Gender: Male Location: Planning to take over the WORLD!
Post the Second
Sooooooo...things couldn’t have gone much more to plan. Lol
Smurph: “ Black Bolt nukes them….Judges, note the shape and sound of the attack. It’s a focused beam of energy.”
Leo: “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. ”
Not much else to say. He blasts, but we’re not there—or 2/3 of us aren’t there. He may question whether we can port fast enough, but as soon as we land, we’re still 0.5km away. That means BB will still need to take at least a second to see us (500m is a pretty long way), generate the power and release it. In that same time, we port away—well, all of us except poor mercer, who, frankly, deserves to get blown up….
BB nukes us which sets mercer off and his death results in the explosion I planned in my OP:
Even if you don’t believe the radius is enough to significantly damage BB, the distraction will serve us well. From half a klick away, there’s even a chance he may think we’re all dead given the size of the explosion. Mercer’s death would also prevent him from following up too closely—or at least immediately (I mean, would he really just go charging into mercer’s death explosion…?) Regardless, what he will NOT be expecting, is us to show up behind him with a gun that makes him human.
I’ve been trying to anticipate a couple of ways smurph might try and gum up the works here so I just want to be crystal clear as regards Reed’s ability: he shares a SINGLE mind/consciousness with all the other reeds in the multiverse:
“Same me…same mission—the holistic man stretching through all that is…”
This allows him the unique ability to pass things from one universe to another, and as we’ve seen, the transportation can be instant, as it was with the gun:
This is…a pretty haxx ability, no doubt about it. thanks Bentley.
So, how might smurph try and bring it down….?
Well, if he researches a bit, he’ll find this in one of the bios: “However, to what extent [he can pass objects between the universes] is unknown as several of his bodies have been destroyed.”
Sounds promising for him. At least until you read the books and realize that in those issues we see 2 (TWO) bodies taken out. That means he has….infinity - 2 bodies still out there. I think that will suffice for this match.
He might try and suggest we don’t really know how the power works—not really important since we see that it DOES work. He may claim I’m suggesting some sort of “no limits” fallacy. Not sure how he could sell no limits—we’ve literally SEEN him materialize an “other-universe weapon” into his hand on command. He didn’t prep it, he simply summoned it. It’s a crazy ability. The fact that he shares a consciousness with all the other reeds was a crucial point in both the new avengers arc, and the future foundations arc—to the point where his ability to share consciousness with his others was used to explain how reed was in both the future foundation AND the absolute carnage series at the same time (see second page of scans):
And remember, he didn’t gain this ability until AFTER owen and franklin remade the multiverse—that’s why we don’t see him using the ability for most of his career.
There really is no way a “no limits” fallacy can be applied to what I’m trying. Smurph (and others) may not like it, but there is no logical fallacy here.
But….smurph is very sharp—so what happens if he DOES find a way to throw serious shade on the idea of summoning my depowering gun?
In that case, things would play out exactly like this: I port behind him, try and summon the depowering gun and….nothing. Before he even knows I’m there I port away again to a different part of the country, say….silicon valley. I mean, we’re on an earth that can’t be destroyed, but….we’re still ON earth. The bf in no way suggests that everything is suddenly gone—all the tech on earth is still present. With scraps he scavenged from battleworld, he was able to create a weapon that DEVOLVED 616 reed into an ape:
If he could do that on that “retrograde” (backwards) world, imagine what reed could do if he had the freedom to just teleport around and gather whatever materials he needed. BB has no way to track us so we could move around as long as we needed to until we simply found the materials needed to build the gun. Or whatever else I wanted to make. /shrug
There’s MORE than enough evidence to suggest reed could summon the depowering gun. But even if by some miracle, smurph convinces you I can’t, my ability to move freely around the world still gives me an advantage he simply can’t counter. It might take time, but eventually I’d build the weapon and end things all the same. The ending is inevitable.
1. Leo’s strat involves a bunch of opening moves:
a. Most of which won’t work; and
b. All of which are going to take time and get his characters killed.
2. Maker’s standard equipment does not include a force field or a teleporter. It is highly unlikely that he can get access to either.
3. Leo cannot use Maker’s powers to simply retrieve any item from the character’s past, and he cannot retrieve or recreate the depowering gun.
4. Black Bolt’s opening move is going to destroy all of Austin, Texas. Leo’s team will be caught in the blast.
Force field? What force field?
Leo is claiming that he has a force field, but his only scans are from a fight that followed massive prep, which took place in an alternate reality (Battleworld) That force field only came up for a single fight. Molecule Man then splits Maker into slices and scatters him throughout the multiverse, and the shield never comes up again.
