Gray Mann vs Sturm (Team Fortress 2 vs Advance Wars) VS Prediction Blog
“History teaches that war begins when the price of aggression is cheap.” - Ronald Reagan
Gray Mann, the immortal roboticist seeking control of Mann Co
Sturm, the overlord of warfare leading the forces of Black Hole
While war can be a cruel mistress, not everyone can see it as that, as there are plenty of worlds where endless battles between colorful teams can be a fun and lighthearted affair. But even in worlds like these, those with darker intentions can rise, as these monochromatic warlords show. Originally hiding themselves and their machinations in the shadows of these endless conflicts, the time they decided to make their moves were dark ones, as many of the ones who had been fighting each other were forced to work together to end their threats. And the many machines of war under their command meant that would be a tall order for anyone to take on. So, in this war of machines and clones, which could come out on top?
Before We Begin
For Gray Mann, this will be covering all the important information for Team Fortress 2, including the main game, shorts, comics, and any other relevant material. As for Sturm, the main media focused on will be the original Advance Wars, Black Hole Rising, and Re-Boot Camp, the recently released remake for both. Dual Strike will also be considered, as that is the canon continuation of the story in these games, but as Sturm was not present in that game due to being dead, he won’t be getting any of the additional units or equipment introduced there. As for other games in the Nintendo Wars series, they will only be looked at as long as they can be considered as part of the continuity of the aforementioned games. For instance, the Battalion Wars series and Days of Ruin will not be included, as both are meant to be separate continuities with different casts entirely to these games.
Finally, this is another army battle blog, and as such both will be getting access to all their resources which could be reasonably considered. However, in the interest of keeping the debate focused on the army side of things, the only ones acting as the commanders here are the guys at the top. As such, Gray won’t be getting aid from the TFC mercs, and Sturm won’t be receiving help from the other Black Hole COs.
Background
Gray Mann
(Gray Mann model and render by Rebbacus)
“Unlike you two pampered imbeciles, I built my empire. I have studied. I have plotted. I have waited.”
In the badlands of New Mexico, there once lived a rich immigrant from England by the name of Zepheniah Mann, and his two sons, Redmond and Blutarch. The two were not the smartest and had been having a long feud for many years, and wanting them to end it, in his last will and testament he would give the two some useless land in the desert to squabble over. The two would fight for this over a century, using teams of mercenaries and mutually gained immortality machines to ensure their feud lasted generations. However, their feud would then be cut short by a new arrival by the name of Gray Mann. Originally the two’s third brother who ended up getting separated at birth and presumed dead due to a sudden eagle attack, he would end up growing up alone, building his own fortune with his own hands. But what he desired was Zepheniah’s true claim to strength, the massive munitions company Mann Co, which in death was given over to Zepheniah’s aide, Barnabus Hale. As such, after killing his brothers, he’d begin his attempted hostile takeover of the company from the hands of its current owner, Saxton Hale.
To help with the transition, Gray deployed an army of robots, and sent them to invade Mann Co company property. However, Hale ended up hiring the now jobless mercs of Redmond and Blutarch to act as the defenders, and as such, a war between Mann and Machine had become. This battle would go on for a year, with both sides ultimately coming to a stalemate. However, Gray then decided to take over the company by other means, as after appointing his young daughter as CEO of his company, he’d challenge Hale to a one on one fistfight, as it was Mann Co company policy to have a fistfight between CEOs for takeovers. Not willing to beat up a little girl, Hale would end up forfeiting the fight, leading to Gray now taking over the company, and its true prize, their stash of Australium, a mysterious life extending mineral. However, Gray ended up coming too late, as it had been taken by another person from the shadows.
After a few months, the once again jobless mercs would be rehired for one last job by their former Administrator, which would take them all around the world. Gray was hot on their heels, as they were all searching for the last bits of Australium on the planet, and he’d even hire some mercenaries of his own to help. Unfortunately, after realizing the true value of this substance, they’d end up betraying Gray, leaving him near death. Before he passed, he’d manage to leave a message to the Mercs who had opposed him, letting them know that their mysterious benefactor had far darker intentions than even him. And while he ultimately didn’t live to see it, the Mercs would both kill his former hires and see to an end of the Administrator's vendetta, ultimately casting all the Australium in the world into the deepest depths of the ocean. While his road to hell was paved with far from good intentions, perhaps in hell he’s laughing, as ultimately he still ended up getting a last laugh on all those who had rivaled his genius.
Sturm
In a world much like ours known as Wars World, conflict was brewing. Many countries of the world had turned against the nation of Orange Star, believing that they were aggressors against them, and that stoked a grand conflict between them. But little did they know that there was a secret menace who had orchestrated this by creating a clone of one of the commanding officers of Orange Star. This overlord, who went by the name Sturm, would use this as a cover to weaken the other nations and take them over himself under the banner of the Black Hole. Not much is known of his backstory, aside from the fact he’s apparently an alien and that the biggest thing he hates is peace. But however he came to War World, he had proven himself to be a dangerous threat. Thankfully, the COs of the world eventually uncovered his plot and managed to fight his forces directly in battle, forcing him to retreat.
But as they were recovered, he’d make a more direct move on the world. With the help of other COs under his command, he’d launch a full scale invasion of every country. This was devastating, but the countries of the world would eventually band together and force back this invasion, ultimately managing to fight back to the Black Hole’s home country. Within it, Sturm would make one last stand, and when his army fell, he attempted to take them with him by activating his final doomsday service. But at this point, he’d end up being betrayed by one of his own COs, which ultimately ended his ambitions for good. But even without him, legacy would live on, as Black Hole continued to be a threat to the world. And yet, even under new leadership, none could truly match the sheer menace offered by Sturm’s forces.
Intelligence & Skill
Gray Mann
Unlike his brothers, Gray Mann is a certified genius. Even when he was just in the womb, he learned how to talk and invented a new form of algebra, and his intellect would only grow from there. He was able to create all of his own tech, including his life extender machine which has allowed him to live for at least 150 years, and he was personally responsible for the creation of his many robotic units. He’s been skilled in commanding them as well, managing to hold a year long stalemate against the mercenaries of Mann Co, and the Mercs have all shown themselves to be a surprisingly skilled unit in spite of their eccentricities, given they had been fighting each other in a long war before he came in. And some of them have shown themselves to be fairly skilled individually, such as how Soldier was able to wage a one man war through Europe with no training, Heavy was able to bust out of a gulag with his family, and Engineer is a genius with 11 hard science PHDs.
Sturm
(bro thinks he’s Judge Holden lmao)
While his past is shrouded in mystery, Sturm has had a fearsome history as a combatant. By utilizing clones of other commanding officers, he was able to stoke a war between nations from the shadows, and with the aid of his COs, they were able to take over many countries of the world in a short time. He’s a fairly imposing commander, given how every time he was confronted, he was up against the combined armies of 3 different nations. These are nations who have been regularly fighting each other for years, and have been shown to keep up in long campaigns spanning the globe. And while some have has some questionable moments, these commanders are shown to be very skilled, such as how Sonja is a master of tactics who has kept up Lash, a Black Hole CO that invented much of the army’s tech, and Sensei was a feared commander in his youth who still inspires fear when he leads troops into the battlefield.
Equipment
Gray Mann
Australium
The central source of Gray Mann’s ambition, this is a golden substance found mainly in Australia, as the name implies. It’s able to adapt and transform into various forms, and most notably, is able to enhance the intelligence and vitality of those exposed to it. Using it, Australia was able to become a technological center of the world, inventing futuristic technology like teleportation and invisibility in 1890. It’s been shown to allow those who use it to revive from death, enhance themselves in strength, and even reverse aging, though without a steady supply of the rocks, these are temporary boosts that could only last an hour. And while this rock is powerful, it is still a finite and rather rare resource, which was bad news for Gray, given what he mainly uses it for…
Life Extender
Similar to the ones developed by the Conagher family, this device is able to use Australium to extend the life of Gray, which he’s used to live for over 150 years. Unlike the bulkier devices used by his brothers which left them confined to wheelchairs, Gray’s is attached to his back, meaning he’s still able to walk around and stay sufficient. But it does still need Australium to run, as without it, his age will quickly catch up to his body, ultimately killing him.
