Scummies 2013 - Nomination Thread

[mastin2]

What about

Best Performance: Town

for Mafiastruck as well?

From my understanding, the scum were trounced, with 6/8 scum killed by town-directed methods, and half the town players still alive by the game's end. That's a serious accomplishment in a game of that size, isn't it?

(A bit hesitant to nom it, considering I wasn't a part of the game, but I guess this is an official nom.)

[mastin2]

Nominate the town of Happy Tree Friends for Best Performance: Town

.

The setup had the potential to go very,

very

badly for the town, with the potential to have a scum victory as early as day two.
It didn't go that way at all, thanks to some very strong play from the town.

The only reason the game was not a perfect sweep was because the town thought they'd also get a modkill on the last scum's slot when they lynched day three. Had they known they wouldn't have gotten the modkill, they would have just lynched the slot for a near-flawless town win.

[mastin2]

Nominate the town of Meta Playstyle Mafia for best town performance

Perfect town wins thanks to the combined effort of effective usage of town roles is always nom-worthy. Plus, if there hadn't been a mod error D2, there practically wouldn't have been ANY town deaths the entire game.

Third.

In the whole game, there were two town deaths, both by nightkill.

One of those deaths was moderator error.

Without the moderator error, the whole game, there would have been only one. single. town. death. Via nightkill, not lynch.

In other words, a complete steamroll of the scum; the town massacred them.

[mastin2]

town tells, Mastin? :p

...

/fixing.

[mastin2]

Nominate killerjester for Best Flavor Text

, thanks to playing with fire. Seriously, read the mod scenes. They were hilarious.


From that same game but fitting his overall play,

Nominate AngryPidgeon for Don Corelone

. Seriously, dude's a boss. As scum, he pretty much dominates the game. He dodges suspicion for most of the game, the few who call him scum are seen as crazy (often also by themselves, as they write their AP suspicion off as paranoia), and he directs the flow of his scumteams magnificently.

He not only dominates the day play, but also the night game by directing the flow of his scumteam's actions and making all of the right decisions.
Basically, he does a good job of ensuring not only that he doesn't get lynched, but also that he's not even in people's preferred lynch lists. And then shuts the town down with his actions.
This nomination can also be supported by Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Legacy.


...Speaking of Angry Pidgeon,

Nominate AngryPidgeon for Rising Star

.

He's less than a year old MS-wise, but he's already made an incredibly strong presence for himself. He's a strong scum player as mentioned above, but he is also an incredibly-dangerous town player. Though he takes a while to get settled into his reads, once he locks on, he decimates the scum with how hard he pushes. But he's a skilled enough player not to tunnel, and knows when to back down.

Basically, he has a strong presence in a game, a presence which is extremely beneficial for whichever alignment he is. The longer he's allowed to influence a game, the more likely it is that his faction will win. His play has been getting stronger and stronger, and you can see improvement in both his town-play and his scum-play by comparing his earlier games (mostly in 2012) to his later games.

Essentially...he's a guy who may come across as annoying at first, and he's a guy who is generally massively underestimated...at the grave cost of the opposite side, as he comes in and blindsides his enemies. He shows incredible promise as a player, and looks to continue having a strong presence on the site.

[mastin2]

Eh, might as well

second NY161

.

[mastin2]

Nominate the town of First Time for Best Performance: Town

.

Every single lynch was on a non-town-aligned player, for a Perfect(ish) win. Dang-strong play all-around.

[mastin2]

Nominate the game of /in-vitational 15 for Most Enjoyable Game

.
It was a quick game, but it was insanely fun to be in. The hilarious theme with matching great flavor made for an entertaining read, combined with an overall blast when playing and some hysterical outcomes to nights.
Let's run through some of the highlights of the game:

• Both the scumteam and the masons misreading their role PMs and thinking they were actually partnered with the players they were flavor-name buddies with.
  
• Hilarious Mod Scenes and role PMs.
  
• The scum and 1-shot vig killing the same player, a worthless PR (fruit vendor) N1.
  
• The scum roleblocking a role meant to be detrimental to the town.
  
