So . . .

I started wondering what would happen if the movie incarnations of the X-Men replaced the Avengers in the Battle of New York vs Loki's Chitauri army. Same numbers (six Avengers, six X-Men), but considerably different power combinations and levels of experience.

Scenario 1: The X-Men: First Class team of Banshee, Beast, Havok, Magneto, Mystique and Professor X.

Scenario 2: The X-Men from X2 because X-Men 3: The Last Stand NEVER HAPPENED:

Team 2a: Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Phoenix (Jean Grey at full power), Storm, Wolverine and Professor X
or
Team 2b: Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Phoenix, Storm, Wolverine and Colossus as seen in X2 and X3 just because I'm a fan of the character and he's the only one who comes close (in terms of raw physical strength) to Hulk, Iron Man or Thor.

I've left out Rogue and Iceman but if someone thinks they can sub for one of the other X-Men more effectively, make your case.

Factors to consider:
1. The movie Avengers (Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor) include some very heavy hitters and they all have combat experience ranging from 'some' to 'extensive'. All teams of X-Men also have some heavy hitters, but while being trained (to some degree or other), for the most part they have far less actual combat experience. They could probably deal with the Chitauri infantry and the flyers, but do they have anyone who can take down a Leviathan? Can Storm interdict the gate as well as Thor did? Can anyone (safely or otherwise) redirect the nuke to take out the Chitauri mothership?

2. Loki. Do the X-Men have anybody who can smash him (in whatever way)? Without Thor's presence, does he have the same issues? I think he probably goes ahead with whatever original plan he had, considering that Thor's presence was unexpected. Are the X-Men are working with SHIELD? Will he set about turning them against each other as he did the Avengers? Will it work? The X-Men are a (slightly) more cohesive team.

So - who wins?

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"An elegant weapon, for a more civilised age".
- Obi-Wan Kenobi

Scenario 1: Xavier can't read Loki, but can screw with the majority of the Chitauri. Banshee flies CAP, while Magneto and/or Havok get the fun job of bringing down the dragon-things. Beast helps against the Chitauri Charles can't stop, and Mystique gets to shock Selvig back to normal and shut down the portal, right after Erik rams the nuke up it. Flawless Victory, until Erek starts making noise about the "council" being willing to nuke them and Charles says something incredibly stupid.

Scenario 2a: Storm neatly takes the place of Thor, Nightcrawler acts as an exceptionally mobile reserve by jumping everywhere there's trouble. Scott is tactical overwatch, because literally nothing can cross his field of sight and live without his permission. Wolverine slices and dices on the ground while Jean protects the Professor, who coordinates the whole deal. They do alright for a while, but are unable to stop Loki. Charles maybe can snap Selvig back to normal and close the portal, but it's a moot point unless they can do it in time to convince the council not to nuke them.

The portal is closed, the world is saved, but NYC goes up in a mushroom cloud. Unless you were serious about "full-power Phoenix" in which case Jean effortlessly curbstomps Loki and everything the Chitauri can throw at her before closing the portal by wiggling her nose.

Scenario 2b: is identical to 2a, except Professor X is replaced with Colossus. So there's one more who can do the ground-pounder routine but probably can't stop any of the dragon-things. On the other hand, without felling obliged to protect the Professor, Jean takes a more active role.

The end result is pretty much identical, though the X-men are less coordinated without the psi-link.

Scenario 1: I'm not sure that Banshee has the speed to fly CAP and his 'wings' are pretty vulnerable. While he's effective, he's not as resilient as IM. Havok would have to be extremely well-positioned to take out the Leviathans given that Jarvis told Tony that his weapons couldn't penetrate their armour (from the outside, anyway). Otherwise agreed, especially with Charles saying something incredibly stupid.

Scenario 2a: Yeah, that's pretty much how I figured it. Cyclops, I think, makes a better job of this than Hawkeye - he's got the tactical nous and much better firepower. As for Jean, I was thinking of the level of power she exhibited at the end of X2. She could clearly control that, and was considerably more powerful at that point than pretty much anyone except maybe Magneto. I figure she can psi-link, deal with the nuke and possibly even Loki if she has time to really work at handling that level of power.

