ep. 5

[Judge Sam]

it's so funny how the mood changes based on exile haha. last episode when yvette went, citizens were at each others throats. this episode donald went and now the spies are 'sort of' at each other's thorats.


I didn't think donald was going to go this time, I really didn't. He might not have gone if this voting system wasn't in place. He was also gone (again) so he couldn't defend himself. Donald did kickass but I guess he had lots of vacations at this particular point in time, oh well.


I am just so insanely frustrated with Pete right now. I am kicking myself for not replacing him before. He has the potential to play well but I haven't seen it in 4 episodes so I'm not holding my breath.


Here's the short and sweet summary. Like 3 days in Pete all of a sudden has exams so for the next 1.5-2 weeks he's out of commission pretty much. He manages to keep up well considering. Then he tells me he's back but 3 days later, after nothing, oops he was still busy. Ok. Then this Episode he's "back" but then disappears for another 4 days. What the fuck.

Okay all of this is fine but basically he is, as of this moment, insanely shitty at Spies but thinks he is God's gift to the Spies. This is because due to absolutely ZERO SKILL OR INPUT ON HIS PART he has been somehow half-cleared because of the Jaya vote. Him voting for 2 Spies didn't hurt either. I'm not that upset about that because it was sort of necessary. It's just so infuriating that he NEVER DOES ANYTHING and yet thinks he is some mastermind at this game due to insane luck.


He has the perfect opportunity to launch himself from this point of citizen-ness and hasn't done a damn thing. The worst part is that he is constantly insulting the other Spies - which by the way he is never around so god knows how he even knows this - about how terrible they are. And has plans to bus so many of them. And talks to Jason about how "awesome" those two are and how all the rest are complete shit and UGH. Jason is 500 million times better than you.


That pisses me off lol. I hope he turns it around and he might able to if he gave one whit about this game but right now it's not happening. Arghhh.

[Judge Sam]

I think I picked a really strange group of Spies. If I could do it over again I definitely wouldn't have picked almost all of them.


So many I picked turned out to be really busy all of a sudden right at the start. =/ So unexpected.


I do believe though that in telling someone they are a Spy changes their gameplay dramatically haha. That should be obvious! But like if you look at citizens and say, wow, they aren't suspected, they would make a good Spy. But if you tell them they are a Spy they wouldn't have done any of those non-suspicious things and might be really bad.


On the upside though we do have two Spies in very good standing at the moment. I don't know if Pete is not-shitty enough to stay in for very long but Jason will do well. Probably not "win at the final three" well but we will see.


They definitely need to pick better Imprisonments. Gabriela and Robert yes that was good, but Mei Yun and Ed were terrible picks lol. That's two exiles down the drain!

let's see... it's 17 citizens vs 4 spies after Ed...

I5: Ed
E5: cit (*cross fingers*
I6: Ellis
E6: Amelia
(15 citizens vs. 3 spies)
I7: Tiberius
E7: cit
I8: Rey
E8: Iris
(12 citizens vs. 2 spies)
I9: Khaled
E9: cit
I10: Thor
E10: This is key. It's up to Pete at this point if he's been shitty up to this point he's gone, otherwise he can pull it off. Let's hope it's the latter. Cit.
(8 citizens vs. 2 spies)
I11: Gretchen
E11: Pete
(7 vs. 1)
I12: Boris
E12: Cit
(5 vs. 1)!
I13: Kirsten
E13: Cit
I14: Roxy
E14: Jason

[Judge Sam]

Donald 89.5
Levi 91.5
Mirela 109.5
Faith 121.5
Ed 142.5
Boris 147.5
Georgia 152.5
Amelia 162.5
Gretchen 165.5
William 187.5
Khaled 192.5
Iris 207.5
Rey 211.5
Thor 212.5
Oswald 215
Ariel 241.5
Jenya 245.5
Ellis 264.5
Roxy 267.5
Kirsten 268.5
Tiberius 269.5
Pete 270.5
Jason 317.5


sums of placements for all citizens in exile #4.

