Long Game 106: On the Shores of The Black Lake

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

I told you I wasn't spiked!

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

1 minute ago, IcedOutPenguin said:

I told you I wasn't spiked!

We had completely reversed roles from last game

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

1 minute ago, KaladinsSenseOfHumorSpren said:

We had completely reversed roles from last game

Lol. It kinda sucks to be out first.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

56 minutes ago, IcedOutPenguin said:

Lol. It kinda sucks to be out first.

It does, but you get used to it when it happens often. There’s a reason I gained the title “Shield of the Lynch”

[Hoid Slayer He/Him]

40 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

It does, but you get used to it when it happens often. There’s a reason I gained the title “Shield of the Lynch”

Wait

I want to hear this story

[StrikerEZ he/him]

11 minutes ago, Hoid Slayer said:

Wait

I want to hear this story

There’s not much to it. There was just a period of time where I kept getting executed very early. It was practically a given that I would be a D1 execution option. The funniest one was a game where it was more based on Avalon almost. I was a spy who knew all the identities of the elims, but I couldn’t just come out and say it because the elims had a secondary win condition of assassinating me. But, because I’m me, I ended up on the chopping block D1. At the very end I panicked and revealed all the elims’ names last minute. I was like “aha, the elims can’t assassinate me because I’ll be dead!” Wrong. I had missed a portion of the rules that said I was immune to the exe. So the elims could just assassinate me and win. They called the game there and restarted it with a new distribution.

Ask @Kasimir about it. He was one of the GMs for that game.

[Kasimir he/him]

Thanks to @Araris Valerian for GMing, and @KaladinsSenseOfHumorSpren and @TwinStorm for being great teammates!

Special thanks to @little wilson and @The Unknown Order for therapist-client confidentiality

Village played well IMO. I think Storm and KSauce were decently under pressure in PoEs, there was just insufficient follow-through, I went into D4 expecting to need to bus KSauce until it seemed that Village had gotten completely distracted on Striker, which was a moment of "Okay...guess I'll roll with it?"

3 hours ago, Hoid Slayer said:

Honestly, you played us all perfectly.

Your scheme was good, and I was more or less honest in dealing with you in terms of that being what I'd do as Village. The one thing I did not do was I did not point out to you that beyond trying to draw the kill, the entire PM scheme should have been taken as a reaction test and dropped into the thread and summarised for analysis the next day. I think you were correct to catch Storm on the basis of an anomalous reaction, and I think KSauce would probably be findable on that basis too based off what he was saying.

I tried to warn them it was coming but honestly it's just hard to get Elim teammates to read the doc in time, or to actually react appropriately to a reaction test and at least one Elim is usually findable that way via anomalous response.

59 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

It does, but you get used to it when it happens often. There’s a reason I gained the title “Shield of the Lynch”

3 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

I was right, by the way! Completely village! I was framed! Lmao

Yeah, sorry. I wasn't going to fish for another ML when you were doing the job so excellently  This was one endgame where convergence would've been 100% understandable because we'd expect the Spiked to try to bus you here, though I definitely think there are side-worlds where a Spiked team would try a thunderdome here: split the vote, hammer the tie, and then kill in the night.

6 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Thoughts on specifics of the game and the distribution I ended up going with to come later.

I'm interested in your thoughts tbh! I felt that on a raw distro meat-and-potatoes basis, the distro favoured my team (though not with regard to player comp.) Village not having any protection from the Coinshot or the Spiked kill seemed rough, and I felt it was lucky that Storm never drew Steel balance-wise.

And yeah I did a PoE and RNGed to make Trips shoot himself. I guess I can retire now, between this and AG8, I'm never exceeding this peak, it'll be downhill from here

3 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

There’s not much to it. There was just a period of time where I kept getting executed very early. It was practically a given that I would be a D1 execution option. The funniest one was a game where it was more based on Avalon almost. I was a spy who knew all the identities of the elims, but I couldn’t just come out and say it because the elims had a secondary win condition of assassinating me. But, because I’m me, I ended up on the chopping block D1. At the very end I panicked and revealed all the elims’ names last minute. I was like “aha, the elims can’t assassinate me because I’ll be dead!” Wrong. I had missed a portion of the rules that said I was immune to the exe. So the elims could just assassinate me and win. They called the game there and restarted it with a new distribution.

Ask @Kasimir about it. He was one of the GMs for that game.

