DTL Season 5-Championship

Have you tried abbreviating? Something like:
"IDK y Tim says Loki beats Zemo. LOL! Zemo + Ares win cuz they r BFF."

No. However, Firefox just ate everything I'd written, so for a change I'll be brief:

Tim's tactics for the most part seem extremely reliant on the premise that his fog of war will pose a nearly insurmountable impedement towards my team's reading of the future. However, as Zemo can allow anyone he so desires to share his visions, and does not require that they even touch the Moonstones and thereby bump their rating, that is far from the case. Moreover, the more successful that he is in obscuring the battlefield, the more inclined they'd be to use different different tactics altogether, and those veer siginficantly from those he'd outlined.


I doubt that fog of all things would be unbreachable to Ares' eyes, when Athena's storms or the maelstrom of The Source were not. Also, fog lifts, regardless of its origin, and sticking with any given timeline, there are elements that will inevitably manifest themselves, even through the haze.

They could also broadcast information at regular intervals with the express purpose of being picked-up in the past. Mostly, I'd expect Mother Box to scan, and Batman to communicate with it. I further note that these are methods the B'wanas have employed earlier in the season, rather than pulled out of the Ether here for the first time. For one of those, they could always focus their attention not on the battlefield itself, but on one of the alternate dimensions Reed or my own Ubers could themselves be located at.


Also, I don't believe that we could alter the ENTIRE field before the battle. I'm sure the subject has come-up over the season.



A Few More Words About the Battlefield

If we accept Tim's premise, than my team has an entire day of staring at a blank screen. The very least they should be capable of is adjusting to Magneto's interference.

I'm not sure how much influence Magneto'd have over Lightray's webs. Sure, light is a form of electro-magnetic radiation, but then, the poles of a planet are themselves strongly aligned, and it is a statement of fact that Apokalips is teeming with electronic scramblers. Lightray nonetheless scanned the entire world unerringly. Is Magneto blocking it from even reaching his team? (Hell, is that even something he can do?)

On that note, light seems the most basic and obvious method of counter-striking at Tim's Regs and the fog. I already use it in a more limited capacity in my own write-up.


The Ubers

It's true that Loki never even has to even be on the battlefield to strike. I acknowledge similar tactics in my write-up. The flip side, of-course, is that that holds equally true for my own team. Both parties here can probably reign death a hundred different brutally efficient ways with little effort. As I mentioned, I tried to boil-it-down to the eventual match-ups, but Loki is hardly the only character present who can manipulate the battlefield. Zemo could easily pick a piece of land and accelerate the flow of time on it, giving his side ample time to make heads-and-tails of its surroundings, and nothing's to stop him from personally spending the entire engagement locked at that speed.

Another method would be bleeding Hades into Asgard, which Ares is capable of, and Zemo can greatly facilitate. At that point, there could be no argument he would be incapabale of monitoring the battlefield extensively. Edit: Those areas of it he converted, that is.

Zemo with a Mother Box sitting in Areopagus would be a devestating thing. I'll briefly mention tactics I'd considered truly over the top, like having an avatar of Ares drawing eyes on the field while the real one helps Zemo pick-off ubers, letting Reed fire mystic Uzis at opponents through the reflection of Ares' plate, or the Thanos Special, a giant Ares avatar packed-full with explosives.

Zemo's own method of attack naturally does not truly require pinning-down an enemy. Gravity will effect you no matter how well you hide. I'd argue that intentionally surrounding yourself with Regs makes them involved in the conflict. Otherwise, it is only their locations he needs concern himself with. He can strike with impunity anywhere else.


Zemo

Loki can certainly attempt to strike from nearly anywhere he so desires, but can he effect anyone directly before bringing down their shields? Has he ever done this, and if so who was his opponent?

Zemo's readily manipulated the hybrid physical/mystic energies of the Wellspring, and during prep absorbed power from Ares' blasts with which he could erect them, so "magic" should not be the operant word here.

Psi-bolts specifically we've seen do not conserve their potency through even ordinary shields, as was the case when the Fantastic Four first faced the Overmind. (And in-fact, the psionic-refractor there used to good effect by Dr. Doom was adapted that very day from early models designed by Reed.)

Tim suggested in his first round of comments that The Magus be masked by Loki's spells. However, it remains that he originally seemed intent on sending him to occupy Ares' time. Further-more, the Infinity Gems' energies were readily identified by Reed long before the Illuminati even set-about collecting them. It would seem inordinantly hard to disguise such read-outs when your opponent knows what to look for. It is, after-all, an aspect of existance, represented in a single point in space (to very roughly paraphrase Warlock). Even failing that, Mother Boxes can run scans and even lend a person clairvoyance, in itself a critical advantage vs. The Magus.

Incidently, what alternate dimensions can Loki use to access Asgard from?


Ares

Will not simply shrivel-up and die the moment he is out of touch with his own time. The page that Tim presented is in turn a direct reference to Ares' first encounter with Wonder Woman, wherein the subject at hand was not so much the absence of humanity as the complete wipe-out of all life on the planet as a result of nuclear war, and even then, while indefinite, the process clearly took some time.

