KingMorgan
Deity
Thanks GM and LF, DE.
Good game, whens the next one?
Good game, whens the next one?
Snakes & Foxes 3: The ****oo's Nest (Game Thread)
- Thread starter Niklas
- Start date
Izipo
Hardcore casual gamer
Next year probably 
At least we finished this one
At least we finished this one
Whenever someone wants to start another one.
hell_hound
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2008
- Messages
- 409
Thanks for a good game Niklas and LF, didn't do too badly considering how early I died 
PaulusIII
Unholy Warlord
The Beastmaster's Tale
First of all, let me freely admit that I was very lucky to win the game in the end. I did not win because my plan turned out perfectly; I won because the plans of others went astray. Neither did I play the complete game very well; I played the beginning and the end, and did almost nothing from day 4 to about day 8.
Then again, no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Plans should be updated at every moment to anticipate new developments.
I either intend this AAR to be a insightful tale from the innocent side, or to be tl;dr'ed.
Day 1 - Organizing the Pack
I was quite pleased with the team at first. I knew Diamondeye, Seon and scherbchen as active players and Tolis was a seasoned veteran of Snakes & Foxes. DE sent out a PM for the sake of organization in which he nominated me for leader; a position, which while it was merely a superficial tiebreaker I was happy to accept. He also suggested to keep our own players out of the arena in response to Ronin voting Tolis in, something I didn't object to either.
Scherbchen immediately told us of his ability without us even asking for it. Thanks for the info Scherb, but really you should've kept that a bit more quiet than you did. I think by the end of the game everybody knew...
Tolis was tempering the mood a bit by forewarning us all that there was more than likely a Mark among us and as such he wouldn't be too trusting yet. I don't blame him for that attitude since he was right
The vote didn't say anything yet. Ronin had made a big mistake by putting himself as a candidate, something you really shouldn't do on the first day since nobody knows anything yet and the first day bandwagon is going to the first who gives a reason to be bandwagoned. Against him the Ranger, who was still unoccupied at that point. None of them on the Pack, so I didn't care about it yet. I bet on the Ranger on a random hunch; I really had no idea at this point.
Day 2 - Silence before the Storm
A day of which there isn't much to be said. The Mark battle, Love vs. oyzar, was none of my concern. I did have a short talk with oyzar on the matter, doing some guesswork on Love's abilities hoping to catch a lead on the battle. And the voting was still the same as the day before; erratic, prone to both random bandwagons and people trying to get lucky by trying to start a bandwagon. Minotaur vs. Centaur won out for the simple reason it was Bull vs. Horse, I think.
I favoured Oyzar in the second battle due to thinking he'd know his opponent's weaknesses, and the Centaur just was a random guess. Ah well.
Day 3 - OH SH.. THE MARKS ARE AFTER OUR TEAM, THEY BROUGHT IN DIAMO- oh, wait, he was a Mark? Thanks guys!
We awoke to find Diamondeye set up against the Paladin, a matchup with which Diamondeye wasn't happy at all. He immediately wanted to see blood from the Druid, of whom he claimed had tried to get rid of him in the evening. I and Seon went along with that for some reason, perhaps because we were a little envious of him? Against him the Knight whom we suspected could get rid of him. DE also wanted cash for equipment of course; we gave it to him. Seon's activity backfired on him somewhat, thankfully the Druid vs. Knight voters were with more. I'd hate losing Seon that early.
Imagine my surprise when we found out that Diamondeye was Marked. Marks pretty much starting out with what looked like a teamkill.
And one quote of mine that might as well describe a lot more people at the time...
Yeah, we were in the dark, following every theory that might make even the slightest bit of sense at the time. Coming back on it, I'm curious as to why we were all trying to off KingMorgan at that point out of envy and a very flimsy justification, but when I pulled ahead that attitude seemed to be lacking. Perhaps Tolis was right with his silence after all, since we as well might stop voting except if it was for getting the bonus points from the first or second vote. It said nothing, it was only bandwagons and people trying to get lucky. I still wonder why Seon was so much more a popular target than me, seeing as how I've got exactly one arena vote during the whole game, and that was Ras trying to get lucky.
I also lost a lot of money at that day. I hoped that Diamondeye would win his battle, and voted in the Knight to kill the Druid and placed my bet accordingly. I was wrong on both counts.
Day 4, 5, 6 - Might as well be MIA
Not much happened during these days, at least not from my end since I was either preoccupied with other things or away to London. I didn't vote very much or even bet at all. I still kept somewhat active of course; since by now, the votes had been switching to the usual purge of inactives. See for this the death of the inactive Firebow, or the Sculptor, or the voting in of the Ritualist. Combined with a somewhat envious streak against the at that time wildly successful Druid, the votes were not to be feared at that time.
Of note was that Tolis softened up a bit after Diamondeye had died in the arena and was Marked; evidently, he was going by the assumption that since a Mark had already been found on the team, he could trust us a little bit more. He sought to obtain money for a scanner; I and Seon, as well as players from outside the Pack (Kulko, and BaoBao, and likely some others as well) contributed to it. He only ever gave one scan with it though, and then we never heard from him again. From what I heard he went on a business trip... yeah, that sometimes happens. I had warned him that being inactive in the thread would be dangerous to him, he preferred to stay below the Mark's radar by being inactive.
