LeoTaint vs DarkSaint: Filler Battle of the Century
LEO OPENING POST
all right, a quick little fill-in-for-fun match up with my pal ds. ATOM/WINTER is a nasty combo and this match will require a great deal of speculation--i suspect on both parts.
first, my guys.
NIMROD. ultimate evolution of the sentinels, telekinesis, shape shifting, on the fly adaptive abilities and combat analysis.
he's proven capable of adapting to nearly any form of attack, and he has proven able to do so almost immediately.
MIDNIGHTER: battle computer capable of running billions of scenarios in order to foresee the conclusion of battles BEFORE they are fought. he's also able to see a battle and work BACKWARDS to achieve the resolution he's looking for. and he's capable of doing that with only moderately enhanced stats and a nice healing factor. some scans. i really like the first one...
if he could handle the AUTHORITY WITHOUT any real special powers, imagine what he'd be capable of with the vast array of abilities nimrod offers. with nighter's precog, nimrod could actually adapt abilities to counter opponents BEFORE the battle even really begins.
nighter also has access to some of the best teleportation tech out there. he can use DOORS:
with my adaptive and precognitive abilities, it will allow me to actually retroactively react to my opponents' opening.
BATTLE:
i'll start by simply teleporting as far from him as i can get to allow midnighter's computer time to calculate (which happens nearly instantaneously). midnighter (as shown above lol) is very familiar with winter, and between nimrod and nighter, atom's powerset will be a completely open book.
as he shrinks, winter's absorption powers will diminish exponentially. nimrod will need to adapt a way to track atom at atomic or subatomic sizes. it's possible ds will argue that at such a small size, there will be no way for nighter to read the electrical energy in his brain. maybe, but nimrod should be able to adapt a way to track him anyway. if he stays small, it should be easy to simply overload and burn him out. i could also use the TK that held JUGGERNAUT captive, to lock onto and hold him. it's possible he could absorb the TK energy, but could he do so before i use it to choke him out as nighter did above?
and of course, i would have played this battle out in every conceivable way WELL before the battle actually begins. i will have had time to adapt whatever defense is necessary to handle whatever type of attack he tries to throw at me.
options i have: sonics, TK, shields, teleporting, doors, shape-shifting, etc. like nimrod did with shaw, i would just find the best way to counter his offense. most importantly: i have the very real and unique advantage of actually being able to wait and see what he's done BEFORE i try and counter it as though i had already seen it coming.
The entire planet could have been cauterised. I can go for broke, and easily have more….but I don’t. Note, everyone, Winter’s words – I was channeling the Sun. NOT the power of the Sun, but the Sun itself.
Oh, what the hell. I can’t help being sneaky.
When the Sunbuster is still firing, I shrink. To the subatomic level. And as the Atom, I ride the energy waves. No doubt, he throws up some kind of shield. Even IF he manages to block my attack (proof?) I will ride the EM waves into Leo.
Ride them HARD.
The Sun does not just output heat and light. It outputs all manner of the EM spectrum – gamma, X-rays, UV, radio, microwaves, you name it, it emits it. Unless Leo’s shield blocks ALL of this (thus negating his sensory abilities) I will be able to ride deep into him.
Yes, that’s Darkseid. But instead of a piffling little gun, I once more channel the Sun. Inside Leo. If needed, I can also expand a little, to make the explosion all the larger. THIS time, I do not hold back.
Boom.
Unlike Ray, the neural storm will not affect me – as I now have Winter there.
Of course, as I am riding the EM waves…I am therefore travelling at the speed of them. I.e., the speed of light. He has no reflexes to counter this, especially with an unknown attack, and especially with a Sun explosion in his face (the first one I let off).
Counters
In this section, I attempt to see if I can guess what Leo would do. And attempt to counter.
So, Nimrod is capable of shapeshifting, telekinesis, scanning, sonics, plasma bolts, and has control of his body on the molecular level, able to heal himself blah blah blah.
