riki ranking

[Riki]

Round 11 ranking early today because I almost certainly won't have time to do it this evening;

So we're at the merge! Congrats to all the folks that made it. I'm sad to see Samus go, I liked her quite a bit while she was around, but it wasn't meant to be. I'd be fascinated to read the Pink Meeting where Robin was voted and also I'd love to know how Yellow's vote broke down this round but maybe with the pre-jury players joining us soon that's not feasible? I'll be mourning the end of the spectator stands as a window into what's happening; it feels like from here on out our last bit of information will be whatever KO'd members are still floating around. Now for some rankings!

 Fuck it, my Xenoblade bias is in full force, but I love her posts and I'm extremely excited that she and Falco managed to worm their way through not one but two rough situations (Blue and Pink both seemed like they might be the death of them so seeing them alive still is very exciting.

 Similar to PyMy, except I find her public posts funnier. He's still excellent though. 

 Still feels like a protagonist, but with Samus and Robin going into the ring and their generally dour attitude to pretty much everyone to everyone else, I'm beginning to feel like maybe they're just kind of an unhappy presence? 

 As more and more time passes I find myself liking their public posts more and more; Dark Pit claiming he's heard Squirtle's a demon elsewhere has absolutely piqued my interest in this little guy! 

 Someone tell Captain Falcon that using BOOST POWER costs energy and life and while it gets him closer to being number one, it also brings him perilously close to crashing. Which is to say, I'm enjoying being along for the ride but suspect if he's not careful he'll overexert himself to his own death. 

 What happened here?? How did he fall behind Falco and Mythra on Pink? It seems like he and Dark Pit were close but now it's hard to know, especially if Dark Pit knew he was being sent in. Show me the Pink Meeting! I'm pulling for them to defeat Plant here, but Plant does seem like a bit of a beast on challenges.

Their extreme bluntness is growing on me; I like that they were pretty clearly unhappy with the Wario vote, but managed to get things together and keep the trio safe afterwards. It feels like they're not quite around enough to make it to the end but they're definitely still playing the game.

 They have a solid public persona and some interesting alliances, but nothing about them really grabs me right now? I feel like they're probably more fun to watch in PMs than a lot of the others though. 

 They're still fine? 

 Still not much opinion on them. 

 Seems to have been only sporadically active. I guess Squirtle and Capt. Falcon kept them around as a third but they've stopped pulling their weight sufficiently that the rest of the team is debating getting rid of them.

Still no solid feelings on the Plant; if there were a lot of folks left going in the ring that I'd like to see leave then I'd be rooting for them to pull out a ridiculous number of challenge wins but the handful of folks I don't care about seem to be safe somehow. 

 I guess they didn't get revolving door'd because everyone would rather kill Plant, which, like, fair. I don't like the egg thing (and no I'm not letting it go) but at this point I'd still see them stay over some of the more quiet and milquetoast member of the cast; I'm grateful to have a player to have negative opinions about to keep things spicy. 

[Riki]

Oof, I've missed a few rounds! I had thought I'd get to ranking again yesterday evening but a boardgame ran very late and wound up being more emotionally charged than I'd like, so I didn't have the bandwidth to post here afterwards. I've missed Plant, Marth, and PyMy going, and I guess both Marth and PyMy also had some really shitty stuff going on IRL, at the end? I feel badly for them if so, but hopefully leaving/getting eliminated could be one less stressor in their life. Samus popping in to say things got worse for her IRL since getting eliminated too  

Other notes; the pre-jury crew seem fun! F's in the chat for Link, who thought he was super close to Dark Pit. Maybe he was and Dark Pit just avoided mentioning it in the stands? Duck Hunt and Wii Fit also actually seeming like they were friends and alive caught me off guard, maybe Robin was also too harsh on them. I feel like those two seem kind of negative about folks in general, I don't know if I've ever seen unabashed positivity from them about a third party. 

 Sliding back in my first place, the Captain knows the spectators want to see something, and so setup a great public thread, Oh yeah! I mean, F-Zero GX is better than F-Zero X imo but still, was pretty fun to read and they had decent banter in Robin's public thread. 

 What a hero, starting a public thread in the free-for-all forums. The return of the Grima schtick as well, really highlighting how much that schtick could wind up being one-note I'm glad they pulled out a win against Plant. 

 Solid posts, solid gameplay; could they pull out a win after being on both Pink and Blue? I kind of hope so.

