I've chosen to nominate @VioletValkyrie and @EurekaTingz.
It's the final four and nominations mean nothing and the veto is what really counts here, so best of luck in the veto to all three of you!
Hello houseguests, jury, and anyone else on this thread! Today, the special eviction took place. 1 competition, 1 ceremony, 1 vote, and 4 houseguests became 3! Let's see what happened...
- The POV competition was a brand-new competition called Legends of the Fallen (rules here).
- In the end, @Ephemera won the tiebreaker round against @VioletValkyrie, winning the POV!
- They decided to discard the POV.
- Ephemera then cast the sole vote to evict @EurekaTingz, naming him the 6th member of the jury.
Conquer Phase
Week 9 --- Final HOH
Hello, Final 3! It's time to step through the final hurdle of the game before you reach the Final 2! 6 jurors are already there, waiting for the 7th member that will help them to decide who will win the 10th season of Big Brother! As is standard, the Final HOH is here. Even though you've all done this before, I'll go over the rules once again:
- Part 1 will be the competition I give you now. All 3 of you will compete in this competition, and the winner will automatically advance to Part 3 of the competition.
- Part 2 will be the next competition, which will only be played by the losers of Part 1. The winner of that competition will also advance to Part 3.
- Part 3 will be the final competition, which will only be played by the winners of Parts 1 and 2. The winner of that competition will be the final HOH of the season.
When all is said and done, the final HOH will choose which houseguest they want to evict, and that person will be the final juror. That said, the person they choose not to evict, they are bringing to the Final 2, where they will face off against the jury and make their cases as to why they deserve to win this game.
Now, before I go further, I want to point out the twist that I alluded to. Winning Part 2 of this competition will earn you an advantage in the game! Only the winner will be informed of the power that they will receive. The winner of Part 1 will have no chance to win this power. How this effects your gameplay for this final week? That's up to you. With that, let's get on to the competition...
Part 1 of the Final HOH competition is QWOP, a game I'm sure you will all enjoy. Good luck houseguests! You have 27 hours, or until September 2nd at 5PM EST.
Hi houseguests, the competition has finished and the results are in.
1st: NP -- 100m (Winner)
2nd: Violet
3rd: Ephemera
Congratulations @NinjaPenguin, you have won the competition and are advancing to Part 3! This means that the competitors for Part 2 are @Ephemera and @VioletValkyrie.
Conquer Phase Week 9 --- Final HOH Part 2
The next part of this final HOH competition will remain a secret. Ephe, Violet, please let me know when you wish to play in this competition (set aside at least 30 minutes to play, though it could run shorter or longer depending on the person).
Congratulations @Ephemera, you have won the competition and are advancing to Part 3! You have also won the special advantage, which you will be notified of shortly. This means that the competitors for Part 3 are @NinjaPenguin and @Ephemera. This means @VioletValkyrie is the first nominee.
Conquer Phase Week 9 --- Final HOH Part 3
The final competition of the season, it's all led to this, you all know it's Know Your Jury. I want all 3 of you to attend this final competition, as right afterwards the Final HOH will be casting their sole vote to evict one of the nominees, and decide who will go with them to the Final 2.
Recapping the final HOH competition and eviction here for convenience (in order):
- Part 3 of the final HOH competition was Know Your Jury (rules here). Ultimately, @NinjaPenguin won the competition, becoming the final HOH of the season.
- This made @VioletValkyrie and @Ephemera the nominees.
- NP, being the sole vote to evict either Violet or Ephemera, voted to evict Violet, naming her the final member of the jury.
Ephemera, NP, congratulations. You have done it, you have gone as far as you can in this game. You will both have the opportunity to explain your game to the jury of 7, and one of you will come out the winner of Big Brother 10: Scramble & Conquer. The finale will start shortly, good luck finalists.
Hello finalists! @Ephemera and @NinjaPenguin, congratulations! You have done what 13 others could not, and have reached the end of the game. There's only one hurdle left stopping you from winning this game, and that is the jury. This jury of 7 will decide who wins this game, and the bragging rights that come with it. But first... I have an announcement to make.
As you all know, as the winner of Part 2 of the Final HOH competition, Ephemera was granted this season's final advantage. This power was the Juror Removal advantage, allowing Ephemera to remove any of the first 6 jurors of their choice. In that juror's place, the audience will be casting a jury vote to round out the jury of 7. Ephemera chose to remove Aria from the jury. With that said, let's welcome back our jury:
Alright, despite basically all of you knowing this process I'll go over it again, here's how this will work. Ephemera and NP will have the floor here to argue, and debate one another as to why they deserve to win this game over the other player. To get the ball rolling, each jury member may ask each finalist 1 question each (though you do not have to). You can ask them both the same question, or you can ask them totally different things, that is completely up to you. All that matters is that discussion between finalists and jurors sticks to this thread.
The criteria that a juror uses in making their decision is completely up to them, as by design there are no wrong jury votes. No right, no wrong, only what the jury makes of the finalists. Votes can be changed at any point throughout the finale, so don't feel like you're locking in a permanent decision when we're only just starting. Jurors, cast your votes in your DR (and tag me when you do), and these votes will be revealed when the finale is over and a winner is to be crowned. At the end of the finale, the finalist with more votes from our Jury of 7 will be crowned the winner of Big Brother 10!
The finale will last for 72 hours, or until September 7th at 5PM EST, no later and no sooner. Finalists, use that time to show the jury why you should win. Jury, use that time to make your decision. This is it, you guys, good luck!
