Yeah, a pity that two folks had to drop but at least it was still round 1, where their absence isn't going to drastically alter the outcome of the game. I hope Alecto gets better ASAP and whatever caused Arabella to drop is also not too serious or awful for them. Because it's early on, I'll probably be pretty cavalier about their leaving when thinking about the game (strategy or relationship wise) but first and foremost; hope they both get better.
Okay, time to think about things. I slept terribly last night and am currently firing at maybe 10% capacity, so this should be extra incoherent.
I think Travers was the plan. Lucius is doing a big song and dance on hearing his name from inside our alliance and out, but I think that's largely bullshit? HK wanted Igor, and Igor and Travers have more similar messaging styles, so it seems unlikely they'll go for each other. Who knows what Pyrites is thinking? And for inside the alliance, the rest of us seem pretty content to sit on our hands for now. So yeah, Lucius wants to kill Travers and I can only speculate why. If I was going to guess, it falls into one of two options? Either Lucius thinks Travers is the other possibility for a strong leadership role that would usurp him, or he legitimately finds the couple of paragraphs Travers sends tiresome. The rest of us are all short-spoken (Wow I lucked into part of my gimmick maybe going well) so it could be either, or both.
Losing Alecto is actually fine for me. She was funny but barely online to begin with, I was surprised when she was part of the set Lucius proposed because she's barely here. But he just wanted a majority I guess, so her leaving is fine because we still have 5/9? Evidence Lucius is a bit of a control freak is mounting. No clue if Figg being out will change anything, the other side's a bit of a black box. Cynically I doubt it; I feel like if you leave before round 1 then you were probably really keen to play this when it was announced but since had life events that made playing really hard? And you don't want to drop and ruin a friends' plans and hard work.
Yes yes, you're very clever for having challenge results bounce back into the social aspect of the game.
![:P](http://images.proboards.com/new/tongue.png)
Okay, with that little bit of snark out of my system I'll say it again but much more sincerely; having the challenges linked and feedback into social implications is actually really clever. When I was mulling over format ideas in FEH I commented on how I viewed the challenges as largely a mechanism to introduce a bit of randomness or asymmetry into the game and two challenges into this game it's clear I did not give interesting challenge ideas enough thought. Even in typical quiz challenges about how folks view the game, it almost always seems to be a reflection of a few rounds ago, which isn't typically relevant anymore? So having questions in this matching challenge that are so speculative adds a lovely layer of spice to future options. Putting them mostly at the end was cruel though, I can tell Digg panicked and ran out of time near the halfway mark when he started to misunderstand questions and just didn't answer the last four.
So what did I learn? Firstly and less interestingly, Digg panics
really easily and is a bit slow-moving on even simple questions. Secondly, he has really strong feelings about Fleur. I'm not sure how he read 'notable omission', but I'm guessing he just skipped the word omission? So he viewed her as most notable. Then he put her for friendliest
and most dangerous. He could not be more clear about her being standout in some way if he tried. I sent back I viewed Lucius as friendly, Pyrites as dangerous, and Barty as likely to survive. This should line up with his experiences; he should have just received a letter from Lucius after all. Pyrites being dangerous is a bit of a laugh, I think? But he was one of the only people to actually just fucking go for a group chat so that's reasonable justification. Anyways, my answers should maybe steer him to work with Wood or Lily, although who knows how that'll actually go. As for me, message received, unless something dramatic happens I'll be writing a letter to Ms. Delacour shortly.
Rewarding people for getting no post is sick (read: funny), Peter. What am I supposed to say now? Please don't write me back, I want to get another idol clue? Absolutely hilarious. People who did get Owl Post are likely to ask about who else got some too, because why wouldn't they? But if you don't volunteer you got a clue out of it, they're going to find out the instant they go a round without an owl post. Assuming those clues are a consistent thing, and there's no guarantee they even will be. But if they aren't a thing, you really don't want to tell everyone you have an idol clue right? Because then your friends will want to see it and from there it just gets messy.
