Ep 47 of The Letters Page discussion- Cosmic Contest & Contest winner

Today we learn how fan favourite Hippopocalypse defeated all comers in the Cosmic Contest when he wasn't even invited.

Listen to tales from beyond the stars to amaze and astound here

Prepare for a long one nearly three hours.  

Yeah, I’m not listening to 3 hours.

Someone mind transcribing the brackets as they go?

Hippopocalypse wins all brackets.

In truth it's about 2:45, but yeah I'm splitting hairs. In all honesty we(or at least I) knew this was gonna be a long one. No one would be happy if they skimped or skimmed over this one.

This.  

So kacited!!

I will say so far except for one matchup I’m pretty satisfied with the results even if I was wrong with my bracket.  

Sky-Scraper is the opening episode for January 

SPOILERS (Highlight to read!)

Bracket Winners:

[color=white]Fanatic; Absolute Zero; Nightmist; MIster Fixer; Citizen Dawn; Baron Blade; Gloomweaver; Operative[/color]

Quarterfinal Winners:

[color=white]Fanatic; Baron Blade; Nightmist; Mister Fixer[/color]

Semifinal Winners:

[color=white]Baron Blade; Nightmist[/color]

Champion:

[color=white]Nightmist[/color]

You didn’t white out any of the text.  

Yeahhh...I couldn't get the code to work for some reason...

I’d suggest deleting the post for now if you can’t get it to white out the text for those who don’t want spoiler yet.  

Got it!  Fixed up above now!

(Edit--So, tallying up, I ended up with a total of 38.  Not bad, considering I messed up pretty much the entire Champion tier...)

Thanks Adam for toughing it out to record this episode.   Just remember folks kids make you stronger against illnesses........

All I know is I'm happy I got Fanatic beating Legacy, which apparently most people did not. :) But yeah, I underestimated both her and Nightmist, big-time, to say nothing of Citizen Dawn. I feel bad for all the people who called Lifeline as the winner; I think that would have gone much differently had the Blood Magic episode come sooner.

Man, this episode was great, though. Christopher and Adam were obviously really excited to tell us this story, and a lot of the fights were surprisingly thrilling to hear about after the fact. Also, now we need an Infected Fright Train promo. Also, Magical Girl Citizen Dawn. :V

Okay, but seriously, now I'm starting to think I should be shipping Haka and Kaargra. >.> We'll see what happens in her episode. Which I assume is coming before Sky-Scraper because she got introduced to comics along with the Coliseum?

Yeah, I felt sorry for Adam through the whole episode. Poor guy… (I have to give him credit for sounding more coherent than I do whenever I'm stuffed up, though.)

As for the contest, well. On the one hand, I was so ridiculously wrong it's not funny, though this doesn't surprise me any.

On the other hand… they incidentally answered two questions I asked as followup questions after the Argent Adept episode yonks ago. (If anyone's curious: I asked essentially what Argent's personal sacrifice was in saving Visionary, and why the baton warped Anthony's personality in a way none of the other Virtuoso instruments ever had.)

On the gripping hand, man, those were super depressing answers.

Uh, so, I think maybe I came out as a net positive? Just slightly?

Kaargra and the Coliseum episode is two weeks from now.  

I think the only part of this contest I don't agree with was Bugbear. I had Bugbear doing to Proletariat what Spite ended up doing, devouring the clones with his stone and becoming more powerful. And it seems his loss was mostly because he was too shocked to be back in existence again that he didn't start fighting until after Proletariat had started beating him with hammers.

And still, unless I really misunderstand how that stone works, I would have thought he could recover from that and start ripping the life force from Proletariat ,ike he did Calypso. But, they almost seems like a rigged match where Jansa really should have let Bugbear out sooner so he could be ready to actually fight instead of just popping him back into a place with air and time and expecting him to start fighting immediately.

Other than that, most of this was really good. I get why some of the fights I got wrong were wrong, and I loved a lot of the later fights that ended up happening. Also, I'm blown away that this is the first time that Baron Blade's Fission Blaster is revealed, and I'm super excited that it could potentially be a card in Luminary's deck. I love that thing in Tactics

"There are some upsets here."

Understatement of the century. :P

I was of the same mind with Bugbear, particularly after how he was described in Nightmist's episode.  I figured that battle would have ended with a giant, bloodsoaked Bugbear, standing atop a mountain of half-devoured Proletariat clones…

We highly underestimated the operative, given how easy she is in the card game.

<NO SPOILERS>

But I love the right answers far more than mine!

Well...

• My Champion was WAAAAY off. Didn't consider that character to be that strong to be that strong
• My tech Tier was also off. Gave one character not enough credit.
• My Martial Tier finalist was right (I made a mistake in one of the first rounds, but it was a toss up).
• My Mystic Tier finalist was way off too.
• My Conqueror tier...let's not talk about that....
• My cunning Tier was 100% right! Yay!
• My Eldritch tier was close, I favored someone a little too much
• My Brusier tier was only close for one of them.
• THE FINAL ROUND: I got two of my choices in the Final Round. but none of them made it to the the last two.

