Madmiketyson [979994] —
Original article
Hear how Firework stands could bring down a faction, how SA & JFK were once taken down with a single hit, and how the glory days are coming back for one of Torn's veteran factions.
Back in 2009, I was a young player floating around the city with no idea what I was doing and no sense of direction. In all honesty, I was probably a couple of days away from never logging in again. Then the company I was in was sold back to the system and I found myself unemployed. As a result of that sale, I met a player called THE-BRAIN.
He gave me a job in his fireworks stand and started to show me the ropes of what Torn was really about. After a few weeks, I joined his faction, Pinky and Brain. PnB is a faction with a rich history. Today, I am here to tell the story of how it rose, why it fell, and how it is now rising again!
Who Was The Brain?
When I arrived in Torn, THE-BRAIN had been playing for a while and had built up a reputation as one of those players who didn't really care what people thought of him. If he didn't like you, he wasn't shy to tell you so - or attack you and the people around you for days on end. But equally, if you were in his circle, he looked after you well. He gave me drugs, meds, and other supplies as I needed them, and I repaid his faith in me by helping him expand his fireworks business.
Back in the day, the five-star special for a firework stand enabled you to remove respect from other factions. We came up with a masterplan: build a huge network of people saving their job points up and then sell the points to HOF factions during wars. At our peak, we had around 20 stands under our control and we were capable of stripping a whole lot of respect from one faction at short notice.
The stands were run by faction members and friends, and we employed anybody who wanted a job and was logging in daily. Our employees received half of the fee we got from whoever took out a bombing contract. 39th and RAoV had a big war where we used over 3,000 job points to strip respect from RAoV in a short period. Sadly, the fireworks special was later removed, but we had a lot of fun using it!
Taking a Lead Role
I eventually got bored in Pinky and Brain and decided to set up a sub-faction named PnB. I put a lot of effort into recruiting and landing a few decent big stat players, but I focused primarily on a hungry core of young newcomers. I spent all my money on funding the youngsters in the faction, keeping them supplied with drugs, meds, and decent weapons. I didn't take Xanax for a long time so I could fund them and keep building up PnB.
Before long, both Pinky and THE_BRAIN became less active, and so we sold the main faction and merged ourselves into the sub-faction. A player named H00D was now my co-leader, and we started to make a lot of money on big-ticket items like stat enhancers by pooling our resources and coming up with creative ways to up the price! Sugarvalves asked me to expand on how we achieved this, but I politely declined!
The money we earned was funneled back into the faction and used to keep us growing. We got into some intense wars and did some crazily long chains as we continued to build. We were never really able to challenge the HOF powerhouses of that era, but we established ourselves right up towards the top of the second tier.
This was the era of ranked warring where you had to move the bar across and every attack took you closer to victory. When you were attacked by the other side, you lost real respect, not the percentages we lose in the current system. There was no leaving or mugging as part of these wars - it was hosping only! And if you had a good night shift, you could go to bed close to being defeated and wake up to find your faction in a commanding lead.
Factions that focused all of their member base in one part of the world would struggle in this system when fighting someone with a good spread across the globe. That little red and green bar dominated our lives for quite a while. Looking back, it was probably my personal favourite of all the warring systems we have had, and I am keen to see how ranked warring looks when Ched re-releases it!
The Beginning of the End
H00D was a divisive character in Torn. Like Brain, he cared little for what people thought of him outside of his inner circle. I remember that Torn once trialled a system where you could bet on the outcome on faction wars in the bookies. H00D rigged a war to make some money which led to the feature being withdrawn. He was roundly criticised for his actions, but he just found the reaction to be highly amusing!
His next act wasn't as funny, at least to me. During a drawn-out war with AoW (the original one led by MattyB), H00D sent a spy into their faction. Back then, if you accepted someone into your faction, they could not leave or be kicked from the faction for seven days. By sending one of our members in with a changed name, we could see all of AoW's plans for the war.
When H00D proposed the idea of espionage to me I rejected it, as I felt it was too underhand. He did it anyway when I was not around, and at that point, I decided I didn't like the direction the faction was taking anymore. I left and started a new faction, Esoteric Elite. This caused a splinter through PnB as some people left to join me in the new faction and some stayed where they were.
