We have a winner!
After just under half a year, the Monster Hunter Tournament has come to a close!
First, our 3rd place winner is Dalamadur!
Ahtal-Ka put up a good fight against its round 1 rival, but in the end Dalamadur took the titles of 3rd Place Monster and Tumblr's Favorite 4th Final Boss. It's still impressive how far Ahtal-Ka made it in the tournament, fans of the golden empress (including me!) should be proud of how well it did, while Dalamadur is very much deserving of it's spot in the top 3. Congratulations to the largest monster in the (main) series for getting such a fittingly high spot!
As for our champion, it's Gore Magala!
After a very close match, Gore Magala managed to pull ahead and claim its place as the #1 Monster! Namielle put up a very close fight, and was even winning for the first day or two, but Gore managed to sneak ahead for the win. Full disclosure: I personally wasn't a huge fan of World, to the point that Iceborne was the first (and to date only) MH game I've skipped since I got into the series with Tri / 3Ultimate. Because of this, I actually hardly knew anything about Namielle before starting this tournament, and certainly didn't expect it to make it this far. Seeing this monster that I had personally not really thought much about have so many passionate fans behind it was honestly one of the coolest parts of running this whole tournament, so thank you Namielle fans! You've made me appreciate this monster that I've never even fought way more than I had previously.
Conversely, I wasn't surprised at all by seeing Gore in the finals: from before voting for round 1 had even started I personally guessed Gore was going to make it really far in this tournament, and I can't deny it wasn't deserving of it. Between being the monster with the most story relevance in the only MH game that tries the hardest to have an interesting plot (barring stories and other spin-offs anyway), having a super unique and engaging status effect, and just generally being a very aesthetically cool monster, it was always going to be a force to be reckoned with in this tournament. Despite it not being my personal favorite monster (that would probably be Valstrax), I'm definitely alright with it being our tournament champion.
Thank you all for joining me for this! While being much more work than I expected, this was a lot of fun to put together. For the future, I might do some smaller, one-off polls if I have ideas for them (feel free to suggest any you think of!), and once Wilds comes out I might do another bracket (either with just Wilds or the whole roster again, I'm not sure). Until then, happy hunting, and thank you all for voting!