Scummies Nominations 2022!

[RH9]

Game of the Year
09/03/22	Ircher	SirCakez	Control	This was an extremely well ran game with a cool theme and setup. I think the player list was really fun to play with, and the game kept my interest even after I died. It has all the qualities a game of the year should have: good mod, cool setup, wonderful player list, and a strong performance from all factions.

NorwegianBoyEE might deserve a Hannibal Lecter nom as well. He played very well.

Nth

[RH9]

Post of the Year
3/18/2022	mastina	Datisi	this glorious post	Okay so some context for anyone not familiar with Not_Mafia: This is the post that Not_Mafia always opens games with. Not_Mafia will, on policy, always hammer a player at L-1 in any game Not_Mafia plays in. To the point where there's a rule in Not_Mafia games universally understood; any L-2 is actually an L-1 if Not_Mafia is off of the wagon because Not_Mafia will hammer the wagon if it is at L-1. Not_Mafia is one of the players most associated with Miltank. Combine these all together, and then look at the post, and you will understand why it is the greatest post ever made.

I can't see the post.

[RH9]

Hannibal Lecter
10/03/22	Ircher	NorwegianBoyEE	Control	This was a spectacular win for NorwegianBoyEE. His role was the Mold, a variant on a third party arsonist. This role required an exceptional level of skill to pull off. Like Serial Killers, he was fending for himself, but as an arsonist, his job was harder because his kills were delayed. NorwegianBoy did a great job staying in the town's good graces and avoiding the suspicion of the scum; not a single player had definitively pinned him as the mold, and he did a good job of keeping it ambiguous whether the mold was third party or a scum ability. While he did end up in a tie with scum officially, NorwegianBoy is the true winner of Control. He did pretty much everything correct, and it was only a mis-wording of the scum win condition that led to him being in a tie instead.

Hannibal Lecter
3/18/2022	mastina	NorwegianboyEE	CONTROL	Norwee had one of the best arsonist performances of all time. Norwee had a lot working against them. As an arsonist, your kills are delayed. You need to douse every single player you wish to kill, then spend a night to ignite. So douse, ignite, douse, ignite. Or if you want to play the long game, douse douse douse douse douse and eventually an ignite. In a game with 21 players, that meant that in order for Norwee to win, they needed to douse every single living player--in a game where, between eliminations, vig kills, and the mafia kills, there was extra challenges to be had since they needed to douse every living player. There were additional challenges beyond the normal, too. Norwee's arsonist was a Loud action. Everyone doused knew that they were doused. This made surprising individuals with it all the harder. Beyond that, the flavor of the arson, mold, made it obvious that the action was malevolent because of the source material. With it obviously being malevolent, the mold was something Norwee would struggle to get going. On top of that, Norwee could not douse the town ascetic, so as long as the town ascetic was alive, Norwee would have been unable to win. Norwee also had some incredibly bad luck when it came to his mold targets. Many of them were eliminated directly after being molded. In one case, Norwee even molded a bodyguard the night the bodyguard got off a successful protect. And the mold was even thought, by some town players, to potentially be a scum gambit, which meant that there was pressure to eliminate the molded players. Thanks to a role that could communicate with the dead thread and communicate with the living once dead, Norwee couldn't even fakeclaim having been molded without the risk of being outed. So when it got down to the wire, Norwee was arguably suspicious due to how they were not molded--or so, you would think. The truly impressive part of this performance is that nobody suspected Norwee at all . And I need to reiterate how impressive that feat is. Nobody suspected Norwee at all for basically the entirety of the game. Not seriously, anyway. Not even on the last day. Not even by the scum. Why this is so noteworthy is that the last day had 6 players alive. With there being two mafia left, and on top of the mafia, having a third party: that meant there was only three town players in the game . And Norwee was thought to be one of those three by EVERYONE. Including the scum. EVERYONE thought that Norwee was one of the three town players in the final day phase. Now, the mafia thinking so was due to an outplay on Norwee's end, where the mafia roleblocked Norwee thinking that Norwee was the arsonist and then Norwee's douse went through in spite of the roleblock due to being immune to roleblock, which threw the scumteam off. And when the votes came down, the player being voted out did have passing thoughts of suspicion on Norwee. But basically, for the entirety of the game , nobody thought Norwee was anything except town. And to reiterate: Norwee NEEDED the town ascetic dead in order to win. Without the town ascetic dead, Norwee could not win. And then Norwee got that elimination anyway. Norwee needed to not be shot in order to win--and thanks to the previous "threw scum off" outplay from Norwee being immune to roleblocks, Norwee managed that. And... BOOM. Ignited. Norwee managed to, in spite of terrible luck on douse targets, keep enough douse targets alive to have everyone doused on the final day. Though Norwee didn't get the solo-win because of the mechanics of the scum roles and the interaction with the arsonist mechanics, the tie for the win was something Norwee very much earned.