Ares has shown the ability to slow-down his own frame of time, which he used as Mars to spend literally billions of years in the future without any direct contact with the Earth. Furthermore, the faith he requires does not by necessity require us hoo-mans to perpetuate. He was massively powered-up during OWAW, for example.

Whether he teaches monkeys how to sharpen sticks, gives the Martians fire, or simply slumbers until the rise of Man, adaptability is the trait that most defines the character, and he has infinitely more nous now than he did back at the height of his madness.

It's also curious to note that the Olympians have not once but twice severed their connection with the Earth entirely. Both times, Ares made a point of keeping tethered to the world to gain more power, but at neither time did the rest of his Pantheon seem on the verge of expiring.

Alternatively, he is easily crafty enough to leave a message of some sort for the future. Say, by teleporting to the moon and carving it on its surface. (Of-course, once there he may encounter The Watcher, which would greatly simplify things.) Lastly, if battlefield-removement is the sum of our ambitions, than all Ares needs to do is send Adam to a different dimension.

I consider it a minor point of irony
that Tim's plans may be undone here in the same manner in which he'd won our first match (for those who haven't seen it, look here, but I'm also seriously wondering how Magik does so well on such a battlefied. She apparently doesn't hear, or she'd be deafened by chiming of the city, and beyond the fog, the most basic strategy my team can use to counter is with great amounts of light, (which in-fact they do in a more limited capacity even in my original write-up). Beyond all this is an already stealthy Batman under optimal conditions tracking her down, and a target that is well aware of the danger which she poses. Both can teleport, and in-fact Ares can directly send Batman to her.


Now, I'll address the bulk of Tim's arguments regarding Ares later, but a salient point which he neglects is that beyond seeing through illusions, Ares is well capable of counter-spelling


Savage

Are you saying Batman knows the details of Vandal's fight with Resurrection Man? I don't see how. It was a one-on-one fight between Mitch and Vandal -- Batman wasn't there. Vandal surprised Resurrection Man with a bunch of his weapons in that fight (and ultimately beat him), suggesting the heroes of the day didn't know Vandal had all those things in his arsenal. After that, Mitch died on Mars. Was there some scene I missed where he conferred with Batman and listed all the weapons Vandal had used against him?

DC1M 80-Page Giant. Batman welcomes back Mitch after the events of the crossover, who openly discusses his demise, including the Bio-Mech Virus. At the very, very least, Batman knows some of the details of the fight.


*sigh*

That still leaves the rather major subjects of Ares' perceptions and Lightray vs. Magneto to address.
 
There's a lot more I was going to say, but probably not a whole lot that truly needs to, and I just can't keep spending so much time replying. So I'll leave it at what I consider the most important point:

What this probably comes-down to is that while Loki can attack Zemo from across dimensions, Helmut's still a shielded teleporting target whose mental defenses have been greatly enchanced, and with a Mother Box by his side. If he can detect the Magus before being overwhelmed, he can very swiftly dispatch him, at which point, and even if Ares could not otherwise have reached him, Loki'd have no choice but take the field or else leave the rest of his team facing Ares.

I didn't have Zemo track-back Loki at-all, so I don't know where that's coming from, but as Lightray's Mother Box is helping him, he would not be reliant on his own senses alone anyway.

As for Ares, I thought there were several inaccuracies in your summation. For instance, I really don't know what you mean by this comment:


Neither Ares or Athena were actually keeping anything from eachother there apart from there specific intentions. I suppose it's possible he keeps a diary his sister never found, but such has never been made explicit.

his ability to see through illusion has nothing to do with conflict either. It was specifically presented as a trait common to all (demi)gods. And he's shown Wonder Woman events in Russia, the US, and elsewhere as far back as his first appearance by simply gesturing and opening some-sort of windows behind him. It's an ability he's used since, and did not involve reflective surfaces of any kind.

I don't pretend that Ares will have total omniscience over the Earth, nor any battlefield he sets his foot on, but focusing on multiple events is an explicit power of Olympians, albeit one that has its limits. It's through that ability that I had Ares aiding Zemo the last time, and again here. It is, incidentally, not a power I'm aware Loki possesses, even with the Eye.
 
Dark Gog said:
Firefox just ate everything I'd written
Sorry about that :(

I've started typing DTL stuff in Word and copying after, so I can save as I go.
 
Reply to Gog's Comments

First, let's start with the most important point. No, it's not the fog, although I'll defend that argument below. The fog is mostly to keep Gog's team from being able to plan for what my lower-level guys will do. The most important thing is Loki's ability to stay hidden while taking down Zemo, and he can do that by lots of means, not just fog. So I'll start with that:

Loki vs. Zemo

My point is Loki wins this fight, because he can strike at Zemo from a hidden location, without Zemo being able to strike back. Even if the fog fails to hide Loki, he can hide in lots of other ways, most notably by hiding out in another dimension and sending attacks across the dimensional barrier (which I showed multiple scans of him doing in my writeup). (In case anyone is wondering, it's also perfectly legal for my characters to leave the battlefield for another dimension, which I confirmed the multiple times during the season that I had Darkchylde taking the battle into Limbo. The only rule is that our prep-time has to happen on the battlefield.)

