This whole game has been a premium experience. Please read this speech, not everything I did in this game was obvious.
I got to talk a lot with my trainer Tate & Liza during the early game about how I wanted to play. We compared our ideas for playstyles, and I think in the end we managed to synthesize our ideas to come up with something lethally effective, and tons of fun to play as well.
My goal in this game was to accumulate as many friends and connections as possible so that I could play both sides of any given situation, and try to one-up other players in how straightforward I was when I talked strategy to make stronger connections.
Tate and Liza suggested that I also make an effort to not be the decision maker myself, but rather be the one who influences decision makers, and when their time comes, just push them over the edge of the cliff and move on.
What this looked like in practice was a 6 step lifecycle of a reggie ally.
1. Reggie and ally exchange flirty, funny, fluff posts. I tried to make my fluff posting have at least one thing that made me laugh in it so you could enjoy it too, and so that I stood out from others in a good way as someone you would look forwards to getting PMs from.
2. Sudden shift to blunt strategy and exchange of information.
3. Reggie builds trust with new ally by (sutbly or extravagantly) throwing some of his current allies under the bus and giving them the credit for the plays he made with them.
4. Reggie continues to form, build, and maintain conflicting alliances while working with ally.
5. Ally is portrayed as a threat to reggie's new allies, gets credited for the moves reggie makes, and must be taken out.
6. Voted out by reggie's new (or old) allies.
Rinse and repeat.
This was how I kept my threat level as low as possible while being informed enough to vote in the majority of every single vote and dodge two idols, all without winning immunity once.
Enjoy the recap of my game, and see how I tried put this into practice.
[Valor]
On Valor, I connected strongest with Mewtwo, Victini, and Uxie. Mewtwo started on the bottom of valor, but I approached him, told him he needed to step up his game if he wanted to have a chance, and we became super close allies from there on out, and he erased himself from the #1 position on the boot order, leaving buzz in the dust.
Now the reason I tell the story of mewtwo is because of this: Lugia, who was near the bottom of Valor, suddenly became a tiny bit defensive after he noticed mewtwo was no longer on the bottom. I picked up on this, and pointed it out to my trainer. From this experience, I learned an extremely valuable lesson: When a player becomes defensive after the boot order changes, it's because they don't have as many options as they think they do.
[Mystic 2.0]
This had the potential to be a terrible swap for me. I was not at all close with tapu lele, I was intimidated by meltan, and deoxys and articuno were a little bit frosty (pun intended). Instead of rolling over and accepting the swapscrew, I spoke with meltan very openly about my tribe within only the first few hours, hoping to build trust, and in return, he opened up to me as well. He revealed to me that he had a plan to have valor 1.0 stick together and pagong all the big threats on mystic, like hoopa, cobalion, celebi, and poipole. All people I had never met. I even got a final 3 offer of meltan-deoxys-reggie. Thanks to my bluntness with meltan, I was able to become the right hand man of one of this games biggest decision makers.
Tapu lele and I felt cornered, and naturally drew closer to each other. While I was growing closer and closer to tapu lele, I also made an effort to convince her to be the one to re-unite valor 1.0. I also oversold tapu lele's threat level to meltan, saying that tapu had the potential to reunite valor under one flag, in the hopes that I could also make tapu lele into a big threat and the figurehead of valor 1.0, similar to a second meltan.
I also got a little bit close with deoxys, saying I was down to go to final 3 with him.
In the last challenge before merge, I convinced tapu lele to throw the challenge with me to sacrifice articuno (who we knew was close to celebi, and wasn't that close with us), which is why our scores were so bad. Amusingly, deoxys, who scored a 0, was not in on this plan.
In summary, I spent my time on this tribe trying to make meltan and tapu lele into big threats that would do my dirty work for me and eventually take the fall for me. Unfortunately the "tapu leading valor 1.0 plan" never kicked off, but that was okay, because I had plenty of backup options. And as you will notice, all three finalists are members of mystic 2.0 thanks to the bonds we were able to form with each other. We were able to exploit the divisions and conflicts within the other tribes (Uxie VS. Cobalion, Volc VS. his entire tribe) to gain an early advantage in merge.
[Hold Harmony Sacred]
---- F11 ---- Volc ----Despite having such a good tribe, I felt like I came into merge with a bit of a disadvantage. Mewtwo and Victini were my closest allies in this whole game, and both of them were just straight up gone. I was going to have to adapt fast if I was going to survive.
The initial plan was to just ride with meltan until he was no longer useful and eliminate as many threats as possible. We quickly recruited Uxie and Volc into meltan's plan, since they were on the outs of their respective tribes, and targeted Cobalion first, because he was already a threat, and he had the least connections out of all the threats. (No connection to mespirit)
So my initial plan was to just ride out the voting block of Meltan/Deoxys/Uxie/Tapu/Reggie/Volc until it became convenient to turn on meltan, but then volc got idoled out. Oops.
