Open 722: Red Flag [Endgame]

[zMuffinMan]

i may post more thoughts on this when i'm not busy with work but there are a lot of things i don't really understand about how scum played this setup (the D1 bussing, the N1 kill which... luckily for them led to a teacher lynch somehow instead of CJ... and a few other things)

also i may do a brief (or not so brief) summary of my thoughts on other things with regards to the game (where i went wrong, where i think players did well)

gc was pretty sharp this game (despite being very low content)

[Hiraki]

I didn't mean to keep my vote on. My vote killed the wagon the first time. I even said that in the PT. I have no clue why Ceejay helped.

[Mathdino]

D1 bussing was awful yeah

only makes sense if LITERALLY THE ENTIRE SCUMTEAM busses or something

but town can still catch the one scum that didn't bus

[callforjudgement]

I can see why you'd want to bus in this setup but it gets very dangerous if a counterwagon on scum forms, because then your bussing doesn't really prove anything (you'd be bussing no matter where you voted).

It may well be that TheBrie was simply the wrong bus target, and that scum's strategy would have worked fairly well if CJ was chosen instead.

[Hiraki]

If anything, that's what I regret the most. It's happened twice now where I thought I could just chill with my vote and got screwed over for it. It won't happen again.

[Hiraki]

The intent on my part was never to buss. It was a gambit to throw the wagon off (which I think worked) but then it gained traction (so somewhere if I unvoted, I feel that there'd be a very very different game)

[callforjudgement]

i may post more thoughts on this when i'm not busy with work but there are a lot of things i don't really understand about how scum played this setup (the D1 bussing, the N1 kill which... luckily for them led to a teacher lynch somehow instead of CJ... and a few other things)

also i may do a brief (or not so brief) summary of my thoughts on other things with regards to the game (where i went wrong, where i think players did well)

gc was pretty sharp this game (despite being very low content)

There are a lot of things I don't really understand about how town played this setup, too (e.g. BBT's apparent belief that everyone is 100% certain in their reads, and more or less everything that Fumuki did past the midpoint of day 1). I'll happily answer questions about my own play, though (although I'd have done that during the game too).

[Mathdino]

had you all piled onto a counterwagon that would've been pretty obvious too i think

the real solution was just to make sure that none of your scum threw

like literally creature's presence in this setup makes it roughly balanced

if he's scum, scum can't stop him from getting D1 lynched

if he's town, he's an IC for a couple days

[callforjudgement]

If anything, that's what I regret the most. It's happened twice now where I thought I could just chill with my vote and got screwed over for it. It won't happen again.

Actually, I'm wondering now if wagons on scum have more of a tendency to reignite than wagons on town, for some reason. Nobody moved to BBT towards the end of toDay, for example, despite me making very clear that it was my first choice and zMuffin making it clear that he was willing to switch, so eventually I moved to my second choice. (I guess the reason might be that if there's a wagon on town that's plausible enough to reignite, it's also plausible enough to go through the first time, whereas wagons on scum are more likely to stall under suspicious circumstances.)

[BlueBloodedToffee]

Anyway, GG town. I'm glad we got there in the end.

I genuinely can't believe I pushed teacher over CJ on D2 - Muffin was right in wondering why I didn't continue with my original scum read and it's obviously what I should have done.

I just felt like I had more content/posts to work with from teacher to actually achieve the lynch. So my bad I guess, but glad I had managed to nail two scum on D1 - reasonably happy with that

[Mathdino]

notable that every last slot that was confused about who the fuck i was, was town in the end

northsidestory ftw

[BlueBloodedToffee]

I so badly wanted to hammer BV and say 'CYA SUCKERS' as well, like sooooo bad. But if he flipped town I would have been very quickly lynched the following Day haha

[callforjudgement]

notable that every last slot that was confused about who the fuck i was, was town in the end :lol:

northsidestory ftw

That's probably because it mattered for town who were trying to read you, but didn't matter to scum who weren't trying to read you.

That said, I've never played with you before and didn't get around to meta-ing you, so I still don't know much about you apart from what I learned from this game (which is actually quite a lot).

[Mathdino]

i was actively trying to emulate NSG's town meta soooo

i actually would've lived up to the persona by emulating her scum meta had i rolled scum

hey NSG how'd i do during D1

[ceejayvinoya]

I pretty much think I ruined this game for scum.

Sorry @everyone. GG tho.

