Open 722: Red Flag [Endgame]

[Creature]

Oh nice, I hesitated on lynching scum

[callforjudgement]

How much time do we have?

There's already been a hammer (= you don't need to do anything immediately), and we've already had a couple of scumclaims (+ a dead scum has posted), which makes it incredibly likely that the hammer was on scum to win the game.

[Fumuki]

heh?

Hiraki and BV?

I mean, wouldn't the best solution be BV try to sound like he was defending BBT and Arch to people link them, BV try to push a weird lynch pool of [Creature, Math, Hiraki] with very bad arguments to no one buy it (attempt at distancing), Hiraki go along with town and focus on pushing BBT instead of tunneling my slot, and when BBT got in L-1, BV simply quickhammered, get nightkilled, and the lynchpool would be mainly [CFJ, Arch] next day as long as Hiraki towned it up?

There's some variations of that strategy with BV dying later and Math dying tonight and all too...but dunno what was the plan actually being used here .-.

Anyway, it was a good game although it was kind of chaotic, both town and scum was disorganized huh.

Sorry for tunneling you CFJ, and HEH, YOU WERE SCUM ALL ALONG HIRAKI.

From now on I think I'll be a solely meta player...it's so easier than try to guess what's in the head of the scums...

[TheBrie]

I pretty much think I ruined this game for scum.

Sorry @everyone. GG tho.

I helped. That push on Fumuki was a really stupid thing for me to do. And despite being told several times in other games, I waffled on my reads, and couldn't make myself believe them. Though honestly, I think I would have had terrible in this game as town.

[Killthestory]

paying attention to the fine print is useful in mafia. however, you don't understand what you're picking up on, and so in being observant, you skew your reads because you're not experienced enough to truly tell whether something looks good or bad for someone. you also need to include macro reads within micro reads.

[Archwing]

Gg town. Sorry I flaked d3.

[northsidegal]

Votecount 3.FINAL

Mathdino (3):

BlueBloodedToffee 2166, BlackVoid 2221, Hiraki 2177

BlackVoid (5):

zMuffinMan 2171, Mathdino 2186, Archwing 2222, Green Crayons 2286, callforjudgement 2311

Not voting (1):

Creature 2181

With 9 alive, it’s 5 to lynch. The Day Three deadline is in (expired on 2018-05-15 19:38:59).

BlackVoid was lynched. He was a

Mafia Goon

.

Hiraki,

Mafia Goon

, surrendered.

The

Town

has won!

[northsidegal]

Private threads:

Mafia hideout

Dead thread

Mod thread

[callforjudgement]

I mean, wouldn't the best solution be BV try to sound like he was defending BBT and Arch to people link them, BV try to push a weird lynch pool of [Creature, Math, Hiraki] with very bad arguments to no one buy it (attempt at distancing), Hiraki go along with town and focus on pushing BBT instead of tunneling my slot, and when BBT got in L-1, BV simply quickhammered, get nightkilled, and the lynchpool would be mainly [CFJ, Arch] next day as long as Hiraki towned it up?

No. No, it wouldn't.

The best plan for scum would probably have been to push Archwing earlier in the day. (Hiraki ruling out the Archwing lynch was, in retrospect, probably a mistake.)

[northsidegal]

Interested to hear more thoughts about the setup. I'm very satisfied with how it played out.

I know that CFJ had the point about how town can make massive gains from playing well while scum can't. I'm not sure how much I agree - with the ability of scum to kill off their weaker members, one strategy is to simply do so as early as possible and then let the game rest on the stronger scum players.

[Killthestory]

day 1 is the most important day.

[callforjudgement]

I suspect scum's best strategy in the abstract is to sacrifice N1 regardless of what happens D1, then never again. That basically makes the game into a White Flag where the N1 kill is on the weakest scum rather than the strongest townie; that should be marginally more townsided than White Flag, but not by enough to make much of a difference.

Scum can obviously vary this according to game conditions, but sacrificing early is a much better idea than sacrificing late.

(Also, skew tends to make games unfun rather than unbalanced. A low chance of large gains can easily balance against a high chance of small gains.)


But yes, D1 is really massively important in this setup.

[Mathdino]

exactly what CFJ said

weakest scum should quickhammer any town on D1 and then sacrifice

i think the resultant setup is actually more scumsided than normal white flag because the remaining scumteam is on average better

what really kills it is D1 associations combined with town's scumhunting/PoE abilities
this town got lucky. i don't think most towns would. mountainous setups usually end with D1 town lynches.

[Killthestory]

as far as day 1 goes, don't try to distance or buss. i'd actually probably have hard defended, thunderdomed villas, and acted like i needed to readjust my reads come day 2 once killing the weakest wolf. at that point, someone also needs to be deep if not two ppl, and if your guy being the main cause of chaos (me) gets scumread, take him out and rely on your deepwolves to carry to the end.

[Killthestory]

exactly what CFJ said

weakest scum should quickhammer any town on D1 and then sacrifice

i think the resultant setup is actually more scumsided than normal white flag because the remaining scumteam is on average better

what really kills it is D1 associations combined with town's scumhunting/PoE abilities
this town got lucky. i don't think most towns would. mountainous setups usually end with D1 town lynches.

maybe on ms? my best day is day 1 where i and others find hitting wolves way easy on day 1.

[Mathdino]

good MS towns tend to find really good high-information D1 mislynches and then go on to solve the game as a result

D1 scumlynches tend to be pretty bad for MS towns because of bussing prevalence. town implodes blaming each other for everything

so yeah that sentiment applies mainly to MS. we're used to lynching town and being roughly cool with lynching town D1 as long as we lynch scum D2. that doesn't fly in this setup.