Hello to everyone in the jury! Here’s a huge wallpost of what I did this game and I don’t exactly expect anyone to want to read the entirety of it but here goes:
For this season, I wanted to innovate on the strategies I was known for in Big Brother and adapt to play a game more focused on my social game, building relationships in this game with others and making moves not just to ensure my targets got out but that myself and my allies would be as well-protected as possible. I also wanted to accomplish my goal heading into the season of a floater purge, eliminating non-players to guarantee that one of the people playing hard would win the game.
One thing I especially wanted to focus on with this game was not repeating the mistakes of my past. In past seasons, I’ve been known as a player that would take a group as far as he could in the game and immediately get eliminated by the other members in my alliance. I wanted to make sure I got to a position where I could be able to navigate through the entire game and not get eliminated by my allies once they had the first opportunity to.
As per the theme of the season, I wanted to mix the strengths of the Scrambler, who uses social gameplay to avoid being targeted and help eliminate their enemies, and the Conqueror, who takes advantage of competition victories to make power plays to get them further in the game. I think you’ll be able to see both of these strategies within my game, with me adapting to the circumstances to make my way further in the game and using innovative social angles to help further my game.
(Fair warning these writeups are super long rip)
When I saw the list of people playing in this game, with so many strong players in it, I knew that I was up against a ton of serious competitors and had to start playing the game as quickly as I could. In the first part of the Hit The Road competition, with me unable to speak to anyone else in the game, I used math and game theory to try to determine my optimal move in Part 1 (if anyone likes math enough to care I can go into this but I’m not sure anyone wants me ranting about game theory haha), successfully deciding to shoot myself, allowing me to escape being at threat of eviction in Part 2.
Now able to speak to the other players, I began to start reaching out to people. I wanted to find a core group of people who I felt like I could trust and who wouldn’t have any premade alliances that would cause them to not be completely loyal to the group. Speaking to Vi, I was able to ascertain that even though she was connected to Lily as always, she didn’t want to play to repeat her past games' plans of taking Lily to the end of the game, so we began to try to think of the other players without any notable pregame alliances in this game, arriving at Ephe, Flour, and Vom. We then began to reach out to those three, seeing if we could gauge their interest in making an alliance and if they’d want the same mix of players we did.
Feeling good about that group and realizing Ephe was going to win the Conqueror’s Insignia based on the scores that had been reported to me, I made the decision to throw Part 2 of the competition. Though the Conqueror’s Insignia was a powerful advantage, I realized that winning it would hurt my game rather than help, since it paints an immediate target on your back, encourages people to put you on the block because they want to stop you from using it, and makes people expect you’ll use it to save them, all of which make it more of a detriment than a help when others know about it. Knowing the insignia would be in good hands, I chose to not try to win that competition.
The second part of Week 1 is where my game plan began to take shape. As the Hit the Road Part 2 competition was ending, we realized that Vom’s score would likely not be enough to survive and the most likely HOH would be mirdo, so I reached out to him before the competition ended, to solidify a strategic relationship before he won HOH.
Both of these came true, as Vom was evicted in Hit The Road Part 2 and mirdo won HOH. From there, it was time for me to enact the plan Vi and I had been building towards and we created an alliance called Hibana, consisting of myself, Violet, Ephe, and Flour. It would be this alliance that I’d work with for the entire game.
Of course, this had an immediate challenge up against us, as Flour was already put on the block with scattered for their performances in the competition. Scattered was someone I’d spoken to a bit and wanted to work with, but next to one of the people in my alliance, I had to try to make sure he was the one who got out.
With a lot of people leaning towards a Flour eviction, it was time for me to begin to make some moves. After Vi had tried to persuade mirdo to keep Flour with a more straightforward approach and he had seemed resistant to it, I knew that I needed to go for a completely different angle to keep him around. I had a conversation with Flour in DMs where he expressed his desire to work with mirdo, and I used the logs of that to persuade mirdo that keeping him was the better option. This worked great, and my approach was able to successfully convince him to keep Flour in the game.
It was this time that I also began to reach out to Almonds, an underrated player in BB9 and someone I’d wanted to work with going into the game. Though he ended up voting Flour because he wasn’t online after the vote had shifted, he trusted me enough to tell me that he was the one vote to evict Flour, forming the beginning of an important strategic relationship for me in the game.
In the end, Flour was saved by an 11-1 vote, with my conversation with mirdo being a key part of the vote flipping to keep him around.
The final eviction of Week 1 was perhaps one of the craziest of the season. With mirdo as HOH and everyone in Hibana on good terms with him, this eviction was set up to be fairly simple. After some discussion, Mirdo nominated TLS and Almonds off the bat, with plans to backdoor Quaking. I was content with it as long as Almonds was safe, but then some chaos began to erupt.
In an attempt to play both sides, both Violet and Ephe, without consulting me, informed Quaking of mirdo’s plan to backdoor him. I immediately recognized this as the type of move that could completely blow up in their faces, since Quaking could just tell mirdo they had said that and the target would instantly shift onto them. I let both of them know that this type of move could be dangerous and we started developing plans for what we’d do if this did in fact blow up.
When Quaking won the veto and saved TLS, mirdo immediately knew something was wrong and started speaking to me to try to find out who it was. Luckily, Mora had made some comment to mirdo that was suspicious and I was forced to jump on it to do damage control and get mirdo to choose him as the replacement nominee rather than Vi. After about an hour of pure chaos and freaking out, it was a success, and mirdo put him on the block.
