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

Prepare for a long one nearly three hours.  

Yeah, I'm not listening to 3 hours.

Someone mind transcribing the brackets as they go?

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:

Fanatic; Absolute Zero; Nightmist; MIster Fixer; Citizen Dawn; Baron Blade; Gloomweaver; Operative

Quarterfinal Winners:

Fanatic; Baron Blade; Nightmist; Mister Fixer

Semifinal Winners:

Baron Blade; Nightmist

Champion:

Nightmist

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'...

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.