DTL Season 5-Week 12 (Set 4)

[DTL Commish]

The rules:
This is one of four threads containing matches.
Due to the holiday, these threads will be in use for 9 days. Days 1-4 (Feb 15 - Feb 18) are strictly setup time for owners to plead their cases, tell us their team’s strategies, breakdown the match ups, and do whatever else they can/want to do to try and convince you that their team would pull out a victory. Please, let the owners do this on their own with no help.

On Day 5 (Feb 19) I will post and tell everyone that voting may begin. Any votes cast before I open voting will not count. Look over the matchups and read the strategies, and take into consideration how in-character each character is. Afterwards, use your best judgment to decide who you think has the best chance to win the match. (Note: The length of a writeup the discretion of the owner. Do not punish owners just for having a shorter writeup.)

To vote, post the team names you think will prevail in each match. Remember to vote for all matches or your vote will not count! The teams with the highest vote total at the end of the 9th day (Feb 23) will get a W while the other will get an L. (Equal votes will result in a tie.)

The battleground for this week is: Oa

Who?*
Starhawk (original) (MU) - Super strength, super speed, energy blasts, manipulates energy, can create light constructs, and a form of cosmic awareness
Over-Mind (MU) - Vast telepathy, super strength, energy manipulation, and incredible durability
Vision (eXiles) (MM) - superstrength/durability, energy projection, density control
Ganymede (MR) - Enhanced stats, flight belt, and a staff that can release energy
Magik 2 (MR) - Teleportation, spellcaster, and wields the Soulsword

VS.

The Authorititans
Red King (DU) -- Strategic and tech genius, flight, energy manip, assorted countermeasures, superstrength, superspeed, various other powers/defenses
Resurrection Man 1-Million (DU) -- Superstrength, flight, ability to choose superpowerset at will by instant-killing-resurrecting himself, starts with Quantum TK powerset
Aztek (DM) -- energy manip, superstrength, superspeed, supersenses, intangibility, flight
Anarky (DR) -- tech supergenius, expert at every martial arts fighting style
Midnighter (Post-Worldstorm) (DR) -- martial arts supergenius, predicts outcomes of battles

 

[Aristotle]

Prep Time
“...it was cheap, cheap, cheap! Since when is he an electropath? Do they even have electricity on New Genesis?”

“Lonnie, you need to calm down,” urges Aztek. “Raging about it won't--”

“And Radion? In Hades? What the hell is that? What's next? The devil shows up with kryptonite when Superman's in our lineup? Siddharta happens by with some lead when we use Sodam Yat?”

“He's not on our team--”

“That's not the point, Curt. The point is that if we lose, we should lose based on the merits of the fight, not because the other team's characters get to randomly generate whatever new powers they need to beat us.”

“Well, it's all under the bridge, Lonnie.”

“Yeah, yeah. OK, squad, listen up. We're not losing this ****ing match. I don't give a ****. We're not losing. That last week was bull****, and next week we'll probably lose to a clown car that, mid-match, gains the power to turn into five Galactus/Darkseid hybrids while remaining under the tuber bar. But this match, we are going to ****ing win.”

Red King pipes up, “If you'd like any help--”

“Shut the **** up, you cheating sonofa*****. Yeah, that's right, I know the whole story. JLA files. Now shut up and get in line, I'm not in the mood. You're taking down Over-Mind. You've got the defensive capacities, and the offensive capacities, to shove his anus through his eyeball.”

“Yes sir.”

“Mitch. You are going to pick Starhawk apart, atom by atom, put him back together, and then beat the living **** out of him.”

“Message received.”

“Aztek. That little ****ing ***** Vision thinks he's hot **** for whatever the hell reason. Fortunately, Curt, you're gonna disabuse him of the notion by taking him the **** apart.”

“Yeah buddy.”

“Midnighter. They got some fairie called Ganymede. **** him up.”

“Her.”

“Whatever.”

“Lastly, Red King, I'm going to be needing a couple of the technologies you developed.”

“...”

“Don't look at me like that. Give me a few days and I'd make 'em myself, but I ain't got that kinda time!”

“When did the boy supergenius turn into a hard-drinking Kansas farmer?” whispers Aztek to Midnighter.

 

[Aristotle]

Battle Time
As the battle starts, Red King fires a blast of energy at Over-Mind that's so powerful, it knocks the members of Who? all over the area. Thusly separated, they're ripe for the Authorititans to take them on one by one.