I was almost inactive during these days. But well, what can you do?
Day 7 - Death catches up with the Lich
Day 7 was the turning point in which I returned to activity, mostly because I'd won a few bets over a few days and I was getting better at it somewhat.
As said before, the votes went mostly to inactive players in the thread and the vote to get Tolis in became stronger.
I and Seon watched on as the vote to get Tolis into the arena became stronger. At that point neither one of us would be lifting a finger to help him out; he had asked for money to be given to the team scanner yet sent only one result, had not voted on anything himself and most importantly he had not said a single word in the thread, something that is very much damning by now. We weren't going to try to save him if he didn't help out himself, mainly because there was some resentment among us as well. Plus, we'd get a refund of our cash.
The Mark got another teamkill across. Somehow I think there should either be more Marks or a provision against the Mark losing that often in evening battles; because well, tbh the Mark had perhaps lost on this day.
Day 8 - Three Wolves
Tolis went down, no surprise there. He was inactive and hadn't even asked us for money to be spent on equipment. The Mark sent in two from Phoenix Rising; again, no surprise there.
Aramazd (always eager to fight) voted himself in against the inactive Ritualist, didn't mind another inactive being voted off. I really should've bet on Aramazd here because it was claer he was going to win, but I forgot to place the bet.
That's all. Another quiet day.
Day 9 - Pack in Danger
The Mark battle; Renata vs. oyzar. Two good players pitted against each other.
Evidently though, Renata didn't have enough cash on her own to buy some equipment and she assumed (correctly, I presume) that oyzar would have bought equipment. As such she had gone around asking a few people for some cash, including myself. She promised high returns on the 50 gold she needed for the last piece of equipment, and even higher if I'd place a large bet for her to win.
And Renata won, which brought a fair bit of cash in. 100 gold from Renata who made good on her promise, and 172 gold from the bet.
For some odd reason the Seon vote won out today. He was never inactive nor making himself suspicious; it might have had something to do with his job title which made people afraid of him. Against him Jono; thankfully Seon won the fight.
Also, Renata had started collecting money for another scanner. I decided to contribute. I haven't had a scan since Tolis went inactive. Even though Renata told me she wasn't holding the scanner (as it turned out, BananaLee was) we needed to get a scanner to aid us in the betting. Seon would join in as well once he defeated the Ranger and got some extra cash.
Day 10 - First Sign of Cooperation
CCRunner vs. Kulko was the battle of the day. Not two people I was involved with at the time (note that this would change ) so I didn't care. The voting told more though; it was really lighting up before noon. Tasslehoff was popular by virtue of not having a Mark found on the team yet, same for Renata and Frozen. I voted in Aramazd and Sepuku to try and do away with the latter; that was just me being pissed about his tactics, since he was fine with selling Seon's stats.
This of course was before Runner exposed Winston and all the votes switched to kill-voting the Ogre. I favoured the Paladin to slay him but the Dragonslayer was more popular in that respect; didn't mind that much since Izipo seemed certain of his victory.
Runner's role didn't end with that revelation though. After having exposed Winston during the day, Runner sent out a message to five people to try and have Renata killed, because he suspected her of being a Mark. Those five people were the first four team leaders excluding BananaLee (which at the time were myself, Izipo, Methos and Aramazd), and his final teammate Tasslehoff. That message would get things rolling behind the scenes and start some degree of cooperation between teams.
Runner died innocent, lending his words some credibility. Izipo didn't agree with his assessment of Renata, and Aramazd suggested to token her. I and Tasslehoff were prepared to contribute some money on a scan. Unfortunately at that point talks broke down a bit due to an unfortunate mistake on Methos' behalf; he claimed to be more suspicious of CCRunner's motives, evidently having forgotten that he was dead and innocent. This raised distrust of Methos and probably contributed as well to talks breaking down.
Day 11 - Silence Returns
Methos vs. Tasslehoff... again, while I had heard of them shortly before I didn't mind this battle much. With another Mark caught the voting calmed down considerably, to the point where it was voting in inactives again, in particular the Frost Speaker. It ended up being Frost Speaker vs. Illusionist.
Not really much happened for me during this day. If on day 10 things looked up, they looked down again on day 11.
Day 12 - The Pack is short one member but the Alliance is formed
Seon was brought in by the Mark against Sepuku, something I considered to be a death sentence for Seon. Sepuku after all had been quite vocal about having Seon's stats and I think some of the Mark must've heard that as well - as expected, he died in the arena, and as such nearly all the cooperation within the Pack came to an end. The arena votes didn't say much at that time. I was still killing off inactives, since I had no Mark lead. Splime died, which was good for my point total.