• The scum's alternative choice for a night action N2 which would have resulted in them committing suicide.
  
• The town not noticing
  for nearly six days
  that I had been voting in the votecounts despite not having said a word.
  
• The last scum member silenced, and therefore unable to talk in-thread.
  
• Roles meant to aid the scum ultimately leading to the demise of said scum.
  
• Mason-vigs concluding that they're secretly scum.
  
• The scum (unknowingly) agreeing.
  
• Hilarious descent into madness from the lonely silenced last scum, ranting and singing for over 20 QT posts.
  
• The town lynching the last scum off of inferred role interactions which turned out to be completely false.
  
• Trolling in the dead QT.

Need I say more?

Oh, guess I do.

Nominate that same game for Best Performance: Town.

Say what you will about the circumstances OF the victory, but the simple fact is that we (the scum) got our asses whooped.
The only mislynch in the game was on the lynchee thanks to the lyncher claiming a cop guilty on them, and all the town lost from it was their only VT.
Two scum dead by D2, and the third lynched on D3 for a near-perfect win. (A win both third parties in the game got to share in.) There are few ways the game could have gone better for the town. I guess I could write an essay on the strong aspects of each individual player, but I really think the record speaks for itself. You can read here for more details.

Speaking of which, though, there is ONE individual nomination I have to make...

Nominate AngryPidgeon for Best Mafia Catcher

. Of all the players in that game, he's the one who stands out as the best overall. He not only nailed the scum, he also delivered the second aspect of a good scumhunter via lynching the scum.

He nailed Tracey, wasn't fooled by the bus and nailed me, and was hot on the tracks to our third scum member (Jal) as well. Of all the players in the game, he was the closest to having it all figured out--and he followed through. He consistently pushed it, and he is THE player who secured the Tracey lynch D1. Despite ultimately having a worthless role, he's the player we decided we most needed gone, and as it turned out, for good reason; he wasn't going to back down.

This may seem like a specific game nomination, but it holds true across pretty much all of his town games, as I mentioned in my Rising Star nomination. He's got the perfect balance in a town player:
He doesn't tunnel and recognizes when he's wrong, he's smart and highly intuitive with a good head for figuring stuff out, and when he figures something out, he's

damn

-good at actually pushing it and leading the town where they need to go. The /in-vitational game is one of the best displays of these qualities, but they are present in pretty much any town game of his.

[mastin2]

Nominate ArcAngel9 for Rising Star

. This might seem like a bit of an unusual nomination to some of you who have experienced her, but she deserves it. I need only point you to Street Racers for proof--
It was one of her first games on-site.
It's also one of her most recently completed games on-site.

The difference between her early play and later play is the difference between night and day. She started the game unfamiliar with MS terminology, as a newb who in addition to being new also had to overcome a language barrier. By the end of the game, she was one of the more town players alive, who had transformed into a competent scumhunter who was actually thinking things through. Though she ultimately made the wrong call in lylo, it was not her fault as many would make that same mistake; she played incredibly impressive overall.

And this is true for her play across the site, too. During the start of her career, she appeared to be a village idiot, who OMGUS'd everyone attacking her. But I've seen her grow, across multiple games, into a far more skilled player capable of thinking outside of those limits. She's learning to overcome the language barrier, she's growing accustomed to site meta, she's gotten her emotions more under her control, and the net result is a dangerously-competent player who in general is massively underestimated.

One quote I have about her, in lylo, summed it up quite well:

So she
-Looks town,
-Is using reasoning which resonates with me,
-Has at least one good suspect,
-Is defending someone we know to be town,
-And is not backing down.

That's INCREDIBLY impressive, and if you asked me who could do something like that in this near-endgame scenario, I would have never guessed it'd be ArcAngel.

[mastin2]

Nth Yates for most cunning manipulator

He deserves it for Slenderman Mafia alone.

Throw in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Legacy for good measure, too.

(This is another

N'th of Yates

.)

[mastin2]

Nominate

mikeburnfire

for best replacement.

mike replaced late into the game when the scum were on the verge of winning and correctly narrowed the last remaining mafia into a pool of 3 players just from his reread alone. He was then able to correctly help point the Vengeful townie in the right direction making sure that the town didn't outright lose with an incorrect kill choice.