Yeah we basically gave him the title "Striker Kalebane, Terror of GMs, Shield of the Lynch" after that game both because he kept getting D1ed so it's like he's shielding everyone else from the D1 exe, and the Terror of GMs was because Hael and I had planned for most game-breaking outcomes...except for the one where Striker didn't read the rules and therefore didn't realise he was immune to the exe, and...yeah, we then had to panic and ask the IM if we could rerun the game.

Edited June 24, 2025 by Kasimir

[Jo and the Bush all/any]

Well dang, GG. I was completely taken in by Kas.

Am I allowed to be proud of figuring out two of the spiked  for the complete wrong reasons?

[TwinStorm He/Him]

4 minutes ago, A Jo in the Bush said:

Well dang, GG. I was completely taken in by Kas.

Am I allowed to be proud of figuring out two of the spiked  for the complete wrong reasons?

lol, I was worried, except that you're reasoning was interesting at best (no offense ofc)

[StrikerEZ he/him]

6 minutes ago, A Jo in the Bush said:

Well dang, GG. I was completely taken in by Kas.

Am I allowed to be proud of figuring out two of the spiked  for the complete wrong reasons?

Sorry I was so tunneled on you. Fog of war and all that.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

9 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I'm interested in your thoughts tbh! I felt that on a raw distro meat-and-potatoes basis, the distro favoured my team (though not with regard to player comp.) Village not having any protection from the Coinshot or the Spiked kill seemed rough, and I felt it was lucky that Storm never drew Steel balance-wise.

I ended up pretty happy with how things turned out. The general thought was to give the village a Coinshot over a Seeker, give the Spiked a Lurcher and a Rioter as countermeasures, and have the game lean mostly on the exe. The village had 3 Smokers, the idea being that maybe one would get in contact with the Coinshot, but in the end that didn’t help.

If I could run this playercount again, I’d probably do 4 Spiked, with no Mistborn but a Smoker, and give the village a Seeker. That would take a lot of the volatility out of things; Rioter/Smoker/Lurcher is a pretty good defensive lineup against a Seeker and a Coinshot, and losing any one of those would not spell disaster, mechanically speaking. And a village Seeker would ease some of the analysis burden that gets otherwise increased when all communication is via RP.

A less major adjustment would be to give the village either 1-2 Thugs or a Lurcher, but I’m less comfortable with that because of the previously mentioned volatility; stretching the game out would just give more opportunities for the elims to lose a key role. 

[Kasimir he/him]

7 minutes ago, TwinStorm said:

lol, I was worried, except that you're reasoning was interesting at best (no offense ofc)

Honestly interesting reasoning doesn't matter. Dead is dead, so you're still in trouble if they get a train on you and there's a kneejerk Elim tell people sometimes look for - it's the one where the player gets a bit overly-defensive of the reasoning. I suspect there are correct ways to play it off, e.g. "This is bad reasoning, therefore I feel this player is struggling to manufacture suspicions" or "This is bad reasoning, they're just trying to push an agenda/find a reason to have a vote here."

But it's common enough Elims will just focus on the goodness/badness of the reasoning without drawing inferences from it enough that it's suspicious. LG83 basically had the Elim team complaining they were being sussed for bad reasons, but the Village was still utterly and accidentally correct and Village kind of doesn't really care as long as you're correct

15 minutes ago, A Jo in the Bush said:

Well dang, GG. I was completely taken in by Kas.

Am I allowed to be proud of figuring out two of the spiked  for the complete wrong reasons?

IMO wrong reason, right targets, good enough. Your reads were generally solid  The only shame was they didn't get pushed hard enough. My judgement call on leaving you alive with keeping the PoE wide enough, and also that I didn't think you'd get enough thread buy-in for that push.

The one thing you probably didn't account for was that I'd changed my Elim playstyle since we last played V/E in that game from...I don't recall who, Elan? Yeah I think it was Elan.

Tbf I was also not really sure how much the M&M Discord server would change my Elim playstyle so this was a first for me in terms of bringing it back to SE. I think M&M has generally been good for me in teaching me to chill both as a Villager and an Elim but especially as an Elim, so the fluidity in reads you noticed was just me going with the flow and being comfortable in reacting to things/forming reads in the moment.