With the end of week vote, Almonds and I had been talking strategically a good amount, while Mora and I had only spoken a tiny bit at the beginning of Week 1, so I pushed for a Mora eviction, which ended up happening.
This was a week where I mostly played under the radar, but did some setup to get myself further in the game. Hibana knew that Quaking was going to win HOH and didn’t particularly mind it, knowing that none of us were his targets. I played my part and reached out to Quaking with mirdo’s approval, telling Quaking I didn’t know who mirdo wanted backdoored but that he wanted someone backdoored, which allowed me to gain Quaking’s trust without mirdo being mad at me even if he heard it and helping cement Quaking’s feeling that mirdo was gunning for him.
The week proceeded pretty straight-forwardly, with mirdo being placed otb next to Aria after the veto, but then I realized there was a major opportunity to further my game and chose to act on it. After telling Quaking and Almonds that I wanted to cast a “sympathy vote” to keep mirdo in the game because Aria asked to be evicted, Flour and I both voted to evict Aria at her request. This would allow us to also retain trust with mirdo’s side of the house, allowing us to be good with everyone in the house.
With mirdo being evicted in a 5-4 vote, we put this plan into action. I reached out to Aria/Sen, telling them I had voted out Aria as requested and saying I thought Flour was the other vote, and we formed a second alliance. Vi soon claimed responsibility for the final vote to evict Aria (even though in reality it was Nick) and we encouraged them to trust her.
By making use of this opportunity to gain trust with one side of the house without upsetting the other, I was able to form a bond with Aria/Sen that would last for the rest of the game.
Week 3 was the time where I think I best exemplified the idea of a Conqueror in the game, using my power to improve my standing with the house and achieve some of my goals for this game. When I won HOH, I realized that there were three players remaining in the game that hadn’t spoken to me: Nick, Lily, and TLS. Of the three, I realized that TLS was the one who I most needed out for my own game. He was strong at competitions, was mostly a floater and not aligned with me, and was fairly close to both Quaking and Almonds, creating a balance of power skewed towards those two. If I wanted to eliminate a floater and continue being close allies with everyone, I needed for both the Aria/Sen group and the Quaking/Almonds group to be evenly matched, which meant eliminating TLS was a high priority.
Hibana and Aria/Sen were happy for me to go after TLS, but there was only one problem: Quaking and especially Almonds trusted me and would be good allies in the future but wanted TLS around in the game. This meant that to evict TLS, I’d need to find a more nuanced way to do so without getting any blood on my hands.
I initially nominated Nick and Lily for not speaking to me in the game and encouraged Almonds to pick Aria/Sen, who wanted TLS out of the game, for the veto, but I made sure that both Almonds and Quaking were aware that I’d nominate TLS if the veto was used because he was the only other player who hadn’t spoken to me.
Going into the veto, there was only one person who wouldn’t have used it to backdoor TLS: Almonds (I also threw the veto, knowing it’d be hard to get approval from Almonds/Quaking to use it). Of course, the person who ended up winning it was Almonds himself, which meant that if I wanted TLS backdoored, I had to somehow get him to use it. After realizing Almonds had somewhat of a game relationship with Lily, I helped coach him in a conversation with her to try to see if using the veto would strengthen their relationship, all while coaching Vi to have Lily say what Almonds wanted to hear. With Lily promising to vote out Nick over TLS, Almonds, confident TLS would stay as a pawn, saved her, allowing me to nominate TLS without it being a shock to either Quaking or Almonds.
At the vote, Hibana once again split our votes in order to gain trust, with Flour and Vi voting out TLS and Ephe voting out Nick. As HOH, I didn’t have to vote, which allowed me to send TLS out the door without any blood on my hands, accomplishing part of the floater purge.
This was a week I feel particularly proud of. It’s incredibly difficult as HOH to backdoor a player and get their allies to trust you more after the week’s events, but I think that I was able to do that super well. I adjusted to Almonds winning veto, got out the best player for my game, and moved towards my goal of the floater purge, all while getting no blood on my hands through my transparent approach to HOH that week.
This was probably the most straightforward eviction of the game. Knowing Hibana had majority on our tribe and Aria was on Flour’s and my side, we all decided to throw the competition, knowing Nick was a super easy target whose eviction would help accomplish the floater purge and that it was easy to justify throwing the comp to the other tribe.
After some-ahem-difficulties in throwing the Pokemon battle to Violet, I lost the competition and we voted out Nick unanimously.
One thing of note here is that Aria originally wanted to vote to evict Ephe, but I was the one who managed to convince her otherwise, allowing the vote to be unanimous and her to continue trusting me.
As the final eviction before jury, and one where almost everyone was eligible to be voted for, this eviction was bound to be intense. In the competition, I knew it was one where people often get angry over being selected as an answer, so I did my best to pick as viable a strategy as I could without angering anyone, picking Violet for almost every single question.
With the vote itself, Hibana managed to place ourselves in the middle, with Almonds/Quaking going after Lily for her vote to evict TLS (which I helped Ephe take credit for with Hibana, leaving her a target of both halves) and Aria/Sen not going after any of the members of Hibana. This left Hibana to decide which player we wanted to evict. I wanted Quaking, knowing he was a comp beast and the player left in the game the least aligned with me, but Ephe wanted Almonds. After we spoke about it for literally like three hours driving ourselves in circles, they agreed with me that evicting Quaking was in our best interest.