[Judge Sam]

I want the Spies to do well but they are inactive even by Citizen standards. =/ it's so sad.

and it's not inactive like they never come to the site, but with the exception of Jason they NEVER get on AIM. holy crap!!! AIM is like the most important thing. amelia has an excuse but pete and iris it is just wretched. how do they expect to play the game whatsoever if they don't build relationships on aim?? it's like they are playing mafia with 15 german speaking students who speak english half the time. they don't even know what is going on in half of the game!

it's so frustrating with pete and iris. pete spent two hours writing up 1,000 words on everyone. that's nice i guess but pete never actually *plays* the game so what good does that do??

it is so frustrating to see iris get on the board like 5 times a day yet not ONCE get on aim and TALK to people. what the fuck?

why do spies do shitty things like this it's insane???

[Judge Sam]

latest convo from jason:

spies6Roxy (8:11:11 PM): hey jason
sPIEs6Jason (8:11:42 PM): Hi Roxy, how are you?
spies6Roxy (8:12:34 PM): im doing good
spies6Roxy (8:12:37 PM): and you?
sPIEs6Jason (8:12:56 PM): I'm OK, eating yogurt yum
spies6Roxy (8:13:01 PM): lol
spies6Roxy (8:25:50 PM): sooo what are you thinking of this round
sPIEs6Jason (8:26:25 PM): Tryinbg not to -_- My vote's on Faith right now, same reasons as last round
sPIEs6Jason (8:26:30 PM): But Amelia's close behiind
spies6Roxy (8:27:09 PM): why amelia this round?
sPIEs6Jason (8:28:05 PM): Same as last round lol, she was "convinced" that Donald was a spy without good reason... and seemingly tried to sabotague one of the challenges, and she's got weird suspicions that she doesn't really talk about or back up ever
spies6Roxy (8:28:27 PM): oh kk
spies6Roxy (8:28:43 PM): yeah amelia is also kind of a lurker
spies6Roxy (8:28:46 PM): which doesnt help
sPIEs6Jason (8:28:50 PM): Not at all
sPIEs6Jason (8:29:04 PM): And she might inactive herself out anyways which is why I'm not voting her as of right now
spies6Roxy (8:29:15 PM): lolol
spies6Roxy (8:30:22 PM): i dont know what her deal is
sPIEs6Jason (8:30:53 PM): Me neither but I'd like to find out
spies6Roxy (8:31:08 PM): yeah


This is after they decided to cut back on the bussing. =/


I thought Jason was really smart at this whole Spies thing but I'm beginning to think there's a key piece of the puzzle missing in his brain here. Maybe he isn't very good at all? I mean it takes almost zero smarts to just bus your Spies take credit and be thought of as a citizen. That's not smart mafia play whatsoever.


There's just SO MANY LAYERS of pointlessness to this specific conversation that drives me up the wall! It's the quintessential example of bussing for NO REASON!


1) Jason brings up Amelia out of the BLUE! No prompt whatsoever.

2) Amelia's name isn't even being brought up by ANYONE! It's not like he is expected to have an opinion on Amelia at this point in time.

3) Roxy SPECIFICALLY asks "why *this round*". Thankfully Jason says "not this round" which I guess gives him +.5 points.

4) Jason uses an actual, meaty, cogent reason for Amelia! At least you could give Roxy a crappy reason that can be shot down. Don't feed them ACTUAL very good reasons why your friend is a Spy!

5) Is there any POINT whatsoever to this bus? Is Roxy the most influential figure in the universe who needs to spread this around? Do you NEED Roxy to think that you are a citizen because she doubts you?

6) Even that, do you NEED more Citizen points for you right now Jason? The answer is no! You are the most trusted you want LESS Citizen points!

7) If you wanted citizen points why say this privately where it has no affect but hurting your own team? At least get credit for it by posting it publicly! No way in hell Roxy is going to look back at this and remember it.


Gahhh it's all so pointless. This is so terrible Spies play lol it makes me cringe.