I got 41. So not bad, really.

I underestimated Bathory’s advantage over Lifeline, and overestimated Writhe, and COMPLETELY got the bottom half of Bruiser wrong, but whatever. I did well. I also called the Legacy knockout.

I also got all of Conquerer, Arcane, Cunning, and most of Champion and Tech right.

I wouldn't be surprised if most everyone underestimated Bathory; up until the Blood Magic episode, I'd looked at her as a tougher-than-normal, blood magic using vampire; I certainly didn't think of her as a nigh-unkillable master blood mage.

I got either 23 or 26 depending on if it counts if you picked a correct winner but they faced the wrong opponent. The only tiers I did even remotely well with were the Mystic and Cunning Tiers. (Coincidence or not that these two tiers contain my favorite Sentinels hero and my favorite Sentinels villain? You decide.)

Sooooo... yeah, I think I'll just take my lore-finding-out deal and be happy with that.

I got 30 points, anytime a choice of mine won (even if the battle between the two wasn't right)

Some Twitter conversation reminded me that I have even more of an appreciation for Biomancer now, since his whole deal was pretty [bleep]ing badass. Interestingly and amazingly disgusting, but badass.

Here's how I did:

First round: 21/32 (but four of my tier winners got bounced)

Secound round: 9/16 (including every figher I predicted to make it to round 3 that survived round 1)

Third round: 4/8 (all of my tier winners that survived round 1)

Quarterfinals: 2/4

Semis: 1/2

Final: nope (I had Fixer)

Total: 37

Best tier: Conqueror (perfect)

Worst tier: Eldritch (2/7)

we got 41 total points, and were also the ones who wrote in guise/setback double knock out

we called the cunning and eldritch teirs correctly, and had only one mistake in the mystic and conqueror tiers.

Our final winner was baron blade fighting against the argent adept.

edit:41.5 points, since we got half a point for the double knockout

I got 36,  but I am proud that I had three perfect tiers

Conquering,  Cunning and Bruiser Tier.  I guess I know the baddies better then the good two shoes.  

I think my biggest disappointment were Haka and Parse

@Cult of Gloom: I ended up with the same final matchup. (Grudge match FTW.)

I did expect much greater things from Haka; after his episode on the Letters Page, I was viewing him as the unstoppable, unkillable juggernaut whom Fanatic could literally run through, and he'd just laugh it off before punching her into next week.  Not the case, as it turns out.

I did expect bigger things from Unity, but I can see how she'd be out of the fight after dismantling Omnitron-U in the opening round...

I got a mere 29 and no perfect tiers, though a couple that I missed by only one (Bugbear and Ermine), and one by two (Ra and Tempest).  I too thought Bugbear would feed off the Proletariat clones--I fact, I had Proletariat winning at first, then figured Spite would feed off the clones, then realized Bugbear would have done the exact same thing.  I'm kicking myself for not realizing how Lifeline vs. Blood Countess would go--in retrospect that was obvious from the Blood Magic episode--but I horribly botched that bracket anyway, getting literally every other match-up wrong.  I had no idea Biomancer would turn out to be such a respectable combatant in person.

I'm standing by my brackets for "best story," though.  I made a choice to go with good stories over literal "who would win" results, and it went poorly for me.  I think if I'd understood the format better--I thought it would be lots of individual comics, so each one would have to draw an audience on its own merits--I would have done better.

My overall champion was Lifeline, so Bathory utterly destroying him was unfortunate for me.

My final tiers were:

Champion:
(Ra)
Fanatic
(Mainstay)
Tempest

Fanatic
Tempest

Fanatic

Tech:
Writhe
Absolute Zero
(Omnitron-U)
Parse

(Writhe)
Parse

(Writhe)

Mystic:
(Harpy)
NightMist
Visionary
Argent Adept

NightMist
Argent Adept

NightMist

Martial: (probably my worst)
Fixer
(ExPatriette)
KNYFE
Setback

(ExPatriette)
Setback

(ExPatriette)

Champion: Perfect!
Infinitor
Zhu Long
Dawn
Progeny

Zhu Long
Dawn

Dawn

Cunning: Perfect!
Baron Blade
Chairman
Miss Information
Green Grocer

Baron Blade
Miss Information

Baron Blade

Eldritch: (no THIS was my worst)
Bathory
Lifeline
Biomancer
(Akash’Thriya)

(Lifeline)
(Akash’Thriya)

(Lifeline)

Bruiser:
Fright Train
Operative
(Bugbear)
(Heartbreaker)

Operative
(Heartbreaker)

Operative

Quarter-finals:
(Dawn)
(Writhe)
(Lifeline)
Operative

Semifinals:
(Dawn)
(Lifeline)

Finals:
(Lifeline)

As soon as Blade was given his second round, I figured he was going to sweet it, right up to the last minute. Quite the twist.

But how the hell did he get back from the Realm of Discord on his own?

Thats going to be my follow up since he would be lacking Devices at that point. 