Meanwhile, Mora had reentered the game and was immune for his first week back, so I started to build a bit of a strategic relationship with him. I’d already informed Quaking/Almonds that I wasn’t willing to go to a tie on the vote, providing a justification to vote to evict Quaking, but I still didn’t want Quaking to know I was voting him out before he got out because of fear he’d try to blow up my game on the way out like he tried to in BB4. It was a bit shaky, but I informed Mora I was voting Quaking out with only enough time for him to switch without him being able to talk for a while with Quaking about it, with my telling the truth allowing me to continue building a strategic relationship with him just in case.
With Quaking evicted that week, another of the largest threats to my game got out and I was able to convince Ephe to save Almonds, a close ally of mine, in the process, setting me up in the start of the jury as a close ally of almost everyone there.
Week 5 was pretty simple. With Mora’s immunity expiring and given his record as a huge threat to win any HOH comp and his ability to have spoken to mirdo on the edge, allowing him to know Vi had turned on mirdo, he was far and away the largest target for Hibana that week.
Adding to this, Mora had begun to already start scrambling at the start of the week, naming Almonds/Ephe and Aria/Sen as targets to Vi, which Vi immediately told us through Hibana and we used to make sure he was a house target for everyone. When Vi/Ephe won HOH and Chieftain, Mora began to scramble even more, trying to turn Lily against Vi, only increasing the size of his target.
This made it pretty easy for the house to be rallied against him, with Sen/Almonds informed they’d be noms with Mora as the backdoor. Everyone in the house (including Mora) was aware of what was going to happen and Mora was pretty swiftly backdoored.
Week 6 was the week where I officially began to set up for the endgame. After Lily told Vi that Aria approached her wanting to vote out Sen over Mora and then there ended up being a vote against Sen, we immediately realized Aria was the one who cast that vote and that she couldn’t be trusted going forward in the game. That made her (along with Almonds for some of us simply because he was such a comp beast) one of Hibana’s two largest targets that week.
With Almonds winning HOH, this meant we had to try to find a way to get Aria out of house that week. Ephe and I had made an alliance with Almonds the previous week, so this was mostly down to us. Ephe tried the simple approach of arguing that Aria was a threat and needed to be evicted, but it failed, as Almonds clearly wanted Vi out via backdoor, which would be hard for us in Hibana to stop without outing our alliance. So I again had to think up a new angle and was the one who convinced Almonds that nominating Lily/Vi first would be the best play, which would give Vi a chance to save herself from the block. When Vi won the veto, we’d be able to pretty easily get Almonds to nominate Aria in her place and send her out.
This plan worked pretty much perfectly. However, the vote still needed to fall in a way that Sen would continue to trust Flour and me. For that, I convinced Ephe to use their Conqueror’s Insignia to get the majority of votes to evict Aria but allowing me to still vote to evict Lily. This is the type of play that gets overlooked, but I think that me convincing them to use the Insignia was super good for my game. Not only did I avoid getting blood on my hands for Aria’s eviction, I convinced Ephe to use up their power. This meant that if Ephe ever wanted to make a big move with the votes in the future, they’d be forced to consult someone else (probably me, since we were close) about it, placing myself in a spot in the game with more power.
The live eviction was a really nice week for my game, where I was able to use my influence to help make sure I could get out the people whose evictions were best for my game. At that point in the game, there were only three people in the game outside Hibana: Sen, Almonds, and Lily. Before the HOH competition began, I’d spoken to Sen about Vi, Lily, and Almonds being our largest targets. After the triple eviction was announced and he won HOH, it meant that the only way for Hibana to stay intact would be for Almonds and Lily to be evicted. Sen nominated the three people I’d suggested and I won the POV to lock in the nominations. To top it off, I even convinced Sen that keeping Vi was the best option, allowing for Hibana to all vote to keep her without me getting blood on my hands.
In the end, I’d helped steer the week so that all four members of Hibana were in the Final 5 with the one other player being outgoing HOH, a super strong position.
At this point in the game, there was only one thing Hibana needed to do to all be in the Final 4: win the veto. Knowing Vi was both the most likely to keep me off the block as a pawn and most likely to beat me in the Final 4 HOH comp, I helped push her to win HOH.
From there, all that was left in the week was the POV, and as long as Sen didn’t win, Hibana would be in the Final 4. With Ephe winning the POV and Vi nomming Flour as a replacement nominee, this goal was accomplished. Though Flour using the Scrambler’s Insignia was a bit of a shock, since he hadn’t told us about it, all it did was help cement the vote to keep him in the house.
With this eviction, I’d managed to help lead Hibana from Week 1 through Week 7 without a single casualty, getting us to the goal we’d set out for and cementing us as one of the strongest alliances, if not the strongest, in PBBB history.
With the entirety of my alliance in the Final 4, it was time for me to shift to playing for myself. My weakness in past games has been my inability to survive once my alliance made it to the end and it was time to try to change that. That meant making as many of the other players in the game as I could want to go to the end with me.
At this point, I had pretty good connections individually with all of Flour, Vi, and Ephe. Now all I needed was to try to make sure they’d take me to the end.
At the beginning of the week, Ephe admitted to me that they were considering taking Flour to the end over me. This, obviously, was something that I didn’t want to happen, so I used the fact that Flour had the Scrambler’s Insignia and hadn’t told us about it to convince them that Flour was a huge threat and someone they needed to get out. This worked almost too effectively--Flour suddenly went from the one they wanted out the least to the one they wanted out the most.
I also had conversations with Vi and began having some with Flour too. I can’t be sure how they would have panned out, but I believe neither of them would have evicted me if they’d been given the chance.
