Now look, you have bar none the absolute evilest group of villains in the game. Most of them aren't even villains per se. They are gods of death, insanity and chaos. Don't go wussing out now with this honor crap -- honor is a pathetic concept made up by would be heroes before you corrupt their souls and destroy the very concept of hope in the world.
P.S. However, I suppose declining to engage in a geekoff might be acceptable supervillain behavior -- it is admittedly rather hard to intimidate while fixing the tape on one's glasses.
Here is another cliched quote to pacify your angst:
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"
Maybe luring my opponent into a false sense of security with a misconceived concept of "fair play" is all part of the plan.
(P.S. you forgot gods of terror and pain) Now, on to the geekoff:
For phase one, I am indeed sending
Eris after Dr. Manhattan, and we need to get a few things straight; Eris' status as a goddess, and really, the personification of Chaos, means she's not getting cast away by magic hexes, confused by psychic powers or trapped in pocket universes. She can't be destroyed any easier than the concept of disorder could be destroyed. The only way to "defeat" Eris is to resist her temptations or seemingly harmless but ultra-manipulative plots and unfortunately for Osterman, those are infinitely more devious and complex than anything
Adrian Veidt could ever conjure.
Of course, she is also the ideal anti-mentor for Osterman: who better to discuss chaos theory with the quantum man, than the godly embodiment of chaos iteself appearing as a beautiful brunette? Why should he care about the messy dealings of humanity when he can converse with a goddess who has the power to perceive time as he does?
The Doctor has finally found his equal, and she happens to work for me.
As Eris works to push Dr. Manhattan into isolation from the group, and I further distract the team with continual futile attacks from an army of hellspawn, Cthuli (star-spawn of Cthulhu) and the Undead, it'll be
Alma's turn to take out Psylocke by slowly decimating her psyche from the astral plane. In her battles with
The Mandiran, the Shadow King and others, Betsey Braddock has been shown to be rather susceptible to psychic suggestion, mind control and outright possession and fortunately for me, those just so happen to be favorite hobbies of Ms. Wade.
And I won't need her for long. With the psychic ninja under my control, I'll use her to
steal three important items: Dr. Fate's Helmet of Nabu/Fate, Isis' Amulet of Isis and Ion's Power Ring, before driving her utterly insane and completely destroying her in mind, body and soul (which would then be under the rule of Chernabog) It's rather inconveinant for the heroes, that such important powers are held in those three very physical (and stealable) objects and I'm confident with the combined stealth of Eris, Alma and the possessed Psylocke, those three items can be had.
The three will then be given to Diablo, perfectly setting up a face-off with the only Round Table member still completely powered: Mr. Majestic, who will undoubtedly notice the similarities between the Lord of Terror and Majestic's own arch-enemy Helspont. Of course, I'm all too eager to play up this similarity and may even have Diablo openly claim to be Helspont. So when Majestic triumphantly rushes to retrieve the magical objects from his old familar enemy, he'll find himself facing a foe a great deal more formidable than the Daemonite. And, should Majestic win,
that Soulstone will be calling for a powerful and prideful host.
And just like that, we're into clean-up. Actually, losing his ring from a power standpoint is really rather meaningless to
Ion, except for the vital protection it provides from his weakness of lead. Ion was beaten to with-in an inch of his life by
Superboy Prime and a bar of lead (necessitating the use of the ring) and looking at my roster, I have a metallic, super powered, time controlling, killing machine in
The Shrike whom I'm thinking I could very easily provide with a coat of lead on its four bladed arms for the occasion.
A fully powered
Isis died of diseases aqcuried from
the Horseman Pestilence, and my buddy Chernabog happens to have a minion of pestilence named
Chuma. Checkmate.
That leaves only a mostly de-powered
Dr. Fate to battle the Great Old One,
Cthulhu. And considering the
ancient extraterrestial has powers to match and surpass a fully powered Dr. Fate, I'm betting Cthulhu will be dead, but dreaming again with the lifeless corpse of Kent Nelson tangled in his tenticles by dawn.