Episode IV Thoughts

[Judge Sam]

Woooooow. Day 17. The day all the crap went down.


So much going on!


Let me say before we start, it is ridiculous how accurate people's opinions of the Spies are. Gordy had like 5/7. Martha has 5/7 out of 21 people. That's insane.


These Spies are way, way, way too Spy-like. Look at Abrams. Look at Kip. Look at Bunni. Look at Madison. Yes they are all less-active citizens, but they are perceived as Citizens! Spies needed to absorb some of that "I don't care" attitude that they have.


The only Spy that was undiscovered was Emma and now she's gone. Masaki is common knowledge, actually Beverly did really good but she just got outed to Candy, Naomi did okay but she's doomed. Faizah and Zander everyone thinks are Spies.


So yeah, total war Spy VS. Spy in one day. And this after they didn't want to go after each other for 4 rounds! I think it got a little too heated. Especially since they don't know about Candy / Beverly.


I kinda like it.


But yesterday I would have said the Spies were going to win, now I think they are going to lose. They need to start working together. And start confirming themselves.


There were so so so many opportunities to claim.

Mystery Prize - could claim anything.
Schism Maker - could claim that.
Fatemaker - you know the role, why not claim it?
Made up role - gosh there are SO many good roles Spies could make up and confirm themselves with. Tyson is a genius in that respect.
Claim won the Investigation



Still not sure why Angelica just didn't deny it and accuse Gordy or Singe as a Spy. Or she could have acted Citizen-like, said "screw this game" and disappeared. Either would have been more effective than just admitting it. o_0


I wonder if they'll believe Angelica saying Naomi is a Spy. I still don't know why she did that. Probably out of frustration.

The fact is: the Spies need the other group to win.


I think it's time for some Spy reconciliation.

[Judge Sam]

Okay, I thought Spies were supposed to be Citizen-like.


What is Citizen-like about admitting you are a Spy? Not seeing that angle...


If a Citizen was accused of being a Spy, is that what they would do? No.


I said it before, but look at Madison, Kip, Abrams, etc... look at how they are playing the game. Copy them.

[Judge Sam]

Ahh... I can't believe this is like... sort of half way done if you go by past games.


Spies 1 would have been over tomorrow. =(


It's gone by so quickly... we are ending episode 4... geez so fast. Yet we do still have 20 people left, so I have hope. =) There's still so much more I want to do!

I alternate between loving and hating this game on a daily basis lol. Sometimes I can't stand it and thinking of it makes me vomit, and other times like now I love it and will be sad when I miss it.

I spend so much time working on things, it's hard to find time to smell the roses. Or talk to people.

Well I guess, now that there's less people, I'll have that time.

PS: so excited for live mafia! =)

[Martha]

admin said:

These Spies are way, way, way too Spy-like. Look at Abrams. Look at Kip. Look at Bunni. Look at Madison. Yes they are all less-active citizens, but they are perceived as Citizens! Spies needed to absorb some of that "I don't care" attitude that they have.

Don't know if I agree with this one.

YES, the Spies were way too suspicious (although I trusted Faizah pretty much completely until after my exile), and YES there were citizens like Abrams and Kip and Madison who didn't look like Spies. HOWEVER:


Abrams - idled out (hardly a good thing!) Practically cleared by the fact that nobody defended him in the first round anyway. Yes, I know nobody really bought that argument when it was applied to me, but the fact that I was a citizen and so was Grace (who was also undefended) should've told people something.


Madison - I really really really hoped the person who played Taylor in Spies 3 and squandered perhaps the best role ever given to a citizen would come back for S4 and play an awesome game and show me how wrong I was to label her "useless". Unfortunately, there wasn't a chance of that as it turned out. Judging on her confessionals, the only thing she contributed to this game was passive-aggressive bullshit.


Kip - first Kip was replaced. Second Kip did awesome and managed to turn around what looked to be his own certain exile and get out a spy instead. (I really wouldn't expect anything less from Allison. ) But again... we're still talking about Kip #1 here. Another idler.


Bunni - one of my faves. She seems to have had a good spydar in Spies 1 and 2. BUT she was later put "on trial" as the person everybody was most unsure of. She could have been eliminated then (although I wouldn't think most citizens would go for it, and indeed they didn't. Good judgement guys!)


In the end I think it really doesn't matter how much you "care", it's the citizen persona that you create that matters. I think back to Spies 3 and look at the Spies there. They sure as hell weren't idlers who "didn't care". Each of them had their own way of taking suspicions off them, and each of them had a group of people who trusted them. Trina told Bebe and Claire, two spies, about her role before anybody else knew. Anneliese told Jessica and Tenchi, two spies, about hers. And Raphael, a spy, actually got Shane to GIVE him his role before he - Raphael - imprisoned Shane!

In the end, it's all about aggression - but the aggression has to be targeted. It's no use floating about trying to appear everybody's friend, because people will pick up on it. (Look at Angie - she had two people, Bev and Martha, call her out for that in the first episode.) You have to create a strong consistent citizen persona. Every single spy in Spies 3 managed this at some point. And although Bev had some very unusual tactics, I think only Zander really came close this time around (hence his being the last spy standing). That's what was missing.

[Masaki]

Fatemaker - you know the role, why not claim it?

Considered. Problem with this was :

1) We were led to believe the other Spy team could imprison us until it was too late. Learning that this wasn't the case cost me an imprisonment. So claiming Fatemaker basically means you'd get imprisoned, so we were led to believe. Also requires imprisoning the Fatemaker before you claim, and knowing with 100% certainty that you got the right person. Now doing this would halt the Fatemaker questions. This means the other Spy knows that you're lying, and the only person who would know about the Fatemaker other than the Fatemaker themself would be... dum dum dum! The other Spies. This role couldn't be safely fakeclaimed with this setup under the conditions we believed we were playing under. Perhaps if we knew that we couldn't imprison each-other, it would have been feasible earlier on.

2) The time I -really- considered it was Episode 9. Problem was Gordy & his knowledge of every role in the game because people came to him with it. Seeing as he openly did not trust me, and seeing as he made it public that he knew the Fatemaker, this would not fly.

3) In previous games, when someone with a role was eliminated, their role showed up next to their Confessional when it got moved down to the Eliminated Players section. We assumed this was the case in this game. =)

Mystery Prize : We didn't win it.

Schism Maker : We knew the Fatemaker was the Schism Maker. Claiming that would risk a counter claim.

Just sayin'

[Candy]

These Spies are way, way, way too Spy-like. Look at Abrams. Look at Kip. Look at Bunni. Look at Madison. Yes they are all less-active citizens, but they are perceived as Citizens! Spies needed to absorb some of that "I don't care" attitude that they have.

Even if I was a spy I wouldn't do this because the game wouldn't be fun. These guys signed on AIM like 3 times the whole game.

Now OK I trusted all of the above except Bunni but it had nothing to do with their attitudes at all!

- I trusted Madison because of the votes from episode 2
- I trusted Abrams because of his reaction to the mystery prize and how Bev, Emma and Angelica tried to set him up
- I trusted Kip because of the things New Kip had to say about Old Kip and his confessional

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, their actions and the way things played out around them were more important than their "I'm totally useless and a waste of space" attitudes and I would never want to be in a game filled with those kinds of players. They suck.