Hilarious!
As for actually sending Owl posts, I feel like right now there's not much to do with them? A one time, one-way message is not enough for me to build a good rapport or conversation out of nothing, even if I had an infinite amount of space to write. Maybe some of the more aggressive folks (if any exist?) are trying to use them to coordinate Switch/Flick stuff already but right now that feels premature to me. Ironically I feel like the best thing to do is to make sure everyone on our side sends to a different person from the Order to prevent too many idol clues (or other benefits) from leaking out? But that requires far more trust and organizational effort then makes sense right now. Hmm, maybe if I quietly suggest to Lucius other Order folks will have clues, he'll think about doing this independent of me? Or maybe he already has, who knows.
My thoughts on Switch/Flick haven't changed yet, nor do I really expect them to for a couple more rounds.
I'd like to see Igor die, but I expect to see Travers die. At least either way my top three will be floating around a little longer, so I reckon I win either way. Rodolphus is growing on me, but Regulus is sinking and my
disastrously dumb attempt to start a new conversation about quidditch (sorry again) just made my already growing frustrations at talking with him even worse. Not that it's his fault that my bad conversation attempt didn't pan out at all! But even before that, I really felt like I was trying to keep up conversation about anything, and I'm just getting nothing back, so having him announce we could just start a new conversation tomorrow with no indication of what that will be is not great. At least with Rodolphus we've established we want extremely short and blunt messages about the game and not much else so I can feel like we're in a different but still comfortable groove.
Okay, now that I've answered your questions I'm going to do a rambly, unfocused thing about how I see the state of the game.
So it seems Lucius, Barty and I are all working together pretty closely. Lucius is telling Barty a lot of stuff about our conversations, so that's interesting. Nothing serious yet, nothing to be alarmed by. But something to remember. Meanwhile, Barty is telling me stuff about what Lucius tells him? But Lucius doesn't tell me much, if anything, Barty is saying. Is that because Barty isn't saying as much to him, or because Lucius rates Barty higher than me? Kind of a weird dynamic between us right now. The other two 'core' folks, Reg and Rod, are not saying a ton. Rodolphus and I have started talking game but it's largely been separate from what Lucius/Barty are talking about? Pretty devoid of tone or conversation outside of just extremely robotic "Here is what is happening" but that's fine for now I guess, while things are still straightforward. At least we're clear that we want to work together, so that's nice.
So Digg sent a letter to Rodolphus, presumably because he and Fleur are working together? Fleur sent a letter to Barty, presumably because her and Lily are also working together. I don't know who Lily wrote to yet, if anyone. But there's the rough suggestion of a trio of Lily-Fleur-Diggle. From our end, I wrote Wood and Lucius wrote Diggle, so those two should both think Lucius and I are a tight duo. There shouldn't be any suggestion of a link between Rodolphus or Barty between Lucius/Myself outside of me saying I think Barty will make merge to Digg. So if I write Fleur here it makes it clear that at least one of Barty/Rodolphus and I are also working together. That's probably fine though? I don't see what she'd do with the information.
The fact that no one wrote Lucius, Travers, or myself suggests that our partners are either very laid-back or that they're not the top priority for anyone to work with at the moment. So that's Diggle, Wood, and Shacklebolt. Worth keeping in mind if this devolves into a side war at merge, that they might not be as attached as the rest?
I wonder if Tonks will overthink HK's message through Barty to her? No idea what he's like with her, but in her shoes I'd suspect Barty was working with HK for better or worse.
Anyways, here's a list of all the Owls I'm aware of.
Barty -> Tonks
Yaxley -> Wood
Lucius -> Diggle
Fleur -> Barty
Digg -> Rodolphus
It's a pretty small list, given there could be up to 18 of them. I guess that's something to talk about with folks I'm less attached to this round, it's probably harmless enough to make conversation with.