Needle
In his youth, he was shown to be able to use needles to inject others with Australium, in order to revive them from death.
Knife
Gray Mann used this to stab his brothers to death. It sure is sharp and can stab things.
Base
Gray Mann’s main base of operations is this island base, from which all his robots are built in and deployed from. Miscellaneous technology the island has includes holding cells for prisoners, screens for broadcasting messages, cameras for surveillance, and voice activated locked doors,
Carrier Tanks
To deploy robotic troops in battle, Gray rolls out these large carriers. Robots will be deployed from the ramp on their front into battle, and these tanks are seemingly able to build more robots within them.
Bombs
As robots are deployed, several of them will end up deployed while carrying this bomb, which can be picked up by other robots if the carrier is killed. If the bomb ends up at the hatch of the defending team’s base, then it will go off, destroying said base. While a robot is holding it, their own speed will be slowed by half, but as they survive while holding it, the robotic team will end up gaining several buffs. The first buff gives them a 35% resistance to all damage after 5 seconds, the second gives them regenerating health after 15 seconds, and the third gives them permanent critical hits which are 3 times more damaging, after another 15 seconds. These buffs will be reset if the bomb carrier is killed. Giant robots can’t receive these buffs, but they also won’t be slowed while holding it.
Mann Co Weapons
As Gray Mann took over Mann Co and had full access to the company’s resources for about six months in universe, it should be fair to assume he’d be able to outfit his robots with all the weapons the Mercs have used. This will not be listing literally every weapon, given for many of them that’s a bit redundant, this is just to establish that they could hypothetically utilize them.
Sturm
Hologram Projector
Sturm has been shown to utilize these to make decoys of himself, giving him the chance to quickly retreat from battles if they end up turning against his favor.
Mini Cannon
These are small cannons placed around the battlefield. While they are stationary and can be destroyed, if a unit ends up in range, they’ll fire a blast that can hurt them for 3/10 HP.
Laser
These devices fire laser beams in the 4 cardinal directions around them, which pierces through enemy lines and deal 5HP to all who are in range.
Missile Silo
Dotted around the map are these, which each fire a single missile that can impact the battlefield, damaging a group of enemies. Though only infantry can fire them, and enemies can use them if they get to them first.
Black Cannon
The Mini Cannon’s big brother, these cannons can deal more damage, up to 5 HP, has a higher range, and can only be damaged from the weak point in the bottom center of it.
Deathray
The big brother of the laser, this can launch a massively damaging beam over 3 tiles that can deal 8HP to any unit unfortunate enough to be blasted by it. It’s also somehow been designed to not hit Sturm’s own troops. However, it does need 7 turns to charge up, and it also has a weak point in the bottom center of it.
Final Missile Platform
The ultimate weapon of Black Hole, this is a missile which was stated to be able to destroy the many countries of Cosmo Land. It does take 30 turns to prepare it for launch, though as a last resort Sturm can manually detonate it to take enemies down with him.
Cities
Around the map are these areas, which infantry units are able to capture for your side. Each turn these provide funds for use in creating units, and any friendly units placed on it will get a defensive boost and heal a fifth of their health per turn, though this does require funds.
Factories
These areas are where the units of your army come from, as you can spend funds to build them in these locations. In order, the standard factory is where you build the land units, airports are where you create air units, and harbors are where you create sea units. Each can also give defense to units that are on them, and heal a fifth of their health per turn after spending on funds.
Headquarters
The central location of a CO’s battle plan. They are able to plan attacks and communicate with their forces from within it. However, if an infantry unit ends up capturing it, then the CO who owns it will instantly lose the battle. Units placed on it will get a defensive boost and heal a fifth of their health per turn after spending on funds.
Abilities
Gray Mann
None Notable
Sturm
CO Abilities
All of the Commanding Officers can give distinct abilities to their units, giving them various benefits and drawbacks. Sturm’s abilities when fought have him push the attacking power and defense of all his units to 120 out of 100, meaning his units are about 20% stronger than average, which makes them rather dangerous for other commanders to tackle. His units also are able to ignore all terrain movement penalties, meaning they can drive through forests and mountains as easily as plains and roads. As for drawbacks, uh… yeah he doesn’t have any. Perks of being the final boss!
Meteor Strike
Each Commanding Officer also has a CO Power, which is based on a star meter that is built up by units dealing and taking damage. When the meter is full, you can unleash the power, which can have a variety of effects to shift the tide of battle. Sturm’s is Meteor Strike, which can pull a meteor from space to crash into the battlefield, landing on a group of units to deal heavy damage to them. This tends to home in on the most valuable units in his opposition, though whether it’s an automatic thing or something he’s aiming in character is unclear. It also boosts his unit’s offence to 140% and defense to 150% for a turn.
Most other COs have a weaker second power that takes less stars to charge up, but Sturm has as much need for restraint as he does for the Geneva Convention.
Army
Gray Mann
Standard Robots
The main robots of Gray Mann’s forces are autonomous robots modeled after the mercenaries of Team Fortress. Each of them have similar capabilities to the team member they’re modeled after, and tend to be deployed in massive groups. They can also come with a variety of loadouts by equipping various weapons. The various robot types include:
Scouts - These robots are the fast run and gunners, being able to run faster than other robots, but having low health to compensate. They typically wield scatterguns or bats for heavy close range damage
Minor League Scout - These are equipped with a Sandman, which can be used to toss balls that will slow down anything hit by them
Hyper League Scout - Also equipped with a Sandman, but they have an enhanced recharge speed, letting them toss out far more balls
Bonk Scout - These come epic with a special soda drink that enhances their perceptions to the point of dodging all attacks for 8 seconds, though they can’t attack anything while in this state
Force-A-Nature Scout - These are equipped with a dual barrel shotgun that can knock back foes hit by it
Jumping Sandman Scout - Also equipped with a Sandman, and are constantly jumping in the air to dodge attacks
Shortstop Scout - These are equipped with a Shortstop, which is a handheld gun that can fire at further ranges. They also have a higher health pool and slightly better movement speed
Soldiers - These run slower than average, but thanks to their rocket launchers, they can quickly cause a lot of explosive damage
Buff Soldier - These are also equipped with Buff Banners, which allows them to buff their ally’s damage to do mini-crit damage, which is charged up with damage
Extended Buff Soldier - Same deal, just with the buff lasting 9 times longer
Extended Backup Soldier - Same deal as above, but they’re equipped with a Battalion's Backup, which lets them resist critical attacks and reduce damage by 35%
Extended Conch Soldier - Same deal as above, but they’re equipped with a Concheror, which can give nearby allies a speed buff and gives the wielder a small regenerating health pool
Black Box Soldier - These are equipped with Black Boxes, which can heal back damage the rockets deal, at the cost of lower rocket damage
Blast Soldier - These are equipped with Liberty Launchers, which can fire rockets that are faster but deal less damage.
Pyros - These have average movement, and use their flamethrowers to burn down enemies in their line of sight and airblast projectiles back to sender.
Flare Pyro - These are equipped with either Flare Guns or Detonators, which can be used to attack outside of flamethrower range and deal more damage if an opponent is burning
Pyro Pusher - These are equipped with Scorch Shots, which can be used to explode flames on foes at a range
Fast Scorch Shot - Same deal as above, just with even faster travelling flares
Demomen - These have lower speed, but use their grenade launchers to fire pipe bombs at enemies to blow them to hell.