Easy.
In my shrunken form, none of his energy attacks will harm me, as I can slip through them. Any that DO manage to hit me, I will simply absorb (and I have an abundance of scans proving Winter’s durability against energy attacks). What’s worse, is that any energy he fires at me, I will return – and it will be the reverse of what he used, thus harming him: http://s5.postimg.org/xzapgq4lz/The...002_Page_08.jpg
Self-healing? The New X-men were able to damage him sufficiently. I am literally throwing him into the Sun – or at least, the Sun into him.
Note, none of the countermeasures he deployed against the brats would even faze me.
Scanning? I argue that Nimrod is only capable of accessing memory banks. MAYBE he could access Midnighter’s memories of Winter, but he sure as hell wouldn’t know about Atom. And he wouldn’t be able to realise what’s happening, until boomtown happens.
What of the Midnighter? He certainly can help process multiple tactics, and I am sure he can help with the countermeasures. He may even utilise doors, but I have a defence against that.
Summary
Match starts, I go boom, and use that as a cover to propel me at lightspeed into Leo. As a sensory amalgam, he NEEDS to be able to detect various energies. Any forcefield he throws up will be permeable to me. Once inside, I once more channel the Sun, directly into him, blowing him up from the inside.
Rinse, repeat as necessary. Over and over again. The only thing stopping Winter last time, was his own control so he didn’t cauterise the Earth. Here, I will cut loose, and actually destroy the entire planet we are on.
A simple tactic this time. Massive AOE damage.
PS: I am posting this, as that noob Blair Wind was unable to. Please check over to see that I have not deviated from my PM, BW.
Gender: Male Location: Planning to take over the WORLD!
MIDDLE POST
lol ds NOT playing games! SUNBLAST to start?! followed by an energy ride to finish with an inside job? gotta say, that is a brilliant, well thought out plan. i didn't see that coming... fortunately, i didn't need to because the battle computer did.
a split second before ATOMIC WINTER (i like that....) unloads, NIMNIGHTER (hmm, not so big on THAT though....) throws up a force field and mutters "DOOR".
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this leads to all manner of problems for him....
firstly, i place the door directly in front of me (shaping it as closely as possible to a parabolic shape to best guide the energy around me) and hide behind it. all the energy from the attack passes through it, while my healing factor and force field protect me from any ambient energy that will pass above and around me. the doors are sweet:
as you can see, they can be pretty precisely shaped and located and open instantly. we also have general knowledge of our opponents, so i will know atom is an extreme size shifter and winter is an energy absorber (midnighter will know that already anyway...)
as i said, his strategy is absolutely brilliant and well backed up with excellent scans. in this case though, it gets him killed.
how you ask? as he is giving off all his energy, he shifts size to ride the energy toward me. between him and i is a DOOR. they ride said energy, at light speed, straight through the door.
**NOTE** i haven't BFR'd anyone (that would be illegal and not count as a win.) HE JUST BFR'D HIMSELF.
and that is a VERY midnighter-esque victory.
neither winter nor atom have anything remotely close to light speed reflexes and so neither could avoid their fate. in fact, the whole thing would happen in the tiniest fraction of a second as the travel distance is so small. with all the energy they output, they wouldn't even know i OPENED a DOOR, so even if they COULD react, they would never know they had to. not only would the huge energy release mask my DOOR, another problem with going so small is that they completely lose the ability to perceive the macro world. easy to understand when you realize that at that size protons are the size of moons.
as an added bonus: at that size, winter couldn't absorb energy. i mean, it would literally hit him as individual waves: he's RIDING a wave of it! if he could somehow do it, he'd literally be absorbing parts of a single wave at a time. lol (that mental picture is funny....)
ds claims he has a way to counter the doors, but his problem is he won't have time to counter anything. he's committed to his attack and his fate is utterly unavoidable. the only way to do so would be to KNOW the door was there, and to then prove that in LESS time than it took the energy wave to enter the door, they could somehow.... bail out, pull the ripcord, hop off the wave and catch one going....somewhere else. ENERGY WAVES ARE NOT TRAINS. ray doesn't hop on and off them at will, and even if he COULD, he could never hop off this one fast enough. he'd have needed to draft flash to avoid that. no, they'd be in the bleed before they knew what happened....and that's that.
