Well, what a competition this year. It's been a blast.
I'll start off by giving my heartfelt thanks to all of this fabulous team who made the past few days the most exhilarating experience.
Particularly, I would like to shout out to my awesome vice captains and committee who have backed me 100% throughout. They handled the team amazingly leaving me able to focus on diplomatic relations:
Pinguux
Padokill
Queen-Warly-Woo
Cartel
z_junior
Ultra
bogie
Sectory
Private_Joker
And yes; MeanMike. We fooled you all. Thanks Mike for playing it so low key, an incredible achievement.
And in no small part our Push leaders and treasury who kept the team moving like a well oiled machine, massive props.
A personal shout-out to DeKleineKobini who made sure our discord has the tools and organisation to make sure everything ran smoothly. His push calendar was a godsend and his statistics tools were amazing. Thank you so much for all your help.
Every single member of this team has made me proud, and it's been an honour to stand with you.
So now for the bit you are all interested in.
My POV of the competition. It is somewhat abridged because it got too long :)
Originally, I wasn't going to participate in elims, let alone captain, but a message from Rosti made me reconsider - so I signed up.
Seeing the leadership race was not particularly hot I decided to step up, having had experience in leading roles in previous years.
Things got off to a good start with myself and Pinguux both level-necking for a while.
This was until of course Dsla decided to back pinguux in an attempt to get himself and gekents on the leadership team.
This in itself wasn't much of an issue until Gekents asked me to join Pinguux and Dsla in a discord chat and effectively trying to force me into backing out to support Pinguux. These are not games that I like to play so I ignored the messages for a while to see what would happen.
Sure enough, a smear campaign ensued with many posts and chat highlighting my lack of general torn activity. Not in a small way either, persistent messaging in both discord and elims chat ensued.
As a sidenote, Pinguux was in no way the provocateur of this and openly supported my candidacy as I did with him. I bought him on as a vice captain as we had agreed prior - and he put in the graveyard shift keeping the team running when I passed out from exhaustion.
This riled the feathers of many, especially given that both MadMike and z_junior had vouched for my leadership, prompting DedeSiregar to mail over 2000 members to support my leadership.. more on that later.
Once this happened I pulled ahead in the leadership race and it was clear in the final hours that I was the only candidate left in the running. Dsla’s plan to discredit me had massively backfired.
At this point I started to reach out to other captains to formulate a game plan - I knew it would be a difficult run as we had the strongest team on paper and therefore would be a natural target.
I realised very early on that I was not a part of the conversation that was happening and I had to scramble to find a way in.
Zuni had told me that we were target number one and was keeping the heat off, but provided no further information. Full disclosure here, RGiskard did in fact ask me to trust zuni - however I did not, having been on his leadership team last year and knowing how he plays elims. He had given me no reason other than ‘trust me bro’ and that was not enough for me.
A misread by zuni (he misread 9L as 9 teams). This was repeated back to me by Nightwing and it sealed my opinion...
Whilst this was happening, I hit a major roadblock. Our discord had been set up by gekents (from earlier) and he was refusing to hand over admin. Dsla and some others had admin for some unknown reason, and our discord was not, in my opinion, a safe place to discuss things.
I ended up having to create a private discord group with the committee so that we could discuss strategy while this happened.
I spent a long time trying to plead with and convince gekents that he does not need admin on the server. I could not trust him after trying to strong arm his way into leadership and I doubted his intentions, as did the rest of the committee. In the end, I issued a harsh ultimatum with a time limit (thanks bogie for writing it):
gekents immediately ran to bogie to complain that this was harassment.. but of course, bogie had written it in the first place.
Gekents I know you are reading this and are going to be in the comments complaining and crying but dude, don't pull this shit again. This is not how you make people trust you. I wasn’t going to post this, but in the end I have decided to. For one reason;
This took HOURS away from my negotiating time and I was now in a terrible position in negotiations - I had to hustle hard to make in-roads and alliances.
I took a lot of stick at this point for ‘disappearing’ as I would throughout the competition. For full transparency, I managed a total of maybe 10 hours sleep from when the captain vote was taken. I recommend that if you want to be a captain - make sure you are ready to not sleep - everything always happens when you're not around.
After much hustling to figure out the plan, we were invited to Nightwings Mother's Milk server - however I knew that we were unlikely to be welcome for very long, given Nightwings hatred for MeanMike.
Early on I was also leaked a conversation where NW described us a rookies, weak leadership and that we were first target. Now it was clear that we had both alliances pointing at us for an early exit. Not a good position.
My allies (although I did not know/believe at the time Zuni was an ally - the others shall remain unnamed until after elims - when I will tell you who was my final 3) somehow got the heat taken off of us in the nick of time…
AiR reached out to me *just* before the whistle to join the BIG alliance server which had a suspiciously named #archive channel with only a few teams having access. High Voltage flipped to mothers milk at the final minute.
I would like to say that AiR nor Andyman (or Marcinko) bothered to reach out prior to this so I happily played along with what they were saying, knowing that an 8v2 pile on was about to commence.
It worked. 9L dropped tickets like a shoplifter fleeing a jewellery shop.
But I knew now that the plan was in motion, that I needed to try and figure out people's intentions.
I sent more messages on discord in those hours than I have ever sent in my life. Fish, negotiate, convince, pretend. But after many many hours I had figured out who my 2 best allies were. No, I won't name them, yet.