As mentioned before, CCRunner had contacted a few of the team leaders, wishing to cooperate in using a token on Renata. Talks had broken down a bit due to some distrust within the ranks but Aramazd sent out another message to try and get us to work together once again. He mentioned that Chandrasekhar had already been scanned innocent and that Kulko had worked together with him on the scan. I was interested enough by then to talk to Kulko and find out what the plan was. Tasslehoff would follow as well. That proved to be one of the biggest break points in the game; it would get me, Kulko and Renata working together on rooting out the Mark.
The idea of a crystal ball also came up; once we got talking though it turned out that the team was short on money, Chand was not very active either and as such we might need another guaranteed innocent. We wanted to get that info before the next update (otherwise we wouldn't be able to vote either Tass or Renata in) so I spent all my cash in a pinch to get a token. Kulko contributed some cash for the token; it was a toss-up between scanning either Tasslehoff or Renata. In the end I went for Renata because she was more likely a mark than Tasslehoff, who had already seen his share of evening fights. Renata turned out to be innocent.
Good news, since that meant I could fully trust her and work together. From this time on I was working together within an alliance of innocents to bring down the Marks. At that time, it included Tasslehoff, Renata, Kulko, me, and Chandrasekhar.
Day 13 - In the Arena
The Mark battle of me vs. Tasslehoff. I'd expected to be in an evening fight, but not necessarily against Tasslehoff, he who already had survived three.
Neither of us were very happy with this, as you can imagine. Both of us were nearly certain that the other was innocent as well, so we decided to cooperate on the battle behind the scenes and still try to turn it to our advantage. We shared our stats with each other and tried to figure out who would win, so that we could try to get a view on the way the battle system worked and make some money on bets. As odd as that may sound, I was completely honest to him in my stats and had not bought anything to aid me in the battle (though that was more because at that point I lacked the money to buy anything, scherbchen did not have any money to speak of either, and the alliance had decided not to intervene on anything), and he was so as well. So the matchup looked like:
Paulus: 5 abilities, of which 2 were against weaknesses and 3 were normal damage.
Tasslehoff: 7 abilites, of which 2 were against weaknesses, 2 were normal damage and 3 were against resistances.
Yeah... it could go either way, depending on the ratio points normal/points resisted. Which was kept secret by Niklas. If the resisted damage was very low or even 0 (turned out to be negative
), I would win, but were it high, then it would go to Tasslehoff. We also talked about it to Renata, she wasn't sure either. The odds looked better for Tasslehoff because we expected that even resisted abilities would deal a fair amount of damage. (Turned out that resistances counted against him. No surprise then that Tasslehoff went down in that fight!)
But I won, and as such Phoenix Rising lost its final member. Jeez, those guys had it bad. The Mark has been sending them in on every occasion. Except for first morning death Ronin all of them fought at least two evening battles.
Meanwhile, we were plotting on the morning battle vote. The battle between Renata and RRRaskolnikov was fixed behind the scenes by Renata herself, as well as me and Kulko. We were never really sure of Raskolnikov; he'd been staying in the background, losing a lot of cash but not really on the stage so on a guess we voted him in, and Renata was (with scan cooperation from BananaLee) pretty sure she could take him down herself. But we failed to see that the lone Serpent who had been caught so far had voted against Raskolnikov earlier, which threw the theory of him being a possible Mark out the window. A mistake we could have avoided were it not that I had different matters on my mind...
Because the battle was fixed by us, Renata was the obvious betting choice. The odds sucked though, so I kept the bet small.
Also note that, overjoyed by both my survival and the huge cash windfall, I spent another token. BananaLee was the target, since he was holding the scanner I'd contributed to, and because neither of us was really sure of his loyalty. He turned up innocent as well, so we could let him in on the plans.
At this time we went by the assumption of having 6 marks and no more than one Mark on each team. This left us with five possible Marks; Frozen, Kulko, ZPV, Thomas and D'Art. Frozen was my prime suspect at that time because his team had seem few evening fights or even fought at all; both Frozen himself and BananaLee hadn't even been in the arena, and the two dead people on the team died in the morning without evening fights. I was working together with Kulko and we had enough time to see for ourselves whether he'd been lying, so he was unlikely to be Marked. For the other three it was pretty much a toss-up.
Day 14 - The Endgame Starts
I'd also noted that I became more fanatical in the "FIRSTPOST!!!!!!!111oneone1!1!" department once I had caught up to the Luridus in score and the innocent victory was nearly certain. After all, being first to vote brought score benefits to it. So I voted in Frozen as prime suspect and Thomas against him because he was also on the suspect list and hadn't fought a battle yet. Frozen responded by voting a battle of him against ZPV, a battle I wouldn't be happy with because I assumed that BananaLee had also given ZPV's data to him and which would probably make it harder for me to get him into the arena to be killed. It didn't prove to be that popular a vote though as Sepuku won out against ZPV. I had bet on the Eidolon here, since ZPV was nigh-inactive and didn't have the resources Sepuku had.
That proved to be a good betting guide, by the way. In general, the less active one is the more likely he is to lose, and the more money he has the more equipment he can buy to win. A lot of assumptions in there but generally it worked.
