/in-Vitational Game 4 (Game Over!)

[Xylthixlm]

Sorry, that post is snarkier than I intended, I'm in a rush and didn't have tome to edit

[Kmd4390]

Hero, when was I a jester?

[Kmd4390]

Hero, when was I a jester?

^I'm reading the QTs.

[SerialClergyman]

claiming vanilla cop itself would be dangerous.

[Kmd4390]

So scum didn't kill me right away, but they kept blocking me. That's good.

[populartajo]

Good job town.

MVPs are definitely Serial and charter. Serial did an awesome job convincing some townies that my lynch was the optymal play and was one of the few that didnt buy rolf's claim. Charter, after some valid mislynching, got himself semiconfirmed and was a very valuable town member in the critical moments: my lynch and baltar's lynch.

I think we lost first when a)rolf decided to softclaim cop when there was no necessity to (Yos wasn't in real danger to be lynched) and b)when Baltar decided to not vote Pooky and go against then scumteam that was pretty obvious going for the "not bussing" way and the Pooky emergency lynch.

I think that if Baltar had gone along the scumteam, we would have had more possibilities of winning the game. We only needed to convince one townie the next day and we had Thesp, Iamusername and even Pooky on our side for doing this. Meh, I really would have liked to win this game after my hider claim.

Best post of the thread is definitely this.

lol

this is the equivalent of the mafia don carrying the bloody knife sitting in the courtroom with his giant cigar, his entire crime family turned state's witness, a mountain of evidence against him charging him with racketeering, murder, extortion... and he points his finger at the teddy bear in the corner and says....

"LOOK! THE TEDDY BEAR IS LAUGHING!!!!!!!!!!!"

Good game town! And good game scum!

[Xylthixlm]

Btw Elvis, loving bunnies is fine, but never put weight on soft claims. Ever. It just leaves you open to being manipulated by scum.

[roflcopter]

i hate being scum so much. i have approximately zero fun when i am. good game town.

[elvis_knits]

God, xyl, such a buzzkill...

I realize I made several mistakes.

But, Xyl, your play did not inspire trust. You didn't make cases, and threw your vote around. I admit you were right about who you thought was scum. I think you deserve a lot of credit for that. But the way you went about convincing people did not work for me. Simply repeating "read vp baltar" does not inspire me, nor does it make me want to spend time making a case on someone

you

want to lynch.

[VP Baltar]

I'm still not quite sold that me hammering Pooky would have given us any more chances of winning. Perhaps, and I'm sure the rest of the scum team feels that way since they all seemed pissed about it afterward, but I really think it would have looked obv. scum team and led straight back to the same lylo situation with us losing. Oh well.

In hindsight, I wish I would have just hammered myself or been bussed when I was at L-1. That wagon was insane and exposed us too much. The scum lovers thing was hard to play as well and forced us to bunch up as protection.

One thing I will say is that playing with an 'elite' player list is a million times more challenging than your average game as scum because it is hard to sell mislynches.

[Xylthixlm]

I don't want to convince you. I want you to pay attention and decide independently. Making cases is not necessary to win a game of mafia. Frankly, I'm right much more often when I'm going on gut and can't make a coherent case than when I can.

[SerialClergyman]

I was speaking to mith about being reminded of The Fonz's theory that the team with the most VIs lose.

I was thinking that we had Pooky, who was playign like a VI all game, and we were going to win - but just as I was thinking that the town was shaping up for a Pooky lynch and he had to drop the crap and post a long, serious and convincing case.

So this game has really highlighted that theory to me.

Xyl - while I tend to agree with you, you seem to think that 'being right' = 'getting scum lynched'. While cases are overvalued, you can't dismiss thigns like looking pro-town yourself and actually convincing people that your reads are right.

Part of why I focused so much on the 'no real downside if tajo is town' argument when trying to lynch Tajo was because I thought that line of argument was more likely to get people on board than 'sup guys, lynch tajo kthx.'

[Xylthixlm]

BTW, my normal technique for making cases on IRC is repeating "lynch him!" or "hammer!" until someone does. It actually seems to work pretty well. Sometimes I copy and paste a few lines from that player without explaination.

[Xylthixlm]

SC: I do try to look protown myself, but I do it by being open about what I'm thinking (even if I know it will look scummy or unconvincing). It's a style of play that I know is extremely hard to fake convincingly as scum - at least against players who follow their gut.

As scum I tend to dial it back and play in a way that is superficially townie but hard to get a gut read on.

[SerialClergyman]

If it looks scummy or unconvincing, you haven't succeded in trying to look pro-town. If gut players get it and case players don't, you need to work out which style to use depending on whether the game is filled iwth gut or case players, yes?