So that leaves several questions:

Can Loki attack Zemo from another dimension?
Like I said, I already showed scans of this, and anyway Gog agreed.
Dark Gog said:
It's true that Loki never even has to even be on the battlefield to strike.

(Gog asks what alternate dimensions Loki can access Asgard from, and so far as I know there's no real limit on it. Obviously he's acted between Asgard and earth before, but on the rare occasions he's had reasons to go to other dimensions he's also been able to send spells back to Earth. I think he did so from Dormammu's dark dimension, for instance. And even if there are some dimensions Loki can't get to directly, Darkchylde could certainly send him there.)

Can Zemo attack Loki in the same way?
Gog thinks so:
Dark Gog said:
The flip side, of-course, is that that holds equally true for my own team.
But that contradicts what he explicitly told me before the fight, which is that Zemo can't attack someone unless he knows where they are.
XFanTim said:
How close does [Zemo] have to be to someone in order to use his powers on them?
Dark Gog said:
Probably line-of-sight or knowing where the target is.
So Zemo can't hit Loki unless he's somehow able to locate him in whatever of the innumerable dimensions Loki is hiding in (where he may also be invisible or shape changed or god knows what to boot).

Gog perhaps thinks Zemo doesn't need to know where his target is if he's just raining down energy blasts or something willy-nilly. He suggests as much:
Dark Gog said:
Both parties here can probably reign death a hundred different brutally efficient ways with little effort.
But (a) This won't help him hit Loki if Loki is in another dimension, and (b) this wouldn't be allowed anyway, since he'd be just as likely to hit a regular as an uber. (Gravity has the same problem -- he can't crush the whole battlefield without hitting the regs, and anyway that wouldn't hit Loki if he's off in another dimension.) He has to know where the regs are to do this, but we'll get to that below when I address the fog thing. Back to Zemo and Loki.

Would Loki be able to find Zemo while he's hiding out in another dimension?
Well, of course. Zemo can be located by magical scrying, just like Loki was able to instantaneously locate and check up on Thor on multiple occasions, even though Loki was off in Asgard and Thor was on Earth. Here's one example, and here's another

With the Eye of Agamotto, Loki's power to find people is even greater. Marvel.com states the eye can "track both corporeal and ethereal beings by their psychic or magical emissions". (It's also worth noting that Loki has the Eye for at least 150 years, meaning he's more experienced with it than Dr. Strange himself.) Loki himself tells us (in Thor #68 / 570) that it "allows me to stay in touch with any Asgardian warrior or mortal I choose." In Thor #69/571, he immediately locates Thialfi and Jordahl and teleports them to the palace, even though he didn't even know exactly who he was looking for, just that he was looking for the people who'd got in a fight with his underlings. In Thor #70/572, Kya (a mage) is trying to spy on Loki with a scrying spell and he immediately detects it, forcing her to break the connection before he locates her. In Thor #74/576, he thinks a storm is a little suspicious, so he says "Let the Eye of Agamotto reveal those who might secret themselves from Loki." and immediately dectects Kya, who had been magically causing the storm. Those are all instances of Loki finding someone when he didn't even know exactly who he was looking for!

Would Zemo be able to find and attack Loki?
So clearly Loki can locate Zemo, and clearly Loki can attack Zemo. And Gog himself said Zemo has to know where Loki is if he wants to attack him. But would Zemo be able to find Loki?

Well, why the hell would he? First, even if they totally get around my ability to obscure his future vision of the battlefield, there's no way he could know which of the innumerable alternate dimensions to look for Loki in.

He doesn't have some power that's equivalent to Loki's ability to magically scry for a person's whereabouts -- in fact it's been made very clear that Zemo has to choose where he's looking (and in what timeline), which is why he can overlook things. Furthermore, Gog stated very explicitly that Zemo's senses are "largely unaltered" by the Moonstones except for "skimming possible timelines". Plus, Loki could hide out somewhere outside of time like Darkchylde's Limbo, where I doubt Zemo's senses would even work properly. (For what it's worth, I also very much doubt Ares could spy on Darkchylde's Limbo, which is a realm fully under her control).

I also want to reiterate that even if Zemo did have some magical scrying power, Loki can sense and counter such attempts to spy on him, as he did against Kya.

Would Loki be able to take down Zemo?
So it's pretty clear Loki is more equipped to find Zemo and strike against him than Zemo is to find Loki and strike against him, but the question remains whether Zemo can block Loki's attacks.

Gog asks whether Loki can affect Zemo before bringing down his shields. First, I think we're getting ahead of ourselves quite a bit here -- since when does Zemo have any kind of shield that can block telepathy? I asked Gog if the Moonstones gave Zemo any defense against telepathy, and the only scans he posted in response didn't show anything that looked like a telepathic attack to me. So far as I know, Zemo has never used the Moonstones to thwart telepathy, and why would we think he could, when the Moonstones really just control gravity. Admittedly, "control gravity" is being interpreted very broadly, more like "control time and space", but I still don't see what that has to do with telepathy. Regardless, we made a very clear decision early in the season not to assume anyone has telepathic defense unless they've been explicitly shown to have it. (This was in reaction to the way telepaths had been rendered useless by everyone assuming mages, etc., could grant their whole team telepathic immunity.)

