The Draft Classic: The Comic Book Draft All-Star Draft

Venom just betrayed them all and Lizard... Not exactly a classic S6er.

Use Shocker and Hobbie.

A Venom/Spidey trump would be mad cool though. They do work well together, and poor Spidey isn't exactly a high tier pick right now.

Oh yeah you know what... Here's a question that needs a final answer. How powerful is Jean Grey? Some guidelines for the GM would be helpful, cause I know someone picked her one time and she seemed to be judged pretty close to Marvel Girl power, but then another time she was pretty good.

I personally would like to see something around her level during Onslaught, which was high enough that she thought she could detain Juggernaut (she couldn't presumably, and he didn't fight her, but you get the idea).

Basically, when she was called Phoenix but wasn't actually Phoenix-empowered by the author.

 

I don't know about Spidey/Venom. I doubt that will make it in.


Anyway, I've edited the list. It should be all set now. Hopefully this is a list everyone can be happy with, or at least live with. I've tried to make as many compromises as possible

I'll get to work on the opening post which will include the new prep rules/premise of the draft, explanation of the new buddy system, and the rest of the usual post.

 

Nice. Oh and in reference to my above edit, that was also probably the same level of power she had in that thing with her and half-Juggernaut and Iceman and Mystique and... Toad...

Oh yeah, are we going to the rolling bump for this?

 

The List
Juggernaut

Um... Uh...

 

Pfft. If anyone still needs to go, it'd be Doomsday. Juggs may be the most physically invulnerable character on the list, but against any high-level (Doom, Reed), or even some mid-level (Cable, Panther) prepsters, he's got a good shot at getting beaten. Against certain psychics that can potentially remove his helmet (J'onn comes to mind, but maybe a bad example, since he's not familiar with Juggs and wouldn't know of the weakness without prep, I guess), he can be beaten. Against psychics that probably can't remove the helmet by themselves (Jean, Emma), but may be trumped with someone who's got a shot at doing so (Wolvie or somesuch), he's got a shot at being beaten. Even a few characters that don't fall into any of those categories (Nimrod, Zemo, Magneto, some others) can beat him.

In a team battle, as long as the opposing team is not made completely out of straightforward bricks (can't really recall any teams off the top of my head that haven't had at least one psychic, at least one person capable of hanging with Juggs on a physical level long enough to get the helmet off and at least one semi-competant tactician there to bring up such a blatantly obvious solution to the Juggernaut problem during the planning phase), then Juggs could maybe, depending on how things play out, be completely irrelavant in the fight. He really could be.

Doomsday, on the other hand, has no such quick and easy solution (without delving into removing-him-from-the-battlefield territory, which I think we've always tried to avoid here). And yeah, Juggs has a great record against Thor (though Thor usually fights him like an absolute idiot), but Doomsday has utterly thrashed a team made up of A-list Justice Leaguers. Put Juggs against that same team and he loses. Juggs has fallen to X-men lineups that Doomsday would barely even acknowledge as he crushed them and went on about his day. Doomsday is the only potential team-buster I still up there. Unless maybe we consider him as he was when he gained intelligence.

 

If we consider him when he gained intelligence, he'd not be a 1st-tier villain (although that's crap that Supes was able to beat him, but it is what it is) imo.

Doomsday got mind-controlled too, don't forget. Granted he wasn't on a rampage when that happened, but neither was it done by an even good-level tp. I'd be inclined to go the King Hyperion route really, if he faced someone good like an Emma Frost.

Except for the Brainiac-possessed Doomsday (it was Brainiac-possessed right?), I don't recall him running through all that much. Especially since he was easily downed by 2 Supermen in Infinite Crisis (I never read it, but each account I've come across says it was quick, fast and in a hurry so I trust the sources there).