Anarky vs. Magik
Anarky finds Magik in his heads-up display and jogs across the battleground to where she is. She's just getting over her disorientation from the blast as he approaches. Instinctively, she fires a blast of magical energy at him—only to watch it dissipate against Anarky's cloak.

“How's that for spontaneous generation, *****!” Anarky cackles, enjoying the protection that Red King's anti-magic technology affords him. “Come on, try your other lame-ass trick, let's see it!”

Stunned at her ineffectiveness, Magik attempts to teleport Anarky into limbo. But as soon as the portal opens, Anarky fingers a button on his belt and it closes again, courtesy of the other technology he borrowed from Red King. Before Magik can even shut her slack jaw, Anarky punches it into next week, and she crumples in a heap.

Midnighter vs. Ganymede
Ganymede is just dusting herself off from the blast when Midnighter descends on top of her from a building overhead. With one arm wrapped around her neck, and the other one punching the bejesus out of her, Midnighter sets to work. Ganymede tries to shake him loose by flying away, but his grip is unshaking. She tries to fight back, but he's in a very advantageous position. He's too close to her for an energy blast. She vainly struggles against him until he beats her head into one big unconscious bruise.

Aztek vs. Vision
Yet another one-sided fight. Vision's speed is simply no match for Aztek's (yeah, Aztek has superspeed, *****es). Aztek rams into Vision and commences defeating him quickly. He does brutal, superspeed battle with his slower, less-powered opponent. It is a valiantly fought effort from Vision, but in the end, Aztek is simply too fast for him. He batters him with phsyical attacks and fourth-dimensional energy blasts and constructs, until Vision is inert, motionless, and secured in a plasma-beam net.

“I know you're not a New God, but still, I'd shoot you with the Radion-emitter I have from last week, just for kicks,” he muses, “but I'd feel like such a fake. I mean, it's nothing compared to that high-grade genuine Hades Radion, is it?”

He walks off, chuckling.

 

[Aristotle]

Resurrection Man 1-Million vs. Starhawk
Look, there's no denying that Starhawk's powerful. But what he realizes very quickly is that his “form of Cosmic Awareness” means precisely dick. By its very nature, it relies upon the Marvel Universe. Starhawk is fighting a DCU opponent, in the DCU. His precog means nothing. So he's a flying, durable energy manipulator vs. a guy who controls everything around him at the atomic level. No contest.

Every time he tries to blast Mitch, Mitch shrugs it off or cancels it out. His invulnerability doesn't mean anything when the very blasts that are hitting him are taking him apart just enough to make him vulnerable. He can't even escape from his opponent. He goes down hard.

Red King vs. Over-Mind
Over-Mind prepares to psionically whup some Authorititan ass, just as soon as he picks himself up from Red King's blast, but the King is already on top of him. Over-Mind is unconcerned, and reaches into the King's mind—there is nothing. He's up against a wall. There is simply no way to get in. Red King is completely shut in, mentally.

Red King blasts Over-Mind repeatedly, and as the monster attempts to psi-blast in return, he finds that Red King's armor withstands the blows easily. This is armor, after all, strong enough to withstand Superman's heat vision and energy blasts from a Green Lantern ring.

Chuckling under his helmet, Red King hunkers down for a knock-down, drag-out brawl, but the outcome is assured. Over-Mind is powerless against him, while Red King has a vast array of attacks from which to draw against Over-Mind. After a long, brutal fight, Red King emerges barely scathed, and Over-Mind lies crumpled in a heap.

Anarky vs. Dark Gog
Gog hears a knock at the door, but before he can answer it, Anarky kicks it in.

“Listen, dude. If we face each other in the playoffs, let's get one thing straight. I don't care how you strategize, as long as you do it fair. You made up bull**** powers and somehow managed to convince four people to vote for you. Of course, Nightwing was already pissed at us since our owner had the audacity to think one of his characters should be reranked, but that's not for here. What is for here, though, is that you used cheap, lazy, shoddy-ass tactics, and you did it at the eleventh hour so there could be no debate. I'd like to think those kinds of mischief won't work a second time, but who can tell. I'm just saying, it's pretty lame to win that way, and if you try it again, we'll run your team through the wringer so hard you won't know what hit you.”

 

[XFanTim]

You're not up against Doom 2099 anymore, it's Vision (eXiles). I traded him to Who? for Doom.

 

[Aristotle]

Uhm...I don't know what you're talking about...

 

[XFanTim]

I must have been hallucinating. Sorry.

 

[DTL Commish]

Voting may now begin.

 

[Nightwing]

wow someones bitter about losing....

