DarthMikey

@Roxas: To answer two of your earlier questions, prodding is when the game mod tells a player they need to post within the next 24-48 hours, and I'm 99.9% sure that Magnificence Incarnate is Marth. If you're just generally confused, this thread looks like it has some good stuff to offer for help with game strategy and the like. You can always ask Vhaltz or any more experienced players milling about for more specific/complicated questions.

@Disco: I don't like saying this, since it feels like an excuse, but really most of the problems you list with me are due to newness. I'm not really used to the environment here yet so it's a bit of an adjustment period. (Your mentioning of behavior vs. intent in finding scum interests me BTW, if you're willing then I'd like to hear more.) Terrador is scummier than you, but not by a huge amount. As you saw, the main point of my vote was to get a reaction from you, which worked, so I don't really have any regrets about that. My main hesitation here is Terrador's lack of contributions since his defense posts, which is both a main sticking point against him (due to his lurking) and the reason my instinct is to hold off because I fear there aren't enough posts from him to make a comprehensive judgment. Still, the limited evidence we do have points to scum, and I'm satisfied enough with Disco's read-list, so... ##Unvote ##Vote: Terrador (Note: If I've been stingy/weird with my vote, the votals could probably tell you why)

OK, so there haven't been any monumental shifts in my reads. Terra's lurking (which I also saw once) definitely reads scummy considering the circumstances, but I also do not at all like Kawaii jumping on the wagon for him with no context before this info was stated. It could be that this was not so much a wagon as a reply to the accusations that she didn't back up her suspicion with a vote earlier, but if that's the case then say it, it only takes thirty seconds. To try and elaborate a little more on my (slightly updated) reads, the main reason I've got my eye on Dan is his sparseness and lack of detail in his posts (I stated why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing back on page 4); I think "active lurker" is a good description for him. IMO Kawaii's passive-aggressive behavior and sudden vote (while refusing to speak further) is scummier, but Dan is suspicious for fairly similar reasons. I'm also getting weird vibes in the same vein off commie scum (Junko?), but I think it's just a gut-read so it doesn't really have the same weight. Boron and Marth both look town-ish, actively pursuing the points they want to push and explaining them well, and their long debate seems more about personal playstyle than anything, in spite of a few interesting points they both turn at each other. On the same hand I believe Refa is town due to their pro-active advancement of the discussion; even in the light of their experience I think scum would choose to be a bit more elusive than they've been. I've wasted too much time on this post so: @Kawaii: Elaborate more on your thoughts and reads aside from just Terrador and explain the reason behind your vote; did you just want to correct your lack of a vote on him earlier, did you want to get a wagon going, did you notice the lurking? I want to hear more thoughts from you. ##Vote: disco kawaii I will try to be back at some point today and then should be on later tonight.

##Unvote Woah, back up. I do not want somebody wantonly hammering while I'm still not very sure. Let me re-read and collect my thoughts, I'll re-add a vote after.

@Refa: In my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience, scum players often seem to go to one of two extremes; either they're eager and want to extend themselves to prove they're on the town's side, or they're shadowy and evasive, trying to draw minimal attention while still posting enough to be considered active. Terrador seemed to me to be going to a lot of effort to defend against a rather simple argument, which looks scummy to me, while Kawaii is actually kind of a weird mix of the former and the latter, eager to get things going with some flimsy accusations but also acting rather terse and a little mysterious, seeming jumpy about giving away too much info. I have lukewarm scum reads on both right now. I absolutely welcome any shows of why my logic is bad or dumb. For the other players: I don't entirely understand/agree with Marth's reasoning, but it's presented well enough for what it is and I don't sense anything particularly scummy about their posts so far otherwise. Dan I think is a little scummy, his posts have been plain and short and without much explanation for his reasoning. On both Boron and Refa I'm feeling slight town, they've contributed confidently and directly and kept the discussion going. On everybody else I'm null, not really feeling anything either way on what they've contributed. I'll continue to re-read the thread and try to glean some more reads when I have time.

