Early jury I pretty much hid. I had alliances here and there - namely, one with you, one with Vash and Entreri, one with Malkon, and a very tight alliance with CM1. CM1 was ridiculously good at getting information and making things happen - he basically had half the game working with him, and it included everyone I didn't have an alliance with, so he seemed amazing as a #1 ally (plus, he's just amazing generally <3 <3 ).
I did a couple of things directly while CM1 was around, but they were generally minor - for example, I told you and CC that Entreri was talking to you both about voting for the other in the first Jury round, because I didn't want CC to go (low vote count) and Entreri seemed like the only vote I could make happen without putting a target on my back for it. For the most part, I stuck to making sure I got all the information CM1 wasn't getting so that between us we could have the complete picture and we could make a plan around it (plans which were pretty much always actually carried out by CM1). I wouldn't call it coasting, because through CM1 I still had some control on the game, but it absolutely could be considered that because if he decided to ditch me I would not be able to impact much of anything. I trusted that he wouldn't ditch me and I think I was right on that.
At CM1's elimination, I knew he was going and I could have put in the votes to save him. If it had been an earlier round, I probably would have done, because I was never expecting to make it anywhere near end until I was somehow there - my earlygame objective was just to make the game interesting and keep my friends alive, hence why I used nearly all my votes in that stage, but just before the start of the Jury phase I decided to start playing to win instead, and I knew if I saved CM1 I was a) saving someone who would beat me at FTC and b) using up my ability to make any kind of move later on, where it might save me personally. I had to let him go there.
Thankfully, he put me through to Ceph and CC by telling them I was his guy on the inside of Vash/Aro/Aura, and by doing so he essentially put me in the position he'd been in, getting information from both sides. This was where I kicked my ass into gear and stopped relying on other people. Ceph/CC were annoyed enough with Vash/Aro/Aura hoarding votes (and claimed that Fel/Piggy were also, although I don't know this for sure - I kept a level of separation from Fel/Piggy to try to minimize the risk that me working against Vash/Aro/Aura would get leaked back to them, so all communications with those two went through Ceph) that they had a plan to use every vote from everyone else to snipe off one of the three, with the agreement that whoever got that third FTC spot would get the jury votes of all of the rest of Ceph/CC/Fel/Piggy/Me. After hearing this, my objective became to get to the end with 2 of Vash/Aro/Aura for obvious reasons, but I knew I couldn't do it the way they were planning, because if we used all our votes to snipe someone that early, the other two of Vash/Aro/Aura get to choose who goes to FTC with them and there would be so many better choices to take than me.
So I made a different plan with Ceph. I'd try to swing Vash/Aro/Aura (I'll call you guys VAA from here to save typing that over and over) to targeting someone with zero votes, either Fel (we thought she had zero, she turned out not to and was just hiding her votes really well) or CC. I can't remember if I went to all of you about this, but I did try very, very hard to swing Vash at the very least onto voting for Fel because I thought he would then swing the two of you, but he wasn't having any of it and we ended up losing Piggygal - a huge blow because Piggy had 13 votes, a huge portion of what we had at the time.
Move forward a round, I realise there are way more votes in play than there should be and the only way it made sense was if Fel was hiding them. She'd been hiding these votes from everyone I was talking to which meant she was incredibly dangerous to me - so I tried to get her to nuke one of VAA by asking Ceph to tip her off that she was getting targeted. My primary objective there was to take out a huge chunk of votes in the game without having to spend any of mine or ceph's, by eliminating one of VAA through Fel votedumping.
This plan failed, because Fel wouldn't respond to Ceph. Ceph tipped her off about the vote, but she stayed completely silent except for posting '1 vote Vash' in the alliance chat, which we assumed was meant to be direct to Monty. I had to reevaluate what I wanted to do, so I decided to try to flip it on its head - get rid of the unpredictable votes Fel had by trying to get you to votedump. I tipped you off that the other side was votedumping you (which wasn't true) to try to get you to ditch votes and to take Fel out of the game, which ended up working - you spent all the way down to (if I have my numbers right) 9, I think.
Another thing happened this round that had a huge impact - Vash out of the blue asked me to put 2 votes on Fel instead of one. I wasn't planning this beforehand, but a plan formed after he said this - I realised I could hide Ceph's votes by putting in only 1 vote and asking Ceph to do so too. The previous round, Vash had asked me for a screenshot proving I'd voted for CC (something Monty later verified was okay), which I'd provided, but that screenshot had also picked up the mod votecount for me so that was 100% confirmed with Vash. If there were missing votes, he would suspect his allies.
