Robin

[Masahiro Sakurai]

Robin will address the finalists here!

[Robin]

THE END HAS COME

YOU MAY HAVE DEFEATED MY MORTAL VESSEL IN THIS MEANINGINGLESS COMPETITION BUT KNOW THAT YOUR EFFORTS TO STOP THE INEVITABLE END ARE FUTILE. THE FELL DRAGON IS ETERNAL AND EVERLASTING. NOTHING CAN STOP MY COMING. YES, THE DAY OF DARKNESS HAS FINALLY ARRIVED. IT IS TIME FOR YOU AND ALL OTHER LIVING CREATURES TO MEET YOUR ULTIMATE FATE AND PERISH FROM THE WORLD OF THE LIVING. YOU HAVE ONE LAST CHANCE. KNEEL BEFORE ME AND SWEAR SERVITUDE TO GRIMA OR BE MADE TO SUFFER EXCRUCIATING TORMENT AND DEATH UPON DEATH.

Oh hayyy everybody! It's good to see you all again Congratulations on making it to the end of this gruelling competition. I am sure we can all agree that it is an impressive feat and, regardless of the outcome of this final vote, you should all be proud of what you have achieved here.

I suspect that any lingering curiosities I have about your respective journeys in this game will be answered in your own statements or in the questions of the other jurors. Instead I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the one thing that I really care about - myself! As you all know I am a practicing tactician in service of my boytoy the Exalt Chrom. I may be known as the Grand Master of strategy but even I am imperfect and have much to learn. The silver lining to losing this game is that it allows me to reflect and grow and improve my skills for the next battle.

I would like the three of you to help me in this endeavour by answering these questions. What do you consider the mistake, or mistakes, that I made in this game to be and what did you do differently to successfully make the finals while I came up short? And please do not say "get good at challenges." Yes, I suck at them and can't win a duel to save my life (except when I get lucky and my opponents tanks harder than I do - thanks Piranha Plant!). I be knowing this already. Something more insightful about the social and/or strategic nature of the competition would be appreciated here.

Thank you in advance and congratulations once again to all three of you.

[Captain Falcon]

Alright, alright, alright. Ready to face my burnin’ eternity in hell and all that jazz. Go on then, whip out the dragon hiding within, and I'll even sign it if you give me your vote here. 

Without blowing smoke, I think you had a pretty upward hill to climb in this game. After starting on red, and then having a few of those post-merge duels shake out the way they did, there was little room to move and that was kinda out of your control. You were a charmer for sure, so can’t knock ya social game. And I can’t point a specific strategic move that would have changed things for ya, I think you had a bad starting hand and a string of bad luck that ultimately sent ya packing. So I don’t see it as being one key moment where ya dropped the ball- outside of following THE CAPTAIN to BLUE of course- oh, and playing as girl Robin from the start- OH YEAH!

In a general way, I think the pinkies as a whole would have benefited from targeting Squirt or myself in those first few rounds, of our group I’d say we might have been some of the easiest to take down (don’t wanna speak for Squirt, but just my impression based on our chats), since Yosh had proven himself a few times in THE RING at that point. That could have given you a bit more power moving forward- but of course I was trying to avoid that scenario best I could, and it’s something you did clock on to when the time came.

More specifically- I think one mistake ya did make WAS to do with the challenge skills, but in terms of how ya presented them. Maybe I shoulda gone over those locks with some finer detail, but all I saw was that you whooped a proven beast in Petey, and then you seemed pretty ready to whoop anyone else you’d ever end up facing. I did take that at face value- and so I saw it worth it to try and chip away at ya as early as 8, cos someone with yer sweet talkin’ mouth, who can back it up in THE RING? That can be lethal in endgame, cos it's hard to ‘em down, and if you end up fighting them on a stage, they take you down. Of course scaring people off can a good tactic in itself, and I was a bit ambiguous with my own skills for that reason. But had we COME OUT to each other as duel-avoidin’ scum, I think I wouldn’t have seen you as an immediate threat to my game, but actually someone who could be a buffer for me. Not saying it would for sure have shook out that way- but I’d have been more inclined to make a switcheroo there if I didn’t think I’d have been linking up with a triple threat that would steamroll me later. Cos I did think we had untapped potential. Well… maybe it was a little tapped, C’MON!

So in terms of what THE CAPTAIN did better- seems we were both players that would need to avoid THE RING best we can to make the end. So in that sense, I think I was better positioned to do so. Partially that’s cos of how the chips fell with the duel outcomes, but I also thought I was good at playing up my challenge skills just the right amount. I think you might have seen Squirt as an easier beat for instance, and took him in with you- that’s what I was counting on there, that he’d be seen as the easier beat, which I don’t think was actually the case. At the same time, I don’t think people saw me as challenge beast that could be used to knock somebody else out or that'd need to be sent in against another challenge beast. I saw the stages at the beginning of the game, and realised that I'd SPIN OUT on most of them- so I knew avoiding those duels was gonna be paramount for me, that influenced how I played things throughout, and ultimately that's something I did pretty successfully since it's why I'm even in this position right now. Again, I think I also held more cards to be playin' that kinda game, and you were more under the microscope early merge, so I can't fault ya for that. But in the end we both only won one duel- difference was, I only needed to win one. So I guess that's all I can reasonably give ya in terms of difference ya could have made- managed that aspect of things a bit more. Still think ya did great here though, and had an impressive run.