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__________________
Last edited by leonidas on Sep 6th, 2015 at 01:21 AM
Post 2 of 3
I was eating a burger the other day – a pretty tasty one, too (yes, we can get them in the UK). Granted, as far as burgers go, it wasn’t the most amazing burger, but it was pretty high up there – I’d have put it in my top five, for sure.
You know how the last bit of the burger, the bit which contains all the juices, maybe with some of the charred crust of the patty, is best, when all of the flavour had melded into one last mouthful? I had been saving the best bits till last, to really finish my meal off with a bang.
Unfortunately, I had misjudged, and instead was left with too much of the dry, relatively tasteless bun to eat. Needless to say, this was a bit of a disappointment.
Not as disappointed as I was, though, when I read Leo’s posts.
He really expects to get away with this?
Midnighter ‘handled’ the Authority…by using prep. He went to Krigstein’s lab, and stole a high tech suit, nano-Aids etc…hardly standard equipment. But apparently, he wishes to utilise hyperbole to…boast me to death, perhaps? Is this not another version of ‘Batman finds a way’? I am sure whatever I type, he will simply hand-wave it away with a glib ‘I knew that was coming’.
But he doesn’t.
First of all, it's 'Nuclear Winter'. Secondly, sure he does. Does he get it up in time? Let’s see.
I’m not quite sure he realises just how powerful my Sunbuster is. It was 800 miles of pure destruction, at near enough point blank range – just the heat alone would be sufficient to melt him (remember, it turned everything in the blast radius into black glass). A parabolic shape in front of him is enough to draw all this energy away? He might as well have drafted a parasol, for all the good it will do him.
Next…
I tweeted George R.R.Martin about this, and he had this to say:
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You think the Authority were the pioneers of teleportation in the Wildstorm U? Where do you think they got the idea from?
So yes, try opening a door in front of me – and even IF I somehow lack the ability to move away, I can teleport my way out of your ‘trap’. You get the resources of the Carrier, as standard equipment – I get the resources of Skywatch Tower, as standard. No BFR, as I have the ability to return to the battlefield.
Over 500 metres, would I have the REACTIONS to activate my teleporter? Tricky. Tricky indeed. Leo has me over the proverbial barrel.
A quick calculation, and it turns out one second of ‘normal’ time equals 62.4 HOURS, assuming a linear correlation. I Googled it, so it must be true.
So how fast do you think NimNighter (seriously? Where did you learn to name things, the Daily Planet?) can see that I am on the battlefield, see that I am activating a Sunbuster, activate a forcefield, say ‘door’ AND shape it and place it in front of my flight path (assuming he can even see where I am)?
½ a second? That gives me 31.2 hours to react.
¼ of a second? ~15 hours to react.
By the time Leo, Night’s Hunter of War (or, Sir Hunt-a-Lot - the 'Sir' is a pun on 'Night') even tries to open a door, I would have seen it, reacted to it, and teleported out of the way. Or, I can just hop onto a different wave, and travel that way, without even needing a teleporter. Note how Atom has the reactions to see light signals are branching off into different directions, choose the route he wants, and actually hop onto it - just like a train: http://i1151.photobucket.com/albums.../fiberoptic.jpg
My plan continues as before. I use the cover of my initial Sunbuster to ride into him, and assuming it doesn’t just destroy him outright (remember, David from the New X-Men blew his head half off with a gun), or melt him (it IS the Sun, after all, at near point blank range), I can enter him, and set more explosions off inside him.
Gender: Male Location: Planning to take over the WORLD!