Is anyone else concerned about the 12 foot tall rat dressed like a train out there now?

After listening to this episode, I think Fanatic is a good candidate for one of those 'power downgrades'...

It's OK, Jansa "reset" everyone.  Except Baron Blade.  And Visionary.  And Argent Adept.  And Expatriette.  But everyone else is all good.  Except Bugbear.

On the Opposite end of my last comment, I am immensly proud of Absolute Zero getting as far as he did in the contest. It shows how far he's really come.

Her mind works in mysterious ways. I mean she missed out on inviting Hippo, Equity, Orthrus, and Night Snake.

Absolute Zero has been my favorite character since before I had the game, and it gave me pause to choose Benchmark over him, but I am so glad that the story went the other way and not only had him win that fight, but go on to much more. 

Now that Equity has an unofficially official voice actor, this gives me an idea or two…

Char is one of the characters I’m surprised doesn’t show up.  

And yet Green Grosser did!

Also makes you wonder why those two Ennead and not anyone else. Or why two instead of just one representative.

Ended with a total of 43 points, I can add to the pile of people who underestimated Blood Countess, overestimated Writhe and was suprised that Bugbear didn't tear apart Proletariat. Overall though, I was pleased with how it all turned out and had a great time filling in the bracket and listening to the episode along with it.

Only into Round 2, but damn. The Tachyon/Tempest grudge match is great, and Parse is now very high on my "keep an eye on them" list. And holy crap, I'm sincerely scared of Anthony now.

Got a surprisingly respectable 39 points, including a perfect Martial tier. Surprising considering I forgot about the necessary AA/Visionary matchup that we've known about for a while now and I overestimated how powerful the Void Guard actually were. Beyond that, I let sentiment get the better of me as I wanted More Grudge Matches! in the last bracket and let that dictate a few decisions.

That didn't exactly go as I expected, but I still did decently well.  I was impressed how they pretty much just took the "who would win this fight?" approach rather than trying to set up interesting stories, but it still ended up with interesting stories anyway, even if not some of the ones I had in mind.

Champion: 5 (only mistakes were setting up Ra vs Fanatic and thinking Fanatic could be stopped by lightning)

Tech: 4 (Anything AZ won I had wrong.  That was one of the biggest surprises to me.)

Mystic: 6 (Had everything except Idealist, because I thought Harpy vs Nightmist sounded better.)

Martial: 2 (This was my worst tier.  I was really surprised when they said this was one of the ones that the most people had perfect.  I could have done 3 better if I took Fixer through instead of Wraith like I was thinking I probably should have done, but I really didn't expect Chrono-Ranger or Stuntman to win, despite the fact that I like both of them more than their opponents.)

Conqueror: 5 (Only got Zhu Long wrong.  In hindsight, I never should have expected them to pass up showing people fighting a dragon.)

Cunning: 5 (Had Green Grosser and The Chairman wrong.  I liked the explanation of how Green Grosser beat Ermine, but I felt like "The Chairman makes his own luck" was kind of cheap.  Sure he's a better fighter than Kismet, but he should go to punch her and his wrist breaks or something.)

Eldritch: 5 (Lifeline was my champion, so that didn't work out, but I had everything else right)

Bruiser: 3 (This is the other tier I was second-guessing the most and it turned out I would have done much better if I changed my answers.  Enough other people have complained about Bugbear, so I won't, but yeah.)

Finals: 1 (While I got over half of the preliminary rounds right, only 3 of my tier champions were right, and out of them, Baron Blade was the only one I correctly had winning a fight.  I had Nightmist lose to Lifeline and had Citizen Dawn win and then beat Baron Blade.)

Final score:  36/63, but I could have gotten as high as 43 if I made the changes I was considering.

Did anyone else hear them say Heartbreaker got his neck snapped?  How does he survive that?  As far as I know, he doesn't have any powers.  They said Doctor Medico healed people, but I don't think he can bring people back from the dead.  I'm pretty sure he survives, since in the Miststorm universe he's involved in For Profit.  Unless being postponed indefinitely means that's no longer considered canon.

They said it, I’m chalking any “deaths” (of which there were several mentioned) up to Jansa’s ability to “reset” things.

I was the fool who said "Oh yeah, Legacy all the way", also way overestimated anyone with an Oblivaeon shard.

I think he was one of the ones reset by Jansa.

I dunno, while I share your concern about Parse, I'm more terrified of Fanatic.

That woman not only has no chill, but the concept was retroactively removed from every dictionary she could ever conceive of reading.

You're definitely not wrong about Fanatic, but we pretty much already knew that about her, whereas for Parse it's a bit more surprising.

And now I'm imagining an arc where Parse gradually becomes a villain by continuously taking the most efficient solution, even if it's not a heroic one.

Almost reminiscent of The Calculator or Owl-Man from Earth-2.  I could easily see Parse falling to a "Gordian Knot" sort of amorality.  It may be why she shows up in Dark Watch/Rook City books so often…

I was more saying that I don't share LFF's opinion of Anthony being scary. He's really powerful and willing to do drastic things, but only when the situation is ridiculously dire.

