What cosmic contest matches surprised you the most?

For us it was the Operative vs Fright Train. We didn't think that her sword would even be able to cut him.

which is a clear indication moving forward that difficulty in the card game is a poor indicator of over all strength in lore. Something they addressed on the villian side of things with the decks representing more how much difficultly the heroes had in one particular battle.

As a bonus, we called Ra beating Haka because we thought Fanatic vs Ra would be more dramtic flashback fodder for when she is grieving over him post OblivAeon. We thought he would do it by burning fire so hot that he would burn all the oxygen and make Haka pass out

I think the dissonance between card game strength and comic book strength is showing with both Gloomweaver, who managed to pressure both the Prime Wardens and Visionary to the point that Vanessa was overcome by Darkmind, and Chokepoint, who stomped The Sentinels and the Termi-Nation heroes with her really useful metal powers.

That said, I was simultaneously surprised and hyped up by Dawn and Progeny's fight. I thought people were overestimating Dawn when they said she was powerful enough to take out a monster that had systematically dismantled most of the earth's heroes and, even if Progeny wasn't quite at full power, I'm happy that I was proven wrong.

I too made most of my decisions based on what would make for a cool story rather than who would beat whom in a fair fight.  That was mostly due to my misconception that this would be a magazine, with 2-3 battles per issue, with lots of time for talking.  I didn't think it could be a single book since it would have to be hundreds of pages to do them any kind of justice.  Once I realized that, most of what I would have found surprising (not having Ra vs. Fanatic, Setback vs. Expatriette) made much more sense.

I figured The Operative would beat Fright Train.  His armor isn't one solid piece, it has gaps, and she'd find them.  I did not expect Plague Rat's infection to have an impact on that fight, since Revocorp cured Plague Rat of his infectiousness, and it only came back in the Miststorm timeline.

Like so many others, I thought Bugbear would feed off the Proletariats and grow stronger.  Seems he was the only one to not get at least some sort of explanation and incentive to fight before being tossed in.

Biomancer vs. Isis was a big one for me.  I had no idea he could transmute himself.  I figured that, like the Chairman, he'd bow out as quickly as he could manage.

I know lots of folks expected Citizen Dawn to beat Progeny, but I wasn't one of them.  In Progeny's original form, the only way to beat him (in the comics) is to exploit the weaknesses he creates in himself when he adapts to attack forms.  Dawn only has one attack form.  The fact that he was both in a weakened state and effectively solar-powered changed this completely.

And, of course, Benchmark in general.  The fact that the writers of Cosmic Contest were at odds with the writers of Benchmark's other appearances threw me off completely.  I expected him to do far better.  Writhe, too; he's supposed to rely heavily on inventions, but didn't use them at all, so I didn't expect him to be a one-trick pony (nor so dumb as to try to enter an absolute-zero environment suit).

I do not believe this kind of book would have been actually publishable under normal real world circumstances. The printing costs would have been huge and it would have needed to sell quite a lot of copies. At the very least it would have been a risk, but thats one of the upsides to working with fiction. You can let real world thing slide.

I was under the impression that Fright Train's skin was so tough it wouldn't be slicable by normal means. I am not sure why. I just didn't think she could do enough damage to put superhumanly tough beings down.

I actually had Progeny lose via ring out in the first round, my only miscall in that bracket, since I though the Scion would just immidently leave. I was  not aware it was going to be a weakened version of Progeny and thought this would deal with the narrative problem of making Progeny look like an unstopable monster who needs everyone on deck to beat him, but not have him win the contest. Him being weakened serves the same function, though it does rob him of his aura of mystique a little bit. Like when the borg start being blown up in Voyager and they don't seem so scary anymore, even if there was a reason for it.

I was surprised by a lot, and nothing so confounding as Nightmist winning the whole thing.

It's like CoG said about the comic/game disparity: I wish that Nightmist's Dark Watch variant even suggested something like that power level. You involve yourself in this community for any length of time, you'll hear someone complaining about how crappy the DW variants are. Fixer definitely fits the level of power he displayed in the contest, but Nightmist? Not hardly. Not even being able to control your Oblivions suggests she can do that. It's somewhat confounding.

