Episode 254 of the Letters Page: Writers’ Room: Prime Wardens Vol. 1 #171-173

Ambuscade on his La Gloire tour. Cover for 171 on Criticls Event for Ambuscade

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Reminds me of the stories when Batman has plans to take down other members of the Justice League (the animated Justice League Doom was a condensed version, and good). But, as his record in the Death Battle videos shows, preparation is key for a Batman-like figure. Love this story.

Also, little factoid. The docents at the Monterey Bay Aquarium here in California have… stories about the giant pacific octopus. Like the baby that somehow made it into the main aquarium and spent probably months eating things in other exhibits until a security guard at night found what he thought was a scrap of cloth. The other is, in the back areas where stuff is developed and the animals are cared for, the octopus tank is the ONLY ONE with a padlock. Because anything short of that, they can get out.

Octopi are notoriously good escape artists, and capable of moving from tank to tank over surprisingly long distances. They have extremely complex brains, practice tool use, and their tentacles are almost as good as a human hand for manipulation - as well as them having four times as many of them to work with. How intelligent they are by human standards is debatable - a lot of that brain capacity may be taken up by processes related to controlling their phenomenal stealth abilities - but I’m personally even less inclined to eat any part of a octopus than I am a cetacean or a canine. Only their comparatively short lifespans and apparent lack of generational transmission of knowledge makes me question if they aren’t smarter than anything kept in a zoo ought to be.

Yup! Too close to “people” for me to be comfortable eating. Squid are fine, but not octopus. Same reason I wouldn’t eat a chimp or elephant.

Of course, I also listen to the Wellerman song and think that the crew got what they deserved for whaling, so…

“Four people who are good at things and Tempest” I’m dying XD

I’m so used to Abuscade being such a pushover, it’s so hard to believe this story arc exists, lol

I’m so glad we could learn about countries today!

I am also glad these guys can actually get paid for sitting around, talking in a bad French accent and laughing their asses off. XD

Oh my god, that was such a cool story. We all wondered how he pulled this off, and part of the answer being “he has his own definiton of victory” makes so much sense! It explains why the CE is just “he’s poked you enough times” instead of actually knocking anyone out. Fantastic.

We needm ore Alpha 2000 stories.

“And then you move to Waluigi.” XD The guys are in a real mood today!

Ooh, you mean villains can gain more Critical Events after they’re released? This is exciting!

Who knew Christopher was such a Natalie Imbruglia fan? XD

Dolph Lundgren, good comparison.

I like “Chrono-Ranger told him to be good and he got sad” XD

Prime Wardens vs. Apex when :V

Great outro.

The increasing frequency of orca attacks suggests that at least some cetaceans have had enough of our BS, and I don’t blame them a bit

Right? The fact that the reports in the media focus on the private yachts just makes me think that the orcas have adopted the “eat the rich” mindset. Pass the popcorn.

That’ll be interesting.

Still wondering what the team villains will look like. I wonder if CE-type alt cards would be a way to implement. Though that’s also because I’d love to have a solo Fright Train villain. What can I say, I like the dude.

Sooner or later there’s going to be an incident where people die, maybe a whole lot of people, and mass extermination of orcas will be the kneejerk reaction. They’ve been attacking relatively blameless small fishing craft as well as yachts, not whalers. A worst case scenario might see an overloaded and badly-maintained vessel full of refugees wind up capsized or sinking and a mass slaughter occur.

I don’t really want a ticket to that show, much less popcorn.

That is also true.

they mention how Ambuscade had it all planned out and if an unexpected hero showed up it would have ruined everything. made me think of that time the Chameleon trapped 7 superheroes but was foiled by a Lhasa Apso he did not plan for.

One of the Champions campaigns I used to play in had an NPC shrinking hero whose whole schtick was secretly tagging along with other heroes to pop up and surprise villains who thought they had a numerical advantage. Mostly existed as an occasional deus ex machina for deathtrap situations like the one with Chameleon there or to be the guy who came to the PC heroes when some other NPC had been captured. After he’d shown up a few times a smarter-that-average villain managed to capture him and our PCs got to go rescue him for a change, which was pretty satisfying.

It reminded me of the Batman argument… and then I wondered if Stuntman is really the Batman of the Sentinels Universe. (Obviously not, he arrives too late and doesn’t have as tragic of a past)

Not as tragic of a past? His horribly mutilated face would disagree!

He’s a great anti-Batman. The closest thing Batman has to a nemesis who’s “just like you, but evil” is Catwoman, but post-RevoCorp Ambuscade is even better. His tragedy is imagined, not real. He’s a showboat for the sake of showboating and not because it’s a useful intimidation technique. But he’s still rich and has a lot of gadgets and is all about planful advantage.

I await the RPG-era reveal that he’s now got an orphan ward that he’s training to follow in his footsteps. Perhaps a former child actor whose parents were blown up by his crooked agent after they discovered him embezzling, resulting in (of course) the kid getting horrific scars that ended his career.

Calling him le Rouge-Gorge is probably too on the nose and doesn’t fit Ambuscade/embuscade thing, but maybe le Petit Leurre instead? Marginally better than le Garcon Sacrifiable, anyway.

