Phantom's House of Fun and Speculation!

General GTG Sentinel Comics Lore
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Reading over some of the old speculations, I find myself hoping for the ones that haven't yet been contradicted.  The following ideas have no real basis in SOTM as we know it, but I think they're cool ideas:

* An Oracle-type hacker/info specialist who supports the heroes without being a target.  (This would require special rules printed on the card which aren't a Power, and that would be unprecedented, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happens with The Sentinels anyway.

* Possibly the same concept, but a hero deck for a character who's just a powerless, uncostumed detective who teams up with the heroes to solve some of their less "Thokk!"-tastic adventures.  Nightmist sort of covers the detective angle, and Expatriette the powerless normal (or so we assume…) but I think it could still be done.

* Decks for CON and FILTER (these are both quite a stretch to me, but I'd be fine with finding out I'm wrong there!)

* A deck for the Fu Manchu wannabe who turns into a dragon and has ninjas.

* A Venom/Parasite type villain, possibly technological and infectious - the Hollow Points / Shock rounds guy/s?

* Also for the cosmic expansion, I'm guessing the guy Chrono-Ranger fights on a lot of his cards is an alien.  (Interestingly, I once dreamed that his name was "Yaz".  Having no record of prophetic visions, I will assume this part isn't likely.)  He was probably just some tough guy back in CR's day, but maybe in the modern age he becomes a big deal somehow.

* And of course, I'm eventually expecting an "evil planet-destroying corporation" villain to be The Naturalist's nemesis…perhaps it shows up in the cosmic expansion, because it's secretly backed by aliens that want to see the Earth depopulated, destroyed, or terraformed for their carbon-monoxide breathing selves?  We can also anticipate that KNYFE will get her own Nemesis, possibly being the FILTER deck.

Meanwhile, we're fairly sure these decks are coming:

* The fifth Prime Warden - I imagine him as having the powers of Firestorm but the narrative role of the Silver Surfer, and appearing in the cosmic expansion.

* Giant Thorathian Girl - Again, probably in the cosmic expansion.  (If that turns out to be #5 rather than #6, these two would be it for new heroes, which would be kinda sad, leaving us nothing more to speculate on.)

* Giant Earth-groping space villain.  (Perhaps he has ALL the nemesis icons?)

I also find myself hoping that Setback will have 24 HP because of the jinxes-on-proper-targets thing.  And maybe his innate Power will be "Activate two other Powers"?  :stuck_out_tongue:

Young Legacy doesn't really need a new deck, but Greatest Legacy could certainly use one, since canonically he's not supposed to be invulnerable…this ought to rule out not only Fortitude but possibly Heroic Interception and Lead From The Front, since he'd be just as squishy as the people he's protecting (no Captain America shield, and while he certainly shouldn't be a coward, neither should he recklessly endanger himself and risk depriving America of its living symbol, or delivering The Enemy a propaganda victory).  An entirely distinct deck for a character with such a fundamental difference from our version of Legacy seems reasonable.

About Unity being Magneto-prisoned…on La Capitan's Walk the Plank, we see Unity as the victim.  I'm imagining that perhaps Cappy shot her and she fell off the plank into the Sea of Time, but that she survived the trip and wound up lost somewhere, until she was picked up by FILTER and imprisoned in the Block, later to be rescued by Our Heroes.  (Also, with the parallel to CON, has it ever been really explained where Devra came up with Unity for her codename?  I remember that name being one of the first things that grabbed my curiosity when I saw the SOTM box, and it still remains unclear to me exactly why she calls herself that…it sort of vaguely fits with her powers, but it seems like it should go deeper than that.)

Also I never caught before that Mr. Fixer's youthful version had "Black" in his hero codename, for "obvious reasons".  (See also Black Panther, Black Lightning, Black Vulcan…and, conversely, Spinnerette's Tiger, who is thoroughly sick of people calling him Black Tiger.)



Agreed.  They're a pretty weak correspondence…they have virtually opposite personalities, but that's not much reason to declare mortal enmity.  It kinda smacks of forcedness, much like the line in Fright Train's bio where it says he and Vance "knew they'd never be friends" upon first meeting.
 

142

I don't mind that line, personally. What really bothers me is the bit where Vance saves Graves' life, and then the two reconcile... and then become nemeses, apparently.

