Open 530 "WSoB" (Stack the Deck): GAME OVER

[Alduskkel]

Wow

I hit the traitor completely by accident and got the tracker killed because of it

Derping that hard made me a complete genius

Best moment.

Also, why is the Role Cop so shitty? Because it doesn't actually counteract other Town PRs?

Hmm, looking at Town PRs again:
Goon Cop -- neutralized by giving Mafia PRs
Roleblocker -- can only be soft neutralized by JOAT and/or recruiting Traitor
Tracker -- soft neutralized by JOAT, but seems to increase in power with more PRs
Bodyguard -- soft neutralized by JOAT
Vigilante -- soft neutralized by Bulletproof and/or not recruiting Traitor
Innocent Child -- just not that strong

Conclusions:
JOAT is definitely a good pick.
Mafia BP or Mafia Role Cop might have been better than daytalk because Bert could have been left alive indefinitely.
Recruiting the Traitor will guarantee that at least one of the Mafia must be a Goon.
To maximize Mafia coordination, you have to recruit the Traitor and take daytalk; however, this means that there will be at least 4 Town PRs with no counter. JOAT seems like the obvious choice after that, but then you run into yet another town PR.
Daytalk is probably not worth both the extra Town PR and not getting a true Mafia PR.

[Ankamius]

I don't expect pieguyn or Sakura Hana to be fooled by my play at all, though. They both have an idea on how I play both town and scum (which is actually pretty much exactly the same), and it's a matter of time until any real chance of being fooled by a hard bus on my end is nil.

<3 Ank

It's kinda true, considering I had won a game as scum around that time by pushing rEdo into the ground.

[notscience]

My optimal picks-

JOAT
BP
Daytalk

Why?

Town get all these prs, but the counters to them are all there.

[yabbaguy]

I'm kind of one of those guys who likes games to be nice and consistent, so I wish it was "Change a Goon to Mafia Encryptor (daytalk enabler)" instead of "Enable daytalk", so that every ability involves tinkering with role names. The only noticeable differences are that a) it gives Town a clue if they flip about how many PRs exist and b) if combined with Recruit Traitor, could result in 2 Mafiosos' Day communication being severed if the wrong person gets lynched first.

[notscience]

The goon cop is really underpowered unless it's drawn when scum take nothing.

[Ankamius]

Vanilla cop that scouts for Goons+VTs might be better, or maybe even PR Cop. It's more dangerous for mafia to hide among all the VTs if there's a risk of them being outed as a power role, but it's not really strong enough to single-handedly confirm anyone as mafia.

[Alduskkel]

I think daytalk is underpowered.

[Ankamius]

Best moment.

Also, why is the Role Cop so shitty? Because it doesn't actually counteract other Town PRs?[/quote]

The last game we ended up playing with this set-up, it was made 100% useless because the town basically massclaimed whether they were a PR or not and eventually made all the PR names clear by D2.

It wouldn't have made any difference either this game, since half the PRs were outed D1 and the other two D3.

TBH, Role Cop sucks in this set-up because chances are you will only get one or two scans by the time it becomes obsolete and the times it pays off aren't very helpful compared to when every single other role pays off. At least BP is passively useful just from the virtue of making the vigilante (if applicable) less powerful.

Actually, to be honest, I've never seen role cop be very useful in any of my games, even when it's used to its fullest potential. Sakura knows which game I'm talking about.

[Ankamius]

I think daytalk is underpowered.

TBH, that's a set-up problem more than a problem with daytalk itself. It would be much more powerful with three mafia than two, but the only real viable way to do that is Daytalk + Recruit Traitor + JoaT, which... can make town too powerful. JoaT is strong, but the power town has can crush it hard.

[LlamaFluff]

I'm kind of one of those guys who likes games to be nice and consistent, so I wish it was "Change a Goon to Mafia Encryptor (daytalk enabler)" instead of "Enable daytalk", so that every ability involves tinkering with role names. The only noticeable differences are that a) it gives Town a clue if they flip about how many PRs exist and b) if combined with Recruit Traitor, could result in 2 Mafiosos' Day communication being severed if the wrong person gets lynched first.

Being the one behind this setup, the daytalk is worded that way to keep town in the dark intentionally. As its been pointed out without the recruit daytalk is not the strongest, this gives scum a mild advantage of when claims shake down it looks like there is one too many town PR claims.

Either way I still think that the best move for scum is actually to pick no PRs, and if anything just take the JOAT. With no PRs only two town roles pop up, and the biggest danger would be BG + Tracker/GC draw from town. The more PRs it starts getting to a situation where there are a higher number of threats and less options for scum. Its a predictability thing, you don't want to suddenly see something like BG + Tracker + RB + IC or anything like that as scum because that's going to be a pain to crack as you could have just picked the wrong counters to start. Plus Track and RB together are deadly when there are only two scum, and are roles that increase in power quickly with lower number of scum

[Alduskkel]

Then why not improve the scum PRs so that it's to their benefit to take something?

[LlamaFluff]

Then why not improve the scum PRs so that it's to their benefit to take something?

To an extent that's the point of the setup.

Is it worth it for scum to take nothing additional (thus essentially confirming town claims) which increase the swing (some scum PRs are greater than what town would gain) for the risk of having town picking up something hard. Realistically, the third town role should be a scum fakeclaiming, but by getting an additional role, you enter that WIFOM territory. This is really a bit of a cross between Pick Your Poison and C9++ setups where town will know partial setup of what scum went with, while scum has control of how much power town has.

That and the old "Hard Boiled" phenomenon where a faction will intentionally do something that they see as more "fun" while it being obviously anti-town if you stop and look at it. I haven't massively dissected this setup so far optimization wise, but in the three runs:

Scum took zero roles and won
Scum took two roles (Role Cop + Daytalk) and won
Scum took two roles (JOAT + Daytalk) and lost

I think nothing works because worst case you are going to have a GC + RB vs 2x Goon + Traitor and that's something im happy enough about as scum (even though that would be a highly favorable town draw). You get something like IC + BG and scum should crush the game. Its looking like the setup may stick around. Will be interesting to see what becomes standard choices. I think a lot of it will come down to what gets drawn though.

[Alduskkel]

You don't think it's worth adjusting it yet?

[LlamaFluff]

You don't think it's worth adjusting it yet?

If the argument is "scum wont takes roles because it doesn't help them" there probably isn't because scum think that taking roles does help them, and im sure there are valid arguments to substantiate that point even though on the surface I disagree with them.

Its one of those things where again look at Hard Boiled - there is a correct way to play that game as town, but the option to not take it is there and its commonly not taken, if the correct option was forced, it would probably be pulled from the open queue. This may be similar, while some options are more vanilla and probably slightly bump win chances, both factions have won games already fairly convincingly (including scum splitting after taking roles). That may be the sign of a swingy setup in a small sample size, but still probably a balanced enough one to let it run a bit more.

Even then its probably not a massive advantage, I would say from a scum perspective I would expect to drop win chances maybe 5% in a large sample size taking extra roles.

[notscience]

At least in last game, scum took prs because they took none the first game.

I've been in every iteration of the game, as Town then Scum then Town.

Game 1- Sakura was Vig, Mutley was Bodyguard. Neither was totally effective with their prs, neither was bad either.

Game 2-IC, Tracker, RB, and we had a scum fakeclaim gooncop. The initial IC kinda flaked, hwoever Maestro ame in and did decent. Tracker didn't get anything, but the RB blocked scum N1.

Game 3- ....

I personally want to try my idea because it negates a fair amount of town weapons

[LlamaFluff]

ended