02 - SILENCE

[Captain Falcon]

 SILENCE 



One round in the can, and THE CAPTAIN passes through with flying colours! Now SILENCE is all about getting to those top speeds, so it's time to hit the accelerate and pull ahead!

The moon is out, and I'm ready! 3… 2… 1… GO!!!

ON THE FIRST VOTE!

That was fun! I think it was the right choice to switch Marth out for Ike, since had Ike bid for immunity and stayed, we'd be in a hot pickle right now. Ike was pretty meh so no great loss there. It was fun conspiring with Richter and Squirtle- definitely feel much better about Squirt now, and reaffirmed my trust in Richter.

ON PARANOIA!

Trying not to get super paranoid here, at least this early on, but definitely picking up a few odd vibes. I remembered proboards had the group function, and subsequently realised that I'm not in any. Pyra and Mythra have not messaged me in over 24 hours, which means they clearly don't think I'm important to talk to for their own safety. Yoshi never really went into much depth with me, but he clearly felt protected over here by a few others. Few little things not adding all the way up, but not enough to act on it. I'll try and just be cool and if I'm in the ring, I'll just have to test my mettle. Pretty sure my timezone isn't helping much, the frenzy seems to happen around midday for me, and that's a bad time for me to be super involved. Being here for events is a bonus, but not if I've already been hung out to dry!

ON SANDBAGS!

Now this is gonna get messy. Assume one of Pyra/Mythra or Piranha will get immunity here, and the other I'd wanna vote out tomorrow night. Attack seems less useful at this stage- if you knew you were going in you'd go for the double of attack/shield like Piranha did, but it's not really worth the hassle to try and micro manage the stages from up in the stands. Falco wants Smashville up and out because it's a tossup, but a stage being a tossup puts it as one of my better ones.

ON TONIGHT!

So with Piranha here and immune, not sure where else the axe will fall but on Marth. I don't know who he's talking to, but I've gotten one message a day from him, and he seems lovely- but no room to breathe here really. I'd drop the twins over him for sure but I don't see the momentum there. I've half-heartedly thrown them out to Squirtle and Richter, just to see if they're on the same page. But it comes back to that paranoia- if Richter and Squirtle are tighter with the twins than I realised, I could be getting played here and I'll be the alternate vote, not them. Ideally Piranha doesn't play for shield again, but that's up to the twins since they're the ones betting for it. If he doesn't it makes tomorrow easy as well, and then we're almost through the first week unscathed.

ON THE FUTURE!

So if the Palinbros is legit, which my get tells me it is, then I'm well set up. Also starting to really vibe with Falco, and I think he could even become my top guy here if we keep progressing at the rate we are. So that's a solid group, I think? Still just have a funny feeling in my gut, I'll see what Richter and Squirt say about the twins and that'll probably cue me in, since if they're only ignoring me, that's probably not a red flag I'd be wise to overlook. Really just hoping I'm just in my head a bit today, just early game jitters!

If not, well... SHOW ME YA MOVES! I've gottem!

[Captain Falcon]

What is up with the twins? It's bizarre. This'll be fun in any case. Gulp.

[Captain Falcon]

I think the twins are just kinda busy/over-whelmned and out of the loop-de-loop somewhat, and now I kinda feel bad that I'm definitely gonna be trying to vote them out tomorrow. Bloody plant.

[Crazy Hand]

Thanks for the very detailed update! It sounds like you're worried that you aren't in any alliance groups chats but also feel pretty confident that you're not on the chopping block?

How does the Arena format of gaining potentially one new member each day for every one that you evict alter that dynamic?

[Captain Falcon]

Feb 14, 2022 21:48:13 GMT 10 Crazy Hand said:

Thanks for the very detailed update! It sounds like you're worried that you aren't in any alliance groups chats but also feel pretty confident that you're not on the chopping block?

How does the Arena format of gaining potentially one new member each day for every one that you evict alter that dynamic?

Well, since I get the feeling that this team is not on my timezone, if they're from ORGY/DA, they might not be used to proboards and thus wouldn't think to start group chats. Personally I kinda hate the group chains as it is, so I'm not super keen to broach the subject. I'm kinda confident AND not confident. There's two parallel lanes here, one of them I'm perfectly safe and not a care in the world until the swap, the other one I'm on the outside of a bigger group here that maybe formed in the free-for-all, and I'm the alt target after the duellist. I'm just trying to figure out which lane I'm driving in right now, instinct says the former initially, but some red flags make me nervous it's the latter.

More red flags being that I haven't heard from Richter in a while now, Falco giving me no plan whatsoever outside of "let's get a duellist", and the twins continuing to snub me unless I directly pry something out of them. If I am in danger, I'd hope they wouldn't blindside me, and give me a chance to at least bid high on attack to try and save myself that way. The problem is that if I'm in the former scenario, I will look super paranoid if I start fishing something out of them that doesn't exist, and I'd like to keep my paranoia under wraps for now. Ideally I'm just overthinking things, and the shadiness I'm picking up on could be misinterpreting greenish behaviour from someone like Falco, or uninvested behaviour from the twins, such as them not knowing the could PM duellists.

