Like Trop, I want to start out by thanking Casey/onside/horvie for running the game. I didn't get to play the last couple of forum games, as I've been helping host them. As a co-host, I understand how difficult it is to continually come up with interesting and thought-provoking challenges, and I think these guys did a great job of that, I had a lot of fun researching them. As a fan of MTV's The Challenge, I wanted to give this one a shot, as it seemed like Casey based it off the latest version, Free Agents.
I've wanted to team up with polabonez and dubs for a while in one of these games, and finally had that chance here, tho with players being eliminated by challenges rather than votes, having a strong alliance was less important than normal. Unfortunately polabonez and dubs both got knocked out pretty early. Luckily trop and I agreed to work together right about the time dubs went out.
It actually got pretty frustrating at that point, as we kept approaching people to add a 3rd vote, to try and have majorities for voting people into elims, as soon as we'd get someone to join us, they'd lose an elim and we'd have to ask someone else. primetime, gmc_sierra, amorak, nyaggie, freaking every time we'd agree to work together, they would go out on like the very next challenge!
We both realized pretty early, that the key to the game was that you can't get voted out if you aren't even in an elimination challenge. And we did a very good job down the stretch, steering the votes away from each other. Just about every vote I was a part of, I was able to throw a name out first and get others to follow suit.
With that said, the challenges mattered more in this competition than any of the others in our forum games, and I think I either won, or was part of the winning team, more than anyone else. Out of all the elimination challenges in the game, I was only a part of one of them (very early on) and I crushed that one. Plus, I won what I think are the two most important challenges of the game, at Final Three, part one and part three.
Between heading up the alliance that controlled just about every vote from the beginning of the game, and my performance in the challenges throughout the season, I hope I've earned your vote to win.
A couple other things, I got crushed by the golf challenge early in the season. I filled half a notebook making spreadsheets from researching that one challenge. I was really down after that, but came back and won that elimination challenge (again, the only one I had to do the entire season) going away.
I'm also disappointed that I didn't figure out any of the Power Plays. I really like the "idol" searches, and I'm frustrated that I couldn't find any of them this time. Did anyone find one?
In closing, thanks again to the hosts for a really fun game. Thanks to trop for being a great partner and staying loyal to the end. I always preach in these games, that you can make promises and keep your word to the end and still get to the end, and we proved it.
Also, props to thebish for getting so far in the game. Early on, based on the voting, it looked like he was targeting me, so I did everything I could to get him out. He survived something like 6 or 7 elimination challenges! Gotta respect that, making it all the way to final three.
With that, I'll be glad to answer any questions you guys might have.
P.S. Trop is a Bears fan...you can't really vote for someone like that can you?