Mini Normal 1920 (Game Over)

[mhsmith0]

Yay I review a normal game and town wins

[mhsmith0]

FWIW from review thread...

"tomorrow morning" has arrived

Town:
Loyal Cop
Ascetic Townie
Weak Doctor
Macho Neapolitan
VT x6

vs.

Mafia:
Roleblocker
Goon x2

So baiscally I certainly see the concern that town can acumulate a shit-ton of clears (and I think that justifies making the roleblocker full instead of odd night). HOWEVER, you also have two important "fucking with results" potential from the roleblocker
1) Loyal cop gets roleblocked, presumes he got a guilty (regardless of actual result)
2) Weak Doctor gets roleblocked, presumes he got an innocent (regardless of actual result)

There's also a legitimate change of the weak doctor not only failing to protect anyone, but also hitting scum early resulting in a double kill and one less mislynch for town, which is a pretty big potential detriment (weak doc is net positive, but there are serious risks). So basically... I think I'm fine with this setup, provided that roleblocker is full and not gated. I think town has too much to give scum less than a full roleblocker.

And yes, i say that knowing full well that two outcomes are VERY possible
1) roleblocker dies early, town steamrolls off of all its hard clears
2) weak doc hits scum without crumbing, or hits scum but is roleblocked, and scum get a MASSIVELY easier road to victory

So yeah, it's swingy as fuck, but I'd accept it as balanced for mini normal meta.

I'd also say that loyal is a substnatial nerf to cop's functionality, since he needs to be targeting for town instead of scum, as hitting scum gives a non-reliable "result". Normal cop would be pretty OP for town here.

I mean, tbh I don't really love a setup that's heavy on in investigative power from a "setups that smith likes" type of thing, but I think it's pretty reasonably within mini normal norms. Probably a touch more townsided than what I tend to pass, but not unreasonably so, especially since a lot of it is swing anyway.

I'll also accept balance complaints if any towards me; myko was uneasy about this setup giving town too much potential, I was willing to consider it given swing (roleblocker vs cop/doc interactions can reasonably create a surprise miller and/or a surprise godfather, and in fact that first one did actually happen).

[mhsmith0]

Setup-wise, I'd say the biggest danger by far for town was the weak doctor. Would be SUPER easy to accidentally suicide n1 or n2, OR be roleblocked while targeting scum, either of which drastically harms town's chances. Barring that, it was really a matter of how many town clears could be generated and/or how destructive a false guilty could be. Without scum generating a false innocent or a false guilty through roleblocker use, their path to victory was probably really really narrow (like, basically being required to kill the cop on n1 for starters)

[mhsmith0]

I'd say setup is probably a bit too swingy on weak doc and roleblocker roles; without one or both moving the ball towards scum, it's a bit difficult for scum team. Debatably the ascetic townie should have just been pulled (its existence materially narrows down the list of who town PRs should target, while not really helping scum since ascetic could easily be an ascetic plus some other PR).

Part of the issue is also that godfathers are just REALLY strong, and the like 15% or so chance that weak doctor / roleblocker interact to create an effective GF is I think a really big potential deal (there's good reason why GF's are banned from normal queue).

But essentially, if you've got a setup that's full of investigative power roles, the only real way to balance it is to have stuff that really introduces a lot of swing to it. MAYBE we could have done like a night one rolecop for scum too I guess? Kinda signaling "hey guys you REALLY need to be hitting town power or you're gonna get smoked"? I suppose we could have made it so that loyal cop was ascetic loyal cop and the double ascetic claim could have introduced more confusion, but I feel like that just introduces more chaos and potential swing to it, which probably isn't ideal?

Anyway, I'd say that the setup was probably towards the townsided end of the acceptable range, but overall still within reasonable balance range. Very happy we didn't go with the roleblocker only being odd night though (maybe it could have been split, odd and even night roleblocker as separate roles?)