I guess in general I'm happy with the development in my Elim playstyle. I was nursing some health issues near the end and had two panic attacks but figured it was generally a step in the right direction. I did want to beat the allegations I couldn't play an Elim game without PHing out though. 

Shoutout to @|TJ|, @StrikerEZ, and @The Unknown Order. One day we'll get our Elim game together but I must absolutely insist you call the game and be Punk to my Cena. I ain't got the energy to call, I just want to chill and slack off  

1 minute ago, Araris Valerian said:

And a village Seeker would ease some of the analysis burden that gets otherwise increased when all communication is via RP.

Or you could just let me be Village!  

[StrikerEZ he/him]

18 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Shoutout to @|TJ|, @StrikerEZ, and @The Unknown Order. One day we'll get our Elim game together but I must absolutely insist you call the game and be Punk to my Cena. I ain't got the energy to call, I just want to chill and slack off  

24 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I cannot wait for that day. It will be glorious!

[Jo and the Bush all/any]

  

Quote

Slight suspicion Jo might have a power role. I’d like to keep him alive for a cycle more, so I’d probably redirect him, but if we can’t manage him and need to kill him, then so be it. Let’s see how the cycle develops. He hasn’t felt particular urgency to exe, in our PM—he’s mentioned that the actions of tonight should give us more information. IMO neither Soother nor Rioter interact in a really informative way, so I’d be wary of his being a Seeker or Mistborn here.

@Kasimir, I can be chill dude. Sometimes I just want to be chill and not push an early execution. Also, and no one ever commented on this, I was playing how Jox would act, because it was an RP game! At least, early on I was. 

Quote

I think Storm should scan Jo. He has PMed me. So far it’s still about RP stuff (what bread I want, can I read the list of what type of bread he must deliver). But I feel like he might have a plan.

My plan was to see who liked talking in PM's. That was it.

There's too many bits in D1/N1 where you guys think I'm hinting I have a role of any sort. I don't think I've done that in years.

Quote

Jo might remember that Smoking has a place.
<snip>
I’m actually aggressively defending Jo with the hopes that if/when I flip, they’ll go for Jo next. Jo might remember this one, busted it out of Wyrm’s playbook from an ancient game where Jo and I were V/E (MR3.)
<snip>
Jo will state it in thread. It’s what a good Villager does.
<snip>
On reflection, if the Coinshot wasn’t Soothed, then it soft-rules out Jo, Ash, Striker, TJ, and Bip as Coinshots. All of these people would 100% take the shot.

I don't even know what to think at this point. I don't even remember the last game I GM'd, let alone the third storming Mid Range, what?!

And like, why would I take the shot? Is that an accepted part of my playstyle? Did I N1 kill someone as a villager at some point? I really don't think I would kill until like, N3 as a villager. 

Sometimes, the way people talk about me makes me worry that someone else has been playing on my account. I don't think I'm nearly as good as people think I am.

Quote

Because actually there is only one gap and we know there isn’t a chance in hell there is no Lurcher in this game, so from a Village perspective, Jo is either being way too naive, or he just exposed the Village Lurcher, who…everyone was already counting on to save us tonight.

Hmmmm, I'm not sure if I was being naive or just playing badly there when it's laid out like this.  Especially since, like, there wasn't a village Lurcher? IDK.

Quote

Joe <snip> Jo <snip> Joe <snip> Jo <snip> Joe <snip> Jo <snip>

You really can't decide how to spell my name huh 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

@Aeoryi Hey what do you mean me signing up to play was unremarkable? Lmao

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

8 minutes ago, A Jo in the Bush said:

third storming Mid Range, what?!

Hey! Language, we're on Scadrial!

[Araris Valerian he/him]

4 hours ago, Hoid Slayer said:

Woo!

Okay. Was not expecting that.

Thank you so much to @Araris Valerian for running this game! It was really a lot of fun, even if I couldn't be active the entire time. @StrikerEZ, I'm sorry, I should have seen the signs. But we were all fooled. On that note...

Excellent job to all the Spiked, but especially @Kasimir. I was not expecting that at all, and though I did get a little more suspicious at the end, it wasn't enough. Honestly, you played us all perfectly.

Thank you to everyone else as well for making this game incredible!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!Watching you play was one of my favorite parts of this game. It's a shame you weren't able to solve things in the end, but you definitely put in a valiant effort. Definitely looking forward to playing with you in an upcoming game.