Demoknight - These trade out the explosives for an Eyelander and Chargin' Targe, allowing them to slice apart foes who get close, and charge at them. If they kill an enemy they get 3 seconds of guaranteed strength.
Demoknight 2 - These are instead equipped with Ali Baba's Wee Booties, a Splendid Screen, and a Persian Persuader, which gives them more health and shield recharge, but no chance to grow in power after killing.
Burst Fire Demoman - These ones fire their grenades at a much faster rate
Samurai Demo - These are equipped with a Splendid Screen and a Half-Zatoichi, which can give the weilder some health on a kill.
Heavies - These units move the slowest, but they have the highest health, and their miniguns are able to shred any enemies that try to approach them.
Heavy Shotgun - These swap out their miniguns for shotguns, which can keep them more mobile, but has less sheer damage
Deflector Heavy - These are equipped with a special minigun that can destroy projectiles like rockets or grenades.
Heavyweight Champ - These swap out guns for boxing gloves. Some carry Killing Gloves of Boxing, which can grant them 5 seconds of guaranteed Critical hits if they kill someone, while others have Gloves of Running Urgently, which gives them faster speed at the cost of taking more damage
Steel Gauntlet - These are equipped with Fists of Steel, which grants them an absurd amount of resistance to ranged attacks, but makes them more vulnerable to melee damage
Steel Gauntlet Pusher - Same as above, just with higher damage and the ability to push back enemies they attack
Heavy Mittens - These are equipped with Holiday Punch, which lets them cause enemies attacked by them to laugh uncontrollably, leaving them vulnerable. They also have higher movement speeds.
Medics - These follow behind units with healing guns, and can build up Ubercharge as they do so, letting them make themselves and their patient invincible to all damage for 8 seconds. They can also use syringe guns to defend themselves.
Some are instead equipped with a Quick Fix, which heals their patient faster but cannot Ubercharge.
Snipers - These are lower health long ranged units who can use their sniper rifles to quickly pick off enemies at range, as well as Kukri for foes that close the gap
Bowman - These are equipped with a Huntsman, a bow and arrow that can be used at closer ranges.
Rapid Fire Bowman - They have more health and fire arrows at a much faster rate
Sydney Sniper - These are equipped with a Sydney Sleeper, which deals less damage, but can coat foes hit in Jarate, making all damage they receive deal more damage
Razorback - These are equipped with a Razorback, which protects them from attempts to backstab them once.
Spies - These lower health units are able to disguise themselves and turn invisible to go behind enemy lines, at which point they can use their knives and revolvers to pick off enemies and sappers to temporarily disable machines. Though said sapper can’t be applied to larger machines, such as Gray’s own giant robots or tanks.
Mecha Engineers
Worth their own section are these robots, based on the resident Engineer of the Mercs. To help make up for his robots tending to just run into danger, Gray helped deploy these robots that have a higher intelligence. They’re equipped with a shotgun and wrench, as well as creating sentry guns to help defend themselves. The initial one who spawns in a wave not only have fairly high health, but can also build teleporters to bring other robots to the front line faster.
Giant Robots
They’re bigger! They’re badder! The robots are also able to come in the form of giants, which have boosted health and take reduced knockback due to their size, though they do also tend to move slower. They are deployed more rarely, only coming in small groups, but their presence can quickly shift the battle if the defenders are unprepared. The various giant robot types include:
Giant Scouts
Super Scout - These are equipped with a Holy Mackerel and move at double the speed of a normal scout
Force-A-Nature Super Scout - These are equipped with double barrel shotguns that deal more close ranged damage and knockback
Giant Jumping Sandman Scout - These are equipped with a Sandman which they can toss at high speeds and have increased jump height
Major League Scout - These are equipped with a Sandman and recharge their balls really fast
Giant Bonk Scout - These are equipped with soda that makes them dodge attacks for a few seconds
Armored Giant Sandman Scout - These have increased health and a high ball recharge time, but move even slower than usual
Giant Soldiers
Giant Buff Banner/Battalion/Concheror Soldier - Like the smaller kind but big
Giant Rapid Fire Soldier - They can constantly fire rockets, but the rockets themselves move slower
Giant Charged Soldier - Rockets from them are always critical hits, but they also travel and fire slower
Giant Blast Soldier - These fire rockets that have wider radiuses and knockback, but less damage
Colonel Barrage - Fires rockets faster and with more damage, but they move slower
Giant Black Box Soldier - Has a big Black Box
Sergeant/Major Crits - Rockets from them are always critical and they can regenerate health
Giant Pyros
Standard ones will always airblast projectiles if they can
Giant Flare Pyro - Equipped with a detonator which they can fire quickly
Giant Demomen
Giant Rapid Fire Demoman - They fire grenades far faster than normal Demomen
Giant Burst Fire Demo - Have increased clip size and fast firing speed
Giant Demoknight - Stuck at melee range, but can deal 3 seconds of guaranteed crits if they land a kill
Major Bomber - Large robots who can regenerate health and have guaranteed crits all the time
Sir Nukesalot - They’re equipped with a Loose Cannon that fires very powerful bombs which can send people flying but is slower to fire
Giant Heavies
Standard ones also gain a 50% damage increase
Giant Shotgun Heavy - They have faster reload speed and can potentially one shot players who get close, as well as being a bit faster than normal
Giant Deflector Heavy - Has a gun that can shoot down projectiles
Giant Heater Heavy - These are equipped with a Huo-Long Heater, which constantly creates a ring for fire when fired to burn anyone who gets close
Captain Punch - Equipped with Fists of Steel to resist ranged attacks, and have regenerating health and faster attacking speed
Giant Heal-on-Kill Heavy - Equipped with a Deflector and regenerate a lot of health when killing enemies
Giant Medics - Can either use a Quick Fix for fast healing, or a standard medigun to charge up Ubercharge
Hat Seller Robots
To try and reclaim some of his lost profits, Gray ended up developing robotic versions of various hats to sell to the Mercs, taking advantage of the TF2 community’s biggest vice. To help sell them, he reprogrammed some of the robots to deliver them. They didn’t seem to be able to do anything besides run into the line of fire, but uh, could be a way to try and get emergency funds.
Romevision Robots
As part of a promotion for the Total War series, if you happen to own a certain cosmetic, you’re able to make the robots look like Ancient Roman soldiers. It’s not too relevant VS wise since they’re functionally identical but it is neat.
Sentry Busters
If an engineer happens to be on the team, these robots will be sent out periodically. They’ll run up to the Engineer’s buildings and detonate themself, destroying whatever buildings happen to be in range, as well as one shotting any mercs and robots nearby, which can even pass through barriers. If the defenders deal enough damage, it will detonate prematurely.
Tanks
These are massive rolling robots which can soak up a lot of damage while rolling at the defense’s center, deploying a bomb if it ends up there. However, they can’t directly attack in any way besides running people over.
Leech Robots
In order to get Australium from anywhere he could, Gray created these robots to suck out the remnants of it from the blood of the Australian population. Though they are just as effective at more directly killing, given they were able to overpower the Mercs and suck out all of their blood, killing them within 5 seconds.
Sturm
Infantry
The main foot soldiers of the army, who come in squads of 5. They wield assault rifles, which appear similar to the Heckler & Koch G11, and can capture map points, but can quickly get taken out by vehicles.
Mech
More specialist foot soldiers of the army, and come equipped with a 3 shot rocket launcher for dealing with vehicles, but they’re still relatively weak health wise, and they have a lower mobility than the standard infantry.
APC
This is a noncombatant unit which is able to transport infantry and mechas around the map, as well as refuel the gas tanks and ammunition of any unit it’s next to.