Feel free to ask me any of those lingering curiosities if they continue to linger, Robbie. Got all weekend, and I wanna be fighting for every last vote here! No stone left unturned with THE CAPTAIN- and never too late to make some purple neither.

[Yoshi]

Yoshi thinks Robin played a very strong social game, as you kind of have to do if you aren't amazing at challenges, but Yoshi thinks Robin might be selling themselves a little bit short with their challenge prowess. Either way here is the advice Yoshi can think of for Robin. Obviously Yoshi doesn't know all the messages and everything Robin knew but this is what Yoshi thinks could've been helpful for Robin:

1st Mistake:
The first mistake Yoshi thinks Robin made was by not sticking with the Red majority in Pink. Despite the Reds being not very active, Yoshi thinks that selling yourselves out in the second round was very premature. Despite everything the four of them might promise you, they are still going to be closer to each other than they are to you and Samus, and as much as Yoshi liked Samus, Yoshi thinks that Robin must have known that Samus's game wasn't going to live up against any of the other 4. Sure, Yoshi would've definitely recommended switching, you couldn't have gone through to merge with just Red, they just weren't strong enough to carry you through merge, but if you had left betraying just 1 more round, you wouldn't have had to go through the Ring that first time. Again, this is with the benefit of hindsight and your initial team is the main reason you were in that weak position, not really through any major decision of your own (except perhaps choosing that RED text...)

2nd Mistake:
Having already been shown that Robin wasn't exactly the highest up in the inner hierarchy of Pink, Yoshi thinks Robin should've definitely sided with Wario on the split vote. Of course it wasn't exactly well communicated and Wario could've done way better with that, but Robin should've probably been probing for a middle ground play there. With 4 eggs left in the game, Robin just had to find 1 other egg bearer they were willing to work with and Yoshi would've been glad to stick with Robin. But that didn't really happen and Robin kind of just left after being hard targetted by Wario for 3 rounds in a row. Yoshi tried as hard as they could to keep Robin out of the vote for as long as possibly and that is probably as testimate to how well you played your social game.

So yeah, those are the two places that Yoshi thinks Robin could've kept themselves alive for, but they are with the glory of hindsight, and even should you have played those with that knowledge, there is no guarantee you survive, there just isn't in a game like this.

Yoshi does hope you enjoyed the game you did have. Yoshi knows they did, and Yoshi did consider Robin one of their closest allies, despite all the times you voted for Yoshi It might have been the most in the game, would be funny to check.

[Wario]

Hey Robin! I'm sure in other games we'll be a great duo, unfortunately it was not to be here.

OK from my perspective you were obviously playing the middle, you made that very clear. I saw you as a big challenge threat from you taking out Piranha Plant, plus you talked a bit about how you were good at challenges. You talked to me about how you viewed the game and different strategies, and straight up I was intimidated by your intelligence. I hate the thought of people having to dumb themselves down, but maybe if you'd been a little less openly strategic with me when we weren't allied it might've helped.

I don't think it would be a mistake in most other games, but here it was a mistake for you to be so vocally in the middle and pushing for a more fluid and open game. Because that's exactly what I didn't want, and I suspect a few other players were happy with their positioning as well and didn't want it to turn into a true free for all. I was OK with one person in the middle, but not two of you. And you were much more intimidating to me than Falco at the time, and Falco and I had a pretty good connection from earlier in the game I felt. If there was going to be anyone in the middle, I preferred it to be him over you.

This combined into me wanting you as soon as possible, and me knowing that I needed you in the ring probably a few times to actually take you out. I was also expecting you to beat whoever you went in against, and I was wanting to take a number from my side without any blood on my hands. So getting you in there with someone from my side was ideal. As I said in my speech, Squirtle wasn't my first choice for who you faced because I still wanted him to be an easy target for the other side. But it didn't make a huge difference who from my side went. And that's how I liked it, having my side and their side. I pushed that hard and was a big part of keeping the two sides going even if people didn't realise it throughout the game.

I made plenty of mistakes, I got voted in twice after all. The only difference is that mine didn't prove fatal. I knew my best way of surviving through the game was staying where I was, with nobody really gunning for me because I wasn't perceived as a threat. There were such obvious arguments for everyone else to be bigger threats than me, that I believe I would've been able to make it late game even if my side got demolished.