So an ideal X-team would possibly be: Beast (brains and speed/strength/agility), Cyclops, Magneto, Phoenix, Storm and ? Not sure about number six. If we need CAP (and we probably do), then Banshee is really the only choice. I wonder how effective he'd be against Leviathans? I'd still like to include Nightcrawler and Colossus, but if I have to stick to the six-person limit, this is probably who I'd pick.

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"An elegant weapon, for a more civilised age".
- Obi-Wan Kenobi

How much ferrous or magnetic metal are is in the alien technology?

This literally might be a case of Magneto tossing them all back (possibly crushing them in the process) into the portal and asking the other mutants if they are going to bother to do anything useful.

If the team has enough muscle to launch a direct attack on the portal, take on Loki, and deal with the leviathans, I don't think they need Iron Man's air patrol role. Especially not if they can close the portal before the Council decides to launch the nuke, which is actually a possibility with Dr. X sitting around using telepathy to figure out what's going on. He might be able to get to Selvig faster and figure out the shutdown process quicker than the Avengers did.

My impression of Xavier is that he's exactly the sort of person who'd rather get to the root of the problem and shut the portal without direct killing, whereas Magneto is rampaging all over the place crushing things with his mind and largely ignoring the portal.

(I just had the random image of Cyclops perched on top of the Empire State Building or something, trying to shoot down an incoming nuclear cruise missile with his laser-vision. Probably not gonna work, worth a try if it's that or vaporize)

I think Magneto probably belongs on the team no matter which X-era we're talking about. He's not an uncompromising villain, and 'aliens are invading Earth' is just the sort of thing that'd bring him into a temporary, fragile, Chitauri-scragging alliance with Xavier's merry band.

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Chronological Incontinence: Time warps around the poster. The thread topic winks out of existence and reappears in 1d10 posts.

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Fiction!: The Final War (Bolo/Lovecraft) (Ch 7 9/15/11), Living (D&D, Complete)

Actually, I hadn't properly considered the scope and power of Xavier's telepathic abilities. Loki relied heavily on mind-controlled minions to set up the portal machinery in the first place. Given that a swift kick to the head seems to break that control, Xavier could easily mess with Loki's plans. Jean, though less skilled, could potentially do the same.

Even if Xavier can't directly affect Loki, I'd expect that Loki's unique nature will make him stand out to Xavier (whether Xavier is using Cerebro or not). That is, unless Loki employs the same cloaking ability he used to sneak the Frost Giants into Asgard under Heimdall's nose the first time.

So the X-team's strategy will look somewhat different than the Avengers'. Assuming that the portal gets opened in the first place, Storm can directly interdict it, backstopped by Magneto and Cyclops, who can also coordinate the team via Xavier or Jean.

Xavier is quite capable of getting people to move away from the assault in a calm, orderly fashion. Assuming he can influence Chitauri minds as easily as he can human minds, Xavier can freeze/distract/control large numbers of them, too. He can also locate Loki for a strike by any of the others. Actually, I wonder if Xavier could affect the Leviathans directly, enough to turn them around and send them back through the portal? But he will need a bodyguard or two if he's going to do all this, so that's where Beast, Colossus, Nightcrawler or Wolverine come in.

Erik, assuming that his power can directly affect the Chitauri and their flying chariots and Leviathans, is a force to be reckoned with. Even if their gear is nonferrous, that won't save them from flying reinforced concrete (and given how strong we know he is, that's a lot of flying concrete). It also won't save them from Jean's telekinesis. She's already shown that she can block Cyclops's energy blasts, so she might well be able to handle Loki by herself. I don't know that Loki would have much chance against both Jean and Erik. Neither is likely to have much in the way of brotherly love for him.

There are a couple of assumptions in there, but given the variety of powers the X-Men can bring to the conflict, and how heavy-hitting many of them are, they may well have a better chance of limiting the size of the conflict by blocking off the portal while finding the generator and shutting it down. Then it's time to smash Loki for the win.

The only thing I would worry about is if Loki was successfully able to mess with Jean's head . . . in which case, "Hulk Smash Puny God!" might be the least of anyone's worries, Loki included, if the Dark Phoenix scenario actually kicks in.

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"An elegant weapon, for a more civilised age".
- Obi-Wan Kenobi

Apologies for the unintended double post. Can a mod please fix?