[Ariel]

Jun 8, 2009 4:42:50 GMT -5 Judge Sam said:

I think I picked a really strange group of Spies. If I could do it over again I definitely wouldn't have picked almost all of them.


So many I picked turned out to be really busy all of a sudden right at the start. =/ So unexpected.


I do believe though that in telling someone they are a Spy changes their gameplay dramatically haha. That should be obvious! But like if you look at citizens and say, wow, they aren't suspected, they would make a good Spy. But if you tell them they are a Spy they wouldn't have done any of those non-suspicious things and might be really bad.


On the upside though we do have two Spies in very good standing at the moment. I don't know if Pete is not-shitty enough to stay in for very long but Jason will do well. Probably not "win at the final three" well but we will see.


They definitely need to pick better Imprisonments. Gabriela and Robert yes that was good, but Mei Yun and Ed were terrible picks lol. That's two exiles down the drain!

let's see... it's 17 citizens vs 4 spies after Ed...

I5: Ed
E5: cit (*cross fingers*
I6: Ellis
E6: Amelia
(15 citizens vs. 3 spies)
I7: Tiberius
E7: cit
I8: Rey
E8: Iris
(12 citizens vs. 2 spies)
I9: Khaled
E9: cit
I10: Thor
E10: This is key. It's up to Pete at this point if he's been shitty up to this point he's gone, otherwise he can pull it off. Let's hope it's the latter. Cit.
(8 citizens vs. 2 spies)
I11: Gretchen
E11: Pete
(7 vs. 1)
I12: Boris
E12: Cit
(5 vs. 1)!
I13: Kirsten
E13: Cit
I14: Roxy
E14: Jason

I like this version of events. I make it to the final 2 and help exile Jason.

[Jason]

Lol sorry to drive you crazy, Sam, to justify why I did this, I'll answer these points:

5) Is there any POINT whatsoever to this bus? Is Roxy the most influential figure in the universe who needs to spread this around? Do you NEED Roxy to think that you are a citizen because she doubts you?

Yes! Because I wasn't actually going after Amelia that round, I was giving the appearance that I wanted Amelia the whole time even as we got rid of citizens like Rey and Thor. I had no intentions of actually going after Amelia until we'd gotten every cit we could possibly squeeze out first, but by having a few key strategic talks like this I was able to make it NOT look like a bus at all, but a real suspicion.

6) Even that, do you NEED more Citizen points for you right now Jason? The answer is no! You are the most trusted you want LESS Citizen points!

At the time I didn't, but I KNEW that going down the wire things from the past would be looked at very closely, so again, by setting this up as a 'real' suspicion I was able to give myself much needed Cit points late in the game, to protect myself from being an actual target. Like Kirsten said, I seemed suspicious more so than a lot of the people left but I'd also behaved so much like a Citizen at other times that nobody brought down the hammer.

7) If you wanted citizen points why say this privately where it has no affect but hurting your own team? At least get credit for it by posting it publicly! No way in hell Roxy is going to look back at this and remember it.
Because publicly could have looked like a Spy TRYING to take credit for an Amelia lynch and that's not what I wanted at all. Roxy was someone I hadn't talked to much, so she didn't know much about me. I was careful not to talk to her much after this convo either that way the only convo she'd really remember us having would be a convo in which I pushed for the eventual exile of a Spy, writing her off as an immediate threat.





I feel bad for what I did to Amelia, but after she publicly claimed to have had in depth convos with me the few times we'd spoken without clearing it with me first or setting up a time to fake the 'in depth' convos which people were invariably (and did) going to eventually ask about I decided that I wanted to push for her to go because I was afraid another instance like that might have been called out and we'd have both been caught dead.

[Ellis]

Aug 19, 2009 15:23:57 GMT -5 Jason said:

Lol sorry to drive you crazy, Sam, to justify why I did this, I'll answer these points:

5) Is there any POINT whatsoever to this bus? Is Roxy the most influential figure in the universe who needs to spread this around? Do you NEED Roxy to think that you are a citizen because she doubts you?