I managed to win the HOH competition, guaranteeing myself safety, and Ephe won the Power of Veto, which they used to send out Flour. I’d managed to get myself in the Final 3 and convinced Ephe to take out the player who they were formerly planning to take to the end over me, putting myself in a strong spot going into the final week of the game.
It was now the final week of the game and all that was left to do was make my way into the finale. I won Part 1 of the HOH competition, guaranteeing my spot in Part 3. Then, I won Part 3 with a perfect score in Know Your Jury, cementing my spot here in the Final 2. Even if I hadn’t won, however, I believe that either of the other two players would have likely taken me here.
My decision on who to evict was incredibly tough. Both Ephe and Vi were amazing allies and having to evict either of them when they were so close to getting to the end was absolutely heartbreaking. In the end, I chose to evict Violet, because her ability to navigate through the whole game with such a massive target on her back was super impressive. Even though Ephe had an advantage from Part 2, I realized that it was most likely no stronger than a jury vote and that because Lily was almost always voting for Vi in F2, it didn’t make them an appreciably larger threat.
I believe that I managed to accomplish my goals heading into this season. I made sure the floater purge happened, eliminating TLS and Nick before the jury phase. I used new and innovative tactics to help advance my game and get my alliance to the Final 4. I played an incredibly strong social game, with close connections in the game to almost every single player in the jury. I found opportunities to make tons of small but important plays to advance my game and took them. I designed plans in my alliance and helped implement them, convincing others to go after my targets. And I improved on my past games and found a way to make sure I could navigate through the endgame.
Everyone knew I was playing hard this season, and yet I was never once nominated or at major risk of being evicted. I’ve done so much work to make it here and for that I’m super proud.
I also wanted to give some quick shoutouts to everyone who played this game with me, so here we go: @Vom I’m still so sad I never got the opportunity to play this game with you. I think we could’ve been great allies and it’s a shame you got out just because of your performance in one competition. D: @scattered mind I also really wish you got more of a chance at this game. I’m so sorry we had to send you out on your birthday and I wish you didn’t end up otb next to Flour so early and we could have played more together. @mirdo I’ve already told Lorde to tell you this so many times, but I feel like you had such a great setup this season and it’s so unfortunate Hibana existed because you would have been in an amazing spot without it. I really hope you didn’t take your eviction as a sign of you being a bad player, because it was how good you were playing that meant you had to go. @The Last Shaymin We didn’t really get a chance to speak this game and unfortunately that meant I had to try to take you out. I hope this game has helped you in some way as a player going forward. @TeamAqua4Life #HEYNICK We also unfortunately didn’t get a chance to speak this game. I also hope you enjoyed your time in the game and it’s helped you as a player going forward. @quakingpunch73 Quaking! You’re a player with super good fundamentals in this game and it’s always a treat to get to play with you. Sorry you didn’t get to make it to the jury because you played really well and definitely deserved it. @Mora I really enjoyed every conversation I had this game with you and I'm really glad you got the chance to come back in the game and I could get to know you better. It’s a shame our games never really aligned, because you’re a super calculating strategic player and someone who is always playing and I really enjoy that. @Jacklongkawaii I’m glad you got the opportunity to really play the game this time. I loved your chaos-based strategy and you proved yourself to be a fun and unique player in this game. @Fiery_Lugia RIP getting 7th again. Having the :FL: around as a personality is always fun and I’ll still treasure that picture frame forever haha @FourteenAlmonds You were such an amazing ally to have in this game and a great friend to talk to about anything. I think based on your KYJ question you really underrate yourself; you played super well this season, grew so much from BB9, and have so much to be proud of. @Senkun Congrats on making it so far in your first game of PBBB! You were a great ally to have and always someone who I could speak to and find a smart and interesting perspective. @EurekaTingz I’d never gotten the chance to play with you before this game, and now I can say I truly get why everyone loves having you as an ally. You’re super fun to play with and I really enjoyed yelling about BB22 with you lol. @VioletValkyrie Evicting you was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made in PBBB. You’ve become such an amazing player and it’s been great being there to witness that. I know how tough this eviction was for you and I hope you can understand what a sign of respect it was and how great of a game you’ve played. You’re a queen of this game and I hope you can be proud of what you accomplished. @Ephemera I've already spoken to you on Discord about this so I'll keep this short, but I'm so glad I got the opportunity to play with you this game.
At this point I've been writing for over 4 hours so I'm going to wrap this up. I've been writing forever so sorry if what I say somewhere here is incoherent and impossible to understand and feel free to ask me to rephrase something in a way that is coherent lol
It’s been a really tough and competitive game and I want to thank each and every one of you for playing it with me. I enjoyed playing this game with every single one of you, as players but especially as people who were always fun to be around. It’s an absolute honor to have been able to make it to the Final 2 of a game with so many strong players.
I’m looking forward to all of your questions!
Hey, hey! NP's basically given you his rundown of the season, and you've all played in it (except audience, but I'm sure Cel/Lorde have kept you updated), so I don't think I'll bore you with another season recap – I'll just hit the highlights.
We all know it: NP has a really strong game, and it really showed this season.
So, why should you vote for me over him?
At the start of the game, I had a pretty clear vision of how I wanted the season to go: we would make an alliance that would get ins with pretty much every player in the game, and play everyone else against each other. This alliance shaped up to be Hibana – consisting of me, Flour, NP, and Violet – and we each made sure to connect with a few players each.