Recon
These units are most useful for scouting, as their high speeds on flat terrain and wide vision during fog of war makes them good for getting an idea of the battlefield. However, their cannons are mostly only useful on infantry, and their lack of armor makes them quickly fall if faced against more damaging units.
Anti-Air
These are machine turrets that can quickly take out airborne units, and can also do good against infantry and lightly armored enemies. However, they can’t do as much against more armored units.
Tank
These are fairly cheap armored units that can directly blast apart other armored units and have machine guns for dealing with infantry. However, they can struggle against stronger land units and can’t really deal with enemies in the air.
Medium Tank
These have higher defense and firepower than standard tanks, at the cost of having lower mobility and higher cost for creating.
Neo Tank
The most powerful land unit, these are special tanks designed by Black Hole which have very high defense and attacking power, as well as having good mobility. The issue is that they also have a high cost, meaning when they end up wrecked they can’t be as easily replaced.
Artillery
A cheaper tank unit that, instead of directly blasting enemies, fires in an arc to blast enemies indirectly. They can be powerful, but can quickly fall to direct attacks if an enemy manages to maneuver to it.
Rocket Launchers
A more expensive indirect unit that has greater range and more damage, but its lack of armor means it can be even more vulnerable to direct attackers.
Missile Launchers
An indirect unit which can annihilate any air unit that flies into its range. And literally nothing else. Likely to be very useful in this debate in particular.
Transport Helicopter
These are air units which are incapable of combat, but can transport one infantry unit through the air to the battlefield. Though unlike the APC it has no other uses.
Battle Helicopter
These are well rounded air units which are able to attack a variety of units, and their airborne nature gives them defense against the cannons of tanks. However, they are relatively weak when it comes to attacks that can hit them.
Fighter
The masters of the skies, these are able to blast apart any other air unit nigh instantly. Though they aren’t that useful against units besides that..
Bomber
While expensive, these powerful planes can fly over the battlefield, blasting apart anything below them with extreme prejudice. Though they do lack any defenses against other air units.
Lander
A sea transportation unit which can carry 2 land units across the ocean to other lands. Though it’s lack of defenses makes it risky if not properly defended.
Submarine
The bane of the seas, these units can blast apart other sea units pretty heavily. While they can be taken out easily if caught, they can dive beneath the water to make themselves undetectable to enemies, though this can quickly burn through their fuel.
Cruiser
These are decently effective sea units, who can blast apart enemy air units and submarines. They can also act as a landing site for allied helicopters, giving them a quick defense if needed.
Battleship
The most expensive of the ships, these are powerful indirect units who can blast apart anything on land or sea with their cannons. However, the fact they’re confined to water can make them questionably effective depending on the battle
Feats
Gray Mann
Overall
Killed Redmond and Blutarch Mann, ending the Gravel Wars
Fought against Mann Co and the Mercs for a year
Successfully ousted Saxton Hale from Mann Co
Robots have been shown to be able to kill the Mercs many times
Power
The robots are able to damage and kill the Mercs
Sentry Busters can explode (0.0948 Tons)
They should be comparable to the Mercs’ own payloads (0.138 - 0.879 Tons)
Via Mann Co weapons:
Manmelter, Pomson 6000, and Third Degree can break down foes on a subatomic level (162.6 Kilotons to 99.3 Megatons)
Cow Mangler 5000 can “quantum disentangle” targets, which could also imply subatomic destruction (See Before the Verdict)
Speed
Robots can keep up with the Mercs in combat
Certain weapons can fire fast projectiles, including:
Arrows from Compound Bows (97.54 m/s)
Rocket Launcher Missiles (115 - 300 m/s)
Righteous Bison and Manmelter are referred to as a indivisible particle smashers, which are near light speed
Durability
Robots can take hits from the Mercs and their weapons
Sturm
Overall
Leader of the forces of Black Hole
Started a war between the nations of Cosmo Land
Took over much of Macro Land
Required the combined effort of 3 different COs to be taken down
Power
Meteor Strike can summon meteors (shocking I know) (47.891 Megatons - 1.962 Gigatons)
Can get higher if you scale based on the map size (305.919 Megatons - 30.739 Teratons) (See Before the Verdict)
Can get higher if you scale based on map size (212.415 Megatons - 874.178 Teratons) (See Before the Verdict)
Vehicles can blow up tanks (0.549 - 2.524 Tons)
Various units can blow up pipe seams (105.032 Tons - 18.563 Megatons) (See Before the Verdict)
Final Missile was stated to cause devastation to the countries of the world
Speed
Direct units can blast nearby enemies (15.36 m/s - Mach 2.08)
Indirect units can blast from at least 2 squares away (30.72 m/s - Mach 4.16)
Rocket Launchers can blast from up to 5 squares away (76.8 m/s - Mach 10.41)
Battleships can blast from up to 6 squares away (92.16 m/s - Mach 12.49)
Silo missiles were able to strike Black Onyx, an orbital satellite (Mach 1109.12 - 0.05 c)
Laser cannons can fire… lasers (Speed of Light)
They’re directly stated to be lasers and don’t really have anything to discount them so yeah I feel they’re fine
Durability
Units are able to survive the effects of CO Powers
Units can survive silo missiles (36.406 Tons - 3.658 Megatons) (See Before the Verdict)
Scaling
Gray Mann
The Mercenaries
While Gray directly scaling to the Mercs himself is unlikely due to his lack of physicality, the robots under his employ have been shown to be a genuine threat to them on many occasions. As such, they should be able to scale to the Mercs’ notable feats.
All of them can:
Kill Robots hard enough to fragment them (9.16 - 79.22 Megajoules)
Outpace and survive the Meteor Shower Spell (Mach 32.65 - 136.99, 16.14 - 284.19 Tons)
Dodge and move in tandem with various light speed projectiles (See Before the Verdict)
Scout:
Casually moved a styrofoam replica of Ayers Rock (0.45 tons)
Stated to be able to outrun light speed signals from a satellite (See Before the Verdict)
Soldier:
Regularly employs Rocket Jumping (30 kilojoules)
Survived being flung by the Bread Monster, which could dent a metal door (0.12 Tons)
Pried open the outside of a rocket that survived reentry (307 - 711.29 Tons)
Pyro:
Survived an explosion that blew up a munitions storage (0.124 Tons)
Can reflect various projectiles, including arrows and rockets
Demoman:
Heavy:
Engineer:
His buildings survived getting nuked (Based on the design of the bomb, 21 Kilotons) (Arguably game mechanics)
Medic:
Sniper:
Survived being on a rocket that broke the dome of New Zealand as a baby (See Before the Verdict)
Should be comparable to his elderly biological mom, who did the same (See Before the Verdict)
Spy:
Merasmus
While Gray’s robots have never fought Solder’s Wizard roommate, as the Mercs regularly fight with him every year on Halloween, the Robots should scale to him by proxy.
Supplies the various spells used on Halloween, which includes the Meteor Shower Spell (Mach 32.65 - 136.99, 16.14 - 284.19 Tons)
His magic powered a machine that was able to create storms (178.854 - 214.589 Megatons)
Saxton Hale
While the full strength of SAXTON HALE is something that most likely can’t directly scale to, thanks to various examples of the Mercs being able to keep up with him in a fight, take casual hits from him, and even take him down as a group, they should at least downscale to his notable feats.
Can casually punch with the force of 2,751 PSI (77.015 kilojoules)
Likely comparable to his father, who could punch his way out of a mineshaft
Survived being launched out of a volcanic eruption (6.576 - 58.606 Kilotons)
Can take on Yetis, even being able to punch one hard enough to instagib it and hunt them to extinction
A Yeti was stated to be stronger than anything on earth (See Before the Verdict)
Sturm
Other Units
The various troops of Black Hole are shown to be able to take on the units of the other armies and are generally identical functionally. As such, it’s fair to assume they can scale to what the other armies have been shown to do.
