Post by TWO-FACE on Dec 18, 2014 14:18:33 GMT 10
I've got a bunch of kids Christmas fun tonight so in case I don't get a chance to polish this up a bit more before the deadline I've got a ready to post version here
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Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, we stand in front of you hoping for a fair hearing as Harvey Dent puts forward his case as to why we feel we should win this game.
A game with 32 players was always going to be a daunting task for anybody to work their way to the end and it's a great credit to all those who reached the merge, and the jury, as it was no easy feat.
With the daunting task, of facing 31 other players, we took the attitude that if we weren't going to go far at least we could have fun with our character. And we did. We tried mixing a cool and measured Harvey with an emotional and irrational Harvey along with using our Superpower, our coin, to make some decisions for us.
That quickly made us appear erratic, emotional and paranoid, which put us in a few tricky spots that we had to claw our way out of, both at DC Villains and at Kapow, culminating in...
THE CALL OUT
At Kapow we made a move that we felt was needed for Harvey Dent to survive, despite the inevitable risks involved. However we then copped the full wrath of our decision in public and private. We won't deny we thought very poorly of it despite being the target.
However as we were the target. We knew right then that, as somebody said to us during this merge, to survive we needed to be...
ADAPTABLE AND FLEXIBLE
We didn't react to the callout. We wanted, and hoped, that people would pin that on Ivy being out of order and that would allow us to gain credibility by not buying in to the spat. We saw the accusations against us and had to change our game. We knew we had to tone down our inconsistency and concentrate on showing that we weren't all that we were being labelled as.
We know we needed to adapt to this new situation and change the way we were playing.
Our initial reaction was to not respond, or react, both public and in private to the point that we were pretty quiet across the board and in messages until...
THE RETURN
Our gamble didn't pay off and in the Arena we were faced with only one option: Returning to Thok and taking our chances. Kapow was suicide and we were warned not to return to Whamm. We took our chances at Thok based on being approached with the promise of sanctuary. The odds of us surviving the next vote at ANY tribe were tiny and even though we felt Thok had to vote us out, we were pleasantly surprised when we weren’t.
Even after surviving that vote, we knew we would be facing trouble at...
THE MERGE
We knew Thok saving us was largely about buying loyalty to both Thok, and the DC Villainesses. We knew that, most people suspected that, but we were going to make the most of the opportunity.
We played along as, once the merge came, the six players of Thok, with Batman looming as a Thok-friendly extra, had the majority at the merge. That was confirmed straight away as the Thok group of 6, banded together in a group PM to ensure that majority. We felt the ex-Thok members would keep voting together to protect themselves early (as it eventually played out).
Fortunately the first merge battle ensured that voting majority, so staying in the good graces of that group, not causing any dramas and voting alongside them was our only sensible option.
Despite that, the merge saw us in a situation where there weren't a lot of Dent-friendly faces. Our situation was public knowledge due to the callout and the Kapow situation, which allowed us to claim that we were...
THE OUTSIDER
Despite feeling a level of security in the majority group, we played up our outsider situation to try to get people considering us as a swing vote or, at least, somebody who could be an extra number to vote with them.
This led us to a situation where we ended up with two fairly strong alliances that enabled us to get deep in to the merge: Superwoman, through our Villains connection and her protection of us at Thok and, setting aside our pride, one with Ivy. Her, and us, had agreed to bury the hatchet as we all felt there was a mutual benefit to working together and catch people unawares. We both played our part in that well.
Through that pair were able to glean enough information from them to get a feel for the merge environment while we continued to doubt ourselves to others, or play up how clueless we were, which helped get extra information out of other players.
That allowed us to know where we sat each round, whether people took our situation seriously, or not, we felt most people were legitimately entertaining working with us at stages through the merge, which shifted targets elsewhere.
We were ready to entertain options, there were instances where players came forward to try and make a move, but the numbers weren't there and we always had to be extra certain about any move after having it nearly cost us at Kapow.
But we also knew there was also another dynamic which could upset things: ...
THE IDOL
Our inbox was pretty quiet early in the merge, so we used the time to take advantage of the blue password characters and knowledge of some of their positions to try and crack the code. We did this at a casual pace, but when Battle 12 appeared with password pieces and locations up for grabs we felt we had to step up our efforts or just miss out. We managed to crack the code - B97asQ - just as the items were being announced.
