Mini 2032: TAZ Mafia: Murder on the Rockport Limited [over]

[Shoshin]

If Gamma is going to doc me, I'd like for Gamma to give food to someone other than me, so that if he's tracked, we know for sure that he used the doc on me instead of just giving me a food item.

[Shoshin]

I agree that if I die, the scum is Gamma, but it also would mean that he probably used switcheroo.

[Shoshin]

I will have enough gold to doc as well, so in theory, we could have me doc Pork, Nos doc me, and Gamma do nothing, to prevent potential switcheroo.

Pork can use his cop on someone, and I'll use gacha item to the best we can, coordinating in neighborhood with Pork.

If Pork has some gold, we can maybe get him another action as well, depending on how much gold he has.

[Shoshin]

I really wish you had used your role on me, Nos. I don't understand why you didn't do that...

[Shoshin]

Gamma, please give me gacha.

If you're town, it should be clear to you that I'm town as well, and that means from your perspective the last scum is between Nos/Pork.

So give me gacha.

How does me being Town make you town
Only things I know rn is at least one of you/nsg is scum vía no hammer, and nsg was tracked to the kill.

Okay, Gamma is scum. I should be town to him at this point.

[Shoshin]

lol?

[Shoshin]

I think it's best if the votes on NSG come from Pork/Nos, not Gamma. Gamma will be able to get switcheroo if he gets the extra gold from Nos.

[Shoshin]

Nos, if you're town, you're going to lose us this game...

[Shoshin]

NSG needs to die today...

Besides her scummy behavior throughout the game, she was roleblocked by Varsoon and tracked to the the nightkill by Porkens.

[Shoshin]

I guess it's NSG & Nos... don't see see why a townie would ever do what Nos just did...

[Shoshin]

I dunno, Irrelepheant. WHat happened? Game was lost.

I strongly disagree with anyone blaming me for this loss, though. Like, I defended against your mislynch on D1, I lynched scum on D2, I defended against Reck's mislynch on D3, and made sure we lynched hated townie over obvious town Gamma on D4 so that we wouldn't automatically lose... I did basically everything in my power to prevent a mislynch on Gamma throughout the game, even faking an innocent result on him... and then I voted scum NSG...

Like, I dunno. I could have played better, for sure. But I was traveling for most of this game (out of the country, limited internet access), so it wasn't the kind of game I could put all my energy into.

I won't play with Nos again. He spent the whole game calling me a bad player while exclusively pushing mislynches throughout, giving extra gold to scum, and doing nothing useful. My biggest mistake was trusting his townread on Pork when I shouldn't have.

I did in fact scumread NSG since D3, in case that wasn't clear (notice the jailkeep on her, as well as basically calling her scum on D3). So I dunno. How the hell wasn't she lynched? Beyond my understanding.

[Shoshin]

Oh yeah, I stopped caring about this game after RC and Irrelephant were gone... so there's that too...

[Shoshin]

This is my first loss as town in like 10 games... really sad loss too...

[Shoshin]

I think town could have won this if Nos hadn't randomly mislynched me...

[Shoshin]

I suspected Pork, even if I didn't say it.

[Shoshin]

I said town "could" have won... it's unclear what would have happened, but I can assure you that I would have reread everything in light of your flip and Pork definitely would have emerged as a top suspect.

[Shoshin]

it's also not much of a statement to say that "town would have won if the person who cast the losing vote in lylo had just voted scum"

Obvious scum.

Vs

Obvious town.

Like, are you really arguing that Nos didn't lose us this game? Outcome could have been very different.

[Shoshin]

I mislynched once this entire game, on Kokichi, when it was optimal to mislynch him.

So, I dunno. Even if it wasn't my best play, I don't think this loss is on me.

[Shoshin]

Varsoon, your understanding of the events in this game are very flawed.

[Shoshin]

I'm not saying you're the sole reason that town lost, but you played a huge role in keeping town from winning and a large part of why I suspect you were kept alive is due to that role.

This is so hilariously wrong.

I didn't play any role in "keeping town from winning." That shows a profound misunderstanding of how this game played out.

