DTL Season 5-Week 8 (Set 1)

[Harlekin]

Cool, I should check his work out sometime.

 

[Dark Gog]

Preliminaries



As a former Ultramarine, Pulse-8 fits well with my team's mind-set. In-fact, simply doing without Ares and, especially, the Swan, should relieve much of any pent-up tension that may have been building. A crack from Zemo involving Quantum Keyboards, Joystick, and rigging his own home-entertainment system signals an end to introductions, and things resume their normal course. (There's actually an interesting team-concept here, if only I could sneak in a Monitor.)

Psi-protection is provided by Pulse-8, who amps the background noise, and Reed Richards, who attunes his devices to match before equipping each team-member with one.

Mister Fantastic has actually created his own reality-warping machine within a day or so himself, when Doctor Doom had found his own. He helpfully modifies the Quantum Keyboard to include Hotkeys, making it that little bit faster to use in combat.

As time-consuming as reading Superman One-Million's power-list is, it proves worthwhile when my team reaches Wolverine and The Midnighter's descriptions, and surmises that being biologically and electronically enhanced, they are likely to be comparatively vulnerable to electric attacks.

Deploying so as to best assure minimal interference with the Ubers by Team Immortals' Regs, my team concludes its preperations.


Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?



"Clever. You used gravitational fields to slow me down, and time-dilation to boost yourself." The Man of Steel hovers over a chasm not fifteen paces from Zemo. He turns his attention to the twin spheres floating by his opponent's side before continuing: "And these.. decoys.. are filled with a synthetic approximation of Kryptonite? It won't work, friend, my Quantum Vision will render the material inert."

Light shoots from his eyes and engulfs the gems, which seem to lose their luster.

...Light shoots from his eyes and engulfs the gems, which seem to lose their luster...

...Light fires from his eyes...

"Actually, I just wanted your attention", Zemo tells the captive figure, "While I do this."

Impossibly, the scene replaying in-front of him begins to change. A well-muscled arm moves back as if to strike, as the man guiding it speaks through gritting teeth: "It ...won't work ...Zemo... You can see the future? I can calculate a billion scenarios simultaneously... I've hacked into The Midnighter's program with my mind... Whatever you do... Wherever you send me... It won't work... I'll be back."

"I'm afraid when one looks into the future, Clarke's first law will always be the first casualty." Zemo sighs. "It's a lesson I paid dearly for. Consider this your tuition:

I'm sending you now to the final moments of the planet Krypton. You will be back, provided I survive this battle. Otherwise, the level of Kryptonite radiation where I send you, coupled with the eminent calamity, will be enough to destroy even you."

Energy crackles. He takes a moment to regard the empty threads before him.

"Hasta la vista, baby."


"Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology ..."



Baron Zemo joins his second battle just in time to see Pulse-8 fall. Feigned shock turns to genuine surprise as he discovers he is unable to extract his teammate back into his Folding Castle as they had planned.

-"Surprised?"

-"Stalling, mostly."

-"WARNING: Power Shortage Critical --"

-"How is this possible!?"

To answer would be to volunteer information needlessly, but Helmut Zemo had always been a man obssessed with demonstrating his own superiority: "Pulse-8 set things in advance. We knew you'd be off-guard once he was accounted for. For the next fourty-five seconds, your armor's alloys will not conduct electricty under any circumstances short of an impromptu event roughly equivalent to the birth of a small galaxy."

The ensuing battle is savage and swift, but Stark has been thrown too widely off-balance. He is routed systematically, his armor methdically taken apart further and he himself knocked unconscious.


Lightray vs. Winter



This can potentially turn-out to be an extremely short match. Lightray may have no means of knowing it, but Winter has in the past been overwhelmed by flying a space-craft into the sun. It's not unreasonable to expect my team to speculate Winter's powers have a limit, or he wouldn't be a Med. Nor is it unlikely for a match involving Lightray to make its way into space. It is also to my knowledge possible an energy manipulator may be able to drain Winter's power, limiting his effectiveness dramatically.

