quote:

Post the I

So....it’s been a while since i’ve done one of these things *sound of squealing gears as he shakes off rust*. Hopefully i’ve not forgotten how. A tip of the cap to my esteemed and VERY capable opponent, and....let’s have at it.

For those unaware, i have an interesting group to work with here—GHOST RIDER (BLAZE), REED RICHARDS (EARTH 1610 AKA THE MAKER) and......(wtf is that guy’s name again.....?) mercer drake? Yeah, pretty sure that’s it. Think a slightly less invulnerable luke cage, paired with a slightly less strong thing, and a character almost completely devoid of personality and you’ll have him pegged about perfectly.

Against the king of the inhumans and one of the most versatile characters in the tier—BLACK BOLT.

I took some time considering different scenarios regarding this match up. BB has an incredibly varied arsenal, and a number of different ways to put my crew down. Since i can’t afford to get into any kind of long drawn out match against him, i needed to find a way to try and end this simply, and quickly. I also have no desire to turn this into a respect thread, so i’ll present only the scans that will back up my plan, and add whatever i need to in my next post. Without further ado-do...

TEH PLANNNNN!11!111!!!!

So we arrive in Austin, Texas, half a kilometer apart. I figure there’s at least an even chance that i’m met with a scream, almost immediately.

That’s why i have no intention of being anywhere around there.

The instant we hit the bf, reed grabs blaze and teleports away, leaving mercer to face...whatever bb has in store for us. If it IS a scream, mercer will die—i have zero feats to suggest he could come close to surviving a scream. And tbh, that’s EXACTLY what i’m hoping for.

If mercer DOES get screamed to death, that is....perfect. Why you may ask, would i root for one of my characters to die?

Because dying is his most useful quality. Mercer is a SIGIL BEARER. In the negation universe sigils are power stones, given to special people who were destined to fight some grand universal war. After we port out of there, mercer will do his best to try and reach bb. If the scream does come, and he dies, THIS is the result:

https://imgur.com/a/ENv31E8

with luck, the explosion will hurt or at the very least distract bb. If the scream does NOT come, he’ll try and take bb out h2h and get some shots in.

In the meantime, where is REED? Well, while bb is wondering the same thing, we teleport BEHIND him, and AWAY FROM THE DIRECTION OF HIS VOICE.

But would standing behind bb really keep us safe from his scream? Note the direction of the energy and the damage, in these scans:

https://imgur.com/a/VEweh

https://imgur.com/FdwJKLe

https://imgur.com/a/zR69p

https://imgur.com/acI3F2D

(in the one directly above, note the maw is standing directly behind him...)

https://imgur.com/XPEbsMm

https://imgur.com/Ckp7tvb

https://imgur.com/a/NcaWF

And on and on.... there are PLENTY more scans to support the idea. You can clearly see waves of energy spread out in the direction of his scream over and over and we repeatedly see people near him or behind him are left completely unharmed. Now it’s true he can modulate his voice to keep the inhumans ‘safe’ from his scream, but here we see Cyclops:

https://justpaste.it/img/e9d6e27bbb...53934ce9a7a.png

https://justpaste.it/img/cd2319fcf3...be79e660a6f.png

right beside black bolt, and completely unharmed.

OBVIOUS CONCLUSIONS ARE OBVIOUS: his voice is only deadly IF you’re in front of it.

So, once we’re behind him (initially shielded behind a force field that easily repels several mjolnir strikes):

http://imgur.com/a/uCzwI

what do we do? Well, this part may need a little background. Again, for those of you who don’t know, reed Richards (the ULTIMATE version) has a...colourful past. For the sake of this bz, the important part of it is this:

https://imgur.com/a/2kO51V7

“THAT GUY, THE MAKER, THERE’S ONE OF HIM IN EVERY UNIVERSE....THEY ALL SHARE A MIND...”

I can hear the questions: “So what Leo?? Who cares if there is one of him in every universe?!”

Well, being of one mind, and a near infinite number of bodies, allows for something very cool—like this:

https://imgur.com/a/oRDXH5T

Pulling creatures (the martian) and tech (omnitronicus) and weapons (the tiger amulet and the gun) from different universes whenever he feels like it. (FUN FACT—that gun he teleported to his hand is actually a weapon from a very old what if, where nick fury actually fought ww2 in space! Lol great find by the writer, Ewing).