First, on D1, I strongly argued against Irrelephant's mislynch (remember our discussion about Irrelephant?) and would have compromised onto Gammagooey (I expressly said that I was willing to compromise lynch onto Gammagooey if we couldn't lynch Varsoon).

Second, I consistently made sure that gacha wasn't given to scum by making myself as obviously town as possible and lobbying for myself as the receiver of the gacha. I received it every night except N5. On D4, the gacha was almost given to NSG (did you notice that?) and I had to argue forcefully to make sure it wasn't. I was successful in that endeavor. I was the only townie arguing against giving the gacha to NSG... The only time that I failed to get the gacha was on D5, when Nos stupidly used his role on Porkens. I gave Nos a massive amount of shit for using his role on Pork. I can't help how Nos decides to use his role, nor can I help how he decides to vote for the gacha, or how he reads Pork. I still said that I should get gacha, not Pork. But at that point, there wasn't anything I could do to convince Nos, and I townread Nos enough that I decided to just let him have his way with Pork, despite thinking he was throwing the game with how he used his role (and I said that expressly in the game).

Third, I strongly defended against the mislynching of Gamma, and even faked an innocent on him, to prevent his mislynch. I was successful in that endeavor, and if I had failed, town would have lost this game much quicker (i.e. on D4).

Fourth, I was against Reck's mislynch, called him town multiple times. Again, it's not my fault that Reck was mislynched. He was mislynched before I even had a chance to make a town case for him... it happened very quickly... If things had gone my way, Kokichi would have been lynched (and Koki's flip as town would have almost certainly confirmed Reck as town, as well as clearing Nos to a large extent - which means the next lynch probably would have been NSG). Yes, there's lots of "what ifs" in this game, but I'm just pointing out that my trajectory wasn't anywhere close to as wrong as any of the other townies in the game. But there's only so much that a single player can do... and saying that I played a "huge role in keeping town from winning" is just wrong.

What more could I have done? Saying that I could have pushed my agenda better is like saying I'm responsible for all the errors that every townie made in the game. The reality is that it's not my fault that a bunch of townies suspected Gamma Emerald for no reason. It's not my fault that Nos became convinced without any doubt that Pork was town, or that he used his role on Pork, or that he randomly decided to mislynch me despite the fact that I was obviously town.

[Shoshin]

Maybe my understanding is flawed, but I will never, ever forget the following:

I did in fact scumread NSG since D3, in case that wasn't clear (notice the jailkeep on her, as well as basically calling her scum on D3). So I dunno. How the hell wasn't she lynched? Beyond my understanding.

VOTE: nsg

I don't get why we're voting nsg instead of no lynching but if this is what we're doing, I want to be on this for the gold.

I've been supporting a no lynch from the start of this day phase.

It's like I said at the start of this day phase. The scum are NSG & Skitter. And the correct move for today, just to be safe, is no lynching.

No lynching in a closed setup is always, always, always against town's interests.

I strongly disagree.

[Shoshin]

No lynching helped narrow the potential scum, as well as giving us a chance to use gacha items and our roles. It also prevented Pork from getting the extra gold he would have got from lynching NSG.

[Shoshin]

Is this my best game? Obviously not. I didn't give it my all, for sure. But does that mean I played a "huge role in keeping town from winning"? No f'ing way. I did a lot ot keep this town from losing much more quickly.

[Shoshin]

No lynching in a closed setup is always, always, always against town's interests.

This sort of rigid thinking is just wrong. Sometimes it's the right move, sometimes it isn't.

In this case, I'd argue that it put us closer to winning, by preventing Pork from getting a bunch of extra gold, allowing us to use our roles/gold, and narrowing the potential scum by removing skitter from the game. In an ideal world, town would have got the gacha again instead of Pork, making the no lynch even more effective. And with skitter's death, we got a 1-shot cop (as long as she used her role on town).

What nobody could have predicted is that Nos would randomly decide to lynch me instead of NSG... think about that for a moment... every piece of evidence in this game pointed to NSG as scum... and Nos decides to vote me? And that's somehow my fault? Lol...

