Combo Shells

Introduction

Combo shells are a type of theory shell read against some combination of abusive arguments. That is, Argument $A$ might not be abusive read alone, and Argument $B$ might not be abusive read alone, but reading Arguments $A$ and $B$ together produces some abuse story.

For example, suppose that the negative says the affirmative should not get access to 1AR theory, and that the affirmative should also not get RVIs. The affirmative might read a combo shell on this, saying that these two arguments combined deny the affirmative access to offense on the theory layer since they cannot read their own shell and they also can't get offense without the RVI. Notice how the abuse is conjunctive – denying the affirmative access to 1AR theory might be fine on its own, or denying the affirmative access to the RVI might be fine on its own, but when combined, these two arguments become especially abusive.

Strategically Deploying Combo Shells

Combo shells can be strategic since they can be very difficult to respond to if there is a genuine abuse story. Your opponent, after all, would have to justify why their combination of arguments is somehow good under competing interpretations.

The main goal when reading a combo shell should be to generate a convincing abuse story. Whereas other theory shells might have many shorter standards, combo shells should generally have just one thorough standard which extensively explains how the combination of your opponent's arguments are abusive. Many combo shells will make some type of "infinite abuse" claim, which is to say that their opponent's practice makes it impossible for you to win the round.

Common Pitfalls

Remember that your abuse story needs to be conjunctive; that is, it needs to rely on how your opponents arguments combined are abusive. One common mistake made when running combo shells is for debaters to justify why each practice your opponent is doing is individually abusive, but they fail to prove why the combination of arguments is abusive. If your combo shell is not about some combination of abuse, it would be easy for your opponent to respond to the individual abuse stories of your shell just like you read multiple theory shells, which defeats the strategic value of reading a combo shell.

When you are reading combo shells against some combination of theoretical arguments, (i.e. a meta-theory combo shell), you need to take extra consideration to make sure your shell is read against some combination of abuse. Suppose that the 1AC justifies that they get 1AR theory. The negative, in response, reads the shell "Interpretation: The affirmative must not justify that they get access to 1AR theory." The standards of this shell are all reasons to reject 1AR theory. Does something seem off about this shell? In reality, this is no different than simply reading reasons to reject 1AR theory, except in shell form. But when done this way, could the negative actually win the round for simply proving why the affirmative shouldn't get 1AR theory?

In response, the affirmative should claim that in order for the negative to win their shell, the negative needs to gain access to RVIs, since the negative's shell is functionally a counter-interpretation to the affirmative's implicit shell that they should get access to 1AR theory. This is an important, though technical point about theory debates. Theory interpretations that are directly answering some other theory argument on the flow technically need an RVI in order to gain offense.

In the context of combo shells, however, you can avoid this issue by reading a theory argument on some conjunction of theoretical abuse. Since your theory shell is no longer advocating for just the opposite of some theoretical argument but is now a meta-theory argument about the practice of reading some combination of arguments, the RVI would not be necessary to win the shell.

Responding to Combo Shells

1–Contest paradigm issues–win drop the argument (if you made an abusive argument, then the judge should just discount that argument instead of making you lose the whole round) and reasonability (you don’t need to prove your norm is good, but just that it isn’t super abusive)

2–Answering the abusive argument solves–in the context of the shell above, yes it was abusive to say 1ar theory is drop the debater and evaluate the theory debate after the 1ar, but that just proves why it justifies a bad norm, not why the act if actively reading the two was abusive because the neg could obviously just respond to the argument.

3–Critical Thinking–being forced to think in tough situations like the one put in from the abuse forces debaters to think on their feet like they would in the real world, which is good for education.

4–Not Conjunctive Abuse–as explained above, if a shell justifies why each plank is bad but not why the reading of every argument in CONJUNCTION is bad, then it doesn’t solve the abuse and is generally arbitrary

5–Leveraging spikes against the shell–for example, if the neg read a shell saying “must not say aff theory is drop the debater and neg theory is drop the argument,” the aff could go up in the 1ar and justify neg theory as drop the argument to take out the combo shell.

Example

To give a formal example, we can look at this shell:

Interpretation: The affirmative must not deny the negative an rvi to aff theory and claim an rvi to neg theory.

The standard is strat skew - affs get a 2:1 theory advantage because they can either win off of my shell or their own shell while I can only win off of my shell - that creates irreciprocal theory burdens and destroys any chance of norming since either negs have to go 7 minutes all in on theory regardless of how friv it gets since nothing else matters OR they don’t read theory at all and affs get away with infinite abuse

As shown, there is one standard (strat skew) but impacted to three different things. First, reciprocity (2:1 skew), second, norming (friv theory which can also be an education claim) and infinite abuse (chilling). Additionally, the abuse is conjunctive–reading no neg rvi or yes aff rvi are fine independently, but reading them in conjunction is bad because it creates a 2:1 skew.