The fact that he shares a consciousness with all the other reeds is actually highlighted here, in case you missed the significance earlier:

https://imgur.com/a/IzFjDjC

The reed’s actually TALK to each other. They share a consciousness and pass info and materials freely among each other. Not at all a stretch (heh pun intended...) when you consider reed had perhaps the greatest understanding of the multiverse of any mortal character IN said multiverse even BEFORE owen sliced him up. While he was still young reed could easily communicate with other reeds:

https://justpaste.it/img/ecf91bb9c9...dbef5072bec.png

And we know his knowledge of the multiverse is without peer:

https://imgur.com/8Wv1M3w

https://imgur.com/m7FOCpZ

https://imgur.com/qX8QeXW

https://imgur.com/sEEUwiX

https://justpaste.it/img/7fdc762bb5...6c7290058b5.jpg

Of course during secret wars, we know reed was busy wiping out entire universes:

https://justpaste.it/img/9e87000cdb...f9ff838bd69.jpg

https://justpaste.it/img/ab0bc9b86b...4eda6f9a0b8.jpg

https://justpaste.it/img/cadb52b467...6ae688dfc4c.jpg

There are more, but as i said, reed’s knowledge of the multiverse and how it works has always been without peer. Add to that the fact that he now shares a consciousness with every reed in all those universes? Well, that’s just plain crazy....Recently, we even discovered different reeds can even exist in the SAME universe, if they decide to, as was shown above (and here again):

https://imgur.com/a/IzFjDjC

“I KILLED ONE [Reed] BUT THE SHIP THAT BLEW US UP WAS BEING FLOWN BY ANOTHER [Reed].”

Incidentally, the reed who was killed must have been a lot weaker version than 1610 reed, cuz ultimate reed is HARD as **** to kill. Will showcase next post if needed.

So, again, what’s the point of all that you may ask? Well, reed’s knowledge of the multiverse, and his shared consciousness with all the other reeds, gives the maker an ENORMOUS advantage. Above, we saw how easily he could claim weapons and tech from other universes—the gun literally MATERIALIZED in his hand when he needed it. I do the same thing, the moment i reappear behind black bolt with ghost rider. Only this time, instead of just some laser from a space-fought ww2, i reach out to another universe and obtain this:

https://imgur.com/a/eyGzcTt

if it isn’t clear from the scans—it is a weapon that completely DEPOWERS superhumans. In an alternate future where sue storm turns evil, one version of reed built the original large version. Using it, he cured Ben, but accidentally depowered himself, cyclops and cap as well. A different reed built a gun-sized version of the weapon. And THAT is what teleports to my hand.

From my place behind bb, i simply shoot him, rendering him a simple, powerless human. At that point, ghost rider just punches him unconscious. Easy-peasy.

Simplest.

Plan.

Ever.

If he does something...unexpected, you still have to understand how quickly this all happens.

We appear on the bf. Reed instantly teleports:

https://imgur.com/a/7xJFIjP

We reappear behind bb (shielded in the event something tricky is happening), reed materializes the DEPOWERING GUN and...WHAMMO. Match over inside of.....3 seconds?

BB has some minor speed feats, but if he tries something tricky like flying away, we should be able to shoot him before he gets too far. If we can’t (for some inexplicable reason), we simply port after him, then shoot him before he turns and screams at the ground in an effort to cover a wider area. (Reed, of course, can also fly if i need him to—will show next post if needed).

There’s not much else to say. I have plenty left in the arsenal if something unexpected occurs, but i’ll wait to see what my opponent does before i counter hypotheticals. From our vantage point behind him, we’ll have a chance to see what he does and react at our leisure. If he does something we don’t like, i simply teleport away—as far away as needed—and look for my opportunity to take him out with the depowering gun.

Check and mate.

quote:

Smurph OP

Judges, here is how the match is going to go:

The drafts were random, so there is no strategy behind the character picks. Luck of the draw. I have one mid-herald, who is arguably the most powerful character in this tourney. Leo has a very random collection of three high metas. Tough luck, but we play the cards we’re dealt.

I am going to present a very straight-forward plan because the only thing I need to do is show you that Black Bolt is simply too powerful for Leo’s band of misfits.

Leo can’t win a direct confrontation in forum conditions, so he is probably going to run with some stunt that uses Reed’s helmet or Ghost Rider’s magic or Mercer’s… something… to buy enough time and/or power to win. Maybe he’ll even try to steal my power or something, idk. It doesn’t really matter what the ploy is, because it won’t work and you shouldn’t believe him. Black Bolt wins this match as soon as it starts.

