Hello, filthy round earthers!
Unfortunately, we've been mouth-guarded by the cabal and our journey has pretty much come to an end with our final push. It's been a blast. I have to run now, so here I leave my ramblings, the path of Conspiracy Theorists through my personal opinion.
The voting process!
Cheb was fastest with making a Discord - and per Elimination guidelines - you now are leader of the team. No, but for real - we had a decent voting process with Cheb, Jokur, myself and Omanpx being the most serious candidates. Prior to the voting started, myself, Cheb and Jokur already had good conversations and made the pact to choose each other and be [vice-]captains together. Quickly joined by Omanpx for his candidacy, experience and bot wizardry. Followed by 811 [you know, the top5 namechange guy] and CALAMITY_gRACE for their experience and timezone coverages. All amicable and luckily, no drama.
Alliances!
Due to us choosing each other prior to the voting process [there were no other real contenders], we could quickly form the base of solid alliances [or so we thought, bitches!] to work with. Cheb has his connections in PT, and myself and Jokur are pretty neutral in general. We'll have some friends, not a lot - but not a lot of 'enemies' too. I thought.
We've set up an alliance called: 'Elim Power Bottoms'. This alliance consisted of:
- Conspiracy Theorists
- Brain Surgeons
- Rocket Scientists
- High Voltage
- Sticks and Stones
- APEX
Originally, our primary target would have been Touching Grass given the pre-elimination statistics of their roster and activity.
Quickly after, two other alliances had been made. Mother Milkers [orchestrated by Nightwing of Loose Cannons] - consisting of the 10 teams except for Inanimate Objects and Nine Lives. Their targets being obvious. And the other one being called BIG Alliance [orchestrated by AiR of Nine Lives], the latter unfortunately invited the entirety of EPB except for Rocket Scientists.
With EPB as our main alliance, we followed in the best interest of that alliance and that was simply to go with the 10 v 2. It truly felt bad betraying AiR this way, and damn, I didn't feel as guilty in years as when I saw this message from Rouge after we just launched the full attack. A very late hug for this one, Rouge.
The flip!
This has been the most stressful Torn part for me, probably ever. At around 13:20TCT on the 12th, EPB has flipped and teamed up with the remaining teams [bar Reptillians, but Dinosaurs are extinct.] against Brain Surgeons and ourselves.
I was the only [vice-]captain around, so I quickly scrambled as much puzzle pieces as I could and tried to see what's what. It had quickly become clear that everyone flipped. Hours and hours I've spent trying to get the ones who are going to be next in line to come together to flip with us and Surgeons, and whilst Touching Grass was open for the flip initially, they later decided it's too risky to join our sides.
We were expecting a flip to happen - that's for sure. We were the team with the most tickets farmed up until this point and would win a tie-breaker with anyone. Why would anyone willing to win keep a team with this activity in the competition? We could have sand-bagged, but hey, we were having loads of fun and spent a lot of time engaging the newer players. Being first in attacks 9 hours after being pinned attest to that. And only this morning, APEX finally overtook us with the rest still being far behind.
Whilst down at the bottom, we tried to have Reptillians join ourselves and kill Loose Cannons, but they pretty much were a car with no driver or were pretending to be. Leader absent and vice-captains not willing to take over and try to win.
Apparently, the plan from the backstabbers was to knock out Brain Surgeons [primarily for their leaders' past Elimination strategies, by some admissions] and to keep us in. Loose Cannons and Touching Grass would follow according to Rocket Scientists' strategy. But with no clear plan laid out, we would simply have been left out to dry and do their dirty work for them. We've exhausted every other option. I've talked to neutral parties, enemies, players I usually don't want to interact with [Hi Fidel], sent out a Hail Mary in the EPB server to see if anyone would turn on each other, but to no avail. And the latter naturally meant us being exited straight after.
Thank yous!
First, thank you to all theorists. You did extraordinary. You were deserving of a much better leadership that could take you all the way, I'm sorry.
I'm not going to make this post too long by naming all helpers, council, push captains and leaders - but a special thank you to the people who must've given up their social life for the last days as well. Leadership get shiny badges, but there's so many people who deserve shout outs. The ones who jump to mind straight away: MafuyuSD, Tiffinity, masanta, SavageHenry, Bobert2422, Viciously_Grim, Pilvlp, Prevalence, Cleansing-Flame, MaryPoppins, DimPerrin, and many more. Sorry for those I forgot here.
This year's Elimination did give a little spark back. We've had so many new players standing out and grinding out. There's a bright future. I'm forever grateful for the opportunity. I'll see you next year!
P.S.
LDP, I know you didn't have your fingers or toes crossed. And you gave me your word. I will never forget. I cri everytim.