Day 15 - The Lone Wolf
Scherbchen and Renata were brought into the arena, something I thought very unfortunate. Ideally I had wanted to keep both alive since Renata was one of my associates and Scherbchen was on my team. We had some discussion on the battle and our plans for it, but I left the battle be because I didn't want to step in there. I ended up betting for Renata to win because that would somewhat cover the loss of scherbchen.
The voting was much more interesting. I stuck with my plan of voting Frozen and another person from the Mark suspect list in, which ended up being D'Artagnan at random (it was either him or Thomas again). The rest of the players voted in a similar pattern, until Chand's revelation came.
Chand had acquired enough money to use a token and was pondering where to use it. I recall him favouring a scan of Izipo, but I, Kulko and Renata agreed that he'd be better off using it on one of his own team, which ended up being Thomas. At noon Chand came with the (I admit, not very stunning, because we had expected it) revelation that Thomas was marked, and the voting went accordingly against him. Frozen would be his opponent because he was still popular as a vote as well.
Scherbchen died against Renata which left me the sole member of the Pack (I briefly comtemplated requesting a name change to 'The Lone Wolf' ). The morning battle was Frozen vs. Thomas, one certain Mark and one nearly-certain Mark. Frozen in Ice had gone around asking some of us (the rich ones; me, Sepuku and Izipo) for money, a PM I never replied to because I didn't want to give away that I suspected him, nor did I want to aid him because Thomas' death would bring Chand back in the points race. To keep ahead, I wanted to find the final Mark, because I expected the chance of being first to vote for Thomas to be past and the final possible Marks had been narrowed down to Frozen and Kulko. I tokened Kulko (who, surprise surprise, was innocent) but I sent that order thinking Frozen would win the battle; which he did not. If Thomas would have died, I'd have voted Frozen in at all costs.
But Frozen died. And as happy as I was to get full credit for a successful Mark call, I immediately was set into crazy paranoid mode when I saw Renata and BananaLee's last-minute bets. Not only did it put BananaLee back in the points race, though I was a clear 1000 points ahead of him at that moment (which might well have been an unintended consequence) but it kicked in my resident paranoid streak because one of the two was clearly no more interested in victory and only wanted the other one of the two to win.
Day 16 - Grand Finale
Thomas sent in Kulko and Sepuku to do battle; tbh I wasn't really interested in that battle anymore, since the game was basically over once Thomas died in the arena. What did raise some of my suspicion though was that there were some who clamoured for an Orb of Mercy, and the gold for the orb was going to Renata. And with what Renata had done in the previous betting round, I presumed that she was not really out to save either one of them from death; it was just a personal fundraiser without others knowing of it. And I didn't go around warning everybody of it because it would just raise distrust of me. As said before, I was getting paranoid.
I also note that after the Thomas vote was sealed, I temporarily bought some equipment. Why? Because Renata had told me of her personal ability, and I expected myself to be a likely target. Caution doesn't hurt anybody... well, not me, at the least. She ended up stealing from Thomas, so I was okay there.
Confident as always, Izipo volunteered to take down the final Mark, and the remaining innocents agreed with him on that. I was certain he was going to win so there would be very few bets against him... at least bets placed with the intent to win. Renata and BananaLee on the other hand... the bets placed on the Brujah vs. Runekeeper proved to me that you wanted one of you two to win, and did not mind betting against the winner to give the other one a big score. Probably Renata was going to help BananaLee get to first place. I anticipated that move and followed your bets with a big bet of my own, which should've been enough to beat BL to the first place. It worked.
...
Thus ends the Beastmaster's tale, I hope you enjoyed reading this. I hope to see an AAR from the Mark side as well. For the whole game I've been wondering about what made you send in certain people in the evening fight, and what your strategy was.
First of all, let me freely admit that I was very lucky to win the game in the end. I did not win because my plan turned out perfectly; I won because the plans of others went astray. Neither did I play the complete game very well; I played the beginning and the end, and did almost nothing from day 4 to about day 8.
Then again, no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Plans should be updated at every moment to anticipate new developments.
I either intend this AAR to be a insightful tale from the innocent side, or to be tl;dr'ed.
Day 1 - Organizing the Pack
I was quite pleased with the team at first. I knew Diamondeye, Seon and scherbchen as active players and Tolis was a seasoned veteran of Snakes & Foxes. DE sent out a PM for the sake of organization in which he nominated me for leader; a position, which while it was merely a superficial tiebreaker I was happy to accept. He also suggested to keep our own players out of the arena in response to Ronin voting Tolis in, something I didn't object to either.
Scherbchen immediately told us of his ability without us even asking for it. Thanks for the info Scherb, but really you should've kept that a bit more quiet than you did. I think by the end of the game everybody knew...
Tolis was tempering the mood a bit by forewarning us all that there was more than likely a Mark among us and as such he wouldn't be too trusting yet. I don't blame him for that attitude since he was right
The vote didn't say anything yet. Ronin had made a big mistake by putting himself as a candidate, something you really shouldn't do on the first day since nobody knows anything yet and the first day bandwagon is going to the first who gives a reason to be bandwagoned. Against him the Ranger, who was still unoccupied at that point. None of them on the Pack, so I didn't care about it yet. I bet on the Ranger on a random hunch; I really had no idea at this point.