In contrast, Fanatic is really powerful and apparently goes full tilt all the time in reaction to pretty much everything even when there aren't evildoers to smite.

Totally agree with Parse being concerning, though. Like, I tend to be more on the pragmatic side myself, but that woman is ruthless even by my standards. Sky-Scraper was at least a somewhat fair fight, but that part with Unity had me giving Parse a bit of side eye.

I at least see it as she gave Unity an out, willing to attack her emotionally but giving her the chance to relent instead of actually doing something that would mess her up even worse.

Really looking forward to the Parse episode, like I said. :D

And I think I had about 27 points, I did bad. :B

My problem now with Fanatic is the fact that not only did she wipe out all of the toughest heroes(The Haka fight's result being total BS in my mind), but she was also able to take down a SUN POWERED Dawn. And we're not talking "she was out in the light for a long time", but power ripped straight from Progeny who got it FROM INSIDE A FREAKING STAR.

C and A have said it themselves in the Citizen Dawn episode, no hero on their own can take down Dawn. Even if they're at 100%, the best they can hope is to simply go toe-to-toe with her. It took all of the Freedom Five to simply put a stop to her the first time around.

Fanatic took down a Star-Powered Dawn all by herself.

I was rooting for Baron Blade.

I have more problems with the Haka fight than I do Dawn.   My problem with the Haka fight was that she kept magically being fully recovered multiple times.  With Dawn there was some build up already as to how strong Fanatic was and the fact Dawn already used up her most powerful move before this fight leaving her a bit exhausted.   I do agree rooting that somehow Baron Blade pulled off what would was a bit of an upset at that point.  

There's a big difference between being pragmatic and being ruthless. 

Taking advantage of your foes' weaknesses, such as knees and weak structural points, is pragmatic.

Emotionally extorting one of your friends and allies by holding her once-dead friend hostage and threatening to destroy him, just after the pair were reunited, is outright villain territory.

If anyone could have done it, it was Blade.

Edit: Admitedly it was alot of info to go through, so I'm 100% sure I didn't retain all of the episode the first play-through.

Yeah, I think this is a good way to put it, now that you put it this way. There's a difference between swiftly incapacitating someone and straight up breaking them.

Yeah, this is part of what made me terrified of Fanatic. In addition to being ruthlessly driven she's apparently a freakin' juggernaut.

It's the sort of thing that lends credence to my theory that Parse, rather than Voss, may be the last Scion…

I figure anyone reading this far into the thread who hasn't listened to all of it is not worried about spoliers.

Got 33 points, which is pretty much the 50% you'd get if you picked randomly so yay me XD. Had Expattriette as the final in (many) upsets just due to her knowledge and training in taking down superhumans as just a regular person.

I'll just go over the ones I got wrong with my reason why I picked the way I did. Long post inc so ignore at your discretion

Champion:

Ra>Haka: I thought Haka would not care about the contest beyond a "Hey, sparring, thats fun!" and would bow out to Ra who would be much more intent

Legacy>Fanatic: (Apparently) Waaaay underestimated Fanatic's power level relative to Legacy. Thought Legacy could just tank and talk it out

2nd Round

Legacy>Ra: Figured if Legacy could power through Ra's fire long enough to get in melee, it'd be over

Tech:

Benchmark>AZ: New/more versitile suit vs old standby would give him enough of an edge. I did recognize that AZ was more experienced though so wasn't too sure on this one

2nd Round

Benchmark>Writhe: I dont know why I keep picturing Benchmark as an analog to Cyborg, but I saw his suit synthesising something to beat him

3rd Round

Parse>Benchmark: Parse would be the one to take his suit apart

Mystic:

Harpy>Idealist: Basically was one round too early. Thought Harpy would have more control over her powers than Idealist over her new powers

3rd Round

AA>Nightmist: I thought that AA would be able to convince NM to to fight after having to beat her protoge in the previous round. Also didnt realize this was where Dark Conductor happened

Martial:

Expatriette>CR: Temporal/Spacial shenanigans. Didnt realize his abilities could be fine enough to effectively teleport. I thought it would just be a shoot-out and Expatriette is to ranged weapons what Mr. Fixer is to melee.

KNYFE>Stuntman: Bare-knuckle brawl I just had KNYFE over Stuntman

2nd Round

Ex>Mr Fixer: Grudge match where Expatriette has learned Mr. Fixer's tricks after watching him for so long and just stays well away

KNYFE>Setback: Love the goofball, but in a smackdown fight he doesn't have the fighter's instincts KNYFE does

3rd Round

Ex>KNYFE: After two brawls KNYFE would be too tired/hurt to keep up with a ranged Ex

Conqueror:

2nd Round

Infinitor>Zhu Long: Limitless manifestations would have eventually made Zhu Long go "Bah. This isn't worth it" and poof away

Cunning:

Kismet>Chairman: Kismet? Getting suckered by essentially a peak-human who doesn't usually resort to fighting himself? Okay....
Ermine>Green Grosser: Just figured he was more of a joke than he was (And good on him for using that against Ermine)

Eldritch:

2nd Round

Lifeline>Blood Countess: Submitted my bracket before the Blood Magic episode....