So far as I know, the only real defense to telepathy that Zemo has is his diadem, a piece of technology that Loki can either disable or destroy in numerous ways -- and anyway, it's been overloaded by far lesser attacks than Loki's. Loki's telepathic assault, even across dimensions, was so powerful that Dr. Strange (amped up by an amulet) only barely managed to stop it. (scan) And that was before Loki had the Eye of Agamotto, which amps up his powers (as Loki explicitly stated in Thor #73/575, and which particularly enhances mental powers.

By the way, if Gog is claiming Zemo is stopping Loki based on some power he absorbed from Ares during prep-time, I would have to strongly question how much power Zemo could actually absorb before pushing himself over the tuber bar. I'd say all our ubers are pretty much at the threshold before taking on any additional powerups.

As for ordinary forcefields blocking telepathy, that's nonsense. If it worked against Overmind that one time, then maybe that says something about how Overmind's telepathy works (or about that particular writer's take on things), but in general a forcefield isn't a defense against telepathy. Off the top of my head: Xavier psi-blasted Magneto into a coma, in spite of Magneto's high-level forcefield. When Jean Grey had lost her telepathy and only had telekinesis, one of Apocalypse's "Riders of the Storm" was able to majorly screw her up telepathically right through her telekinetic forcefield. Stryfe was able to telepathically muck with Jean inspite of both here telekinetic forcefield and the fact that she'd be trying to resist telepathically. Juggernaut has an extremely powerful protective forcefield, and yet he's totally vulnerable to telepathy once his psi-proof helmet is removed. And in the DC Universe, hasn't it been established that Superman has a protective forcefield just over the surface of his skin? And yet, people like Despero have been able to mess him up telepathically. Those are just the first few examples that pop into my mind -- I'm sure there are many more.

The bottom line is unless it's been shown that Zemo's forcefields block telepathy, it makes no sense to assume they can. And if it has, I assume Gog would have told me when I asked if Zemo had telepathic defense.

Incidentally, my backup plan if it turned out Zemo did have some great telepathic defense would be just to teleport him, separating him from the Moonstones. Loki can teleport him the moment he detects him, as he did to Thialfi and Jordahl in Thor #69/571. I know Zemo has used the Moonstones when they were out of his grasp, but they always seemed to still be in his general vacinity, like line of sight or so. If Zemo were teleported to another dimension, there's very little reason to think he could still access the Moonstones. I also don't see any reason why Zemo's teleportational powers (which are gravity based), could be used to disrupt Loki's teleportational powers (which are magic based). They're two totally different things. I grant that Zemo could teleport himself back right away if he were still in touch with the Moonstones, but he wouldn't be.

Of course, there are also many instances of people teleporting past forcefields.

Would my takedown of Ares work?
Dark Gog said:
Ares will not simply shrivel-up and die the moment he is out of touch with his own time. The page that Tim presented is in turn a direct reference to Ares' first encounter with Wonder Woman, wherein the subject at hand was not so much the absence of humanity as the complete wipe-out of all life on the planet as a result of nuclear war, and even then, while indefinite, the process clearly took some time.
And that's exactly what I'm talking about -- sending him back in time to a time before there was any life on Earth. Not just human life, but any life. Ares explicitly stated that if Earth were left lifeless, then all the gods of Olympus would perish. As if that weren't definitive enough, Ares whole defeat in Perez run, the reason he stopped his effort to create World War III, is because he foresaw that this would end life on earth, and thus would destroy him. He saw this while trapped in Wonder Woman's golden lasso, so it had to be the truth. (scan 1, scan 2, scan 3)

So that's two different writers (Perez, Rucka), telling us in as certain terms as possible, that Ares on a lifeless earth suffers a speedy demise. The fact that there's still life elsewhere in the universe clearly doesn't save him.

Being away from Earth in the future, or the fact that Olympians could sever their connection to Earth and survive, is all beside the point. If we ask What happens if Ares is on Earth at a time when Earth has no life? the answer is explicit in the comics -- swift, unavoidable death for Ares.

But for the sake of argument, suppose I'm wrong. Suppose Ares could somehow survive being on a lifeless Earth. My team would know he had survived, and could deal with it accordingly. Darkchylde's Limbo is outside of time, essentially connected to all times (which is why she can teleport through time as well as space). So if Loki goes over to Limbo, he could scry into the past just as easily as the present. He could look in on Ares and make sure he had indeed perished. And if he didn't, Darkchylde could port Loki back through time to finish off the drastically weakened Ares. (At the very least, he'd be drastically weakend by being placed on a life-less, and thus conflict-less, world. Gog has had Ares grow more powerful over the course of the battle from increased conflict, so he can no doubt lose power at approximately that same rate.) Loki could even finish off the weakened Ares in a non-violent way, to avoid accidentally empowering him. Trapping him in magical stasis or teleporting him into a magical prison or simply overwhelming him with a magical sleeping spell once he's sufficiently weakened.

My team could likewise use this ability to check up on Ares to make sure he hadn't left behind any messages, or to destroy any that he did leave behind.