[Shoshin]

It's pretty clear that objectively people shouldnt play games with other people if they're going to spend it all to policy lynch others.

Just because you like Reckoner and you don't like me doesn't mean I instigated shit. And talking about my play when you tried so fucking hard to derail the kokichi/shoshin/RC town block on D1 that would have rolled the game is lol.

Policy lynching in general is dumb. I know you're an emotional guy and all but it would have been nice if you could stay in the game. We probably would have cleaned this game up.

I lost interest after you replaced out and everyone mislynched obvious town Irrelephant. So that obviously played a part in our loss too.

[Shoshin]

I argued for a no lynch followed by the lynch of NSG. That is not a misplay, and it isn't what lost us this game. It had no relevant impact on the game at all, in fact.

[Shoshin]

That isn't what lost us the game. And to be clear, I didn't argue against lynching scum. I happily joined the wagon on NSG.

What I argued for was a delayed lynch on NSG, not a no lynch instead of a lynch on scum. And if NSG was confirmed scum, why aren't you even talking about Nos, who mislynched me instead of lynching NSG? Like, wtf? Nobody could have predicted what he did, and if we had lynched NSG instead, you wouldn't even be talking about this as somehow a game losing move...

[Shoshin]

What lost us the game was Nos voting me instead of confirmed scum...

No lynching on D5 didn't lose us anything...

[Shoshin]

Scum didn't have two kills... what the fuck are you talking about?

[Shoshin]

I didn't say my play was perfect...

I have learned a few things from this game...

But to say that I played a "huge role in keeping town from winning" is just wrong.

There's a difference between saying, "I could have done X better" and saying "I'm the reason town lost."

[Shoshin]

No lynch was fine for two reasons. One, we already got rid of scum's extra killing role, so the likelihood that scum would end up with another kill was very, very low. I was willing to take that risk so that we could narrow the pool as well as use our roles. Two, we prevented Pork from getting any extra gold on NSG's lynch, which worried me a lot more than the gacha items.

No lynching isn't always the right move, but it's not always the wrong move, either. In this game, it had no impact on our loss. None. The no lynch isn't the cause of Nos voting me, nor is it the cause of NSG somehow avoiding death. No matter how you spin it, the no lynch is NOT the reason we lost.

[Shoshin]

You see the quotes I made above?
How town had scum at L-1 and because of your frequent suggestions of a no-lynch INSTEAD OF LYNCHING CONFIRMED SCUM, town doubted and went with the no lynch?

Yes, you didn't SINGLE HANDEDLY LOSE THE GAME FOR TOWN, but you sure did PLAY A HUGE ROLE IN IT

Do you understand the concept of cause and effect?

The no lynch had zero impact on our loss. It is NOT what caused Nos to vote for me.

[Shoshin]

Do you want to know what CAUSED our loss?

Townies mislynching Irrelephant, Reck, and me. Those were the game-losing mislynches.

Mislynching Kokichi was irrelevant, since he was hated.

[Shoshin]

Lycanfire, I never pretended to be BP.

I admit that I played very poorly by sing the switcheroo on skitter. That was my worst play in the game, by far. It didn't lose us the game, but I could have used the gold much more effectively, to be sure.

[Shoshin]

The problem with arguing best mechanical play all the time, Shoshin, is that you start sounding like Reasonably Rational, who absolutely would argue best mechanical play as scum.

I don't know what "mechanical play" refers to. Nor am I arguing about what's the best play at this point. I'm talking about what caused the town's loss in this game... and it wasn't my play... like, this obviously wasn't my best play, but I still made myself obvious town throughout the game, still argued against multiple mislynches, prevented a mislynch that almost certainly would have happened in my absence (Gamma), roleblocked scum, and was the only person voting scum (NSG) when the game ended... so it's a bit absurd to argue I'm one of the main reasons we lost...

