Good luck to you, Charlotte, and may the best team or solo person win.
Now, on to the fun stuff!
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Now, when I look at the prep that Charlotte put up, the first thing that comes to mind is the following. She seems to think that because Chase's powers effected and nullified an Invisible Woman analogue, that said method would work against the force fields of K'lrt and Johnny. Now, I don't think I need to explain to the judges that similar powersets =/= translating into being able to do that to everyone with the same powerset. He overcame a Sue Storm knock off. Impressive? Sure, why not? But at the same time, does that character have the feats of Susan? Or the exact same power source? We know for a fact that character doesn't have Susan's unique powerset augmented by the Power Cosmic, which Johnny explains here:
Essentially, it's Susan's power +++. I feel that that beating another company's analogue of ________ is baseless when that analogue doesn't have decades of feats, skills, and showings to fall under their belt, let alone a character whose power set has been drastically amplified with a power source which does not exist in that company.
Not only does that display what a Johnny fresh with the Power Cosmic is capable of offensively, but it also reveals a staggering difference between Susan and Johnny. Needless to say, Chase looking superior to some random Invisible Girl analogue =/= Chase being able to tool someone with power and skill greater than the character said analogue is based off of. The same applies to Super Skrull, who while not of the Power Cosmic, is not Susan Storm-lite.
Also, as we were wise enough to specifically prepare for, offensive telepathy is not going to cut it here against our team. Besides the fact that Doom's armor is psy-proof - to say nothing of his staggering willpower - something which Charlotte was wise enough not to challenge, we've also brought along some defenses in the form of psionic refractors as outlined in our prep. In addition, our Doombots are stated as being able to fool the most adept of telepaths. Between our tech and 'bot, mass illusions are not going to cut the mustard against the Fantastic Force.
To further drive the point home, I again point the judges in the direction of Johnny. Blessed with Cosmic Awareness, the likes of which enable him to keep hidden from Galactus and see that which Galactus' own Cosmic Awareness cannot, do you really think that illusions are going to fool his senses? Furthermore, when everyone on the team is stealthed and rendered completely indetectable, casting illusions isn't going to matter.
-Does not have the means to reasonably undo or cancel out our force fields outside of a shaky "Chase beat an Invisible Woman knock off, and all force fields are the same, so..."
-Does not have the means to detect us when we stealth en masse where as we'll be able to detect them no matter what they do
-Has their telepathy/illusion based assault nullified
-Has next to no defense against Doom's magical prowess
-Has no answer to fighting off Doombots, Drones, and Mindless Ones
Charlotte argues that because Ambrose Chase managed to get past the shields of an Invisible Woman analogue from an entirely separate company and universe, that Chase should be relevant in this battle when confronted with Johnny and Kl'rt's shields.
Note, Chase didn't take it to an alternate universe Sue Storm but simply a character from Planetary, a DC publication, that paid homage to Sue's character. Using feats against alternate universe characters is always ill advised, as you all know, but given that this isn't even a Marvel character, there's really no basis for comparison. Kim Suskind, the 'Invisible Woman' from Planetary never actually used her powers in the series beyond that one showing, and her powers were never fully detailed. The Mr. Fantastic analogue was a telepath (could 'stretch' his mind), the Johnny Storm character possessed super strength and regeneration and the Thing analogue was green and never did anything. Sorry for the spoilers, but the point is clear that these characters can not be used as a basis for comparison to the classic Invisible Woman, much less her clear superiors.
Jake's posts have detailed how Johnny is far and away more powerful than Sue Storm, and capable of using her powers in ways that Invisible Woman never could.
This remains true for Super Skrull, who utilizes his powers with greater skill and in more creative ways than Sue Storm.
So Charlotte lacks evidence entirely that Ambrose Chase could bypass our forcefields. Additionally, it's important to note that our primary defense won't even be our invisible forcefields- on top of each of our character's superb durability is Johnny's cosmic stealthing (capable of rendering him completely undetectable to Galactus) and Doom's magic and psi shielding (allowing him to laugh off all telepaths, including no-selling Emma Frost).
The primary use of our forcefields will be to filet our opponents, which is a use that Ambrose Chase has never encountered or countered from any Planetary ripoff.
In short: Ambrose is basically useless here.
Charlotte tossed out Mimic's healing for Ambrose's distortion field (which may not even be possible, given that we know basically nothing about the nature of his powers), but I won't dispute the point since it makes Mimic even more useless in this fight.