Technically, Batman has Hush, who is such an absurd anti-Batman that he defies belief. He’s a rich kid who tried to kill his parents for the inheritance, but Bruce’s dad saved his mom. Then he got jealous that Bruce’s parents died, and started a campaign of vengeance against him for… having successfully lost his parents? And he uses Batman-style super-planning and gadgets and investigation skills to just constantly try to ruin Batman’s life, for literally no reason.

Stuntman is a rather different, and better, route.

Also, for “Evil Batman” there is Wrath, an assassin whose criminal parents were killed by police on the same night Bruce Wayne’s parents died. A forgettable D lister.
Catman was a decent mirror match with Batman until he got a bad case of villain decay until becoming cool again in Secret Six. Too bad the writer could not take that story where she wanted to.

Honestly… people forget Bane’s intelligence, and how he initially got to Bats through planning and placement. Also fits the “power at a price” Revocorp enhancements. Though Bane did not have any redemption arc (a few… but they got aborted).

If I had to choose a Sentinels character to carry out a similar plot, Parse seems like the best hero, and Miss Information the best villain.

One major aspect of the Caped Crusader is his detective skills; I think that NightMist is really the only detective hero that Sentinels has?

I mean… I feel like, because of the power levels, that this would be less a Freedom Five thing and more a Prime Wardens thing. But overall, I think that’s either a Parse thing, a Soothsayer Carmichael thing, or an Expatriette thing.

RPG Wraith has d10 Investigation, d10 Deduction and Principle of the Detective, y’know. Think she’s qualified.

Can’t find an image in the Rook City Renegades Kickstarter right offhand, but isn’t her variant literally called Detective Wraith?

Yep

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Okay, yeah, fair points, @Chief_Lackey_Rich and @Thunderbird. I suppose that I just don’t really think of the Wraith as a detective for some reason. Sure, she practices detection, but only under the larger umbrella of vigilantism/crime-fighting; not like NightMist, who’s actually a detective by profession.

Then again, Batman isn’t a detective by trade either, so I really don’t know where I’m going with this. I suppose that I may simply be trying to mentally differentiate the Wraith and Batman, as the former is inarguably the Sentinel Comics character that is most similar to a “real” comics character in my mind.

True, Expat is specialised in taking down powered peeps. Although I wonder how she’d fare trying to suss out the weaknesses of non-powered characters—say, Bunker or Mr. Fixer. Fairly well, I’d imagine.

And I suppose that Soothsayer C. does have the knowledge to do it, but I believe that he lacks the means—although he may be able to pull it off. Plus, he’s only really knowledgeable about things arcane in nature—he’d likely be at a complete loss trying to defeat, e.g., Captain Cosmic or Baron Blade.

If my memory serves me correctly, Miss Info did actually carry out a similar plot against the FF.

Well, according to Sentinels of Freedom (which I need to get back to, but that’s another story), she makes plans like that when she needs to calm down while Setback is… well, Setback. So she’s probably figured out a few ways for each of them. How many times has she probably redone the fight with Fixer, you suppose?

“Be efficient, be polite, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.” Well… she has two of those.

Batman? AKA “World’s Greatest Detective”? Star of DC Comics? Formerly known as Detective Comics?

But yeah, that was a joke about “Stuntman/Batman can beat anyone… with enough prep time.”

I mean to say that it’s not his job. Yes, I do agree that he is a great detective, but it’s not his source of income. It’s an overly pedantic, hair-splitting distinction, I know.

Also, the answer to whether Batman can defeat someone isn’t how prepared he is, it’s whether the writer wants him to. : )

I mean, that’s true of every fictional character ever. Even the ones who can break the Fourth Wall and directly threaten their creator with bodily harm to ensure they get their way are only able to do so with authorial permission, no matter what Guise or Deadpool may think.

As for detectives, if we’re limiting it to people who actually work at it for a living, Ralph Dibny (who actually had a PI license at some points) and Detective Chimp both get to lord it over that Wayne dilettante.

This episode seems to have been crafted to reflect some painfully obvious flaws in real world comics if around this era. They literally put a plot hole into this story just for verisimilitude, because sometimes plot holes exist.

Interesting that the magical spikes are precursors of the Oblivion Engines, which we never had a hint about until the Focus of Power card appeared in OblivAeon’s deck. At the time I found them weird; why would a space god need --a starship-- external engines of power? But once they told the OblivAeon story in episodes 83-84, it makes perfect sense. A chekhov’s gun very skillfully deployed, it’s great getting the groundwork for it laid even earlier.

So based on the fact that there’s a zoo in it, I conclude that San Alonzo is the SOTM world equivalent of San Diego.

Ambuscade has a good sense of tactics here. Take out the support members of the party first, before you tackle the heavy hitters. Imagine setting up an Ambuscade game against Haka, Fanatic, and a somehow inferior version of Tempest, but H is still 5 and you don’t have two incapped hero turns.

This story would really need to emphasize Fanatic’s internal dialogue; because she actually is a hero, and isn’t just lying to herself like a lot of villains who think of themselves as heroes, she can’t just do whatever she seems necessary and reckon not the cost.

VLAD PITT!!!

Energy Powers Ambuscade would be a super easy hack to create; just put Charged Attacks into play during setup, and it’s indestructible.

Adam’s chickens in the end blooper sound like donkeys to me, other than the one really loud “crawk!” at the end, that’s the only time it actually sounds like a bird sound.