[Shoshin]

i think from an objective standpoint everything i said regarding shoshin + gamma, the possibility of shoshin not actually having bought switcheroo, her lying about the 1-shot cop and just playing strangely in general were true

obviously not correct but from an objective standpoint i would say that there were plenty of good reasons to scumread shoshin

No lynch was fine for two reasons. One, we already got rid of scum's extra killing role, so the likelihood that scum would end up with another kill was very, very low. I was willing to take that risk so that we could narrow the pool as well as use our roles. Two, we prevented Pork from getting any extra gold on NSG's lynch, which worried me a lot more than the gacha items.

no lynching to prevent porkens getting gold wouldn't mean anything when come tomorrow he would vote me anyways. if anything lynching me in mylo wouldn't have had him on the wagon whereas lynching him after we came up with the plan for him to track me would have had him on the wagon

Buying switcheroo was a mistake on my part... I misunderstood what it did when I bought it on N2, and then I had to live with the consequences lol

I think lying about the 1-shot cop was a good move, mostly because I really needed to keep Gamma from being mislynched and he was the main target of players like Nos/Skitter, as well as you and Pork. I don't think faking results is bad play if you're right about the result, and I was confident enough in that read to fake the result.

[Shoshin]

i would like to point out that the day before mylo me and porkens could have quickhammered Gamma and then coordinated to speedlynch kokichi

for no reason in particular

That's part of my point. I was the only person strongly arguing against that lynch... and if not for me, this game would have been lost a lot quicker...

[Shoshin]

I also argued with you, North, against both Irrelephant lynch and Reck lynch... as well as with others... so like, I was arguing against mislynches...

[Shoshin]

I dunno... it just feels very unfair to me to say I played a massive part in the town's loss when I feel like I spent most of the game trying to keep the town from mislynching, I roleblocked scum when I got that item, and then I voted scum at LYLO...

And as Irrelephant knows, I definitely am not the kind of player who just refuses to admit when I played bad. I actually write down all the ways I want to improve from each game, including this one. I just think my play wasn't anything like what Varsoon is making it out to be...

[Shoshin]

Reasonable people can disagree about the merit of no lynching at MYLO.

I think Varsoon's approach -- never no lynch at MYLO -- is wrong on its face, for the simple reason that there are no hardline rules in mafia that always apply. Sometimes you shouldn't no lynch; other times, you should.

The difficulty is weighing the risks against the potential rewards. In this case, I think the potential rewards outweighed the risks (which were really, really low). We no lynched. And if things had gone according to plan, we should have lynched NSG afterwards. Nobody could have predicted that Nos would vote me instead of NSG... if I made any error, it was putting too much faith in Nos to vote NSG... and yeah, I'll be more wary of players like him in the future in these situations...

[Shoshin]

I just really, really want Shoshin to focus more on lynching scum and never no-lynching in a closed setup again.

I didn't realize that the NSG lynch needed more focus... I thought it was obvious that's who we were lynching... I'm open to suggestions on how I could have dealt with Nos better, because that's actually the sort of thing I'd love to hear about... I don't know how to deal with his type of personality very well, at least not in the situation we were in... but that doesn't mean there wasn't focus on scum NSG...

As for the other lynches, again, on D1, I said I would compromise onto Gammagooey instead of you... but YOU and others pushed an Irrelephant mislynch through against my wishes before I had a chance to switch my vote to Gammagooey...

I admit I was absent from the game for large periods when I could have been more persuasive about things -- again, I didn't say it was my best play, and I'm obviously aware that my play could have been better on D1 and D3, when I was out of the country with limited internet access. But there's a big difference between saying I could have played better and saying I played a "huge role" in the town's loss... If you replaced Nos with someone better, someone I could have worked with, town almost certainly wins this game.

[Shoshin]

If you replaced Nos with someone better, someone I could have worked with, town almost certainly wins this game.

i don't think so unless you're just saying "if you replaced nos with someone who didn't vote me and who also scumread porkens then town would have won".

i think porkens could have easily won 3 person lylo even if i was lynched. that's literally what we were planning on.

That plan assumes that Nos is around...

I wasn't going to lynch Gamma, so it would have come down to Nos/Pork. Could Pork have won in that situation? Yes. Is it likely if you replace the Nos slot with a better player? No.