FINALE
well, i'll try not to disappoint so badly this time... though, i confess: it seems like he is calling into question midnighter's most basic power. "SEEING THINGS COMING," is EXACTLY what midnighter does i'm afraid....
i mean, seriously? he sometimes has no answer to what is happening and gets beat, and situations can deteriorate to the point where there are no options at all, but "seeing things coming" IS his power. i never said he beat the AUTHORITY without some plot--it's just not relevant because in THIS case, he is in the body of a ludicrously adaptable, cl100 sentinel, itself capable of instantly analyzing and calculating battle scenarios--just not as effectively as nighter. i'd submit that in the NIMROD body, with its strength and powers set, he could pretty easily replicate that beat down of the authority.
so, yeah. this is a rare case where in fact i DO get the chance (to a degree) to retroactively attack a strategy that was implemented. this strat just had a simple counter.
HIS COUNTERS
(1)
lol
except that THIS parasol utterly and completely cuts off any of the energy immediately around me by sending it into another dimension completely. is there ambient energy? sure. but given our combined healing + force field + nimrod's OWN ability to adapt, surviving that wouldn't be a problem.
here is an inferior nimrod unit dealing with the mutant MAGMA:
with nighter's precognitive abilities, he would have already been adapting the heat sinks to further shield himself--not that much energy would get to us anyway, as we are pretty much surrounded by a DOOR...
surviving the onslaught wouldn't be an issue.
(2) DO I HAVE TIME TO CALL UP THE DOOR?
recall i teleport and put some distance between us. the instant i'm appearing i throw up the door. given my processing speed, that whole process would take...maybe 1 sec? let's look again at his sunblasting scene, shall we?
this is an important scan for a couple reasons. for the moment, look at what it took to GET him to the level where he could release the power:
but here, he wants you to believe that he can actually call up said power in the opening INSTANT of the match? i, for one, ain't buying that. it would at LEAST take a few seconds. that would give me AMPLE time to develop whatever defenses i deem necessary. even if you somehow believe he CAN do it instantly, NIMNIGHTER'S precog and analysis would calculate whether i had time to teleport AND defend or whether i should just open the DOOR instead. again, this isn't BATMAN FINDS A WAY. this is MIDNIGHTER'S ABILITY paired with NIMROD's own super-computer mind and analysis capabilities. as much as digi is looking for hyperbole, this isn't it.
the real saving grace is that i'm not required to do....pretty well ANYTHING. all i need to do is open a DOOR. nothing complicated, nothing that stretches credulity. my defense/offense couldn't be simpler.
so, yes, given the amount of time (and STRESS) that was required to bring about the power in the first place, i would CERTAINLY have time to call up the door. even if you think he CAN do it instantly, precog + computer speeds would easily let me utter DOOR before he attacks, even if i have to forego the teleporting.
(3) HIS ABILITY TO TELEPORT BACK
hmm....nope, not buying that either. even in his own scan:
it clearly says he has is a TRANSPONDER that will let THEM teleport HIM if needed. of course, he has no access to "THEM" in this match. he doesn't get help. here again is an example. ALSO supported in yet ANOTHER of his own scans:
it's clear winter possesses no ability to teleport on his own. even in his SECOND set of teleport scans, (where he uses it "offensively") he needed someone ELSE to operate the teleportation. and obviously, THAT doesn't fly here.... mind you, that is totally different from what nighter does with the DOORS.
***(BTW, i DID ask ds if DOORS were allowed, and he gave me a )***
nighter has a more...personal link he uses to access the tech in a personal way. he does NOT radio someone and ASK for help from some person sitting in a room somewhere.....
and even if we ALLOW that type of assistance, would that transponder communicate from the bleed? it would need to signal whoever he is asking for help across a dimensional barrier. proof it could do that?
i think it's safe to say that winter does not have the ability to teleport--if he did, we would likely have seen it in his other match with beatboks. may have come in handy there.
palmer required special prep to pull that off. he needed to actually alter the way his own tech worked. and of course, no prep here. so...no, time passes exactly the same for him as for me.