H00D continued to do some interesting stuff as the leader of PnB, and if you're wondering what I mean by interesting, let me just say that his actions led to the faction being dirty bombed by a guy known as Wildstone. I think this was way back in 2010! I am not exactly sure what exactly triggered him into doing this, but H00D had a tendency to be able to upset people with his opinions, so it was hardly the shock of the century when retaliation came his way.
With the way the warring system worked at the time, having our respect lowered actually gave PnB a huge advantage in faction wars, and H00D used this to declare war on SA & JFK in quick succession. PnB was able to make one hit on each and claim victory, propelling PnB to the top of the faction HOF rankings.
After claiming victory in a ranked war like this, you couldn't fight again for 30 days, so PnB spent the next month as the top faction in Torn with next to no respect!
The Wilderness Years
Despite the success we had against SA and JFK, the end for PnB was near. As H00D lost interest, so did some of the other players, and PnB began to fade away. Meanwhile, over at Esoteric Elite, I realised that my heart was not in it, so I left to join JFK. This faction would become my home for the best part of the next decade.
Looking back, it is easy to say that we could have tried to resolve the differences that led to my departure from PnB, but I thought it was too far gone and I didn't want to be part of it anymore. I think if you are part of a faction that has a huge change in leadership strategy like that, you need to keep your eyes open.
Even if the better people start moving on, it is easy to stay where you are through a misguided sense of loyalty to what it used to be. It is more common than you might think. Sitting in an inactive faction generally leads to people losing interest in the game, in my experience. I have seen some good people quit the game by staying somewhere stale for too long.
In the period that followed Hood's departure, PnB was run by Viscount. It spent some time known as Cold Fusion and then briefly existed as a sub to IBB as Viscount tried different things to revitalise the faction. Ultimately, however, what remained of PnB became largely inactive. A second Dirty Bomb then hit the faction, this time from Vinerri, who were seeking to avenge a defeat from years before.
The Rebuild
During the Insurgency war of 2019, Wicked, an old factionmate, started playing the game properly again and joined me in JFK. Wicked had spent a brief period in PnB the first time around, and when the Insurgency war ended he began to get itchy feet. Wicked wanted us both to go and do something different, so we spoke to Viscount to see if there was any appetite to get PnB on an upward curve again.
A proposal for Wicked and I to return to PnB and take over the reins was made. Viscount accepted the proposal, and it went through with no money changing hands - the last time PnB was exchanged for money was in 2009 when I bought it! Viscount was just happy to see fresh energy come into the faction, and upon our return, Wicked and I set about revamping everything immediately.
Our first task was to give PnB a freshly stocked armoury full of candy, alcohol, and meds. Once this was bought, we went on a recruitment spree. Recruitment was one of my favourite aspects of leading the first time around, and luckily, I still had a knack for it. In a short space of time, we had the faction full and began to look for the cream that would rise to the top of the roster we had formed.
With the faction on the up, we began to consider our location on the territorial map. PnB was marooned in two terrible pieces of territory, surrounded by Sport Club and HT. As luck would have it, a neighbouring piece of territory then became available when Sport Club dropped it to do a fake wall war with HT. I picked it up and instantly invoked the wrath of both Sport Club and HT! PnB was making enemies like the good old days!
HT and Sport Club demanded that we give back the territory or they would do terrible things to us. My response was to tell D3VL that unless we had gone back in time to 2005 when HT were last capable of scaring somebody, I wasn't particularly interested in his opinion. This might have seemed like a strange move, but I was planning to move us to sector 7 to maximise our available territories anyway. Besides, the opportunity to gain some respect and teach our new recruits what war was like was too good to pass up!
Taking it on the Chin
We took a beating from HT and Sport Club for all three territories, but we kept climbing back on the walls just to be a pain in the arse. After the first territory fell, they offered to let us off if we toed the line going forwards. I insisted they continue to show us the error of our ways, and we lost a few members who clearly weren't up for the warring lifestyle! But those who remained were starting to toughen up and buy into what war is all about.