By the way, the whole sending Ares through time thing is just my clever coup-de-grace, it's hardly essential to defeating Ares. Magus is a tough match against Ares to begin with, and even if Ares started to gain the upper hand, Magus could still stall with powers like phasing, or by hopping through portal after portal and forcing Ares to try to chase him down. And all Magus has to do is last long enough for Loki to beat Zemo (which I'm quite convinced he would for all the many reasons I gave above), after which it's two on one. If Magus is a tough match for Ares, then Magus plus Loki should be able to beat him on raw power without needing any fancy tricks.

Just to review, Magus is a Thanos-level character. In fact, he had the upper hand on pre-resurrection Thanos, who while weaker than the current version was still powerful enough to utterly defeat a team of Avengers and Avengers-allies that included Thor, Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Adam Warlock, Moondragon, Captain America, etc. When I say utterly defeat, I mean Warlock was killed and the rest were all captured and imprisoned. Magus was also shown to be far more powerful than the present day Warlock, who's basically a Silver Surfer level character with numerous high-end feats.

Ares is a major powerhouse, but if he's leaps and bounds above the Magus, much less Magus + Loki (w/ the Eye of Agamotto), then he's the most over-powered uber in this thing by a wide margin. I think he was allowed on the assumption that he's not ridiculously powerful to that high a degree.

By the way, as far as Ares "counter-spelling", I'm sure he's done so against mortal mages like Circe, but that doesn't mean he's going to be able to stop Loki's magic. Talisman counters magic too, but when she "cancelled" Loki's Fire Fountain spell all that happened was it blinked out for a fraction of a second and then turned back on and blasted her into a wall. (scan) And personally I'd say that in terms of magic (as opposed to physical stats) Loki is above even Ares, especially when Loki's power is amplified by the Eye of Agamotto (which was explicitly stated to amplify Loki's power in Thor #73/575).

Note that at this point, I still haven't discussed the fog
I figured the whole fog thing would be one of the more controversial points in my writeup, and while I think it's fully defensible (see below), my point is I don't need it to beat Gog's ubers. It's more to prevent him from gaining too much of a tactical advantage against my regs. But really, if I beat the ubers there's no one else on his team that can hope to stand against my ubers, and my team's victory will be assured.

I'll get to the fog in a minute, but first a few other quick points.

Zemo amping up his speed with time manipulation . . .
I question how much if at all Zemo can amp up his speed without making himself tuber. Didn't we discuss this point with the uber mages a while back? I think it was said that they couldn't amp their own speed substantially without crossing the uber bar. (Whoever it was who had Hourman and was forced to give him up -- Corp, maybe? -- felt especially strongly that the mages shouldn't be able to pull this stuff.) Zemo with his half-a-dozen instant kill attacks should be no more allowed to do this than they are.

Also, if we really want to play that way, Loki could go to Darkchylde's Limbo, which is outside of time, and from there he could strike against Zemo at any point in time. Being able to send your attacks to any point in time trumps superspeed, I think.

Ares using avatars . . .
I'm not quite sure what that means. Creating new characters? Or amping up existing ones? Either way, it's not allowed -- you're either violating the five character limit, or violating the limit on how many you can have at each ranking.

If we are going to let Ares amp up his teammates, note that Loki is at least as good at amping people up. Obviously, he's made ubers like Absorbing Man, but he's also amped up a minor side-show mind reader into an extremely high-level psionic. I could post scans, but for now I won't bother, since like I said I don't really think it's allowed.

Bleeding Hades into Asgard . . .
I didn't really think we're allowed to outright change the battlefield into a different one, which is what that would amount to. But if we want to go that rout, Darkchylde could open a massive portal like she did in Inferno and let Limbo flood into Asgard. In Limbo, Darkchylde has Sorcerer Supreme type magical abilities (in fact, I think she is considered Sorcerer Supreme of that dimension.) The problem with bumping her up in ranking could be circumvented by having Magus absorb her soul like he did in our previous fight (since he can use knowledge -- including I assume magical knowledge -- of people he absorbs). Loki and Darkchylde's magic in a Limbo/Asgard fusion would be basically unbeatable.

Personally, I think that's pushing things way too far, but no more than transforming Asgard into Hades.

Reply to Gog's comments continued below
 
Sorry about that :(

I've started typing DTL stuff in Word and copying after, so I can save as I go.

I do that sometimes, but working on a lap-top, it can get to be a major strain on memory. Mozilla actually saves any text you have in your reply box, but it won't be able to reload the preview screen, which apparently I accessed.

Anyway, I edited my reply slightly.
 
Reply to Gog's comments (continued)

The Fog

Finally, lets get to whether the fog would or wouldn't obscure your team's vision of the future. I'll address your criticisms point by point:

Zemo sharing his visions
First, Zemo was shown to be able to display images of future timelines he had already seen to his teammates. That doesn't mean he can sufficiently externalize the whole process of skimming the timelines (subject to his own prejudices and yada yada) to let them direct which ones he finds. And anyway, if his teammates are controlling where the Moonstones look, how is that any different than them using them and bumping up their ranking?