Bruiser:

Plague Rat>Fright Train: I thought that the infection would do more than it did

Bugbear>Proletariat: I agree with others throughout this thread, Bugbear should have had a nice big meal out of clones

2nd Round

Plague Rat>Operative: More infection badness. Didn't realize "Skilled in poison use" -> "Immune to poison"

Bugbear>Spite: Thought Bugbear would be riding high on Proletariat clone energy

3rd Round

Bugbear>Plague Rat: Figured his blood stone would protect him from Plague Rat's infection and then he'd win

QuarterFinals: Tempest vs Citizen Dawn, Parse vs Baron Blade, AA vs Lifeline, Expatriette vs Bugbear

Tempest>Citizen Dawn: Figured she'd be worn out dealing with Infinitor's manifestations

Baron Blade>Parse: He's always got a trick up his sleve no one expects

AA>Lifeline: From everything ive heard, Void magic > Blood magic. AA would just wait him out

Ex>Bugbear: More ranged combat and maybe Relentless Pursuit right into a claymore?

SemiFinals:

Tempest>Baron Blade: Overload his devices with lightning mostly

Ex>AA: Expatriette is well versed in taking out powered humans and AA would be worn out

Finals:

Expatriette>Tempest: Same as above basically. If Ex could find a good sniping spot, Temest could be taken out before he even hears the shot

In conclusion: I was way off but had fun anyway. Listening to the episode, I agree with the logic for most of the ones I got wrong and had a great time overall. Good job C&A and G>G in general!

That's not quite what they said. No hero on their own can consistently, reliably take down Dawn one-on-one. The distinction is important.

Right. No one is so high above Dawn that they can just take her out without any chance of defeat, but there are people who could possibly beat her one on one.

Also, they later added that by the end of the Multiverse timeline, Expatriette could absolutely defeat her mother one on one.

Not exactly… They said Expatriette faces Dawn one-on-one, but she does it with words, not guns.

Plus, by the end of OblivAeon, Expatriette is wielding the Infinity Cannon…

Plus, Fanatic didn't really take down Dawn on her own.  She essentially had help from Progeny and a freaking dragon.

So, a couple of questions.

1) What uniforms were the Freedom Five in? Their OblivAeon suits, or their normal ones?

2) Was Anthony drake the Dark COnductor when facing against Nightmist?

I think they answered this pretty definitively in the episode:  he had destroyed his pipes in favor of using Vogel's baton in the effort to free Visionary's psyche, so he was under that dark influence during his battle with Nightmist.  During that battle, Nightmist managed to shunt his power–at least temporarily–back into his vocal cords, repressing Vogel's influence.

I got the feeling it was even weirder than that; Nightmist essentially attached Anthony back to himself, since he had intentionally done to himself what he accidentally did to Xu way back when, just after attaching himself into the baton first via blood magic so he didn't just outright die.

So, I got a heck of a lot wrong.

My final score was exactly 32, giving me a perfect 50% accuracy rate. My big problem was that I voted for three of the finalists (Absolute Zero, Nightmist, and the Operative) to lose their first matches for various reasons, which caused all three of those tiers to upend on me pretty fast. I also totally messed up the Eldritch Tier because I was working backwards towards my belief that the story would give Lifeline a chance to throw a fight, and thus he couldn't face Gloomweaver because him trouncing Gloomweaver was a whole Thing later...

The only matches that I feel cheated on were the Bugbear/Proletariat and Lifeline/Blood Countess. The latter makes a lot of sense with information that we didn't have when we were voting - I expected Lifeline's mastery of blood magic plus his alien tech to overwhelm her, because I didn't know about the Court of Blood story he'd already done at that point. The former just feels like cheating on the part of the multiverse writers. (And in the end, it doesn't matter, because I had Spite beating Bugbear and then losing at the last round, so it didn't upset my numbers too badly). 

I got too clever with my figuring things out, and assumed that Benchmark would have a good showing, and ultimately lose to Writhe, that all of the Void Guard would reach the second round to show off the power of Oblivaeon shards, and that they would want Progeny in the final 8 as a big Oblivaeon thing. So all of those matches messed me up. 

But overall, that was a heck of a contest. Good job, everyone!

So his costume changed too? Or was he still in his PW stume? 

Normal ones.  The F5 suits don’t appear until after OblivAeon destroys Freedom Tower and that hasn’t happened yet during Cosmic Contest. 

I don't think he'd have had enough time to change costumes in between fights–it seems like most of the fights run quickly between one another.  So, likely Dark Conductor powers while wearing the Prime Wardens costume.

Pretty sure they were in their normal suits at this point, since when they went down the Brackets Adam and Christopher didn't say "Freedom Five Wraith" or such for them.