With that said, here we go:

“I have a plan: Attack.”

Match starts. Black Bolt nukes them.

Specifically, he hits them with a focused energy beam powerful enough to level cities:

(please log in to view the image)

(please log in to view the image)



The context:

- Black Bolt attacks Kang’s fortress
- Kang’s defences redirect the beam via a time portal
- The resulting blast causes the Tunguska Event, a massive and unexplained explosion from 1908. NASA estimates that the event was caused by a meteor exploding in the atmosphere and releasing the energy of 185 Hiroshima bombs.

Judges, note the shape and sound of the attack. It’s a focused beam of energy. It’s not a traditional whisper or a scream, but as the scans show, Black Bolt can channel the awesome power of his voice into the attack. One of many ways that Bolt destroys things through “transformative electron manipulation”:

(please log in to view the image)

So, in the opening moment of the match, Black Bolt fires this nuke laser at Team Leo, with the power dialed up to 11. He caused the Tunguska Event with a whisper, so this time he channels a proper shout into a transformative electron beam that obliterates his opponents. They’ll be at ground zero of a massive explosion.

This opening attack is happening very quickly. Leo’s team gets nuked before they can escape. Black Bolt will keep the pressure on and continue the assault while he closes the distance:

(please log in to view the image)

It doesn’t matter if any of Leo’s team survive the opening blast, because Bolt will just continue blasting. If he closes the distance and Leo’s still in the match, he’ll switch it up and use a traditional scream at full tilt:

(please log in to view the image)

quote: (post)

Originally posted by Galan007
Quote cut for length, but check out Galan's post to see the outcome of Maker's prep

quote:

..and, most hilariously, by locking him inside an autopsy drawer… from which it took Maker 45 minutes to escape:

https://i.postimg.cc/B6GxGzT4/Venom-1.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/Y9fQ2xRg/Venom-2.jpg

lol

quote:

POST THE END!1!11!

And here we are, pretty much exactly where I expected be to be.

So, let’s do a quick review since Smurph seemed to imply that what I am doing is somehow...complicated. To repeat:

I appear and teleport behind him.
I summon a depowering gun and turn him human.
He’s done.

Not sure anything could be more simple.

Turns out I anticipated his attack correctly, and he did exactly what I’d hoped—focused a nuke style attack straight at my team:

SMURPH:

quote:

Judges, note the shape and sound of the attack. It’s a focused beam of energy.

And the scans he used to support this attack show CLEARLY that all his energy is directed FORWARD.

Judges, please note: I never once suggested BB is not CAPABLE of an omnidirectional blast. I’m sure he is. But it’s irrelevant. The important thing is his first attack was focused forward at my team.

Because that means I can easily teleport behind him, and at that point the match is done.

THROWING OF SHADE

As expected, smurph, who is, as I said, very good at this, has tried to suggest I’m unable to do…well, anything. lol He spends an inordinate amount of time protesting the force field. He’s right though—there really is only the single scan. So, you know what? I’ll concede his point. I COULD make a case with this scan:

https://imgur.com/a/RlI556e

that Reed ‘prepped’ his force field and his devolving weapon. That is the SINGULAR scan that MIGHT support smurph’s point about prep. I COULD counter by saying Reed’s helmet is a powerful computer:

https://imgur.com/a/RS0G4Oz

and that if he did indeed program the helmet to create force fields, and he HAS the helmet….it should follow that it is STILL programmed with shields, but, the fact is: I don’t care about the shield. Suffice to say that while I absolutely believe Reed could pull out a force field, (ask yourself—if you were reading a comic with ultimate reed, would YOU be surprised to see him pull out a force field?)…it is meaningless because smurph did the exact thing I was hoping he would do.

TELEPORTWUTSTHIS?!!1?!

Unlike the force field, teleporting is an ability that really can’t be disputed. Here is yet another example:

https://imgur.com/a/7rSar2L

he ports to air force 1 to confront the president. This is one of the scans I showed previously:

https://imgur.com/a/eBsgbn9

But I never showed where he teleported FROM. This is the immediately PRECEDING PAGE:

https://imgur.com/a/94zh2We

he was teleporting WHILE he was on the new avengers (AIM) base. His ability to teleport has NOTHING to do with a translocating bay.