Yes! Because I wasn't actually going after Amelia that round, I was giving the appearance that I wanted Amelia the whole time even as we got rid of citizens like Rey and Thor. I had no intentions of actually going after Amelia until we'd gotten every cit we could possibly squeeze out first, but by having a few key strategic talks like this I was able to make it NOT look like a bus at all, but a real suspicion.

6) Even that, do you NEED more Citizen points for you right now Jason? The answer is no! You are the most trusted you want LESS Citizen points!

At the time I didn't, but I KNEW that going down the wire things from the past would be looked at very closely, so again, by setting this up as a 'real' suspicion I was able to give myself much needed Cit points late in the game, to protect myself from being an actual target. Like Kirsten said, I seemed suspicious more so than a lot of the people left but I'd also behaved so much like a Citizen at other times that nobody brought down the hammer.

7) If you wanted citizen points why say this privately where it has no affect but hurting your own team? At least get credit for it by posting it publicly! No way in hell Roxy is going to look back at this and remember it.
Because publicly could have looked like a Spy TRYING to take credit for an Amelia lynch and that's not what I wanted at all. Roxy was someone I hadn't talked to much, so she didn't know much about me. I was careful not to talk to her much after this convo either that way the only convo she'd really remember us having would be a convo in which I pushed for the eventual exile of a Spy, writing her off as an immediate threat.





I feel bad for what I did to Amelia, but after she publicly claimed to have had in depth convos with me the few times we'd spoken without clearing it with me first or setting up a time to fake the 'in depth' convos which people were invariably (and did) going to eventually ask about I decided that I wanted to push for her to go because I was afraid another instance like that might have been called out and we'd have both been caught dead.

Jesus, you are so much like me as a spy that it scares me. Jason = the epithome of ruthlessness. He'll hate hanging people out to dry, including his own comrades, but he'll do it to every single last one of 'em if need be.

[Jason]

Aug 19, 2009 17:10:39 GMT -5 Ellis said:

Aug 19, 2009 15:23:57 GMT -5 Jason said:

Jesus, you are so much like me as a spy that it scares me. Jason = the epithome of ruthlessness. He'll hate hanging people out to dry, including his own comrades, but he'll do it to every single last one of 'em if need be.

Hey, I admitted day one that I Tyson was a big inspiration! I've always liked Tyson's solo Spy style as the best Spying method, it was the only way to go ; D

Just imagine if we were Spies together, though... what insane chaos could possibly ensue?!

[Ellis]

Aug 19, 2009 17:34:35 GMT -5 Jason said:

Aug 19, 2009 17:10:39 GMT -5 Ellis said:

Aug 19, 2009 15:23:57 GMT -5 Jason said:

Jesus, you are so much like me as a spy that it scares me. Jason = the epithome of ruthlessness. He'll hate hanging people out to dry, including his own comrades, but he'll do it to every single last one of 'em if need be.

Hey, I admitted day one that I Tyson was a big inspiration! I've always liked Tyson's solo Spy style as the best Spying method, it was the only way to go ; D

Just imagine if we were Spies together, though... what insane chaos could possibly ensue?!

This kind of chaos.

ONE SHALL STAND. AND ONE SHALL FALL...

[Kirsten]

you would get each other lynched simultaneously episode 1. The ultimate double bus. NOBODY would expect it.

[Jason]

Hahaha
sadly Kirsten might be right... But how awesome would that be? If Sam did a thing kind of like in Spies 4 where there we two opposing Spy factions, but instead made it one faction, two Spies... and their goal was to eliminate the other without role claims or any investigative roles out there... That would actually be loads of fun... they could yell at each other in the SPY HQ and then head out to try to kill each other ; D


Actually I'm probably just semi-non-soberly ranting and I'll regret it when I read this in the morning.

[Judge Sam]

I disagree. Obviously Jason is incredibly skilled at Spying, and this doesn't reflect his gameplay, just spy-playing tactics in general. But it is not hard whatsoever to bus your fellow Spies, cause duh, you know who they are. It's not hard to say you suspect them and bring their name up all the time even if you don't vote them (you can only vote for one person, after all).


