Illadelph's Tournament Odds Thread

The ever-popular odds thread kicks off yet again. My thanks to Blair, who actually reminded me that we should be making this soon.

First, the basics:

Tourney Rules (most recent version I could find): http://www.killermovies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=10966965#post10966965

Notes:
- All rosters appear to be finalized, except perhaps fangirl's roster, since shrinking was recently limited to 2cm, and Nightblade may be more points than fangirl took him for.

- Free agency is a new aspect of this tournament that may or may not affect outcomes. Hard to account for in odds, but something to watch.

- Possible strategies should not be revealed or discussed, out of respect to the participants who may have thought of the tactics (or not) and wish to keep it a secret from competitors. However, general comments on teams and/or characters, as well as the participants themselves, are both welcome and encouraged.

Rosters:

Blair and Smurph
Nimrod - 30
Hawkman - 20
Noh-Varr (Marvel Boy) - 20
Hank Pym - 25
Vector - 30

Charlotte DeBel
Emma Frost - 30
Miss Martian - 30
Omega Sentinel - 25
Oracle - 5
Zachary Zatara - 25
Nyssa Raatko - 5
Stuart Clarke (Rampage) - 5

Scoob & Leo
The Mandarin - 30
Spiral - 30
Brit - 20
Magik - 20
Century - 20
Alfred - 5

AlmightyKfish
Abomination - 30
Jean Grey - 30
Electro - 25
Taskmaster - 15
Sabretooth - 20
Jarvis - 5

King Kandy & id369
Spawn (3rd Age) - 30
Cable (TO Virus) - 25
War Machine (Warwear) - 30
Midnighter - 20
Spot - 20

fangirl101
Alex Power - 25
Judo Master - 10
Speedball - 20
Starfire - 30
Nightblade - 15
LeViathan (Shrinking Violet) - 25

Digimark
Death's Head II - 30
Mr Sinister - 30
Iron Man - 30
Machine Man - 30
The Joker - 5

...

Thoughts:

- Experience always seems to account for a lot. Newcomers can and have won, but the "regulars" will likely again be among the favorites.

- Personally, I like the Spiral/Mandarin duo. Miss Martian as well. Power and versatility rolled into one is always a plus in my book, especially in a tournament with so many loopholes guarded against. I can't say I see too many of the overarching strategies for teams (yet), so I'll refrain from comment on most of them.

- Obviously I like my own team, but hesitate to place it in context because it's clearly a biased opinion.

Add your own thoughts, odds, smack talk, etc. I might make an official odds line eventually, after enough comments.

So far the most impressively looking team is the one of Scoobs and Leo. Team Kandy&id looks impressive on paper, but we'll see them in combat.

Team KFish has a glaring weak point which is... Abomination. Really, one-dimensional bricks aren't good spending of 30 points. Had he drafted Thing, he at least would have had a good prep area.

Interesting threads.

I can see some of the strategies some people may have chosen in their selection, and some are quite nice (assuming what I think they plan to do is what they will do). Whoever chose Miss Martian was quite clever ...it is actually almost cheating, since the power set in that one individual alone is tantamount to having an entire X-men team wrapped in one person.

As Charlotte said, the person who chose Abomination kind of hampered themselves, since the truly one-dimensional character of Abomination (which is further emphasized by the several omni-dimensional characters used in other teams) makes it an inefficient use of 30 points. I can think of a minimum of 5 ways in which each team can either take out Abomination, make him a liability to his team mates, or make him a strength to the other team. However, it is VERY possible that the team that selected Abomination have a nasty surprise up their sleeve (.....and I can think of at least one, but it would involve killing Abomination).

It will be interesting to see if the people competing can use their teams as a whole instead of as individuals. By this I mean using a team as a unitary functional unit, instead of just saying person A will attack person Z on the other team, while person B will attack person Y on the other team.

I remember once I had Iceman, Magneto and Superman on a team I once created 2 years or so ago, and I made them into one team by having Magneto use the Earth's magnetic field to create the strongest forcefield around Superman and Iceman, then had Iceman create absolute Zero Kelvin temperatures inside the forcefield, and then had Superman fly around inside the forcefield as fast as he could .....and then used physics to show how that level of speed by a super-dense object inside a supremely-magnetized and super-cooled sphere could be used to create a singularity!

Hopefully there is more use of teams instead of a mere assemblage of characters.

With that said, I hope it is interesting (looks like it will be ....I know almost all of the posters and they are quite good). Maybe someone can keep me posted through private mail (I'm normally travelling and quickly forget about threads).

Originally posted by spetznaz
Hopefully there is more use of teams instead of a mere assemblage of characters.

Thing with this tourney is that we can merge (amalgamate) various characters into single beings before the matches ... the only limiting factor to that is that you have to field a team of 3 characters, amalgamated or otherwise.

So Abomination may not be as bad as some may think if he's there to shore up weaknesses in other characters ... and it never hurts to add that much strength to any amalgamated character.

Originally posted by spetznaz
Interesting threads.