His TEAM had to use a translocating bay—but reed himself teleported in and out of…wherever he wanted at will (AIM base, airforce 1, the prison where he spoke to white tiger) and it had nothing to do with a translocation bay. He integrated the tech INTO his suit/helmet. Here he is AGAIN, teleporting back to his base just before he manifests his weapon:

https://imgur.com/a/RikuJzi

all these examples can’t simply be ignored. It was a well established ability throughout the entire 18 issue new avengers series and as such should be beyond contention. I mean, at some point tony stark ‘prepped’ his basic armor, right? But when we see the same ability demonstrated over and over, it is no longer considered to have been ‘prepped’. /shrug The same holds true here.

PASSING TECH FROM UNIVERSE TO UNIVERSE!11!!!

Again, as expected, smurph has tried to cast doubt on reed’s ability to move tech between universes for the same reasons I predicted—no limits, and because it was never clearly explained.

And as I said BEFORE his objections—neither of those points should be factors here.

WE SAW—crystal clearly, on panel—that that he CAN manifest weapons from other universes. The weapon from the universe where ww2 was fought in space CAME from an alternate universe. His martian CAME from an alternate universe. The white tiger amulet CAME from a different universe. And here, we see he has even summoned a being from BEFORE the multiverse—the being was moridun, and he came from the 5th multiversal iteration (we’re in the 8th):

https://imgur.com/a/je60erz

So, yes, moving things between universes/multiverses IS his thing, and it was amply demonstrated in both the new avengers, and in the future foundation series where it was THE key part of his origin. I’ve already shown several scans to support the idea. But what’s more, smurph’s OWN scan strengthens my case:

https://postimg.cc/RqjjC9Cg

“DIMENSIONALLY OPAQUE, SO I CAN’T GET OUT OR BRING THINGS IN!”

IOW: The prison was DESIGNED TO PREVENT MAKER FROM DOING THE VERY THING SMURPH IS CLAIMING HE CAN’T DO! lol

And as far as smurph’s claim that he can’t summon tech from his OWN universe? Well, that is simply and manifestly incorrect. As I’ve already showed (a couple times), he brought CITY, his grandest creation in the ultimate universe, to him in the new avengers, where it was renamed OMNITRONICUS. But in case you don’t believe this:

https://imgur.com/a/I4gbG8A

or this:

https://imgur.com/a/WJ041VF

there is this as additional proof:

http://tiny.cc/qjoutz

So, yes, he may have been having trouble travelling TO his universe, as you can see, he is FULLY capable of pulling tech from it.

To reiterate—we have reed SAYING AND SHOWING he can pass things back and forth between universes:

https://imgur.com/a/oRDXH5T

“I’M IN LOTS OF PLACES…AND CAN PASS THINGS FROM SLICE TO SLICE.”

https://imgur.com/a/IzFjDjC

“THEY ALL SHARE A MIND.”

Then, throughout the series, we have him surrounded with other universal beings (martian), other universal magic (the tiger amulet AND moridun) and other universal tech (city), and to top it off, he is finally placed in a prison designed to PREVENT him from calling on his other-universal abilities.

To say he CAN’T do it is…. and flies directly in the face of TWO SERIES’ worth of proof.

TO SUM UP:

Everything I have claimed happens here has been backed up by MULTIPLE SCANS—multiple scans of reed teleporting, multiple scans of reed’s ability to access other universal objects including things from his OWN universe. Well, okay, only ONE scan of him using a force field, but that appears to have been programmed into his helmet, which he has with him and is meaningless to my plan anyway….

TO BE CLEAR: post secret wars, ultimate reed has only appeared a few times, but he was the MAIN antagonist in both the entire 18 issue series of new avengers, and the short lived future foundation series.

That means the abilities, and the interpretation OF those abilities, that I’ve shown here constitute the BULK of his appearances since secret wars and his change in powers. That should mean those showings carry the bulk of the weight as far as post secret wars reed goes.

To simply disregard all this proof doesn’t make sense. Just because the ability feels haxx isn’t a reason to discard it. There is also some irony to what smurph is saying—he was taking scans from Reed’s MOST recent appearances in venom—but, if I did the same, well, reed would have a whole new additional powerset to call upon:

https://imgur.com/a/gjjrbIs

but, if I tried claiming reed is now bonded to a powerful symbiote, I’ve no doubt smurph (or anyone) would call me out on that as well, claiming we haven’t seen enough of what this new reed can do. And they’d be right to do so. So what’s the only alternative? TO USE AND ACCEPT THE EVIDENCE WE HAVE. And the evidence is solidly in my favor.