Who? vs Authorititans

 

[Aristotle]

Bitter about getting screwed by tactics that have no support from the comics? Yes. Bitter about voters not critically thinking about those tactics while scrutinizing mine to a ridiculous degree? Yes. Bitter about a writeup coming in hours before the deadline to quash debate, and winning? Yes.

 

[wiegeabo]

Bitter about getting screwed by tactics that have no support from the comics? Yes. Bitter about voters not critically thinking about those tactics while scrutinizing mine to a ridiculous degree? Yes. Bitter about a writeup coming in hours before the deadline to quash debate, and winning? Yes.

We've all been there.


It's time to let go.

 

[Aristotle]

If everyone's been there, why did almost everyone contribute to it? It's one thing to lose to AS, who for all his annoying, marginally unfair tactics, at least TRIES to stay faithful to the spirit of the competition. This is a guy flipping the bird to the entire concept of the DTL, pulling powers out of nowhere in the source material, writing up at the very last possible minute in order to make it impossible to really debate him in front of the voters, and generally displaying nothing but contempt for the process. I assumed voters would have more respect for the DTL than to vote for that. Instead, you blindly believed everything he said, and scrutinized every minor detail in what I said.

 

[XFanTim]

I'm not familiar with DC's Hades, so I assumed when Gog said it had radion he was basing it on something shown in the comics, not just speculating. (My vote came before you'd contested that point.) But anyway, the radion thing wasn't the part of Gog's writeup that convinced me he could win the fight with Infinity Man. He argued based on the fact that Ares killed High Father and has been compared to Darkseid even several powerups ago. That hardly proves he'd actually beat Infinity Man. But your whole argument was that Ares has a bunch of losses in the myths, and that these are canonical for the DC Ares because he's based on the mythological Ares. I don't buy that we can treat myths as accurate portrayals of the comic book versions of mythological characters, so by comparison Gog's argument was better.

Lightray being able to generate an EMP is questionable, but I didn't see that as being a deciding factor in the fight anyway. And I thought you underestimated Lightray in having Aztek beat him so badly that he could take time out from that fight to help Anarky against Reed without Lightray taking advantage.

In short, Gog's writeup had flaws, but so did yours. It's not like we just said "Gog's writeup is full of holes and Ari's is flawless, but screw it, let's vote for Gog."

That said, I found your writeup this week pretty entertaining, even if it was dripping with bitterness. And with no opposition, it's a really easy decision this week. I vote for the Authorititans.

 

[XFanTim]

One other thing about Gog:

I don't think for a second he was deliberately delaying posting his writeup to keep Ari from debating. Is it that hard to believe he was just busy?

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure I was the only one who voted against Ari before he got his comments up. (Nightwing's vote appears above Ari's comments, but he edited it in afterwards.) And I didn't feel too bad about voting before the comments, because Ahura voted against Gog before Gog got his writeup up. So even if Ari's comments would have changed my mind (and I'm not sure they would, but I might have gone against Gog simply for failing to respond to the comments) my early vote only canceled out Ahura's even earlier vote.

 

[Harlekin]

The Authorititans

 

[Ahura Mazda]

The Authoritarians

 

[wiegeabo]

The Authorititans


Couple of problems. Starhawk's cosmic awareness is still going to work fine. It doesn't matter that we're in the DCU, or Res-Man is a DC character. If we ran the League that way, then DC speedsters would be useless in the MU since there's no Speed Force for them to tap. We don't play it that way, so Hawk gets his CA.

Also, the anger was pretty funny in the prep-time. Actually had me laughing. But by as the match went on, I grew tired of it. I didn't even feel like voting by the end. There's a time and place to vent, and it's not in the battles.

Still, it was a decent writeup against an ownerless team, and I'm not going to vote against that.

 

[Aristotle]

Starhawk's cosmic awareness is still going to work fine. It doesn't matter that we're in the DCU, or Res-Man is a DC character. If we ran the League that way, then DC speedsters would be useless in the MU since there's no Speed Force for them to tap. We don't play it that way, so Hawk gets his CA.

The reason that it appeared to be different to me in this instance is that, as it was explained to me, Starhawk's cosmic awareness is based on a previous life cycle lived in the Marvel Universe, which would seem to tie it directly and irrevocably to that universe. He's only cosmically aware of what goes on in that universe.

There's a time and place to vent, and it's not in the battles.

It's against an ownerless team, and it gave me a creative vent for my frustrations.

 

[LadyVader]

Aristotle

 

[DTL Commish]

Voting is now over.
Final Results.

Who? 0
The Authorititans 5