NOTW XXXIX: Impending Retribution Game Thread

[TheForestAuro]

Yarrrr!

Choxorn and I tried our hardest but I got brained night two and Paulus/Civplayah were just rather nonexistant for the majority of the game. Frownyface.

It was the first game I'd played in six months but it was excellent to watch run just as much.

I did a little math and found out I've only ever been on the winning team once so luckily I haven't tarnished my record here!

 

[Camikaze]

Great game, BL.

I actually thought we were doing pretty well as mafia until we were all killed off. We were at least on the ball enough to sniff out DE (we thought Saboteur, but we were close enough) and TFA (we were pretty certain he was a Saboteur). Up until Renata caught me out, I was very happy with how we were going. (BTW, although BSmith was on our radar as *something*, as far as I remember, I don't think we ever twigged that he was the prophet until after we were gone; rhawn covered well)

I tip my hat to Renata, however, for bringing us down. Her organisation of repairs trapped us, given role reveals, into sticking to one kill a night. And I really thought that I was staying under the radar quite nicely! But her deconstruction of my activity was spot on (picking up on the subconscious 'we' was good). I don't know if the connection would've been made if Winston hadn't been suspicious after I claimed to him to be totally vanilla in items/abilities (we discussed this in our QT, and eventually had decided it was safe enough to claim vanilla), because we were *this* close to killing her the night before she connected the dots (and a couple of other nights; neglecting to kill her on several occasions proved costly).

I was expecting Camikaze to get it with his NCIS mafia game in the queue, but we have a winner!

I would've had I seen it before Romanichine.

(I like cookies)

 

[Autolycus]

Like I've said after I died in the dead thread: I consider it a flaw in NOTW games that the Scums can kill active players to shut them up completely. There's no drawback to killing them, as opposed to ORG games where an active player can become a threat with his innocence confirmed. Also, the endgames are so much more interesting and lively near the end if players are not forced to silence. You are right to point that this game was boring in the end, BL. From a watching point of view, it was indeed boring, and I can't imagine how you must have felt given the obvious amount of work you've put in that game.

I consider any rule that prevent players from participating, to be a bad rule, and no talk after death is one of the worse. As a host, you want players to participate, let them participate!

The trick for me with allowing the dead to talk is that it then has the opposite incentive for the innocents. Especially in games that prohibit out-of-thread communication, lynching the best players early is strong innocent play. This is why, whether good or scum, I support killing inactives early. It's also why I do favor WOGs, even though they harm the innocents in some ways.

 

[Renata]

I was disappointed when I died... I thought I was playing well.

Great game.

You were. Kennigit's weird promotion of you (and something vague related to that that I can't remember) was the only weird discordant note, and there were too many distractions to really focus on it. You were just unfortunate enough to run into Big Tom.



I had a ton of fun playing this, thanks very much for the game, BL. (And Yay Innocents!)

A few random thoughts --

Methos' role, which he revealed to me on day one, was one of the most fabulous I've ever seen. The way it made me bang my head against the wall the entire time I was alive and even after my death? Awesome.

The conduit repair. BL, you might remember me being a bit paranoid about that? It was amusing to find out later that for once my paranoia was well-founded. I'd have done the repair immediately anyway, though, as I had guessed that a prophet might well have need of Intelligence to be functional (calls home for background information). I'm really sort of shocked that the saboteurs never twigged to that possibility. I remember mentioning to Earthling round about day two or three that I knew exactly what I'd be blowing up that night if I was a saboteur, and I was referring to Intel.

While working with rhawn had its moments of frustration, the fake prophet reveal and its outcome was perhaps the most satisfying moment I've ever had in NOTW. (Sorry Zack.) I made such a mess of that role when I had it; being part of the fakery this time around was just the sweetest redemption.

I'm glad I got a chance to redeem my initial mis-judgment of Sprig.

I'm not proud of myself for letting "logic" overrule instinct as regards CCRunner. Lots of things pointed to him being neither saboteur nor rogue, but lots of other things, ranging from behavior to metagame issues (to name just one, there were three assault rifles in the game giving bonus votes, and the other two belonged to innocents), pointed to him being not innocent. Thank you to the innocents who remained after I died for not letting that blunder lose us the game.

Kudos to Earthling for making the right call on engine repairs that night (and unfortunately being ignored).

Kudos to Seon for speaking an astonishing amount of sense right after my death and continuing from there (and unfortunately being ignored).

Losing Romanichine, God Emperor, and Winston Hughes from the game one right after the other made me a sad panda. Three of my favorite players.

And the number one default rule of playing mafia-style games as an innocent, which this game illustrates in spades: when it's getting toward the late game, virtually all information is in the open already, and you're nevertheless flailing with no real leads, lynch or vig the people who are just barely doing enough to get by. Usually that's where the mafia is hiding. And if not -- if it is one of the talkative people -- well, all else being equal who would you rather lose to?

Thanks again, BL.

 

[DaveShack]

I'm a huge NCIS fan, and my family thought it was really cool that I was playing Gibbs.

I was constantly in fear that a scum would scan innocent and I'd promptly get killed, so I was making sure that multiple people knew who had been told what, but they knew different things so if weird stuff started happening I'd have a chance to detect who it was. Turned out to be unnecessary but it lent a lot of realism to the undercover agent role.

I wanted to brig Methos and fulfill my PG for a 100% but someone had a kill ability at that point and didn't want to chance that the captain's role might be able to survive a lynch.

Even when Takhisis revealed the pilot role, it sounded insurgent leaning to me and I suspected him till the end. He might have been the next scan if it went on.