Thanks to the judges for indulging us, and thanks to my always worthy opponent monsieur le smurph.

quote:

Smurph Closing Post

Leo: thanks for a great match! This was very random, and very fun.

Judges: don’t trust this crook.

Just kidding - but please do check that he proves each of his claims. Leo’s an excellent tourney poster, but clever arguments can’t make up for missing proof. This is one of those matches that was won and lost in the random draft assignment.

I’ll start by recapping the issues re: standard equipment and Maker’s ability to summon tech. Then I’ll move back to my team, and tell you why Black Bolt overpowers this match.


Starting with Maker:

Maker simply has very little standard equipment

We should all agree on at least two points:

1. Maker is a prep-based supervillain who often has some sort of prepared tech in his showings.

2. Maker has relatively few appearances; especially if we look specifically to his appearances since Secret Wars.

I don’t think either of those points should be controversial. All that I am saying is that Leo cannot combine those facts to conclude that Maker’s prepped technology is standard equipment. He cannot cherry pick Maker inventions from over the last five years and claim that Maker conveniently carries those inventions as standard equipment.

If Leo wants to sneak in an uber force field, he should be able to show Maker busting it out even… one time… since its debut in Secret Wars.

Same for the “translocator”, which served a clear narrative purpose when Maker was preparing WHISPER, and which hasn’t come up again since AIM blew WHISPER apart and imprisoned Maker.

To be clear: my ultimate point is not about Maker’s ability to create that tech; it is just that Maker obviously has not been carrying it during any of his recent fights. Ergo, it is not his standard equipment.

Maker’s ability to summon tech is a neat trick, but not a useful one

Leo has one scan of Maker summoning a gun passed to him by a version of himself in another dimension. It’s a cool ability, but it doesn’t give Leo much to work with. If we are really strict about logic and proof, then all that we know is that Maker can likely summon that particular gun. If we take a broader view, then Maker can likely grab other things too… but what?

I have no idea, and Leo has no idea, because there’s been zero elaboration in the comics. Maker grabbed tech from that WWII-in-space dimension, and at some point he brought in his martian buddy from a dimension where Mars is the dominant planet. Super cool, but not very useful for a tournament, because we have no idea what tech Leo has access to in those worlds. Specifically, he would presumably have access to the tech that the alternate versions of Maker have in their respective universes… but again, without prep we have ZERO idea what that means.

Leo wants to exploit that ambiguity to suggest that Maker can take anything from anywhere (or any-when), which is absurd and unsupported. It’s the definition of a no-limits fallacy, which Leo himself pointed out before I had to.

Judges, I think you’re in a difficult position trying to figure out what to do with Maker’s powers here. My submission is that Leo’s strategy relies on pulling specific devices that Maker has never ‘pulled’ before. Furthermore, Leo is looking to take devices from universe(s) that Maker actually has no access to: the Ultimate universe (and perhaps also Battleworld, if that’s where Maker’s shield tech is?). The bottom line is that Leo’s strategy is just not going to work, and you’re left to decide if Maker will be able to summon some other sort of weapon that can give him a fighting chance here. I think that is highly unlikely.


Black Bolt is the only one with a working force field


Just so it’s said, if there is any remaining that Maker has a hope of somehow teleporting to BB and summoning a gun and shooting him, I’ll point out that BB is the only person in this match with his own force field: https://postimg.cc/p5jHqLC6/cd14946f


RIP Austin


In my opening post, I explained that Black Bolt was recreating the Tunguska Event, dialed up to 11. More specifically, I said that Team Leo would be at ground zero of a massive explosion.

Leo argued that by teleporting behind me, his team will be safe. I have already explained that Leo’s team has no power to teleport, but it really doesn’t matter. Why?

Because Black Bolt starts by standing .5 km away from Leo’s characters, and he’s just hit them with a suped-up version of the Tunguska blast, and THAT blast leveled 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 kilometres squared.


Remember that in the Marvel world, the Tunguska event is an explosion that Black Bolt created when Kang teleported his whisper to 1908.

So Leo uses his opening gambit to move .5 kilometers away from ground zero of a blast that will stretch out over a much, much bigger area.