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"An elegant weapon, for a more civilised age".
- Obi-Wan Kenobi

Yeah, if a knock to the head can end Loki's control, then Xavier should be able to do it, too. And without his mind-controlled henchmen, Loki is a vastly smaller threat. I doubt that they could handle the full-scale Chitauri battle, though, unless Magneto is with them and operating on his highest level constantly.

Clint and Nat seemed to be able to hold their own against the Chitauri infantry even in HTH so they're not that tough and unlike Clint, Cyclops isn't going to run out of arrows. Storm should be able to do movie Thor's job adequately enough especially as Thor seemed to be rather hammer-happy in this movie, preferring to beat heads in over the argually more effective approach of electrocuting every alien in sight.
If we're including Dark Phoenix Jean the question becomes moot, it's no longer about if New York is destroyed, but wether it's the aliens, Jean, or the nuke doing it.
If I got to make any changes to the X-Men teamups without venturing outside the first two movies, I'd replace Kurt with Kittie. Not only can she get inside the giant snake monster vehicles no problem if someone gives here a lift or has a sufficiently strong throwing arm (hate X3 all you like but that scene was funny) and leave behind the most interesting surprises, she may be able to phase through the forcefield protecting the gateway generator[/quote]. Even if she [i]can't turn it into so much scap metal by simply walking through it as she could in the comics, there's any number of interesting things she could do once she's past the shield.

If we go by full (comics) powers, Magneto and Jean can stop the whole invasion singlehandedly. Xavier can do everything except take down Loki. Past experiences with Asgardian magic-users have not gone well for the Professor. Scott can maybe plug the portal on his own if he can find a decent position quickly enough, and if he can, in fact, take down one of the dragon-things.

As for any other team configurations, well, it wasn't all that menacing an alien invasion. I'm sort of surprised the Council decided to nuke Manhattan rather then send in the air force/army.

The Army was sent in but didn't make much in the way of difference (which isn't saying much for the Marvel Movie Universe US armed forces given a guy with a bow and a woman with a pair of autloaders managed to hold their own against the invaders) as mentioned in one of the newsclips.
Of course, this is the same universe that has gatling guns with a fraction of the refire rate of an ordinary single barrel real world machine gun, their cream of the crop (i.e. SHIELD) thinking aircraft cannon fire could do any more than piss off The Other Guy and the pilot doing the pissing off...getting way to close after having been explicitly told not to get too close.
If that's the best they have I'm not surprised their regular military is moderately useless.

Huh, I think there may just have been something about the army there after all. Will have to get the DVD whenever it's finally released.

That's sad. I bet the LAPD could fend off the aliens. Then again, they'd level NYC in the process so there may not be all that much difference.

Why? They are clearly just battle droids with mushy parts controlled by a signal. There is zero evidence that Xavier, especially FC Xavier, could do this.

FC Xavier was still powerful, but still seemed a little less so than his later version, where he could potentially kill every non-mutant on Earth with his telepathy amped by Cerebro. IIRC, Emma Frost could only block him while in diamond form and Magneto and Shaw (both very strong personalities) required the helmet. Jean could block him when she reached full power. However, even his FC younger self could possess people from a distance, meaning that if he can get to someone next to Loki, he could raise hell. Personally, I'd love to see a battle of wills between Xavier and Loki.

However, I'm not sure whether he could affect the Chitauri either, which is why I thought of him coordinating the team, locate Loki and crowd control the humans. That, and sort out any mind-controlled humans. Everything else is indeed an assumption. They've still got brains, though, right? (not sure why I thought of brain-eating zombies when I wrote that . . .)

But if he can affect the Chitauri and their Leviathans directly, that puts a major stopper in the invasion plan.

FYI, the DVD/Blu-Ray comes out here in NZ on 29 August.

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"An elegant weapon, for a more civilised age".
- Obi-Wan Kenobi

I thought that's all they were trying to do...piss him off and get him to jump out of the carrier...did I miss something?

No. He was told to get his attention so that he would go after the fighter and get off the helicarrier.

Well in all fairness he did manage to do that, if in a somewhat suboptimal fashion.

My impression is that the National Guard units that showed up were trying to hold a perimeter and (especially) evacuate civilians to safer places underground. They weren't swarming the portal from all sides to clear the streets of aliens, but I can think of two reasons for that.