But on the other hand I see your point. Two Supermen is no picnic. But we clearly disagree on how hard it is to get Juggie's helmet off, and that Nimrod thing, really as someone pointed out, was complete crap since all of him is invulnerable, and all sound or electromagnetic attack or any other kind of attack besides TP does is either put pressure on him or paralyze him, 2 things that should be completely ineffective. I'd be willing to give NImrod the win against him simply because I have to acknowledge this did happen, but I'm in no way inclined to stretch that to anyone else, including my beloved Magneto. And anyway, most teams also have someone who can provide at least decent protection against psychics, as well.

You want them both off then? I wouldn't lose sleep over that. Although it would take out a major lead for villainy in this draft... In this league.

We could replace him with Red Shift, or Grayven... We have the 2 other sons of Darkseid on there, even though it would still be a hit against villainy.

Oh yeah, Mongul and Cyborg Superman have power rings... And they have for quite awhile now.
And heck, I never thought about this till today, but since we're apparently still in talks, let's switch out Power Girl for Mary Marvel. We already have SupesX2, and Mary could double as villain if she got picked for a villain squad.

 

No. Mary is so mixed up right now there's no way I'm putting her on the list. Villain will pick her and say she's a villain, hero will pick her and refer back to her hero career. They just need to settle which way she's going(or we specify, which then makes her either just another Supe with absolutely no character if she's good, or a Black Adam clone, almost exactly but with more pouting, if we go villain). Let DC sort that mess out and give her a timeout for now.

Sure, that's three supers, but then there's Zod/Bizarro/...er, I just had the third guy but I forgot. Oh well. There are plenty of villains to match that type is all I'm saying that we don't need to say we need to throw Mary in there just so that there's also another female super that can go villain.

So should we remove Doomsday then? I was pretty wary of him to begin with.


Oh yeah, Mongul and Cyborg Superman have power rings... And they have for quite awhile now.

Was that in question? I mean, for Mongul I guess it could be, but that's pretty much been Cyborg's deal for most of his career.

 

Well, I dunno why you think Dr. Psycho's a crappy telepath, but DD has also shown to be able to resist powerful attempts at mental control at other times.

And yeah, he was possessed by Brainiac during that fight against the League, but there's no indication that Brainiac did anything for him aside from grant him (considerable) intelligence. It was still all DD's strength, speed and such. The only time Brainiac's intelligence appeared to be a key factor in that fight was when he knew specifically to dodge WW's lasso. But other than that, I see no reason to think that fight would've turned out any differently had Brainiac not even been involved. I mean, based on DD's previous showings, why would it? The utter curbstomping of Darkseid (avatar or no) and a curbstomp-in-progress of a prepared, mother box-enhanced Superman who had help from the freakin' Waverider. They only "won" thanks to a pretty epic version of battlefield removal, and that was all Waverider. For the purposes of this draft, anyone who can completely dismantle a mother box-enhanced Supes (who should've had access to it's full power, btw, unlike Orion, who has to use much of it to keep his rage in check) the way DD did is definitely too much, IMO. Especially since we've removed pretty much anyone who'd even have a chance of standing up to him.

Even before he'd fought Supes for the first time and the Radiant for the first time, and therefore, much, much less powerful than his peak, he'd singlehandley demolished a massive chunk of the Green Lantern Corps. Sure, a bunch of namless, faceless GLs, but still a huge feat.

As for the Inifinite Crisis fight... I dunno. Based on previous history, it seemed like they Loeb'd him down big time against Kal-El and L. Big time. The good far, far out outweighs the bad in DD's case, I think.

So whatever. I still think Juggs is beatable against too many people or combonations of people to have to be taken off, but if any one character is still too much, I think it's Doomsday. And I think he would still be top-tier even with intelligence. He still managed to hold his own for a while against an army of Gogs. I don't see too many others managing even that. But me personally? I didn't care much at all for intelligent Doomsday. Just seemed like a pretty lame version of that character and it didn't really stick for all that long, so that's why I'd hesitate to make it smarty pants DD.

 

I'm glad we had this chat.