Leo has claimed that he is safe because Black Bolt’s voice never hits the people behind him…

The truth is, Black Bolt chooses where his voice goes, and when he wants to level an entire city that he is standing in the middle of, he will:

https://i.postimg.cc/ZRwfwZNC/Attilan-scream.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/3JVqMKcG/Attilan-scream-2.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/13FjsLkj/Attilan-scream-3.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/G2L7P9HW/Attilan-scream-4.jpg


(please log in to view the image)


Picture: Leo’s team caught in the center of that city-destroying blast.


As his destruction of Attilan shows, obviously Black Bolt is perfectly capable of leveling an entire city when he chooses to. And as I explained in my opening post, what Black Bolt is hitting them with an attack that will detonate a ramped up version of the Tunguska explosion.


The match in a nutshell


Leo got a random group of high metas. He literally ditched one to die, and he’s all but ignored the other, so this has all come down to Black Bolt vs the Maker, in an all-out fight, with zero prep.


It may not have panned out the way Leo intended, but judges, don’t let him change his strategy mid-match. We have to assume that his characters are going to start by trying to carry out Leo’s opening post. If Leo concedes that he has no force field, or no depowering gun, or no teleporter, he cannot redraft his strategy to compensate for those losses.

With that in mind, there are various points that judges will have to figure out, but only a few ultimate scenarios:


- Maker either has a force field, or he doesn’t
- Maker either has a translocator, or he doesn’t


As I’ve said, the most supported conclusion is that Maker has neither device. I’ll also point out that the Maker who used the force field never used the translocator, and the Maker who used the translocator basically came out and told us that he had no force field. In other words, judges, you might find that Maker has neither device, but Leo has zero scans to support Maker having both devices.

That said Leo’s whole gambit is for Maker to:


1. grab Ghost Rider;
2. teleport behind Black Bolt;
3. shield;
4. summon the depowering gun;
5. un-shield; and
6. shoot Black Bolt.


So, putting this all together, we come to three possibilities:


Most likely: Maker has neither device

The match starts. Maker grabs Ghost Rider. They hug it out while they await the nuke. Mercer explodes, killing his own team.

Less likely: Maker has a teleporter but no shield

The match starts. Maker grabs Ghost Rider while a nuke laser races towards them.

In all likelihood, that’s as far as Maker makes it, because all of the scans of the translocator device show that it takes time to work. There’s a lot of dialogue each time Maker uses it… it might be a teleporter, but it’s not instant like Magik or Nightcrawler. It’s more like Star Trek.

That said, even if Maker and Ghost Rider make it behind Black Bolt before they get nuked, then they have only succeeded in travelling .5 km from ground zero of a blast that instantly kills them.

For his part, Black Bolt by this point has flown out of range of any of their attacks, but perfectly within range of his destructive blasts. Black Bolt just turns around and continues to nuke them.

Least likely: Maker has a shield but no teleporter

I categorize this as least likely because the comics have been so clear that Maker has no force field since Secret Wars. I don’t like the character’s downgrade any more than Leo does, but it is what it is.


Anyways, in this scenario, Maker grabs Ghost Rider. They try to teleport, but that doesn’t work. Maybe Maker scrambles to try and summon a new teleportation device? Surely they get nuked before that works.


Leo’s OP makes it seem that Maker only shields after teleporting, but even if you give him the benefit of the doubt on that point, then they just get nuked. We don’t know the full limits of what the force field can take, but again, avoiding any argument of a no limits fallacy, Black Bolt will break through because his scream is distinctly more powerful than a Mjolnir strike, which is the best (and… only) feat that Leo can attribute to that force field. Those are random strikes from the Thor Police, so I’m not really sure where to categorize them on the tiers, but just compare Black Bolt’s solo fight with Thanos, or his staggering of Galactus (which, I should point out, was later undone by Dr. Strange).



Without a teleporter, Leo’s team has no way to escape destruction. Even in this scenario, which again, I think is very unlikely, their defeat is merely prolonged.


Cheers everybody! Thanks for the match, Leo.

quote:

So, first off guys, I really, really want to disqualify you both for making puns.

But onto the debate.

Both of you have pretty simple but effective plans. Leo a little more complicated but not much more.

Smurph's opening is he just nukes them, and if neccessary closes the distance and keeps blasting.

Leo successfully predicted Smurph'd go for this tactic, so Leo teleports away and leaves behind someone who will himself go kablowie giving concealment, and teleport behind and blast Smurph with a de-powering gun. Leo conceded on the force field argument so that won't even factor in.