I think her DW variant shows she has more control over her magic and it isn’t quite as chaotic.   As to whether you see that as more powerful or not playing the game is a different story.  

For me the surprise was Haka vs Fanatic.  I posted this in the other thread a bit but the fact Fanatic comes back completely rejuvenated multiple times just doesn’t sit well with me.   I feel like there could’ve been other explanations of why she could’ve won.   Based on her deck she can come back but it’s not at full health.  I also feel her broken Absolution has to be some kind of liability.  

We guessed Nightmist would win because we assumed she had to learn something to discover what she needed to do to deal with OblivAeon. We thought she's learn it from Jansa, though, but it worked out. 

We really couldn't imagine Unity taking out Omnitron-U, so that was a shock. We also couldn't imagine Haka reaching Ra, as others described (and we saw a Ra vs. Fanatic confrontation as an interesting one), or that Stuntman could take that level of abuse. 

On the flip side, we didn’t realize Chrono-Ranger could bounce around like that! We also forgot we were dealing with Dark Visionary, which makes a big difference. And we assumed Plague Rat’s venom would work against Fright Train – turns out it was too slow to do what we expected it to do. 

But none of that do I blame on anyone but us in our analysis.   It was all good fun! 

Is there a list of the winners somewhere?

Link

EDIT: That’s the final winners, not the winner of each match.

I decided to go through and use the PDF to mock up what a 100% correct tournament bracket looks like: Dropbox

As for me personally, I went for the pure "interesting stories" approach, but if I had to list what I would be surprised by on pure fighting prowess matters:

Chalk me up as another one surprised at how far Fanatic went. I knew she was powerful and driven, but I didn't realize she was basically an avenging angel version of the Pkunk.

Chrono-Ranger beating Expatriette was surprising, since I figured Expat was the better gunslinger and didn't realize Chrono could use his time powers in that manner.

Likewise I thought Stuntman was the type who's pretty good in action movie situations (or RL scenarios which resemble action movie situations) but would get outclassed by someone who was actually a serious fighter (and a dirty one at that).

Who knew Green Grosser wasn't a total joke?

Bugbear losing to Proletariat still feels a bit like a cheat.

Thanks, Jeysie! :D

And yeah, Green Grosser advancing -- or, let's face it, even being there -- was maybe the biggest surprise next to Proletariat beating Bugbear.

I find Highbrow as the most surprising entry honestly.  

This is probably the only time in existence I will ever say this, but, I felt sorry for Ermine.

 I like that Benchmark lost so quickly. The fact that he was created solely to be the new best superhero without irony is a thing that happens a lot in comics. The minds behind the “totally fictional” Sentinel Comics wanted a new character to be the most popular. New toys, movies, thousands of comics and appearances. So the writers were forced to make Benchmark outmaneuver Tachyon, lead better than Legacy, and take a punch from Haka. In the comic universe, he shows up and just outshines everyone. 

I think K.N.Y.F.E. v Stuntman was my most surprising mistake. I had a lot of ppl right, but i just couldn't see K.N.Y.F.E. Getting taken out that early, wasn't something i saw coming. I mean, with her powers, and the armor, and the military training i couldn't see her loosing to any one stuntman no matter how tough he is.

Thanks!

I got 31 right. Feels … mostly random.

The Martial Tier? Goose egg. I called all four of the first round fights wrong.

I did OK with the villains, in general, calling six out of seven in both the Eldritch and Bruiser tiers. I mean, Gloomweaver is a GOD. Not surprised at all that it pulled off winning its own tier. And I haven't been listening to the Letters Page, so maybe I don't know why Bugbear is supposed to be difficult to beat, but I've always thought of Proletariat as being mighty. Hard to pin down, hard to hurt, and can overwhelm you.

The Letters Page hasn’t delved too deeply into Bugbear.  The thought I think most have is that he has Blood Magic and could absorb those clones to refresh himself while still pummeling the rest.  It’s a matchup I thought Bugbear would win but had secretly hoped Proletariat at least got past one round.  Their description of what happened with Proletariat against Spite is exactly what I though Bugbear would do to him.  