Nth.

[RH9]

Post of the Year
3/18/2022	mastina	Datisi	this glorious post	Okay so some context for anyone not familiar with Not_Mafia: This is the post that Not_Mafia always opens games with. Not_Mafia will, on policy, always hammer a player at L-1 in any game Not_Mafia plays in. To the point where there's a rule in Not_Mafia games universally understood; any L-2 is actually an L-1 if Not_Mafia is off of the wagon because Not_Mafia will hammer the wagon if it is at L-1. Not_Mafia is one of the players most associated with Miltank. Combine these all together, and then look at the post, and you will understand why it is the greatest post ever made.

I can't see the post.

It's a speakeasy post, but I don't have a way to give a Post of the Year without a link to a post even though you normally aren't supposed to link to the speakeasy outside of it.

Oh. Makes sense. Thank you for explaining.

[RH9]

Community Contributor
3/18/2022	mastina	Datisi	For this thread and its speakeasy predecessor	This thread is already shaping up to be one of the most incredible threads of mafiascum of all time. I'm not sure if 'community contributor' is the right award for it, but I don't have any other idea of what would be the appropriate award for honoring Datisi's incredible work from that thread, which is genuinely an incredible contribution to the community.

Post of the Year
3/18/2022	mastina	Datisi	this glorious post	Okay so some context for anyone not familiar with Not_Mafia: This is the post that Not_Mafia always opens games with. Not_Mafia will, on policy, always hammer a player at L-1 in any game Not_Mafia plays in. To the point where there's a rule in Not_Mafia games universally understood; any L-2 is actually an L-1 if Not_Mafia is off of the wagon because Not_Mafia will hammer the wagon if it is at L-1. Not_Mafia is one of the players most associated with Miltank. Combine these all together, and then look at the post, and you will understand why it is the greatest post ever made.

Resubmitting these, with their GD equivalents!

Nth this in case I previously forgot to.

[RH9]

Goodfellas
Date Added	Nominator	Nominee	Game & Link	Description
06/07/22	Prism	fireisredsir, Dunnstral, marcistar, Gammagooey	Mafia Invictus Redux	First, let me start off by saying as the designer that this setup and game were incredibly townsided. Town wound up getting 13 total eliminations, 2 mechanical clears, and 2 near-forced mechanical kills within the PoE. Scum had zero say in who these forced nightkills and clears got to vengeshoot. Somehow scum dodged all investigations, repeatedly dodged invictus shots until almost the entire PoE had been completely burnt through, and overcame the obstacles of the setup to win the game. They completely dominated day and nightplay, and while town made a last minute comeback and it was close in the end, virtually everyone recognized that they probably should have won much sooner. Virtually everyone was impressed when they managed to clutch out the 3-way. The team as a whole was amazing and worked together well, constantly strategizing, making suggestions and working to refine each other's dayplay, and deferring to one another's preferences and plans. Their scum PT was a great read. Each player had a different role. marcistar struggled and got caught earlier but was always open with feedback and gave the team good credit moving forward. Dunnstral wound up intentionally taking most of the dayplay heat to set up bad interactions on flip, yet still survived virtually to the end . Gammagooey was responsible for much of the dayplay angling and argumentation that happened, and most players expected him to endgame. fireisredsir pulled out one of the performances of the year to save the game. The highlight of the performance was definitely fire's 112 page neighborhood with Kovu in a 137 page game, but fire was also extremely adaptive to his team, at one point intentionally shifting to taking more risks and going to bat for them at the expense of his play lategame. The team just had everything you look for in a great, cohesive scumteam. Won the game? Check. Won dayplay? Check. Won nightplay? Check. Worked well with each other and had fun together every step of the way? Check.

