Only 26 Survivors left, and a four-way tie for first place! This has turned out to be a bigger cliff- hanger than I thought it would.
Really, it was always likely to end up with something like this. The enormous list meant some of the "take down the biggest thing" pressure didn't apply, because it took
so long to search through it for the biggest thing. Further, with some options having a dozen (or more!) different things--and thus an absolutely
massive footprint in comparison to something like Satyr--there was an unusual "bring down the things that got an (allegedly) unfair advantage" motive, once the handful of intensely (if not necessarily
widely) disliked options were gone.
Further, with such an enormous pool to churn through and participants
aware of the almost inherent "mediocrity/traditionalism wins" pattern, there's been a conscious effort to "fight the power" as it were. That's a lot harder to resist when there are so many options and all it takes is 2-3 people consistently targeting a particular option to remove it (see: Lotusden and Chromatic.) That's why humans were removed almost immediately, because they were affected by
both the opposition to having a perceived unfair advantage with 7 entries, and the opposition to allowing the perceived "boring" option to win because it always will if it makes it to the end.
Hence why we now have so many people--including yourself--feeling that there are
no good options. Previous rounds have taught folks, or at least those actually wanting to strategize, that you should target the inoffensively-bland options first. Because those are the ones that will sail through, ignored or slowly boosted by their fans, while the controversial options get blasted out due to non-fans (or even anti-fans) outnumbering fans in essentially all cases (Lore Bard being a key exception to this pattern.)
If you want your pick to succeed, you shoot at the ones that people could
settle for once all their preferences are gone. Worst-case scenario, you make it into the late stages and the dogpile happens to fall upon the stuff you want. Best-case scenario, the same thing happens except the things you don't want get dogpiled. Likely case? Something like what you've described for yourself: people who check out and thus stop downvoting, or who downvote sporadically/randomly, and thus pose much less threat until the very end (or no threat at all, for the former.)
You want people to see the thing you like and think, "Well, I don't really like it myself, but I'd rather
this win than the
other things."
It is a battle for middle-earth, Dwarves vs Elves.
I predict every other will get exterminated - the way Shifters and the Anthropomorphics are slowly being eliminated
Bit of a hard sell, there, given that there are 88 points' worth of "anthropomorphics and shifters" to churn through while only 28+26 = 54 Dwarf/Elf+Half-Elf points to churn through. Especially because there are people specifically gunning for the removal of the "Tolkienesque" options for reasons mentioned above.
My prediction is that none of the "Tolkienesque" races will make it to the Final Five. The closest we'll get will be either Half-Elf or Half-Orc, likely the former because they're prettier. Instead, one of the "anthropomorphics" will survive the meatgrinder (I would make a prediction, but that would make people downvote it, so I will stay stilent), and Genasi will hang on by a thread purely by the numbers. From there, it'll be a pseudo-random draw for what the other two end up being, my money being on Gnome and Gith at present purely by the numbers. That's somewhat disheartening to say, because it doesn't include any of the options I like (other than the "anthropomorphic" option I'm not naming so it doesn't get deleted), but it's the loosely most-likely option given past trends.
So that would be a score of 50 for the Animorphs? Meaning they are still in the lead? Sheesh, is there any way we can call animal control or something?
By my count, if you include kobolds (which I do), it's 88. Unless you don't count shifters, in which case it's 66.
Is that better or worse than the
100 points that Tieflings-of-some-stripe started out with?
