This is seriously annoying the heck out of me. Did he truly not know he had the Mind stone in his possession? He could have gotten the Soul stone without problems, just do a Jedi mind trick on Gamora: “You *will* tell me where the Soul stone is.” Quick jaunt over to wherever the hell it was (I forget the planet’s name). Boom, 2 down, 4 to go. At this point, the Power stone is still in the orb on the planet it was on at the start of GotG, completely unguarded. Go there, get it with no problems. Halfway to a full set. At this point, the Time stone is in Earth with the Ancient One, Space stone is on Asgard in Odin’s treasure room, and the Reality stone is still as the Aether just randomly out there somewhere. There’s no Avengers formed (no Loki with scepter to fight, no Avengers forming to stop him) and Tony’s Iron Man suit is still several generations behind the nanotech suit. It’s a toss up between hitting Asgard or Earth first. If he goes to Earth first, he’s fighting the Ancient One and all the sorcerers, and the Ancient One is going to be significantly more skilled than Strange. Asgard would still have Odin actually on the throne, though Thor is nowhere near close to discovering how strong he truly is. Odin also may or may not release Hela from her banishment in order to stop Thanos, if he even thinks of it. There would be a massive fight for either stone either way. I would think Space stone first though. If Hela does get released, with the Power stone he can destroy a lot a Asgard to stop her from gaining too much power. He destroys Asgard, Odin and Thos, gets the Space stone, the transports to wherever in the universe the Aether is. He forms that actually into the Reality stone, the transports to Earth with 5 Infinity Stones. There’s no warning for the Ancient One, so there’s not even a chance to look at possible futures, if the Ancient One even thinks to do that. I don’t think she would, even of given the chance to do it. Another fight there, and Thanos gets the Time stone. And then he kills half the universe.