 

[Renata]

@ Camikaze --

There was something you said fairly early on that pinged me to you; I think it was your vote on Frozen. It was in part for the wrong reasons (right after my first vote on CCRunner, you place an essentially comment-free vote onto a bandwagon I'm leaning toward thinking is on an innocent -- it rather looks like you're trying to make sure CCRunner doesn't come into danger), but partly for the right ones (the pattern I noticed later). I do have to say I might not have gone back to try to make a full review and decision on you if not for what Winston did.

Did you leave me alive so long in part because I was coordinating repairs (my usefulness against the saboteurs, that is)? I wondered.

Also, about the stalking thing --
Mostly I kept the various repair people in the dark as to who was doing what, but once or twice due to lack of time paired up the people who were repairing the same compartment in a single PM. I'm pretty sure Kennigit got one of those combined PMs at least once. Did you consider using those opportunities to know for sure where someone was so you could kill them?

 

[classical_hero]

I never realised I got the most powerful repair tool around, so that really helped me to get my PG done. It was a shame that Duke was not around for the last few nights, since he could have done his PG also, since he was planning on contacting Tak and getting the training and then flying me off with him away from the game. He knew I had already successfully done my PG, so it was about him doing his, which unfortunately he did not get to do.

 

[Zack]

After reading the Dead Innocent QT, this was completely unfair and uncalled for Earthling:

Can only wonder how much differently things could have gone if we'd killed CCRunner days ago - or even if the Rogues killed him. I mean the Rogues basically let Camikaze get killed for no reason, they could have swung the lynch and had their own nightkills, foolishly sent Zack on the wrong attack when they could have had us all easily focusing on lynching CCRunner, Frozen, etc...

Really? I can't believe you said that. Of course we made mistakes, but the rhawn thing was a good play by the innocents, not us being "foolish". Same with Camikaze.

 

[Nictel]

choxorn and CCRunner non-innocents? I never stood a chance of surviving this.

 

[classical_hero]

At the end of the game I had plenty of things in my possession. After Sprig was forced to give up the charge to Renata, I was given it for safe keeping and i kept it in my possession right until then end of the game. Also when Renata knew she was near the end of her game, she knew I had a powerful repair tool, so she gave me the master key to the ship, so I could go on repairing any section of the ship I needed to repair.

 

[Takhisis]

I won as probably the nearest role to a pure 'vanilla' townie: weak Strength, no abilities that I could do by myself, never, EVER left the Sleeping Quarters at night, NO Night Actions taken ever, no tools… I still wonder how I got through this unscathed.

Pity about Blackstone not fulfilling both his and my PG, though.
Why did everyone think my chopper was a sort of crane to offload people as we wished? I said several times I couldn't do it if they didn't come.

 

[classical_hero]

Yeah it appears that Duke got busy, so he did not have the time to send in orders, and I could not send them in for him.

 

[Takhisis]

But if you had learned you could have flown both of you out, would it have fulfilled DB's PG or not?

 

[Earthling]

No, it wasn't, Zack. Out of any comment of mine you want to pick out, that one is perfectly accurate and I'd stand by it. You rogues failed to use your nightkills well at all and generally played very poorly in the couple days leading up to your quick demise. You guys had been saying for days you should have killed someone like Renata or me, yet you didn't, and only were killing once a night, with choices like taking out the anti-saboteur Secura which was a pointless decision for your team.

And for rhawn, you completely ignored the fact that in the public thread it'd been revealed "rhawn had a powerful weapon" and that the scan on Darth Caesar was fishy. Maybe you couldn't have been expected to figure out rhawn wasn't the prophet exactly - but if he was he could have been protected too, but at least to guess that something was up. Both Kennigit and sprig also had knowledge and leads on several powerful Innocents that could easily have been better kills than rhawn, so it's not like you didn't have other options. But more importantly, again, letting Camikaze himself get into the brig to even make the situation a problem was entirely your own fault. Practically your whole team came forward to make bad votes that day, a real deviation from your previous play and it was a poor call. You first went after rhawn on the votes, then bandwaggoned me on the lynch and bandwaggoned on the "long way" which was all very suspicious and at no point did you have the votes to do any of that anyway. You could have easily gotten CCRunner locked up instead, lurked around so no one guessed you were voting together, etc... and Camikaze might never have even been in the brig to worry about that night.

Why did everyone think my chopper was a sort of crane to offload people as we wished?

You never denied this. Everybody recognized that you couldn't force someone against their will, but you were supporting the story that someone (who agreed to go with you) could be "ferried off" and leave the ship entirely. Seon didn't help here though either, but you were never clear at all on what the helicopter could do, for a while you were making me think you could use it to carry out attacks too.

 

[Zack]

Hindsight is 20-20.

 

[Takhisis]

But of course it is! Being obnoxious is a longstanding CFC tradition.

 

[Earthling]

It is always nice to hear scum claim that the critical mistakes that directly got their team killed, weren't mistakes and they never could have forseen or fought against such game imbalance. Must've meant we Innocents did so much better.

Though there is someone who could use a clarification perhaps after a good run at things. I don't know if anyone's answered this again, but switching pronouns is probably not what got choxorn killed, not in the least bit. Not sure if he was scanned ,but if it wasn't a direct scan the Innocents really went on, it was effective process of elimination at that point at the least, he shouldn't be hard on himself for that in hindsight.

 

[Zack]

I'm not saying they weren't mistakes. I'm saying that it is silly to make a post afterwards saying "You know, the rogues were really stupid to do this thing" they couldn't possibly have had any idea about.

 

[Takhisis]

All right, please, stop it… I want to gloat on my first ever townie victory unimpeded.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Be nice guys. In this game, no one was infallible - everyone at some point or another made at least one bad judgment call. That's the way things go sometimes.