The Ultimate Order of the Stick Book Tournament, Round 4

[137beth]

Greetings playgrounders, and welcome to
The Ultimate Order of the Stick Book Tournament!
Here, you can vote for your favorite of the first eight books in a double-elimination tournament. Each week I will post a new matchup. Vote in this thread, not by PM. You get one vote per person. If your post contains more than the name or abbreviation of the book's title, I ask that you bold your vote. Votes may take the form either of the book's title, the abbreviation, or the number.

The Contestants
Dungeon Crawling Fools
No Cure for Paladin Blues
War and XP
Don't Split the Party
Blood Runs in the Family
On the Origins of the PCs
The Start of Darkness
Snips, Snails and Dragon Tales

Although BRitF has not been released, I think that we have seen enough of it from the online strips to include it in the running.

Last week, Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales completely obliterated On the Origins of the PCs 7 votes to none. Origins was really hurt by its conversion to the fourth edition dimension.

Current Bracket Standings: clicky! (http://challonge.com/OOTS_Books)

The Current Match:
Match 2:Start of Darkness http://www.giantitp.com/Images/products/OOTS99_4in72dpi_RGBds.gif
vs. Blood Runs in the Family http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Poster_not_available.jpg

The final seed match! Regardless of the outcome, it seems quite possible that these two contestants will meet again in the finals:smalleek:

The current match will end Saturday, April 3. Vote away!

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Hmm, definitely the toughest one yet. I think I will go with Blood Runs in the Family.

[oppyu]

The Start of Darkness

Ah, Redcloak.

[thatSeniorGuy]

Start of Darkness, but it only barely edges out BritF.

[ChristianSt]

Easy one. SoD is the one book that imo shouldn't be missing in any OotS related book collection (though I see no reason to miss others, too :smallwink:).

It is something completely different than the others book, and just is a really great book. I would like to see a book I like better in the future (because that book would be frigging fantastic), but it has raised the bar for "best OotS book" to a pretty damn high level.

[Gift Jeraff]

They're about on par in terms of drama. BRitF had better action, but Start of Darkness was funnier, which is more important to me.

[Terrador]

Very, very hard call. From the material I've seen (online strips, SoD, OtOoPC), these are easily the two best publications (with honorable mentions to the battle for Azure City and Vaarsuvius' bargain for being my favorite scenes). BRitF does more for the plot by far, and has much better combat, but SoD is more gripping and more emotionally challenging.

My vote goes to Start of Darkness.

[Bird]

Start of Darkness. Both are great books, but "Darkness" is all muscle, whereas "Blood" has some fat on it.

[Glodart]

Start of Darkness , Redcloak, Right-Eye and Xykon are absolutely awesome in this masterpiece. One of the best comic books I have ever read

[Jzadek]

My vote goes to Blood Runs in the Family. I love SoD, but only because I'm so invested in the main storyline, of which BRitF is of course part of.

[Sylian]

Start of Darkness.

[Procyonpi]

BRiF, in part because SoD is gonna win anyways.

[Cizak]

Now this is definitely the hardest one, because these are probably my two favourites. I think, but I'm not entirely sure, that Blood Runs in the Family is my number one. Right now, it gets my vote because it's losing either way. But I do hope to see this match again in the finals, because these two are the ones that deserve to be there.

[137beth]

And voting is closed!
As the final seed match, this was also the closest, and the most likely to be repeated in the finals. Now we will move on to the elimination matches!