---- F10 ---- Mespirit ----At this point, I got sort of upset (read my confessional postgame for a funny time!), and I noticed uxie was quite upset as well. We stewed in anger for a little bit, before I went back to reflect on what I had learned. I realized the reason I was getting so angry and defensive was because I didn't have as many options as I thought I did. Sure, I was in on meltan's plan, and I was allied with Deoxys/Uxie/Tapu/Meltan, but if that plan went down in flames, like it was currently going, I would be SOL. And who knew what was going to happen? This F10 vote looked like it was going to tie 5-5, Meltan VS. Celebi. What if it went to rocks? I needed to make a move and take my fate into my own hands.
So instead of risking potentially getting screwed by an uncertain future, I swallowed my pride and anger, and approached Cobalion and started talking game and trying to build trust. I said that I had nothing against him, and would be open to working with him to take out meltan. Cobalion, as soon as we started talking for reals, I feel like both of us realized that any alliance we made was going to be temporary. Your speech gave you away as an extremely smart player, and the way we interacted made me feel like you respected me a lot as a player too. We were doomed to become rivals
I made a deal with Cobalion that we wouldn't vote for each other, and that we would work together to prevent the F10 vote from being a tie. Cobalion also mentioned he was close to Celebi, so I started trying to get closer to Celebi to wedge myself between the two sides of the game, so that I would be untouchable.
Mespirit medevacing meant the cool plan I sold to coba never actually got executed, but the connections I made here were absolutely crucial to my game, and they were my own moves.
Also, this is the one vote I wasn't informed on at the time - apparently mespirit was being targeted anyways.
---- F9 ---- Uxie ----F9 was when the game got very, very stabby. I had already hard-committed to playing both sides, so now my only option was to exploit and encourage conflicts between players so that I could never be taken out myself. I started selling out the members of Meltan's alliance (which I dubbed Meltan's Hate Cult, since the members hated cobalion) to Celebi and Cobalion themselves, with the intent that I could use Celebi and Cobalion and their allies to push meltan off of a cliff, thereby making cobalion the new leader I could follow behind and later assassinate. We agreed upon an alliance of Reggie-Celebi-Cobalion-Tapu Lele (Without Tapu lele's consent!!!) that would dominate the game at F7. I believed it at the time, but cobalion saw through my scheme.
At the same time, an internal conflict arose in the Cult Of Meltan. I wanted us to vote for poipole, since I was secretly trying to protect Celebi and Coba. I sold it as an idol-dodge to meltan, tapu, and deoxys, and they all seemed fine with it. However, Uxie had a different agenda. Uxie kept arguing for a Celebi vote, and ended up strongarming everyone into voting for Celebi in the end. I wasn't sure how she was able to do this, until Meltan told me that we basically just had to do whatever she said, BECAUSE SHE HAD THE SECRET TETRIS IDOL, and we needed to appease her until we blindsided her at F6. I became suspicious that Uxie and Poipole were closer then they were letting on - since Uxie had initially mentioned to me not wanting to vote out poipole when we first met at merge.
Shortly after this, Cobalion and Celebi told me that Uxie was their target (to dodge an idol, ironically), and I saw the opportunity to snipe someone who wasn't compatible with my current plans (since he hated celebi/coba) and had an idol, and I took it without thinking twice. Uxie would have been harder to get rid of later in the game then celebi, since she had an idol, a relatively low threat level, and was better at challenges then I was. He easily could have taken my seat at FTC if I hadn't made this move.
On a strategic level, it was a fantastic play. On a personal level, it's probably the only vote I actually feel bad about since you were legitimately the nicest person here and you really trusted me.
---- F8 ---- Cobalion ----Yeah, so Deoxys also flipped on uxie. If I hadn't made those connections to Celebi and Coba last round, I would have been totally screwed here, but thanks to my aggressive play, I was able to over come this unexpected situation. I played it off to Meltan/Poipole/Deoxys/Tapu like I had made an impulsive newbie mistake (I assure you, voting out uxie was no mistake.), and I played it off to Celebi/Cobalion that this was a down payment of trust and that I wanted to work with them to vote out meltan next. I got into a little trouble with tapu lele, but managed to recover. Deoxys lied for a bit before admitting to it and we were good to work together again.
This was the round where my social and strategic abilities were tested to their limits. Deoxys suddenly had a new agenda to vote out Coba -> Hoopa -> Celebi, and I didn't want that. So I sold him out to Coba/Celebi, but they didn't trust me and leaked it right back and started pushing for me. I managed to defuse the situation with Deoxys and Poipole, resassure tapu lele despite the fact that I blindsided her (closest?) ally last round, and Meltan who I just straight up backstabbed. Any two of those people could have correctly deduced that I was untrustworthy, and just voted me out with hoopa/celebi/coba. But in the end, it was possible to convince people that Cobalion was a bigger threat than me, and push him off the cliff.