This move ended up shaping the rest of the game – all four of us had ins with a certain few players each, but since we spread the connections among us, none of us started off with big targets on our backs. The honor of being the big targets early game went to Mirdo and Quaking, which leads me to my first point.
As an alliance, our goal was to play the sides against each other. However, those sides didn't just set themselves up. We made sure to form them in the way we wanted, with the players we wanted.
Mirdo started this game being the scariest player in the house: with Aria and Sen as allies, and a lot more people as connections, he was the person people didn't want on their bad side.
The plan, however, necessitated the existence of another faction to oppose Mirdo. As such, I felt that Quaking should be informed of how Mirdo was targeting him – Quaking was another big figure in the house, with many connections and allies of his own. Certainly it was risky – but if it played off correctly, the game would run exactly how we wanted it to.
And it did: Mirdo evicted Mora (a nice bonus, since he was incredibly dangerous), and Quaking promptly evicted Mirdo the next week, saving us from having blood on our hands.
The game was afoot.
So: I took risks to ensure that our ideal game state would occur.
Next: since I had helped to get Quaking off the hook, he trusted me enough for me to be in his core alliance – consisting of us, Almonds, and Shaymin. This, in my opinion, was the hardest part of my game.
The plan was still in motion: get a few people to trust each one of us, and collect information and deal it out as needed to ensure the other houseguests target other people, not us. But my position was the hardest to maintain, for a few reasons.
A) Quaking, Shaymin, and Almonds were arguably the most dangerous collective in the house at that point. Not only did Quaking and Almonds have the social strength to potentially get any of Hibana evicted, but they were the three biggest comp threats in house besides Violet – and Violet couldn't win comps, otherwise Hibana would be exposed. If any of them caught on, or even set their minds to evicting someone in Hibana, we would be caught between a rock and a hard place.
B) I also had connections to Nick, stemming from the alliance he set up with me and Mirdo week 1. However, considering the fact that Nick was gunning for Quaking, this would be hard to reconcile :U
As such, I believe my position pre-jury was pretty darn vital to the success of this alliance: I successfully convinced the strongest side in the game to gun for other people, while making sure that my motivation to preserve Hibana wasn't revealed. Simultaneously, I kept my connection with Nick waiting in the wings should it ever be needed, while ensuring Nick didn't find out about me working with Quaking.
As such: I successfully directed the scariest players in the game not to go for my real allies.
Over the first few weeks of the game, everything was going according to plan.
Goal 1: establish an alliance with ties to literally everyone else in-game.
Check.
Goal 2: keep that alliance secret.
Check.
Goal 3: make the threats target each other.
Check.
At this point, Shaymin had been backdoored by NP, and we were hoping to get another comp threat (as in Quaking or Almonds) out the door next.
Then Survivor Week hit, and threw a wrench into everyone's plans. Not only was Violet separated from the rest of us in Hibana, but the aforementioned threats were both on the same tribe as her.
We then had two potential plans going forward:
A. do our best to win, and hope Violet was planning something
B. make our tribe lose, and use our majority to evict a non-Hibana member
I had taken quite a few risks beforehand. But potentially losing Violet wasn't a risk I was willing to take – all the risks were meant to ensure success of this alliance; I wasn't about to jeopardize the situation I risked my position in the house to set up.
Thus: we lost.
(Not going to lie, I don't think we could have won there, but hey, at least the loss was according to plan!)
Losing Nick in Survivor Week wasn't ideal, since he was a connection of mine, but we couldn't evict Aria without letting people know that something was off.
Then came the second half of Survivor Week, and the tribes merged once more. Violet thankfully won immunity, making my job of keeping Quaking's side off our backs much easier, but we still had to navigate the rest of the week and ensure that a priority target was evicted – especially with Mora back and looking like he was going to join up with Quaking.
NP and I discussed endlessly about who we should target there. On at least two occasions, we argued well into the night (on my end that is). In the end, we decided that taking out the more prominent player, Quaking, was the better move. It kinda tore me up a little, but Quaking was evicted with me not playing my insignia.
But the vote was 7-3, not 6-4 like predicted.
Thus: I adapted to twists – and there were many twists – easily, and managed to reach the best outcome after each of them.
With Quaking gone, Mora was the next comp threat we needed out – it was highly possible that a duo of Mora and Almonds just stomp competitions for the whole jury phase.
However: there were a couple things we could use to reach that end – Mora had voted Quaking in the last eviction, not Lily as expected, and when Violet looked to be winning HoH, Mora suggested that the block be me and Almonds.
As such, it was easy to build the narrative that Mora had turned on Almonds and I, and we thus formed a new alliance with NP. In addition, Hibana had successfully gotten Almonds on board with backdooring Mora – two birds with one stone.
Despite the game seeming easy, I made sure to plan meticulously for the upcoming weeks, and made sure that everyone knew the strategy.
This was to come in handy later.
Once Mora was gone, it seemed like smooth sailing. I correctly calculated that Week 6 would just need to end with Almonds not getting chieftain – if he won HoH, he'd be vulnerable to a backdoor the next week, and if he didn't win HoH, we could just backdoor him. We didn't need power that week – either Almonds would take out someone who was not us, or someone who was not us would take out Almonds. As such, we carefully kept track of scores and when it looked like Almonds was the highest score behind us, we made sure to throw to Almonds.
Slight problem: Almonds wanted Vi out.
Easy solution: NP and I convinced him to put up Vi/Lily initially, so that ostensibly a renom could be from Aria/Sen, and turn the supposed pairs against each other.