Meanwhile, a new issue emerged. Dsla and DedeSiregar had noticed I had made no hits. I hadn’t - I was flat out trying to figure out how to make a play. The committee were messaging me like crazy. You need to get in chat. You need to sort this now man, just make some hits and shut them up. I paused negotiations briefly to deal with the issue - not the ideal time, but we also couldn’t afford bad morale and dissent, so, I got some hits in maintaining some of my stack for later.
I had suspicions at this point of who was going to screw me over. The biggest threats I could see were Nightwing, LDP, Zuni and Cheb.
I needed to beware of HV because they were the biggest unknown to me, with very little contact, so I could assume that they were out to get me, but I had nothing concrete to go on other than a gut feeling.
So I hustled a plan. I spoke to everyone. I kept leads warm. I formed a team of 5 ‘Davey Jones’ Locker’ - including my 2 for the final 3. Later, I will learn that this was probably a mistake, but, back to the story.
Breakthrough. LDP had reached out to me. He wanted to form a team of 6. Perfect.
I played the game, back and forth, careful with information. LDP was very cagey and I wanted to keep him on the outside of what I had been cooking.
I got him to invite half of the team and set up the server and look like the man calling the shots, so that it didn't paint a bigger target on me.
We framed the group ‘Operation Cleanup’ as a democracy. Majority vote. Everyone wanted Zuni gone. Everyone suspected Cheb was working with Zuni. Nobody seemed to know what they were up to and both were cagey. I had screenshots of Cheb pointing me as a target. Nothing heard from zuni. Nightwing had been cooking something else - I have no idea what, but the choice was clear to me - I had to let this play out. The other teams looped Nightwing in on the plan, but let Nightwing think it was his plan and had Nightwing set up a new server ‘Operation Yapper Duck’.
Meanwhile, Dsla reached out - although he had changed names to noobslayer with some numbers in it. He told me that he initially thought that I was a plant. By this time, I had more than proven that a) I was going to be active and b) I was trying my best to actually win. We had a short chat and left things on good terms.
Cheb reached out at the final minute to invite me to ‘elims power bottoms’. Again, hidden channels with other teams to target loose cannons. I played along. He made the same play as AiR - inviting me in without so much as convincing me of his plan. In my mind, he had to go.
IO dropped and the bullets started flying. Blood everywhere. The operation was working. Not only had I somehow managed to avoid bottom 2, we were now avoiding bottom 4. Brain surgeons were the first casualty. Zuni reached out after and told me his plan. I asked why he hasn't reached out before. I feel bad, but if you are an ally, to me, you need to be seen to be one.
When conspiracy theorists became the next target I started to suspect something was off. Teams were testing attack responses. 15 mins at a time. Sometimes alone. Sometimes 2v1. I reached out to a few people and they tried to convince me nothing was wrong. I remained suspicious. We held tickets stable with 2 teams attacking us simultaneously. We were making double the hits of everyone else. I knew this was bad. I instructed our 1b+ stat players to stack. A fight was coming.
Cheb reached out wanting a flip. I entertained the idea. But kept him cold. I had been leaked a screenshot of Nightwing approaching Cheb and the door being closed - a good sign, but not good for trust.
RAPY also reached out. I played it cold with him too - and I shut him down. I needed to know I could trust the conversation to go no further.
I had seen screenshots of LDP and Natty plotting against me, so I knew that the relationship with LDP had met its end but I kept him close, in the effort to keep him seeing me as useful.
By this point, I had 3 teams who I knew would be solid if I had the numbers - a viable play emerged.
As I was about to make the decision - a part of my conversation with RAPY was leaked in elims power bottoms server. My ability to trust them vanished. The plan dissolved. Conspiracy theorists were gone.. As was potentially our way out of the next part of the story, if the rockets accusation was true.
Nightwing reached out the night before CT departed. I had the perfect response.
The next day, I kept the pressure on the group to focus loose cannons, yet, on the tick, APEX, STICKS LC AND HV were hitting us. I tried my hardest to keep the others on side, but to no avail. I was 1 team away from making a viable flip. I tried HV to see if they could be persuaded. Mistake.
The doors closed and my leverage vanished. It was at this point clear it was Apex & Rockets pulling the strings.
I had one choice left. Drag a team down to pressure them. The choice was clear but I knew it would be a push. The 2 sides of the original toss up of who would be out first, with friends on both sides.
We unleashed hell on loose cannons, bringing them down to 0 tickets in a 7v1 pile on. It was spectacular.
I used the opportunity to negotiate with Nightwing.
He wanted MeanMike off of the team. I pretended to consider even though I had no intention of complying.
I waited, and then made my play. The best negotiation of the competition followed. We had a deal. We just needed to gather the numbers.
I had 2 potentials. Nightwing had maybe 1.
Cards down, the last play. Then Nightwing pulled the rug. He couldn't make the flip happen.
Now the only hope was to outjump cannons, but it was clear our activity was dropping and we were shedding lives.
I handed over to Pinguux to see the night out and I went to bed. All that could be done, had been done.
I said my farewells and adieus to everyone else.
If I were to predict the outcome of the competition, it may change how things play out - but at this point I don’t really care.
For me, I think it’s a toss up between Rockets and Apex. Do with that what you will - I hope I’m wrong <3.
Touching Grass, in my opinion, has been the best eliminations team that I have ever participated in to date. I am so proud of every single one of you.
Now go get some rest and TOUCH SOME FUCKING GRASS.