Day 2 - Silence before the Storm
A day of which there isn't much to be said. The Mark battle, Love vs. oyzar, was none of my concern. I did have a short talk with oyzar on the matter, doing some guesswork on Love's abilities hoping to catch a lead on the battle. And the voting was still the same as the day before; erratic, prone to both random bandwagons and people trying to get lucky by trying to start a bandwagon. Minotaur vs. Centaur won out for the simple reason it was Bull vs. Horse, I think.
I favoured Oyzar in the second battle due to thinking he'd know his opponent's weaknesses, and the Centaur just was a random guess. Ah well.
Day 3 - OH SH.. THE MARKS ARE AFTER OUR TEAM, THEY BROUGHT IN DIAMO- oh, wait, he was a Mark? Thanks guys!
We awoke to find Diamondeye set up against the Paladin, a matchup with which Diamondeye wasn't happy at all. He immediately wanted to see blood from the Druid, of whom he claimed had tried to get rid of him in the evening. I and Seon went along with that for some reason, perhaps because we were a little envious of him? Against him the Knight whom we suspected could get rid of him. DE also wanted cash for equipment of course; we gave it to him. Seon's activity backfired on him somewhat, thankfully the Druid vs. Knight voters were with more. I'd hate losing Seon that early.
Imagine my surprise when we found out that Diamondeye was Marked. Marks pretty much starting out with what looked like a teamkill.
And one quote of mine that might as well describe a lot more people at the time...
Yeah, we were in the dark, following every theory that might make even the slightest bit of sense at the time. Coming back on it, I'm curious as to why we were all trying to off KingMorgan at that point out of envy and a very flimsy justification, but when I pulled ahead that attitude seemed to be lacking. Perhaps Tolis was right with his silence after all, since we as well might stop voting except if it was for getting the bonus points from the first or second vote. It said nothing, it was only bandwagons and people trying to get lucky. I still wonder why Seon was so much more a popular target than me, seeing as how I've got exactly one arena vote during the whole game, and that was Ras trying to get lucky.
I also lost a lot of money at that day. I hoped that Diamondeye would win his battle, and voted in the Knight to kill the Druid and placed my bet accordingly. I was wrong on both counts.
Day 4, 5, 6 - Might as well be MIA
Not much happened during these days, at least not from my end since I was either preoccupied with other things or away to London. I didn't vote very much or even bet at all. I still kept somewhat active of course; since by now, the votes had been switching to the usual purge of inactives. See for this the death of the inactive Firebow, or the Sculptor, or the voting in of the Ritualist. Combined with a somewhat envious streak against the at that time wildly successful Druid, the votes were not to be feared at that time.
Of note was that Tolis softened up a bit after Diamondeye had died in the arena and was Marked; evidently, he was going by the assumption that since a Mark had already been found on the team, he could trust us a little bit more. He sought to obtain money for a scanner; I and Seon, as well as players from outside the Pack (Kulko, and BaoBao, and likely some others as well) contributed to it. He only ever gave one scan with it though, and then we never heard from him again. From what I heard he went on a business trip... yeah, that sometimes happens. I had warned him that being inactive in the thread would be dangerous to him, he preferred to stay below the Mark's radar by being inactive.
I was almost inactive during these days. But well, what can you do?
Day 7 - Death catches up with the Lich
Day 7 was the turning point in which I returned to activity, mostly because I'd won a few bets over a few days and I was getting better at it somewhat.
As said before, the votes went mostly to inactive players in the thread and the vote to get Tolis in became stronger.
I and Seon watched on as the vote to get Tolis into the arena became stronger. At that point neither one of us would be lifting a finger to help him out; he had asked for money to be given to the team scanner yet sent only one result, had not voted on anything himself and most importantly he had not said a single word in the thread, something that is very much damning by now. We weren't going to try to save him if he didn't help out himself, mainly because there was some resentment among us as well. Plus, we'd get a refund of our cash.
The Mark got another teamkill across. Somehow I think there should either be more Marks or a provision against the Mark losing that often in evening battles; because well, tbh the Mark had perhaps lost on this day.
Day 8 - Three Wolves
Tolis went down, no surprise there. He was inactive and hadn't even asked us for money to be spent on equipment. The Mark sent in two from Phoenix Rising; again, no surprise there.
Aramazd (always eager to fight) voted himself in against the inactive Ritualist, didn't mind another inactive being voted off. I really should've bet on Aramazd here because it was claer he was going to win, but I forgot to place the bet.
That's all. Another quiet day.
Day 9 - Pack in Danger
The Mark battle; Renata vs. oyzar. Two good players pitted against each other.
Evidently though, Renata didn't have enough cash on her own to buy some equipment and she assumed (correctly, I presume) that oyzar would have bought equipment. As such she had gone around asking a few people for some cash, including myself. She promised high returns on the 50 gold she needed for the last piece of equipment, and even higher if I'd place a large bet for her to win.