Rising Star
Date Added	Nominator	Nominee	Description
06/07/22	Prism	fireisredsir	Best new player of the year IMO. Struggled early as scum in a loss in League of Legends as Amumu, but Invictus Redux was a signature win and an incredible feat of WIM/perserverence. Crisp progressions, pre-emptive meta work, and WIM got them widely townread early, fire later adapted and showed a lot of flexibility to sacrifice some of that towncred to save their partners, and they still managed to win a very tough 3 way. They were extremely cooperative with the team all the way...And did I mention that they kept up a 112 page neighborhood while doing all of that publicly? Because they did, they weren't just random garbage but were mindful and strategic, and it was insane. His style in the game is high-effort and thoughtful without being overbearing, and he puts a lot of the right (imo) emphasis on tracking carefully through players over time and shows a great understanding of how the game works on a basic strategic level. While he wasn't the decisive winner in Melancholy, he put up a strong town performance all game long, was skeptical of the right things, and was rarely if ever flat-out wrong. It was virtually impossible for scum to push him. He wasn't perfect in Spring Fling, but again showed great argumentation and play throughout the game. He struggled early (as did most of town), but finished strong by being right on Datisi and voting to eliminate himself and his dance partner to win the game. While this read on Luke was wrong, I think it shows a lot about how fire plays the game. It's insane that posts like this come from a player with such little experience. I'm not as familiar with his play in other games-Panic Room, Coalition, NbITGBSMoD, and any others I might have missed. Maybe someone more familiar with those could elaborate on the quality of play there.

Nth both!

[RH9]

Moment of Brilliance
10/22/22	mastina	Lukewarm, Dannflor, Ydrasse	Datisi's Cafe	This was a heavy town stomp, but I would mostly call it the key work of these three players in particular that really clutched the win. On D1, it was Lukewarm who managed to point out a page one scumslip by Ircher. While this was far from the only reason for Ircher to be scum and Lukewarm was not the only player to push him, it was this early suspicion that condemned Ircher and guaranteed a D1 elimination on scum, setting the scum vastly behind. Lukewarm then continued the push on a second scum, Titus, and fought hard against the eventual town elimination that day phase. His push was enough to greatly influence the death of the second scum, Titus, but he couldn't have pulled it off without the next player. Dannflor replaced in on D2. He replaced a fairly scumread slot that hadn't contributed much, and then proceeded to synergize with Lukewarm, HARD-pushing Titus in a way that basically hard-cleared his slot. This hard-push from him effectively established him as town from the onset, effectively giving the scum no wiggle room. He couldn't be mislimmed and he was pushing for the elimination of scum, so his presence was vital. However, what truly sealed the game was Ydrasse's D3 gambit. Ydrasse opened with a soft-guilty claim implied to be a PT cop. But Ydrasse's actual role/claim managed to guarantee Titus was caught in a lie. With two scum dead in three days, the scum were effectively left with no way to live, and the rest of the nontown fell in quick succession.

Speaking of Dannflor replacing in tho...

White Knight
10/22/22	mastina	Dannflor	Datisi's Cafe	I don't know how Dannflor does it, but damn, does he manage to do it. I realize Dannflor is already the current holder of the White Knight award, but I genuinely think his performance is worthy of holding it in back to back years, because he did it again. He replaced into a widely-scumread slot, managed to quickly turn it into universally townread, and he brought the town together to eliminate scum after scum. He immediately caught Titus, and his reaching out to others and reasoning things out was a method to help the town get a near-flawless victory in the end.

Nth both.

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A Moment of Brilliance
10/22/22	Lukewarm	Ydrasse	Datisi's Café	With a gambit, Ydra managed to turn a psuedo-negative utility role into a cop guilty, and it was brilliant. First lets start with her role. She was a PT crasher, which explicitly could only join non-factional pts (for obvious reasons). On the whole, this appears to be a fairly weak role, akin to a neighbor or neighborizor with extra steps. However, in this game, once used successfully, it would actually have turned her into a miller for our traffic analyst. However, with her brilliant gambit, she forced a scum into fake claiming in her favor. After targeting Titus, and learning that she was in no non-factional PTs, she began soft claiming traffic analyst that had gotten the result that Titus was in a PT. (1, 2, 3, 4) This forced Titus, who was scum, to believe that she needed to fake claim being in a PT, because she thought Ydra had learned that she was in one. Which, based on not joining said PT, Ydra knew to be a fake claim - and upon revealing her role, led to Titus's successful elimination

Nth.

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Nth.