For his services among other things, he was night killed that night.
Overall mike brings a collected, concise, and articulate point of view to the game that I think should be commended and despite the town loss for this game, his play in this game certainly deserves it.

I am nominating

Glork

for Most Cunning Manipulator.

His play in the uPick Pokemon game was simply spectacular. He risked bussing both of his teammates in a power role heavy game for the town credit but boy did it pay off. From the beginning Glork had a plan to setup this specific LyLo design that would maximize his chances of winning. Through his interactions with his teammates and strong arming the lynches that he wanted, Glork didn't even have to lift a finger to secure the LyLo win when both of the townies voted each other. He was viewed as essentially confirmed town for his actions in the game as well as role interactions that made it seem like the Bodyguard died protecting him . Overall a really good scum game where Glork effectively manipulated the players he needed to and killed off the rest.

o_O

2nd mikeburnfire, nth Glork

.

[mastin2]

Nominate the town of Micro 180 for best town performance

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=28535

Not a single town player died that game, and one scum was run up to L-1 by the end of page 1

Second.

[mastin2]

Nominate the town of WWE: The Shield for Best Performance: Town

.

With the exception of my "lynch", there was not a single mislynch in the game. The town started off in a relatively bad position, taking a long time to get their act together, but once they did, it was pretty much a total reversal in the play of the game. One scum lynched. Another scum lynched (eliminating that faction). A third scum lynched. And then, the last scum lynched. All in a row. Basically, the town went from having very little coherence and risking multiple mislynches, to suddenly unite against the scum and utterly annihilate them. In record-speed, too.

[mastin2]

Second Nexus for Flavor.

[mastin2]

[*]

Best Mafia Catcher

Nominated: MattP First: chkflip Second: None
[*]

Funniest or Most Enjoyable Player

Nominated: Faraday First: SleepyKrew Second: None

[*]

Best Performance Scum Group

Nominated: The Simpsons Mafia First: qwints Second: None
Nominated: Scum of Switch Mafia First: Ms Marangal Second: None
Nominated: Scum of You Could Be Anyone Mafia First: Oversoul Second: None

How the heck did MattP fail to get seconded?

Second MattP,
Second Faraday.

Also, I can't help but notice the distinct trend--almost every single Best Performance Town nom has a second, whereas nearly every single Best Performance Scum nomination...well, doesn't. (Really says something about the site meta when you think about it. )

[mastin2]

...what does it say?

More-or-less?

That--true or not--we see it as being much easier to win as scum than as town, AND/OR we see setups as being much more easily scumsided than we do town-sided.

[mastin2]

Speaking of Jason, I don't actually see him nominated, not for Rising Star, not for Most Cunning Manipulation. (Which is surprising, since I thought I remembered him being nominated.) Time to fix that, and I hope he gets a second before the scummy noms close today.

Nominating JasonWazza for Don Corelone.

He's a seriously,

seriously

badass scum player.

Sure, yeah, he might SEEM obvious as scum to some, but the fact is, he's damn-good at not actually getting lynched as scum. And even when he

does

get lynched, the trail of destruction his posts leave makes finding his scumbuddies incredibly difficult; he masks his interactions quite well, and gives a lot of red herrings which'd lead to the lynching of town.

[mastin2]

Second Xenoblade for most enjoyable.

I wasn't even a player (although I

almost

was; I made an offer for a dang-good reason), and I can tell you it was a fun game. I was reading along for quite a bit, I loved every bit of the game, I wanted oh SO badly to actually be a part of the game, because I knew just how memorable it was, how fun it'd be to be a player in a game which was turning out to be that epic.

Edit:

Make that thirded.

[mastin2]

It's kinda sad that we haven't had any nominations at all for Professor Mafia. There have been plenty of people in 2013 who have contributed a great deal to mafiascum.net, yet none of them have received any recognition for their work at all. It's about time I fixed that.

"If Hito's guide were edited some, it should be required reading."

-zoraster.