(NP, my plan of wanting aria gone didn't exactly fail. We wouldn't have gotten Aria gone that week had I not so strongly argued to get her gone in our group – I feel Sen would have gone there instead, and Aria would still hold a lot of resentment for us after that.
Also: given the state at the time, I was never going to use my insignia anyway – so your move in getting me to spend it was good, but not that good. My chance to use it would have been during the Quaking eviction, but that wouldn't have worked anyhow.
End side note.)
Vi won the veto handily, Aria was put up, and we were good to go.
Then: more twists. The Triple Eviction was something no one saw coming, and we couldn't communicate to get on the same page.
However, since everyone knew the plan, and everyone knew where people stood, even though Sen won the HoH in the end, we knew we'd be safe, and could definitely win the veto over the others.
The triple eviction actually furthered Hibana's plans at a faster rate, and we entered F5 handily, with Sen being the outgoing HoH, and you all know the rest.
Sen was evicted (Flour's Scrambler's Insignia did cause some panic when we found out about it), but I did realize from that that Flour was the one who would win F2 100% of the time, and evicted him in F4. Sorry, Flour.
I won FHOH Part 2, got the advantage, got picked by NP, and here we are.
The main point here is: I planned meticulously for each outcome and made sure everyone knew what the contingencies were, and that helped deal with unexpected twists.
To conclude:
NP has had a pretty darn dominating game, but here are the points in favor of me.
I took risks to get the desired game state.
I played a precarious position – getting the dangerous players to trust me and also not go for my allies – and played it well.
I adapted to twists easily, sizing them up and getting the best outcome each time.
I was able to do (3) because of my meticulous planning and thought process, which allowed everyone to know what the goals were and how to get to them.
If you also don't mind, I'll go into a bit more detail into why I think my game has an edge over NP's.
If you didn't notice – and that's fine, given that the whole point of Hibana was not to be noticed until it was too late – NP and I have played incredibly similar games.
We both had ins with more than our share of the house – I know I said that we split the house among the four of us in Hibana, but NP worked with Almonds, and Aria and Sen (alongside Flour) and had talks with a lot of others. I, on the other hand, talked to and worked with almost everyone in the house, with the only people I never worked with being Aria and Sen (not including Vom/Scattered).
This time, however, I'm not in the position I had in BB7. I got to make bold moves, and made sure no one traced them back to me:
Setting up the house – I made sure to make sides and get Quaking's side to counter Mirdo's side. I set up the Winner's Alliance, and built it as a framework to counter Mirdo's side of the house, while keeping tabs on the other side and ensuring I wasn't perceived as the cause, or the second-in-command.
Quaking eviction – I had a major hand in this, and all it took was not playing the insignia, something that people wouldn't fault me for.
Simply staying on Quaking's side of the house was probably the most dangerous play in the game. If anyone ever sussed me out, I was done for. But I got through it and managed to keep the facade until the very end.
NP played the laid-back style this time – he made moves that advanced his game, with the biggest being the Shaymin eviction on his HoH, but I think how I managed to never get nominated once before F5 despite my risky, precarious position shows my skill, and even then the F5 nomination was just for show and to keep Sen pacified – even getting nominated there was furthering the plan.
Despite my emphasis on the risks involved in my game – and there were a ton of those – I always made sure those went in my favor in the end. What I said a lot in Hibana chat was, "Whatever happens, we'll deal." And we could deal, because I planned for pretty much everything.
NP has also played the insider job – he and Flour were the ones taking care of the remnants of Mirdo's side and making sure they target not me. But my job was the riskier one, since I had to believably let my side get decimated without losing their trust in me.
I've played the literal tightrope, and made it through unscathed, through extremely detailed planning in Hibana chat and in my DR.
Honestly? I think anyone in the F4 deserved a win.
Flour for his strong socials and under-the-radar game – and for being the (relative) hero among the villains in Hibana, Vi for simply being such a force of nature in the house that once Quaking was gone the whole game revolved around her, I could go on and on.
I knew going into this F2 that it would be an uphill battle. NP's played a great game, and people like him.
(A signifier of that is when he got the most answers in the "Who would you like to see win the game?" category.)
So, why does NP deserve to win this game? He's played a masterful game of keeping people from targeting him while also subtly reaching his goals – for example, the Shaymin eviction was to commit to his floater purge, yes, but it also furthered NP's wincon – both his individual and alliance wincon.
You'll forgive me if I don't go into as much detail for NP's game as I've gone into for mine, but NP 100% is deserving of a win here, for the following reasons:
He was the voice of reason in Hibana. We went to him for arbitration, for confirmation, and for a lot of stuff.
He kept a low profile even while winning power, which is something I'd like to learn how to do. This is particularly impressive given his reputation already.
He always had a clear vision of what he wanted each week.
And finally: he made sure that people in F4 wanted to bring him to F2. I probably would have brought Flour in the end had discussing with him not made me realize that Flour was an autoloss.
NP's the Blue Oni to my Red Oni (well, Violet was the Red Oni, I guess I was the Red-ish Oni? Purple Oni?), and I respect his play a great deal.
(Red Oni, Blue Oni is a trope; you can look it up if you want to know more about it.)
NP's the Blue Oni to my Red Oni (well, Violet was the Red Oni, I guess I was the Red-ish Oni? Purple Oni?), and I respect his play a great deal.(Red Oni, Blue Oni is a trope; you can look it up if you want to know more about it.)
This strategy is a pretty good example of what this means.