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Modfather
11/10/22	Aristeia	Datisi	Datisi is one of the most passionate mods I have ever played with, his games are always the first thing I look for when I am considering signing up for something - this man lives and breathes mafia. I know this because every day when I wake up, I check discord and see he's tossed a new completely insane idea into the #mafia discord and I can't help but smile and laugh a bit. 99% of his ideas do not see the light of day - we are quite lucky that the ones that do happen on this website. Here are a few of my favorites to have watched or played this year: Datisi's Cafe: A Large Theme with a unique twist that allowed town power roles to decide whether to use their powers at night at a cost. This game played out splendidly with some interesting gambits that dealt the mafia team a blow which they did not recover from. But what really makes this game special is all the cute little touches Datisi puts into it - I especially loved all the custom pictures for each role pm. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes: This twist is my absolute favorite - on each day the town would "nominate" players to become bomb experts and on each night the mafia would nominate players to be bomb defusers - players would then be put into a PT and get to defuse a bomb together - either side could win upon reaching a certain number of defusals and failing would result in the bomb and the defuser exploding. It was high drama in the thread and the PTs as players jostled for who would get to be an expert and who should live or die. Every choice had lots of consequences and wifom and it was just delicious to watch. The Turing Test: Did I mention Datisi loves WIFOM? That man might have been born an alcoholic by how much of it he drinks! The twist in this game was that instead of a nightkill, the mafia would put up two players for judgement and everyone would then vote on who is the mafia out of the two players. Unluckily I was dealt a mafia rolecard and I had to figure out a way to present choices to the town that would remove powerful town voices while still somehow getting the town to believe these strong voices were mafia. It was quite a balance and a lot of fun to play. Dats was an excellent mod and kept me company in the scum PT. In addition to all these creative game ideas - Datisi also hosts some of the best Normal games on the site; Large Normal 240: Baileyposting: A normal game built around a loyal vigilante who is out to hunt his own teammates and a dastardly mafia doctor who is trying to stop him from killing the innocent. This wasn't as funny as the previous games in this post but the lengths that both sides went to throw this game back and forth at each other was quite entertaining to watch. Mini Normal 2262: A normal game with a backup vigilante with no real vigilante because Datisi doesn't like his millers to know that they are millers. A great read, back and forth action and a nailbiting finish at the end. And on top of all these great games - he even hosts opens and infuses them with some of his own unique flavor; Moderator of the Discord Server[Guardians of the Fortress]: The best flavor text I have ever read in a mafia game. This game had me laughing so hard I thought I would literally die. If you read any of these games for fun, pick this one, click on Datisi's ISO and enjoy. PYP XY SS: I played in this one. Memorable for the scum team accidentally all picking the same role and the town team deciding to torture Datisi with theorizing over whether we should eliminate the last scum or kill all the vanilla townies for style points. Lastly I just want to say how much I appreciate the time, effort and care that Datisi puts into properly formatting all of his games. It's just pleasant to have games that have the aesthetic feel of looking like they weren't slapped together haphazardly - his formatting is so good that some lazier mods on this site have begun shamelessly stealing from him. Finally here are some of my favorite pictures he has included in his flavor: Spoiler: #10 Spoiler: #9 Spoiler: #8 Spoiler: #7 Spoiler: #6 Spoiler: #5 Spoiler: #4 Spoiler: #3 Spoiler: #2 Spoiler: #1

Nth.

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Mad Scientist
13/11/22	Ircher	MegAzumarill	Fusion UPick	This was a well executed and cool twist on how upicks normally work. Basically, MegAzumarill took the concept of picking your own role and extended it where your pick also affects another player's role as well. MegAzumarill did an excellent job combining our picks and made a cool setup; I hope something similar gets run in the future.

Mad Scientist
13/11/22	Ircher	Datisi	Datisi's Cafe	In this game, Datisi introduced productivity points for all of town's PRs. If you wanted to use your ability, you had to spend productivity, but if too many players did this, scum would gain additional kills. It is a cool concept in that it's another way to limit the power of town that differs from the traditional usage of modifiers, and I can see it having a lot of design potential for future setups.

Game of the Year
13/11/22	Ircher	Save The Dragons	Lost	This was another one of those games where I actually continued following along after I was dead. The player list was fun to play with, and seeing how the game unfolded in the last few days was very nail biting.

Nth all.

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Nth.

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Paperback Writer
23/12/22	furtiveglance	PookyTheMagicalBear	House of the Dragon	Even as someone who hasn't seen HotD or GoT, I was still amused and entertained by the detailed flavour of this game, which synergised really well with the special mechanics of King and Council. Every flip was given thematic flavour text, and there was also a 'duel' mechanic which gave Pooky more opportunities to characterise the players in interesting and funny ways.

