Chokepoint an Termi-Nation

I would guess Unity remains the intern because she is seen as the child of the group and the one they want to protect.   They are fully aware she can handle things on her own but there is still a parental protection thing going on.   

Unity's status as an intern is solely because the Freedom Five stocked their gift shop before she showed up, and at this point they would have to take a loss on any merchandise if they changed their name or logo. Once they are out of stock of Freedom Five T-shirts and collectors memorabilia, they will reassess Unity's status. 

but she is not a child though , you can't say she is a kid she is way past that age also they can't do it forever

She may not be a child but that doesn't prevent the team from looking at it that way.   

This is pretty much what I am thinking as well.

AbZero and Bunker all seem straight forward. Zero needs protection but can't use his suit, so he has to use his powers in different ways as we see on his card. Bunker has the same "my suit is gonna be used against me" problem as Az, so he gets a new one. I never thought about it being made from Akash limbs, but I think it's a very likely idea since the suite would need to be sorta organic or at least made up of a compound that Chokepoint couldn't manipulate. It's not all organic though, we see the limbs being held together with linking beams of sorts, and that red visor in the center screams some kind of Omnitron influence to me.

But the weird one here is Unity. Yeah, her constructs can be used against her, but thats as easy for her as just not making golems. What does her card art say about what she is doing differently? We see a rather large Chomps in the background, but how is that gonna help her? Whats new? If there is one thing that needs to be pointed out as "odd" in the picture however, its that she has a "gear" tattoo on her elbow. Can you see it? Is the tattoo new and now just a normal part of her growing up (in Tactics she wears long sleaves all the time so it's hard to compare the then/now). Or could it be something more telling?

I think what you all say makes sense about their new looks, and reason behind it. No need to beat a dead horse with Absolute Zero and Bunker.

My theories for Unity is that her power is to use her teammates (and her own) technology to benefit her. So, she doesn't wear anything she relies on for survival. 
Which makes sense; I don't see the word destroy in her new power. So thematically, her teammate's lack of tech can't help her make Golems. She needs a new way to do this.

I always felt she shared a lot with Kitty Pryde of X-men  fame. If you don't know, here's the spiel.

She joined the Mutant Academy at a young age to get trained. She was never part of the older team full time, and has for the longest time played the side-kick in most of her adventures. She was the one younger kids can relate to. She was always a go-getter, in with the action and brave, but still considered a child. Of course this changes when joss Whedon got hold of her. She became more full-fledged and less "interny".

So Unity has always seemed like that to me. Full-time, but not really. Incredibly useful and talented, but still not entirely there. Yet. 

I don't quite understand this point. She wears a tank top and cargo pants in the card game. 

Based on a conversation on the holiday sale page between McBehrer and Phantaskippy it would seem that destroy is part of the power text.  

Shame on the playtesters! Revealing playtesting information in the non-playtesting areas.

I figured it was free game for playtesters at this point since the cards were revealed even if some of the text is hidden.  

Yeah, Bunker uses a powered armor suit in battle. Absolute Zero uses his powered armor to live. Unity doesn’t have anything of her own, no power suit, no weapons, just pants, shirt, and the rest. She doesn't need to change the way she dresses, or change too much what she wears for this kind of theme.

Her power are things she's built or found, not what she's equipped with. She relies on other's abilities, and power to be useful.

Hopefully this clears things up! And hopefully I don't sound too mean, I realize it was a little unclear.

Dude, your copy of Sentinel Tactics seems to have an error. On my copy, she has a sleeveless shirt and the tattoo can be seen quite well on Raptor Bot's card in Sentinel Tactics.

Nope. Text wasn't revealed, we don't share.

Just to be clear, you didn't do anything wrong, Powerhound.

Well they spilled the beans a bit even if they were trying to be vague.  

Well I'll be damned. You're right! My memory has let me down. Thanks Ronway.

Edit: I think the question of "What is Unity doing differently to combat Chokepoint" is still up for discussion. And wait till you all see her incap art. I feel like there will be some good threads about it because it has me totally stumped. Spoiler alert!