We knew Huntress would find it gone once she won the items, and she did, and soon after Batman was identified as the holder. We saw what happened once that 'knowledge' got out so we made sure we told nobody to avoid any idol plotting against us.
We held on to the idol hoping to play it whenever a situation arose that could hurt our game. We went along with all the discussion, and execution, of the split votes as we knew those proposals would inevitably work, plus their end results suited our game.
If there was a risk we would have acted with the idol, but we felt comfortable we were able to keep our destiny in our own hands.
Also enabling us to control our destiny was...
CHALLENGE VICTORIES
We know that repeat challenge winners aren't thought of highly, as people tend to judge their game solely on relying on that. However this format enabled the challenge winners the ability to control immunity and who was saved, and indirectly the game. That was going to be crucial.
We had a number of opportunities where we could control and protect our path through this game. We went in on the presumption that one person flipping was always a possibility, so we always tried to have a majority in the pit of at least two where the chances of two people flipping were a lot higher. We tried to minimise any risk to us with our decisions, and this was how we made our...
SIDEKICK AND PIT DECISIONS
Our first decision was where we protected Nightwing. This left 7 people in the pit, with the Thok group at a 5-2 advantage. This should have led to a vote out of Scarlet or Starfire, who we had no connection with, and could only see working against us given our Kapow history.
Next was us protecting Scarlet Witch and Wiccan. We were always going to protect only one of Scarlet and Nightwing, isolating the other against the pit majority of 4. In this case we felt it less likely that somebody would hook up with Scarlet later on so we felt Nightwing had to go sooner. Wiccan was also protected as we felt least sure about his intentions at that point and didn't want his influence in the vote.
Next round was isolating Scarlet against the majority, but it was also about keeping Harley out of the pit as, by this stage, we were starting to hear rumblings of her wanting to make a move which did not include us.
By this stage Ivy was pondering making a move against Superwoman. We felt we needed Superwoman around more than we needed her out, so the next round we decided to keep the two people providing us the most information, and protection, out of the pit to enable us to move forward later on.
We felt Wiccan and Harley would vote out Batman, but that pair was shaping up as a dangerous pairing who would cause us troubles later on. With that in mind we felt we needed to split them up and, given it was the last time to play it, handed the idol to Batman to protect him, leading to the exit of one of the pair.
Did protecting Ivy help her save us over Harley at the next vote? We don't know, but it proved our loyalty to her which we believed had some influence.
And ultimately the final battle where I could not only get myself to the end but, hopefully, put myself in a better position to win by removing somebody who everybody had been saying was the favourite to win this game.
We think being able to position the votes in our favour was critical in this format and we felt we've given ourselves the best opportunity to dictate our path through this game, but we had...
OTHER STRINGS TO OUR BOW
We know some don't rate our social abilities, that's obvious in some cases, but we feel we've done more than enough to stay alive through most of this merge period. We won't deny that right now we wish we had better relationships with a number of people on the jury, but we've tried to make the most of what we could.
Where we could we found that, when faced with a decision of casting Harvey Dent to the wolves, we have been able to provide people with reasons and options for keeping us in the game for themselves and indirectly us.
Despite a claim as the outsider who knew nothing that was going on, we managed to get enough of an idea to know what people were thinking or planning as evidenced by winning Battle 14 (requiring knowledge of the game and more importantly, the players). Being aware of what people were, or weren't, saying enabled us to keep the game in front of us and be able to be in a good spot in each round.
People may feel that we were used or dragged to the end, but we have taken as much, if not more, as we've had taken from us and exploited that information to get us in a position to get to this point.
Not everybody can dominate a game from start to end, especially a game such as this, but having control of your own destiny in this game plays a massive factor. Our game, and the game itself, never allowed us to be the puppet master playing people off against each other, but we have been able to control our own game and do what WE needed to do to get Harvey Dent in to a position to try and win this game.
We have been able to do that by being in control in our game, setting up the votes to go in our favour, and having confidence in our situations, despite the impression we've given off.
We've managed to get inside the majority at the merge, having the idol as security and being able to dictate the direction this game has gone to suit ourselves.
We’re certain that anybody presented with a numbers advantage, the security of an idol and having a large influence on who goes and stays would take that path. That is a large reason why Two Face is deserving of being crowned winner of Versus: Comicverse.
We understand there will be some personal feelings involved with your decision, jury, but we hope you read what we have presented with as open a mind as you can. We look forward to any questions, or issues, that you may have with our statement and/or our game and thank you for taking the time to read this and we hope we can also thank you for your votes.