[callforjudgement]

Some retrospective thoughts about BBT…

The #1 most basic towntell in a game of Mafia is curiosity. Sure, one of the biggest differences between town and scum is how scum react to their buddies, and (especially in a game like this) it's possible to pick up on that. But even in a game with only one scum, there's a crucial difference between the informed minority and uninformed majority: the informed minority are informed, so have no reason to wonder about the setup, whereas the uninformed minority are curious as to what's going on behind the scenes. This is the reason why, e.g., rolefishing and SK speculation are considered such large scumtells (as they're the only thing the scum has left to wonder about).

BBT's playstyle this game, especially on later Days, is pretty much a rejection of curiosity. Being (or portraying the state of being) sure enough about your reads that you accuse your scumreads of gamethrowing, refusing to acknowledge other people's concerns that you could be wrong, and the like, shows that you don't care about finding out more about who's scum – you already know. (I think BBT may genuinely have had some of his reads at the strength he claimed, e.g. pushing teacher over CJ because the teacher lynch was easier is only correct reasoning for a townie if you're totally sure about both reads; normally you'd push the read that's

stronger

. I made a similar mistake Day 1 and it didn't work out all that well for me either.) But of course, if you're acting like you know the setup, people will assume that you're informed, rather than uninformed.

[Hiraki]

I pretty much think I ruined this game for scum.

Sorry @everyone. GG tho.

No reason to be sorry. Just a game bud.

[callforjudgement]

i was actively trying to emulate NSG's town meta soooo

i actually would've lived up to the persona by emulating her scum meta had i rolled scum

hey NSG how'd i do during D1

Imitating someone's meta is normally a bad idea (and as Fumuki pointed out, you didn't get anywhere near NSG's actual town meta).

The most obvious reason for this is that if someone's town meta and scum meta are different, then that proves they're either unaware of or can't imitate their town meta (or else they'd be doing that as scum). Why would someone else be any better at it?

My approach to this problem is to use a town meta that's hard to imitate as scum (to help me win as town), and to try but to typically fail to replicate it when I'm scum (as I backed myself into a corner with my town games); this is the best approach I'm aware of to "play to win" in every game I'm in. (Oddly, I've been mixing parts of my scum meta into my towngame recently because it helps to avoid me getting lynched and hasn't shown any real reduction in my read accuracy. Logically, that shouldn't work, which implies that people aren't very good at reading me. I didn't do much of it this game, though; the main change I made from my usual town meta was to hold back and not post in situations where I wasn't certain the post would be helpful.)

[Killthestory]

ggwp

[callforjudgement]

And finally, an apology: I apologise for all the walls.

That is, I'm sorry that they were necessary (and forced players to slog through them), as opposed to that I'm planning to stop doing them. The problem is that I can't be online all that often and yet there's often a lot I want to react to, so it often all comes out in the same post as there's nowhere else to put the information.

Perhaps I could try to write the post first, then split it up into smaller posts and post it in instalments, allowing other people to post in between? Would that be helpful?

[Mathdino]

CFJ you don't understand
i played this game as a gag
i didn't want to join under mathdino because i knew i'd probably get NK'd on N1 as i tend to in all-vanilla games
but NSG still encouraged me to so i cleared the idea of gimmick-alting with her

a lot of people aren't able to completely imitate their town meta as scum. NSG is one of them.

and fumuki's meta-case was awful objectively . NSG has hardlurked it out in similar ways before due to demotivation
i agree i didn't fully emulate it, but i don't think activity was the reason why, haha

[Mathdino]

Perhaps I could try to write the post first, then split it up into smaller posts and post it in instalments, allowing other people to post in between? Would that be helpful?

the solution is to cut out the stuff that's not useful or that people won't read, basiclaly

the problem wasn't necessarily the length but that you started arguing into nitpicky twisty details that didn't have an effect on the big picture

the reward for reading your posts was just low. i can name a few effective wallers (tfw mastina is not one of them whoops)
it usually just relies on having a lot of good meaningful gamesolvy content

[Creature]

How much time do we have?

[Killthestory]

walls are cool if you try your hardest to be concise, and they still end up as walls. it happens.

i think overusing walls makes them less significant. when i wall, people read it because i rarely do. (except on other sites where walling is one of my metas) i like to make sure everything i say is important and captivates a reader to actually take my thoughts into consideration.

[Creature]

Oh right, game likely ended