And that's exactly what happened. Cut to next round, Vash starts telling me that one of Aro/Aura is lying to him, and comes to the idea that we need to blindside whichever one is more likely to be hoarding votes and not telling him about them. Fantastic! I could eliminate one of VAA right here, and I'd still have my votes and Ceph's votes in my pocket for a later move if we needed to make one. Vash came to the conclusion that Aura was lying (I pushed this a fair bit because I figured Aura had more than Aro after the results of the previous round, but I think Vash would have gone there even without me pushing) and sniped him - again asking for 2 of my votes, so I once again hid Ceph's votes with mine.
Here's where things went a bit wonky. Vash immediately comes up to me asking if I did anything that previous round - and I know at this point that he has a screenshot from Aro, so I either have to claim that Aro forged the screenshot or come clean about what I did. I decided to go with the latter, because I figured that I could convince Vash that CC and Ceph were too dangerous to take to the end based on the pledge that group all had to vote for each other if anyone - and I figured that if Vash decided I was the one lying I'd be in far more danger than if I just came clean. He'd actually joked about me making the exact play I made when he was talking about targeting Aura:
So I thought he was pretty much guaranteed to put two and two together and figure out what I'd done, especially if we sent Ceph home.
Amusingly, Aro actually had edited his screenshot to show less votes than he had - I noticed this immediately when Vash sent me that screenshot, because it was titled 'proof.png' which strongly suggests someone re-saved the image *after* taking the screenshot, but I was only sent the screenshot after I'd already come clean. I was kicking myself when I saw it but what had been done was already done and I couldn't take it back.
Vash... did not take it well. It turns out he'd been playing the game on the basis that he would never stab anyone who wasn't intending to stab him, and he hated the fact that I'd tricked him into stabbing someone who wasn't actually lying to him - which is reasonable, but I don't think the rest of his reaction was. He got angry at me for it, and we had an argument - my PoV was that there were 3 people in the game he viewed as close allies, so he had to cut one at F4, and I knew that would probably be me if I didn't make something happen before it. He even outright told me this in the argument - he said that I'd 'have a shot' at convincing him to take me at F4 based on the loyalty card, which obviously meant there was a very strong chance he wouldn't take me, but he was phrasing this all as if I was some monster for having the audacity to not go to F4 with him (and most likely no further).
I'll admit, this got me annoyed. I was fully intending to go to the end with Vash/Aro before this point - I thought it was probably my best win chance, and it was the easy, easy option for me because of the amount of votes they had. At that point, I started thinking that maybe I should go to the end with Ceph/CC just to show that I could. Vash was talking as though his spot at FTC was guaranteed, and in any reasonable scenario, it was - but I'm the king of unreasonable scenarios.
When I tried to reach out to Vash one more time in the morning to see if anything could be done, he told me he was putting one vote on Ceph and essentially told me to fuck off. Not quite in that way, but it boiled down to 'I still hate you so stop talking to me before I decide to vote you instead'. That was the moment I locked in my endgame plan to do the impossible and take Ceph/CC.
I figured that CC would vote with us in the event of a tie, because CC really didn't like Vash/Aro's vote hoarding and was more invested in stopping them getting to the end than anything else in the game at that point. I took a huge risk on Ceph voting with me, but honestly, we'd built up enough trust at that point that I was willing to take the gamble. So I went to Aro and pretended I was buying his story about not having any votes to try to make sure he thought he wouldn't be a target, and claimed that I'd be putting in a whole bunch on Ceph to try to get him to lowball. I went to Ceph and pointed out that there was a way we (C/C/C) could all make it if we were able to survive this vote by just using four votes, because Vash was holding back to try to ensure he had majority on the final round.
And we did that. And it worked.
I immediately talked to Ceph and then locked in my votes on Vash. It maybe wasn't the best play from a gameplay perspective - I think I would have an easier FTC against Vash, because Vash told me he would throw everything he possibly could into making sure Ceph won if I took him out - but it was the play I wanted to make, because I like Ceph, I like CC, I've worked well with them both, and frankly I found the way Vash had treated me to be arrogant (acting as though his spot was guaranteed and not considering that it might not be) and incredibly annoying (in the whole not talking to me part) and I didn't want to reward that with an FTC spot. But most of all, managing to get myself/Ceph/CC to the end after the huge vote disparity in the earlier rounds was something incredible, and I'm someone who is obsessed with doing incredible things. If you had looked at the votecount between VAA and CCC at F6 (16-33) all three of us making it was damn near impossible - and we pulled it off.