 Without spectator stands it's a lot harder to know what they're thinking. Getting voted into the ring this round with K.Rool and Kazuya as the backups suggests that any alliance between the three of them plus Wario is at minimum on shaky ground, and it seems they also maybe threw away an alliance with Robin and Samus near the end of pink. It feels like their willingness to throw other folks under the bus for better relationships might catch up with them soon, but maybe they'll go the distance, who knows. 

 Always fun when they post, they just don't post often enough!

 Also always a solid poster and maybe is going to slide through things while the rest of their allies get caught? One to watch for sure.

 In a round where all their friends get at least one vote to get sent into the ring, they manage to stay above it. Given a lot of folks view them as shady, I wonder if they'll be kept around for the FTC?

 The kings are both pretty chill, not much else to say really.

 How dare they take out Pyra/Mythra! 

[Masahiro Sakurai]

If I had a dollar for every unnecessarily emotionally-charged board game night. I run a tabletop game club at my uni and we tend to get lots of people who struggle socially and it can be tough to accommodate everyone at once. What game was it?

The last round was wild; Wario and Falco both tanking their games in various ways with various people, and yet, both are still here!

[Riki]

It was a game of Twilight Imperium IV; one of the players requested to play a 12 point game rather than the typical ten so it went on a couple extra hours, and two of the players messed up early on and decided the only way they could win was to actually try to eliminate the rest, which meant there was way more pointless murder than usual. It was a five player game as well, so they almost wound up king-making by each trying to eliminate one of the high-scoring players, leaving the last one to almost run away with it before a slight mistake on how one of the murder players attacked allowed their target to still eke out a win over the third-scoring player. It ran for about 8 hours when things were said and done.

I find if you know you're playing with folks that have a lot of trouble with emotional regulation, careful game selection can alleviate that to some degree! But TI IV is maybe the worst physical board game I'll willingly play for sparking some intense emotions because it just does so many other interesting things!

[Masahiro Sakurai]

Ooooh, I've never played Twilight Imperium! I'm not generally a fan of that sort of game, but I'm a huge fan of Eclipse, so I feel like it's a logical next step for me. Definitely need to play it some time. I have some friends in Aus I think I could make a night of it with.

[Riki]

I haven't had the chance to play Eclipse, so it's hard for me to say, but compared to the other games in my collection Twilight Imperium is definitely one of the most unique! There's a fantastic TTS mod, if you're a TTS person.



So much for Wario and Falco "tanking their games", I've somehow (??) missed two eliminations and they haven't even been voted since! K.Rool and Dark Pit both winding up leaving one after another was surprising. It feels like a lot of the mid-game groups have lost a member or two now. (CF & Squirtle lost Marth(?), the O.G. green team villain alliance has bled both K.Rool and Dark Pit, Falco has lost Pyra...) so it's really hard to guess who's working with who. Anyways, here's a round 14 ranking. 

 Keeping up a solid board presence and (thus far) skillfully avoiding the ring, I'm a little nervous that things seem like they're maybe sailing a little too smoothly for him.

 Still cute, still happy to see their posts, even if those posts are a bit more rare than I'd like. 

 Kazuya has been growing on me a lot lately; I really enjoy how solemn he seems when losing friends and indifferent to losing enemies. He's one of the only players who have any heart on their sleeve in public. At least I know losing K.Rool and Dark Pit were both probably not great for him, but Dark Pit was probably worse?

 Still solid publicly, even if they tanked their game in PMs? I'm hopeful they can pull out of whatever mess they've gotten themselves into.

 Maaan, I don't know what to think of them at all anymore. Probably friends with King D3? But other than that, who knows. 

 Still just kind of a cool king guy, at this point I have no attachment or negative feelings towards them.

 I'm getting a little worried they might wind up being someone everyone wants to take to the finale because they think they can beat him easily? Like, Dark Pit has been talking (probably to everyone?) about how much Wario overplays constantly but rather than anyone bothering to take him out now, they're just taking out his close allies so he has no power. I hope I'm being too cynical here. 

 How dare they kill Dark Pit! In all seriousness I still have no idea what to think about them, other than I suspect they'll be voted into the ring consistently for the remainder of the game. I feel like the egg stuff is potentially unusable now anyways unless you really, 100% are sure you have the most eggs on your side and no one else knows about it, because the instant you tell Yoshi to do something with it you're tipping your hand to him anyways.

