General Advice #1: Don’t give up.
FTC is hard. FTC is, at times, brutal. FTC will probably make you cry. It happens. The very nature of FTC is an in depth interrogation of your game and how you play, it’s going to suck. Sometimes you will want to stop trying, don’t. Take a break, come back later, but DO NOT GIVE UP. I’m reminded of Survivor: Legendary, where one of the participants felt that the jury didn’t want to vote for them, then their entire closing statement was them saying how they didn’t care and they were obviously losing. They still got 2 votes, and if they hadn’t self-destructed in their closing, they might have gotten more. Like I said, sometimes FTC will make you want to cry, just cry, don’t fight it. I remember answering one question during Killing School Survivor where I ended up breaking down and crying while writing one of my answers. It was one of my better answers because it was raw and people could see me. While not giving up does not guarantee you will win, giving up can guarantee you lose when you just needed to give a bit more.
General Advice #2: Find out where you stand and act accordingly.
It is rare for everyone to walk into FTC with equal win equity. As such, walking in you may be in a situation where everyone wants to give you the win and you just need to not blunder, sometimes you just need to do better than someone else, and sometimes, you are walking in as a heavy underdog and you have your work cut out for you. Depending on whether you have a lot to do or a little to do, how you need to react will be different. If everyone likes you for being a good friend, maybe don’t tell everyone how you used them as pawns, and if everyone is reluctant to vote for you for being too passive, you’ll have to either explain why you weren’t passive or why being passive was better than doing something else. The key to finding out where you stand is simple: listen to the early FTC questions, because you may think you know where you stand going in, but 95% of the time you will be wrong. Once you know where you stand, you can think about what information you want to share and figure out how to share it.
General Advice #3: Different jurors are different. Don’t try to please them all
This piece of advice might seem obvious, but it is important. Some members of the jury will want to vote for you at the start of FTC, others will want to vote for someone else, and some might not want to vote for you at all. Furthermore, some jurors prefer flashy games and others prefer more UTR games, normally this boils down to the fact that jurors like the games that they tried to play. The point is that with any answer you give, unless it is very well crafted, some people will be inclined to like it, and others won’t; this is normal. Furthermore, very few unanimous or near unanimous FTCs have happened on MS, and one of those was because a participant openly admitted to cheating. As such, you probably won’t win every vote, so rather than focusing on trying to please everyone, focus on where you are strong. If you can find ways where you can please people in other areas, that’s great, but that’s a bonus, not your primary goal.
General Advice #4: You and the jurors are people, make sure everyone remembers that.
FTC can get heated. It’s true, and sometimes people get so angry they forget that everyone else is also a person. Even if a juror is attacking you, don’t lash out at them. While it might feel right in the moment, you will likely regret it. Not only is it probably unhealthy but it doesn’t usually help your case. That does not mean you shouldn’t let people know how you feel, sometimes it just takes a little reminder for everyone to cool off a bit. Also, the listmods are there for these occasions, so feel free to talk to one.
General Advice #5: If the jury is being unfair, don’t be afraid to point it out, but be careful.
Sometimes, jurors will be unfair. Maybe they ask unfavorable questions to you, they seem to be a lot more critical of your game than your opponents' or they seem to value the game you played less. Don’t be afraid to include what’s happening in your answer. If you are already not favored to win, you need to be able to shift how the jury looks at your game, and the one of the best ways to do that is to point out where they might be unfair or there is some dissonance in how they treat the other finalists. Arguing with the jury may seem like a bad tactic, but so long as it isn’t done in a manner that insults or invalidates how they played, it can be very useful. After all, you are at the end for a reason even if it’s not clear to them, so make those reasons clear.