The idea is to not-Exile your fellow Spies and what you did firmly goes against that gameplan, giving no benefit to yourself while only hurting your team. The game is not Jason VS. Citizens it's Spies VS. Citizens and I noticed in your replies you never mentioned how your actions helped the team you only mentioned how they help yourself. Which might be a plausible plan to help the Spies if you were not already the #1 most trusted person in the game.

[Ellis]

Aug 19, 2009 22:42:54 GMT -5 Judge Sam said:

I disagree. Obviously Jason is incredibly skilled at Spying, and this doesn't reflect his gameplay, just spy-playing tactics in general. But it is not hard whatsoever to bus your fellow Spies, cause duh, you know who they are. It's not hard to say you suspect them and bring their name up all the time even if you don't vote them (you can only vote for one person, after all).


The idea is to not-Exile your fellow Spies and what you did firmly goes against that gameplan, giving no benefit to yourself while only hurting your team. The game is not Jason VS. Citizens it's Spies VS. Citizens and I noticed in your replies you never mentioned how your actions helped the team you only mentioned how they help yourself. Which might be a plausible plan to help the Spies if you were not already the #1 most trusted person in the game.

Sam... seriously... name a single "early-outed" spy whose actions helped the team in any significant way other than their being bussed. Did ANY of Donald's jailings prevent an investigation, and did Iris' followers ever stop suspecting the final two spies because of her? Not that I can recall. I'm not "dissing" the other spies here but I am saying that they had very little to contribute towards the main events that were primarily responsible for the spies winning the game.

When I was a Spy, I bussed both of my partners. The first one's exile I counted as a personal victory, because I believed (and still do believe) that if we'd let him survive, he would have killed both me and the other remaining spy. The second one I counted as a huge failure on my part, because if I'd been a better spy earlier in the game we could have gotten to the end together and won it at f5, just as Jason and Pete did.

Now look at the spy busses in Spies 6 using the same criteria. Were they a victory or a defeat for those involved?

Almathea - her lynch had most people convinced that there were a small number of spies on that team (with the notable exception of Paul / Gabriela, but one voice in thirty isn't going to be heard a lot of the time.) A lot of people, myself included, practically discounted Jason and Pete on the basis of that one lynch alone. What would have happened if they'd have saved Alma? Major suspicion on all sides IMO. So Alma's sacrifice was a huge victory for the spy team.

Jaya - Her lynch all but cleared Pete as a suspect, leaving him free to lurk his way to the endgame. It also gave Jason the opportunity to do some quality framing later on in the game - her lynch contributed to the Yvette case, for example. So I'd class this one as a victory.

Paris - the ally the spies never knew about. He'd voted for two spies himself and was actively looking for others, at this point barely taking any note of the "traitor" part of his role and playing as much as he could like a citizen. If he hadn't been lynched, Iris might have been. So that was a victory too.

Donald - on the surface this was utter fail on the part of Jason and Pete. Look at it more closely though, and it's a slightly different story. The exile was led by myself and Kirsten - quite likely the two most stubborn people in Spies 6 (at least until Mei Yun got her mitts into me). If they'd objected to the Donald lynch, they would probably have accomplished very little beyond awakening my Jason suspicions a round earlier than they did awaken and giving me more of a chance at doing something productive with them. I wasn't going to be persuaded off Donald like I was off Levi the previous exile!

Iris - she imploded, so the spies voted her off. It's a fail on Iris' part and a net loss to the spies, but not through the fault of the people who bussed her.

Amelia - the fact that she survived two rounds longer than she ever should have is a testament to how well Pete and especially Jason were doing in terms of framing citizens to exile. When she was eventually lynched, she didn't even cast a vote to save herself, and I 100% agree with Friendly Squirrel Judge Sam about that one. 'Twas lame.

And Jason and Pete survived and won.

That's my twenty-five cents.