And Renata won, which brought a fair bit of cash in. 100 gold from Renata who made good on her promise, and 172 gold from the bet.
For some odd reason the Seon vote won out today. He was never inactive nor making himself suspicious; it might have had something to do with his job title which made people afraid of him. Against him Jono; thankfully Seon won the fight.
Also, Renata had started collecting money for another scanner. I decided to contribute. I haven't had a scan since Tolis went inactive. Even though Renata told me she wasn't holding the scanner (as it turned out, BananaLee was) we needed to get a scanner to aid us in the betting. Seon would join in as well once he defeated the Ranger and got some extra cash.
Day 10 - First Sign of Cooperation
CCRunner vs. Kulko was the battle of the day. Not two people I was involved with at the time (note that this would change
) so I didn't care. The voting told more though; it was really lighting up before noon. Tasslehoff was popular by virtue of not having a Mark found on the team yet, same for Renata and Frozen. I voted in Aramazd and Sepuku to try and do away with the latter; that was just me being pissed about his tactics, since he was fine with selling Seon's stats.This of course was before Runner exposed Winston and all the votes switched to kill-voting the Ogre. I favoured the Paladin to slay him but the Dragonslayer was more popular in that respect; didn't mind that much since Izipo seemed certain of his victory.
Runner's role didn't end with that revelation though. After having exposed Winston during the day, Runner sent out a message to five people to try and have Renata killed, because he suspected her of being a Mark. Those five people were the first four team leaders excluding BananaLee (which at the time were myself, Izipo, Methos and Aramazd), and his final teammate Tasslehoff. That message would get things rolling behind the scenes and start some degree of cooperation between teams.
Runner died innocent, lending his words some credibility. Izipo didn't agree with his assessment of Renata, and Aramazd suggested to token her. I and Tasslehoff were prepared to contribute some money on a scan. Unfortunately at that point talks broke down a bit due to an unfortunate mistake on Methos' behalf; he claimed to be more suspicious of CCRunner's motives, evidently having forgotten that he was dead and innocent. This raised distrust of Methos and probably contributed as well to talks breaking down.
Day 11 - Silence Returns
Methos vs. Tasslehoff... again, while I had heard of them shortly before I didn't mind this battle much. With another Mark caught the voting calmed down considerably, to the point where it was voting in inactives again, in particular the Frost Speaker. It ended up being Frost Speaker vs. Illusionist.
Not really much happened for me during this day. If on day 10 things looked up, they looked down again on day 11.
Day 12 - The Pack is short one member but the Alliance is formed
Seon was brought in by the Mark against Sepuku, something I considered to be a death sentence for Seon. Sepuku after all had been quite vocal about having Seon's stats and I think some of the Mark must've heard that as well - as expected, he died in the arena, and as such nearly all the cooperation within the Pack came to an end. The arena votes didn't say much at that time. I was still killing off inactives, since I had no Mark lead. Splime died, which was good for my point total.
As mentioned before, CCRunner had contacted a few of the team leaders, wishing to cooperate in using a token on Renata. Talks had broken down a bit due to some distrust within the ranks but Aramazd sent out another message to try and get us to work together once again. He mentioned that Chandrasekhar had already been scanned innocent and that Kulko had worked together with him on the scan. I was interested enough by then to talk to Kulko and find out what the plan was. Tasslehoff would follow as well. That proved to be one of the biggest break points in the game; it would get me, Kulko and Renata working together on rooting out the Mark.
The idea of a crystal ball also came up; once we got talking though it turned out that the team was short on money, Chand was not very active either and as such we might need another guaranteed innocent. We wanted to get that info before the next update (otherwise we wouldn't be able to vote either Tass or Renata in) so I spent all my cash in a pinch to get a token. Kulko contributed some cash for the token; it was a toss-up between scanning either Tasslehoff or Renata. In the end I went for Renata because she was more likely a mark than Tasslehoff, who had already seen his share of evening fights. Renata turned out to be innocent.
Good news, since that meant I could fully trust her and work together. From this time on I was working together within an alliance of innocents to bring down the Marks. At that time, it included Tasslehoff, Renata, Kulko, me, and Chandrasekhar.
Day 13 - In the Arena
The Mark battle of me vs. Tasslehoff. I'd expected to be in an evening fight, but not necessarily against Tasslehoff, he who already had survived three.
Neither of us were very happy with this, as you can imagine. Both of us were nearly certain that the other was innocent as well, so we decided to cooperate on the battle behind the scenes and still try to turn it to our advantage. We shared our stats with each other and tried to figure out who would win, so that we could try to get a view on the way the battle system worked and make some money on bets. As odd as that may sound, I was completely honest to him in my stats and had not bought anything to aid me in the battle (though that was more because at that point I lacked the money to buy anything, scherbchen did not have any money to speak of either, and the alliance had decided not to intervene on anything), and he was so as well. So the matchup looked like:
Paulus: 5 abilities, of which 2 were against weaknesses and 3 were normal damage.