More likely than any of those things, of-course, is that this will evolve into a gruelling and protracted battle. Contagion is an acceptable turn-out here for me; my main goal for Lightray in the early stages would be to keep track of opposing Regs and make sure they (or Winter) don't catch my Ubers by surprise. Which difficult in itself, with them hovering in the air possibly being massively destructive, and Zemo being surrounded by gravitational fields.

Lastly, it's possible that New God or Reed Richard's tech play a part in containing Winter. Both have been turned on far worse before. For example, Doom's very first invention -- and one Reed should be quite familiar with -- was his Freeze Spheres, which he MacGyvered in his teens with all the resources of a travelling Gypsy. Being frozen solid in a block of ice may not stop Kamarov, but it should still delay him.


Death and The Midnighter vs. Reed Richards and Vixen



Phased in advance until an agreed-upon moment, and charged with electricity for good measure (Reed is largely resistant, and Mari MacCabe can borrow an appropriate power), Reed and Vixen serve mainly as decoys here.

Wolverine goes-down cutting a clone of Vixen, who attaches him to a generator to keep down. The Midnighter is more weary, being able to observe these precautions from afar thanks to his augmentations. Eventually, Lightray blasts him off a mountain.




Final notes: Zemo used Mother Box to scry and access the DCU, much like he used Smuggler to tap the Darkforce dimension.

S1M may be more formidable than most Ubers available, but for so long as he is not allowed to blitz, incapacitating him is not beyond either Pulse-8 or Zemo. Wether is capable of exploiting any number of weaknesses the Superman Dynasty's suffered from, and Zemo is, aside from being exceptionally powerful himself, capable of scattering him across creation.

Even Vixen could -- should things go awry -- potentially mimic his powerset while lightray or Zemo funnelled his own energy reserves towards her.

The real Moonstones are now carefully hidden and protected. Losing three weeks in a row will have that effect.

Vixen can sense other life-forms around her, via her connection to The Red. It would be interesting to see whether she could locate Deathverine. Of-course, Stark may be shielding him from detection.

 

[Aristotle]

My vote narrowly goes to The Immortals. I think Stark may well be easy enough for Pulse-8 to work over, but Kal will take care of both of them really quickly. As for the med/reg fights, I just think I buy Khel's a little more than Gog's. But a very close one.

 

[XFanTim]

My votes for both matches now appear on page 1.

 

[Khellendros]

So, do I bother with a rebuttal, or is Gog limiting his participation to posting the initial writeup?

 

[wiegeabo]

You can rebutt as much as you like. If Gog doesn't or can't, that's his choice.

 

[wiegeabo]

My votes for both matches now appear on page 1.

I don't see your second vote.

 

[XFanTim]

I don't see your second vote.

You don't see it? It's right here. I voted for Ari and Khell.

 

[XFanTim]

So, do I bother with a rebuttal, or is Gog limiting his participation to posting the initial writeup?

Personally I always like to read rebuttal. If you feel someone is making a mistake in how they're treating one of your characters, I'd rather read about it now than make the same mistake myself later.

 

[wiegeabo]

I couldn't see it. The page wasn't updating with the changes for me.

 

[XFanTim]

Weird. I think the Hype's just being a little crazy tonight. Earlier one of my posts wasn't listed on the forum page ... I had the last post in the thread, and I could see it when I went into the thread, but from the main forum page it listed the post before mine as last.

Either that, or some admin is just screwing with me.

 

[Dark Gog]

(As far as the no blitzing rule, I think that really refers to things like teleporting the whole opposing team into the core of the sun. At this point it's largely redundant with the ubers can't attack regs/meds rule. But your ubers are certainly allowed to use whatever speed advantage they may have against the opposing ubers.)