I honestly was not aware we were supposed to vote someone as soon as we declare a suspicion on them? I remember that was common practice in the one Mafiascum game I was in, too, so maybe I should have figured. If I'm waffling/indecisive, it's partly because I'm a little waffling/indecisive by nature and partly because I really don't see an excessive amount to go on right now. RVS in general always frustrates me because what seems to get everyone else excited always tends to look like small potatoes to me, though I try to go along with picking apart every little thing about a person's behavior. The way I kind of negated myself about Terrador is a good example of my problem with it; there are things people do that could be scumminess or could just be them. In a sense Mafia is easier when you play with people you know because you're much more familiar with what is normal behavior for them and what is strange. Gotta go, I'll be back later. Before I leave, I'll just acquiesce and vote my biggest suspect ATM. ##Unvote ##Vote: Terrador

I don't really like Kawaii or Terrador at this point. Both seem over-eager to prove themselves by quickly launching accusations and defenses. Kawaii I might be a little more forgiving to since she might have just wanted to compensate for the prod dodge post, but Terrador's wordy defense posts seem to smell more particularly of trying hard to look town. Of course, though, that might just be his usual style even on the rest of the boards.

Rick Perry is the first Republican to leave the race. I'm stunned that Jim Gilmore held on longer than anyone, but oh well. In related news, the next GOP debate will take place Wednesday night for anyone interested in that. I think they've recognized the potential for money-making these debates have due to Trump; CNN is running commercials to promote it and charging some ridiculous amount for advertisers during the debate's runtime.

##Vote: commie scum daggum socialists takin' our guns

[spoiler=Album Thoughts]Midnight At The Movies is probably what would happen if you threw Tom Waits' Closing Time and Hank Williams' greatest hits in a blender and fed the aftermath through an eight-track. Justin Townes Earle is an interesting artist because, even though it's easy to tell it's the same guy with more or less the same influences behind each album he's released, there's something about those records that makes them all sound recognizably different; it's like he's shifted to a different mode or gear on every LP. In a way, though, I think Midnight At The Movies is his definitive release, because it encapsulates a lot of the basic musical ideas that Earle's built on as a singer/songwriter since. From the raw (if somewhat sleepy) sorrow of "Someday I'll Be Forgiven For This," to the bizarre, upbeat-yet-bleak character portrait of "Black-Eyed Suzy," to the ragged slice-of-life the title track perfectly lays bare for you to absorb, it's full of great songs with an unmistakably dusty, age-old-wisdom-feeling tying them together. It is probably a little tough to appreciate the more starkly country numbers like "What I Mean To You" and "Poor Fool," which I have a hard time deciphering as either hipster-ish jokes (just listen to that put-on accent on the former) or genuine tributes to the past, but I think Earle displays enough reverence for his roots throughout the whole album's sound and lyrical attitude that we can trust his honesty. Either way, he definitely proves himself here as a musician, and especially as a songwriter. Favorite songs: "Midnight At The Movies," "They Killed John Henry," "Mama's Eyes," "Black-Eyed Suzy" One of the best words I can come up with to describe Choose Your Weapon is "quirky"; these are clearly musicians with eclectic taste and a willingness to experiment. At their core, most of these songs are simmering soul burners, but many draw in elements from jazz, funk, worldbeat, EDM, chiptunes, and even some thuggish hard rock rhythms. The band was super-tight and locked into a bunch of great grooves (I found the guitarist especially interesting, often focusing more on accentuating rhythms and adding texture instead of the traditional lead guitar antics), and the vocalist took a little getting used to, but I came to find her great, with gritty lows and sweet highs; it was like her voice was coated in pepper and sugar at the same time. A lot of the songs had this weird, ethereal feeling; there seemed to be a million emotions swirling inside each note with how detailed and ambiguous the arrangements were, and it creates a weird kind of dissonance that draws you into the album's thick soundscapes. The lyrics were usually nonsense when I paid close attention, but the music itself carries a unique emotional power; freaky and funky; that makes them almost unimportant. Maybe I'm not making sense, but rest assured I thought it was an excellent record, a display of subtle, well-trained musicianship paired with an unstoppable creativity. Favorite songs: "Shaolin Monk Motherfunk," "Swamp Thing," "By Fire"

/confirm

I wouldn't call any of the other patches "near-perfect" except maybe FE6, and that one has only reached the level it has after an extensive overhaul by Gringe. Few fan translations are free of issues; whether it be due to inconsistent quality or delay in development; because they're typically produced by unpaid, non-professional volunteers, who are often working for an audience who will be satisfied just to play the damn thing in English and let the kinks be ironed out later. That's the other problem; many fan projects are just raw translations of the original text, with little effort put into refinement or localization. Of course, I'm not putting any blame on fan translators; their work is often long, tiring, and relatively thankless; my main point is that you can't exactly expect professional-grade quality from folks are usually just passionate amateurs doing their best in their free time. Occasionally you'll see an incredibly well-made patch like Mother 3's, but that one had the advantage of Tomato, who was actually a professional Japanese-to-English translator. In the case of FE6, I think Gringe works as an English teacher in Japan, so it has similar roots to its success.

