Okay. Forcing myself to do a power ranking coming out of the old Sides before starting the new thread for Episode 5. Added bonus of having waaaay too much to do is that I still haven't had the time to even register who's on which of the new Sides
![:lol](https://i.imgur.com/X4ixXao.gif)
so this involves zero hindsight. Here goes!
Malfoy Manor just had a rather tumultuous evening. HK had spent the weekend trying to understand and improve his position, and after everyone in his supposed alliance shut down his attempt to discuss more than one vote ahead (via his plan to essentially buy free eliminations by contacting the Order and arranging for Switches) he worked harder to compare notes with Regulus and Rodolphus about all of Lucius' shenanigans and group chats. Karkaroff had been trying to usurp Lucius' position as the center of all things, so has been vibeing nicely with HK for a while, but also being as open as possible with Lucius. When HK formally brought together Regulus/Rodolphus/HK/Karkaroff with the goal of flipping the Side against Lucius/Crouch/Yaxley once Pyrites was gone, Karkaroff tried to buy favour with Lucius by warning him that something was in the works for when they got down to seven, but that Karkaroff would ensure it never eventuated.
Lucius naturally didn't believe that Karkaroff would stick with the trio, and so immediately switched to making the first move, now. Eventually Lucius told Pyrites he'd been the target (but only recently for being less active over the weekend, which is absurd because everyone will be telling Pyrites after the vote that he was the target for almost a full week) and recruited him against HK/Rodolphus whom they saw as their most dangerous opponents. Pyrites agreed to come on board (I mean the alternative was to leave
![:P](http://images.proboards.com/new/tongue.png)
) and target Rodolphus who hadn't been making as much effort to assure Pyrites that all was well (again, it wasn't). Buy Yaxley had gone to sleep after putting a pre-vote on Pyrites, so the rock draw Lucius was hyping up the others for was not going to happen, and Karkaroff certainly wasn't going to save Pyrites to go to rocks. By then Lucius had gone far enough that he promised to play the Item on Pyrites, with only Crouch knowing that was the plan, hence the 3-
5 vote.
1.
Crouch - His social game has landed him in the best spot here, with just as much knowledge as Lucius but none of the risk. Even when people assemble against the apparent trio of Yaxley/Lucius/Crouch he's never the target because everybody likes him and expects to work with him moving forward, around whatever battle lines form on any given evening. He's managed Lucius fairly well too, at least up until things got out of control tonight. And he and Lily are the PBvO pair with the most potential to actually work together to benefit one another in the longer term, while their House Point total steadily increases. He could end up with any combination of the DEs post-swap, even after this Magical Council, and still not be targeted by any of them. And most of the Order has corresponded with him and looks forward to meeting even before he's worked his full charm on them directly. Easily the player coming out of this phase with the most going for them.
2. Yaxley - I'm really impressed with how well he's transferred from pure shtick to loyal number, without anyone stopping to reassess and wonder whether the guy who was literally playing dumb at first is in fact essaying about every permutation of
everything in his confessional. He isn't as close with everyone as Crouch is, but he's still very much shielded from the Lucius blowback = in fact Lucius perhaps stands out more in hindsight because he wound up with the two most easy-going players on either shoulder. I also have Yaxley behind Crouch because he hasn't been so directly in the loop - he was the third wheel in the trio and only found out about Lucius' Item a few days later, and slept through the entire scramble today. But he's also well positioned to retain all the DE connections, and already helped to push Diggle back into the Order core by cleverly using his Owl Post to share the right information with the right people (even if it made the last round hell for Lily).
3. Regulus - Probably should have been the target for Lucius tonight, as I think he's done more to rally the 'other side' of Malfoy Manor than either of HK or Rodolphus, despite having a far less intimidating presence, and there was no risk of a Switch keeping him in the Game. Even after a few days of low activity due to real life pressure, Regulus' manner cuts to the chase quickly and puts everyone at ease. In this group, not overplaying (and not appearing to invite overplaying) made him an asset, and he now comes out of a potentially tricky spot with full knowledge of what his place was and what went wrong. His threat level has sat far beneath where it ought to be since Figg quit and he played up the sympathy card of being the Side's first single, and there's nobody (except Lucius) who won't be willing to give him a go. That being said he's had such rotten luck with all his closest connections getting cruelly torn away, so while I think he's got good prospects ahead as a free agent I really hope he finds his people now and makes it last more than a round or two, even establishing some agency of his own.
4. Karkaroff - Did some really solid work over the last few days, then blew it all to smithereens today by telling Lucius just a little bit too much, not predicting the extremes to which Lucius' paranoia would take him. In the process he needed to come clean to both sides about just how well he'd set himself up to play the middle at the Side's eventual final seven, and lost trust with everyone. He's not the Big Threat that Lucius will be seen as, but he is the Side scoundrel and in some senses that reputation will make it harder for him to progress deep into this and garner the respect needed to win... the same issues that have plagued him in previous games but which he so expertly avoided until now, taking it easy and quietly luring everyone in while Lucius copped the heat for his more obvious overplaying. With the Swap he absolutely could recover, or reset... or he could not. We know how capable he is of weaseling his way in, even from the bottom, but that's far more difficult to do when the other players are also aware of it. Should make for an interesting next week to follow.
