Iron Chef Optimization Challenge in the Playground XVIII

[gbprime]

I'm all in favor of just moving forward, honestly. I'd like to see what ICOC XVIV has to offer.

Wouldn't that be Iron Chef XIX ?

[Zaq]

Wouldn't that be Iron Chef XIX ?

I don't know what you're talking about. That's obviously what I said. That edit that you see on my previous post was just to fix a missing, um, capital letter. Yeah, that's it. Capital letter.

[OMG PONIES]

Where's our fearless chairman?

[true_shinken]

Where's our fearless chairman?

I'm here!
Sorry, guys, I've been very very very busy lately. I have to attend to a party now but when I come back I'll wrap this contest up.

[Thurbane]

Wouldn't that be Iron Chef XIX ?

Iron Chef 10011?

[gbprime]

Iron Chef 10011?

Excellent choice if the special ingredient is some kind of engineer. Like Combat Trapsmith.

[BobVosh]

I always thought of it as more of a 0x13

[true_shinken]

First of all, I'd like to apologize. All contestants, judges and guests - February is a very busy month for anyone in Brazil and this one particularly had a few family and work emergencies I had to deal with. I'm really sorry for taking this long to wrap this contest. If I had the time to do it before, you can be sure I would have done it.
Second of all... I'd like to apologize again, for the lack of trophies. I finally convinced Jumilk to give Gimp a try, so we might have trophies coming out this week. Keep your fingers crossed.
Now, without further ado, I give you the winners of this round of Iron Chef!
In 1st place, we have kestrel404's Loyal Servant.
In 2nd place, we have gbprime's Reek.
In 3rd place, we have Zaq's Ogar.
In 4th place, we have Urpriest's Skullface.
In 5th place, we have Draz74's Faltino.
In 6th place, we have Amechra's Tamlaine.
In 7th place, we have OMGPonies' Perpetua.
Tied for 8th place, we have Zonugal's The Creeper and Amphetryon's Tamalin.
Honorable mention goes to Urpriest's Skullface.

Thanks everyone for gracing us with your presence in another round of Iron Chef. Stay tuned for Iron Chef XIX in a few minutes.

[Draz74]

Well, that was thoroughly disappointing. None of the judges seemed to appreciate the things that I thought were elegant about my entry.

Frankly I thought, with a Wisdom-based arcane casting class (with a crappy spell list), that Arcane Disciple was a shoe-in, pretty much required for anyone who wanted a decent UoSI score. But it didn't turn out to be so popular, nor did any of the judges seem impressed with the synergy. Or any of Faltino's other little combos.

Bleh. On the plus side, this should help me resist the temptation to enter any more Iron Chef competitions, during the next few busy months when I really need to be focused on school.

Congrats to Kestrel and gbprime. Sorry you had to wait FOREVER for this round to complete.

[Zaq]

Woo, I took bronze! Kickass! I was a little discouraged after the first score, but I'm glad to see that the other judges made up for it.

I agonized over how to avoid taking that level in Ranger, but nothing else I tried gave me what I needed to be able to fit in Bear Warrior 5 (and thus the all-important brown bear form). I thought that getting the proper amount of bearitude was worth the obvious dip.

I'm proud of the way I used Mounted Fury, really. I'd never even heard of it before . . . I just stumbled across it while searching the WotC site for Wild Cohort. I had originally intended a TOTALLY DIFFERENT entry point that I am loath to reveal (because I just might end up using something similar in another ICOC), but I saw Mounted Fury, realized that they left it very open-ended, had Bear Warrior cross my mind . . . and from then, my path was clear. I think that I'm one of the first people on this board to bring it up, since I've noticed at least two other threads talking about Mounted Fury since Ogar was posted. I'm kinda proud of that.

Anyway, congratulations to everyone who entered, and especially to everyone who placed! See you at ICOC XIX!

[kestrel404]

Yay! My first win! Congratulations GB and Zaq, it was pretty darn close.

My entry came out of my attempt to find a combination of classes that would give me the entry skills required - it's pretty hard without taking a level of ranger or Factotum. Ninja totemist came up as a possible combination, and Crinti Marauder was one of the few classes that also focused on mounts and had similar entry criteria, and what clinched it is that it adds dice of surprise strike, and thus was born the Loyal Servant.

[Amechra]

Oh well, my refutation was late.

Sigh.

Not that it would have made a difference; you guys were great.

(Next time, though, I shall prevail!)

[Urpriest]

Honorable Mention, awesome! If Jumilk likes working with Gimp, I might get a shiny crystally trophy!

I only decided to enter at the very last minute, after the following train of thought:

1. Everyone is complaining about it being hard to get all the hunting animals that Dark Hunters are supposed to have.
2. What about a character who is a hunting animal?

I had already thought up the Arcane Wis-casting/Tainted Scholar connection, but I didn't want to risk the cheese without a source of originality to balance it out. And noticing that Krenshars are a player race...that was tasty.

I hope people enjoyed my rendition of the Fairy Queen. Even she can appreciate a puppy, if it's Tainted enough...

[OMG PONIES]

Congrats, all! Draz, I feel your pain. I thought entering via Ardent (especially Tribal Ardent) would snag some originality, archaic initiate would pick up some blasting power, and my progression to metafaculty would provide some elegance or UoSI points. But hey, better builds won.

[Akal Saris]

Yeah, I was also surprised that veteran contestants like Amp, OMGPONIES, and Draz74 all scored low. This round didn't have too newcomers though.

Congrats to the top winners!

[Amechra]

So when does the next one start?

[true_shinken]

So when does the next one start?

It's already on.