Nominate hitogoroshi for Professor Mafia

. In addition to having created a strong MD thread for moderators (albeit one which

mainly

benefits a specific type of game, themes), read his posting history over the last year when it comes to MD. They're not very frequent, but almost every single post he makes is worth having been posted.

[mastin2]

Nominating the team of Eddie Fenix, Varsoon, and Dante for Best Performance Scum Group during their play in Calvin and Hobbes Mafia.

We had a perfect scum-game in a multi-ball setup that even had dayvig's in it. I really twisted town about and was confirmed-town for over half the game after brilliant use of my neighborizer power. Not only that, but I claimed scum on D1 and was tracked to a kill early in the game and somehow argued my way out of it. Between the brilliant NKs, misdirection, and active-lurking and distancing done by my team, we made it through a 21-player multi-ball game without a single one of us dying!

Eh,

Second

.

[mastin2]

Nominate mastin2 for Professor Mafia

Weird, I thought it'd been done.

Technically, I have been nominated for it. Once before, in a previous year, for my "A view on cops" article. (Back in 2011.) I was up against people who were far better theorists than I was, though, so they deserved the title more than I did. (When up against Vi (the Professor Paragon!), Lord Gurgi, Kublai Khan, and others, I wasn't exactly a notable candidate. )

And thank you. You guys are awesome. I'll try not to let you down.

[mastin2]

Nominate the scumteam of Pinkmin mafia for Best Performance: Scum.

Say what you will about how "obvious" the team was. The simple fact is that they managed to completely obliterate the town. Yes, all their members were suspected by players, but said players mostly ended up dead via nightkill. Oversoul pulled a claim which had enough credibility to shake off the suspicion which

was

there, ActionDan managed to survive for much longer than he could have, they managed to lynch a lot of the town power roles, and killed anyone who was even remotely a threat to them. Arcangel9 may have had suspicion on her, but was among their least-suspicious players. And GiF's slot (despite having scumslipped) managed to avoid getting lynched.

[mastin2]

Personally I think that's more deserving of a scumteam nom instead of just a nom for Generic. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here but both NTP and myself played valuable roles in the game too. For instance I was helping make the strategies for Generic to follow (he executed them extremely well so props to him) and NTP served as the platform for our townreads due to us bussing him. Upon that I was the main pusher behind most of the town lynches in the game (especially the Smudger lynch, which I basically campaigned hard on and managed to win over enough people to get him lynched).

That's not to say Generic is undeserving of the nom though.

Alright.

Nominate the scumteam of Mini 1463 for Best Performance: Scum.

Because I like scumteam noms.

...No, but seriously. I read quite a bit of that game. They played together as a team rather wonderfully. They all had an equal part in that victory, even if Generic was the star of that show. Good, solid play all-around.

[mastin2]

Could someone with more mafia experience please advise me whether AurorusVox's Paradox Prime would make for a good Best Mechanic/Mutation nominee?

I haven't come across a game quite like it. It started in 3 player lylo for starters.

I'd consider it unique enough to nominate.

I'll call that a nomination, and I will

Second

it. That mechanic looks absolutely brilliant.

[mastin2]

Ghostlin, let me handle the talking.

Second Bork for Xenogears/saga flavor.

He's an awesome mod, who provided excellently-written flavor which felt right on the mark. When faced with unexpected situations, he even improvised patches for flavor situations he hadn't anticipated needing, and nobody could tell the difference without him telling them that he was improvising.

Buuut...that's not the award I think is most memorable about that game.

Nominate the town of Xenogears Mafia for best performance: town.

The game was a massive, MASSIVE success for the town. Everyone worked together well as a team, synchronizing reads, correctly identifying town play, and working together as a near-flawless unit to lynch four scum in five days. Even in the single mislynch breaking that streak, the town managed to use it well, with nick's mislynch serving to help corner the scum. Even the roles were used well. Town players picked up on town 'crumbs, while the scum players were completely blindsided by them, unable to pick them out. Solid nightplay with their actions cornered the scum even further, both by reducing the mislynch pool and by outting another scum. The town's performance dipped a bit thanks to paranoia (and deviation from a game-breaking strategy), but still pulled out the win despite the strong play of the last surviving scum.