Tasslehoff: 7 abilites, of which 2 were against weaknesses, 2 were normal damage and 3 were against resistances.
Yeah... it could go either way, depending on the ratio points normal/points resisted. Which was kept secret by Niklas. If the resisted damage was very low or even 0 (turned out to be negative
), I would win, but were it high, then it would go to Tasslehoff. We also talked about it to Renata, she wasn't sure either. The odds looked better for Tasslehoff because we expected that even resisted abilities would deal a fair amount of damage. (Turned out that resistances counted against him. No surprise then that Tasslehoff went down in that fight!)But I won, and as such Phoenix Rising lost its final member. Jeez, those guys had it bad. The Mark has been sending them in on every occasion. Except for first morning death Ronin all of them fought at least two evening battles.
Meanwhile, we were plotting on the morning battle vote. The battle between Renata and RRRaskolnikov was fixed behind the scenes by Renata herself, as well as me and Kulko. We were never really sure of Raskolnikov; he'd been staying in the background, losing a lot of cash but not really on the stage so on a guess we voted him in, and Renata was (with scan cooperation from BananaLee) pretty sure she could take him down herself. But we failed to see that the lone Serpent who had been caught so far had voted against Raskolnikov earlier, which threw the theory of him being a possible Mark out the window. A mistake we could have avoided were it not that I had different matters on my mind...
Because the battle was fixed by us, Renata was the obvious betting choice. The odds sucked though, so I kept the bet small.
Also note that, overjoyed by both my survival and the huge cash windfall, I spent another token. BananaLee was the target, since he was holding the scanner I'd contributed to, and because neither of us was really sure of his loyalty. He turned up innocent as well, so we could let him in on the plans.
At this time we went by the assumption of having 6 marks and no more than one Mark on each team. This left us with five possible Marks; Frozen, Kulko, ZPV, Thomas and D'Art. Frozen was my prime suspect at that time because his team had seem few evening fights or even fought at all; both Frozen himself and BananaLee hadn't even been in the arena, and the two dead people on the team died in the morning without evening fights. I was working together with Kulko and we had enough time to see for ourselves whether he'd been lying, so he was unlikely to be Marked. For the other three it was pretty much a toss-up.
Day 14 - The Endgame Starts
I'd also noted that I became more fanatical in the "FIRSTPOST!!!!!!!111oneone1!1!" department once I had caught up to the Luridus in score and the innocent victory was nearly certain. After all, being first to vote brought score benefits to it. So I voted in Frozen as prime suspect and Thomas against him because he was also on the suspect list and hadn't fought a battle yet. Frozen responded by voting a battle of him against ZPV, a battle I wouldn't be happy with because I assumed that BananaLee had also given ZPV's data to him and which would probably make it harder for me to get him into the arena to be killed. It didn't prove to be that popular a vote though as Sepuku won out against ZPV. I had bet on the Eidolon here, since ZPV was nigh-inactive and didn't have the resources Sepuku had.
That proved to be a good betting guide, by the way. In general, the less active one is the more likely he is to lose, and the more money he has the more equipment he can buy to win. A lot of assumptions in there but generally it worked.
Day 15 - The Lone Wolf
Scherbchen and Renata were brought into the arena, something I thought very unfortunate. Ideally I had wanted to keep both alive since Renata was one of my associates and Scherbchen was on my team. We had some discussion on the battle and our plans for it, but I left the battle be because I didn't want to step in there. I ended up betting for Renata to win because that would somewhat cover the loss of scherbchen.
The voting was much more interesting. I stuck with my plan of voting Frozen and another person from the Mark suspect list in, which ended up being D'Artagnan at random (it was either him or Thomas again). The rest of the players voted in a similar pattern, until Chand's revelation came.
Chand had acquired enough money to use a token and was pondering where to use it. I recall him favouring a scan of Izipo, but I, Kulko and Renata agreed that he'd be better off using it on one of his own team, which ended up being Thomas. At noon Chand came with the (I admit, not very stunning, because we had expected it) revelation that Thomas was marked, and the voting went accordingly against him. Frozen would be his opponent because he was still popular as a vote as well.
Scherbchen died against Renata which left me the sole member of the Pack (I briefly comtemplated requesting a name change to 'The Lone Wolf'
). The morning battle was Frozen vs. Thomas, one certain Mark and one nearly-certain Mark. Frozen in Ice had gone around asking some of us (the rich ones; me, Sepuku and Izipo) for money, a PM I never replied to because I didn't want to give away that I suspected him, nor did I want to aid him because Thomas' death would bring Chand back in the points race. To keep ahead, I wanted to find the final Mark, because I expected the chance of being first to vote for Thomas to be past and the final possible Marks had been narrowed down to Frozen and Kulko. I tokened Kulko (who, surprise surprise, was innocent) but I sent that order thinking Frozen would win the battle; which he did not. If Thomas would have died, I'd have voted Frozen in at all costs.But Frozen died. And as happy as I was to get full credit for a successful Mark call, I immediately was set into crazy paranoid mode when I saw Renata and BananaLee's last-minute bets. Not only did it put BananaLee back in the points race, though I was a clear 1000 points ahead of him at that moment (which might well have been an unintended consequence) but it kicked in my resident paranoid streak because one of the two was clearly no more interested in victory and only wanted the other one of the two to win.