[Masahiro Sakurai]

On who's working with who, I think it's gone back to Pink vs Yellow Gold now, with Kazuya kind of floating in the middle and there being a weird, uneasy dynamic now where Wario is working with Falcon and Squirtle more because there's nobody else left with any real bond there. It's almost become an Egg Alliance with them and Yoshi.

[Waluigi]

Pyra and Myrtha still in the game? Are they keeping the dual personality gamestyle?

[Masahiro Sakurai]

Mar 3, 2022 13:34:32 GMT 10 Waluigi said:

Pyra and Myrtha still in the game? Are they keeping the dual personality gamestyle?

I have bad news

They are still using it on the jury though!

[Riki]

Oh hey Waluigi! It's exciting to see another lurker around.

Yeah, PyMy getting cut was sad. It feels like a lot of the spec-stand fan (read:my) favourites got cut recently. r.i.p. Robin, one of the few folks left in the game that we got to see play the game a bit.

I guess Kaz decided to stop floating in the middle? If it's still Pink vs Gold then it was Falco + D3 vs. Falcon Squirtle and Wario? With Yoshi and Kaz playing the middle to varying degrees of success. Given Kaz is in the arena now it sure looks like their attempts at playing the middle didn't pan out for him super well.

Big exciting meeting #5 has 100% shaken my rankings up a bunch! 

Round 16:


 "Come out from PMs" My fucking hero, inject this drama straight into my veins. I'd say more, but first my very close #2...

 Holy shit I love how Wario tries to shit talk him with the whole "Oh great plan" only for Kaz and D3 to immediately both dunk on him, even liking the other's posts doing so DESPITE both admitting they haven't been friends or on the same side of any conflict for ages. These two are close to interchangeable for me but D3 advocating for more public fighting out of the gate keeps them sliiightly higher. Kaz is pulling out some great clips though. 

 "I voted Captain Falcon and I'm not changing that" in public again! Goddamn, ice cold. Sucks they didn't get what they wanted there, but at least whichever of the two survive this will likely view Falco as one of the only real friends they have left. Still looks like an underdog despite never getting sent in.

 The nice new set of shades they're rocking makes up for the Robin murder. They feel like one of the safest bets for a victory here at this point?

 Still rooting for the Captain here, they haven't lowered in my eyes much, it's just Kaz and D3 gave the game some spice for us spectators. 

 They came across kind of poorly in the meeting thread, being a bit tactless towards Falco initially before getting kind of randomly(?) destroyed by both D3 and Kaz. It's a really bad look to have it directly shown out of the loop you are in any sense, but I feel like thinking two players are friends is waaay worse than two players successfully hiding a friendship. Maybe this is just me projecting my own feelings on it, but it really feels like Wario has had a plan mapped out on how they saw the game going, and the frustrations they have with the fact it hasn't gone at all how he felt it are genuine. He comes across as actually a bit mad in this meeting. While it makes for good viewing, I do hope they're doing okay as a human being. Still, at this point if they're sticking in despite having no clue what the shape of the game is then that only strengthens my fear they'll be dragged to the end to have an easy person to beat in a final vote. 

 "I have more heads then there are eggs left in the game" No fucking shit, there are only six other players left in the game! All it takes is for one of them to not have an egg for that to be trivially math-ed public knowledge and seriously what are the odds you haven't figured it out? Maybe there's some behind the scenes stuff that makes him posting that more relevant or powerful but from where I'm standing it definitely came across as more of a plea for attention than an actually useful bit of gameplay. 


Has anyone noticed my password yet?

[Masahiro Sakurai]

The password has been noticed. The only unaccounted for Smash Ball is the Yellow one among the players!

[Waluigi]

Mar 3, 2022 18:50:31 GMT 10 Masahiro Sakurai said:

Mar 3, 2022 13:34:32 GMT 10 Waluigi said:

Pyra and Myrtha still in the game? Are they keeping the dual personality gamestyle?

I have bad news

They are still using it on the jury though!

[Riki]

Welp! We're near the end-game now. Half of the remaining players will make it to the final three! The other half will have come so very close, and there's no doubt that the more savvy among them have already started considering Jury management and everyone that's made it this far should be proud! God knows I would be if I ever made it this far in a game. 

I think unless something really dramatic happens this will be the last ranking I do; I don't really expect much more in the way of public fireworks from here to the end. I certainly won't complain if we get more! But as the weeks have worn on a lot of my thinking has calcified, and at this point I don't know enough to be surprised if anyone leaves; the only seemingly solid connection left in the game is Captain Falcon and Squirtle. 

