The Ultimate Order of the Stick Book Tournament, Round 5

[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, Start of Darkness was seemingly defeated, until it rose as a lich and bound the soul of Blood Runs in the Family.

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

The Current Match:
Match 5:Dungeon Crawling Fools http://www.giantitp.com/Images/products/OOTS01_4in72dpi_RGBds.gif
vs. No Cure for Paladin Blues http://www.giantitp.com/Images/products/OOTS02_4in72dpi_RGBds.gif

The loser of this match will be eliminated from the tournament!

The current match will end Saturday, May 10. Vote away!

[Jaxzan Proditor]

This one isn't much of a hard one for me. While, DCF is quite funny, with a lot of the basic elements that would define the rest of the series there, No Cure for the Paladin Blues is where things really started to get good.

[Cizak]

No Cure for the Paladin Blues. The start of the real plot; the introduction of Miko, Shojo and the Sapphire Guard; Redcloak's real personality starts showing... lotsa good stuff.

[Gift Jeraff]

Dungeon Crawlin' Fools has a simplistic charm and works quite well as a standalone book. NCftPB is the awkward transitional phase, IMO.

[thatSeniorGuy]

No Cure for the Paladin Blues.

[Sylian]

In general, I feel that his work has improved the more recent it is*, and it's especially true early on.No Cure for the Paladin Blues gets my vote, no doubt.

*Start of Darkness being an exception. That book is so good.

[oppyu]

No Cure for the Paladin Blues

[Jasdoif]

No Cure for the Paladin Blues. Dungeon Crawlin' Fools is a good book, to be sure, and it introduces us to many of the characters we know and love/loathe to this day...but No Cure for the Paladin Blues has much more substance to it. (Also has my favorite strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0301.html).)

[ChristianSt]

I will have to vote on NCftPB, too. My signed DCF will not like it - but I voted for NCftPB in favor of DStP, so someone could certainly argue that it says that DCF can be as good as DStP :smallwink:.

[Sunken Valley]

Paladin Blues

[137beth]

And voting is closed!
The Dungeon Crawling Fools walked into a pit trap and fell out of the tournament. New round is up.