Sailor Moon-Verse Strategy Guide

How to be overpowered in Sailor Moon, divided by different tiers.

Local to City Tier Threat:

On the local to city scale, what kind of threats would the fighter have to fight. We're looking at things like local spirits and yokai, characters on the level of the dark agency and if one goes up to the regional/national scale threats like the Kings of Heaven. What kind of powers are common for the verse?

Generally we're looking at building to town levels of raw power, massively hypersonic to ftl levels of speed, some form of disguise, up to city-scale energy-draining and up to continent scaling brainwashing.

Truth be told the Low Tiers of SM are very inhospitable to outside verses as massive speeds and ridiculously strong brainwashing and energy-draining (especially for the former) for their level of power. Now obviously some characters can just overpower these characters, but to keep it consistent I must keep it at or below FTL speeds and building to town level of powers.

Due to the sheer incredibly strong levels of brainwashing, I don't think a direct fight against these guys would be a very good idea at all, since country to continent levels of mental resistance for sub-city level fights is almost unheard off and even then the character would need defenses against the sheer speeds and energy-draining of the verse, let alone the occasional other broken abilities the verse has.

So what weaknesses are there, what are there to exploit?

Well examining the verse, a few things stick out to me. The characters while most of them have disguise power, most of them don't actually have any way of detecting through disguise. The tier doesn't actually have very good sensory range, nor do they have that good attack range outside of their haxes.

That's interesting to me because that suggests a particular archetype could do really well, and it's a combat role I don't think exists in the low tiers and that is the stealth assassin role, or to get the biggest benefit, the stealth sniper role.

The various creatures of SM might be fast and have strong abilities but a stealth-based sniper could ping them before they could react....that's a pretty good start.

If you wanted to be REALLY safe, you'd want to be able to attack them from outside of even their range. However, that might seem impossible, as their effective range is a significant portion of the planet, well beyond the horizon of the planet. Well there is a way you could stay out of their effective range without having to worry about that.

Firing from ABOVE them. Aerial or especially Orbital Attacks would be something completely outside of the bounds of the Dark Agency and would be massively op.

All this leads me to what I think would be the most effective "build" if you will for the dealing with characters like the Dark Agency and that is robots.

An orbital robot with a computer brain, would be able to do the complex calculations to ping them from space perhaps using some kind of laser weapon and that would be that. It helps that often in fiction robots have some level of resistance to brainwashing and energy manipulation the two big haxes of the Dark Agency. This brings me to the first character I think would be an effective counterpick: GLaDOS

MFTL Reaction speed meaning she won't get blitzed, and even if she would her "mind" is hidden far underground and she can survive on a comically low amount of energy renders her practically immune to counterattack. Meaning with her literal superintelligence she can portal on the moon and fire down lasers and bombs on the calculated areas of the Dark Agency killing them. Ohhhhh that would be so effective!

Let's say however that you actually want to engage them in more direct combat. I still think some of the same properties can be applied. I also think another weakness, a general one for the most of the SM verse can be applied. This is the lack of stamina feats. Now the verse doesn't have any stamina anti-feats, but without feats of it, their stamina can only really be assumed to be human level or barely superhuman. This means outlasting them is a very potent tactic if you can avoid their haxes.

They also don't have very much inter-dimensional capacity. Only Luuga and Jadeite if he is being counted (more of regional/national scale threat) have inter-dimensional capacity of the lower scale beings, and they both can only travel to a singular dimension. Any character rapidly able to shift in and out of dimensions would be a nightmare as they would run themselves ragged just trying to hit them, assuming they can't blitz. Any inter-dimensional travel is not a hax that is unknown on the lower tiers, a number of lower tier verses do have some capacity there. 

So stealth tactics, sniping tactics, aerial bombardment, outlasting them, and inter-dimensional travel. Is there a verse that has characters that combine all of those? Oh yes there is. The Angels and Demons of Bayonetta

Higher Spheres Angels and Demons would obviously just overpower but even Third Sphere ones....

These guys would be on the lower end of speed and power for the SM Local to City Scale Threats but my god they would just be super unfair to put against them. They have casual invisibility and inter-dimensional capacity meaning a Dark Agency enemy wouldn't even know if they were there and would constantly have to spam their haxes just to not let their guard down for a second until the DA Member tires out and collapse from exhaustion. They have flight and ranged attacks that let them ping them and retreat safety if they want, and in terms of damaging them they not only could with the raw energy of their speed, but they could also just casually bfr them. 