[northsidegal]

So do people think this setup would be worth running again? Should the ability for scum to kill their own members be removed (i.e. town wincon is changed to just "killed" rather than "lynched"?)

Also, interested in feedback about the post numbers in votecounts. Was it something that ever actually helped people. When a mod put the number there instead of the name just being a link I personally found it helpful to see the chronology of how votes shifted around, was wondering if anyone else ever looked at that.

[Killthestory]

infolynches are sort of lame, honestly.

@northside, scum bein allowed to kill themselves is the only reason they got so far.

[callforjudgement]

Btw: re: the dead thread:

Fumuki, I don't think you're necessarily a bad player. You often come to the right conclusions eventually. However, you tend to rely too much on really convoluted plans; the more moving parts there are in your ideas, the more likely that one of them will go wrong.

Also, that "fakehammer" on BBT was a genuine miscount. I always double-check the vote totals when hammering as scum, but normally don't bother as town. (That said, you can't use a miscounted hammer as a towntell for me because it'd be trivial to fake.) I had given effective intent, though, when I said I'd hammer BBT if he was still at L-1 after 24 hours. (

That

was an attempt to make any votes on his wagon more meaningful; in particular, the idea was to make it possible to locate a potential bus vote. I would have gone through with it, though, so the only deception in my post was the reason behind it.)

Scum intentionally trying to save a scummy-looking townie D3 is interesting and would explain the weird voting patterns. I think it might have backfired, though. Really, though, the problem by that point was PoE, so maybe there was no scum strategy that'd have worked.

Incidentally, I was paranoid of zMuffinMan but not pushing him because I felt that he was playing in a sufficiently town-sided manner that he'd eventually have to shift in a weird way (exposing himself as scum) or else end up giving away who his partner was (through PoE or otherwise).

[callforjudgement]

good MS towns tend to find really good high-information D1 mislynches and then go on to solve the game as a result

D1 scumlynches tend to be pretty bad for MS towns because of bussing prevalence. town implodes blaming each other for everything

so yeah that sentiment applies mainly to MS. we're used to lynching town and being roughly cool with lynching town D1 as long as we lynch scum D2. that doesn't fly in this setup.

Normally a good town here will force the scum to give themselves away trying to stop a scum lynch on D1. OTOH if the scum bus, then we'll probably be aimless for a day or so (as the information we'd want will be missing) but town are ahead by enough simply due to having fewer scum to lynch that the bus will ultimately have backfired.

The problem is frequently that there are sufficiently many bad/uninvested/lurking townies that even lynches who are obvious to the engaged townies won't go through. So you have to wait for the game to get a bit smaller and/or more invested players to replace in.

So do people think this setup would be worth running again? Should the ability for scum to kill their own members be removed (i.e. town wincon is changed to just "killed" rather than "lynched"?)

I think it'd have better theoretical balance but be not much fun to play. By day 3, one faction or the other is going to be really depressed.

Also, interested in feedback about the post numbers in votecounts. Was it something that ever actually helped people. When a mod put the number there instead of the name just being a link I personally found it helpful to see the chronology of how votes shifted around, was wondering if anyone else ever looked at that.

I used it a huge amount, mostly because it made it easy to find the starts of wagons or the like. (I found the links to vote counts in the OP to be less than useful, though; I could just ISO the mod in order to get that information in a much more useful format.)

[Mathdino]

FTR i thought the BBT fakehammer reaction was really the towniest thing in his entire ISO

[callforjudgement]

Even after reading the scum PT I still don't understand the KTS kill. It's not explained there either.

The most I can make out was that scum were planning to kill KTS to stop him pushing TheBrie and then for some reason didn't change their minds even after TheBrie got lynched?

[northsidegal]

I think it'd have better theoretical balance but be not much fun to play. By day 3, one faction or the other is going to be really depressed.

Was this setup fun or interesting enough for people? Would any of you play it again?

I used it a huge amount, mostly because it made it easy to find the starts of wagons or the like.

(I found the links to vote counts in the OP to be less than useful, though; I could just ISO the mod in order to get that information in a much more useful format.

)

I'm glad to hear it.

On the bolded - perhaps, but unlike with the post numbers that might clutter the votecount for some people, I doubt those links can

hurt

, so if even a few people find them useful then I'd say it's still worth it.

[Killthestory]

Even after reading the scum PT I still don't understand the KTS kill. It's not explained there either.

The most I can make out was that scum were planning to kill KTS to stop him pushing TheBrie and then for some reason didn't change their minds even after TheBrie got lynched?

i had enough scum pinned to win the game even if cj died. pisskop was in both of my teams and my general poe. hiraki was the only place i was fooled.

[callforjudgement]

I think it'd have better theoretical balance but be not much fun to play. By day 3, one faction or the other is going to be really depressed.

Was this setup fun or interesting enough for people? Would any of you play it again?

I personally wouldn't play this setup again, but a major part of it is that this game has helped confirm to me that I don't have the time for anything bigger than a Micro if I'm playing from D1. (I'm the sort of person who almost always replaces in.)

D3 was pretty stressful for me; it was clear to me that many of my reads were wrong but not what the specific issues with them were. Additionally, when scum numbers get low, the game turns into something of a slog even though town are winning; even before then, a scum-on-scum kill (like on D2), although it leaves town better off (unless it happens very close to the start of the game), doesn't really make them

feel

better off and it rather prolongs the game. It probably isn't much fun from the scum's point of view if one of them gets lynched early, either.

So I guess it's fairly like 2:11 vanilla – my previous example of a highly skewed setup – in how the game feels. The exception is D1, which is a lot of fun. I already came up with a way to effectively extract Red Flag's D1 into its own, balanced setup (which should also have the advantage of being fast to play as it's only one day). I need to go post it over in Open Setups Discussion.