One, there may not actually have been that many soldiers- say, a National Guard regiment showed up, to hold a perimeter of several blocks and take care of tens of thousands of civilians.

Two, there may have been a mixup in the high command. Maybe some high-ranking Army general got orders that the Shadowy Council was trying to nuke Manhattan and stopped any more reinforcements, preventing a counterattack. Maybe the colonel or whatever on the spot decided (see 1) that evacuating civilians while the crazy flashy people fought the invaders made more sense than trying to use foot infantry with rifles to clear out an army of flying chariots and giant hover-monsters.

Remember, one of the beings seen fighting the aliens is the Incredible Hulk. The army has experience with the Hulk, and most of it involves getting their butts kicked. They may be hoping that either the aliens kill the Hulk or vice versa, and they move in to finish off the survivor.

Uh, I think you may be wearing that cowl a little too tight.

When I saw that scene, it was obvious to me what the F-35 pilot was trying to do. He was trying to piss off Hulk with the machine gun, so Hulk would leap out into midair to attack the plane. Then the pilot bails out and leaves Hulk grabbed onto a crashing airplane. Hulk can't fly, so that's Sir Isaac Newton's call to take over.

Sure, Hulk'll probably survive falling 20-30 thousand feet, but at least he's not the Helicarrier's problem anymore.

So... incompetence? Or just the act of a man with balls of granite? You be the judge.

'The Army is here to contain the violence but clearly it is outmatched'. Now I know the quality of US news reporting in this day and age is under dispute, but surely even they would know the difference between the Army and the National Guard (which showed up where, exactly? I'm not calling you a liar but the only ones I remember setting up a perimeter were cops).
And while you were right about the bird being sent in to get the Other Guy's attention, the pilot was also instructed not to get too close. The 'Newton solves our problem' scenario works out just as well with the Hulk jumping for the fighter and coming up short, and the pilot sure as hell didn't seem to have expected the Hulk to jump onto his plane.

Hm. Something about the vibe I got off of those troops just made me think National Guard. I may not have been looking closely enough at the uniforms- there are slight differences, but only slight differences. In the US, "Army National Guard" units wear pretty much the same camouflage as regular army and are more likely to be right there to respond to an emergency.

Then again, a reporter might misidentify anyone wearing digital camo and carrying rifles as "Army. Even if they're Marines and respond by kicking the reporter into a pit and yelling "THIS IS THE CORPS!" or whatever Marines do when you confuse them with army.

Dunno.

As to the fighter thing, I think I see what you're saying. The pilot may or may not have been surprised, I can't remember- but he may have gotten too close.

There's an easy explanation for that; the pilot might have badly underestimated how far the Hulk can jump. He was probably sent up in a hurry, so I don't know if they exactly gave him the detailed briefing.

Also, military chronically overestimates the effect of weapons against the Hulk, probably because of that "madder he gets stronger he gets" thing: they implicitly expect the Hulk to have some kind of fixed upper limit on his durability and strength, instead of just being a big walking no-upper-limits case that can find rifle bullets stinging at one time and laugh off chaingun rounds another.

That's comics Hulk. movie Hulk if memory serves was if not seriously hurt nevertheless not inconsiderately inconvenienced by autocannon fire.
The 'Hulk' Hulk was the one who got to blithely ignore that and toss around MBTs.

There would be absolutely no way for a civilian to distinguish between USANG and regular Army unless they're extremely adept at reading the small green and black unit patch that's worn on the arm. Hell I've been in for years and there's shitloads of unit patches that I have no idea who they belong to. Equipment is pretty much identical, there may be more M-16s then M4s in a Guard unit, but a reporter isn't going to know that.

I can vouch that there was definitely a scene where you see Humvees and soldiers evacuating civilians - I think was near grand central

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I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character

On the fighter issue, it didn't look to me like the pilot had much choice in closing in on the Hulk, I don't think he would have had a shot from much farther out. Also, what else is he going to use to get the Hulk's attention but the autocannon? Its not like anything he's carrying is going to do much more than piss the Hulk off, anyway, and anything that would, would probably do more collateral damage than it was worth.

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A fuse is a physical embodyment of zen, in order for it to succeed, it must fail.

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