Hey there my Ride or Fly
Mipha's case at the moment seems to be relying on the existence of the resurrection chamber, and Urbosa's has a lot of talk of playing (or having) advantages.
As someone who's here without using the chamber or your own advantages (though that Amiibo reader still gets me), do you think your game was helped or hindered by not holding onto any jewellery of your own? What would you have liked to have happen differently in regards to finding bling?
Oh hindered greatly. Playing from the bottom is really hard to do, you know that for sure, and typically items are a way to negate that. They enable you to make the big moves that everyone bothers to remember and flip them game and as pointed out, you can use them to also force social bonds. Just having a useful item can make you indispensable to an alliance and enable you to keep living just a little while longer. And in a game without items you still can socially maneuver your way into an alliance or a position where people don't have you as the main target and get to the end.
Playing without items also sucks, but can be managed if you are in a position of power since you can maneuver and make sure you aren't the target of the item or just organize votes to play aorund them. Sure your game might get wrecked by one but you have a good amount of stuff to do.
But you know what really sucks, playing on the bottom without items, while everyone else has them. Like it's walking through a minefield, at any point whatever you do can easily be fucked if you tell the wrong person cause most of the time (not all the time obviously) people will keep their item in reserve until the moment it is useful, and when you are on the bottom, people aren't going to be just...giving you free information. You have to scrounge and struggle and hope that what you are doing is enough, and even if it is enough to force a tie or whatever, you can still get fucked by an item. Like seriously, the "bottom" of the game managed to band together and almost made a comeback but got fucked by Epona's steal a vote.
Like the amount of times an item could have fucked me was surreal, Kohga had an idol, a half idol and an arrow, Sidon had their extra vote, Epona had the half-idol. Like the fact I wasn't eliminated by any of those is surreal, especially when they all wanted to kill me at one point.
Also in a game with so many items and me having none, I'm kind of insulted by the level of item play we saw, because people just couldn't seem to use them effectively. If people want me to list examples I will, but since well, this is a comparative, I'm just gonna focus on the use of items by Urbosa, because while yes, they made plays, but they could have done so much more.
Like here are all the things they did with their items that I consider either misplays or missed opportunities:
1. Giving the Sensor + to Link: Okay so this is minor, but I doubt this actually swung link all that much, the threat of death was probably enough to make them vote Pellison and using this item in any of the later rounds to ensure that the person they thought was going, was going, or sus out a blindside would have been immmense and useful with other items or idols them or their alliance might come into.
2. Using literally any items to save Hunnie: When Urbosa told the story of this tribe it sounded like they were helpless and how it was terrible that Hunnie was voted out, but THEY HAD 6 ITEMS AT THIS POINT. They could have used the idol to save Hunnie, but it's understandable how you'd hold onto that. They could have used the bomb arrow to force a 2-2 tie, which you just win. If that doesn't work the statis would have been a lot better used here as well. Not only would it have protected Hunnie, but it would have forced Epona, Kass and Kohga to turn on each other. You could not reveal your vote and just see where they go and foster chaos that way and show someone they're on the bottom of the Kass/Epona/Sidon/Kohga alliance.
3. Using the vote blocker in the 4-4 round: Sidon had an extra vote Urbo knew about, There was also a steal a vote somewhere. Just using the blocker here would have been smart and saved the round a lot of time and avoid the potential of Kass giving away items during the revote scenario.
4. Using literally any items to save Oven: Vote blocker + Fury saves Oven and splits votes in case of idols all at the same time, would have negated the steal a vote. Maybe a bit harder to tell Oven is the target though (hence why Sensor + being around would have been useful). Using the Gale on Sidon (who Urbosa wanted to kill so much) would have removed their idol or their extra vote and any items they had and immediately upset the balance of power of the game, and between immunity, Mipha's idol and either Sidon's vote or Idol a tie vote is won. Maybe it's better to hold off on said play, but they sure as hell didn't try to talk something over with me, just went after Sidon long after it was apparent they weren't really listening to Oven's concerns.
5. Giving any items away. I was nervous because I barely had items, do you know how much better it would have been to give me or Oven or Mipha an item, they certainly had enough to spare and not all of them are ridiculously strong. Suddenly everyone in the alliance has items, everyone feels necessary and no one feels like a stick out threat, but you can still claim that you are the origin of the items and thus the person the credit belongs to. Hell even when Urbosa was talking about "making me feel safe" with the fury that's bull. Like I was more worried about my vote being useless by voting into an idol than anything (it took me a while to come around to yes, they probably had it since Urbo had a much lower rate of lying to me than to everyone else), and if they really wanted to make me feel safe they would given me the fury when I asked instead of going on about how I "couldn't be trusted to use it correctly", like I wouldn't play it on myself.
Urbosa's use of Items was not great, it was greedy and selfish. And maybe you believe that's fine, it is an individual game after all. And hey they did use some of the items to save their skin when they found themselves isolated and with few friends, but they only found themselves in that position because of the cowardice and inability to use those same items earlier to save their allies or shore up their relations. And sure, you can't do all of what I pointed out, but doing pretty much any of them would have been a lot better than what they did do.
And maybe that's a bit harsh, but I do not tolerate easily avoidable losses and people then pretending like they weren't easily avoidable. Especially when I had to fight and claw and barely get by so many rounds, and sometimes I needed to get lucky and sometimes I just had to hope that everything would be okay because, yeah that's what you do when you are fighting for your life. You hope you've done enough work to get votes where you need them, or just that people want you around more than the other guy.
And it's not like I didn't try to get items. I tried in broth of the wild, I did look for idols, found none, never been good at that, I tried to pick up multiple in the Bazaar but all of them had higher bidders, and from that moment I feel my fate this game was sealed. I was marked for death by items and not having them, and yet somehow I skated through.
In regards to what I prefered to happen, I probably would have prefered that the auction evenly distributed items or put a cap at like 3 for the number you could get so while some assymetry was possible, it wouldn't have been as lopsided as it ended up being. Honestly I just wanted to have one decent item to call my own, even your tribal reset thing I would have loved to have, like that would have been a perfect move to pull if you didn't go offline that round and lived.
As always, went off topic but reading Urbo's post kind of made me angry when I realized just how much they had.
