(5)Tharja vs (14)Juliet Starling vs (23)Tiny Tina 2013

This was our first match that was a true match from beginning to end. No one had any clue what any of these three characters would do, the picture shed no light on anything, and a legit argument from boobs to game quality could be made for all three. The only real standout factors were Fire Emblem (Nintendo always does well) and Borderlands 2 winning our Game of the Year poll, though games =/= characters is a pretty big rallying cry in these contests.

Come match time, Tharja jumped out to a big early lead, while second place was way up in the air. Juliet led by 60 early, but Tina left her in the dust pretty quickly and Juliet was ultimately stuck in last place rather early.

(I feel like I'm announcing a mud wrestling match, this is so dumb.)

Once Juliet was out of the picture for good, the match seemed over. We have a line on Board 8 called the Nintendo Power Hour, and Tharja used that to build up a 400 vote lead in this poll. That lead got up to 437 pretty quickly, too, before Tina started her long (very long) and slow (VERY slow) march toward coming back.

To put this in perspective, Tharja's lead was 437 at 1:30. At 4, it was 383. I don't know how many of you play Magic the Gathering or did any M14 limited, but http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=370697&type=card

That card's nickname is "Wall of Stall", because f*** that card in limited.

It continued on like this for a long time, though Tina was overall getting the lead down. Then the morning vote came, and the lead went from 300 to tied in about 3 hours. Under normal trends, Tina probably would have gone on to win this match. But this was the Contest of Rallying, and it didn't take long for 4chan to notice the match and push Tharja over the top to hold on for a close win.

It's hard to really say if Tharja flopped or Tina performed really well, because we have no data here. This is also a good match to get into my opinion on 12 hour matches. For the most part, they're a great idea in early rounds to weed out all the garbage quickly, because no one wants to see 24 hours of Link, Tingle, and Isaac doing nothing. But every now and again, you get a match where 24 hours would have been awesome, and this was one of those matches.

But even still, 12 hours for 2 rounds and 24 hours from 3 on is the exact format we need from now on. Hopefully Allen sticks with it. The 1 match in 10 that needs to be 24 hours is not worth making the other 9 suck for 24 hours.