From the sound of it Progeny more helped Dawn than hinder her after all was said and done. Same for the Zhu Long match in a way, since she absorbed the fire/energy blasts that he hit her with. At the very least Zhu Long didn't do nearly enough as he wanted since all he could really do to damage her was physical attacks.

Thanks Everyone for all of your help!

That's what i thought, just wanted a little bit of clarification.

I love that, despite being the most pwoerful team in game, the Freedom Five went down pretty quickly. 

Tachyon at least won a match and it sounds like her match against Tempest was a coin toss.   Absolute Zero got pretty far having won the Tech bracket and with his current state against Baron Blade I just didn’t see that going to well for him.  

AZ did fantastic. I especially loved the fight between him and Parse.

Yeah she destroyed his suit, but who doesn't? He's still gonna fight.

I do appreciate the fact that Absolute Zero starts out his heroic career as "Oh, no!  My suit!  I'm gonna die!  I'm out of here!" and, by the time Termination rolls around, he's like, "Yeah, yeah, suit got busted.  Again.  I don't even know why I wear this thing anymore.  Ice shell it is..."  Way to roll with the punches, Ryan.

I think that even though technically Nightmist won the contest, AZ is arguably the real paragon of humanity in that he's a paragon of the human spirit, not just physical prowess.

Like I admit I question Jansa's idea of what criterion makes you a "paragon" regards how she sets up her contests, but, you know, superhero comics. AZ manages to fit both types of criteria, though.

(Though honorable mention to Anthony for being the one person in the contest who has an actual real heroic fight.)

Part of the take away from this is that no one champion will be enough to weather the storm that is coming and that all need to unite against the coming end times.

 I would not take this as "character X beats character Y every time", for one thing there tends to be outstanding circumstances in most super fights outside of a setting like this, for another a lot of the fights in later rounds had people going in not at full capacity. Nightmist one on one with Gloomweaver might have gone differently if she had not had a pair of cake walks and he hadn't had two grudgematches keeping his blood magic body togethor against blood magicians. Or Fanatic might have defeated Baron Blade if he had not had his full aresnel.

In some ways what we took away from this were things we could have already known. You can't out-tech baron blade, you can't out magic Nightmyst, you can't out dark magic Gloomweaver,  and you can't out martial arts the Operative unless you are Mr. Fixer, and even then only if you are undead.

@Cult of Gloom: I was more being philosophical and noting it seems odd to me to have deciding who is a paragon of humanity to be based on who can beat who in a fight, or the general attitude that having better powers makes you a superior being/race, when it seems like there's loftier factors that can be considered.

But I also admit that veers into Necessary Weasel territory considering the genre we're dealing with, so I'll just be proud of AZ and Argent instead.

I don't think this is how Jansa picks every time. In the Deadline episode she basically goes to Tagorath and says "Come with me if you want to not die." This feels more like her seeing that reality is about to implode and going "Well, I'm going to use this as an arbitrary excuse to make people fight for my enjoyment."

I've only listened through the first couple of rounds of fights, but I need to know -- do C&A ever actually say where the fights are taking place or why these characters even agree to fight in the first place?  I know Jansa orchestrated it all but the podcast just jumps right into "here's how this fight went" and "here's how this fight went", etc. and without any context, I'm having a hard time slogging through the podcast.  Maybe they answer that basic table setting stuff later in the episode?

In the Question section they do describe the environment they fight in.  As to the agreement part it doesn’t seem like any hero or villain necessarily agrees to this they were just forced into it.  

Wow. I'm blown away we did as well as we did on ours. Very cool! 

Definitely was both a fun time guessing and an entertaining time listening to how it actually played out! 

Well, I can't give my score because I'm still a bit confused on exactly how the scoring works.  But I aced the Cunning, Conqueror, and Mystic Tiers perfectly, missed the Bruiser Tier by 1 match (Operative vs Fright Train, w hich technically means my final was wrong too, but I correctly picked the victor of the Operative/Fright Train match, so it sort of counts, even if it's not worth points) , and completely flubbed the Champion Tier (except for Tempest vs Captain Cosmic).  I correctly called all the Finals matchups except the Martial vs Bruiser matchup (although I had Ra as Champion instead of Fanatic, he won and lost in the same matches she did).

My working theory was that since the Contest was a lead up to OblivAeon, the heroes who played major roles in OblivAeon would do well, and the writers wanted to show off pre-OblivAeon powerups.  So my Tier winners were Ra (although I assumed he was Setting Sun at this point), Parse, Nightmist, the Wraith (which violated my rule), Dawn, Baron Blade, Akash'Thriya, and Fright Train (who was also a violation, but they didn't have any good OblivAeon story candidates)

Not too surprising to me.  I had Parse taking the Tech Tier, and only losing to Baron Blade.

On the Dawn v Fanatic front, I think Fanatic was the first person they mentioned as possibly being able to go one-on-one with Dawn, so there’s that. Remembering back to that episode they did say that Fanatic is just super powerful. Funny enough that didn’t really come across in the Fanatic episode, but I think it’s because they were more focused on explaining her power. That said, I think they did say that Fanatic is pretty much only ever defeated by her circumstances (or am I thinking about someone else?).