Planetary Threat:

Fighting against and threatening a planet basically means having to be a threat to a single average Sailor Senshi. So what kind of capacities would that be?

While it's not totally defined, we're probably looking at power capacities of stellar+ levels of power, low end mftl speeds (Thousands), manipulation of some element, some inter-dimensional capacity, and very heavy resistance to hax, most strongly energy and mind manipulation.

The main problem here is that most starbusters are a lot faster then thousands of times ftl and so that several limits the options.

Are there any weaknesses to utilize? Well yes. First off, actual attack range is not great for this tier, only in the city range or so. Also while Sailor Senshi can hit on the astral plane and resist their energy being drained, actually being to absorb energy might actually be pretty op for the verse, since most of the Sailor Senshi attacks take energy forms. 

Another thing that would be really strong for the verse is time manipulation and I think a strong time manipulator would do really well. The user of the Plutonic Power, the power to control time, is limited hugely by taboo and responsibilities to tie down how broken her powers would be otherwise.

This gives me a strong idea for who could be super op in the verse, Lavos

Pretty clearly weaker then the Senshi in speed and to a lesser degree in power but it's attacks could still harm them. And they could do absolutely nothing to it in turn. Existing beyond time, most Sailor Senshi would hugely struggle to get to it, if at all. It can attack from comically outside their range, can absorb the energy of their planet power. It can also super mess them up with time warps and while Most Sailor Senshi only have a few attack techniques it can actually copy attacks meaning it will very quickly gain every capacity of it's opponent.

However let's say you wanted to avoid using heavy duty time manipulation. Any other options....well yes...I think there's a really good pick

Michael from Bastard!! would be an amazing anti-Sailor Senshi pick. Most of the Sailor Senshi can probably hit the astral plane considering how they can hit ghosts, that said the spiritual plane would be pretty much impossible. It's not like they have atomic scale attacks normally either so she's likley just regen even if by some miracle they do harm her body. She's got stellar+ levels of force with her supernova level sword, but can hit on a stellar range, way outside theirs. Their speed is comparable, yet Michael's Dispel Bounds would be pretty much impenetrable to the Sailor Senshi. The Senshi basically shoot one attack at a time and it requires a spell casting, while Michael has many thousands of forcefields which regen near-instantly.

Even outside that, she can easily outlast them in combat and her ultimate attack "Victory Rainbow Rising" would one-shot normal senshi. 

Galactic Scale:

On the Galactic scale we're basically looking at something like a Chaos Stars judging by Pharaoh 90 the ruler of the Tau Nebula.

How strong are the Chaos Stars? We're looking at up to universal level of power, mftl speed up to millions, lots of very strong offensive haxes, primarily spacetime manipulation (cosmic), mind manipulation (planetary+), energy manipulation (planetary) and some degrees of matter and soul manipulations, as well as some more esoteric abilities, and for defenses intangibility and energy absorption.

It's peculiar because for their stats and hax levels, far greater speed would be normal, much like the prior scale threat.

But for weaknesses are we looking at. Generally the Chaos Stars are arrogant and underestimate the power of things like light, love, etc. as well as weak looking things. They also don't have very strong hax resistance, relying pretty much purely on an overwhelming offense. Being intangible they are pretty much immune to conventional matter/energy manipulation, but mind/soul hax would work on most of them. Another thing that would definitely work is time stopping, as demonstrated in the second arc, though other forms of spacetime manipulation would be less effective.

So what kind of character would be a good counter to them?

Mokona the Creator God I think would do really well against them. Not only could he likely just freeze time on them, but his humble normal appearance means they would completely underestimate the tiny creature and he could basically just warp them out of existence if he wanted. He could also casually enter a different dimension and attack them from there which would take a moment for event the best dimensional travelers of the Chaos-Stars to respond too. The Chaos-Stars would have to immediately attack Mokona to stop him, but again they would completely underestimate the tiny creature. 