Chinese dragons would be sick as hell. Seriously, IS should put out an FE game set in ancient China and replace wyverns or manaketes with them.

Most of my favorite supports aren't actually romantic (Bartre/Canas, Karel/Karla, Matthew/Guy), but I guess I do have a few pairings I like so I'll list those. Astore/Igrene (The only FE6 pairing I care for, and really not even that much...) Eliwood/Ninian Hector/Florina Lyn/Rath Erk/Serra Kent/Fiora Raven/Rebecca (This probably wasn't supposed to be romantic now that I think about it. Especially since they don't have a paired ending. And I don't think of them romantically, anyways, they just have one of my favorite supports in the game. I actually just put them here to try and fill out this list because I have no other favorite pairings. ...Um. :I)

/in, even though I haven't played Mafia in... a while. (Never here, for that matter.)

Bring more variety to the chapter objectives; have defense chapters, escape chapters, unique boss-kill chapters, and whatever weird new ones you can come up with. Sometimes they're a little irritating, but they also frequently pay off and add some spice and color to the big line of seize and rout objectives. Go back to the old system of having a dedicated set of written support conversations for each character, instead of FE13/14's way of having a bunch of weird, rushed romances and mostly dumping platonic supports. The old supports weren't always supremely well-written, but to me they were more frequently funny, interesting, and/or developing to the characters involved because more time and care was put into them. However, please DO retain the newer games' simpler system for growing support points. The way the GBA games did it was seriously annoying. Have less useless units. I don't really understand the point of having units like Shanam in FE5, or Karla in FE7, or all the super-weak pre-promotes in FE11/12. Even mediocre late-game pre-promotes do have a purpose in supplementing a poorly-trained or under-staffed party if you've basically been scraping by throughout the game, but units that are statistically awful and utility-wise contribute almost nothing; to the point of basically just being useful as sacrificial meatshields; should either be re-hauled to have some purpose or removed outright.

The Water starter is my favorite in almost every gen (not sure about VI; about to finish my first playthrough of Y with Chesnaught and I like all of them pretty much equally in terms of design). It's not always the first I pick, though. Like I mentioned, I went for Chespin in Y, along with Charmander in FireRed and Turtwig in Diamond. I can't really say why I prefer the Waters, since I wouldn't even call them my favorite type or anything. I guess they just all have great designs and well-rounded stats to me.

[spoiler=Albums]I'm not very familiar with neo-soul; there's a bunch of classic soul/R&B that I like, but I've never ventured much into the genre's modern stuff, probably because I've been a little turned off by modern R&B singers like Usher and R. Kelly. Lianne La Havas's Blood was a very pleasant surprise in every way; pulsing with vitality, emotion, and pure musical power, it's the best proper introduction to neo-soul I feel I could have asked for. A lot of the album has a really "thick" sound to it; there's a bunch of facets shining here, with the pop melodies intertwining with hip-hop beats, EDM production techniques, folk tenderness and acoustic instrumentation, brassy jazz flourishes, and of course, Lianne's powerhouse voice lifting the whole thing to a completely different level, whether she's crooning softly or belting it out. There's a lot of good contrast, too, in the way the slow-burning acoustic tracks mix with the balls-out soul stompers. I'm a big fan of the album's sound in general; there's a lot of interesting instrumentation swirling around in the background on the bigger songs, and the atmosphere is great, kind of smoky and subdued but with a simmering passion always lurking beneath the surface, in true soul fashion. Overall I'd rate Blood very highly. An excellent album, with a lot of craftsmanship and care poured into it. Favorite songs: "Unstoppable," "Green and Gold," "Tokyo," "Midnight" Pianos Become the Teeth were a little hard getting used to; they sounded like a band I've heard ages ago, but there's a certain something about their sound that kept me on my toes throughout the whole album. It kind of reminded me of Spiderland in that way; it wasn't as paranoid, and it didn't feel like it was about to collapse into a mess of noise any second (both feelings that album gave me), but some of the same musical ideas that gave that album its distinctive atmosphere were present here to my ears. I guess that's what files them both under post-rock, though in other ways they felt pretty different. Anyway, Keep You was a good record, full of personal, painful songs and pasted together with a very melancholy mood, only occasionally jumping forth with a sort of ragged energy in the way that most of the (i.e.; not much) post-hardcore I've heard does. The band was great, weepy guitar lines locking in with strong rhythms to put together some good arrangements. One problem I had is that some of the songs kind of melded together for me; the sound is very cohesive, but that also means that sometimes the group sounds the same during particularly quiet and loud sections of different tracks. On a similar point, there just aren't many great melodies here; the overall sound might be memorable, but the dense arrangements also create an issue where it's hard for one clear, strong melody to jump out at you. (Don't mean to bring up Spiderland again, but this is a problem I had with it, too, but didn't articulate a week ago.) Still, in spite of some flaws, the music remains focused and impactful throughout, and the band does stir some emotions in unexpected ways, almost sneaking up on you. It's good stuff, if not among my collection of absolute favorites. Favorite songs: "Repine," "The Queen"