143

The bio said that they had a reconciliation of sorts, meaning that there was still some bad blood between them. I imagine Tyler would feel very betrayed seeing Graves as Fright Train, since it was partly Tyler's testimony that got Graves an honorable discharge. Likewise, I imagine Graves being jealous that while he was unable to find work, Tyler went on to become a nationally known and supported superhero. Fright Train does become a hero in the Iron Legacy timeline, and so it is possible that he gets help and goes back to the straight and narrow in the future.

144

There's a few heroes and villians who feel like nemesis status does not quite fit. The first one that comes to mind is obviously Tachyon and the Matriarch. And I feel even moreso about the deck connection, their mechanics and how they play off one another. Bot for Absolute Zero and Proletariat I'm holding my opinion until I see how they play off of one another. Yes the lore connection sounds weak, but maybe there's more to the story that we're just unable to see yet...

145

The vengeance team is assembled to take down the Freedom 5, so whether the opposing characters have backstory or not, it is clear Baron Blade picked them to balance the threat of Legacy's team.  If he can neutralize Legacy's team, he can take Legacy down himself, which is his goal.  It doesn't matter if Proletariat and Absolute Zero dislike each other, Proletariat is coming for him.

 

Matriarch and Tachyon make sense, as Lillian is lashing out at the person everyone thinks she should be like.  It's a pretty common psychological reaction, just with superpowers involved.

146

I agree that the Fright Train/Bunker thing is okay. I feel it's more like Graves blaming Tyler for everything that's gone wrong. Misplaced aggression yes, but look at the type of persona he took on. It's in the same "baliwick" (spelling?) as Bunker, but inferior. That can also drive a man towards unwarranted hatred, the best you can do is inferior to what he was "given" (after all the Bunker suit was not designed by Vance, the government gave it to him)

 

Crazy thought from reading Envisioner's list. What if The Naturalist shares an icon with Argent Adept? I know there is no precendent for it, but look at the bio. Akash'Bhuta turns his life upside down by turning him into a gazelle. Then this irratating guy with red hair acts all "mysterious stranger" and puts him through two more transformations before finally curing him. He has plenty of reason to hate both of them, and dealing nemesis damage to AA wouldn't be out of character. Of course, it could get a little wierd, but I do wonder...

147

Yes I can see what Blade is doing, but every other member of the V5 actually has history with their coresponding target.

Blade to Legacy, Fright Train to Bunker, and so on. I'm just thinking Proletariat maybe could of had a bit more background to hate AZ. Like maybe they've fought before and AZ took him down unexpectictedly easy or something, or he could have had his own realization to their similar situation and come to hate him on his own.

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Keep in mind Proletariat is more than likely a hardcore Socialist. You know how much McCarthy hated Communists? The feelings were mutual the other way around toward Capitalists. 

AZ, to Proletariat, probably represents everything he despises. AZ afterall is little more than a government lapdog for the US backed Freedom 5, and a leashed one at that! Damn Capitalists!

There is no way Proletariat wishes that sort of confinment for himself. He probably sees Baron Blade as a perfect representation of a Socialist system (Baron [ie. the state] owns everything but kinda allows his minions/friends/followers access for the ongoing cost of their loyalty), and sees AZ as the antithesis of his very ideals.

Their connection may not be a physical one. They do not share the same backstory together like Vance/Graves or Legacy/Blade, but the idealogical hatred on Proletariat's side I see as very tangable. 

149

Also remember AZ is doing this for money. The entire reason he is a hero is to pay off the suit. He embodies capatalism in that kind of dark way, he saves people because he is paid to do so, otherwise he wouldn't bother... Dang, I kinda hate the guy when I put it like that

150

Oh, do you? Eeeeexcellent...

151

New Speculation, A future expansion contains a conjurer villain.

He became a villain because he once joined the F5, but Ryan Frost kept bugging him to read Atlas Shrugged and talking about how the pursuit of profit is the most noble right of man, and the mage flipped out, harnessed the powers of chaos and vowed to destroy the Freedom 5.

 

Also have to argue with Foote a bit (shock!)

McCarthyism isn't at all representative of the Communist view of Capitalism.  McCarthy was convinced that anyone with Communist feelings or ties were an active enemy of Capitalist America.

The Communist view of Capitalism is that the Capitalist leaders run the government and opress the people, the average person who believes in Capitalism is a victim, they may be deluded or weak, but they are not a hardened criminal that must undermine the socialist paradise.

I accept that your error was most likely one of generalization, but I still have to argue such things.  It's in my contract.