It was all-around a well-deserved overall victory.

Nominate that same game, Xenogears Mafia, for Most Enjoyable.

Seriously, everything there was good. It was a blast to play, it was a blast to be dead in, it was all-around an awesome game. Almost nothing could have been better about that game, and it was all-around a seriously fun game. Bork delivered a perfect experience, enhanced by the players making it a game that was good to be in, and good to play in.

Nominate borkjerfkin for excellent moderation.

That same game as an example. Seriously. Zoraster has him as the highest-rated theme game mod--HE'S EARNED IT! There's virtually nothing he could do better. Awesome at votecounts, awesome at replacements, awesome at flavor, at setup, at...everything. He delivers a good game consistently, and is probably legitimately one of the best mods on the site, and I can't believe nobody's done this yet.

[mastin2]

/bitter support for both. *grumblegrumbleIwascompletelyrightasareplacementandtheystillwongrumblegrumble*

I'll do a detailed write-up later. (Short on time atm.)

[mastin2]

Nominate the scumteam of Micro 0xFF (255) Sabotage Mafia for Best Scum Team Performance

BROseidon & ETL steamrolled us this game with some great play. They managed to thief a weak neighborizer ability, then BROseidon used the ability to suicide into his scumbuddy so the scumbuddy could claim the kill and become "confirmed town". We considered every option in LYLO: me, zipperflesh, and XScorp all as potential scum. But not once did we consider that ETL had her buddy suicide into her to secure the win. Quite fantastic play.

I'm not well-read enough to give a proper description, but I AM

just

familiar enough with the game to do this:

Second BROseidon and ETL for Sabotage Mafia

.

[mastin2]

Nominate pieguyn for Rising Star

.

Pie joined in August, a mere three months ago, and yet, I already consider pie to be a player of high-caliber. Pie is an absolutely brilliant player, with a good head about him, able to adapt to nearly any situation and make the most of it. He's smart, and dangerously-competent. To give just one example of it, know how zMuffinMan just got a scummy nom for cunning manipulator? Pie was one of the few players who was onto zMuff, AND to the other surviving scum (Psychlone) as well. The only reason the game was a scum win is because pie had no way of knowing the game was in lylo a day earlier than it would normally be. (There were seven alive with two scum.)

He's new. But he's damn-good for being new. Given more time and experience, he'll be up there with the elite. He's already up there in the higher-tier.

[mastin2]

...Except that flavor came at the cost of week-plus delays to basic game functions such as day starts?

Cabd's not exactly right, but nor is he wrong. (I call it "SaintKerrigan's Curse". ) Most of the delays were off of real-life scheduling inconveniences, and the final week-plus delay to the game was not, as stated, motivated by a need for flavor, but rather, my depression having set in full-force without me having realized it. (Procrastination on vital tasks is one of the warning signs.) The given excuse

was

"flavor", but honestly, it was probably just that--an excuse, me lying to myself.

Butyeah. Regardless of whether flavor was the issue or not, there's a reason my game doesn't have any other nominations.

That said, though, there should be one:

Nominate penguin_alien for Don Corelone

. She's not exactly a high-key mafia player, but

damn

, she's

good

at it. She has an excellent head when it comes to nightkills and running the math for night actions in general, and while her play is more 'reserved' than the average player, she's quite competent at reading situations and manipulating them to her favor. Though most strongly shown in Maniacal Street Mafia, it is present in her other scum games as well; she's a highly-underestimated scum player.

[mastin2]

Not sure if I've done this already or not, buuuuuut...

Nominate Katsuki for Don Corelone

.

I don't know

what

it is that makes Katsuki so damn good as scum, but between Anything Goes and Death Note, clearly, Kats is doing SOMETHING right, and is a competent scum manipulator.

[mastin2]

mk. I've got one that definitely deserves it.