The evidence:
Leo’s force field scans are from Secret Wars #4. The fight takes place with the Cabal and Thor Police on Battleworld.
In the leadup to being on Battleworld, Maker prepped extensively for the end of the world and for his escape. We don’t know the full extent of his prep, we just know that it was powerful and massive:
We also know that Maker was further prepping during his actual time on Battleworld with tech that he found there:
So, the mysterious force field that he busts out for a single issue was likely created in the leadup to Secret Wars, to ensure he survived the upcoming conflict. Alternatively, maybe he made it out of tech he found there. Either way, he doesn’t have it here.
Leo wants you to believe that Maker got to bring all of his inventions with him, but we never see the force field again. In fact, we know that Maker does NOT have a personal shield now.
Now, I’m not arguing that he’s not still ridiculously smart. He is. But perhaps the downgrade explains what happens
The most damning and clear evidence that Maker has NO shield comes from his sneak-attack on Toni Ho. He is surprised by and marvels at the strength of her personal force field, and then he tells her he's not quite a "Big Brain" anymore. THEN, he tries to recruit her because of her force field:
These scans are more recent than Secret Wars, and I don’t think you can get more cut-and-dry proof that Maker does not have an uber shield as standard equip. In fact, the scene strongly indicates that he’s no longer smart enough to just whip one up… but I'm not too worried about that. Even if this was simply a low showing (which it probs was), my only point is that Maker wasn't prepared with his own force field.
It’s just way too unreasonable for Leo to try to sneak in a single shield from a single prepped encounter and claim that it's standard equip. Maker is getting KO'd often these days, in fights that he's prepped for. More importantly, we never see the shield again. It makes sense, because the shield was likely left back on Battleworld, where no version of Maker could retrieve it.
Teleporter? What teleporter?
For similar reasons, there is NO evidence that Maker has a teleporter as standard gear.
Leo’s scans reference a couple instances of Maker teleporting, but:
- the scans all come from the same fight, and
- Maker (again...) heavily prepped for that fight:
The context: Maker had put together a spy organization called WHISPER, and was running a team of supervillains out of its base. It IS true that Maker uses tech to ‘translocate’ during the fight, but all the members of his team used that tech out of the WHISPER base, which had its own “translocation bay”:
Imagine Wolverine stuffing Nightcrawler in a locker and Nightcrawler being stuck. You would probably – correctly -- deduce that Nightcrawler couldn’t teleport anymore.
More importantly, Maker is no longer the head of WHISPER (he now works for Project Oversight), and he has not shown the same tech again. It's the same story as the force-field: this is tech from a single, prepped fight. The burden is on Leo to somehow prove that this is standard gear.
Leo’s use of Maker’s power is… a stretch (pun intended)
The only instance that I can find of Maker on-panel materializing a device from another dimension is the singular instance that Leo is relying heavily on: https://imgur.com/a/oRDXH5T
Other things (like the martian, or the amulet), are implied, but entirely off panel.
As for that single instance: we have NO idea how much prep was involved, or how Maker communicates with his other selves, or how responsive those other selves are to send random shit to him.
It is just WAY too far to suggest that Maker can, at will, summon anything from any other dimension. See: all of the above instances of Maker getting his ass handed to him. All of his stories since SW involve him plotting for months to pull off relatively low-grade schemes, but Leo wants us to believe that he can just wilfully summon any device that Ultimate Reed Richards invented, in the single second that it would take before the nuke hits? Based off a single scan of Maker grabbing a gun from space-era WWII?
I'll concede that Maker can summon that particular gun, but that's ALL we know. As Leo pointed out for us, his argument is all one no-limits fallacy.
Most importantly: Leo has claimed that he can summon a device (specifically, the depower gun) from the Ultimate universe, using Maker’s ability to pass things between versions of himself. However, this is impossible. Why?
Because the Ultimate universe is the one universe that Maker cannot successfully travel to, or wilfully summon things from: https://i.postimg.cc/mDBNxq4C/Ult-uni.jpg
The bottom line: Maker can't get through to the one place Leo is claiming he can.
----
So that there are no surprises for Leo, my final post is going to:
- Argue that Black Bolt is perfectly capable of an omnidirectional blast, which is what's happening here
- Argue that Black Bolt is the only person in this match with working force-fields
- Walk through the possible scenarios for this match, concluding that Leo's team dies, no matter how this plays out.
Last edited by Smurph on Mar 12th, 2021 at 03:21 AM
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?
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.
__________________
“Perhaps this is the ultimate freedom. The freedom to leave.”
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.
Pr's verdict:
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.
Galan's verdict:
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.
Congratulations Smurph, you are the winner. You advance to the semi-finals.
__________________
“Perhaps this is the ultimate freedom. The freedom to leave.”