Any great or semi great villain has screwed with entire teams such as Loki, Dr. Doom, etc.
A multiversal threat, from a different dimension, with the push of a button, while the rest of the multiverse didn't know what to do? Including the original Monitor? Show me how Loki or Dr. Doom did that with planning. It would be on par with Doom saying he was watching the Beyonder all through the Secret Wars, and he had a plan, and boom, out through Mjolinr came a beam that led to BY's death
Darkseidi is cunning just not to the level Thanos is on. Darkseid was safely away from the conflict. But sure he pressed a button to use his own tech and Luthor to aid the heroes who put themselves on the line.
You contradict yourself here. DS is not cunning because he places himself off of the battlefield? Silly.
And because Luthor and Co. were heroic, it made him less cunning? That's not a good argument. I think you're talking about when the Guardians sent their team to the begining of time to prevent Krona from opening the portal? I thought you were good at this!?!
Izaya was Darkseid's equal in terms of preparation since they always stalemated in terms of winning the war. Let's discuss Darkseid's role in Final Crisis. Batman got the drop on him. Despite the anti life equation being used and one sided prep they repelled Darkseid and all his new gods. That was an awful showing of manipulation and cunning since he completely and utterly failed.
So by got the drop on him, you mean that he shot him with a bullet, and then got killed (Batman). Then DS survived; and turned into a singularity, and is still alive today? Because, by your own arguments on this board, all the DS's are the same one. So the DCNU is the same as the PC DS by your logic. That makes DS the most prolific character ever. He has survived every Crisis DC has thrown at him and has remained intact. Does Thanos have anywhere near that kind of reality manipulation endurance? I think not.