Proletariat would likely view Ryan Frost as a victim of a capitalist society which expected him to pay them for something they did to him.  (the pike industrial complex being a capitalist operation, and the government he has to pay back for saving his life is the puppet of capitalism)

When Ryan would fight him Proletariat would probably view him as a lapdog of that system, too dumb to bite the hand that opresses him.

 

Man I can't wait for Proletariat to come out, Marxist storylines are fun.

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I had this exact thought myself (I forget where I expressed it first, probably on a now-locked thread about the Vengeance heroes, which I am probably best off not bringing people back to).  I figure he probably has his own nemesis, some representation of the planet-destroying corporation he used to own, but that he might have AA's nemesis icon in addition to his own.  I even think I had another idea of a double-nemesis hero, probably Setback and Baron Blade, or maybe I was thinking a second existing hero might also fit as Natch's nemesis's nemesis (perhaps Wraith, because the company would be a business rival of Montgomery Industries).  Thusly, both Natch and his nemesis would have an existing hero's nemesis icon, in addition to sharing one, and things would get extremely strange when Natch and the two heroes involved were fighting his nemesis.  (Of course, Wraith is a lousy choice in that she already has more nemeses than anybody, and I'd much rather see everyone be balanced.  It'd be sort of funny for Wraith to have more enemies than anyone else, given how iconic Batman's rogues' gallery is compared to other superheroes, but it'd still annoy me on a certain level.)

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Thanks for the added context Skippy. 

But I agree, Proletariet is the one I'm looking forward to the most. He just has such a cool theme for his powerset. 

154

You ever notice that "can make a large number of copies of himself" is one of those powers that's pretty much exclusive to villains?  It just seems to be one of those abilities that the audience doesn't believe you can possess and not be evil (right up there with Mind Control, where Charles Xavier is almost the only non-villainous example, and even he's generally portrayed as a bit of a Well-Intentioned Extremist).  A few heroes have multi-appearance powers, but always with a low cap on the number of bodies they can generate - DC's Triplicate Girl has three bodies, and Harem from the webcomic Grrl Power has 5, but I can't think of a hero who gets more than that.  Which is weird because, unlike with Mind Control, it's not really a terribly sinister idea (apart from the mild Stepford-Wives subtext you can get from talking to more than one of them).  I fully expect there to be some sort of dialogue between Legacy and Proletariat about the power of "working together" (a Marxist vs. a team-captain type; it writes itself), and it's entirely valid to think that a multi-body guy could play some of Legacy's "strength of many" ideas completely straight.

155

Jaime Madrox (Multiple Man) would speak otherwise.  He's been on both sides of the villain/hero spectrum.

156

True, but he first premiered as a villain IIRC, and in most cases I tend to think that such status is not easily revoked, just because the character claims to have cleaned up their act.  Unless the time as a villain was extremely short (eg Hawkeye), I tend to figure they tend to still qualify even if they put on a white hat every once in a while - I still regard The Riddler as a villain, for instance, even though he ostensibly went legit for a long time.  Whether heroes that turn villain for a while follow the same pattern is debatable, but either way, I tend to think a character is always one or the other, or else confirmedly neither, but never really qualifying as both.

157

Triplicate Girl of the Legion of Super-Heroes would also care to argue.

I expect there's a list of superheroes with that power… haha, this is the internet of course there is, there's a whole wiki on superpowers!

http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Superpower_Wiki

Replication power list

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Has she recently gained the power to make more than three of herself?  If not then please read moar.  I said heroes are seldom if ever able to make large numbers of duplicates.  We see a dozen or more of Proletariat, and being a one-man army is also typical of Multiple Man, a couple of Heroes characters (one from Season 5 and one from the extended universe), Agent Smith, and probably several others I'm forgetting.  The only heroic (mostly) character I can think of who does this is the title character of Naruto…for heroes, there seems to be a limit of roughly a half-dozen selves, and any character beyond that threshold is presumed to also be beyond the moral event horizon.  (I now want to make a Seven Samurai character…)

159

Technically Proletariat DOES have a limit to his clone count as well, though it does have a higher cap than most heroes.

160

Envisioner,

Actually, yes, she has. She's also reverted back to the Duplicate Damsel name.

Also, Jamie Madrox was a villain (well, antagonist he didn't actually do anything villainous apart from fight the heroes and if that's your criteria the entire marvel universe is a villain) for 1 single solitary issue of Fantastic Four and a hero since then. I think we can safely say he's a hero.