As a side piece I'd like to know more about the Scholar of the Infinite's incap which was seen on the Handelabra livestream on Tuesday.  

You only care about the Guise portion of it!

Maybe........

edit: I've been wondering about it since I saw the incap side during OGDE volunteering for Handelabra.   It saddened me.  

Oh, I whole heartedly agree. I even posted a thread in the PT forums disscussing that very art and possible implications. And to add a little more spice to the rum pot, there is a chance that it's not the only card art incoming that features those two characters....

I'm kinda really walking a real fine line here, but story stuff excites me and you can be sure there will be a Footnotes thread about Scholar come VotM release time.

My thoughts on Unity are that she has the ability to control metal, and electricity. Maybe her skills are strong enough now that she can use anything that even has minor traces of metal in it. Cause all she needs to make the golems work is something that can use electricity, right? So could she be able to encase her golems in material that can move around while having a skeleton she can control?

Would this make it to where Chokepoint has a harder time of mending the machine to her? So she would rather run from it or attack it instead of absorbing it?

Maybe the part of the card we can't see shows how she's doing it.

These are just a collection of thoughts running through my head about what Unity could do to change her attack strategy to be more efficient against Chokepoint.

Unity can manipulate Metal, and affect technology with her mind.

In Tactics; Citizens of the Sun get their own seperate turn from Dawn, Drones from Omnitron take one action by omnitron to give the drone a full turn.  Unity however, shares her turns with her Golems at a 1-1 ratio.  Their actions are her actions.  This to me says she is directly controlling her golems, While Omnitron's drones are programmed and only need direction from Omnitron to act, they can do the rest on their own, while Citizens don't need direction from Dawn in combat to be effective in combat.

Also, I'm trying to be careful, I didn't think I gave anything away, if I did I'm sorry.

To me, unless I'm missing something obvious, Unity is in an odd position in the battle against Chokepoint.

On one hand Unity's entire power base is very similiar to Chokepoint, the manipulation, de- and re- contstruction of tech ect. Unity is slightly more powerful since Chokepoint can absorb tech, but Unity can create tech. However, this means the stronger Unity gets, the stronger she males Chokepoint.

On the other hand, Unity does not need to create tech bots or walls or anything. Chokepoint's power can't harm or inconvience Unity unless Unity builds something first, barring some secret reconstructions we are unaware of that would make Unity partially made of Tech.

So, Unity can be unaffected by Chokepoint if she chooses not to fight, if she chooses to sit on the sidelines. That isn't Devra though, she wouldn't be able to stand being sidelined, but she is also smart enough to realize that fighting in her normal manner would only make the enemy more powerful, thus putting her friends in danger.

This is why Unity gets a new promo I think. She needs to find something different, some new trick, so she can go fight without making the enemy more dangerous to those she cares about.

Unity can also reconstruct existing tech (reconfigure). So she could try to counter Chokepoint's modifications, disabling blasters at the last second, turning off force fields, etc. 

She basically creates tech out of tech, so she could try and turn Chokepoint's equipment into something harmless, like bubble guns. 

Doesn't Devra's backstory say that as a kid she would golems out of pencils? I'm not sure her power is limited to just tech.

She can move metal with her mind (Ferro-Kinesis), and control Mechanical devices/mentally read them (Techno-Pathy).

She did use paperclips and pencils and other student's belongings to make golems, but I would assume she did it by controlling the metal in the construct.

I wonder if a better term would be metallokinesis, or if she's really just limited to iron.

Isn't ferrokinesis the movement of magnetic metals? Not just iron. Which makes sense if we assume she controls the magnetic fields.

And magnetic fields would also allow her to create and blast lightning likeshe does with... her one card, by moving magnetic fields over "wires".... generators do it... I cannot remeber the name of the effect. But it makes perfect sense.

That'd be the Faraday effect!

But "ferro-" is just the prefix for iron. You're probably thinking of the word "ferromagnetic," which basically means "something with magnetic properties like iron."

As paperclips are usually steel, there is no obvious answer. Darn iron alloys. Also, thanks for pointing out about 'ferro'. I did not know that.
 

