130.Mirror Mafia - Game Over

[mastin2]

Why can I only scumhunt in newbie games

Oh, how I know the feeling...

[Duplicity]

Honestly, after Pine wasn't lynched when a) we flipped tracker and b) he claimed to have tracked our own goon to killing us, it was pretty clear the town's bullshit detectors were turned off.

[Thor665]

^^^
This.

[Pine]

Hehehe, that may be my favorite successful bluff ever. And thankfully, we'd killed everyone who would have caught my bullshit before I tried it.

[Thor665]

Still boggles the mind.

[Magister Ludi]

How is nine anti town players in a 22 player normal even close to being considered balanced.

Who reviewed this? Did no one bring up concerns?

[mastin2]

Crosskills.
They were expected, they happened frequently.

It was swingy, sure. But it was also balanced.

[Pine]

Indeed. The Town damn near won, and that with a useless Town. Of the nine anti-Town, eight died. Only one, Gollum, was arguably brought down by Town.

All

of the others were either night cross-kills or scum-led lynch wagons.

[Tasky]

Ok, here I go with some comments:

first, balance:
after seeing how the game played out, I am really, really happy about this setup. I think it was very self-balancing.
I can see why someone when looking at the setup for the first time might think it is unbalanced against town for some reasons, I'd like you to consider some things, though:

1. there are 4 factions (let's say 3.5, since the SK usually is expected to have less winning chance), so even if town had only a 30% chance of winning, the game would be balanced (30/30/30/10 I would consider perfectly acceptable). In my opinion, however, town had at least 40%, which is more than enough in a 4-factions game
so, yes you could say the game was scum-sided, if you add all the anti-town percentages together, but each individual scum-faction had definitely not a bigger chance at winning than town (read further for explantation)

2. someone argued in the dead QT, that town had only 4 PRs, while there where 7 anti-town ones (4 track/watch, 2 GF, 1 neighborizer). This is however fallacious because every single one of the 7 anti-town PRs worked in towns favor:
-> The GFs just distracted the scum and did in fact nothing
-> The watcher/tracker had no town-target, since hiders can't be killed at night anyway even if found by a watcher/tracker, on the contrary, tracking a hider who dies would help scum find and kill each other better
on the other side, watchers/trackers increased the likelyhood of crosskills enormously, since each team had now 3 targets (opposing tracker,watcher, killer) and 2 roles to find it. Add to that the triple targeting of the serial killer (who in fact did absorb one NK this game) and you see how pro-town this supposed anti-town PRs were.
-> The neighborizer is pro-town anyway, as more discussion will always be an advantage (maybe small, but definitely no disadvantage)

3. While it is true that town had the possibility to lose 4 members the first night (2 hiders, 2 scumkills), this is definitely made up by the enormous likelihood of multiple crosskills after that. the serial killer limitation was intended exactly for the purpose of reducing N1-massacres.

4. Just by looking at this game, you can see how good towns chances actually were: town played a TERRIBLE game from D1 onwards. You managed to no-lynch D1, while outing both masons. except for the gollum-lynch, you were basically always sheeping scum-members and you failed TWICE to lynch a scum-caught-in-fake-claim (Pine and hohum). Maybe I'm a bit biased, but I can't understand how town could not lynch those.
And still you made it to 4P-MyLo (why one would lynch over no-lynch in that situation is another mistery to me).
There were 4 crosskills (5, considering the one absorbed by the SK). removing those players, town had only 4 scum (who were actively bussing each other, due to not being on the same team)+1SK to lynch. I think that is a very reasonable task.




second, some random comments:
1. I found it amusing that the red mafia totally forgot that they had seen Ion target one of theirs. It was pointed out by their watcher, and later forgotten. Probably Twistedspoon could have won if he had remembered that and killed hohum instead of furcolow
2. Ctorj, didn't you see pappums rat's breadcrumb on his night-target in the neighbor-QT? Again, maybe I was biased, but it looked kind of obvious to me.
3. I think the best player in the game was Magister Ludi. Except for the fact that he had Pine as town (I still can't see how that's possible) all his scum-reads were in fact scum (especially here).
4. I liked Thor's play a lot too, too bad he got unlucky with those tracks. I think he could have a decent shot at winning.
5. I think calcifer did some nice plays, but he wall-o-texted way to much. In the end I think a lot of his analysis was just lost in those huge walls.
6. town did not deserve to win this. However, I still don't understand how town could lose after hohums obvious fake-claim.
7. blackscum played very, very aggressively. It payed off, cause town was lost already. I think it could have gone very, very bad, though. Well, they took the gamble and won. Congratulations
8. In a one-scum game, red scum would have definitely owned the town. They were flying under the radar always, and hadn't it been for black-scum's over aggressiveness, they would have never died. Two of them were killed at night, the other two were lynched as a result of a black-scum gamble. So I think redscum has a too calm way of playing here, which didn't quite work out in this game.