(5) TRAIN HOPPING
lol well, you can look til you're blue in the face, but you'll never find a scan that shows him hopping from one energy wave to another.... and even if we ALLOW the chance, all of the energy he radiated is heading AT me. MASSIVE amounts. even in his OWN scan it shows all the energy flowing in the same direction. now, i suppose it is possible there are stray light beams going in the opposite direction, (i mean he CAN see me....) but he may have to hop over....millions? of beams of radiant energy to even FIND one. that....just isn't happening i'm afraid....
SUMMARY
he goes for broke with the sunblast, and rides the energy at me, but...i open a DOOR and he BFR's himself. pretty unavoidable at this stage. he can't teleport without the help of someone else and there is no time for him to avoid his fate. his attempt at trying to show time dilation required prep. he can't avoid BFR'ing himself.
WHAT IF
not much time, but let's say you believe he DOES get inside me. it is NANO TECH that allows sentinels to adapt (that's also how bastion turns someone INTO a sentinel....) i could pretty easily adapt the nano tech inside me to attack him as soon as he enters and overwhelm him, or generate an internal energy field to deal with him. like i said, at that size, winter's powers would never be able to function properly and it wouldn't take much to ko them. if he tried to grow inside me, i could just turn intangible, like here as he ghosts into forge's building:
at that point, as soon as he is standing in front of me, i could pull a vision-style attack and pull his heart out. even if winter could somehow survive that (he has been ko'd physically more than once btw...) he'd be out long enough for the win.
so even assuming for the moment he DOES succeed at getting inside, he stills dies in multiple ways.
but really, none of that is necessary, as he has done my job for me.
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PS--ATOMIC WINTER is better. i mean it has ATOM right in the name!
As Leo’s post will be freshest in your minds, I will deal with them in reverse order.
Sure.
Nano tech, eh? Good luck affecting me, when I am smaller than that (nano is still >> photons). As for proof that Winter’s powers functioning at that size, whenever the Atom shrunk the JLA, sure, it took them time to adapt – but their powers still worked. Flash was still fast. GL could still form (noodley) shapes. Here, Hippolyta is able to lasso photons together: http://i.imgur.com/So8p9me.jpg
The lasso still works. Her speed and strength still works. The Atom still can get mass etc – if we are seriously going to even consider that Winter’s powers don’t work because I am now tiny relative to an energy wave – how does the Atom see when he’s smaller than a photon? How does he breathe when he’s smaller than an oxygen atom?
IOW, yes, I fully agree that by all logical accounts, Winter should not be able to function when he’s now the size of the energy waves he absorbs. But that does not stop the Atom from breathing, or him from seeing things, etc. Everything else around him functions just as fine as if he were full size. If we are allowing for that…attacking my strategy on this basis is futile – you may as well argue I choke to death due to the lack of oxygen.
As for Winter being KO’ed – I plead the carver defence. That is to say, all showings PRIOR to him being resurrected by the Doctor, were when Winter was in an older body – i.e., null and void. When he was resurrected, he gained a new, younger body (with the same experience). Ergo, his high end feats still count, but low end feats don’t. http://postimg.org/image/rcaq1ozpv/
Prior to being resurrected, he was living in the Sun. Being driven crazy, sure, but still sentient. NOT KOed. Relative to the size of a human body, the Sun outputs massive amounts of energy – Leo has NOT shown that he can do so, even when tiny. Assuming he can find me of course – he just says ‘oh, Nimrod WILL find a way’, without explaining how. I am smaller than nanotech, after all.
Nor can Midnighter use doors without the help of the Carrier. Never said Winter could teleport under his own power – merely that, IF Midnighter gets to tell the Carrier to open doors for him, Winter should get to tell Skywatch Tower to teleport him.