If I AM perfectly safe here and don't have to directly worry- then I'd wanna get the twins out anyway, regardless of who returns to us. I think Arena at this stage should be about setting yourself up with as much padding as possible, we should never be relying on luring in a duellist only to immediately revolving door them. That is not gonna work if we have more than a couple more votes here. Even if we just have four votes, if we get down to 5 and the boot target bids on shield, we're cutting into who are the (in my eyes) core 4, and I don't even want that in the realm of possibility. If we boot the twins tonight, we're officially a duellist haven and I don't think we'd have to worry about getting people over here whether we swap at 18 or 16. We'll have the core 4, and can rotate the other three spots out as we like. We can always promise the duellist one guaranteed night of safety, and let the shield decide which of the other two is booted. I feel like in Arena once you identify someone as expendable down the line, you cut them first. Whittle the core down as much as possible, and that gives you room to muddle the bottom rungers around enough to give the illusion of fluid dynamics. You just never wanna be that tribe that gets smaller and smaller each round until you're choosing between allies at the end of the first week. Like, I wanna be able to tell Marth and Mario- come here, you'll be 100% safe, this the plan, get in on the plan, we need you. That's how you get duellists, you have to give them something. We're setting ourselves up for failure here.

That's the tricky spot I'm in right now though, since I'm not quite sure if I'm up against less experienced players who I should be whipping into shape here (making myself a huge target in the process, probably), or if they've already got this sorted out and everything I've just outlined is already happening, only I'm in the position of the twins. But the fact that I'm getting crickets for the most part doesn't fill me with confidence. Squirtle is clearly the most experienced one here I think, but also the one most likely to snow me, so his commitments are less assuring. Falco and Richter, clearly some level of experience based on the character play and general competence, plus Falco claiming to be a challenge beast. But then you've also got Falco worrying he offended me early on, and Richter following everyone's profiles lol. Pyra & Mythra feel like DA players who are more into the character play than messaging, at least I'm hoping that's the case. And then the plant, who cares? Non-verbal shticks can be great, but you've gotta put some level of effort in. Seems he's just here to be a thorn in everyone's side for as long as he can. Challengewhores signing up for arena games and putting in zero social effort, they're the worst!

Uh... wow that was a lot. At least I've got some kind of mission for the day. Whatever goes down tonight, I'll know for sure where I stand!

[Captain Falcon]

Threw a line out to Marth, hoping he'll give me a straight up answer here and either put my fears to bed or light a fire under me. If I'm just being paranoid, well at least it's just Marth and not one of the close allies.

[Captain Falcon]

Well, I've gone and went the "whipping them into shape" route.

They seem content to just hope we get a duellist, hope we can revolving door them, hope we outbid the plant for tomorrow. Uh... ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT? Cos I'm not. If what Marth tells me is true, and both other teams wanna make a move, it means that both other teams are at least promising them something. As far as I know, we've given them nothing and are just relying on the fact that we had a 4-3 vote, or something. If we agree to dump the twins tonight, we can promise two nights of safety, which is a juicy deal. I get the hesitancy to dump the twins, but I see it as an inevitability that one of us will have to go tonight or tomorrow, and tonight we'd be getting a much better deal out if it than if we did it tomorrow night when there's no choice but to.

I really don't wanna be overplaying here, but we should't be playing for a swap that isn't guaranteed. What if we don't swap? Then we've set ourselves up for failure big time. Even if we do, if the plant outbids us again, then we have to vote out one of the core four. I feel like nobody is on the same wavelength as me and they seem pretty chill about the whole thing. Another red flag, but I'm just gonna play this as if I'm safe, cos if I am the alt target then this is the vote I'd be angling for anyway.

[Sandbag]

Hello Captain!

You've been quite conservative with your attack cards thus far, what situation would cause you to start being more bold in your bids?

[Captain Falcon]

No real reason, I knew I could get away with a small bid on the first one, and the second round everyone else seemed pretty keen for the bags so just let it slide. Will probably be dropping something bigger tonight.

If I felt I was going in I'd go for the sheild/attack combo, but jury's out on that. Don't think I'm not keeping my eyes on the grab too, DP and Robin just had a lot of time to talk without Ike there, I see those cross tribal alliances forming.

[Captain Falcon]

Knew this would happen, we were sitting here twiddling our thumbs while the other teams were promising them the world probably. How annoying.

Makes the vote easy for me, but annoying I have to splurge on this shield now.

[Captain Falcon]

Pretty sure I'm going in, that was way too funky! Hope I don't regret not doubling up on Attack, but if I am safe, I had to have some kinda bid on shield.

Let's see! But pretty ready for THE RING!

[Captain Falcon]

This is so cold, damn... they really made it a point to snow me, didn't realise I was that out of the loop-de-loop. Well it's not over, though we do love a good trainwreck early flame out every now and then!