Either way, once Fanatic beat Legacy I remembered just how strong they had said she was, and realized that she was probably going to do quite well. I briefly held out hope that Haka would beat her [and therefore my chosen bracket winner would do better], but I wasn’t surprised after that.

Only fight result I “disagree” with is KNYFE vs Stuntman. Stuntman is cool and pretty awesome, and I love the idea that he can take a serious bearing and just won’t stay down, but I have a hard time seeing him beat her. Then again, I had KNYFE winning the bracket, so it’s possible I’m just biased.

I got 36 points overall. Interestingly enough, I did MUCH better on the villian brackets than the hero ones. But I think that probably has to do with the fact that for heroes, I was more focused on “good story fights”, whereas for the villains I considered just straight up fighting power.

I can't speak for everyone else, but it wasn't Parse winning that surprised me, it was the incredibly cold and cruel way she won some of the fights that surprised me.

Also, since I made for someone in another thread, here, have a mockup of what a 100% correct bracket looks like:

Dropbox

You had to write down 63 names to fill in the brackets; how many of those names were the correct names?

Like, if you had Ra beat Haka, Fanatic beat Legacy, and Fanatic beat Ra, that’s still 2 points because the second round match still had the right victor despite an incorrect participant.

I have no idea what my final score was, or what I selected in my brackets but I know it was a pretty horrible score.

But I did get Christopher and Adam to say my name in the episode so in a way I did win.

Quite a few questions to ask for the Editor's note when I get my thoughts in order, but I hope it is not Comsic Contest only, last month's Editor's note was recorded before anyone heard any of the episodes so i would like some coverage of questions from those episodes.

Did some math; random guesses would produce an average of 21.3 correct answers.

Interestingly, I had 21 correct picks, so I guess I should have made random guesses instead… might have done slightly better.

Still, this was a really fun episode.

Anyone else find it kind of funny that the description of Argent Adept vs. Naturalist amounts to basically AA spamming Sarabande of Destruction over and over?

I hate to say it, but that's a little lame then.  They're saying that Legacy agreed to beat the tar out of another hero just because a space alien told him to, with no other motivation than that?  I don't think I'll bother to listen through to the end of this one.

@mwc146: Particularly since that's a not uncommon way to play base Argent. (I had a Deadline game in particular where that's literally all Argent did the entire game.)

They do actually talk about Legacy trying to be reassuring to his first round opponet that this is strange circumstances they have been thrown into and they must fight but he still respects her…

And then Fanatic hits him right in the face cause she is fine with this circumstance.

So people do react differently to the cirsumstances, the Chairman trying to bow out gracefully is another example.

They don’t ever fully explain the motivations as to how they got various villains and heroes to participate.   That just seems like they got forced to.  I have a question on that for the Editor’s Note.  I will say it’s worthwhile to listen to the end though even not knowing the motivations. 

When a being with the power to whisk people from which ever reality they are in to another place billions of lightyears from their relative places of residence tells you to fight so one of you can become "Champion of Earth", you say yes!

And man, I really wanted Blade to win and then go "What need have I for your gifts? I already proved I can survive anything."

I'm listening to the podcast again, and there is something that I don't think I caught. What was the battleground like? The environment? Was i ana lien planet? a city? an arena? I'm doing my best to picture this. 

From WalkingTarget’s notes:

>

• What's the environmental setup? The environments are all sort of an "empty ruin planet" - an arena that Jansa set up just for this. There's lots of varied terrain and cover available, but the environment itself isn't throwing in any twists to affect the outcome.

The Environment description is early on in the Questions section at the end. My notes for it are thus:

"The environments are all sort of an "empty ruin planet" - an arena that Jansa set up just for this. There's lots of varied terrain and cover available, but the environment itself isn't throwing in any twists to affect the outcome."

I got an urban feel from some descriptions and rural from others, so I think it's kind of a "whatever would look cooler for that fight" situation.

Edit - and ninja'd in quoting myself by Powerhound/Sonvar. Par for the course, really.

Thanks!

Blade was ROBBED! ROBBED, I tell you!

It hadn't really occurred to me until this episode just how many ultra-powerful characters there are in the Multiverse. Characters where Christopher and Adam tell us, "Seriously you guys, X is so powerful, you don't even know." I'd have been tempted to pick Haka for the win because of the statements in his episode that it took plot devices to stop him just showing up and solving major events in the comics. But then I recalled that Progeny took out the entire Prime Wardens team handily. Then Citizen Dawn beats Progeny, and Fanatic beats Haka, and...

The Cosmic Contest is the best sort of 'who would win in a fight' discussion. It gives a lot of interesting 'what if?' confrontations, but doesn't give us an ultimate answer of who's the 'best' character, because each fight was so situational. We can all hang onto our favourites, and agree that the Nightmist writers need someone to take them off to one side and have a quiet word about making everyone else look bad. :P

I can't speak for anyone else, but whether I like a character or not has pretty much everything to do with their personality and the concept of their powers and very little to do with their actual power level or who they can beat in a fight.