Prep that….he never took out. [b]I am willing to give Leo one more post, with a challenge[/b] – post a scan of Ray taking that improvement out of his belt (besides, it is arguable he did that prep so that the JLA could experience time at their level, whereas Ray didn’t need it on his own)..
I can tell you now, he will fail. But if he wishes to do so, Feel free.
Otherwise, how the hell would Ray be able to catch and ride on photons? He’s just a man, with human level reflexes. Either his speed is increased, or time has shortened.
No, he just says it out loud and asks the Carrier to do it for him. Which, apparently, is OK.
No need to prove it. I was using time dilation to teleport BEFORE going through the door. ~15 hours of reaction time, remember?
Ah, but beatboks did not ask if he could call upon an extradimensional sentient Carrier ship for help. Had he done so, I would have called upon Gary, who’s currently manning the teleport inquiry desk, for help.
As before, if he has access his resources, I have access to my resources. I am NOT disallowing it, or quibbling it – I merely ask that fairness is achieved.
It took the time between saying the work ‘Jack’ and ‘Son’. Prior to that, it was NOT as if he needed to charge up. Simply that he didn’t know he had it in him (as seen by Leo’s kind scans, where they try to induce it for him) – it was a brand new power that Winter had manifested. Once he had it, however, he was able to fire it off lickety-split. It depends on stress and emotions – nothing more: http://i.imgur.com/leVTeUy.jpg
And I hate Leo.
An inferior Nimrod, dealing with inferior heat. Magma, if we go by her namesake, is 700-1300 degrees C.
The Sun at its lowest, is ~5000 degrees, and goes as high as 15 million degrees. Winter was channeling the Sun. You can do the maths. Any heatsinks he can develop, will be useless.
Wait, are you surrounded by a door now? I thought it was just a parabola?
I have shown Nimrod’s durability. Midnighter doesn’t have THAT great a durability. Combined…it adds up to an amalgam which isn’t all that durable. HF is up there, sure – but I am leaving nothing to heal FROM. You will need to create a door that completely surrounds you on all sides, above, and below (yes, the ground you’re standing on would be cooked, too). Which cuts you off from all analytics.
Summary
So, no real tactics on how to take me out beyond – ‘Nimrod will find a way, it is what he does’.
A ‘parabola’ door defence, which ignores the heat /radiation pouring around the edges and which does not surround him completely (remember, 800 miles blast radius, of which he is at ground zero).
An appeal to be able to ask external resources to open doors, with a simultaneous appeal to prevent me from doing the same.
An attempt to discredit my tech/abilities, whilst ignoring canonicity showing how the Atom can latch onto individual photons, no proof he downgraded after that, and an actual explanation from comic writers that ‘it just happens’
An attempt to disregard Winter’s Sunbusters – even though he never needed any external powerups to do so, and Jackson tells him how it will get easier
Yes, I am less disappointed now. But only marginally .
Leo, you have one more post, of the Atom removing the improvements made.
Otherwise, you have no answer whatsoever to my plan, which is as always. Blow up, shrink, ride, blow up some more.
Gender: Male Location: Planning to take over the WORLD!
lol
story of my life. i thought it was fun and it gave me something to do, so cheers.
and i did tell the judges to just go ahead and post their rulings right in this thread when finished. figured it was just for funnsies, so we could cut out the middleman. if you'd rather have them pm rulings to bw or someone, that's fine by me as well.
- MNer is a tricky pick. On the one hand, potential for infinite adaptation. On the other hand, since we control the characters, arguing on potential alone is risky if it isn't supported with actual methods of countering the others' plan. I've considered him numerous times but never really pulled the trigger. I'm curious to see what Leo does.
- Leo's teleport at the beginning of the match negates DS's insta-bomb. I'm also unclear how Winter immediately has enough sun energy to replicate what is arguably his best feat. DS makes an attempt at justifying this, but I'm unclear whether or not this can or should be considered a baseline feat for him.
