Mid-Range Game 35: Final Flight

[Furamirionind]

First of all @Ax's Boyfriend definitely I think should have won that game. His loss boils down to a semi-active elim team and a non gaurunteed elim kill. Would have killed Bard N6 and me N7, winning the game. Funny how going inactive for a cycle is actually what saved me from dying that game.

@Elandera you did good at getting some mild suspicion on you all game. Early on, I thought something was strange with you, but I was focusing on LG55 and forgot about it.  Unfortunately, by the time you made a truly condemning post, the player pool was small enough we could guess you were the SK. :/

I did not scratch Doomslugs head in an attempt to claim her after the game. I dont know rules/stuff as to what justifies a claimed item. I was hoping for something to happen. I also talked to Doomslug in my GM PM about who my suspicions were and such. I just wanted something to happen. At the expense of the game? Well, I wasnt in my right mind.

Speaking of not being in my right mind, I really tried this game to play well. I really did. But I have mentioned how insane I went from taking LG55 so seriously, and I needed an outlet for my insanity. This became that outlet. Nothing I said here had any relevance to LG55, but I just said whatever came to mind for the most part, and trying to argue for my own lynch released a lot of built up stress from the other game.

Oh, I was kind of hoping there would be more secret roles too. Like perhaps, everyone is role would have started out secret or something. : )

Thank you Steel for running this, the first Skyward game. This game definitely did Skyward justice I think.

[Lumgol]

Good game everyone! Although I wasn't as involved as I hoped to be, I'm glad I got to be a part of this game and it was really fun stepping in  

[StrikerEZ]

1 hour ago, Elandera said:

I apologize to @StrikerEZ. I feel slightly responsible for you getting shot down, as I light-lanced you that night turn. I was down to just a few points of health and was really paranoid I was going to get shot down. I couldn't let M-Bot get destroyed though. 

Nah, don't worry about it. It worked out in the best. I had used both my light lance and my destructors on you that night, so you definitely would've died that round if you hadn't light lanced me. I couldn't decide if you or Drake was an elim, and decided last minute that I trusted you less.

Speaking of which, @Young Bard Sorry for not telling you that I'd changed my mind and used my actions on Elandera. That probably would've made things a little easier. 

[Mailliw73]

Thanks, Steel, for running this! I want to apologize again for not giving it the attention it deserved! I still stand by my statement that I don’t like using inactivity as a strategy of any type and wasn’t intentionally doing so. 

Again, another congrats to Ark as he really pulled us through, especially where we couldn’t shoot pilots except with our elim kill, but they could all shoot us and they had shields. 

[+Ark1002]

I'll take it

[Steeldancer]

Alright, I'm home. So, Doomslug was the first, most obvious secret. 
The second secret, and probably the most essential secret, was Joe being a pilot. An elim pilot was absolutely essential to the balance of this game. I figured that an elim pilot would allow the entire team to get hard cleared if they were clever. Even more trolly, I made Joe a Wingmate with Snipexe. I did not predict that all the wingmates would go down in a single turn. That was kind of unexpected. 
The third secret was Fura. Fura was the Secret Mechanic. Because I'm hilarious. All there was to it was when Fura first attempted to fix a ship, they would discover that they were a mechanic. But a secret  
So, what went well this game? I felt there was a good chance for each team to win this game. The elims would have had a guaranteed victory if the second lifebuster hadn't shown up. Instead, there would have been 4 normal Krell, meaning Ark's kill would have been guaranteed to hit, pretty much. That or someone would take some serious damage from the Krell. If Elandera had been lynched, she would have had the perfect opportunity to end the game when the first lifebuster showed up. And the village did a great job of analysis, as I deliberately did not have any scanning roles, and tried to make it as hard as possible for any roles to truly hard clear a player. (ex. see elim Squadron Leader and Wingmate). So that had to be analysis, and nothing else. 
I liked seeing how the village was forced to strategize during this game, to deal with the Krell. IMPs were definitely underused in this game, and a lot more krell would have died if more people had risked using IMPs, especially the less risky IMP missiles. I also enjoyed watching people react to Doomslug sort of showing up. I allowed actions interacting with Doomslug to go through, but basically just gave flavor in return, nothing useful
I REALLY liked the OoA mechanic in this game. It could have used a bit of fine tuning in regards to where the elim kill occured (I probably should have all elim actions go where the elim kill was in the OoA, so that they couldn't accidentally kill a Krell that would otherwise have knocked out the shields of the person they were targeting). I liked how there was a risk to each ship, where Fresa's lightlances were powerful but had light health, the IMPs of the tanky Largos were powerful but everything else they did would occur after everyone else in the OoA, and Pocos were sort of a balance between them. 
So, what went wrong? 
I think the health was funky for this game. The Base probably had too much health, I was expecting it to take a lot more damage than it did. That also plays into the Krell mechanic, which worked, but at the same time... I think it should have been more swarmy. Perhaps it should have had just a health bank. I'm not entirely sure. 
The single greatest problem was the elim kill. I expected Joe to be hard cleared and survive, and then be able to guarantee those kills a lot longer than he ended up doing so. The shields were weird in this game, and that kind of messed people up. Especially the elims. It was an interesting mechanic, but I just don't think it worked. 
The wingmates were super OP, as I accidentally realized mid-game. If one wingmate IMPd, any ships that attacked that wingmate would be doomed as they got shredded by the revenge attack by the other wingmate. So that was a fun realization. 
I liked the vote mechanic for inactivity, but at the same time... it did give a lot of information. It was an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I would try anything like that again. 
Furthermore, the gunners were an interesting role, but I don't think it worked totally. It might have been better for all the elims to be pilots. However, the idea that the gunners were important to the defense while not counting towards the number of krell showing up was an interesting one. 
I might have more to say later, but I got extremely distracted in the middle of making this post by Hollow Knight Silksong stuff from E3, so maybe once I've had time to think I'll remember some more stuff. And maybe I'll actually say the things I meant to say in the LG55 aftermath thread. 

[+Ark1002]

Thank you.

I actually think most of your problems were fine. If I were to redo the game, the only thing I'd fix is the elim kill. I'd have it go through shields. 

[Fifth Scholar]

We’ve started to fall behind a bit on closing up old games, and with three months having past, it’s officially time to lock this one up. Thank you to Steel for running this last game before your mission; despite being slightly confusing, your ruleset and ship mechanics were interesting to watch play out, and I’d be interested in a modified rerun of this game. The setting and writeups were also excellent, and contributed to the flavour of the game even though I’d not read Skyward yet.  Congrats to the village pilots for their narrow victory, and to the Rebels, particularly Ark, for persevering despite being dealt a poor hand, and nearly running away with the victory. 

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Orlok, Alvron or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can.

You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about. If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Elbereth, Amanuensis, Aonar, A Joe in the Bush, or Stink) would be more than willing to help you out in private.

Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!