The 3DS has been a pretty big success for Nintendo sales-wise (over 50 million units so far), so I doubt that it's going to be dumped so quickly. Although, in all fairness, I'm not sure how the money it's made compares to the money that's been spent on production of all the different iterations (original, XL, 2DS, N3DS...). Nothing about the Reddit post sounds too out-of-this-world, but that's almost what makes it difficult to trust for me. I always expect Nintendo to surprise me somehow, even if it's just by disappointing me.

Several of the pre-promoted snipers are pretty decent, i.e. Klein, Igrene, Innes, FE10!Shinon. In terms of actual archers, though, there's... uh... well, Jamke and Faval are good in FE4, and while I haven't finished it yet, Ryan is a pretty solid unit in FE12, and even Gordin's OK there. And then there's, you know. Wolt. And Rolf. And Ronan. And Rebecca. And Wil. And Tomas. And Neimi. And FE9!Shinon. And I should probably stop talking now for the sake of all Archer fans.

To them, he has a scary Muslim name that sounds like Osama. That is actually the very first context I heard Obama's name in (my family members called him "Obama Osama" or something like that circa 2007).

IMO a Trump presidency and a Clinton presidency would probably be fairly similar policy-wise, both because the Clintons have traditionally been centrists who move where they need to go to maintain a good public face, and because Trump is probably still a big-business Democrat at his core who is capitalizing on a weak Republican primary to try and gain power. I'm more scared of Trump simply because, while Hillary would probably tend towards diplomacy and tact (particularly in foreign relations), I can easily see Trump making balls-out crazy deals and wrecking our international reputation simply by doing what he does best; i.e., being Donald Trump.

Why would you just use one? It's not like there's a penalty for deploying both (or everyone, for that matter). Do you just prefer to field one bow user? Either way, Faval hits like a truck due to Ichival and statistically is hard to screw up, but IMO Lester is better due to having a horse, being around from the start, also getting great inheritance with the Brave Bow and Killer Bow, and did I mention the horse? (To kind of have an actual last item, Lester is generally better at doing his job because along with moving greater distances, FE4's broken Canto means he can move far away after attacking someone, meaning he has less trouble on enemy phase than Faval generally will.) The one sort-of-weakness I can think of Lester having is that you have to be pickier with his dad, as his options to be great are basically just Midir and Jamke, while Faval can deal with pretty much anyone aside from the mages. (Dew, Holyn, Jamke, Beowulf, Lex, Noish...) Really, though, I don't have a recommendation for either. They're both great units that tend to be outclassed by balls-bustingly broken ones, so if you're going to use only one, just use the one you like better.

This is basically my thought process on it. Nintendo's move into the smartphone market should probably focus on attracting casual gamers (i.e.; ideally stuff like Wii Fit and casual spinoffs, like Pokemon puzzle games and such, will move to smartphones), while the NX is centered on hosting dedicated, more polished core games. Which is not to say that all "lighter" material ought to go to smartphones; mainly just less "traditional" games that are more like lifestyle apps or made for bite-sized sessions.

Bishop is the more efficient option, but Sage has a much cooler sprite. And you already got two, so throw a Sage into the mix, spam some Elfire.