To reiterate, if determining which future to view rests with Zemo, then if all futures look like blank fog he has no way to know which to show his teammates, even if they could perceive more than fog when they look at those futures.

Scanning the future
Of course, whether Zemo can let others determine which future to look at is irrelevant, unless his teammates can use the Moonstones to learn more than Zemo himself can, and I'm not so sure they could. Gog assumes they can scan the world on the other side of the Moonstones' portals, either with Lightray's photon webs, Ares magical senses, or Batman's technology. I don't think they could scan through the portals, because that would be interacting with my team, which they're not allowed to do in prep-time. You might say "Well, his team is in prep-time, but mine is in battle-time, so that makes it OK." I find that a totally illogical interpretation. Under any ordinary circumstances, my team would instantly detect any efforts to scan them and be able to act to block them or counterstrike against the scanner. Loki demonstrated that he could immediately detect a magical observer in Thor #70/572, and for non-magical scans Magneto would surely detect it as well. If my team isn't allowed to defend against Gog's scans because his team is in prep-time and we can't interact with them, then the only fair interpretation is that it goes both ways and they can't interact with us either.

As far as I'm concerned, all Gog's guys are allowed to do is passively observe, meaning seeing the images that come through from the future. Actually reaching through time with magical senses or the future equivalent of radar or what have you is pushing it too far.

"fog lifts"
Not magical fog. Loki can create fire that burns forever without fuel (not to mention doing crazy crap like bringing statues to life and making them walk around or turning a car into an ice cream sundae) and you think permanent fog would be a problem?

"elements manifest themselves through the haze"
Again, this isn't naturally occurring fog, it's magical fog, and Loki can make it as thick as he wants. Plus, he's overlaying it with the illusion of even more fog. Surely he can make it thick enough to obscure everything completely, if he so desires.

countering fog with light
Again, a sufficiently thick fog will obscure whatever light is being put out, or at least reflect it from water droplet to water droplet in a blinding glow that obscures more than it reveals. Plus, Magneto can redirect light and otherwise muck around with it, since light is after all an electromagnetic wave

How does Darkchylde see anything?
First, because she's in touch with Loki, who is magically scanning the battlefield. The Eye of Agamotto lets Loki keep in touch with whoever he wants (friend or foe), as Loki explains in Thor #68/570.

Also, if Darkchylde wants she can hop over to Limbo, figure out where she needs to be by scrying from there, and then hop back in to the battle at the appropriate place. (She's not allowed to fight another character in Limbo, because she's more than a reg there, but she can certainly hop in and out of Limbo, as in fact she does every time she teleports. All her portals stop over in Limbo.)

The first thing I had her do in the battle was port in to attack Ares, so I doubt Batman is stopping her before she does it. If he stops her afterwords, who cares, he's not getting past my ubers. Hell, as long as Loki beats Zemo then Loki and Magus together can beat Ares on raw power, without Darkchylde's help.

Would Mister Fantastic's knowledge of the Soul Gem let him find Magus?
Maybe, once the battle started. (See my above comments about how your team shouldn't be able to actively send scans forward in time during prep.) But once the battle starts, Magus is attacking Ares anyway, so there's no need to find him.

Could Magneto really disrupt Lighray's scans? And shield his whole team from them?
I don't see why not. Look, I don't know what Apokalips' "electronic scramblers" could do, but I do know what Magneto can do: it's been stated multiple times that he controls all forms of electromagnetism and all portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. By your own admission Lightray's webs are a form of electromagnetic radiation, so I don't see why Magneto couldn't disrupt it. As far as protecting my team, while the uber Magneto could work on a global scale, even the version I have could at least affect things several miles away, so as long as my team stays within a few mile radius of him I'd think it would be fine.

As far as your team adjusting to Magneto's interference during prep, again that only works if they're allowed to send their scans -- in this case, send the "photon webs" -- through to the future. And that illustrates exactly why it shouldn't be allowd: they're adjusting to my team's interference, but my team's not adjusting to the attempts to scan them? Doesn't seem fair to me. Either both should be able to interact with the other, or neither should.

Is flooding the battlefield with fog altering it too much?
I don't see why -- it's just manipulating the surrounding environment, which is one of Loki's main powers. My understanding is we're allowed to basically do what we want to the battlefield we're given. I think something like you turning it into an extension of Hades or me turning it into an extension of Limbo are too extreme, but merely creating a magical atmospheric effect doesn't seem unreasonable to me. How's that any more illegal than if Storm or Thor make a bunch of fog (which I submit would clearly be allowed)?

Batman's knowledge of Vandal
I haven't read the DC1M 80-Page-Giant, so I'll take Gog's word for it that Resurrection Man somehow made it back alive to tell of his fight with Vandal. I find that a bit odd, since the JLA 1M trade made it pretty explicit that Res Man dies on Mars.
Death, at long last, like the breaking waves of the sea. The storm invades, dust covers dust. There is a voice in the sand. The voice of an old friend. The voice of Mars. If he could smile at the sound of it, he would. But the dead do not smile.
Kind of sucks if he did live, since that was an awesome death scene.