Good luck jury, best of luck Ivy and best wishes for Christmas from the offices of Harvey Dent.
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A game with 32 players was always going to be a daunting task for anybody to work their way to the end and it's a great credit to all those who reached the merge, and the jury, as it was no easy feat.
With the daunting task, of facing 31 other players, we took the attitude that if we weren't going to go far at least we could have fun with our character. And we did. We tried mixing a cool and measured Harvey with an emotional and irrational Harvey along with using our Superpower, our coin, to make some decisions for us.
That quickly made us appear erratic, emotional and paranoid, which put us in a few tricky spots that we had to claw our way out of, both at DC Villains and at Kapow, culminating in...
THE CALL OUT
At Kapow we made a move that we felt was needed for Harvey Dent to survive, despite the inevitable risks involved. However we then copped the full wrath of our decision in public and private. We won't deny we thought very poorly of it despite being the target.
However as we were the target. We knew right then that, as somebody said to us during this merge, to survive we needed to be...
ADAPTABLE AND FLEXIBLE
We didn't react to the callout. We wanted, and hoped, that people would pin that on Ivy being out of order and that would allow us to gain credibility by not buying in to the spat. We saw the accusations against us and had to change our game. We knew we had to tone down our inconsistency and concentrate on showing that we weren't all that we were being labelled as.
We know we needed to adapt to this new situation and change the way we were playing.
Our initial reaction was to not respond, or react, both public and in private to the point that we were pretty quiet across the board and in messages until...
THE RETURN
Our gamble didn't pay off and in the Arena we were faced with only one option: Returning to Thok and taking our chances. Kapow was suicide and we were warned not to return to Whamm. We took our chances at Thok based on being approached with the promise of sanctuary. The odds of us surviving the next vote at ANY tribe were tiny and even though we felt Thok had to vote us out, we were pleasantly surprised when we weren’t.
Even after surviving that vote, we knew we would be facing trouble at...
THE MERGE
We knew Thok saving us was largely about buying loyalty to both Thok, and the DC Villainesses. We knew that, most people suspected that, but we were going to make the most of the opportunity.
We played along as, once the merge came, the six players of Thok, with Batman looming as a Thok-friendly extra, had the majority at the merge. That was confirmed straight away as the Thok group of 6, banded together in a group PM to ensure that majority. We felt the ex-Thok members would keep voting together to protect themselves early (as it eventually played out).
Fortunately the first merge battle ensured that voting majority, so staying in the good graces of that group, not causing any dramas and voting alongside them was our only sensible option.
Despite that, the merge saw us in a situation where there weren't a lot of Dent-friendly faces. Our situation was public knowledge due to the callout and the Kapow situation, which allowed us to claim that we were...
THE OUTSIDER
Despite feeling a level of security in the majority group, we played up our outsider situation to try to get people considering us as a swing vote or, at least, somebody who could be an extra number to vote with them.
This led us to a situation where we ended up with two fairly strong alliances that enabled us to get deep in to the merge: Superwoman, through our Villains connection and her protection of us at Thok and, setting aside our pride, one with Ivy. Her, and us, had agreed to bury the hatchet as we all felt there was a mutual benefit to working together and catch people unawares. We both played our part in that well.
Through that pair were able to glean enough information from them to get a feel for the merge environment while we continued to doubt ourselves to others, or play up how clueless we were, which helped get extra information out of other players.
That allowed us to know where we sat each round, whether people took our situation seriously, or not, we felt most people were legitimately entertaining working with us at stages through the merge, which shifted targets elsewhere.
We were ready to entertain options, there were instances where players came forward to try and make a move, but the numbers weren't there and we always had to be extra certain about any move after having it nearly cost us at Kapow.
But we also knew there was also another dynamic which could upset things: ...
THE IDOL
Our inbox was pretty quiet early in the merge, so we used the time to take advantage of the blue password characters and knowledge of some of their positions to try and crack the code. We did this at a casual pace, but when Battle 12 appeared with password pieces and locations up for grabs we felt we had to step up our efforts or just miss out. We managed to crack the code - B97asQ - just as the items were being announced.
We knew Huntress would find it gone once she won the items, and she did, and soon after Batman was identified as the holder. We saw what happened once that 'knowledge' got out so we made sure we told nobody to avoid any idol plotting against us.