This was probably the most fun I have ever had losing a war convincingly. We found out a lot about the newbs we had brought into the group, and I got the greatest message I have ever received in my entire time in Torn. One veteran member of PnB told me I was an idiot for not bowing to a bigger faction and that, "PnB will implode with f**king people like you in the lead." I looked him up as I wrote this article and he is still a bum! PnB, on the other hand, has grown quite nicely.
After being sector 7'd, we moved north and created a little area for ourselves where we could pull in a decent amount of passive respect each day. A racket soon spawned nearby and we decided to go and get ourselves some Moonshine. But just before we could attack, a proxy faction appeared and attacked the territory. We waited until they had it and then we assaulted them, but members from WarBirds jumped in to defend it. An enjoyable little skirmish ensued, but ultimately, we didn't have the strength to take it at that point.
Another Moonshine racket popped up just a few territories away and the faction in charge of this one was terrible. We thought they would be easy to take out and get ourselves a little bit of income. But surprise, surprise, another proxy. And this time for SA! They piled in to defend the racket when we refused to stop our assault and threatened a raid if we persisted.
As we entered 2020, we carved out an area in the west with some fun warring periods. Eventually, we managed to claim a Munster racket that spawned on a neighbouring faction thanks to Wicked's quick thinking territory moves. We held this racket for a long time, getting all the way up to Level IV without being assaulted.
Expansion Plans
During 2020, we looked to expand the PnB brand. A neighbouring faction we had become friendly with, NSK, were a smaller group with potential, and the system favoured numbers in a group. After some discussions about what a rebrand would entail, they agreed to join us as PnB Proteges. Again, no money changed hands, but we did pump some cash into their armoury and helped with recruiting. As the relationship grew, we moved our territories next to each other and acted as one unit when attacked.
By this time, we had spent most of the money earned from the Munster racket on a revive faction that we named PnB Life. One of our best young PnBers went over to lead this new faction and get it to 25e revives. Verboten did a fantastic job, recruiting some good young players of her own. An opportunity to buy a larger faction then presented itself, and I was able to negotiate on behalf of Proteges to buy a bigger shell with an established chaining group.
We agreed to move PnB Life into the Proteges shell, upgrading both factions in one fell swoop. Both factions were renamed to give them fresh impetus. PnB Life moved into the Proteges shell to become PnB Vitality and is now focused on bringing new players through while providing space for some of our less active big hitters to be homed. The old Proteges retained the Penguins identity and a large proportion of the solid chaining core it already had. PnB Penguins was born.
Undivided Attention
SA and CR entered our area after a while, and we subsequently lost the Munster racket that had served us so well But by this point, we had built up a pretty good roster and held back enough funds to move to a new area with purpose behind our movement. Luckily for us, everyone across the faction family gets on well, and we have merged all the Discord channels into one active community.
This level of communication was and is essential, as people were taking notice of PnB for the first time in years. We struck up a friendship with the Nuke family and moved in close to them, taking three rackets from some smaller factions above the Nuke-controlled area. A resurgent PT Family also got in touch a couple of months later to notify us of their intention to war us for our rackets and territory. We had a short but intense war, spending all of the faction funds we had built up on revives inside 12 hours.
Then came the offer to join Animal Kingdom. BSG had been sold to SA and they were looking for a group to replace them. We accepted AK's offer, but within a couple of months, the animal kingdom had fallen. The lessons we learned and the friends we made ensured that this was still the right call, and the future of PnB remains bright.
The Future
One of the things PnB loves to do is experiment with Organised Crimes. You may recall back in November 2020 that Rosie made PnB the first faction to do a Presidential Assassination with three green leaf players.
This achievement was game-breaking, quite literally, as it led to Chedburn nerfing the CE gains for OC members who are below the usual requirements. But this hasn't put us off from experimenting further, and lately, we have been playing with plane hijack teams - I will soon publish some data on those that could change the way a lot of factions approach them!
We are also looking forward to seeing ranked warring come into play. I posted recently that our ambition for the year was to be a top 20 faction. In response, I received several messages from other leaders who were insistent that we were already in the top 20. After an analysis of the factions above us, I was inclined to agree.
From nowhere to the top 20 in 18 months is pretty impressive, if I may say so myself! For the time being, we are continuing to grow the funds available to us for future warring, training, and chaining in equal measure, while also striving to build our team up. But as soon as ranked warring comes out, we will be as active as anyone, making sure that despite our lower respect in relation to the big boys, we are able to find our true position in Torn's faction HOF!