But for this fight, I don't think it matters much. Even if Batman knows what Vandal can do, I still think Vandal could give him a decent fight. And regardless, I hardly ended up using Vandal in my writeup, and basically said "If Batman beats Vandal, my ubers could take care of him", which is clearly true.
 
My reply to Gog's comments is up, in posts #29 and #31. (Yeah, I had so much to say that it spilled into a second post.)

If he posts more comments I will reply further, but for now I'm going to go get some much needed sleep. :)
 
Added a few comments in post #27, and this is probably where I'll stop debating for the most part.

In general I thought you presented a strong strategy, so well done.
 
Voting for Tim. I especially liked the methods he devised to take care of Zemo's visions, and ditched Ares' ass.
 
Added a few comments in post #27, and this is probably where I'll stop debating for the most part.

In general I thought you presented a strong strategy, so well done.
Thanks, Gog. I thought it was a quite a good fight from your end too. :up:

I'll probably post a very brief reply to the new stuff you put up, and then call it quits.
 
Reply to Gog's final points

There's a lot more I was going to say, but probably not a whole lot that truly needs to, and I just can't keep spending so much time replying. So I'll leave it at what I consider the most important point:

What this probably comes-down to is that while Loki can attack Zemo from across dimensions, Helmut's still a shielded teleporting target whose mental defenses have been greatly enhanced, and with a Mother Box by his side.
I'm not sure teleporting does anything to make it harder for Loki to mind blast him (or my backup plan of teleporting him away from the Moonstones.) The only way I could see that this would be true is if it stopped Loki from finding him, but I don't think it would, because Loki doesn't need to target his search in a specific location. To repeat one of my above examples, when Kya sent a magic storm against the palace in Thor #74/576, he just had to look for the person who was responsible for the storm and instantly found her, even though he had no idea where she was (or even exactly who he was looking for.) There are other examples like this too. My point is, since he doesn't have to target his search at any particular location, the fact that Zemo is moving doesn't make the process of searching any more difficult.

Regarding the fact that Zemo is shielded, like I said above, I don't buy that generic shields typically block telepathy. I listed a number of counter-examples to this claim above.

Regarding Zemo's mental defenses, all there really is is his diadem. Even if Loki doesn't simply destroy this piece of technology (as I had him do in my writeup), I'm not convinced it could stop him. As I noted, it's been overwhelmed before by lesser telepathic assaults than Loki's. Yes, Batman could probably enhance it somewhat with future tech, but enough to stop Loki's attack? A telepathic assault that Dr. Strange, with his power further amplified by some amulet, was barely able to stop? Actually, a telepathic assault that would even be way stronger than that, given that the Eye of Agamotto amplifies telepathic abilities.

I don't really buy that. In principle we could say "Well, 853rd century tech is super-advanced, so they must have an answer to everything", but in practice we don't treat it that way. If we did, guys like Vandal Savage and Batman 1,000,000 would both be way more than regs. We've been mainly limiting them to tech they actually used in the comics. Did Batman or anyone else ever actually use beyond-Dr. Strange level psi-shields? I'm pretty sure he didn't.

I'm also pretty sure the Mother Box doesn't grant beyond Dr. Strange level psi-shields. Keep in mind, Dr. Strange is someone who's defended himself against the Mind Gem (something Professor X failed to do in Infinity Crusade), and yet he's had to struggle to stop Loki's mental attack even before Loki had the Eye of Agamotto. (Note also that in order to contend with Loki in "The Reigning", strange had to first temporarily shut off the Eye of Agamotto.)

Dark Gog said:
If he can detect the Magus before being overwhelmed, he can very swiftly dispatch him, at which point, and even if Ares could not otherwise have reached him, Loki'd have no choice but take the field or else leave the rest of his team facing Ares.
Magus is also a teleporting target, and thus hard to get a fix on even if not for all my other ways of keeping Zemo from knowing exactly where he is. But like you yourself acknowledge, Magus is just as able to take down Zemo as vice versa -- they each have attacks that the other can't block. I envisioned it as the ubers pairing off, so Magus fights Ares while Loki fights Zemo, but if Zemo persists in persuing Magus then that basically forces Magus to join with Loki in trying to take down Zemo quickly. Then one of three things would happen:
(1) Loki takes out Zemo before Zemo can take out Magus. (I think this is reasonably likely, since Loki has multiple attacks that I think would take down Zemo pretty much immediately -- either the telepathic assault or teleportationally separating him from the Moonstones.)
(2) Magus takes out Zemo before Zemo can take out Magus (This is reasonably likely because Zemo presumably can't hide his soul from the Soul Gem, whereas I have various ways of hiding Magus from Zemo's senses as discussed above.)
(3) Zemo takes out Magus first with his various quick kills. (Again, he does have to know where Magus is to use these, but after that they're largely unstoppable.)

On the whole, I think most scenarios would favor Zemo falling first. Yes, Ares would also be trying to interfere, but he doesn't have Zemo's instant kill attacks, and so probably couldn't take out my guys before one of them used their own instant kills against Zemo.