The thing is, sure, Unity builds these things, but does she imbue them with some spark of life to keep them together when she isn't concentrating on them? Presumably they are powered somehow, at least, that's what the glowing eyes makes me think.

The "Ferro" is the root of the chemical symbol for iron, "Fe"- also the source of the words "ferrous" and "ferric."

Spacecraft engineer and high school teacher: BY OUR POWERS COMBINED...!

Hey, Bubbles, you are probably closer than you think with the phrase "spark of life," given the word "golem." In eastern European Jewish mythology, a golem was animated by putting a piece of paper with a Hebrew word like "life" in its mouth, and the golem would lose animation if the paper was removed.

.... I should really not post when so tired. I studied a LOT of occultism and mysticism for my degree meaning I know that about golems. Next question then: where does it come from? Devra? Or some other source?

Where do Legacy's powers come from?  Or Absolute Zero's?

She (Devra) is Israeli, and therefore presumably Jewish....

Meaning the spark of life (or whatever it is). Sorry for the unclear posting.
Crackpot theory: she taps into the power source of the cosmic being that revived Omnitron which is what powers her golems. Mostly because inscribing words of power doesn't seem her thing: 1) it's magic, not technology based, 2) the preparations would take a while.

I would bet that for the most part when she isn't conscious her Golems aren't either.

We do know they aren't just metal husks though, because platform bot shoots lasers, cryo bot actually freezes things, etc.  That isn't her powers.  They have to have technology inside them, which is probably why the lab explodes.

I mean she's building tech that can (at least somewhat) mimic Tachyon and AZ's powers, that isn't easy.  Not to mention a mini weapons platform that doesn't lag too far behind the original in firepower.

Her Technopathy would still allow her to work with her bots.

The crazy thing is Reconfiguration in Tactics.  She explodes a golem designed to roll at insanely fast speeds and reform the pieces into one that moves at normal speeds but now it freezes things around it at will.

That's some insanely awesome stuff right there.

I would imagine he trained herself to a point where she can think of the blueprint and will it to come together, but think of the extra parts she needs to have in every golem.

Also how would she deal with wires?  I imagine she would have to wrap the insulated wire in some kind of fabric woven with tiny iron thread so she could control it.

Thinking about reconfigure... do you think if you handed her a hunk of iron she could make a working curcuit board? I think at that point her power would be too ridiculous but how much of her tech is the parts she starts with and how much is her ability.

It's important because as Dr. Stinsons lab Aide Devra has access to Tachyon's work and AZ's suit, as well as Bunker's Suit. If stealth bot is more of Unity borrowing and copying Wraith's smoke bomb technology that her turning scrap iron into a smoke releasing robot, then she has limits not well represented by the cards. She still develops tech herself, and reconfigure could by explained by a... multi-tool engine? that works as Cryo bot if A is plugged into B, but does Swift Bot if B is plugged into C instead.

Also, thank you for the reminder on the Faraday Effect, I think that is how she creates the power we see as the pink lightning and what may also power the golems.

Tangent... What does Construction Pylon do is reality I wonder?

In reality? It sits on a piece of card looking really good. I guess you could fold it up and use it to stop a table from wobbling.

Perhaps this is another way the Freedom Six manifests in this (non-Iron Legacy) timeline?

The Chokepoint encounter results in Bunker destroyed and Unity becoming Golem Unity. While AZ is the only one to walk away relatively unscathed (perhaps his powers getting out of control in Elemental Wrath started from him using his powers to create his makeshift ice suit).

Termination happens before Tactics. At the time Tactics is set Unity is pushing to becomec the sixth official member of the Freedom Five. The Freedom Six as we know them are not around in "our" universe, and I doubt they will ever be so.

Here's something I don't get about the Chokepoint encounter: I thought Absolute Zero's powers were technological in nature. Specifically, I thought his suit enabled his manipulation of fire and cold. Without the suit apertures, how does he make the ice we see encasing his head and arms?

The suit from my understanding was more so for allowing him to survive normal temperatures without feeling pain.  As seen with Freedom Six AZ his powers go out of control and encase him in ice.