 On paper Falco seems like an eternal underdog to me; he was on the losing side of Blue, on the losing side of Pink, and lost his one true love in Pyra/Mythra halfway through the free for all. Despite this, they've never actually been sent into the ring? I don't know what they're like in private but in public they seem basically witty and likeable, so hopefully that's why they've stayed safe over their companions. Apparently they tanked their game a few rounds back, but I'm hopeful this means they're less of a threat to take to the end. Having never been voted in makes their challenge performance a pretty big question mark though, so who knows how it'll go from here.


 Kazuya seemed to be a bit inconsistent, especially early on. That being said, lately he's really seemed to get in the groove, at least as far as having a board presence in the game. His initial friendships with Wario and Dark Pit are now dead or seemingly in-tatters; where he goes now, either joining up with Wario again or forging a new alliance, remains to be seen. Unlike Falco he's been in the ring, but not enough to be a terror. I'm worried he might come to the end of his rope soon? I'll be hoping he can pull through to the end, and who knows, maybe he's managed to do some solid damage control in the last round after getting voted in.

 Probably the most persistently fun board presence left in the game, with rumours of a mean game running beneath that. Squirtle's only been in the ring once, defeating a scarier opponent in Robin; this gives Squirtle more of a threatening feel than Kaz or Falco and makes me wondered if they aren't the best positioned to win the whole damn thing? I'd say performance wise unless I've missed a really strong performance from someone else Squirtle feels like the second-scariest person to enter the ring with.

 Oh Captain my Captain! I've had a soft spot for Cap' since he popped into the spec-stands in round 1. He's managed a really good vibe of the meme, interesting version of an otherwise kind of boring perfect man, and like Falco he's managed to avoid the ring this whole game thus far. That being said it's hard to know how strong he is socially behind closed doors; he was pleasant in the stands but never a stand-out and a handful of other folks have off-hand mentioned not being huge fans. I don't know if he gets to the end here, and I don't know if they win at the end if they do. 

 Anyone that's read my rankings over the game knows I'm not Yoshi's biggest fan; I found the egg thing really strange at first and then really annoying because it made tracking what was happening so much harder and added even more admin in a game that already had a decent amount of it. That being said; outside of that Yoshi seems fine? When the egg thing isn't the focus they're basically a fine presence on the board, and I do enjoy how many heads they've got to display. It feels like in a game where most of the cast is trying to win through love, Yoshi might pull out a win through fear, which is appealing to me? At this point in the game the worst scenario for anyone else is getting blind-side sent into the ring against this Dino, so when picking your two to vote for, it's really hard to imagine deciding to vote for Yoshi because what if you're the one that goes in with them? Between that and Egg-holders having him as a spare vote, I think he'll make it to the final three but I can't really see him winning. 

 Wario's a tough one to talk about because so much of my knowledge of what he's like is coloured through the lens of other players. His public presence has been largely fine-ish? Well, up until that meeting, which was a delight in and of itself. So I'm aware that most of what I think of him has pretty flimsy evidence to back it up. That being said; wow it feels like everyone who talked about him in any serious capacity was negative about him. Dark Pit was ruthlessly negative but that was at least partially schtick; I was prepared to give Wario the benefit of the doubt on that one. But D3 and Kaz both calling him out for having no idea what was going on in the game... oof. Right now it feels like if there was a member of the cast to bring to the end for an easy jury opponent, they might be the one to take? But they've also been very proactive all game, so it's possible they could spin that to their advantage. That being said it's hard for me to root for them right now. I don't remember how their bouts in the ring went, other than Richter accidentally dooming himself. Probably not as scary as Yoshi or Squirtle, but less of an unknown quantity than the rest. 

Going into the final rounds I haven't kept track of the points spent on the various sandbags at all, so I can't begin to speculate how that will factor in. I wonder how many players landed in my boat? On one hand they have more incentive to track it but on the other hand they have a lot of other things to manage and track as well. 

Anyways, I'm excited to see this play out!

[Nintendog]

Falco's been in the ring.
He went in the last round of blue.

I'm assuming the cap is going to be in danger tonight. Well unless he took the shield bag this round, I've lost my position in trying to follow this game, I think basically since duck Hunt went.

[Riki]

Oh, oops. Not sure why I thought they hadn't.

I guess you were only interested in your Dog brethren?