On that topic:
Super Skrull will destroy Mimic in combat. We've been over how Johnny will make us all completely undetectable, so Mimic will essentially be flying blind. Additionally, let's compare stats:
I'm going to bet that he's clearly stronger than Mimic. His flames have always been far hotter than the Human Torch's (Thor was worried he could end life on Earth with a nova blast), and his durability from Thing stacks neatly with Mr. Fantastic's stretching to ensure that nothing Mimic can do would have a lasting effect.
As for speed, while Mimic may possess faster speed due to half of Northstar, Super Skrull was literally flying circles around Human Torch from day 1,
Given that he's pretty fast in his own right and entirely undetectable to Mimic, I'd say that any speed edge from the mutant gets more than nullified.
Finally, while physically far more impressive, Super Skrull actually lacks the need to enter physical combat as he can simply use his forcefields to tear apart his opponents.
So, Skrull alone can win this match, and he's probably our least impressive combatant.
Not to mention his other spells and technology. Crimson Bands, anybody?
So, basically, any of our characters possess the firepower to KTFO any of our opponents, and they can do so with ease.
In summary:
Charlotte completely lacks the offensive force to damage us or overcome our multiple defenses, completely lacks the perception to detect us, and completely lacks the capacity to defend against our multiple avenues of destroying her team.
OK, let's go.
1. Your stealth
You have proven that Invisible Man's Power Cosmic - augumented powers allow him to stay undetected from even the Cosmic Awareness. But did he EVER used his powers to hide anything other than himself? And IF he does that to the members of his own team - well, they're doomed as their senses will be f*cked up from being unable to see or do anything.
Remember the "invisible retina" trick? Congrarts, you've just got two blind mice on your team represented by Doom and Super Skrull...
Either total invisibility or total self-defeat. You choose.
Luckily, blasts aren’t what I’m going to use against you. Judges, if you seriously believe that this can stop somebody who casually swapped the minds of Superman and Bizarro around: http://www.picamatic.com/show/2011/...8_1620x1215.jpg
http://img187.imagevenue.com/img.ph...8_122_445lo.jpg
To clarify better, this is the invisible retina problem. However, you're not merely going for visual stealth there, you are shielding your team against any means of detection meaning you're making them blind, deaf and unable to communicate for starters.
Seriously, nice self-defeat. Sometimes uber-stealth backfires.
The idea that between Skrull and Johnny stealthing Doom, whose the only one without natural invisibility and force fields would somehow blind him is...well, it's a massively wild stretch. First off, allow us to remind the judges that Johnny is possessed by Cosmic Awareness. What does this mean? Well, it makes Johnny, who probably had the Power Cosmic amplified version of Susan's power for maybe a few days in the context of the arc, a born natural.
Look at the above scan. Johnny effectively uses his power to peel back the layers of the spaceship armada to find and remove the detonators of their nuclear warheads. In case you were wondering, Johnny knows absolutely nothing about disarming nukes. And yet, with his Cosmic Awareness, instinctively knows what the hell he's doing.
The level on control and finesse for such a feat is absurd, and definitely far more difficult than "cloaking" the rest of his team with invisibility which, again, fools the cosmic senses of Galactus himself. Further more, he's working with two people with nigh intimate knowledge with the power as well in the form of Doom and Skrull.
Here, we see Johnny, rendered invisible to the eye by Susan, sneaking up Doom. And it's obvious to us that Johnny can still see where he's going as he approaches Doom and there's nothing to suggest in that scan that Johnny was blind. Susan Storm-Richards has been making herself and other invisible for decades and decades without them being rendered blind as a result. They're only blind and their retinas are only effected when she chooses them to. And in this match, her brother, Johnny - rest his soul - is armed with her exact same power set and stated and shown through out the pages of the arc to be on a level >>> than Susan and with added benefit of Cosmic Awareness.
So, no, there's no way in hell we'd wind up "accidentally blinding" the rest of the team. With that debunked, it brings us back to the point of said defenses we possess.
We're rendered completely undetectable by conventional means and able to hide from the vast senses of Galactus himself. Furthermore, our tech prevents from psychic intrusion. Furthermore, we've littered the locale with Doombots and Mindless Ones and Drones. So, how exactly does Charlotte expect to find a foe she can't detect by any means with the mobility to fly or teleport virtually anywhere on the field?
Answer: She doesn't.
While her team is busy defending against our minions, we have the luxary to unleash invisible bolts of energy, various mystical spells, exploit Doom's insane tech and weaponry, and generally attack at our leisure as her forces are trying to find where we are. And any sort of temporal manipulation of space/time or whatever Charllote is getting at?
Well, the good Doctor has something to say about that.
Given the fact that he has his time platform/cube connected to the suit itself to say nothing of his mystical prowess, which enabled him to go back in time under his own power, temporal traps are nothing to us.
Effectively, the opposing characters really have no defenses against our varied avenues of attack nor do they have the offensive means to harm us.