I was really surprised by how well the Argent Adept did. Just by how his deck handles…I figured he can barely do anything by himself, and he exists to make other heroes better. I would not have expected him to stand up in any fights, and I figured the Naturalist would have a relatively straightforward apprentice-beats-master victory.

Speaking of forgetting that it was Dark Visionary - the contest bracket files just say “Visionary!” I thought that since this event happens so close to OblivAeon, it would be Visionary Unleashed, and she would just wreck people. It doesn’t always matter so much, like for the Prime Wardens, but knowing which Visionary variant it was makes A HUGE difference to her performance.

They did mention which version of the heroes it was during the Editors Note episode they revealed the contest. 

@Trajector: That bit was pretty fair, though. They straight up told us in the podcast it was Argent versus Dark Visionary at several points, and Argent's podcast noted he's good at neutralizing threats in non-combat ways (which he did to both Naturalist and Dark Vis).

Well, this is Prime Wardens AA – he sets up at double the speed and can really come out swinging. Argent Adept usually just supports others, but he has consistent damage in his deck and can buff himself considerably. All he'd really have to do is keep neutralizing Naturalist until he's ready to pull out all the instruments and chain together a dozen instances of damage, each of them buffed.

Especially since it pretty much just stops at "neutralizing Naturalist" anyway; when Naturalist is down to being just Michael Conteh, Argent's basically like "GG, dude".

I didn't send a bracket in since we had so little info on the setting, how the tournament worked, etc.

Absolute Zero was personal favorite of mine. He performed so well, being able to take the whole tech bracket even as his suit was being torn appart. I was greatly impressed on how in the Parse fight he was all "Yeah, you broke my suit. Who hasn't?" and then just froze her in a block of ice. Anlyze that.

All I'm gonna say regarding Fanatic is that I was rooting for Blade by the point those two fought.

I was rooting for Blade for just about his every match, really, for the entertainment value. I especially loved the special brand of sheer pettiness in the wholly unnecessary tasering of the Chairman. But yeah, watching Fanatic go down to one of the most normal participants in the whole thing was particularly entertaining.

Felt pretty conflicted when he got to facing AZ, though. Poor AZ. :(

Hey, just take it like this: It took the smartest/craziest villain in the Multiverse who was very familiarwith how AZ worked to take him down. :)

Right there with you on rooting for Blade! It's an issue I have with a lot of Superhero stories. They often come down to a contest of brain versus brawn, where brawn is the hero and brain the villain. I tend to sympathise the other way. But I digress.

Haka losing in any kind of physical contest was insane, considering that C&A told us that writers had to keep coming up with reasons why he couldn't just show up and shut down every major plot event. I mean, sure, Fanatic is cool and all, but very little in her episode indicated that she possessed that level of power.

KNYFE vs Stuntman was crazy, though the idea of the Rogue Agent suit being less combat-oriented kind of gave that some legs. Once again, nothing in Ancel G Moreau's episode indicated that getting up after being knocked down was a particularly special power of his.

Nightmist beating Mister Fixer was kind of a surprise, but the takeaway from this and the Nightmist episode is that Nightmist has the greatest number of plot devices in her possession.

Yeah, I know one reason why I felt more interested in Marvel over DC over the years was that Marvel seemed to have a much larger quantity of science heroes and science being awesome versus the smart people being villains and science being bad.

But I'm still willing to appreciate Baron Blade being one of the most mad sciencey mad scientists to ever mad science.

Well, think about it: what other villain has a higher threshold of tollerance to being beaten up by heroes?

Akash’Bhuta, Dawn, Progeny, Infinitor, Matriarch, Omnitron, Spite…

Honestly most of his survivability comes from being invisible. Stuntman doesn’t really do that; he’s not a hunter anymore, he’s an action star.

But you've got to admit, he's used to getting pummeled as often, if not moreso, as other villains!

Maybe the Hippo. Maybe. If being too dumb to quit counts.

I guess now we know he tends to play Indiana Jones-type characters, whose super power seems to be getting punched.

Maybe it's a meta joke.

I mean, how many times did Ambuscade get beaten down over the last couple months while we were sussing out unlock conditions for all the variants?