Comic's Biggest Brains Enter a Stratego Tournament

demigawd

http://boardgamecentral.com/games/stratego.html

Stratego is a unique blend of strategy, memorization, and unit management. In the standard game, each side of the battlefield (composed of ten squares by ten squares) is populated by an army consisting of quasi-European military units circa 1820. The pieces on the battlefield give the impression of toy soldiers marching off to war. Before the game begins, each player secretly places his units so that when combat is initiated, the outcome becomes apparent only after the pieces in conflict are revealed.

TOAA has decreed that the winner of the First Universal Stratego Invitational will win their very own Cosmic Cube. He invites:

Lex Luther
Batman
Black Panther
Reed Richards
Captain America
Doom
Thanos

He bases his invitations not just on raw brainpower, but on leadership, strategy and military knowledge and expertise.

Who gets the Cube? And what do they do with the Cube when they win?

demigawd

lol, ok, I'll answer it myself, then.

Lex Luthor - Luthor is smart and ruthless, he'd sacrifice a lot of smaller ranks to take the larger ones from his opponent. However, he's too arrogant and may give his positions away.

Batman - a lot like Luthor, except he's the best bluffer in the business. He can get inside Luthor's head.

Black Panther - has experience with armies, and is almost as smart as Batman, and as ruthless as Luthor. he's beaten Mephisto at his own game.

Reed Richards - the smartest human in the universe. But his ability to conduct psychological warfare is questionable.

Captain America - not the smartest man here, but his experience in leading armies and super teams and in combat tactics and strategy could be just as important.

Doom - Reed's equal, plus he has the ruthlessness and decisiveness neccesary to get the job done. He's also not above building something to cheat (a cosmic cube is on the line).

Thanos - Also a tactical genius. Has his own armada, has beaten the Gamesmaster and Mephisto at their own games. An expert in psychology.

Round 1

Batman takes out Luthor after making him nervous and making a mistake.

Black Panther takes out Captain America by doing something that seems self-destructive, knowing that Cap can't put himself in that frame of mind to understand.

Doom tries to play it straight, knowing that Reed will expect Doom to do something ruthless. But Reed knows that Doom will play it straight because he figures Reed will expect Doom to be ruthless. But Doom knows that Reed knows that Doom knows that Reed expects Doom to play it straight. After an epic, Doom manages to win by getting Reed to overanalyze and trick himself.

Thanos gets a bye.

Round 2

Black Panther takes out Batman because he understands more about the nature of people and organizations. Batman is not socialable enough to understand that, making him less complete. Black Panther plays it defensively because he knows the horrors of wars on the people. Batman can't conceive of that and his lack of humanity costs him.

Thanos and Doom go at it for a long time. Doom, sneaky devil, invented a telepathic device to read what Thanos has set up. Thanos has a counter-telepathic shield and labtomizes Doom in retaliation. Thanos wins by default.

Black Panther and Thanos play a cautious game. They don't know much about each other. Thanos figures that Panther is another typical hero and can't read BP's face. So Thanos does high risk activities to try to confuse Panther. Panther is able to read Thanos' character because of it and tries to play along, playing the hero role and trying to conserve. Thanos figures Panther is easy meat and goes in for the kill. Just when he thinks he knows where the chief officers are on the board, he runs into bomb after bomb. He can't understand why - Panther tricked him! "A good king knows that wars cannot be won without sacrifice. And in desperate times, desperate sacrifices are called for". Thanos has lost too many pieces to recover. Panther wins!

PANTHER WINS!

What's he do with the cube? He creates plentiful food and technology for third world countries everywhere, not so much to help the poor worldwide (that's part of it), but to piss off the US, particularly Stark.