The way I always I took it so far, it just meant a speedster (or any other character with an instant win, really) couldn't overwhelm his opponent offensively before they got in a few actions of their own. Although tactics such as making an instant grab for an important artifact may well work in moderation. Defensively, of-course, manuverability would still be a vital asset.

 

[XFanTim]

The way I always I took it so far, it just meant a speedster (or any other character with an instant win, really) couldn't overwhelm his opponent offensively before they got in a few actions of their own. Although tactics such as making an instant grab for an important artifact may well work in moderation. Defensively, of-course, manuverability would still be a vital asset.

See, I don't really like the idea of having to let someone get an action in, because sometimes a character's only defense is to hit the other guy first.

For instance, consider Flash vs. Prof. X. Realistically, Flash should win because he could knock Prof. X out with a punch before the Professor can even think to fire a mind blast. But if Flash has to give Professor X a free move, then that's basically saying he has to let himself get taken out, since he has no telepathy defense as far as I know.

Plus, it's unclear who has to wait for whom. I mean, isn't Professor X mindblasting Flash as much of a blitz as Flash punching Prof X? In a situation where whoever strikes first wins it seems like the faster character ought to get the win.

Anyhow, maybe wieg can clarify the no-blitzing rule. Personally, I'm not sure we even need it given that the fastest characters are ubers and thus can't be blitzing anyone but other ubers.

 

[Nightwing]

The Immortals vs B'wana Bet?
The Nameless Wonders vs The Authorititans

oh and i use Photobucket for my images and never had a red x yet i dont think

 

[Dark Gog]

Khell wrote an interesting battle. I particularly ilked Zemo's first line, for whatever reason. I do have a few comments:

Lightray - I don't think he'd really go for close combat as often as depicted. It makes sense with Winter, where his goal was to take him into outer-space, but otherwise simply blasting at a distance should work just fine, and probably suits his character better. More importantly though, tactics like anti-light and energy absorbtion shouldn't work too well against him. He can absorb energy himself, and actully defined his main power as energy conversion, not generation. Usually, when confronted with an energy attack, his reaction would be to transform it into harmless light, or a similar type of energy.

Wolverine- This goes into the what info we're supposed to volunteer, but wouldn't energy-blasts and teleportation be part of the basic description handed-out? Are we supposed to list our character's main powers (and Wolverine, even Death Wolverine, really doesn't have that many to begin with), or just a brief description?

Too Efficient? While Zemo's Cosmic Awareness isn't perfect, if your very first action is to neutrelize the Quantum Keyboard, I'd expect him to pick-up on it. It's what he'd do, after-all, and it plays into his (failed) tactic here of feigning Pulse-8's early defeat. (I was actually thinking of starting him phased, although since I neglected to put it into the write-up, it hardly matters.)

On a related tangent, while I appreciate you wrote all parties well and obviously didn't have your own characters act as ruthlessly as they theoretically could with their powersets either, I do feel it's my job to mention that as long as Zemo can draw enough of a bead on S1M to teleport him (which he can do on a rather large scale, after-all), he'd probably go the extra yard and displace him in time as well as space. It's likely to take a bit more effort, but would be a lot more effective and, again, fits well into my own strategy for the match.

Stark- This isn't a major issue by any means, but I just read the What If? the other day, and I really don't remeber him reflecting any blasts from Dormmamu. Could it have been someone else he did this against?

 

[Dark Gog]

See, I don't really like the idea of having to let someone get an action in, because sometimes a character's only defense is to hit the other guy first.

For instance, consider Flash vs. Prof. X. Realistically, Flash should win because he could knock Prof. X out with a punch before the Professor can even think to fire a mind blast. But if Flash has to give Professor X a free move, then that's basically saying he has to let himself get taken out, since he has no telepathy defense as far as I know.

Plus, it's unclear who has to wait for whom. I mean, isn't Professor X mindblasting Flash as much of a blitz as Flash punching Prof X? In a situation where whoever strikes first wins it seems like the faster character ought to get the win.