Most vehicles are able to cause explosions with their main weapons
Famicom Large Tanks have the power to blow up themselves (19.486 - 50.873 Tons)
Famicom Tanks can crash into large tank shells hard enough to make them start rolling (0.026 Tons)
A Famicom Infantry was able to outrun and dodge shots from a tank
Super Famicom Infantry use bombs while capturing HQs (288.302 Kilojoules - 0.0143 Tons)
Game Boy Infantry can make explosions when capturing cities (0.239 Tons)
A Green Earth Mech’s RPG caused a comically big explosion (78.398 Kilotons - 27.738 Megatons)
The Commanding Officers
Sturm was considered to be a threat to all of Wars World, and generally all the other COs are treated as if they’re on equal footing with each other. As such, Sturm and his troops are likely comparable to the others here.
Max smacked a punching bag hard enough to Team Rocket it (1.246 Tons)
Olaf can create blizzards across maps (1.702 Megatons - 3.678 Gigatons) (See Before the Verdict)
The animation depicts the storm moving across the map and area beyond it (161.389 Kilotons - 753.847 Gigatons) (See Before the Verdict)
Drake can create typhoons across maps (1.758 Megatons - 3.8 Gigatons) (See Before the Verdict)
Hawke can create damaging storms across maps (1.758 Megatons - 3.8 Gigatons) (See Before the Verdict)
Weaknesses
Gray Mann
While Gray Mann is certainly intelligent, he’s not a perfect mastermind. For one, his intelligence being higher than most others in the world also gave him a bit of an ego, which has led to him underestimating enemies and left him open for their plans, such as how he was blindsided by the TFC Heavy’s betrayal of him and how he explained Australium’s effects to the Administrator, which enabled her to start the forever war. He also seems far from imposing personally, given he tends to rely on his robots to do the more direct fighting, and he has been overpowered by others fairly easily, indicating he likely can’t personally scale to the stats of the Mercs. Finally, while he can keep living for a while with the Life Extender, he still needs it and a supply of Australium to keep living, and if the device is removed from him or he runs out of the gold stuff he will end up dying for good.
As for the robots, their biggest issue is their relatively simple AI. While they can be a fearsome threat as a unit, individual bots haven’t been seen utilizing more complicated maneuvers like rocket or sticky jumping, and most of them tend to just run in a straight line to their objective, not shifting even if they’re going directly into the line of fire. Their demonstrations out of gameplay don’t really improve this, given they’ve been outsmarted by the plots of Soldier of all characters, who was able to infiltrate them with a cardboard robot costume. Finally, the fact they run on his money does mean that in a prolonged war Gray Mann risks running out of funds to keep his troops going to the front lines, which is such a short sighted design flaw that even his own robots think it’s dumb.
Sturm
While Sturm is a fearsome opponent for any army to take on, he does still have some weaknesses. First off, he is pretty overconfident in himself, quick to mock those who choose to fight him, which has led to him getting backed into a corner by those he underestimated on many occasions. Sturm himself also doesn’t seem to be too imposing personally, being fairly reliant on his tech and weapons to take down enemies. As for his units, besides their individual counters for each other, they do have a weakness in that their terrain movement will be cut if there’s a sudden change in weather, such as a snowstorm. They also require ammo and fuel to be topped up during battle, with them losing effectiveness if those run out.
Before the Verdict
The Obligatory Part About The Grordbort Weapons
Yeah, it’s time to talk about this fucking mess. If you know TF2 scaling, you know the main argument for pushing stats of the series high are from the weapons connected to Dr Grordbort’s weapon catalogue. First off, these weapons are technically crossover weapons, but unlike other examples, these actually have backing of being canon. There’s dedicated comics showing how the Mercs got their hands on them, the Grordbort website has numerous posts indicating these weapons went through a wormhole to the TF2 universe, and both companies were generally pretty close at the time, so yes these are fair game. The big thing of note with these weapons VS wise is that they’re able to completely disintegrate foes hit by them. That can get decently high, but the real shit comes from how statements imply that these weapons are able to break foes down on a subatomic level. While the Manmelter, Pomson 6000, and Third Degree have these statements directly, the real star of the show with this topic is the Cow Mangler, as that being a more damaging weapon means there’s more of a solid argument that it can blast apart things in one go, along with potential upscaling due to how explosions work. The problem here is that the description of its effects uses the term “quantum disentangle” to describe its effects, which is not a thing that really exists. Kind of.
You see, quantum entanglement is a genuine scientific concept, which is basically covering the connections electrons can have with each other. As electrons are subatomic, some have suggested that this implies this weapon is able to blast apart foes on a subatomic level. However, the issue is that this concept is not referring to how electrons are bonded, but rather the idea that there is a correlation between them. To use an example from the above article, a light source that emits two photons at a time can emit these photons in any orientation, but thanks to quantum entanglement, these photons will always be in matching polarizations, so if you measure one’s orientation, you also know the other will be either the same or the exact opposite of it. This is pretty tied to the idea of superposition. To use a more common analogy, whenever you flip a coin, you don’t have to look at what it landed on to know it had to have landed on either heads or tails, meaning the result is both predictable, in that you know exactly what options it could be, and random, as you still would have no idea what of those options it is.
What does that mean versus wise, then? Well, to reiterate, the issue is that this concept isn’t tied to a subatomic bond molecules have, just the idea they’re correlated if they’re from the same source. As these bonds aren’t subatomically connected, this means the Mangler affecting them would not have any effect on the actual structural integrity of these electrons, and therefore it is not capable of the energy to affect them. While you could argue that the other weapon descriptions could help add consistency to the subatomic interpretation, the issue is that the weapons the statements apply to are standard laser projectiles and an axe, as opposed to how the Mangler is firing specifically an energy explosive blast, meaning there’s not much reason to assume them being subatomic means a completely different weapon type is also subatomic, especially when there’s also other Grordbort weapons which have no such statements in the first place. And this is even more noted once you start looking into the full breadth of his catalogue, which shows these effects are far from a consistent element of these weapons. So while applying the values for subatomic destruction to the three aforementioned weapons is fine in my opinion, applying it to the Mangler is not. This also means the argument that this value can increase due to how explosions work is also invalid.
There’s also even higher numbers you could claim these weapons are capable of by assuming that these weapons are capable of deconstructing giant robots or tanks. However, the keyword here is “assuming”. Unlike standard robots, who can potentially be one shot by these weapons under specific circumstances, it is completely impossible to one shot either enemy type with these weapons without the use of exploits, meaning there’s not really any argument to attribute their destruction entirely to these weapons on their own. And no, you can’t downscale the value by dividing it by the minimum amount of shots needed to kill these guys by the value needed to atomize their whole body, as you can’t just break down something’s atoms progressively, it would have to all at once for the effect and calculation to make sense. Finally, tanks specifically are just completely incapable of having the disintegration effect applied to them at all, which combined with the sheer damage they need to take to get wrecked, means there is absolutely no reason to attribute their destruction solely to these weapons.
That Fucking Yeti That I Hate
Now to talk about the other infamous sticking point with VS stuff in TF2. Saxton Hale has been shown to be able to take on the Yetis at several points, both in the comics and in the short for the Jungle Inferno update. That’s fine enough on its own, but there is a specific statement from the comics where a scientist claims that a Yeti could not be stopped by anything on Earth. This statement, if taken literally, can lead to a lot of scaling to stuff people otherwise can’t really be argued to scale to. But in my opinion this is not fair game to include on any merit.