We held on to the idol hoping to play it whenever a situation arose that could hurt our game. We went along with all the discussion, and execution, of the split votes as we knew those proposals would inevitably work, plus their end results suited our game.
If there was a risk we would have acted with the idol, but we felt comfortable we were able to keep our destiny in our own hands.
Also enabling us to control our destiny was...
CHALLENGE VICTORIES
We know that repeat challenge winners aren't thought of highly, as people tend to judge their game solely on relying on that. However this format enabled the challenge winners the ability to control immunity and who was saved, and indirectly the game. That was going to be crucial.
We had a number of opportunities where we could control and protect our path through this game. We went in on the presumption that one person flipping was always a possibility, so we always tried to have a majority in the pit of at least two where the chances of two people flipping were a lot higher. We tried to minimise any risk to us with our decisions, and this was how we made our...
SIDEKICK AND PIT DECISIONS
Our first decision was where we protected Nightwing. This left 7 people in the pit, with the Thok group at a 5-2 advantage. This should have led to a vote out of Scarlet or Starfire, who we had no connection with, and could only see working against us given our Kapow history.
Next was us protecting Scarlet Witch and Wiccan. We were always going to protect only one of Scarlet and Nightwing, isolating the other against the pit majority of 4. In this case we felt it less likely that somebody would hook up with Scarlet later on so we felt Nightwing had to go sooner. Wiccan was also protected as we felt least sure about his intentions at that point and didn't want his influence in the vote.
Next round was isolating Scarlet against the majority, but it was also about keeping Harley out of the pit as, by this stage, we were starting to hear rumblings of her wanting to make a move which did not include us.
By this stage Ivy was pondering making a move against Superwoman. We felt we needed Superwoman around more than we needed her out, so the next round we decided to keep the two people providing us the most information, and protection, out of the pit to enable us to move forward later on.
We felt Wiccan and Harley would vote out Batman, but that pair was shaping up as a dangerous pairing who would cause us troubles later on. With that in mind we felt we needed to split them up and, given it was the last time to play it, handed the idol to Batman to protect him, leading to the exit of one of the pair.
Did protecting Ivy help her save us over Harley at the next vote? We don't know, but it proved our loyalty to her which we believed had some influence.
And ultimately the final battle where I could not only get myself to the end but, hopefully, put myself in a better position to win by removing somebody who everybody had been saying was the favourite to win this game.
We think being able to position the votes in our favour was critical in this format and we felt we've given ourselves the best opportunity to dictate our path through this game, but we had...
OTHER STRINGS TO OUR BOW
We know some don't rate our social abilities, that's obvious in some cases, but we feel we've done more than enough to stay alive through most of this merge period. We won't deny that right now we wish we had better relationships with a number of people on the jury, but we've tried to make the most of what we could.
Where we could we found that, when faced with a decision of casting Harvey Dent to the wolves, we have been able to provide people with reasons and options for keeping us in the game for themselves and indirectly us.
Despite a claim as the outsider who knew nothing that was going on, we managed to get enough of an idea to know what people were thinking or planning as evidenced by winning Battle 14 (requiring knowledge of the game and more importantly, the players). Being aware of what people were, or weren't, saying enabled us to keep the game in front of us and be able to be in a good spot in each round.
People may feel that we were used or dragged to the end, but we have taken as much, if not more, as we've had taken from us and exploited that information to get us in a position to get to this point.
Not everybody can dominate a game from start to end, especially a game such as this, but having control of your own destiny in this game plays a massive factor. Our game, and the game itself, never allowed us to be the puppet master playing people off against each other, but we have been able to control our own game and do what WE needed to do to get Harvey Dent in to a position to try and win this game.
We have been able to do that by being in control in our game, setting up the votes to go in our favour, and having confidence in our situations, despite the impression we've given off.
We've managed to get inside the majority at the merge, having the idol as security and being able to dictate the direction this game has gone to suit ourselves.
We’re certain that anybody presented with a numbers advantage, the security of an idol and having a large influence on who goes and stays would take that path. That is a large reason why Two Face is deserving of being crowned winner of Versus: Comicverse.
We understand there will be some personal feelings involved with your decision, jury, but we hope you read what we have presented with as open a mind as you can. We look forward to any questions, or issues, that you may have with our statement and/or our game and thank you for taking the time to read this and we hope we can also thank you for your votes.
Good luck jury, best of luck Ivy and best wishes for Christmas from the offices of Harvey Dent.