[Kasimir he/him]

28 minutes ago, A Jo in the Bush said:

You really can't decide how to spell my name huh 

I flipped a coin for it

29 minutes ago, A Jo in the Bush said:

@Kasimir, I can be chill dude. Sometimes I just want to be chill and not push an early execution. Also, and no one ever commented on this, I was playing how Jox would act, because it was an RP game! At least, early on I was. 

More that it's generally accepted that it's not good Village practice to avoid the exe, and you've heard the debate enough I figured you probably would be sold on the consensus view. My other thought was that if you're a regular Villager, you don't really know the distro, therefore should have reduced faith in night actions saving the game for the Village.

(To be more precise: if I'm an Allomantic role, I have reason to believe there are probably other Allomantic roles. If I'm a Villager, I can believe this is a roleslite game.)

27 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

@Aeoryi Hey what do you mean me signing up to play was unremarkable? Lmao

You and Bip signing up was remarkable thank u I don't take u for granted

52 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

I cannot wait for that day. It will be glorious!

Only if you carry me  Call the game! My E!style is the equivalent of John Cena I just want someone to call it for me so I can focus on doing me

[StrikerEZ he/him]

18 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

You and Bip signing up was remarkable thank u I don't take u for granted

1 hour ago, StrikerEZ said:

I’m glad someone appreciates me.

19 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Only if you carry me  Call the game! My E!style is the equivalent of John Cena I just want someone to call it for me so I can focus on doing me

I will gladly hard carry that elim team. I would put on the weight of the entire world if you, me, and TJ were elims together.

[Kasimir he/him]

23 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

I’m glad someone appreciates me.

I will gladly hard carry that elim team. I would put on the weight of the entire world if you, me, and TJ were elims together.

THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED.

[|TJ| he/him]

17 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Shoutout to @|TJ|, @StrikerEZ, and @The Unknown Order. One day we'll get our Elim game together but I must absolutely insist you call the game and be Punk to my Cena. I ain't got the energy to call, I just want to chill and slack off  

What Striker said, it shall be glorious!

Thanks for running the game, Araris! For once, I could actually (sorta) RP till the end . 

I do think we should have some form of blocking a kill. Giving us a Lurcher/Thug could have been an option but also to make Soother being able to block Spike kills as well. I know it is pretty damning if there's no Spike kill in a cycle but figuring out who are Spiked and who among them could be submitting the kill is a skill that is hard to come by and should be rewarded I think. Congrats to the Spiked, y'all had the upperhand on the village for pretty much the entire game!

[Aeoryi she/her]

19 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

@Aeoryi Hey what do you mean me signing up to play was unremarkable? Lmao

I thought you were in a deep sleeping state.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

4 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

I thought you were in a deep sleeping state.

...why would my reappearance be unremarkable then? Wouldn't it just be remarkable?

[The Unknown Character he/him]

Tin Rinrin arrived at headquarters. "I'm here to see Tin Capone. He's expecting me."

The guard nodded, opening the door to let Rinrin in. He walked through the mansion with purpose. He was Tin Capone's chief scout, and he had walked these halls many times.

He knocked on Tin Capone's door, not loudly, but not softly either. He knocked with the confidence of an servant so trustworthy he was nearly a friend. Nearly.

"Come in," Tin Capone called from inside.

Rinrin opened the door and stepped through. Tin Capone, who sat reclined into his chair, smiled at Rinrin. "Welcome back. How was Blackkeep? The people, so welcoming there."

"It was burning, sir. The koloss had swept through and trashed it. You were wise to leave when you did." Rinrin told Tin Capone. 

He nodded thoughfully. "There were Spiked there, servants of the late Lord Ruler. Copper Copper saved me, but I thought it best to find a different town to expand into. I suppose a reward is in order for him."

Rinrin nodded along. He was accustomed to the man's ramblings. 

"And you too of course. I commend your skills once again."

Tin Capone will return.

~

Thank you to @Araris Valerian for running this game and especially for making Capone and Copper's deaths ambiguous. I enjoyed roleplaying as them, and I look forward to them again.

Congratulations to the elims, and especially @Kasimir, who is proving that he's better at elim than he let's himself think. Or maybe we're just that bad at solving. Hmmm.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

1 minute ago, The Unknown Order said:

Or maybe we're just that bad at solving. Hmmm.

Or maybe I'm too much of an elim at heart to be able to balance a village team.