I can see some of the strategies some people may have chosen in their selection, and some are quite nice (assuming what I think they plan to do is what they will do). Whoever chose Miss Martian was quite clever ...it is actually almost cheating, since the power set in that one individual alone is tantamount to having an entire X-men team wrapped in one person.

As Charlotte said, the person who chose Abomination kind of hampered themselves, since the truly one-dimensional character of Abomination (which is further emphasized by the several omni-dimensional characters used in other teams) makes it an inefficient use of 30 points. I can think of a minimum of 5 ways in which each team can either take out Abomination, make him a liability to his team mates, or make him a strength to the other team. However, it is VERY possible that the team that selected Abomination have a nasty surprise up their sleeve (.....and I can think of at least one, but it would involve killing Abomination).

It will be interesting to see if the people competing can use their teams as a whole instead of as individuals. By this I mean using a team as a unitary functional unit, instead of just saying person A will attack person Z on the other team, while person B will attack person Y on the other team.

I remember once I had Iceman, Magneto and Superman on a team I once created 2 years or so ago, and I made them into one team by having Magneto use the Earth's magnetic field to create the strongest forcefield around Superman and Iceman, then had Iceman create absolute Zero Kelvin temperatures inside the forcefield, and then had Superman fly around inside the forcefield as fast as he could .....and then used physics to show how that level of speed by a super-dense object inside a supremely-magnetized and super-cooled sphere could be used to create a singularity!

Hopefully there is more use of teams instead of a mere assemblage of characters.

With that said, I hope it is interesting (looks like it will be ....I know almost all of the posters and they are quite good). Maybe someone can keep me posted through private mail (I'm normally travelling and quickly forget about threads).

That clever one was me. Megan makes decent fighter (yjough not on level of Hyperclan or J'onn, but you can't compare teenage girl with a peak speciman solgiers\policemen, and on lower level and with some training M'gann can replicate manyof their feats- on lower level but she can), quite lame as a telepath, but there's our beloved blonde telepathic powerhouse Emma Frost to deal with that.
Also the thing with point-based team is moneysaving=getting as much power as you can for the least amouth of points. Economics rule the world!

hmm, i can think of one very important thing that abomination can and has done that has nothing at all to do with strength . . . just don't think it can be exploited by the people he has. although clearly an abomination with a sabes's-type healing factor and adamantium weapons is absolutely NOTHING to feel good about facing . . .

i also can't really see many over-arching strategies. bw/smurph have me a bit baffled. i THOUGHT i had an idea of where they were heading, but now i'm not so sure.

cdb has a very strong team as do kk/id. i'm actually really looking forward to seeing that match take place. 🙂

k-fish has a good team as well. be interesting to see how he does in this thing. an underdog, certainly. but jean has a vast array of great showings. i mentioned abomination already and electro has a couple very good feats to his name as well.

FG's team is the most puzzling to me . . .

digi has more brute power than anyone, AND knows how to debate. and he prolly really REALLY wants to whoop all our a$$e$! 😂 i know how effective tech-based characters can be in these things (that was my focus in the last 2 tournaments) and digi has about the best you can get. he's gonna be a problem in this thing . . .

for most. 😈

Originally posted by leonidas
hmm, i can think of one very important thing that abomination can and has done that has nothing at all to do with strength . . . just don't think it can be exploited by the people he has. although clearly an abomination with a sabes's-type healing factor and adamantium weapons is absolutely NOTHING to feel good about facing . . .

i also can't really see many over-arching strategies. bw/smurph have me a bit baffled. i THOUGHT i had an idea of where they were heading, but now i'm not so sure.

cdb has a very strong team as do kk/id. i'm actually really looking forward to seeing that match take place. 🙂

k-fish has a good team as well. be interesting to see how he does in this thing. an underdog, certainly. but jean has a vast array of great showings. i mentioned abomination already and electro has a couple very good feats to his name as well.

FG's team is the most puzzling to me . . .

digi has more brute power than anyone, AND knows how to debate. and he prolly really REALLY wants to whoop all our a$$e$! 😂 i know how effective tech-based characters can be in these things (that was my focus in the last 2 tournaments) and digi has about the best you can get. he's gonna be a problem in this thing . . .

for most. 😈

Thing is, the only Jean you can draft for 30 points is pre-Phoenix one. That limits the amouth of "good showings" you can use with her- like no molecular TK showings from (New) X-Men since that series show her as Phoenix- after her "secondary mutation". Pre-secondary mutation Jean, though, is good, but not uber-good. And "teh uberezt" showings of subatomic TK\etc are all after secondary mutation...that's just to clear stuff a bit.
BUT- there's a possibility of an UBERmesh for the team. I won't cover entire thing, but those who are experts in Marvel psionics can guess what I'm talking about.

As for Fangirl, at least one of his amalgams is predicable.

Originally posted by leonidas
hmm, i can think of one very important thing that abomination can and has done that has nothing at all to do with strength . . . just don't think it can be exploited by the people he has. although clearly an abomination with a sabes's-type healing factor and adamantium weapons is absolutely NOTHING to feel good about facing . . .