5. Hedwig's Killer - He'd finally found solid ground before the Swap, but now he's lost Rodolphus and Karkaroff's trust, Pyrites is still in, and the impression the Order has of him could hurt more than it helps. He came into this as the standout character and has mellowed that a little bit to enable proper conversation and trust-building, but even those who are now talking with him freely are worried that he's a big player, hyperintelligent, skilled in strategy and deception, thus unreliable long-term because his own interests will eventually come first. And while Lucius et al used Owl Post to communicate their alliances and spread news of the Item, Killer has used it to play in character for the most part. I've loved all those messages, but they didn't help Tonks any, and now her connections won't help him as much as they could have. I have faith that he'll survive whatever is thrown at him in this stage of the game, but already his chance at making the endgame he so desperately wants to see does seem unlikely. Unless he really builds something strong and longlasting on his Swap Side... I don't know whether that's possible in this Game, but I'd love to see it.
6. Lucius - This is a Ranking of how well they're set up moving forward, not how influential or entertaining they've been so far, or else Lucius would obviously and easily sit right at the top. I've been giving his antics some good-natured tongue-in-cheek in the blogs so perhaps need to state the obvious first, which is that I'm kind of in awe of all he's managed, and that it didn't all go much worse, much sooner. He's clearly an incredible player, and I see parts of myself in him (down to leading a whole Side on a wild goose chase around an Item he already has, which I did gleefully in AS Chile). But he's also far too transparent about it, and has a tendency not just to overplay but also to let everybody else know that he's overplaying, thinking that apologising in advance or sharing his schemes will build trust rather than sketch people out. He makes too many groups and webs of lies, somehow juggles them all for a time, then has to start throwing even more secrets to keep the original set in the air... and while the expertise that takes and the spectacle it spawns are a joy to watch, everybody knows it has to come crashing down.
In one fell swoop, he's lost all the trust he built so carefully and so dishonestly - everyone now knows he had the Item first and was leading them along. (Whereas his attitude toward that Item needed to be like Sam/Mark's in Australian Survivor, and mine in Chile, keeping it a secret unless the playing of it could outweigh the harm of revealing it.) Everyone who thought they could still work with him while they weren't each other's actual number ones now knows he'll get paranoid at any whiff of a plan against him and take sudden, drastic action to the point of saving somebody he's been willing to vote for and stringing along all week with his Item, when at worst losing Pyrites and remaining in Malfoy Manor could have caused a 4-3 vote against him the next time, when he could have used the Item on himself, or coordinated with Wood to Switch and save him. Nobody is going to trust him now, and while he may cockroach for a while yet (I certainly hope he does), if he makes it through the early merge I'll eat my wand.
7. Pyrites - He needs to seriously turn things around. And while I hope he can, there's just far too much working against him. He was persona non grata for rounds and had no idea, and just scraped by in the most absurd way possible. The Order has been told that he's the DE's Mundungus, inactive and nonresponsive, but at least Mundungus had the timezone factor working against him, knew he was on the bottom, and put in just enough effort to save himself when it counted. Pyrite's best hope is to hook onto whatever uncertain web Moody can pull in, but I don't think Moody is super keen to make that a long-term thing (some successive Flick charms give evidence to that) and at this stage being part of a pair may only make Pyrites that much more desirable a target. I do look forward to the truth about Malfoy Manor finally reaching him. And I admire his perspicacity in wanting to target Rodolphus over HK, despite HK/Pyrites gunning for each other for a while, because they've both put more effort into their chats. I just despair that too many people have written him off and even if he makes a deep run it'll seem like he's being dragged through.
(
8. Rodolphus) - Really didn't deserve to go out here, just as he was finally coming into his own
![:cry](http://imgur.com/Gh2UmYT.gif)
This really shouldn't have happened any time soon - it took an absurd ploy by Karkaroff, an overreaction from Lucius, an Item in exactly the right place, Pyrites getting over his beef with HK and more paranoia and speculation in assuming Rodolphus in particular was the bogeyman of the 'other side' coming for the trio, based on Regulus casting a stray vote. And while Lucius will no doubt say that that the way Rodolphus builds connections is just slightly too game-focused, and I've had a similar criticism of Lawls in the past, that was absolutely not the case in the missives this time around. He was the perfect balance of outgoing and cautious, sociable and strategic, lacking perhaps in the character department at times but never enough to get in the way like it did for Pyrites who only felt more distant the more he tried at it. If Rodolphus had survived tonight, I'd have had him at number 3, and the loss of his reunion with Fleur and all that could have sparked only makes his premature exit even more tragic.
At least it's an iconic way to farewell this tangle of a Side, giving everybody plenty of baggage and doubt, and questions galore. The fortiutous timing of this coming right before a swap that none of them were expecting has ensured this mass of overlapping alliances will never coalesce into anything firmer just because some factions are bound to get swapped together and build trust - they'll be starting from scratch, and far more likely to include Order members and partners than exclusively one another. Malfoy Manor is as dead as Rodolphus, make my words, and it will take a true Phoenix indeed to reassemble anything from the blaze of glory that ended them tonight. What an ending! And it's only Day 8.
Also
![(rofl)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/rofl.png)
at this thread subtitle from back when this round was just a boring question of whether Pyrites or Mundungus would get mercy-killed
![:lol](https://i.imgur.com/X4ixXao.gif)