Sunday, August 15th, 2010
Issue: 41   Editor: HowlingMadMika


Smoke, Mirrors & Riddles Altro
Behind door one there is life, continued happiness and longevity. Door two; death, re-ranking and a lust for revenge that can never be quenched. Twelve hours, ten questions, your time starts.... NOW!

It was a peaceful Saturday on Bootleggers, nothing much happening apart from The Syndicate leaving, a few hundred kills and a fairly quiet game forum. That was soon to change, as once again Smoke and Mirrors decided to rock the boat with one of their games. Instead of targeting several crews at a time, like they have in the past, pitting them against each other, this time, they selected just one; Dirty House. TheHangman posted a set of ten questions on the game forum, giving the crew till the end of the day, roughly twelve hours, to solve them or face “Regulation”. This undisclosed punishment for failure may seem vague, however, Smoke and Mirrors have shown in the past what they were willing to do if their demands were not met. Crews that ignored the warning or failed the game were met with sticky ends, yet a few have escaped the wrath by engaging and completing the tasks.

Dirty House decided to play along. The game was unlike any of those set in the past. Simply answer the ten riddles within twelve hours to pass. The word simply relates to the rules, not to the game, for the riddles were anything but simple. Smoke and Mirrors did leave one hint to help Dirty House, “checking profiles might be a wise idea.”

Dirty House quickly set about their task, checking their members profiles and previous accounts they were able to successfully collect most of the answers. Riddles such as, “Find a quote from a very wise man on the profile of one of the past accounts of your boss,” proved simple enough. However, “From the Dead: 75:42:2:14:10,” took a little longer to crack. The solution being the days a member has spent alive on their previous accounts. One of the riddles read, “Pretend out actions are a great big fantastic hug,” which related to a quote in a members profile, the answer being the name of the member. With all the questions completed they handed in their answers to be marked.

Three hours, nineteen minutes and nineteen seconds after the deadline had past Smoke and Mirrors delivered the result. Nine out of ten, strong enough for an A in most marking systems, however, for Dirty House in this case, it was sadly a fail. Kikav3, a Don and councillor of Dirty House, fell dead. He was shortly followed by four fellow Dons, seven Legendary Godfathers and a Godfather. McLovin, the only shooter, used 180,000 bullets bought from bullet factories. On the popular crew ranking site Bootcrews.com, Dirty House fell from second position to fifth out of fifteen, showing that they still remain fairly strong.

We decided to ask McLovin a few questions about the game and attack. We asked what was the motivation behind the game, “We at Smoke and Mirrors like to play games in an attempt to provide some entertainment for both the BL community and, well, ourselves.” On the topic of why Dirty House was chosen he told us, “Dirty House was picked because they never do anything with their position on the statistics, and since we had already targeted all the other crews with our games we felt that it would be fair to attack someone else this time.” He went on, “We are not sure yet whether DH can expect some more bullets to come their way, but, everything is possible really. The fact that a few people I killed today felt that it was necessary to talk shit both to me and about our crew really doesn’t help them in their struggle for survival.” We wondered if it was their intention to drop the whole crew, “I had never the intention to drop the whole crew, I just wanted to ‘Regulate’ them for not answering all of our questions correctly.”

As Dirty House had just one question wrong we wanted to know where they had slipped up, and what the correct answer was. McLovin said, “They original question was: ‘#5: Type this name in English: MeStUp4ShUrE.’ They answered ‘messed up for sure’, but the correct answer should have been ‘LAME’. Yes, a trick question indeed!” We caught up with Milonietje, council member of Dirty House to ask what they thought of this question, “It just means that we never could have answered all the questions. So this attempt on a wipe was inevitable... a very LAME game if you ask me.” We asked what they thought the reason they were selected were, “I think because Dirty House is high on bootcrews and high on stats. You know that when you are on the stats you are taking a risk and you will get wiped sooner or later.” Adding, “But if it’s fair? Course not, but life isn’t fair.

“For me personally it feels kinda stupid to get picked [...] I’m the former boss of TGF and back then I got complains that we were acting like a bunch of hooligans, and now we are boring all of a sudden.” What does Dirty House do now? They still hold the crew spot, have high ranked members, “I can’t say anything, we are a big and active crew, so I’m sure you will hear from us again.” As for the future of Smoke and Mirrors and if they had any future games planned, McLovin told us, “Yes, yes we do. I can’t go into detail on this one but we’re definitely going to do more games.”

In the past Smoke and Mirrors have attracted a lot of criticism for their games. McLovin told us, “We do realise that there are people out there who think our games are stupid and what not, but at least we do something. It’s usually the same people bitching and whining anyway. If we were to return to the stats like people in the BL community have been suggesting for quite some time now, we would get shot over and over again. Now where is the fun in that?”

With more games apparently planned, crews will be on alert. It appears the messages from Smoke and Mirrors is once again, engage and win, or die.