[Jason]

Yeah, my strategy from the very beginning, marked by my episode 1 confessional was ultimately "It's my job to win the game by any means necessary."

I realize it's a team game... but if one Spy wins... the whole team wins. What we do with each other ultimately is a team strategy whether or not the whole team decides on or agrees with the strategy... I agree with Yves' assessments but I'll add in my reasoning for each Spy I bussed or helped bussed:


Alma - She was in VERY hot water. I think I mentioned that she'd have probably been the first one exiled whether she was a Cit or Spy based on her character. She was simply doing too many things at once and it was perceived as very Spy like. I'd have voted for her if I was a Citizen and didn't know that she was a Spy... supporting the case on her was easy because it was a really good one.

She'd have been caught sooner or later and had she been caught, those trying to save her, aka Pete and myself, would have been exposed late in the game when the rest of our team was gone. Actually, I'm fairly confident that had we fought to save Alma the Citizens would have won the game. I hate that we lost such a great person IRL and fun character so early, but it was necessary.

Jaya - I didn't have anything to do with this one.

Paris - Doesn't count because we didn't know.

Donald - Like Yves said, a LOT of people were pretty convinced on him and would have been incredibly hard to pull off. Had we fought hard enough to have done so, we'd have looked really suspicious when he inevitably went down later. If you remember we DID fight to save Donald at the Yvette exile... After the 2nd week in a row of a strong Donald push it was pretty apparent that he was on limited time. And I didn't even vote for Donald, anyway...

Still, I regret not trying harder to save Donald and that's one of only two things I'd do differently if we were to replay this game.

Iris - The confessional claim killed her. No Spy from any game would have tried to defend that because it directly claimed something that you specifically and explicitly stated could NOT be done an episode or so beforehand. And I didn't vote for her...

Amelia - Amelia survived WAY longer than she could have. I jumped on and encouraged the Thor bandwagon because Amelia was GOING to go if the Thor thing didn't catch fire, so I made sure to help it catch fire.
And then we got Rey. If you remember I made a big deal about sleepy and started threatening to leave. Part of it was that I WAS sort of sleepy, part of it was that I didn't want it to take all night, and part of it was I wanted to pressure people into feeling we were going to have to seal it on Rey or die.
And of course being a strong advocate of Amelia for several rounds made me look better.

Ultimately EVERY Spy I bussed had a very important purpose. I don't think bussing Spies left and right out of the blue is a good idea, and I don't think bussing them the moment they're suspected is, either. I bussed when the time was right because it was the best overall thing to do for the Spies as a whole, and I'm sure Pete will say the same thing. We did what it took to when and I'll be adamant by saying that Pete and I wouldn't have won without the others and what they did. Even though several Spies got eliminated early, sometimes by fellow Spies, they didn't rat us out as revenge or do anything crazy and I respect and commend them for that.

I didn't bus every Spy partner; I didn't bus Jaya, Pete, Iris, or Donald.
I defended or protected Spy partners when it was safe to do so; Iris, Donald, Amelia.


So to clarify for future Spy players in the Spies series:

- Bussing all of your partners at whim is NOT going to win you the game!! It's not a short cut or an easy path to victory!
- Winning as a Spy takes a LOT of planning ahead, a LOT of calculating. You HAVE to work with your Spy team. In this game we could never really catch each other online at the same time so I decided to go solo in terms of strategy and if the Spies meshed with or fit into that strategy, aka Pete, then I was glad to have it.
- Spy bussing is all about Benefit vs. Risk. If the benefit far exceeds the risk then go for it. If it doesn't, then don't. Sometimes it can be a risk to keep a Spy, but just remember... If you start gunning for fellow Spies they might start gunning for you, or just take you out with them. And THAT is a scarier risk, I'd say.


I hope this game doesn't start a trend of Spy vs. Spy action... Ultimately Sam's right, it's NOT a very good or worthwhile strategy. Unless you have a REASON and specific purpose planned out you're going to wind up selling your allies down the river only to find yourself all alone when you need help the most.