(Which is why I was amused with this whole deal instead of irritated, because it never made that sort of judgment that a less powerful character is a "bad" character.)

This is especially true when we are talking about comic book characters who’s “power levels” vary drastically depending on writer.  

If someone honestly says “I’m not going to play XYZ ever again because they lost the Cosmic Contest” then I suspect they are missing the whole silly point of this event.  

Yeah, one of the things I like about the Sentinels fandom is that we're usually pretty cool about not bashing each other's choice of favorites.

But, ugh, so many geek fandoms where I've very definitely seen people bashing each other's faves for being "weak" characters in some way, which definitely tends to come out of the woodwork particularly in "who'd win against who" type discussions.

Which is disappointing because discussing the weird ways various powers interact with each other is otherwise pretty intellectually entertaining.

In all honesty, I'd agree with how things went for Nightmist. She dealt with threas quickly and concisely, but most of all she handled them 'believably'.

I just wish AA was in his right mind when they fought. That would have been quite the battle, I bet.

Now that I’ve finally finished this very entertaining episode, I think the biggest surprise was this:

They thought the puzzle hunt would last FIVE YEARS?!

I think it was more that the demand was there with sales strong enough to fund things at a much faster rate than they expected; Vengeance got funded essentially as a stretch goal, for one thing. 

Yeah, they kind of turbo-accelerated the expansions. It went from one every year or two to one every ~9 months.

WOOOO NIghtMIst Won!, I guess one person right all the way, wish I been a bit more serious with the rest.

We have to note that we didn't have all the information. We didn't know Lifeline is Countess's Thrall (I still rooted for the Countess), Progeny was powered so Dawn got powered up. Dawn can absorb dragon Fire but not Holy Light.

I want to remind people that anything Apostate can do Fanatic can do, even if she is not aware of it. Fanatics is very competitive, I would hate to play the board game Sorry with her.

And you guys leave Parse alone. I liked her before but now she is in my top 3 heroes, even if I don't enjoy her deck all that much. My take on her vs Unity is "I don't wanna hurt you and this is the fastest resolution for this battle. You are not in a place to carry on". I am now super pumped for the Parse episode, Need to form my question now.

Sie note: I love the SC writer world. I give C&A lots of wiggle room to be wrong and shows they have a lot of love for comic books. I am sure if a different writer would have let different people win. We also know the Terminarc can pull people banish form time and from deep inside a sun but not the realm of discord. (Poor BB)

I have a somewhat deserved reputation for being excessively negative, but I have tried hard to combat that tendency since back in my Justifier days. But it’s been a while since I indulged much at all, so I think I have earned the right to at least say that this is one of my least favorite episodes of the early podcast (probably least up to this part apart from small interludes that don’t really count), and that I largely don’t care for the Contest itself as a story in its current form.

BUT! As I often said back when Justifying, perceiving something as “wrong” often makes me become very invested in trying to make it right. And as I listened to this episode, I found an unprecedented degree of desire to rewrite to my satisfaction. Not because I don’t like the concept, although that’s somewhat true, and not because I disagree with many of the match outcomes, although that’s definitely true. But because, in my opinion, a lot of the presented details of how the scenario is presented, both in terms of the participants and of the readers, don’t quite line up as presented. Why Jansa is doing this, why the heroes agree to fight each other with at least close to lethal force, why the villains voluntarily participate against someone definitely using lethal force, what happens as a result of the outcomes, and how the whole thing makes a comic book that would be any good… I’m trying to make all these details add up, and the answers I come up with seem interesting IMO. Interesting enough that there could be a good fanfic in it, though it would be a lot more work than any project I’ve ever come close to completing.

For now, all I’m going to say about my headcanon vision is this. This is the Sentinels OblivAeon version of a certain iconic scene in… (decides the Schmony Schmobbins bit isn’t going to cut it here) …in Retributors: Unbounded Conflict. In that scene, the Nightmist or Argent ripoff character holds up a single finger, and then shortly thereafter names the sequel film. That’s what Jansa has to be doing with this conflict. Tarogath is back from being Deadline, so Jansa again has the Pandemonium Key, and I say that every aspect of how the contest is structured, every finest detail of the rules, was decided based on seeing how every other possible outcome would result either in OblivAeon succeeding and everything being destroyed, or something even worse (eg Bugbear eats everyone up to and including OblivAeon, or Paul VIII makes some error in judgement that turns him into Sciorn Legacy and he saves America by feeding Rainek all the other countries, something outrageous like that which would mandate one of the unfair matchups or improbable upsets or the like). The Key and similar equipment has proven to her satisfaction that everything has to happen within these exactly parameters. That doesn’t mean she calculated everything, at least one of the match outcomes had to have been an upset even by her standard; the heroes and villains get credit for what they did, and the lasting repercussions (eg the end of Dark Visionary) remain. But this wasn’t just Jansa picking an Endling from Earth or anything, this was her ensuring reality would be preserved, however terrible the price.