[Shoshin]

I dunno. You made the right call bringing Nos to LYLO, obviously. Never in my life could I have predicted that he would vote me instead of you...

[Shoshin]

I'm open to suggestions on how I could have dealt with Nos better, because that's actually the sort of thing I'd love to hear about.

it would have made the game a lot easier from my pov if you would have communicated with me more and answered my questions

Yeah, that's fair. I know it was frustrating for you. But I didn't think you'd ever mislynch me, and I was partly trying to get reactions from you because I wasn't sure of your alignment. I will make more of an effort to communicate with players like you in the future, though.

I also think what you're talking about has nothing to do with how I could have dealt with Nos... I'm still completely confused by his play throughout the game...

[Shoshin]

Shoshin, I think you just need to reconsider your reads and be more critical of certain play. When it comes to unpredictable players like Nos, you want to keep them far from lylo or engage with them enough that you know they'll be voting with you/sticking to a plan. I think your plan would've been fine (no lynch then lynch NSG) but it overlooked a ton of potential issues in the setup (like scum gacha'ing into something that wins game or scum using that night to buy something game-winning or scum having roles that are game-winning with that extra night or in LYLO). That's the problem with closed setups. Even then, you should've established your plan a bit more and made sure everyone was for sure on-board with it. This day should've started with all of town voting NSG, and it didn't.


Porkens has no excuse for being globally townread in this game and I'm confident that Porkens would be dead to rights with a scum flip from NSG given how hard he defended her.

Pork wasn't globablly townread, and yes, he would have been dead with an NSG flip. That's part of what I'm saying. I suspected him.

As for my reads, I do reconsider my reads constantly...

I'll agree with you that the plan should have been established more clearly. The plan would have been to get item/role results and then to lynch NSG. I thought it was clear that we were voting NSG, especially after Pork's results.

I voted NSG... right after Pork's results...

And it was becoming clearer that Pork was scum when he didn't vote NSG after the results...

[Shoshin]

I think a lot of what you're saying about no lynching, Varsoon, comes from the mindset of avoiding any risk of a scum win, whereas my viewpoint is that it's okay to take calculated risks. A no lynch at MYLO is a calculated risk. So is faking an innocent result on someone who you think is town, which I did effectively in this game.

In past games, I've taken a number of calculated risks, and the vast majority of the time, those risks have led to town wins. As I said, this is my first town loss in a very long time. I'm obviously going to learn from it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop taking calculated risks altogether.

[Shoshin]

idk how to deal with nos (although his play in 5way up until he voted you was really townie imo; it's really the only time i had much of a read on him all game)

with you, i need to understand what you're thinking in order to read you. if you just ignore me and don't answer questions, i can't get that from you. i understand that you don't like to respond to what you consider frivolous or pointless questions, but from my pov they're important and useful and help me sort you; i rarely ever just ask random questions even if they look like they are; they usually go somewhere or have some purpose or are trying to get at something not directly

you disappeared from like day3 to day5 and i couldn't get you to share reads or explain what you were thinking or how you used gacha so to me it seemed like you were just doing ???? whatever and i couldn't understand it (and tbh i still don't entirely understand what you did that game)
and to townread people i need to understand what they're thinking

and when you decided you scumread me you just stopped interacting with me at all and that's incredibly frustrating to deal with because what am i supposed to do there?

I didn't stop interacting with you -- part of it maybe was timing -- but I was frustrated with you as well for suspecting me/Gamma and didn't have the energy to explain a bunch of things that seemed obvious to me. I understand that what's obvious to me isn't always obvious to others, so I did eventually answer your questions. It just took longer than you would have liked.

[Shoshin]

Doesn't matter who people say they scumread. What matters is who you vote, and who you actively defend from getting lynched. .

[Shoshin]

Your ego is too big to admit that you did dumb shit all throughout the game and the you were scumsiding like 50% of the time.

I never scum sided. You're actually delusional if you think that.

[Shoshin]

Varsoon is wrong that the no lynch caused the loss. It didn't.