(A Week 1 decision basically characterizes both of our gameplay styles? It's more likely than you'd think :U)
In the first part of the Hit The Road competition, with me unable to speak to anyone else in the game, I used math and game theory to try to determine my optimal move in Part 1 (if anyone likes math enough to care I can go into this but I’m not sure anyone wants me ranting about game theory haha), successfully deciding to shoot myself, allowing me to escape being at threat of eviction in Part 2.
For the RAF comp, NP used math and game theory to deduce that the technical best option is to shoot self, since it gives a better outcome whether your opponent shoots you or shoots self. Reason, logic, math, level-headedness – that's what I think characterized NP's gameplay this season.
On my end, I decided to shoot Mirdo because I figured Mirdo was the type of person who wouldn't expect people to shoot him, and thus would shoot – I played off what I knew of people's thought process. Psychology and getting into people's heads is the type of play I typically do.
Although I'm not as logical as NP, I completely respect his play and think that is play worthy of winner status.
As you're both aware, from my perspective you did play extremely similar games. What you did, you did as an alliance, and that saw the entirety of Hibana make it to Final 4. You both kept it a perfect secret and played incredible social games outside of that alliance, though for me it seems that NP had a slightly more overt impact on the game, mainly as a result of the Shaymin backdoor. I haven't seen anything like that coming from Ephe, but hey, we weren't working together (note: turns out it was pretty one-sided there lol >.>) until relatively late in the game.
So, the question I'm going to ask to distinguish between the two of you is going to be about your social game: What position would each of you have been in had the winner of the Triple Eviction POV been myself or Senkun, and what were your plans for that event?
I was a full 49 seconds behind NP so it's not like it was close, but I think it's an interesting hypothetical.
As you're both aware, from my perspective you did play extremely similar games. What you did, you did as an alliance, and that saw the entirety of Hibana make it to Final 4. You both kept it a perfect secret and played incredible social games outside of that alliance, though for me it seems that NP had a slightly more overt impact on the game, mainly as a result of the Shaymin backdoor. I haven't seen anything like that coming from Ephe, but hey, we weren't working together (note: turns out it was pretty one-sided there lol >.>) until relatively late in the game.
So, the question I'm going to ask to distinguish between the two of you is going to be about your social game: What position would each of you have been in had the winner of the Triple Eviction POV been myself or Senkun, and what were your plans for that event?
I was a full 49 seconds behind NP so it's not like it was close, but I think it's an interesting hypothetical.
Hm. Interesting.
I think you mean Triple Eviction POV winner being you or Lily? Sen wasn't playing in the POV.
Let's have some fun, and show you my general thought process.
If either of you wins the POV, then we have the following situation:
Violet still on the block
Almonds on the block, Lily off (or the other way around)
Me/NP/Flour as possible nominees
Given this, I'd definitely be the renom. Oooh, this is interesting.
I could definitely have gone there, if the wrong series of events took place.
They didn't though, but let's consider.
If Lily is the POV winner:
Violet / Almonds / Ephe
Flour and NP are Hibana, so they'd likely discuss who to bring between me and Violet.
Lily would 100% vote to save Violet here.
I think I stay, simply because NP knows he loses to Violet in F2, and convinces Flour of that as well.
If Almonds is the POV winner:
Violet / Lily / Ephe
Flour and NP are Hibana, same thing: choose me or Violet to stay.
I expect you vote to keep me, or maybe Lily – wouldn't blame you if you did.
Either way, it really comes down to Flour and NP's decision to choose me or Vi to stay, and I think I'd be the one picked to stay.
Can't say for certain, but this is a hypothetical anyway.
Side note: sorry almonds :U
Other side note: I pretty much had a hand in every major eviction of the season, so I would suppose that counts for major moves.
You guys gave me a game to remember, that's for damn sure. Sadly this finale could have been a little more vicious if only you let me play. Since I had a question in mind before my eviction and you unfortunately both answered it in your initial write-ups, I'd like to throw you guys an interesting one. I am me, after all.
My question, or request, is a little similar to Lily's. How would you write a case for me to win? I can be transparent here and say I'll simply vote for whoever's I like the most.
(well, Violet was the Red Oni, I guess I was the Red-ish Oni? Purple Oni?)
(Red Oni, Blue Oni is a trope; you can look it up if you want to know more about it.)
You guys gave me a game to remember, that's for damn sure. Sadly this finale could have been a little more vicious if only you let me play. Since I had a question in mind before my eviction and you unfortunately both answered it in your initial write-ups, I'd like to throw you guys an interesting one. I am me, after all.
My question, or request, is a little similar to Lily's. How would you write a case for me to win? I can be transparent here and say I'll simply vote for whoever's I like the most.
I'm curious – what was your initial question?
Also – please excuse me, I'll wait a bit before making the case for you to win.
(Gotta make sure it's good )
Also: I think I know why this F2 is gonna be brutal (it's already brutal lmao):
our plays are super tied together. Like, NP's shaymin eviction occurs easily because of my connections to Quaking, my cover on Quaking's side of the house doesn't get blown because NP helped in keeping it hidden, and neither of us can fully claim credit for the Quaking eviction.
So this F2 really comes down to whose process the jury likes better.
My initial question was asking you two to prove yourselves as strong to stand next to me, by getting clarification on how you two took out both our (as Hibana) and your own biggest threats without relying on the 108 billion by your side. You've both proven yourselves in that regard, and... nah. I don't think I can say that. Maybe I can and maybe I won't.