[flinter]

Thanks for modding Tasky. The game was a lot of fun, although I got shot. Thank you for winning the game for us, Pine and Hohum, when I was gone!

[hohum]

Thanks for modding Tasky. The game was a lot of fun, although I got shot. Thank you for winning the game for us,

Pine and Hohum

town, when I was gone!

Fixed.

[hohum]

Honestly, after Pine wasn't lynched when a) we flipped tracker and b) he claimed to have tracked our own goon to killing us, it was pretty clear the town's bullshit detectors were turned off.

Not only were they turned off but I think someone managed to pepper a few high-powered bullshit acceptors in there somewhere. I mean, I had to bus one scum for 3 days to get him lynched and I had to claim investigation results to get the other lynched (which nearly didn't happen BTW)

[Thor665]

I actually think this setup favored town pretty strongly. It was a setup ripe for town breakage. All of my accurate calls in the dead QT (and in thread) were easily based off the most simplistic setup spec it was laughable. Yeah, there was a ton of scum, but town should have been eating their faces because by Day 3 9and certainly by Day 4+) scum functionally had no allowable false PR claims.

I'll admit...yeah, they actually did use some, and even sat behind blatantly obvious scum claims, but I don't think that's the setup's fault.

I had a great time Tasky - though I should have stuck with just the neighboring for a while - probably would have caught a lot of scum and via my NK protection possibly lasted till late enough to make a play for win via killing. I just got too excited once I could start stabbing people to death. Ah, well.

[Tasky]

I actually think this setup favored town pretty strongly. It was a setup ripe for town breakage. All of my accurate calls in the dead QT (and in thread) were easily based off the most simplistic setup spec it was laughable. Yeah, there was a ton of scum, but town should have been eating their faces because by Day 3 9and certainly by Day 4+) scum functionally had no allowable false PR claims.

Don't forget, however, that in this setup PR-fakeclaims weren't needed at all. With the large amount of VT's this setup had, fakeclaiming (or even worse, real-PR-claiming) was actually a very bad idea. I think scum was way to over-agressive trying to confirm themselves as town too much, which would then punish them with a shot in the back from the other team.

Probably scum should have needed to realize the setup they were in earlier, so they wouldn't have exposed themselves so much.
Maybe, but I'm not sure, not using the Watchers/Trackers would even have been optimal play. I liked the prisoner's dilemma- style thing here:
if both scumteams used w/t, they would both be punished. however, if the other team didn't, then using it would be best play.

I think scumteams had a very reasonable chance at winning (Looking back at stuff I'd say 40/25/25/10 is a good estimate for this games odds).

[Haylen]

This wasn't a win for any faction. Just a lose for the town.

[hohum]

This wasn't a win for any faction. Just a lose for the town.

A little bit of posturing from the losing scum team

[Thor665]

Wait, should I be doing that?

Everyone is super lucky I got caught and lynched, because if I hadn't been lynched or NKed I would have won, fools!

[Pine]

[mastin2]

Lol.

It is probably true, Thor.

I suppose you got a little Distracted By The Shiney.

[Bub Bidderskins]

Good game scum. This was an interesting setup, but I got lost a little to my relative inexperience.

[Kise]

Thanks, hohum.

[pappums rat]

This was a fun game to play in and to read along with after I died while I was still caught up. Now that I finished reading it I'll give my thoughts on it. I cant believe the town bought hohum's claim at the end, especially after he admitted before TS was lynched that he had faked the investigation. Town definately did not deserve to win this game. As for the setup, I think it was quite well thought out and original and pretty awesome, despite my initial misgivings when I saw how much "power" the scum had. Thanks for modding this one Tasky, it was pretty awesome.

[Twistedspoon]

I still think Thor should've won

best faction by far

[Thor665]

I support Twistedspoon's request

Also - thanks.