Anyhow, maybe wieg can clarify the no-blitzing rule. Personally, I'm not sure we even need it given that the fastest characters are ubers and thus can't be blitzing anyone but other ubers.

I really do understand where you're coming from. Usually when comparing characters, my approach would be simply to weigh-in what each side can do that they'd actually be willing to. I just get the vibe that, while treating characters as much more competent then they often are in comics, the DTL still favoured some story-telling sensibilities. And narrative-wise, having a brief back-and-forth between individuals still makes much more sense than simply having one of them destroy the other in an instant. Even if one of those characters still fails to get a shot in.

More than that though, treating comics fully realistically really does stretch them just a bit more then they could take in some ways, just as applying some charaters' power-sets fully here may result in some truly counter-intuitive matches. For instance, we all may expect and accept the Flash blitzing, but what about the Surfer? He's reacted in nano-seconds before, after-all, and routinely navigates in transluminal speeds. Is Thor bisecting rivals with a portal deemed acceptable? What about GLs, who outside of directly effecting other characters, seem well and truly capable of just about anything they could imagine (if only on a limited scale)? We don't even seem to expect inventors to drudge-up past creations much, if not specifically tied to the match-up in some way.

It's why I've approached a lot of my fights the way I have, really, and my reasoning for some of the individual character rankings.

The Flash vs. telepaths, incidently, is one of my pet-peeves on the. The idea that thought or psions travel instantaneously just makes no sense at-all to me, and doesn't seem to match well with the majority of subject matter either. (There's also the point, which I'm told has seen some play in the DC universe, of trying to effect exponentially faster thoughts with by comparison fairly ordinary faculties, even if you were somehow able to trace an active speedster's location.)

 

[Khellendros]

Lightray - I don't think he'd really go for close combat as often as depicted. It makes sense with Winter, where his goal was to take him into outer-space, but otherwise simply blasting at a distance should work just fine, and probably suits his character better. More importantly though, tactics like anti-light and energy absorbtion shouldn't work too well against him. He can absorb energy himself, and actully defined his main power as energy conversion, not generation. Usually, when confronted with an energy attack, his reaction would be to transform it into harmless light, or a similar type of energy.

Eh. I admitted I really didn't know what to do with him, so I opted for a fight that sounded good, even if it wasn't too in-character. Then it would've just come down to a slugfest, since unless he can whip that mini sun up in an instant, Winter could just absorb any effort he made, convert it, and fire it back, after which Lightray would do the same, ad infinitum. And in a physical fight I'd go with Winter, since he can take the energy of each punch and use it to amp his own.

Wolverine- This goes into the what info we're supposed to volunteer, but wouldn't energy-blasts and teleportation be part of the basic description handed-out? Are we supposed to list our character's main powers (and Wolverine, even Death Wolverine, really doesn't have that many to begin with), or just a brief description?

Well, I suppose I dropped the ball in not providing any descriptions for my team this week. But, I've had Death use his sword's blasts in most of the battles I've used him in. As for the teleporting, I had actually forgotten he could do that until a day or two before I started writing this match.

Too Efficient? While Zemo's Cosmic Awareness isn't perfect, if your very first action is to neutrelize the Quantum Keyboard, I'd expect him to pick-up on it. It's what he'd do, after-all, and it plays into his (failed) tactic here of feigning Pulse-8's early defeat. (I was actually thinking of starting him phased, although since I neglected to put it into the write-up, it hardly matters.)

Well, considering the fact that he only sees possible futures, as I understand it, I figured I'd allow myself that one rather vital piece of good luck.

On a related tangent, while I appreciate you wrote all parties well and obviously didn't have your own characters act as ruthlessly as they theoretically could with their powersets either, I do feel it's my job to mention that as long as Zemo can draw enough of a bead on S1M to teleport him (which he can do on a rather large scale, after-all), he'd probably go the extra yard and displace him in time as well as space. It's likely to take a bit more effort, but would be a lot more effective and, again, fits well into my own strategy for the match.

