[The Canadian Content]

Great Minds
Lex Luthor
Doctor Octopus
Brainiac
Lizard
The Leader
Anarky

The Demon League
Ra's Al Ghul
Lady Shiva
Firefly
Psycho Pirate
Cheshire
Felix Faust

[Deleted]

GM

[The Canadian Content]

Great Minds is a great concept well executed. I like the Demon League, but it caught a raw deal here.

[Lucky]

Demon League is awesome but will get crushed because its all secondary villains. Awesome secondary villains who totally work together.

Great Minds is just too much of that prototypical villain team up that has a bunch of big guys who group together to defeat their enemies but will inevitably self destruct under the weight of their egos and greed. And no way those dudes cope with an obnoxious teenager as their peer.

[Batman]

The Demon League works because there is an obvious leader and no reason to wonder why the others would follow. And I love the Psycho Pirate.

Great Minds is kind of one-note.

[Chris Eco]

So yeah, Great Minds is very top-heavy: Luthor, Brainiac, and Doc Ock are probably three of the most recognizable comic book villains ever, and Lizard/Leader are probably not unknown to anyone reading comics.

But I think there's more to the team than that. A lot of these villains were the ones who always relied on hired muscle (Luthor, Dr. Octopus's Sinister Six cohorts, Leader) and they're tired of that. They're not out just to get things for themselves, they're out for an ideology--the superior power of intellect brought together will dominate any measure of force. Is Anarky going to be considered a peer of Brainiac? Of course not. But he is ideologically in line and intellectually useful. It's not a group built to stay together and rule the world after they're done--it's a group built to redefine how people look at their world. And the adoption and abuse of Dr. Curt Connors/Lizard to create the perfect prototype of servile muscle that is still intellectually useful is a sign of where they intend to take this experiment.

Besides, with the exception of Anarky, these are all people who have some experience playing with others given a set goal (Brainiac and Luthor from time to time, Dr. Octopus and Lizard constantly. The Leader for this EXACT same purpose with "The Intelligencia"). I think they can get behind this main mission.

[Lucky]

Don't Brainiac and Luthor's alliances always end the same way, though? And Luthor's almost always about trying to bend the minds of guys he thinks are dumber than him (because everyone is) believing he can manipulate these egos but with it inevitably destroying his plans. Similarly didn't the Sinister Six ALWAYS fall apart from squabbling and egos and lack of trust?

I'm not trying to knock you too much. You have big names and they all more or less fit together in a similar bit of idealogy/character. For me its just the same sort of big villain teamup I've seen a hundred times in the comics. Two or more villains group up because they're tired of being foiled by the heroes. They pool their resources, scheme together, and manage to get the jump on the heroes for once because they're working outside their wheelbarrow or with some aid. Then when all but one hero is captured and incapacitated all the scheming that these megalomaniacs have been doing behind each other's backs starts to catch up and creates the opening in which that one hero the villains underestimated because he has no powers or is a rookie or an idiot manages to turn the tide of the battle and free the heroes who then clean up the villains, usually finding a couple of them fighting each other, and usually having one of them sneak away because he saw all of this coming because he apparently reads comics too.

I just struggle with the idea of evil, power hungry, natural leader megalomaniacs being a united force for more than 12 pages before one of them starts scheming behind the other's back and all their thought bubbles are all "You arrogant fool. Just you wait..." They always THINK they can unite for this one main mission. It never works.

Plus, I'm really not sure how Anarky fits into this. Not because he's a kid, although that does genuinely strike me as an issue Luthor would have if not the Leader and Ock. But I never saw Anarky as the type to be all "Yeah, lets fix the world by taking it over and subjugating man!" sort of guy. But admittedly I never read much of Anarky so maybe I'm just not understanding the full nuances of his philosophical outlook. I could see him wanting to tear down society as it is, but not with these dudes because I assume he'd be smart enough to recognize that the society they build back up would be just as bad if not worse.

But really, it comes down to the fact that I'll basically grade every team on one simple standard. "Do I believe they can work together?" Its why I stayed out of this draft because I did a bad job constructing my teams in the Heroes one and I knew this one would be so much harder to do. This is a team I just have no faith in because its too many leaders, not enough soldiers.

[Deadly]

Demon League.

[Stu]

Who decides the tiebreaker in this again?

[Chris Eco]

Ideally, the people who bothered to vote in the other ones, but not this one? :-)

[The Canadian Content]

Dec 27, 2009 18:11:37 GMT -5 Stu said:

Who decides the tiebreaker in this again?

There was what turned out to be an inconsequential tie last round. I asked Pun to break it because he knows enough about comics that he can have a legit opinion on the teams but he doesn't generally participate in or vote on the showdowns.

He'd be my first choice if it comes up again.