Minvitational 9 - Game, set and match before 611

[mith]

Huh. So our main assumption regarding the "likely innocents" (that the scum wouldn't kill AniX) ended up being wrong, though all of that group were still innocent. And our thought that Dasquian was the most likely scum in a two-scum setup was also wrong.

Yeah, I find the kill choices quite interesting, I'd like to hear what mathcam had in mind. I can guess the rationale behind killing me (leaves open two strong possibilities for last-scum in the only-one-left case, puts some why-aren't-you-dead-yet suspicion on Pie, avoids Pie's protection as I was probably the least likely to be protected)... not sure if it was a better play than going head-to-head with me, though. mathcam is one of the players I would feel least confident about going up against.

[MeMe]

Well, yay! Many apologies for my low attention through the bulk of the game -- glad it didn't ruin anything on the town's end!

Looking forward to hearing from Cam as well.

[mathcam]

Congrats, town! Great game. I'm just back from a tiring trip, so I don't have the energy to post right now, but I'll certainly share my "strategy" when I get my energy back.

Cam

[mneme]

Grats, town! Sorry for letting myself get lynched d1, partner! (on the bright side, I forgot who my partner was through pretty much the entire day, so I don't think I left a lot of cues lying around.

[Antrax]

vote: mathcam

for lurking.

[mathcam]

I didn't have in mind doing anything weird this game at the start, but once mneme was lynched day 1 (which, kudos to the town for -- I didn't think he was particularly obvious), I realized I was probably in some trouble. I figured I was in a mostly mountainous game with me vs. 10 pro-town players left, possibly with power roles, and so I decided I had to do something drastic. An idea I had been toying around with was to play an uber-WIFOM strategy -- make the seemingly stupidest decisions possible as scum, the idea being that I would subtly argue WIFOM, someone would point out that this is crap because it's WIFOM, and I would argue "Yeah, yeah, but even taking into account WIFOM, the risk to reward is just too horrible to make that a worthwhile strategy." In fact, since I've made that argument so many times in the past, I almost felt like I was playing exactly as to provide a counter-example to my own argument. There ended up being several side benefits to the strategy as well, e.g., general confusion, the avoid-the-cop and avoid-the-doc pheonmena that other people have mentioned, etc..

In any case, the way I implemented this was, at least at the start, to kill the scummmiest player still alive. Later this morphed into maintaining what I would later postulate were scum's motives -- leaving alive only one natural target to be lynched. By the time this "natural target" came around to be me, I hoped to be able to argue that this was scum's likely plan, and to urge people not to fall into their trap.

Dasquian's killing of Anix completely jacked everything up for me (I hadn't thought about the "avoid-the-vig" problem). By all means, the most likely explanation of the night 2 happenings was that a rational scum had targeted Antrax, that Pie had protected him, and that Das had indeed vig-killed AniX. Having three confirmed pro-town players spring up over night was devastating. I decided to go all out with my kill strategy, though mith has pointed out several of the auxiliary arguments that led to his death (believe me, the head-to-head confidence thing is mutual). In particular, I decided that the continued existence of Pie and Dasquian would ust be too bizarre for anyone to beleive that they could both be pro-town.

Ending the game, I think this strategy of leaving Pie and Das alive did end up working to an extent, though I failed to think about how worried people would be that there could still be 2 scum left. If it hadn't been for that, I think I might have gotten a Das lynch and made it to the endgame, which leads to:

mathcam, what was your followup plan if we went for Dasquian today?

I'm reasonably sure I was going to kill ZONEACE, and continue the uber-WIFOM or leaving alive myself and two players who the previous day had each expressed confidence that the other was innocent. I have to admit I was sort of falling in love with this idea. While I realize it was still a longshot to work, I felt like I had chances -- I just had to put enough doubt in one of your heads that you were being played by the other to keep thc conversation alive.

The alternative strategy was to kill one of Antrax/MeMe and continue the case that Pie/ZONE was going to be laughing his ass off after the game that he claimed doc, inexplicably continued to survive, and yet ended up winning the game as scum. The reason I probably wouldn't have gone this route is that ZONEACE didn't make as much of an ass out of himself as I would have hoped. I was really hoping for some fireworks, and if he built up enough scumminess on his own, I would have abandoned the WIFOM strategy and just tried to argue he was the right lynch. In this sense, Antrax' quick vote on me after ZONEACE's post was really bad for me. It prompted a very quick end to the day, instead of letting a Dasquian/ZONEACE fight break out.

Some final thoughts/answers:

1)

Oh, and mathcam, why kill after our no-lynch?

I was actually pretty proud of this decision. I figured that the implication of the kill so strongly pointed toward scum being someone who didn't think they would be lynched that I would get some significant town points for this. Unfortunately, no one tried to make this argument, and so I made it myself, but even then, no one seemed to really latch on to it.

To all: What do you think would have happened if I had no-killed? Another no-lynch? I wasn't sure that town was really ready to seriously propose a draw (especially with the negative stigma that DP put on it...this might have also contributed to my decision to kill). If they had, I probably would have killed, playing for the win and making the argument in the above paragraph much stronger.