First off, there is the most infamous feat people have used this to connect to, that being the creatively named Apple device that blew up the moon in the Mac Update comic, which has gotten to at least 9.543 petatons, though you could argue it’s higher. While I could just write this off as an outlier and move on due to it being so absurdly above anything else in the verse, there are two major issues with applying the feat itself on its own merits beyond that. First off, this is a very minor gag scene that is not at all relevant to the story of even this comic, so treating it as if it’s the biggest and most important feat of the series is already a bit suspect when there’s not any other feat to correlate this level of power. The other issue is that this event as well as the comic itself is pretty questionably canon in the first place. And not just in the sense of a modern looking Apple store existing about a decade before the company would even exist, as that could just be handwaved as another general anachronism of TF2. In basically all other media seen in TF2 where the moon is visible, it is always portrayed as intact and not exploded, and there’s never been any explanation given on how it could have been repaired, if at all. Sure, the exact timeline of events in these comics can be a bit unclear so it might still have happened later in the timeline than the games. However, we know for a fact that the moon was not exploded at the time of this statement. The Yeti fighting comic was one of the ones made to lead into the Mann vs Machine mode, as his beatdown of the Yeti was recorded directly for the Mercs who were being hired by Hale to fight the robots, and it’s directly established that it took place 3 days after Gray killed his brothers. This therefore means it had to have happened at some point close to the Halloween event involving the brothers trying to send each other to hell, which happened in the direct fallout of their deaths. And if you just look at the skybox of this event’s map, you can pretty clearly see a moon that is very much not exploded. Unless you want to assume the moon got blown up at some point during these specific 3 days, there’s not much reason to assume it could have happened before this statement, and therefore it cannot be applied to it.
Well, even discounting that feat, there’s still plenty of other strong feats in the series that you could scale them to, right? Well, there are individual issues in certain feats some have cited for this chain. For example, New Zealand sinking into the ocean is an offscreen event we have no real context to the method or timeframe of, and the moon damaging weapons Dr. Grordbort has in his catalogue have no evidence of getting brought into the TF2 universe like the weapons the mercs actually use. But putting aside that, the big overarching issue with applying all of the feats this scaling could apply to is that it’s pretty hard to assume this statement is literal and not simply hyperbole. The scientist in question mentions her work with the Yeti was mainly in methods to pacify it, not anything to do with violence, so there isn’t too much reason to assume she could accurately know if these weapons could kill it. Even if she did, she’d also not really have any way of actually testing if these weapons could deal with them due to the sheer destruction a lot of them would cause. The context of the rest of the conversation also makes interpreting this way a bit suspect, as given she was mainly focusing on discussing the Yeti’s anger issues, you could interpret the statement more as “nothing on earth would be able to stop his feelings of anger if he was aggravated” rather than anything related to his power, which is especially so given she did not mention weaponry at any point in the conversation. And of course it is a bit of an aside comment in the first place, so putting this much weight into it is already stretching things a bit.
Finally, there’s a pretty big inherent paradox in this argument, as there’s also no reason the scientist would not be including Hale himself as one of the things that could not take down the Yeti, given she instantly recognises him the second he’s out of disguise. This means that the central conceit of this scaling chain is essentially debunking itself, as if you buy this, you’d have to accept the idea that the scientist was completely correct about literally nothing on Earth being able to kill the Yeti, with the singular exception of the guy who she just got done warning not to fight it. Don’t think I need to say that this feels pretty arbitrary. While you could just handwave that by the fact that Hale is meant to be the strongest guy in the verse, that doesn’t really change the actual issue here, as Hale beating the Yeti at all shows her assumption with this statement is demonstrably incorrect. Even aside from that, it would only really make sense to treat this statement literally if you were to assume Hale was significantly stronger than anything else in the TF2 universe, as she clearly says that nothing else could stop the Yeti, implying it’s not just stronger than anything in the universe, it’s so much stronger there’s no possibility of anything beating it. And this is simply an assumption that is not supported by anything else. Sure, Hale is generally treated as the strongest guy in the world, but not to the point of being some Saitama-esque god tier no one has any ways to stack up to. His first dedicated comic has him get kicked out a plane and land with an injury he needed to bandage, the very Yeti he fought in the comic was able to briefly overpower him in their fight, a lock designed to only open with the force of his punch was something Ms Pauling could bypass on her own with a battering ram, he got arrested offscreen by assumedly normal police officers, there’s even an official gamemode involving teams of Mercs having to take him out directly. And the recently released final comic clearly ends on the implication he could end up dying to a pack of cheetahs. So the idea of treating Hale as if he’s inherently far stronger than anything in the universe from just this single statement is simply not something that’s supported by much else in the series.
That’s also without mentioning the fact that the Jungle Inferno arguably retroactively retcons away his fight in the comics, since in the animation it’s stated he hunted them to extinction. Given this animation had to have been during the events of the Gravel Wars, as the two teams still are fighting each other here and there’s no mention of them being hired by him, the one in the comics is kind of retroactively breaking the lore entirely by existing. Admittedly, this a minor point you could just ignore, but that’s just another issue with this idea on top of all this bullshit. And also I just want to draw attention to that due to it being a point I don’t see anyone else mention.
In conclusion, this yeti is a fraud, and you should stan Paul Wisniewski from MySims Agents instead of talking about this bum.
The New Zealand Dome
A more recent argument for higher stats of TF2 that has popped up comes from the backstory of the Sniper. Basically, in TF2 lore, New Zealand ended up sinking its population into the ocean while putting a dome over itself, and Sniper as a baby was on a rocket ship that broke this dome, which sent him to Australia. Yes, it is a canon part of the lore that Sniper was secretly Superman, no big deal. Anyways, later when he reunites with them, his elderly mom ends up taking another rocket that also shatters the dome. The impact of both rockets being able to create big holes in the dome have been calced to be 167.68 Gigatons and 293.572 - 568.226 Gigatons respectively, and as these feats were done by a baby and an elderly person, the Mercs should logically scale to these. While I do think the logic of the Mercs scaling to these feats is itself fine, I have multiple issues with how these feats were actually calculated.
First off, in neither case is there any reason to assume they’re taking the full brunt of these impacts. They were not strapped to the top or side of these rockets, they were inside them, and rockets are specifically designed to protect the people flying them from the full impact of their lift offs, so logically they should not be scaling to these values fully. While it is possible to downscale the impact a bit, the issue is that unlike standard explosion surface area stuff, impact feats are not as easy to figure out a formula to downscale from, so it’s not easy to exactly guess by how much they should be downscaling these feats.
But the bigger issue in my opinion comes from how these calculations pixel scale these impacts. For one, these calculations assume the dome was as big as New Zealand the country, by taking the full length of the whole country and assuming the dome was as big as that. However, if you look at a map of the actual New Zealand, that assumption doesn’t make much sense logistically, as the country is multiple islands that are in a rectangular formation, so a dome of that size could not have been built before the island was sunk, given it would be mostly over sea water. They also directly describe the dome as fragile, meaning the impact of that much freestanding glass getting brought down to the ocean’s surfaces with nothing to cushion to blow likely would’ve instantly broken it if it was sunk outside of the country, as opposed to a smaller sized one being somewhat protected by having the whole landmass to support it. And obviously they had to have made the dome before the island sunk, because otherwise they’d all have drowned instantly. That’s not helped by the fact we only ever see what appears to be a single major city under it, which could imply that, rather than literally sinking the entire country, they just gathered the population in a smaller area and just sank that, whether that be just on one island or a part of it. These calcs also don’t really account for the fact that the edge of the dome is not visible in either case, meaning that it’s hard to say that the whole dome can be scaled from in the image, as unlike a planet, a dome is not a perfect sphere, it is the top of one, and without seeing the edge it’s unclear where the dome actually ends, meaning it’s not as easy to figure out the exact size of it, or even what percentage of a sphere it is.