Dark Gog said:
I didn't have Zemo track-back Loki at-all, so I don't know where that's coming from, but as Lightray's Mother Box is helping him, he would not be reliant on his own senses alone anyway.
Not totally sure I know which part you're objecting too, but my point on the senses was Loki can find Zemo better than Zemo can find Loki. Mother Box can give him some extra scanning, but I don't think it's enough to locate Loki in whatever random dimension he may be hiding in. I certainly don't know of inter-dimensional scanning feats for the mother box to match the kind of feats I've already cited above for Loki.

Dark Gog said:
As for Ares, I thought there were several inaccuracies in your summation. For instance, I really don't know what you mean by this comment:It's also established that gods can conceal their actions from each other.

Neither Ares or Athena were actually keeping anything from eachother there apart from there specific intentions. I suppose it's possible he keeps a diary his sister never found, but such has never been made explicit.
She says she knows he's "up to something" (with the word "something" emphasized.) It's seems pretty clear she doesn't know exactly what he's planning at that point. If she's been able to observe everything he does, wouldn't she have a better idea than that? Hence, me thinking Ares can hide some things from Athena.

It's not just that scan I'm relying on, though. What about this one? Athena says that she can't see into the Underworld, and Hades can't see into Olympus. So gods can at least keep what's happening in their own realms concealed. That makes me think that Loki on his home turf of Asgard would have greater abilities to hide things from Ares. Likewise, I'd think Ares would have a hard time seeing what happens in Darkchylde's realm of Limbo.

Dark Gog said:
his ability to see through illusion has nothing to do with conflict either. It was specifically presented as a trait common to all (demi)gods.
Were there other examples besides this claim that the perceptions of a demigod let you see through any disguise? As I noted above, a disguise is something more specific than an illusion -- it's something that conceals a person's identity. So seeing through disguises wouldn't necessarily imply you can see through illusions. Especially since the way gods can see through disguises is apparently by sensing the deception in the thoughts of the disguised person, as evidenced by the fact that Circe was able to fool Ares's avatar when she made herself believe her disguise was real.

More on that point: If the way of seeing through disguises (or other illusions, if Ares really can do that) is by sensing the deceptive thoughts behind them, then I don't think that'd work on Loki, whose already formidable mental defenses are massively enhanced by the Eye of Agamotto.

And regardless, none of this means Ares can see through actual physical fog (even if it was summoned by magic). This is one reason I had Loki use a mix of real and illusory fog -- as a way of hedging his bets.

Dark Gog said:
And he's shown Wonder Woman events in Russia, the US, and elsewhere as far back as his first appearance by simply gesturing and opening some-sort of windows behind him. It's an ability he's used since, and did not involve reflective surfaces of any kind.
OK, so he can use Zemo-style portals to view things as well as mirrors. That doesn't mean he could see something in the middle of fog. Let me see if I can be clear: This sort of "window" allows him to see things from a different vantage point. But there's no vantage point that would let you see something in the middle of a fog. Imagine you're standing outside of a locked room that's filled with thick fog. A magical "window" would let you see what things look like from inside the room, as opposed to being limited to seeing what things look like on the outside of the room. But if in the inside of the room everything just looks like fog, you're still not getting any info about who's in the room.

I don't pretend that Ares will have total omniscience over the Earth, nor any battlefield he sets his foot on, but focusing on multiple events is an explicit power of Olympians, albeit one that has its limits. It's through that ability that I had Ares aiding Zemo the last time, and again here. It is, incidentally, not a power I'm aware Loki possesses, even with the Eye.
To be clear, I never said it was too many things for Ares to focus on. I'm just questioning how much he can actually see. Regarding Loki's ability to keep tabs on multiple people, he says in Thor #68/570 that the Eye of Agamotto "Allows me to stay in touch with any Asgardian warrior or mortal I choose." (There's also various incidents I've cited above of him locating people pretty much instantaneously.) Whether he's keeping track of everyone on the battlefield at the exact same time or just rapidly cycling between them probably doesn't matter too much, I think.
 
OK, that was a little longer than I intended, but now I think I really am done. Unless Gog changes his mind and posts some significantly different argument, I think I've argued my case about as well as I'm able.

I see votes from Ari, Nightwing, and Khell, so among active voters that leaves . . . LV and Wieg?
 
I'm reading, damn you! It's weird, but when I try to read it on my computer, I don't feel like reading it. It's too much. But when I put it on my iPod's small screen I've got no prblem reading through it.
 
Xfantim although I got some issues with his tactics. :) But all in all, I feel his write-up was better organized and I just can't dismiss the fact that this is Loki's home turf y'all. And I never really liked that shady zemo character either! :)
 
Tim as I liked his tactics better plus Loki in Asgard is very formidable.
 
Great match. I really liked some of the things Gog used. Especially a ray designed by one on his team specifically designed against one of those on the other. Would Magneto fall for the same trap twice? Wouldn't Reed anticipate this and make a better device?

For me, it boiled down to two factors. Loki's homefield advantage, and the slight edge I think Tim had in the debates. This was truly worthy of a championship match, and I'm glad one of our rookies put up such a great effort this season. (Actually, congrats to all the rookies that got so far.)

So, while Gog almost had me a couple of times, my vote goes to The Deadly Dozen.
 
Voting is now over.
Final Results:


The Deadly Dozen 6
B'wana Bet? 0
 

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