If you want to not rely on their underestimation, let's say it stipulates for instance that the characters are serious from the get go or it's a simple one on one fight what can you rely on. Time-stopping will still help but all 4 Chaos-Spawn are evil so controlling evil or using anti-evil abilities would be very helpful. Also they have really bad matchups against powerful sealing abilities. This brings me to think,,,

If you want a darkness powered counter, Zorc Necroshades would be able to do it. Comparable speed and power from scaling, creator of darkness, he also has time-stopping abilities would stop them quickly but also has potential counters to all the Chaos Stars abilities and can hit intangibles like weaker duel monster spirits. His main counter would be his own ability to seal parts of himself in objects with his Avatar Yami Bakura which he could do to thinks like the Cursed Mirror, the Taioran Crystal or the Malefic Black Crystal. Or he could just potentially outright seal the Chaos Stars which is something that definitely does work on them. The Chaos Star would have no knowledge how to handle this but he could stealth attack them. He can absorb evil energy and manipulate it outright and could potentially just take direct control of the Chaos Stars.

Another counter to the Chaos Stars is using a non threatening facade mixed with esoteric powers they don't have awareness or counters too like metafictional manipulation or death imposition.

Another unconventional option would be Grim from the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. One of his objects he has gives him time stop, he has reflexes to not get blitzed by them and comparable power. But his main advantage would be sheer versatility over them. He can also just impose the concept of death on them, which theoretically should work or reality-warp them outright and given his demeanor and lack of immediate impressiveness, this would be very likely to work given they would likely underestimate him. 

Universal Scale:

At this level one would be fighting against the top tiers of the verse which is mostly going to be Sailor Cosmos and Sailor Chaos. 

This is where it becomes really troublesome because while the speed cap DOES go up to about the quadrillions-quintillions range most likely, the hax levels are so high that no one in their power range is just going to be immune to everything they can throw around. In other words there is going to be some inherent danger if the two fight. One needs to just be better at exploiting the weaknesses of the other side. So what weaknesses are there here.

Sailor Cosmos and Sailor Chaos generally speaking have spacetime hax on the universal scale and then pretty much everything else on about the planetary scale in terms of hax. That said there are a few weaknesses. Both of them have been limited to a certain area at one point in time, the universe because of the lambda power for Cosmos and the Galaxy Cauldron for Chaos in it's base form. Both of them are weak against heavy charisma based builds, Chaos has been shown to not go full out if it's been charmed by the majesty of something's existence, wanting to fuse with it instead and deliberately acted suboptimally. Sailor Cosmos is Usagi and can't use her full power if she doesn't want to fight. Even the slighly lower tiers like Galaxia are vulnerable to heavy charisma based builds.

In addition their hax range is not the best for anything besides spacetime hax, their sealing resistance is not great, planetary at most. So what kind of builds would be helpful? Trans-Time or Inter-Universal Sealing Counters, Cosmically Ranged Sealing-Based Counters, Heavy-Charisma Based Manipulators that can at least survive long enough to do so.

The Anti-Spirals wouldn't be that op normally, but first off their sheer size means nothing outside of Cosmos and Chaos raw power and spacetime manipulation would likely be able to affect them as their mech is larger then galaxies. Also while their raw power wouldn't be insane they have a technique that traps the opponent in an infinitely expanding multiversal range of possibilities as a labyrinth, which would perma-dimensional BFR both Cosmos and Chaos. And they can do this at a range Cosmos and Chaos can't do much. They can even attack back into the past counting Cosmos and Chaos acausality with it's own.

  

While most Top Tier Green Lanterns would be too fast for this, most high tier ones or like a single Guardian of the Universe from Oa would likely be op for entire SM-verse. A few High Tier GL were able to seal Parallax, the multiversal embodiment of fear. Also while their power and speed are only really comparable, their sheer range for most things usually measures in terms of lightyears, GL John Stewart was able to create an entire star system without much difficulty. Someone like John would probably be really op in SM.

There's also another option from the same verse that I think would be even better, if he is counted. The reason why I say if he's counted is technically he's the weaker version of one of the strongest characters in fiction.

Lucifer Morningstar is one of the strongest characters in fiction but he was temporarily dropped in power down to the universal range. His speed was likely still too fast for this really but given SM has plenty of counters to speed and how perfect an example he is of the third build type that would be a good counter, I though it was good to include. His ability, the will of Morningstar would allow him to counter basically any hax thrown at him via his raw will and he could manipulate Cosmos and Chaos easily with his incredible manipulative abilities. Even in his depowered state he would be broken in SM. 

And there you go, that's a guide on how to be op in Sailor Moon.