Nominate AngryPigeon's Sabotage Mafia for Best Setup

The town each had multiple 1-shot abilities, and the scum had the ability to "sabotage" them (block the ability). In addition to this, the scum had other 1-shot abilities they could use during the day and night, as well as a list of the remaining town abilities. Beyond the usual scumhunting/townhunting, this setup required both town and scum to use their abilities as advantageously as possible, and to challenge traditional tells (like a scum kill always belonging to a town player ). There were some very interesting claims and working out how to organize reads was definitely a puzzle. Despite being power-heavy, the setup was expertly balanced, imo. It was unlike any other setup I've ever played.

2nd.

(Or third, depending on whether shos's nom counts.)

Nominate the town of Fire Emblem Awakening Mafia for Best Town

The fact we lynched 4 scum consecutively, utilized the mechanic to bolster the towns numbers and deny the scum additional members(only one non town player got married!) Gave the town enough time to POE down the final two members of the scumteam.

2nd.

because no one's been nominated for this yet and mastin is awesome <3

Might be true, but I'm actually a better IC outside of newbie games than I am inside of newbie games. (For instance, my post-game write-up after Chain of Command, as probably the best example of an outside-newbie-queue IC write-up.)

Nominate Mind Reader Mafia for Best Setup

This setup was centered around the role of the mind reader, who got access to everyone's personal QT and was known to be in the game and thus confirmed town. The setup allowed for a mostly mountainous game which ended up being pretty certifiably awesome; every townie had a mason/hydra partner to vent to, and every scum had one confirmed town who they had to find eventually but could also singularly choose to manipulate. Mastin was scum in this game and his QT was a fucking masterpiece.

How the hell did this get missed?!?

Second.

Nominate Fire Emblem: Awakening for Best Mechanic

All roles in the game are designated as either 'male' or 'female'. Most male roles have the ability to propose to another player once per day. If the proposee is female, they can accept, and if either has a particular role modifier ('childbearer'), their child (the parent will know the child's rolename but not their role) enters the game the following day, and the family becomes a neighborhood. These families have their flips delayed until the entire family is dead, at which point all of them flip. The only closed aspect is how the child's alignment is determined.

I thought it was a pretty graceful way to integrate janitored flips, which is something that is cool but fucked up pretty easily, and this mechanic ended up creating really strange family dynamics (some families were loyal to each other to the point of being completely irrational, while others got very paranoid of each other very early) and effected game play in a really interesting way that I don't think anyone saw coming.

Second.

Also, an

Nth

to Thor-as-IC. Along-side Nacho (the current holder), when I think of most-competent-IC, it's him I jump to. Nacho and Thor are, quite simply, the best there is at teaching the game to newbies. And Thor's the best possible candidate to inherit Nacho's award.

[mastin2]

Nom Cabd Rising Star.
Nom fferylit Rising Star.
Nom GuyinFreezer Rising Star

Really not sure why these ones didn't go through a while ago. All three joined late 2012/early 2013, and they all are prolific players who are consistently terrifying players as both alignments. I could start linking specific games here, like AMOL, Xenoblade, or any ffery game where she gets killed N1 because of how much of a threat she is to scum teams, but I would have to go through and link the vast majority of each of these players games, given that they all consistently put out a very high level of play. In particular, Cabd's metaknowledge+willingness to gambit, ffery's ability to organize and lead a town, and GiF's ability to control his presence in a game (look at Xenoblade and Touhou imperishable nights to get a sense of what I mean here) are major assets that they bring to the table as either alignment.

There's one player you're critically neglecting to nominate, BRO, though for understandable reasons.

If it hasn't been done already...

Nominate BROseidon for Rising Star

.
Dude's a beast, right up there with AngryPidgeon in terms of skill as both town and scum. (By which, I mean...practically god-tiered.) He's a master, absolute master, at scum manipulation; you need only look at the fact that most of his scum games are nominated for the "Best Performance: Scum" scummy to see this in effect. Furthering that, he's also frequently among the "Best Performance: Town" nominations as well, and for good reason there, too! I can't cite that many specific examples off the top of my head, but basically...as scum, BROseidon is not only hard to spot, but also hard to lynch when spotted. As town, BROseidon is deadly-accurate with his reasons, and normally quite charismatic at getting people to listen to them. He's got the good qualities of both a town and a scum player; what more can you really ask for?