It was a very interesting game.

For reference - this was the PM I sent mith after tajo flipped scum:

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I haven't lost my team the game!!!!!!!!

Would have absolutely certainly been lynched at some point if tajo was town, and we'd be toast. Eeek!

I think that charter and elvis were certainly the townies who had to challenge themselves the most. I think as soon as I was prodded into action I got a good read and the rest was convincing people I was right despite iam and pooky and the other options while avoiding getting lynched for rolefishing and generally being controversial.

I was really, really happy with my play and the way that worked out, but I don't find that aspect of mafia as hard as something like charter or elvis had to do - completely throw off their reads for the game and reverse their position and vote someone who looked quite townie because it was the right move to make in the circumstances.

[SerialClergyman]

Also - I did lol at Zu's death.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

SC's case on Tajo really turned this game around

that was pretty awesome.

[charter]

Yeah Xyl, my play day two was completely wrong. Don't think anything I said was right. Only redeeming factor to lynching you was it greatly helped lynching Balter.

It just seemed that if you were town, you would have tried defending yourself before you were threatened to be lynched. I don't think I've ever played with you, so your behavior, to me, just looked really scummy, but I'll know next time. But yeah, my play day two was shameful.

As far as your decision to bus, Balter, I'm not sure hammering Pooky would have helped you guys, as you said. All my scenarios for if Pooky was scum (if anyone read them) would have been even more impossible if Pooky was actually town. We would have had no choice but to assume tajo was scum gambiting, and the game would pan out pretty much the same way. If you had hammered Pooky, we very well might have lynched you over Thesp in LYLO.

As far as the scumteam goes, that was insane. Mad props for that gambit, you had me fooled for a while. At first, when tajo claimed, I just decided I would believe it because it was plausible and it was so much easier to assume tajo was town.

And I agree that SC was pivotal in town winning this game, great job.

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry, one other unsung hero was Ojanen's case on VP, which not only made her shinign pro-town but also drew the fastest town clusterfuck of a wagon I've ever seen in my life. Ojanen played well and was unlucky not to get protection from me N2 (I was too much of a pussy, and said so in my night action PM - sorry )

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

the pussy bodyguard

rofl

[SerialClergyman]

It's genuinely a hard role to play... I could have defended her, and I breadcrumbed it (my last words the day before was something like 'if xyl is town, ojanen is the only pro-town player I can see') but when it actually came to sending in the night action - I couldn't do it. I have the ability for a 1-shot protect, and can confirm myself using it. After a massclaim, that ability becomes much more powerful. If Ojanen is a Vanilla, as seemed likely, I felt like myp rotecting her was trading a weak power role for a vanilla, and didn't seem like a good swap. Plus I'm 100% on my alignment, and only 90% on hers.

If I knew she was a goon cop I'd have done it.

[mith]

Oh, I forgot to include Ojanen's night 2 investigation in the list. That should make you feel a little bit worse about your decision...

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

wow

town miraculously wins after pussy bodyguard fails to protect hot female cop.

that's epic storyline.

[mith]

Re: The Setup

The setup was largely inspired by various Open setups - Vengeful (both the Vengeful Townie, and the Traitor variation which dies with the Godfather), Lovers, Pie E7, several C9 variations (Bodyguard C9, for example), Treestump, probably some others - combined with a theme of "weakened normal roles". My first draft of the setup basically included a list of the most common "normal" roles, with the intention of picking 1-2 at random to keep at full strength and 2-3 of the others in weakened form (some of the weakened roles didn't make it into this setup, but might appear in some future game, or in an open setup design). I eventually revamped the thing to go with something more C9-esque.

The weakend Cop roles were meant to be roughly equal in strength, though the Vanilla Cop would probably have been a bit stronger. Ditto for the protection roles (not sure Hider would have been stronger, but definitely would have been more swingy). The rest of the roles were coupled C9 style with Vengeful Townie/Treestump, leaving the potential for either a lot of limited shot roles or a lot of "lynch do-over" roles (ended up getting a 2-2 split). The remaining non-train slot was mostly so I could truthfully claim that all the roles listed were possible and could be duplicated.

Happy with the balance... and the semi-open nature of the setup was successful in that "outguessing the mod" wasn't much of a factor while there was lots of room for strategy in the use of the roles and for fake claims.

[Xylthixlm]

Yeah Xyl, my play day two was completely wrong. Don't think anything I said was right. Only redeeming factor to lynching you was it greatly helped lynching Balter.

It just seemed that if you were town, you would have tried defending yourself before you were threatened to be lynched.

If I ever defend myself before I'm at L-2, that's a sure sign that I think the person attacking me is obvtown.