...
I drew this up and then honestly I stared at it and I went and re-read Phoenixian's posts and I almost talked myself out of voting for it before I redrafted it to what it is now.
Phoenixian appears to believe it is possible for Iowa to be a Force of Nature-tier party. That's rather the point of
writing something like this:
If, for instance, they've got a guca that can weaponize Feathers as a phenomena, I'd like to know that too. Because fighting an enemy that stitches time would be... problematic. I don't expect that to be the case, by any means, but "the worst known factors we can imagine" are a good stand in for "completely unknown and dangerous trump card." Or hell, even just knowledge of their fundamental character. If we know they absolutely will or absolutely won't weaponize the witchbomb, for instance, that makes a difference.
and the thing is, actually, "the worst [factors] that we can imagine" (not "known factors", because what he's describing is
not under
any definition "known") are
terrible stand-ins for
anything.
It's plausible that Iowa has counters to our bigger shticks: timestop, in particular, I think we all expect isn't going to buy a free win here, because that means no big fight scenes.
But what I read you as arguing here, Phoenixian, is that Iowa in this universe is plausibly a peer or superior opponent to us. And that's absurd.
If this were IRL, that would be one thing. But this is a game, and that means meta-level thought is in play. We've heard from both Nadia
and Yuki on Iowa, and neither of them have remotely suggested that Iowa is
somehow a walking Force of Nature, which is exactly what they need to be to remotely take us in a serious fight, because
by God, Mitakihara Group is a walking Force of Nature, we've just
sandbagged all the way down to "strong" at every fight we've ever been to.
Iowa isn't two orders of magnitude more powerful than an average magical girl group, or their reputation and the things we've heard about them would be very different -- they would be walking, chaotic evil
demigods.
One order of magnitude is plausible, but
one order of magnitude over an average group, even assuming that timestop is irrelevant against them?
That's not in our weight category unless we sandbag
hard.
So to be blunt, insofar as my reasonable belief extends, either the
fear you're writing (your words, not mine) is right, or the
storytelling is right. And I know full well which of those I believe.
...
I have had a
lot of trouble reconciling that belief with actually voting for something like this, much more than I initially expected I would. I do not
go for things that I think
wrong. You're basically going to have to take this as-is if you want me to bend on this, I think, because I can't see myself doing anything but outright reverting to my previous vote if you're not interested in this.
[X] Express that you're worried:
-[X] Some part of you is pretty sure that you won't just get to wipe Iowa out from timestop.
-[X] You are, in fact,
actually new to being a magical girl and aren't
completely certain of how to evaluate "Iowa is strong" relative to your own strength, given that you know so little about their capabilities.
--[X] You're pretty sure they're
beneath the six of you standing here plus Kyouko. But that's because you're pretty sure virtually
everybody is beneath the six of you and Kyouko. And you know things like, keeping Homura in reserve during the fight would allow for pretty much no-selling any attempt at surprise via timestop. And that in practice there isn't actually anything stopping you from pulling out enchanted grief-based force multipliers, and having people just... actually make
full use of your ability to, to give them not just infinite magic but also better multitasking, to let them simply
drown Iowa in magic. You want to
crush Iowa, not give them a chance to hurt any of your friends, or anyone who has decided to stick their necks out for you against Iowa.
--[X] But you'd expected to do a lot more intel-gathering on Iowa before fighting them, and part of you is saying that you could just... take an orbital flight path in timestop at 20-Gs to the last place Iowa is known to have been, find someone to ask about their capabilities. Ask Mami if you could engineer a way to let Oriko or Sayaka scry Iowa's specific location, outside whatever interdiction they have, from timestop here in Japan. That you're rushing in arrogantly, and that it'll be your fault if someone of your side ends up dead because of it.
[X] Listen to your friends.