Day 16 - Grand Finale
Thomas sent in Kulko and Sepuku to do battle; tbh I wasn't really interested in that battle anymore, since the game was basically over once Thomas died in the arena. What did raise some of my suspicion though was that there were some who clamoured for an Orb of Mercy, and the gold for the orb was going to Renata. And with what Renata had done in the previous betting round, I presumed that she was not really out to save either one of them from death; it was just a personal fundraiser without others knowing of it. And I didn't go around warning everybody of it because it would just raise distrust of me. As said before, I was getting paranoid.
I also note that after the Thomas vote was sealed, I temporarily bought some equipment. Why? Because Renata had told me of her personal ability, and I expected myself to be a likely target. Caution doesn't hurt anybody... well, not me, at the least. She ended up stealing from Thomas, so I was okay there.
Confident as always, Izipo volunteered to take down the final Mark, and the remaining innocents agreed with him on that. I was certain he was going to win so there would be very few bets against him... at least bets placed with the intent to win. Renata and BananaLee on the other hand... the bets placed on the Brujah vs. Runekeeper proved to me that you wanted one of you two to win, and did not mind betting against the winner to give the other one a big score. Probably Renata was going to help BananaLee get to first place. I anticipated that move and followed your bets with a big bet of my own, which should've been enough to beat BL to the first place. It worked.
...
Thus ends the Beastmaster's tale, I hope you enjoyed reading this. I hope to see an AAR from the Mark side as well. For the whole game I've been wondering about what made you send in certain people in the evening fight, and what your strategy was.
One minor correction though.
If my calculations were right, your initial big bet of 1500 unbolded would have made me barely nose ahead of you after the multiplication. You then changed it to 1700. Don't say I didn't notice
If my calculations were right, your initial big bet of 1500 unbolded would have made me barely nose ahead of you after the multiplication. You then changed it to 1700. Don't say I didn't notice
PaulusIII
Unholy Warlord
One minor correction though.
If my calculations were right, your initial big bet of 1500 unbolded would have made me barely nose ahead of you after the multiplication. You then changed it to 1700. Don't say I didn't notice
True. I made a mistake there.
Izipo
Hardcore casual gamer
Nice AAR Paulus, it was a very pleasant read.
... and in fact he only had 1600 to play with, so that's what his bet actually was.If my calculations were right, your initial big bet of 1500 unbolded would have made me barely nose ahead of you after the multiplication. You then changed it to 1700. Don't say I didn't notice
It happened once, at which point I realized I hadn't considered it. So from that point on I asked them to send me two names instead, so I would always have a pick. IIRC they only had to do that once though, before Winston was killed and the Snakes could reign free.
Btw, Diamondeye was a nice kill for the Snakes. But Charles ended up in the arena because the Snakes failed to send a kill even when prodded (I picked one of them at random), and Azale ended up in the arena on his own volition. He didn't explicitly ask for it, what he did was to send me a message saying he would drop out, instead of the combatant choice I was expecting. I just put those two loose ends together myself.
PaulusIII
Unholy Warlord
... and in fact he only had 1600 to play with, so that's what his bet actually was.
Heh. Mistakes again under pressure. Does that mean though that 1500 would have been enough?
For which player was that?
Yes. You would then have won by 5732 vs BananaLee's 5691.Heh. Mistakes again under pressure. Does that mean though that 1500 would have been enough?
I believe they both picked the Lizardman, and when prompted I got the Luridus from thomas as a second pick. I admit my memory is not perfect here though.
PaulusIII
Unholy Warlord
Oh, and another thing I wanted to ask.
Did you or Frozen come up with referencing... well, that thing.
"That PM mistake" was that I accidentally sent out a scan to BananaLee of the wrong person. The purpose of the delay was to ensure that everyone would get a chance to put in bets based on the accurate information.
Oh, and another thing I wanted to ask.
Did you or Frozen come up with referencing... well, that thing.
Frozen said his item, a mirror, gave +Distraction. He said that I had free reign with whatever his opponent saw--he gave the example of his own death, but he also said that it could be funny or really anything that I wanted. So I took it and ran with it.
PaulusIII
Unholy Warlord
Frozen said his item, a mirror, gave +Distraction. He said that I had free reign with whatever his opponent saw--he gave the example of his own death, but he also said that it could be funny or really anything that I wanted. So I took it and ran with it.
Ah, so it was +Distraction. I actually thought of +Mind myself.
Their obvious strategy from the beginning to evening 13: Kill Phoenix Rising.
Although, yeah, I'd like to see that, as well as why they decided to kill Phoenix Rising.
thomas.berubeg
Wandering the World
I mostly based my choices on points and who I thought could kill who. as in Luridus and Lizardman. (i figured sun would be good against a lizard... )
PaulusIII
Unholy Warlord
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