Because as SA and JFK found out all those years ago, a low respect PnB is not something you take lightly.
He gave me a job in his fireworks stand and started to show me the ropes of what Torn was really about. After a few weeks, I joined his faction, Pinky and Brain. PnB is a faction with a rich history. Today, I am here to tell the story of how it rose, why it fell, and how it is now rising again!
Who Was The Brain?
When I arrived in Torn, THE-BRAIN had been playing for a while and had built up a reputation as one of those players who didn't really care what people thought of him. If he didn't like you, he wasn't shy to tell you so - or attack you and the people around you for days on end. But equally, if you were in his circle, he looked after you well. He gave me drugs, meds, and other supplies as I needed them, and I repaid his faith in me by helping him expand his fireworks business.
Back in the day, the five-star special for a firework stand enabled you to remove respect from other factions. We came up with a masterplan: build a huge network of people saving their job points up and then sell the points to HOF factions during wars. At our peak, we had around 20 stands under our control and we were capable of stripping a whole lot of respect from one faction at short notice.
The stands were run by faction members and friends, and we employed anybody who wanted a job and was logging in daily. Our employees received half of the fee we got from whoever took out a bombing contract. 39th and RAoV had a big war where we used over 3,000 job points to strip respect from RAoV in a short period. Sadly, the fireworks special was later removed, but we had a lot of fun using it!
Taking a Lead Role
I eventually got bored in Pinky and Brain and decided to set up a sub-faction named PnB. I put a lot of effort into recruiting and landing a few decent big stat players, but I focused primarily on a hungry core of young newcomers. I spent all my money on funding the youngsters in the faction, keeping them supplied with drugs, meds, and decent weapons. I didn't take Xanax for a long time so I could fund them and keep building up PnB.
Before long, both Pinky and THE_BRAIN became less active, and so we sold the main faction and merged ourselves into the sub-faction. A player named H00D was now my co-leader, and we started to make a lot of money on big-ticket items like stat enhancers by pooling our resources and coming up with creative ways to up the price! Sugarvalves asked me to expand on how we achieved this, but I politely declined!
The money we earned was funneled back into the faction and used to keep us growing. We got into some intense wars and did some crazily long chains as we continued to build. We were never really able to challenge the HOF powerhouses of that era, but we established ourselves right up towards the top of the second tier.
This was the era of ranked warring where you had to move the bar across and every attack took you closer to victory. When you were attacked by the other side, you lost real respect, not the percentages we lose in the current system. There was no leaving or mugging as part of these wars - it was hosping only! And if you had a good night shift, you could go to bed close to being defeated and wake up to find your faction in a commanding lead.
Factions that focused all of their member base in one part of the world would struggle in this system when fighting someone with a good spread across the globe. That little red and green bar dominated our lives for quite a while. Looking back, it was probably my personal favourite of all the warring systems we have had, and I am keen to see how ranked warring looks when Ched re-releases it!
The Beginning of the End
H00D was a divisive character in Torn. Like Brain, he cared little for what people thought of him outside of his inner circle. I remember that Torn once trialled a system where you could bet on the outcome on faction wars in the bookies. H00D rigged a war to make some money which led to the feature being withdrawn. He was roundly criticised for his actions, but he just found the reaction to be highly amusing!
His next act wasn't as funny, at least to me. During a drawn-out war with AoW (the original one led by MattyB), H00D sent a spy into their faction. Back then, if you accepted someone into your faction, they could not leave or be kicked from the faction for seven days. By sending one of our members in with a changed name, we could see all of AoW's plans for the war.
When H00D proposed the idea of espionage to me I rejected it, as I felt it was too underhand. He did it anyway when I was not around, and at that point, I decided I didn't like the direction the faction was taking anymore. I left and started a new faction, Esoteric Elite. This caused a splinter through PnB as some people left to join me in the new faction and some stayed where they were.
H00D continued to do some interesting stuff as the leader of PnB, and if you're wondering what I mean by interesting, let me just say that his actions led to the faction being dirty bombed by a guy known as Wildstone. I think this was way back in 2010! I am not exactly sure what exactly triggered him into doing this, but H00D had a tendency to be able to upset people with his opinions, so it was hardly the shock of the century when retaliation came his way.