- MNer knows Winter, so getting the drop on him is going to be tough as hell. Palmer is the key here. I have no idea how he'd be reliably taken out when paired with someone that can take as much punishment as Winter.
- Me knowing MNer well might be good or bad for Leo. I'm wondering if DS will post the scan where Angie gets a microscopic version of herself into MNer's brain. Or if Leo will counter with his mechanized tech defenses inside his brain. Either way, the tactic did work on him, but it took quite a while.
- Neither of you did. Me am disappoint.
- Sure, if the Carrier works, so does the Stormwatch base for teleports. Despite the one usage offensively, they're frequently an integral part of MNer's maneuvers. Winter won't be as adept in a combat situation at using numerous doors for strategic purposes.
- As befits a short match, both plans are fairly straightforward. Unfortunately, getting the drop on Nimnighter (Leo's right; terrible name) will be hard, as will wrangling a subatomic Atom.
You guys are going to hate me. This match is a damn draw. At subatomic sizes, I'm not confident Winter/Ray can take out the other duo. At anything larger, MNer wouldn't allow himself to be taken out. I give MNer the decided calculative and reflexes edge, so he's going to have the initiative indefinitely. But I don't know how Nimrod adapts to a power set that literally doesn't exist in Marvel and can render this an indefinite stalemate. And how will any attack take Winter out - whose absorption feats are well-known - before he shrinks and tries again? I could foresee scenarios where, say, a clever use of a Door could possibly kill Ray/Winter, or where Ray/Winter miraculously get the drop on Nimrod, but none were shown that I have much confidence in.
In a comic book, I think MNer finds a way eventually, but my general rule when judging is that I pretend - as much as I'm able - that I'm seeing these characters for the first time. I also don't know exactly how he'd do it, which is a problem. So I'm only working with what's presented. Leo did a nice job countering a lot of what DS said. But I don't think he did enough to show how he takes Atomic Winter out. Palmer + Winter can turtle too well, so to speak, unless there's some truly special offensive maneuver on the table. And MNer's calculative ability is too thorough to allow for lapses of the size that DS would need to have his opening.
Go ahead and shuffle your hatred/disappoint onto me. I realize what a wet fart of a judgement this is, but I'd feel disingenuous flipping a coin or something.
Well I’ll be damned if this wasn’t a hard one to judge. I thought my Nova Prime vs Monica Rambeau was tricky enough but this is a whole kettle of fish. Very complicated and hard to look at.
I’m going to start by saying that I agree with Digi (no not with it being a draw). But I think it’s really close. I think for a lot of his arguments Leonidas has edged on the fact that Nimrod will adapt to this and that Midnighter will have the Precognitive ability to say
“Well I knew Nuclear Winter was going to do that”
The trouble is for the most part a lot of using characters like these is going to be based on assumptions, and more heavily so than other characters. Because you can forever argue that my amalgam is going to adapt to everything. Which is true with Midnighter to an extent. Perhaps he might be able to adapt to the amalgam. But I don’t know if he’s going to have the time to do it. We kind of saw what Midnighter was like when he was being attacked by tons of them demons. He remarked that it was mindblowing trying to calculate at the same time as fighting them. So while it didn’t show a limit. Or looked like he was close to reaching one. It hints at what could happen if he is overstressed.
Now to go into the meat of the posts. When I was comparing the opening posts together I couldn’t see any difference. It looked like an impasse to me. But when it gets closer I saw myself favouring Darksaint more. I feel that for a lot of Leo’s argument it relied a lot more on words than scans. And you may very well go ahead and say,
“Well duh, without words he can’t put across an argument”.
That may be the case. But I think for a BZ like this scans really are needed. And the thing is when you are arguing in such specifics about characters such as this you need scans. And particularly for Leo’s 2 characters. I enter this Battlezone knowing nothing of either character. And so far into the BZ I think Darksaint has settled the chinks Leo tried to put into Darksaints armour. The reaction time that Darksaints amalgam will have from being at that size is a big asset. It’s something that Leonidas didn’t even really directly address in the next post that he had.