There’s also the issue that how big these holes were calculated to be is directly contradicted by the size of other objects in these scenes. The hole Baby Sniper went through was shown to be a bit bigger than the team’s submarine, which was earlier shown to be about the size of a car, but if the hole was actually 37 miles wide like in this calc, then the sub should be far smaller compared to the hole than it is. There was also the direct aftermath shot of the hole, where the water rushing through it seems to be comparably big to nearby buildings, and which also doesn’t make much sense with the assumed size. Finally, the hole Lar-Nah went through has the same issue, as the hole is only slightly bigger than the width of her rocket, but if the hole was actually 178 kilometers wide, then the rocket should be far smaller in this shot or far bigger in the earlier one. So treating these as if they’re town sized holes is hardly consistent with the scale of anything else in these panels. The only thing the assumed sizes would be consistent with is the assumed size of the dome, but as mentioned there are several issues with assuming it’s quite that big. As such, I believe it’s more consistent to assume these holes are far smaller than these calcs claim.
All that means that I feel these calculations are entirely inapplicable. I did go through the effort of recalcing both dome cracking with the smaller hole sizes in mind, and they would get to… 0.243 Tons and 0.0849 Tons respectively. And keep in mind the above point on how both characters should realistically be downscaling these values due to not being fully exposed to these impacts. Yeah, these are far from the most impressive feats you could argue anyone in the series is scaling to.
Light Speed TF2
To finish the obligatory roundup of TF2 Before the Verdict stuff, there’s this stuff. And I don’t really have a lot to add about it frankly. Yeah, these are entirely based on weapon description statements which are a bit humorous, but because these are still meant to be directly describing these weapons regardless of the joke in said descriptions, I feel it is fair to treat the ones for the weapons as accurate.
However, there is one exception I take here in the description of the Cross-Comm Express, which is the one which implies Scout can run faster than light. First off, unlike the other statements which are fairly technical in their description, this is one entirely meant as a joke, which makes treating it literally a bit questionable, especially given the use of “may” clearly implies it’s not a definite statement of his speed. There’s also issues with this description being one which is questionably canon, as not only is it a bit questionable for Scout to have a eyepiece that can directly track objects via satellite in 1968 about half a decade before that sort of thing would even start to exist when there's no other lore implying that's part of the TF2 universe, it’s also a crossover cosmetic tied to the Tom Clancy series, which both has no real backing of canon and is a far more grounded verse with no real implication of this kind of speed.
Additionally, while there are plenty of reasons to assume the Mercs can scale to light speed projectiles in terms of reactions, the idea that Scout can just casually run at light speed is a lot more unsubstantiated, given the many cases of him clearly not outrunning stuff like bullets and trains, and there are no other cases of this kind of speed being true for anyone outside of reactions. Finally, the existence of Bonk, a weapon that explicitly buffs his reactions to let him dodge bullets automatically, completely contradicts the idea that he can just naturally outrun them, as logically he would not need it when he’s already many times faster than any bullet. Unless you want to genuinely argue every projectile in the game is actually comparable to light speed to make this statement make sense, it simply is not consistent to assume Scout scales to light speed in terms of his movement.
Advance Wars Map Sizes
Like any good TRPG, the scale of everything in the map of Advance Wars games can get a bit hard to judge. As such, the major calcs that rely on using that to measure objects out of battle have two ends to account for. The lower end measures the length of each square based on the size of buildings in the cities on the map screen, which comes in at 30.72 meters. The higher end instead calcs the size based on the background of the city areas in battle, and as such it comes in at 1428.148 meters. I don't really have a strong opinion on either being more accurate, and the debate would be relatively unchanged in spite of whichever end is used. As such I’ll simply leave it up to the reader to determine which version they’d consider to be more accurate.
CO Powers Scaling
(Fan comic by Brawl in the Family)
Perhaps the biggest question with scaling Advance Wars is how to handle the CO Powers and if anyone scales to them. First off, while some have suggested these could be representing some sort of tech or other function of the armies, Reboot Camp pretty clearly debunks this idea, as it shows that the COs are undoubtedly doing these abilities of their own power. For starters, in the activation animations for these powers in, all COs pretty consistently seem to cause some sort of effect when activating them, whether that be their equipment glowing, creating sudden blasts, directly summoning the effect on their units, their eyes glowing, and most notably, the storm creating trio all summoning said weather effects at will. It’s also been shown this is something they’re able to actively weaponize, as seen with Hawke using his CO Power on Sturm to kill him. This instance was already a part of the original game and is directly part of the story, meaning these CO Powers are undoubtedly a canon element of the series, and they should scale to their effects.
But with that said, can you scale any of the basic units to these abilities when the COs typically stay out of these battles personally? Well, yes, and there are several reasons to do that. First of all, plenty of these CO Powers are for dealing direct damage to the units on the field. This is directly meant to be a durability feat, as these abilities are programmed to only bring units to a single health, not actually kill them outright, so that directly suggests they should scale to them in terms of durability. Secondly, there’s plenty of cases in the games’ story modes where army units are shown to be a direct threat to the COs. There’s some notable cases like Sami getting trapped by Black Hole troops and needing to be rescued by Eagle, but the most important case of this to bring up is in Dual Strike, In it, after Hawke and Lash end up getting betrayed by the new Black Hole squad, they end up acting as units in a level where the Black Hole’s Oozium is sent out to dispose of them, and they end up needing saving from the allied COs. As mentioned, Hawke is the most blatant case of showing himself to possess these powers, so units being treated as a threat to him shows pretty directly that units should be able to scale to his level of power.
Finally, while this might seem a bit odd, this does make a lot of sense logically speaking. Given the COs are, well, the commanding officers of their forces, it would make sense to assume the units are as combat capable as them. These aren’t anime organizations where you can safely assume the leader is meant to be the strongest simply by them being the leader, these are treated as if they’re an actual military force. In those, the commanders aren’t automatically stronger than their troops solely due to being their leader, they’re simply the ones with authority and the one directing their movements in battle. And beyond that, treating the COs as if they could just nuke the entire opposing force in one shot would kind of contradict the central conceit of the series being about making their armies fight, so assuming they’re way stronger than the basic soldier doesn’t really track with that idea. So yes, these abilities are indeed for real, and yes, army units should be able to scale to their effects.
Verdict
(Sturm Fan Art by ButtButtTheNobelButt)
Stats
In terms of strength, both armies could boast some fairly destructive firepower, and they could compare at many levels. Both had plenty of good scaling in the building to city block range, and could even get up to city level via scaling. For the robots, they could scale to the high end of Grordbort’s subatomic weapons at 99.3 Megatons and Merasmus’s storm creation at 178.854 - 214.589 Megatons. But Sturm’s forces could certainly compare and even exceed this value. Depending on what ends you use for feats like Sturm’s meteor and the various storm creations, the forces of Black Hole could simply surpass it at 305.919 Megatons, comfortably exceed the range at 1.962 and 3.678 Gigatons, or completely blow it out of the water entirely at 874.178 Teratons, which was over 4 million times greater than anything the bots could possible compare to. And keep in mind these are values Sturm’s soldiers should be upscaling, given their superiority to the average units. So in terms of sheer power, Sturm unquestionably held the edge.