Then it's probably a good thing Sabretooth doesn't have any adamantium anymore.

😛

well, in that case--his team sucks. 😄

Damn ... we're gonna pwn everyone sooo badly.

This might even get boring.

🙁

😛

I like Digimark, Charlotte DeBel and Kandys teams the best.

Blair and Smurph have a nice pick with Nimrod but he's not enough and the others are meh.

Scoob & Leo have done well with Mandarin/Spiral but the others again are not so great. Granted I don't know anything about Century.

AlmightyKfish with his one sided Abom, I feel that's a down fall like for all bricks but he would be great for taking out street level and low meta characters. Jean, Sabre, Task and Electro are nice but only Jean and Electro have the most potential.

Fangirls team is just 😆

Originally posted by Endrict Nuul
Scoob & Leo have done well with Mandarin/Spiral but the others again are not so great.

We shall see young padawan, we shall see......

Originally posted by Scoobless
We shall see young padawan, we shall see......

Good luck Scoobs!

Originally posted by Endrict Nuul
I like Digimark, Charlotte DeBel and Kandys teams the best.

Blair and Smurph have a nice pick with Nimrod but he's not enough and the others are meh.

Scoob & Leo have done well with Mandarin/Spiral but the others again are not so great. Granted I don't know anything about Century.

AlmightyKfish with his one sided Abom, I feel that's a down fall like for all bricks but he would be great for taking out street level and low meta characters. Jean, Sabre, Task and Electro are nice but only Jean and Electro have the most potential.

Fangirls team is just 😆

Fangirl heads to some well-exploited in previous tourneys rosters.

Also, to those who are interested- there's something about what "non-Phoenix" Jean is and where she is in Marvel's TP hierarchy (thanks colleague Exodus Cloak):

Originally posted by ExodusCloak

Without the Phoenix Force I'd say Jean is out though....because a.)according to current continuity Jean is the Phoenix Force making all her feats redundant..and b.) Because the Jean before the Inferno Saga (When the PF fused itself into Jeans DNA) was nothing to shout about.

BTW Jean only bested Emma when she taps into the PF...Psylocke with the Crimson Dawn got owned on the Astral Plane by the Shadow King...

With PF:

Jean:
Emma
Psylocke

Without
Emma
Psylocke
Jean

Originally posted by ExodusCloak

BTW Jean is the Phoenix...so when people say no Phoenix they're basically talking about the Jean before she was retconned....meaning it's the Jean without the Phoenix before the Inferno saga...during the Inferno Saga...Jeans DNA was merged with the essence of the Phoenix and Pyor...so any other appearances after that incident would count as Jean being the Phoenix....

When the Force met Jean it duplicated her body....so any feats after that duplication clone are not hers....

Once that Clone died...Jean was found in a cacoon...that's the real Jean...

Up to Inferno where the Life-force of the Phoenix was permanently integrated into Jeans DNA....

So anything after that is Jean/Phoenix..

Originally posted by Charlotte DeBel
Fangirl heads to some well-exploited in previous tourneys rosters.

Also, to those who are interested- there's something about what "non-Phoenix" Jean is and where she is in Marvel's TP hierarchy (thanks colleague Exodus Cloak):

Oh yeah, no PF....Oh well, those goes Jean than And all the power to FG.

Originally posted by Scoobless
We shall see young padawan, we shall see......

indeed . . . 😖hifty:

Originally posted by Endrict Nuul
Blair and Smurph have a nice pick with Nimrod but he's not enough and the others are meh.

Scoob & Leo have done well with Mandarin/Spiral but the others again are not so great. Granted I don't know anything about Century.

Not to be rude, but you should never ever count out Leo's team, and I am known for coming up with strategies with teams no one else would have thought of, and usually dominating. And Leo...well Leo is too damn cunning for his own damn good.

Just saying. Where you see meh, I see lots and lots of potiental on both teams 🙂

Other than that, Digi has the most obviously powerful team. But theres something to be said for more subtle teams 🙂

Originally posted by Blair Wind
Not to be rude, but you should never ever count out Leo's team, and I am known for coming up with strategies with teams no one else would have thought of, and usually dominating. And Leo...well Leo is too damn cunning for his own damn good.

Just saying. Where you see meh, I see lots and lots of potiental on both teams 🙂

Other than that, Digi has the most obviously powerful team. But theres something to be said for more subtle teams 🙂

I'd say team Leo are obvious tourney favourites.And I tried to assemble my team to be as "all-around" as possible. Digi's team is also good one.

Smurph is little crafty bastard and so is B-Dub so...
Team Kandy? Looks impressive on paper, but we'll see.

Originally posted by Blair Wind
Not to be rude, but you should never ever count out Leo's team, and I am known for coming up with strategies with teams no one else would have thought of, and usually dominating. And Leo...well Leo is too damn cunning for his own damn good.

Just saying. Where you see meh, I see lots and lots of potiental on both teams 🙂

I am not talking about Leo debuting skills for it is uncanny, I am talking about his characters.