With the way the warring system worked at the time, having our respect lowered actually gave PnB a huge advantage in faction wars, and H00D used this to declare war on SA & JFK in quick succession. PnB was able to make one hit on each and claim victory, propelling PnB to the top of the faction HOF rankings.
After claiming victory in a ranked war like this, you couldn't fight again for 30 days, so PnB spent the next month as the top faction in Torn with next to no respect!
The Wilderness Years
Despite the success we had against SA and JFK, the end for PnB was near. As H00D lost interest, so did some of the other players, and PnB began to fade away. Meanwhile, over at Esoteric Elite, I realised that my heart was not in it, so I left to join JFK. This faction would become my home for the best part of the next decade.
Looking back, it is easy to say that we could have tried to resolve the differences that led to my departure from PnB, but I thought it was too far gone and I didn't want to be part of it anymore. I think if you are part of a faction that has a huge change in leadership strategy like that, you need to keep your eyes open.
Even if the better people start moving on, it is easy to stay where you are through a misguided sense of loyalty to what it used to be. It is more common than you might think. Sitting in an inactive faction generally leads to people losing interest in the game, in my experience. I have seen some good people quit the game by staying somewhere stale for too long.
In the period that followed Hood's departure, PnB was run by Viscount. It spent some time known as Cold Fusion and then briefly existed as a sub to IBB as Viscount tried different things to revitalise the faction. Ultimately, however, what remained of PnB became largely inactive. A second Dirty Bomb then hit the faction, this time from Vinerri, who were seeking to avenge a defeat from years before.
The Rebuild
During the Insurgency war of 2019, Wicked, an old factionmate, started playing the game properly again and joined me in JFK. Wicked had spent a brief period in PnB the first time around, and when the Insurgency war ended he began to get itchy feet. Wicked wanted us both to go and do something different, so we spoke to Viscount to see if there was any appetite to get PnB on an upward curve again.
A proposal for Wicked and I to return to PnB and take over the reins was made. Viscount accepted the proposal, and it went through with no money changing hands - the last time PnB was exchanged for money was in 2009 when I bought it! Viscount was just happy to see fresh energy come into the faction, and upon our return, Wicked and I set about revamping everything immediately.
Our first task was to give PnB a freshly stocked armoury full of candy, alcohol, and meds. Once this was bought, we went on a recruitment spree. Recruitment was one of my favourite aspects of leading the first time around, and luckily, I still had a knack for it. In a short space of time, we had the faction full and began to look for the cream that would rise to the top of the roster we had formed.
With the faction on the up, we began to consider our location on the territorial map. PnB was marooned in two terrible pieces of territory, surrounded by Sport Club and HT. As luck would have it, a neighbouring piece of territory then became available when Sport Club dropped it to do a fake wall war with HT. I picked it up and instantly invoked the wrath of both Sport Club and HT! PnB was making enemies like the good old days!
HT and Sport Club demanded that we give back the territory or they would do terrible things to us. My response was to tell D3VL that unless we had gone back in time to 2005 when HT were last capable of scaring somebody, I wasn't particularly interested in his opinion. This might have seemed like a strange move, but I was planning to move us to sector 7 to maximise our available territories anyway. Besides, the opportunity to gain some respect and teach our new recruits what war was like was too good to pass up!
Taking it on the Chin
We took a beating from HT and Sport Club for all three territories, but we kept climbing back on the walls just to be a pain in the arse. After the first territory fell, they offered to let us off if we toed the line going forwards. I insisted they continue to show us the error of our ways, and we lost a few members who clearly weren't up for the warring lifestyle! But those who remained were starting to toughen up and buy into what war is all about.
This was probably the most fun I have ever had losing a war convincingly. We found out a lot about the newbs we had brought into the group, and I got the greatest message I have ever received in my entire time in Torn. One veteran member of PnB told me I was an idiot for not bowing to a bigger faction and that, "PnB will implode with f**king people like you in the lead." I looked him up as I wrote this article and he is still a bum! PnB, on the other hand, has grown quite nicely.