Well, considering the fact that he had to deal with two opponents, I assume he would want to conserve as much energy as possible. The more effort he expends on Kal, the less he can spare to defend himself from the Sorceror Supreme at his back.

Stark- This isn't a major issue by any means, but I just read the What If? the other day, and I really don't remeber him reflecting any blasts from Dormmamu. Could it have been someone else he did this against?

Well... I look at this page:
And see that blue-rimmed square thing seemingly absorbing Dormammu's attacks, and that says "he opened a portal to redirect an attack" to me.

 

[wiegeabo]

The Authorititans
B'wana Bet?

I don't have a problem with Ari's reg/med battles, except there's no guarantee Midnighter would be close enough to help Anarky. But I'm not sure Anarky needs that much help. I also don't think Res-Man can hold up against Fernus. But I guess he just has to hold long enough for Bart and Aztek to speed blitz the Martian.


I don't think Kal would be able to fry Pulse-8's board in the first few seconds. Especially if Zemo's protecting him, or he only has to press a single hotkey like Gog mentioned (I like that idea). And if Pulse-8 gets a chance to do some work, he can do some damage. Close fight in the ubers.

I'm ambivalent about Lightray and Winter. I don't know much about them, and both battles sounded pretty good. I tend to agree with Lightray keeping his distance.

Although I think Reed would fair better, I favor Khell's reg battle. But, all in all, I give it to Gog by an edge.

 

[Aristotle]

Res-Man really only has to hold on for a second, because the Flashes are fighting in a matter of split-seconds. Furthermore, what allows him to hold out so long on Fernus (just in case Harl runs Fernus against me when we play) is that he has the power to take things apart at the molecular level with quantum TK, meaning Fernus has to waste a LOT of his focus and mental resources on countering that with his shapeshifting.

 

[AnnoyingSilence]

i'm goin with the authorians and b'wana bet

 

[Ahura Mazda]

The Authoritarians for obvious reasons.

 

[LadyVader]

Aristotle and Dark Gog.

With Pulse 8's abilities and Zemo's cosmic awarenes, plus his regular's bigger adaptability, I think Dark Gog's team has a better chance with this one.

 

[Ahura Mazda]

What I love is that many seem to not take account the speed of Superman 1m. He is just shy of the Flash...you know the one who moves faster then thought. Anyways, I should not but in so please ignore what I just wrote...

 

[wiegeabo]

What I love is that many seem to not take account the speed of Superman 1m. He is just shy of the Flash...you know the one who moves faster then thought. Anyways, I should not but in so please ignore what I just wrote...

But my thinking was that Zemo would only need to protect Pulse-8 from Supes long enough for him to press a hotkey on his keyboard (or a couple of keys). I could see Zemo doing that. And if Pulse issues the right command...

That's also assuming Pulse couldn't come up with a way to protect himself during prep-time (don't know if he can though, so I really didn't consider it).

 

[Khellendros]

I don't think Kal would be able to fry Pulse-8's board in the first few seconds.

Really. I would love to know the examples of his keyboard's extreme durability you're basing this on.

But my thinking was that Zemo would only need to protect Pulse-8 from Supes long enough for him to press a hotkey on his keyboard (or a couple of keys). I could see Zemo doing that. And if Pulse issues the right command...

That's also assuming Pulse couldn't come up with a way to protect himself during prep-time (don't know if he can though, so I really didn't consider it).

So, you see Zemo's future sight as flawless? Because I thought he only saw possible futures. Also, I love how when our tech guy gives out stuff like teleport belts or flight rings, it gets **** on. But improving the reality warping tech from another universe? Perfectly acceptable.

Also, I don't think Pulse ever used his keyboard on himself, did he?

Anyways, yes, there are a lot of things Pulse-8 COULD have done, because he's a reality warper. Reality warpers on the scale of him and the Doctor are, potentially, unbeatable. I refuse to write him as such, just as I wouldn't expect Gog to write my guys the same way.