---- F7 ---- Meltan ----Deoxys and I formed an F3 with Tapu lele, suggesting a boot order of Meltan -> Hoopa -> Celebi -> Poipole.
Celebi and I formed an F3 with Tapu lele, suggesting a boot order of Meltan -> Deoxys -> Poipole -> Hoopa (-> Tapu).
At this point, I had outlasted the one person who had actually figured out my plan to play both sides, so it was up to me to keep distractions and conflicts going, so that no one decided to finish the work cobalion started (voting me out!). I manufactured an artificial conflict between myself and deoxys (without deoxys knowing about it?) just to make Celebi and Hoopa trust me more. The reason I needed to do this is because it's impossible to play both sides unless there is a conflict to play both sides of. An alliance cannot exist unless it has people to target.
In reality, I planned to take deoxys to the end. The way I did created and maintained this conflict was as follows:
1. At F8 when deoxys was lying to me, I tried to sell him out to celebi and made it clear that I didn't trust him.
2. I ended up regaining trust with deoxys after he came clean with me, but there was no reason that Hoopa and Cel needed to know that.
3. After cobalion was voted out 5-3, I said "i told ya he was coming after you, now can we get rid of this guy?"
4. When the vote was obviously going to be Meltan, I tried to get the numbers for 4-3 vote on deoxys with celebi's help, also going to Meltan and tapu, because if it works, cool, if it doesn't work, it makes my story more believable.
5. The reason I was able to do this behind deoxys' back was because deoxys already didn't trust Hoopa or Celebi since he was targeting them. That way, when hoopa leaked the fact that I was "targeting" deoxys back to him, deoxys believed me over hoopa. And if he didn't actually believe me, he didn't have the motivation to vote me out anyways, since he had already burned the bridge with celebi and hoops.
6. Since deoxys and myself had such similar voting records, anything that raised my threat level could be blamed on deoxys instead, to further sell the story to celebi and hoopa that deoxys had to go, while at the same time underselling myself and making it look more believable that I was willing to work with hoopa/cel. This also made me look like a dumb or easily manipulated player because I was tunnel visioning on deo.
Meltan, the reason I voted for you here was because you were a big threat, and despite the fact that we had a close relationship, I wasn't reliant on you the way you were on me.
---- F6 ---- Poipole ----Due to a miscommunication, I thought the vote was going to be 3-3 Hoopa VS. Reggie. Despite all my paranoia, my strong connection to Celebi and Hoopa payed off, as they mistakenly thought I had their best interest in mind due to the fake conflict I was in with deoxys, and idoled out poipole instead of me.
Poipole was not someone who I saw as a threat at all, and was actually someone I was considering going to the end with as a backup to deoxys.
I absolutely should have been idoled out here. The fact that I survived should say something about the effectiveness of my playstyle.
---- F5 ---- Hoopa ----Hoopa, you were the last person in the game that didn't have a final 3 deal with me. </3
I hope it didn't burn you too hard that I was talking with you like I was considering going to the end with you but then I voted you out. As you can probably tell by now, I'm a player with *ahem* "very fluid allegiance", and so I was at least willing to talk to you to consider if going to the end with you would be a good idea or a bad one for me. In the end it seemed like you weren't really happy with it, and in my heart I wasn't really happy with the idea either, so I decided against it.
The original plan was to blindside celebi too, but she wanted in on it so we let her in.
---- F4 ---- Celebi ----It made the most sense to take celebi closest to the end because she was the worst at challenges. I hope you were all entertained by my public thread posting, and I hope you realize that I have, in fact, not played a worse game then deoxys, and that was an act to get me past final 6.
Overall, I think there are very few things I would have done differently this game. I played my heart out the whole time, and I think I had an excellent performance both as a character and as a player.
I learned from my mistakes, and the mistakes of others. I stayed light on my feet, adapted to the winds of change, and never put 100% faith in any one plan or person. I aggressively forced myself into a power position early on in merge and successfully played both sides until the very end of the game. I voted in the majority of every single vote. I survived two idols. I bounced back from all the heat I took. I made an alliance with pretty much every single person in this merge - save for maybe mespirit and/or hoopa. And I managed to do it as a newbie who couldn't compete very well with the pros for individual immunity, or access to immunity idols.
Don't be shy now - hit me with the hottest questions you got. Let me know what you really think of me.
Ultimately though I'm not sure what each of you values in a winner, and I hope I get the chance to work through that in the Q&A. So let's go with what I thought of each of you and my deepest darkest ragrets.
I knew that it was a distinct possibility, it's just not something I really took the time to think through.