After being sector 7'd, we moved north and created a little area for ourselves where we could pull in a decent amount of passive respect each day. A racket soon spawned nearby and we decided to go and get ourselves some Moonshine. But just before we could attack, a proxy faction appeared and attacked the territory. We waited until they had it and then we assaulted them, but members from WarBirds jumped in to defend it. An enjoyable little skirmish ensued, but ultimately, we didn't have the strength to take it at that point.
Another Moonshine racket popped up just a few territories away and the faction in charge of this one was terrible. We thought they would be easy to take out and get ourselves a little bit of income. But surprise, surprise, another proxy. And this time for SA! They piled in to defend the racket when we refused to stop our assault and threatened a raid if we persisted.
As we entered 2020, we carved out an area in the west with some fun warring periods. Eventually, we managed to claim a Munster racket that spawned on a neighbouring faction thanks to Wicked's quick thinking territory moves. We held this racket for a long time, getting all the way up to Level IV without being assaulted.
Expansion Plans
During 2020, we looked to expand the PnB brand. A neighbouring faction we had become friendly with, NSK, were a smaller group with potential, and the system favoured numbers in a group. After some discussions about what a rebrand would entail, they agreed to join us as PnB Proteges. Again, no money changed hands, but we did pump some cash into their armoury and helped with recruiting. As the relationship grew, we moved our territories next to each other and acted as one unit when attacked.
By this time, we had spent most of the money earned from the Munster racket on a revive faction that we named PnB Life. One of our best young PnBers went over to lead this new faction and get it to 25e revives. Verboten did a fantastic job, recruiting some good young players of her own. An opportunity to buy a larger faction then presented itself, and I was able to negotiate on behalf of Proteges to buy a bigger shell with an established chaining group.
We agreed to move PnB Life into the Proteges shell, upgrading both factions in one fell swoop. Both factions were renamed to give them fresh impetus. PnB Life moved into the Proteges shell to become PnB Vitality and is now focused on bringing new players through while providing space for some of our less active big hitters to be homed. The old Proteges retained the Penguins identity and a large proportion of the solid chaining core it already had. PnB Penguins was born.
Undivided Attention
SA and CR entered our area after a while, and we subsequently lost the Munster racket that had served us so well But by this point, we had built up a pretty good roster and held back enough funds to move to a new area with purpose behind our movement. Luckily for us, everyone across the faction family gets on well, and we have merged all the Discord channels into one active community.
This level of communication was and is essential, as people were taking notice of PnB for the first time in years. We struck up a friendship with the Nuke family and moved in close to them, taking three rackets from some smaller factions above the Nuke-controlled area. A resurgent PT Family also got in touch a couple of months later to notify us of their intention to war us for our rackets and territory. We had a short but intense war, spending all of the faction funds we had built up on revives inside 12 hours.
Then came the offer to join Animal Kingdom. BSG had been sold to SA and they were looking for a group to replace them. We accepted AK's offer, but within a couple of months, the animal kingdom had fallen. The lessons we learned and the friends we made ensured that this was still the right call, and the future of PnB remains bright.
The Future
One of the things PnB loves to do is experiment with Organised Crimes. You may recall back in November 2020 that Rosie made PnB the first faction to do a Presidential Assassination with three green leaf players.
This achievement was game-breaking, quite literally, as it led to Chedburn nerfing the CE gains for OC members who are below the usual requirements. But this hasn't put us off from experimenting further, and lately, we have been playing with plane hijack teams - I will soon publish some data on those that could change the way a lot of factions approach them!
We are also looking forward to seeing ranked warring come into play. I posted recently that our ambition for the year was to be a top 20 faction. In response, I received several messages from other leaders who were insistent that we were already in the top 20. After an analysis of the factions above us, I was inclined to agree.
From nowhere to the top 20 in 18 months is pretty impressive, if I may say so myself! For the time being, we are continuing to grow the funds available to us for future warring, training, and chaining in equal measure, while also striving to build our team up. But as soon as ranked warring comes out, we will be as active as anyone, making sure that despite our lower respect in relation to the big boys, we are able to find our true position in Torn's faction HOF!
Because as SA and JFK found out all those years ago, a low respect PnB is not something you take lightly.
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