There were also other things such as Winter supposedly not being able to teleport etc and this was what I noticed to be something quite important in Leonidas’s argument against Darksaint. If what Leo said was true here then it would be a victory for him right there. But the thing is because of the fact that we acknowledge that Midnighter does need help to teleport with doors that Winter by rights should be allowed to teleport to. So this makes it harder on Leo’s end here because Darksaint has gained another advantage.
I do have one problem with one of Darksaint’s arguments. I will go through them now.
The Sunbuster thing is one although not one that I would put as the priority. We know from the scans that it didn’t take him ages to activate it. But he did need to be pushed over the edge to do so. So it leaves us to be torn between 2 sides because do we agree with Darksaint that as Jackson says it will become easier over time. Or do we go with Leo in that it was 5 pages that it actually took to happen. I believe that for the most part if it does become easier for him to use this ability then it could help Darksaints argument. I can see a Sun blast going off from the beginning. I don’t know about a second time though. Not to suggest that one couldn’t go off. But I’m just unsure about it. But I will say it isn’t unsure to the point where I’d feel uncomfortable about making a verdict on it.
You may look through this verdict now and say,
“Well you haven’t really addressed the amazing Precognitive + Adaptational abilities that Leos amalgam has”
For me I think a character like this is a good but also a bad character to bring into a battlezone. Because if you go one way into a BZ with any one of Leo’s characters you can just run the mistake of referring a lot to the fact your character can.
“See what is going to happen before the battle starts”.
Which may be true as far as we know. But if we completely follow that. Then why not just put Midnighter into comics fighting characters that are Skyfathers or put him in tourneys facing them. The problem is I think there comes a point where it becomes silly to overassume what a character can do. That isn’t to say that I am denying what Leo’s amalgam is capable of. I just don’t think Leo has gone about his arguments I the right way.
Darksaint has spent a lot of his argument picking holes in what Leo has said along with posting scans here and there to back it up. Whereas I feel Leo left himself open to attack because he often tyoped a lot more than posted scans. And the thing is once them words go down they are open to attack. You need to balance picking apart your opponents scans with accepting the fact that what is in them is true.
And all in all I have to give the match to Darksaint for the reasons I have explained above. This wasn’t an easy decision. You’re both very intelligent posters (Leo being a tourney vet) knows his way around certain things but Darksaint is also a clever poster. But I think Darksaint has it edged out for me.
So that’s my verdict. Another reason this was an odd one to judge is because of Digi’s decision. I don’t mean in terms of criticising it. But more because now mine and Style_Time’s votes are now more like Gold dust than they even were before. And it makes you think even more about every detail.
I always find it hard putting the verdict down when I have made up my mind, I see you as both really good posters having made good arguments but ultimately I feel my choice is not without reason.
So all in all thanks to the opposing combatants for allowing me to judge. This was a new thing for me judging amalgams. And I enjoyed it very much.
[SPOILER - highlight to read]: I hope them bloody DocDroid links work.
KMC Community Forums
Sep 4th, 2015 08:24 PM
well, i'll try not to disappoint so badly this time... though, i confess: it seems like he is calling into question midnighter's most basic power. "SEEING THINGS COMING," is EXACTLY what midnighter does i'm afraid....
i, for one, ain't buying that. it would at LEAST take a few seconds. that would give me AMPLE time to develop whatever defenses i deem necessary. even if you somehow believe he CAN do it instantly, NIMNIGHTER'S precog and analysis would calculate whether i had time to teleport AND defend or whether i should just open the DOOR instead. again, this isn't BATMAN FINDS A WAY. this is MIDNIGHTER'S ABILITY paired with NIMROD's own super-computer mind and analysis capabilities. as much as digi is looking for hyperbole, this isn't it.
