of games on maps with an odd number of zones. In the case of both players capturing two zones and fighting over the single final zone, Cut should have an advantage. Checkmates become vastly more threatening in the final zone, given that there is no longer any place to which the opponent may retreat.

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