They don't even have the means to see us, to be brutally honest. So how do they and Charlotte win?
Let's break apart the only input Charlotte's offered thus far:
She provides absolutely zero counters to our team's physical might besides boasting that she holds a speed edge (clearly not true against Johnny Storm, and only slightly so for Super Skrull), but disregards that speed advantages mean absolutely squat when her team has no way to tell where we are. She claims that us making use of Johnny Storm's abilities to cloak us would be either impossible (ignoring that Johnny made the panels of a nuke invisible without even grasping the scope or nature of his own powers) or would hamper us and make us blind (ignoring that Sue Storm has made herself and others invisible for 50 years without imposing a self handicap...). Given that Johnny's paired with perhaps the two MU characters who know the most about Sue's powers outside of Invisible Woman and Mr Fantastic, this seems a laughable notion and entirely groundless.
Charlotte additionally does absolutely nothing to tackle the obvious magical offenses that our team provides. We've repeatedly posted a scan of Doom WTFpwning Sentry with an offhand spell, and we're all well aware of Doom's capacity to remove any opponent from battle with the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, and that's not even scraping the surface of his arcane options. In fact, the only powers that Charlotte actually addresses are our team's capacity for invisible forcefield creation, claiming that Ambrose Chase will be somehow relevant in breaking through, despite evidence being based on an entirely different character with zero feats or power explanations. Additionally this ignores the complete irrelevance of shields since, again, we'll be cloaked in every way and are otherwise physically superior and capable of simply using the energy from the forcefields to rip and filet our opponents... unless Charlotte is suggesting that they use Ambrose's reality distortion on their own bodies, they won't be affecting our application of invisible force.
This also ignores that should shields be needed, while we certainly have Johnny and Kl'rt's, we also have Dr Doom's technological and mystical shielding. As Jake pointed out, Dr. Doom's tech is immune to time manipulation and there's absolutely no basis for assuming that Ambrose Chase could affect magic with his powers.
Finally, Charlotte has yet to address that we've brought an army with us. The Doombots are telepathically identical to the real Dr Doom, and the mindless ones are... mindless, so the only real offense that Charlotte has been boasting about (her useless telepathy) should be extra useless against our minions.
On that note, as far as claiming that Super Skrull would be affected by Manchester: Manchester's feats all revolve around single mental combat, which requires precision and being able to detect your opponents mind... which Galactus couldn't. So, you know, good luck and all. Further, Charlotte's agreed that Manchester's mental prowess would prove useless against Johnny and Doom. Given that we've proven that Johnny can extend his invisibility and given that Skrull is armed with Doom's tech and that we prep in castle Doom (and we have Johnny, whose power cosmic grants him instant understanding of super tech), it's silly to assume that Skrull would be less protected against telepathy than either Johnny or Doom.
This is the same fallacy that was present in your debating about Zatanna. I DON'T DOUBT THAT Susan or Johnny can make themselves invisible without any ill effect - they have required secondary powers for that.
But here's the catch. If you make someone invisible while leaving their sensory perception intact, you DON'T MAKE THEM PERFECTLY invisible.
As for Johnny's invisibility being better overall, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY SCAN OF HIM (not Susan) cloaking others than himself. "Instinctively" handwave problem of temporary blocking all sensory perception of a being... ALL - including magic, TP and stuff >>>> than make somebody invisible in visible light spectrum (Sue Storm was capture by motion detectors, infrared and stuff).
He was capable of feat B=/=he can do feat "A" if A is seemingly easier than B. Johnny himself has the powers to move absolutely free when invisible - sort of secondary required powers... Susan as well.
I ask you only one thing - has Johnny ever made anyone OTHER THAN HIMSELF invisible from all means of detections? Not "has Susan ever made anyone other than herself invisible from visible light spectrum while keeping their retina unaffected"?
What's even funnier - when Sue made multiple people invisible, for some reason they were perfectly aware of general location of each other. http://www.picamatic.com/view/7653155_blz12/ http://www.picamatic.com/view/7653156_blz13/
So much for perfect cloaking...So, either we're invisible from everything or not. I don't doubt the powerset of Johnny himself - I only ask for a SINGLE scan when he grants the invisibility to the others and they move freely etc without crippling effect.
Has he ever made, say, Galactus invisible?
Just because he is >>> Susan in overall powerlevel, does not mean he can perform the same tricks with the same degree of finnesse and perfection.
By the same logic I can argue that Chase can distort spacetime all over the Baffin island by "no limits fallacy".
Also, for all my love of Emma, Black is > her at TP front. Superman has 100500 willpower feats. Yet Black f*cked up his mind right, left and center on occasion.
