Raphael

[Rhea]

This thread is for Raphael's questions and finalist answers.

[Raphael]

First off, well played to all three of you.  I suspected that this would become the F3 the moment it became clear that Edelgard wasn't willing to go to rocks for me.  I said a long time ago that there were no goats in the game and I stand by that.  All three of you would be worthy winners.

Now, I've known where my vote was going for a long time. Barring a complete meltdown in the opening speeches my vote was never going to be up for grabs.  I don't want you all to fight to get a vote that you have no chance of receiving.  That being said, the rest of the jury is not decided and so I'm going to ask a few questions anyway.  They will be fair questions, intended not to tank any finalists or prop them up, but instead to give you all one more platform to show off to the rest of the jury.

I was going to just post this for now and think of my questions later but the mods have told me that they "have to be dicks" about the post limit and therefore this counts.  So to start things off:

Dorothea: I can't help but noticed that while saying nice things about everyone on the jury and also Edelgard, your speech only mentions Shamir twice and both times were framed in a you-vs-her manner.  Can you tell me how *you* view her game and how your own game interacted with it?

Edelgard:  For most of the game you had a reputation of being a gamebot, and certainly the earlier parts of you speech seem to bear this out.  At the end you say you did heartfelt things for the sake of them but those moments didn't really stand out to me.  Can you elaborate on these things?

Shamir:  You mentioned multiple times during the game that you were concerned about being seen as tied too closely to Edelgard, and yet much to the surprise of everybody on the jury Edelgard was not one of the people who had to attempt firemaking.  Can you explain why taking Edelgard to the end was not a mistake?

[Dorothea]

I OBSESSED over Shamir and I'm sure that's no secret.  I could have been waayyyy off base too and everyone just considered Shamir another player but I picked up on little hints such as her frustration with the Claude vote followed immediately by a push on Hapi.  Or how everyone said they didn't have a preference on what F9 vote to do yet she kept insisting in our group chat that Felix should be the one to go.  After Claude, it felt like every vote only happened if Shamir allowed it to happen and I had to figure out how to work around that.  What's worse, I suspected one of You/Shamir/Edie to have an idol as you 3 were some of the stronger players in the game and picked up on things quickly. 

So my way of interacting was to always stay on Shamir's good side.  I saw the power she had and didn't want to be caught in a 1v1 with her after what happened to Hapi and with me suspecting she had an idol.  Instead, I plotted with Petra/Caspar to make a move at F8 and F7 against her but we needed Ashe to do this.  In the end, nothing really worked out and most players seemed content to consider Shamir not a major threat.  Even Caspar was hesitant about saving Felix at 9 or pushing you at 8 so my worries about Shamir were getting overlooked.  Luckily, my relationship with her/edie was strong enough that I was never their target but I did have to adapt my gameplay around theirs after plans to weaken them kept failing. 

[Shamir]

When I voiced my concern about being seen as tied to Edelgard, those were for the most part not genuine concerns, but rather a tactic. My intention was

1. Get Edelgard targeted before me [and not as a split vote] so that we would know where to play our idols, and
2. Tank my own threat level by dumping all the heat I got for my moves on her.

I am now seeing that it may have worked a little too well, as I'm getting many questions asking why I didn't cut her if I saw her as my shield. I didn't realize that calling Edelgard a shield as a tactic to get her targeted without really meaning it meant I would later be obligated to cut her. If everyone in the game goes home before me there aren't enough rounds to cut everybody!!!

I also wasn't expecting Dorothea and Edelgard to cooperate and vote for Ashe, but they went and did it. I don't know why Edelgard thought that was a good move, that will be for her to explain. I felt that Dorothea would be the best vote for me to make in F4 because she was more likely than Ashe or Edelgard to have votes locked in for her (see: Hapi's question thread).

I feel like taking Edelgard to the finals was not a mistake because even though I set her up to go home before me by calling her a shield, I still think I can beat her in the end! And setting her up to go home before me in a worst case scenario was supposed to be a resume move for me, not her!