Speed was a bit more complicated. Both parties did have plenty of comparable levels in terms of attacking speeds, as both could hit low mach speeds directly, could scale to foes arguably able to directly summon lightning in Merasmus and Eagle, and had access to various projectiles that could attack at the speed of light. However, that was just in terms of attacking. In terms of reactions, well, there really wasn’t much to go for the Black Hole troops, given it is physically impossible to straight up dodge attacks in these games, so the bots did have an arguable edge there. Even if you try to extrapolate, the bots directly comparing to the Mercs meant they could scale in speed to a lot of the light speed projectile dodging they can do, whereas they really wasn’t an argument that anyone in Advance Wars can react to the speed of the laser cannons. This did mean Gray’s bots had an edge in speed…
…that said, this edge in speed was a bit irrelevant in practice for this battle in particular. For starters, it’s a bit questionable if these robots are even able to directly dodge attacks at these speeds given they are physically incapable of doing that within gameplay. And to reiterate, it is a part of the lore that the robots are not smart, so their lack of dodging within the gameplay is likely meant to be canonically accurate. The only robots who have been seen explicitly dodging attacks are the Scout robots that can drink Bonk, but this is a temporary buff that only a small selection of the robots could even use, and said robots are also the physically weakest. Even ignoring that, these robots are also only scaling to these speeds in terms of their reactions, not their movement. That means they wouldn’t just be blitzing the entire Black Hole squad faster than they could react, they still are moving at relatively normal speeds. Finally, the sheer amount of AOE that most of those units could pull with their explosives means the odds of the robots successfully dodging these attacks in the first place were practically zero anyways.
Arsenal, Abilities, & Army
Now as mentioned, neither of the two had too much to give in terms of a one on one fight. Though ironically Gray was the only one of the two that has been seen killing people personally, which when combined Australium’s ability to enhance strength temporarily, meant that he’d unironically have better odds in a one on one fight. But of course this was unlikely to come down to a one on one fist fight, so let’s go into which of the two had better armies. Right off the bat, Gray did have some immediate edges. For starters, his forces generally require less set up to deploy, as while Sturm needed to directly build his units at factories and then move them, as opposed to Gray who could roll out the carriers wherever to start the invasion from then. He did also have a massive advantage in terms of overall versatility with these units, as he had far more options for specific types of units than what Sturm did, and access to Mann Co’s catalogue meant they had plenty of options for specific weapon loadouts as well.
However, Sturm did have the edges to make up for this. For starters, the fact a lot of his more notable units are vehicles and not infantry meant that it would still be an uphill battle for a lot of Gray’s units to actually make a foothold once they end up in battle proper, as the great majority of their weaponry was specifically focused on more personal combat. This wasn’t helped by Gray’s lack of options outside of infantry, as the tanks were incapable of directly attacking and the Leech Robots wouldn’t be that useful on anything that wasn’t infantry. The only robots that could reliably make a dent against them would be the Sentry Busters, but even then, the disadvantage in power and the fact they tend to only be deployed sparingly meant it likely wouldn’t be enough to make up for that. And while Gray’s lack of air and sea units meant certain units, like Missile Launchers, Fighters, Cruisers, and Submarines, would have next to no use, that also meant Gray’s options for actually countering attacks on these fronts were extremely limited, meaning a lot of his troops would quickly become fodder for Sturm’s battle helicopters, bombers, and battleships. Sure, he did have a few units which could counter these kinds of projectiles thanks to the Deflector Heavies and Pyros having airblast, but that was a minority of the force overall and they still had no way of effectively counter attacking those units. That also wouldn’t stop them from getting blasted apart by machine guns, laser cannons, or a sudden fiery rock falling on them from space.
That means Sturm simply had far better options to end the battle in his favor. First off, his base would not only be where all his units were built, but would also have plenty of other weapons to help protect them, with his variety of cannons, lasers, and missiles meaning that any attackers would have a hard time actually threatening his HQ. Gray’s base, on the other hand, wasn’t as well defended. It being isolated on an island with no anti sea or air defenses meant it could quickly get overwhelmed by not only units on these fronts, but landers and transport helicopters bringing in land units to invade it directly. MEteor Strike would also be a very big issue, given it gives Sturm a free way to heavily damage a decent portion of the attacking force basically for free. And all that’s before mentioning the biggest ace in the hole Sturm had, the Final Missile. While its full power is unclear, the fact it was going to cause significant damage to the world meant it likely had more than enough power to take out Gray’s base if the battle managed to last long enough to allow it to launch. And even if Sturm was put on the backfoot, he has been willing to detonate it himself to take out his opposition with him, which could arguably give him a technical win depending on how you want to count suicide moves. But of course that was hardly a necessary result given all the other advantages his forces would have.
Even if Gray’s forces managed to keep the war as a stalemate, the odds of them outlasting Sturm’s in a prolonged battle of attrition was unlikely. For starters, the fact they run on money is something Sturm could certainly take advantage of, given he also needs money to build up his troops. This meant that, much like in his battle with the Mercs, Gray would basically be giving all of his money to his opponent if the battle lasted long enough. While it did take a year for that to happen in canon, that was against a smaller group of about 9-18 guys fighting in a series of relatively small-scale battles. In a more prolonged war where he would need to deploy more troops just to keep up like this one, it is entirely plausible that he would end up running low on funds far faster. Sturm’s troops, meanwhile, were not as likely to do the same, as APCs and cities would both be able to help keep them in fighting shape, and the opposition literally dropping the stuff meant the odds of Sturm running out of funds to keep the battle going was slim. Finally, even if a stalemate were to happen, Gray is still the only one of the two who has a time limit to worry about due to limited supply of Australium, meaning playing the long game was simply not a good option for him here.
Tertiary Factors
Of course, war is not decided solely by superior firepower, as tactics can be just as important. The two were generally about on par with each in terms of accomplishments, as many of the mercenaries and commanding officers they’ve waged war with are genuine threats in battle despite their eccentricities. Gray did definitely have superior numbers for experience on his side, as there is not really anything suggesting Sturm is over a century old like him, and he’s also a genius who developed much of his own tech, whereas Sturm was reliant on his subordinates like Lash to invent his machines of war.
On the other hand, in terms of more direct battle experience, Sturm did have more impressive displays as a commander. Sure, Gray did manage to keep a stalemate for over a year, but that was against a relatively small unit with conflicts entirely focused in singular locations. Sturm, meanwhile, is a commander who has kept pace with others who are shown to be far more experienced overall, and this kind of large scale battle is something he’s been shown to be more in his element in. Sturm’s units were also a lot more competent in terms of direct fighting, given the relatively low intelligence they possess canonically. And while Gray is an impressive schemer, he’s never been shown to compete with a unit as organized and prepared for outright war as the Black Hole units.
Conclusion
(art by MetaruPX)
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but really. What would either of you know about hate?"
Advantages:
Equivalent in attacking speed, technically faster in reactions
Army overall more versatile and faster to deploy
Certain units of Sturm were completely useless
Likely smarter generally and had more overall experience
Is real lucky Valve got off their asses and finished the comic, meaning I can’t use that as an easy joke
Somehow has a daughter despite his age
Disadvantages:
Weaker on all counts
Far less options for non-infantry units
Lacked methods of countering attacks from air and sea
Worse options for defenses and outlasting
Inferior in battle experience and less competent army
Has yet to personally appear out of the comics as more than an intercom voice
Responsible for only the second worse bot invasion in TF2 history
Advantages:
Stronger on all counts
Equivalent in attacking speed
Better options for non-infantry units
Gray had no methods of countering attacks from air and sea
Better options for defenses and outlasting
Superior in battle experience and more competent army
The Advance Wars games are great please play them
Has some of the rawest quotes ever
Disadvantages:
Technically slower in reactions
Army overall less versatile and slower to deploy
Certain units were completely useless
Less overall experienced and not as smart generally
Got replaced as main villain by the lamest CO in the series
This battle is likely to be a long one with many lives lost in their attempts to take each other down. And Gray definitely had a lot of options for how to go about this battle. But ultimately, between his superior might and army, Sturm had everything he needed to end the Mann bloodline in a crushing defeat. This war simply advanced far past anything Gray could mann up to face.
The winner is Sturm
Sourcelist:
Next Time
I had never heard of this matchup until now, and your blog convinced me it should be an actual animation someday. Great blog as usual, and I'm hyped to see Ford in a vs match for next time.
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