Paperback Writer
31.12.2022.	Datisi	Prism	Mafia Invictus Redux	i loved the flavour of this game. cleverly written, funny, present in every single votecount. and every player had a personal welcome-to-the-dead-pt message.

Goodfellas
31.12.2022.	Datisi	Ausuka	Large Normal 241: Random Pictures and Other Stuff	this game was an endurance test which lasted for 2 and a half months. the rest of ausuka's scumteam was... not putting in an enormous amount of effort this game, and most of them were continuously scumread while they were alive. ausuka deepwolfed throughout the whole game, managed to bus or defend when needed, and ended up winning a 1v1 in final 3. the dead thread was spoiled, but even when i read that ausuka was scum, i did not believe it at first, that's how snowed i was.

Nth

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Nth.

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Paragon
1/06/23	fireisredsir	GuiltyLion	i think GuiltyLion has been the best town player on site this year. he manages to be consistently top tier in multiple key town categories: his thought process is always clear and easy to engage with, he puts in a lot of effort every game, he is reasonable (and very pleasant!) to talk to, is usually able to get himself townread, and finally he just simply has very sharp and accurate reads and insights. every game he played this year was a standout (all of them as town, eliminated in none of them, winning all but the two games that were barely lost in ELO to exceptional scum performances), but a few highlights include: Holiday Dance Party, a challenging game full of tough solving where he managed to avoid giving in to paranoia on his dance partner Datisi as they never expected to endgame but went on to win as the sole remaining town pair (with a very fun read of a dance PT as a bonus) KTaNE, a game that showcased great scumhunting as well as excellent lategame process to consider all possible angles on a full reread of the game to correctly land on the final scum as well as House of the Dragon, where among other things he was instrumental in convincing town to change course and eliminate widely-townread scum Datisi in a 13p that town didn't know was melo while laying out exactly what the scumteam's master plan was and who they were being both one of the best raw scumhunters and also one of the best collaborative townblockers (all while being humble, grounded, and friendly) is a rare combination in mafia, and every town that he is a part of has a much better chance of winning the game because of it. GL's performances this year to me clearly demonstrate that he deserves the title of Paragon.

Nth.

[RH9]

Paragon
1/06/23	fireisredsir	GuiltyLion	i think GuiltyLion has been the best town player on site this year. he manages to be consistently top tier in multiple key town categories: his thought process is always clear and easy to engage with, he puts in a lot of effort every game, he is reasonable (and very pleasant!) to talk to, is usually able to get himself townread, and finally he just simply has very sharp and accurate reads and insights. every game he played this year was a standout (all of them as town, eliminated in none of them, winning all but the two games that were barely lost in ELO to exceptional scum performances), but a few highlights include: Holiday Dance Party, a challenging game full of tough solving where he managed to avoid giving in to paranoia on his dance partner Datisi as they never expected to endgame but went on to win as the sole remaining town pair (with a very fun read of a dance PT as a bonus) KTaNE, a game that showcased great scumhunting as well as excellent lategame process to consider all possible angles on a full reread of the game to correctly land on the final scum as well as House of the Dragon, where among other things he was instrumental in convincing town to change course and eliminate widely-townread scum Datisi in a 13p that town didn't know was melo while laying out exactly what the scumteam's master plan was and who they were being both one of the best raw scumhunters and also one of the best collaborative townblockers (all while being humble, grounded, and friendly) is a rare combination in mafia, and every town that he is a part of has a much better chance of winning the game because of it. GL's performances this year to me clearly demonstrate that he deserves the title of Paragon.

Nth.

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[header=5]Paperback Writer[/header]
[row][cell]14/01/23[/cell]
[cell]furtiveglance[/cell]
[cell]numberQ[/cell]
[cell]Open 848: Chromavalon: A Bouquet of Colours[/cell]
[cell]I was just looking through my games when I remembered this one. At the time, I was too worried about who my Merlin was to enjoy the flavour, but it really is great. numberQ used the theme of an artist struggling for inspiration in this game, casting Merlins as artistic Muses and Mafia Goons as 'Painter's Block'. Every votecount came with beautiful artwork and the story of the Painter's search for inspiration ran through the game in the creative flavour text.[/cell][/row]

Nth.

[RH9]

Nth.