It could have. If scum had an extra killing role. Or if they received a killing item from gacha. But those things didn't happen. And so the no lynch didn't actually do anything harmful to town... all it did was narrow the pool of potential scum.

The loss was mostly caused by Nos playing really poorly, not just by mislynching me over NSG, but by mislynching Irrelephant, mislynching Reck, pushing a mislynch on Gamma throughout the whole game, and by strongly townreading Pork throughout the whole game for no apparent reason, as well as using his role on Pork.

[Shoshin]

@Shoshin: You never would've had to worry about getting into that Lylo situation where Nos throws, though, if you had just lynched NSG in MYLO. Like, yes, the reality is that scum didn't get/have an extra kill, but as a player you couldn't have known that and it wasn't safe to assume that. I'd say "don't ever assume a no lynch is the best plan for town in games I run" but I've recently made no lynching literally not an option because it makes it easier to balance/design games around mechanics like gold-gain, role growth, end-of-day rewards, etc. This game should have not had a no lynch option, imo--there's already the 'randomized' swing of the gacha and what its rewards were, so compounding that atop no lynch mechanics introduced a potential for way too much swing in this setup.

It was pretty obvious scum didn't have another killing role after Gooey's.

Again, it's a matter of weighing risks vs potential rewards. I understand that you are more risk averse than me, but that doesn't mean my decision to take a risk was wrong. In this specific instance, had we given gacha to town and had skitter used her role on town, we would have been in a really strong position to win after NSG's lunch.

I admit that I never imagined Nos would do what he did, and maybe that was wrong of me, I'm not sure yet. But I disagree with you that the no lunch was "bad," it was simply a different way of weighing risks than you. It's a judgement call that didn't hurt town in this game, and in a different game, might have been game-winning. To be sure, in some games it could be game-losing. That's why it's a judgement call that you make on a case by case basis.

[Shoshin]

The situation where NSG isn't lynched in LYLO never occurred to me as a realistic scenario. And 99% of the time, it wouldn't have happened. Attacking my play because of an unpredictable scum side from Nos isn't fair imo

[Shoshin]

Again, I agree with you that no lynching COULD have caused the loss, just as it COULD cause a loss in any game. But it didn't in this game. And it hasn't in the vast majority of games where towns no lynched at MYLO.

I would appreciate if you could separate your theoretical belief that no lynching is always bad from the reality of what happened in this game -- no lynching here did NOT decrease the town's chances of winning. Scum didn't gain any advantage from the no lynch. As a factual matter, the no lynch didn't CAUSE the loss.

I agree with most of your points -- as an uninformed player, we don't know what capability scum has to end the game before we get to LYLO -- but I disagree that this means you shouldn't ever no lynch. It just means that there's risks to no lynching. Your view rests on speculation about what could happen. But there's also risks to lynching at MYLO (i.e. the risk of mislynching) and no lynching could provide new information that substantially lowers that risk on the following day phase, at LYLO. In other words, your logic also applies to the risk of mislynching at MYLO vs the risk of mislynching at LYLO with an extra night of information.

How do you weigh these risks/benefits? Despite your tone of certainty, there's no clearly correct answer. You can't deny that some games reward no lynching at MYLO, while others punish it. The reality is that it depends on the specific circumstances in each game.

In this game, you say the risk was very high that scum would end before we got to LYLO through an extra kill, but I thought that risk was lower precisely because of Gooey's flip. Scum had already lost their extra killing power, as well as removing the hated townie from the game, making the risk of no lynching much lower. And while you might disagree, the reality is that no lynching didn't give scum an advantage in this game. They didn't have an extra kill. And if town had played better (e.g. skitter using her role on town), town would have ended up with more information than they otherwise would have at 3p LYLO.

I don't think it's correct to blame what Nos did on our decision to no lynch. The two actions don't have any connection.

[Shoshin]

It also seems that you have a strong preference for games that punish no lynching, as a game designer and player, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with games that reward no lynching. Maybe it's not your cup of tea, but it's still a legitimate game design and strategy decision.