2) On my slip day 1: I really did forget that there had been no night 1, and I did worry that MeMe was a cop and had pegged mneme night 1. In hindsigh, I was pretty amused at how well my "I don't think even *I* would be dumb enough to forget that I hadn't killed anyone as scum last night" fit into the WIFOM framework. Sometimes I really am just that dumb.

In any case, I think a more poignant answer to

DP: Why a Godfather when we have no cop? To confuse us if we get him first?

was that it confused the Godfather himself into thinking there was likely a cop.

3) When Tally started the day with "Why did you kill AniX, mathcam?" I again jumped to the conclusion that she was the cop, and I was probably in for. I thought for hours about what my claiming options were, etc., until I decided I was pretty sure that she actually

didn't

have an investigation result on me, or at least that my best plan of action was to assume this. (I was pretty proud of being right about this afterwards). So I deleted all my previous responses, and went with something that I felt was a natural townie response. I spend quite some time settling down on the specific wording to my response. Funnily enough, everyone seemed to think it was a scummy spur-of-the-pants resonse anyway.

In short, this was a lot of fun. I think I did a decent job of spreading confusion, but the town did a better job of coping with it than I would have hoped, and didn't buy in too many of my bogus arguments. I think I'd give my strategy a B-.

Cam

[Dasquian]

Glad to see me killing AniX had some value, even only because it meant we all assumed the wrong thing

[mith]

I was actually pretty proud of this decision. I figured that the implication of the kill so strongly pointed toward scum being someone who didn't think they would be lynched that I would get some significant town points for this. Unfortunately, no one tried to make this argument, and so I made it myself, but even then, no one seemed to really latch on to it.

Had I been alive I probably would have instead taken the implication to be that

either

there was one scum who didn't think they would be lynched (and thus favored to win)

or

there were two scum who were favored to win simply by numbers. That said, I likely would have acted on the two-scum assumption anyway, as Antrax did, so I'm not sure how much that would have mattered.

Excellently played, in any case. No idea how I would have taken the AniX kill if Dasquian hadn't spoken up.

[Mr. Flay]

Thanks for the excellent moderation, DP. Sorry for being relatively useless there at the beginning; I was frustrated with mith's single-mindedness and not able to give the game the time it deserved.

Vote: lurkercam

- I never would have guessed you were soloing the whole game after D1.

In hindsigh, I was pretty amused at how well my "I don't think even *I* would be dumb enough to forget that I hadn't killed anyone as scum last night" fit into the WIFOM framework. Sometimes I really am just that dumb.

[mathcam]

That said, I likely would have acted on the two-scum assumption anyway, as Antrax did, so I'm not sure how much that would have mattered.

Yeah, I'd say that one of the things I did the worst at this game was remembering that everyone else didn't know there were only 2 scum total. Several of my plans probably should have proceeded differently if I had thought about the fact that they were still worrying about 3 scum.

Cam

[Antrax]

Wow, that's very impressive. It's funny because had I seriously considered the possibility that scum targeted AniX in any scenario but "Dasquian is lying", it would have cast serious doubt on Pie_is_good. Basically, it seems that my underestimating of the scum in this game contributed to the town win. I did consider many of what apparently was the truth, but I was like "nah, nobody would try THAT, it's too risky and convoluted". It's reflected in my later posts, where I keep holding back because "This seems too easy, we shouldn't have gotten to an endgame with a confirmed innocent majority".
As for the kill following the no-lynch, it told me two things:
a) there are two scum alive.
b) the scum want us to think that our next target is innocent.
The implications of the kill as a "haha, you're going to lose next turn because you got it all wrong" were just too coarse to believe as genuine.

Another point I found interesting was something I think was a slip by DP. He ruled out a scenario I thought was possible, of a cop claiming townie. By confirming that No-lynch/no-kill twice would end the game as a draw (effectively ruling it a stalemate) he confirmed that there were no such hidden tricks, so to speak.

So anyway, excellent game, mathcam. I'll be sure to give a lot more credibility to all sorts of kooky theories next game I play with you in it

[mith]

I don't think it rules out that scenario; it just forces the cop to come out the second day (which he probably would have done anyway).

(Also, as mathcam was Godfather, a cop wouldn't have affected the stalemateishness of that situation anyway. But I don't think having that rule is equivalent to saying that there is nothing going on behind the scenes that could break the stalemate - it's more like perpetual check than stalemate, to take the chess analogy. In theory, you could force mathcam into a perpetual check while having pieces that would allow you to win. The difference here is that only part of the town knows what pieces the town has.)

[Dragon Phoenix]

I also fail to see why that was a slip. I would have ruled this regardless of what roles were left.

[Antrax]

Okay, then we just mod differently. FYI, in the past I was mafia who could delay his kill and managed to talk the town into stopping to lynch altogether, and secretly poisoned people at night while they thought they were winning. If a mod had ruled that game a stalemate, or forced me to claim to stop the erroneous notion that "we're going to no-lynch until something interesting happens", I wouldn't have considered it fair, nor would I in this scenario if I was the hidden cop. It's not a stalemate if the game is still progressing, only in hidden ways. In every game I know, a stalemate is just a declaration of "well, this game isn't going anywhere". That's not the case here, IMO. But if you wouldn't have ruled differently even if there was a cop, then obviously no information has been given.