Leo argued that Smurph would take time to spot him at 0.5 K and the explosion could even leave Smurph believing the team was dead, while he teleported behind. Smurph provided nothing to show he could find Leo before he teleported, or that he would know if everyone was killed, or that Leo teleported behind him.

Smurph's argument mostly consisted of trying to debunk Leo teleporting or being able to bring the neccessary weapon. I found Leo disproved Maker not having telepprtation(especially with the prison scan Smurph thought supported his argument) and I was not convinced that Leo's plan was a No Limits Fallacy. Leo showed the various versions of Reed communicating and passing things to Maker, and a version of Reed making the de-powering device in gun form, not as some unallowed prep Smurph tried to argue. He also showed it working on enough different superhumans to reasonably believe it'll work on Black Bolt.

Smurph showed Black Bolt has shields and how he can level cities with omniblasts, but neither were used in his opening attack. As I said earlier, I didn't see anything to even argue that Black Bolt can just instantly pinpoint the team and be aware of the results on them of the blast, or that he would detect Leo being behind them, and Smurph has no shields to protect from the de powering gun. Leo sufficiently convinced me he can teleport and use this weapon, and it would work.

So while Smurph proved to me Black Bolt SHOULD win, his own strategy has me give my vote to Leo. But good job guys.

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Leo vs Smurph

The minute I saw that Smurph was repping Blackbolt, my interest in the fight increased tenfold. No disrespect to Leo, but if there's one poster that is associated with Blackbolt, it's Smurph, so I was very, very interested in what he was going to do, especially against what looked like a pretty stacked team on Leo's side of things... even if I didn't know who or what Mercer Drake was. I was very interested to see what you two would come up with, and like the other competitors, you didn't disappoint.

At first, I have to be honest, I thought Leo had accounted for Smurph's tactic pretty well, and when I saw that Smurph basically said "he nukes them", I was already on the side of Leo. Then, though, I saw more of Smurph's posts. His points about what tech The Master could bring to the fight, not to mention his sacrifical use of Mercer and his seeming... unwillingness to utilise Ghost Rider effectively, had me moving more and more to support Smurph's side of things. The final nail in the coffin was the "yes, he can do omnidirectional blasts" thing. Funnily enough, that's one of the few things I actually know about Black Bolt, so I was glad to see Smurph quite plainly bring it up.

Great read, guys, but I have to go with Smurph.

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So as with all matches, I put aside everything I knew about the characters going into this(which was hard to do, because I'm one of The Maker's biggest fangirls ), and judged with a clean slate... If it wasn't proven in this match, then it simply didn't happen.

Anyway, my vote goes to Smurph. Here's my rationale:


Smurph:
Your strategy was simple, but effective: BB speaks; leo's team dies.

I think you successfully proved that Maker doesn't necessarily have a fully operational force-field on hand at all times. I think you successfully proved that even if Maker can teleport, it still requires *some* degree of time(however insignificant) to do so... And in that time he would have, in all probability, been able to open his mouth/speak, and unleash a city-razing, omni-directional blast... And if Maker has no FF, it is possible(based on the showings you presented) that the subsequent blast could at least incapacitate him.

I will say that I didn't see much of a counter for GR, but that's moot because GR was borderline non-existent in this fight.


Leo:
I think you successfully proved that Maker can teleport at will. I think you successfully proved that Maker can pass tech and whatnot back as fourth between all of his other 'slices' across multiversal timespace... So from that perspective your strategy seemed perfectly feasible.

The main part of your strategy that wasn't definitively proven for me: that immediately after the bells rings, Maker can successfully grab GR, then teleport behind BB, then manifest the particular piece of weaponry he requires, then aim the gun/pull the trigger, then blast/depower BB... All before BB can unleash his blast and potentially incapacitate you.

But the most unexpected part of your strategy is how you really just made it "The Maker vs. Black Bolt." Don't get me wrong, I understand that: a.) Maker was the linchpin of your strategy, and b.) Mercer Drake(whoever the fook that guy is) was basically just a throwaway pawn... But I felt like you could(and should) have also integrated GR's powerset into your strategy much more than you did -- as a backup/contingency plan if nothing else. I think that could have made the difference here.


All of that being said, this was a VERY fun read, guys! Well done match all around!


...Oh and thanks to all for waiting for me to send in my ruling.