I seriously doubt Ems (whom I love madly, but that's another story) can replicate the feat of keeping Silver Banshee AND Bizzaro sane while mentally controlling thousands of people all over the world to pull "reality warp without reality warp".
Here he's talking about this (and saving Lex Luthor's ass against top DC telepaths and sorcerers). http://www.picamatic.com/view/7653240_P00006/ http://www.picamatic.com/view/7653241_P00007/
Long story short:
1. The blockers you gave Skrull suck donkey balls and he's just an extra cannon fodder for our team.
2. Telepathy is still a great asset against your team.
3. Magic is the only saving grace against localized timespace warp that can be useful.
4. No proof that Johnny can give others the same kind of perfect invisibility he has himself and cloaking someone other than himself from detection in visible light spectrum is>>>>cloaking someone from EVERY means of detection (while somehow enabling communication between members of the team so they're totally invisible to us but not to EACH OTHER ). Truly PERFECT invisibility and teamwork do not go hand to hand (scans in the post above show why - if someone is able to see you, you're not invisible by definition).
Short as this match was, it was well-fought. The kind I enjoy judging, but hate actually making a judgment for. Random thoughts are below.
- I love Ambrose as a pick. Clever there.
- While the 60's-era mental bolt blockers are dubious, at best, I'm of the mind that a mental assault would be hard to get a win out of, because there are some considerable defenses in place courtesy of Doom. Superman didn't have prep, tech, and experience with countering telepaths.
- The speed edge is with Charlotte. Mimic's reactions and Ambrose's warping equals a scary amount of potential speedblitzing, and yes even with a herald on the other side. Charlotte, you really needed to show the scan of what he did around himself when he was dying. It would've driven this point home even more (a few scans on either side were broken, you may have and I missed it). That said, you got the most out of a limited-run character.
- But those two working in tandem wouldn't always be the easiest thing. Ambrose doesn't have epic multi-tasking feats, and while what he does is damn impressive, he does so in localized areas. It wouldn't be as fluid as Charlotte says, though still powerful.
- Here's what I didn't see: how you were going to kill Smurph/Jake's team. Too much time spent arguing the invisibility stuff, driving home the telepathy, and defending your speed edge. If you spent another 1-2 posts on other avenues of attack, your case would've been 5x better.
- I also didn't see enough of Doom. His gadgets and constructs took center stage. Doom himself is more impressive, despite such cool supplements.
In the end it was raw firepower. A herald + Doom and a competent 3rd. If the mind-rape doesn't work (I can't believe it will, at least not enough ftw), Charlotte's outgunned, with one person on their level (Mimic) and another who is one spatial slip-up away from being eviscerated. Even Mimic could sneak in as high meta, whereas Doom and any herald are pushing the limits of low herald. So drafting played a role as well.
I will have my judge vote in tomorrow. I've been watching the match closely, but for the benefit of the participants I'm going to go over it one last time and have a written reasoning as to my decision.
Jake/Smurph:
I like your picks. I like your strategy.
However, I think Charlotte was right in that she had a definite speed edge and that Ambrose could have broken your shields. I know that Johnny and Skrull are probably 100x more powerful than the alternate reality IW, but the powers he used would have been universally constant no matter how powerful the shields are.
However, because of your cloaking abilities and anti-TP technology, I felt that the threat was never really felt. That, coupled with your immense numbers advantage, gave you an advantage in my mind.
I'd have loved to see more of Doom and his magic.
Charlotte:
Ambrose was an excellent pick, I just don't think he was used as effectively as he could of been. Ambrose is best on localized 1 on 1 fights. They brought an entire army of Doombots, and you spent most of the fight arguing on the mechanics of invisibility - I'm sorry, but I don't believe that, using comic book science, cloaking themselves will cause a hinderance to you opponents - and whether you could break their shields or not (I believed you could). This problem of focusing on that one aspect is all compounded by the fact that you have a numbers dis-advantage and they are forcing you to be more focused on detection than an offensive assault. It means you never really got a chance to flex your muscles. The potential was all there.
The assualt you did line up, telepathy + mimic, I think was effectively blocked by Doom's technology and their cloaking. I think that a TK assualt would have been effective with AOE attacks (something you never really touched upon). In fact, I thought TK was one of the major things you left out of the match - this is a guy who can knock around Superman with TK. I don't think I've ever seen Doom create anti-TK devices (I know they exist, but other than Ironman, I've never seen someone make it).
KMC Community Forums
Jun 15th, 2011 05:19 AM
). Truly PERFECT invisibility and teamwork do not go hand to hand (scans in the post above show why - if someone is able to see you, you're not invisible by definition).