The other reason I think that I can beat her is because I believe I was the more active member of our duo that made moves and pushed for votes, while Edelgard was the one telling me to just chill and keep on sliding through as the "mafia informed minority" as she puts it with our idols in tow. I think a difference between us is that having an idol emboldened me to take greater risks, whereas it seemed to do the opposite to Edelgard. I'm not 100% on that read though, but it just felt that way from our conversations.

[Edelgard]

Edelgard:  For most of the game you had a reputation of being a gamebot, and certainly the earlier parts of you speech seem to bear this out.  At the end you say you did heartfelt things for the sake of them but those moments didn't really stand out to me.  Can you elaborate on these things?

Well a good deal of that reputation was because you were elected Leader and told the head of every new tribe that I was a gamebot.. From your point of view it was true, I came to you with a lot of game talk because you seemed like you enjoyed it as opposed to the sassy way I talked to Shamir, Thea or Petra. It's also not a reputation I minded having. It's like a height restriction at carnivals, you must be willing to talk this much game to bond with Edelgard.

I'm surprised it doesn't stand out since the things I mean are public. I suppose what I meant is I did things that weren't just for the game, but because they were fun and they made certain people laugh. How many people will ever be able to claim they exchanged rings in Fodlan? During that same time I didn't just use the idol on Dorothea because I wanted her to stay, it was because she told me idols scared her so I wanted her to feel safe. Consider it my dedication as an Emperor who leads her subjects well. It's still a game but I try to be nice when I can.

You were more of the.. shared shenanigans type? I tried to keep the idol answer from you and tease about it but when I realized you had it all along and were humoring me.. Lorenz got all the chaotic credit but you have the same tendencies. I didn't get to play many jokes on you because you kept playing them on me! I hope it doesn't surprise you how much I liked you because that would make me a poor friend indeed. I think this is getting more suited for Petra's question about jurors so I will gush more about you later.

[Raphael]

I was going to leave this thread alone because you all gave satisfactory answers to the first batch of questions and my vote was never going to move anyway.  However, there is some stuff going on in this FTC that I don't really care for and I have to mention it here.

Dorothea, I think the way you keep trying to imply that Edelgard and Shamir got as far as they did because of idols is incredibly uncharitable, and the fact that you have referred to them as "Shamedelgard" several times in an attempt to subtly imply that their games are the same and therefore you are the alternate choice is gross.  Just because another player has an idol doesn't mean that you can't make it work to your advantage; Hapi went home instead of Shamir because I worked on making sure Lorenz had to use it that way.  You have mentioned that you tried to do the same with Edelgard's idol but you didn't actually do it, and part of the reason you didn't do it was your social game - by telling other people that you were voting for me for most of the F7 round it made me distrust you to the point where I never would have trusted you to actually vote for Edelgard.  You just said "Sure enough, Raphael quit shortly after Edie revealed she would be swapping her vote.  The sad part is... I might have swapped.  " but the last thing you said to me was that you would never trust me and I would never trust you. So why would I assume that you would swap? And more importantly, how dare you imply to the jury that you might have as part of a strategic play when both of us know that isn't true?

Dorothea played a great social game with most players and has a lot of friends on the jury.  I ask the jury to look at how much Dorothea actually *did* during the game compared to either Shamir or Edelgard.  When it comes to deciding who deserves to be crowned the Sole Survivor, I think it's apparent that Edelgard and Shamir are in a tier of their own.

See you all at the reveal.

[Dorothea]

I understand we weren't going to see eye to eye during the jury.  Thanks for keeping me in check.

This is a game of perception and you've been listening to them most of the game instead of me so I hope there are no hard feelings that you view the game differently then me. 

Them having idols did help and Lorenz' idol was practically theirs as you were the one influencing Lorenz to use it.  My side never had that advantage and I got here without it.  You can claim what I would have done but at the end of the day, I did vote Edelgard at F7 in an attempt to work with you and save my ally.  No, we didn't trust each other but that doesn't mean I wasn't going to make moves that helped my game and forcing rocks could very well have done that.  You gave up on me several times this game and if that's my fault, then ok. 

See ya after.