Mini 1962: Magical Girls Mafia II (Day 4)

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I think people conflate

1) Being a good wolf

With

2) Having a balanced range / getting townread

It getting kind of old tbh...but maybe my viewpoint is really naive or too idealistic?





Having a balanced range is easy, just dont try so hard when villaging or be actively wolfy on purpose.

Getting townreads is easy, just townside or bus your bros. The single most tragic thing that happens in a game of WW is when a wolf busses and gets heat for the way he did it. Lol.

Getting villagers to kill each other and looking good while doing it is $#@!ing hard. This is the ultimate wolf play.




Your job as a wolf isnt to get townread, its to help the village as little as possible and get away with it. Some games the village lets you get away with more than other games (incidentally this is why subs are lame imo, because you cant plan for someone subbing in and calling you out for doing A, B or C. Which was acceptable to do in the pre-sub gamestate, but not after).

If you are feeling good, then you can start actively working against villagers and get away with it.


But people sit in the graveyard at endgame crying that so-and-so is openly wolfing, and that the village are a bunch of morons, then they refuse to give the open wolfer any credit because he was "obvious". He was obvious because your team let him be, being an "obvious wolf" without getting caught was his optimal play.
It wasnt flashy, it wasnt "award winning", but it did the most damage possible to the village.


Then some guy busses his entire team, survives 3 NKs (!?!?), and wins at LYLO because the village got complacent (or because the setup had too many mechanical clears, so the busser not dieing was "normal"). Then everyone calls him a WW god, and noms him as the greatest wolf of all time
Bussing is easy!

This happens to me in every scum game I play.

Scum is about playing to your AUDIENCE, the players, not to the SPECTATORS.

The scum kill is the single greatest tool they have, and any good scum player knows how to chart a path from a losing situation to a winning one by leaving the right people alive.

[Mulch]

This is definitely, 100%, scumsided.

Then explain after lynching a vig and a cop day 1 and day 2 we still were almost PoEd out day 3 and had to panic in scum chat

[Mulch]

I think people conflate

1) Being a good wolf

With

2) Having a balanced range / getting townread

It getting kind of old tbh...but maybe my viewpoint is really naive or too idealistic?





Having a balanced range is easy, just dont try so hard when villaging or be actively wolfy on purpose.

Getting townreads is easy, just townside or bus your bros. The single most tragic thing that happens in a game of WW is when a wolf busses and gets heat for the way he did it. Lol.

Getting villagers to kill each other and looking good while doing it is $#@!ing hard. This is the ultimate wolf play.




Your job as a wolf isnt to get townread, its to help the village as little as possible and get away with it. Some games the village lets you get away with more than other games (incidentally this is why subs are lame imo, because you cant plan for someone subbing in and calling you out for doing A, B or C. Which was acceptable to do in the pre-sub gamestate, but not after).

If you are feeling good, then you can start actively working against villagers and get away with it.


But people sit in the graveyard at endgame crying that so-and-so is openly wolfing, and that the village are a bunch of morons, then they refuse to give the open wolfer any credit because he was "obvious". He was obvious because your team let him be, being an "obvious wolf" without getting caught was his optimal play.
It wasnt flashy, it wasnt "award winning", but it did the most damage possible to the village.


Then some guy busses his entire team, survives 3 NKs (!?!?), and wins at LYLO because the village got complacent (or because the setup had too many mechanical clears, so the busser not dieing was "normal"). Then everyone calls him a WW god, and noms him as the greatest wolf of all time
Bussing is easy!

This happens to me in every scum game I play.

Scum is about playing to your AUDIENCE, the players, not to the SPECTATORS.

The scum kill is the single greatest tool they have, and any good scum player knows how to chart a path from a losing situation to a winning one by leaving the right people alive.

Yeah once I read that quote it really resonated with me

[mastina]

Using this ability on the target will allow you learn your target's one non-passive ability.

Okay so it says, "learn your target's one non-passive ability".
But.
Maki's one active ability was a rolestopper--a NAI power.
Panzer's one active ability was a JOAT with three options, two of which were town--NAI unless the rolecop result was all three.
You had TWO active abilities and there's no current clarification on which would be received. If the gladiate--NAI, because that's not innately a scum ability.

I'll consent to the rolecop being stronger if the mod clarifies that yes the rolecop would've seen the ninja and/or the strongman.
HOWEVER.
That does not change my other comments RE: balance, regarding how the rolecop has to FIRST:
-Target scum
-Target scum not being rolestopped
-Target scum not commuting
-Not be targeted for the redirection

The scum had NO LESS THAN THREE counters to the rolecop.
NO. LESS. THAN. THREE.
One for each fucking scum role. As in, even with a scum lynch D1 and the rolecop attempting to use their power on a scum they COULD get a guilty on. Regardless of which scum was dead, they could STILL fucking fail to get that incriminating result.

And this is true for literally every town power. Roleblocker, vig, tracker, cop. Every single one of them has those counters which would prevent them from being used against scum.

Not. even. REMOTELY. townsided. That's flagrantly and blatantly scumsided. Because scum had a counter to literally every fucking town role in the game, shit which would NEVER fly in a Normal Game balance review for damn fucking good reason. Since if scum have a counter to literally every fucking town role in the game, no fucking shit the town roles are going to not help the town and even hurt them.

[Mulch]

"like a fucking IC, global motion detector, cop tracker, and vig + other stuff flipped

three of those give full to semi clearing info"

[Mulch]

"I'm curious on how almost50/Kokichi conf each other plus we've had no protective flips yet and you're a strongman I wouldn't be shocked if one of them is a doc of some sort"

[Mulch]

"something has to be off with how the nhoods kids are confirming each other

there's no way we should be getting poe'd this hard through ROLES"

[Mulch]

"how are we in such bad shape I felt the prs we killed were all fucking broken :/"

[Mulch]

#realquotes from scumchat

[mastina]

+ 2 all town nhoods + conditional IC + A50 gettingmeta confed

Neighborhood are innately NAI. They were all town, sure. Players had no way of knowing that and by the mod's own account--if anyone had source material with three picks, that'd be enough for a 'hood...even if it contained scum. Assuming all town, while accurate, would from a theory standpoint be a mistake.

You judge the players by their individual play.

Almost50 being essentially conftown was not something which a balance review would account for nor should it.
And as mentioned--the conditional IC had a condition nearly impossible to fulfill. The role by my understanding was one-shot: one chance, and one chance ONLY. It needed to be activated the night BEFORE a scum lynch by my understanding. So the conditional IC had to guess when scum would be lynched.

FURTHERMORE.
Given an ungated strongman, the strongman just auto-kills the IC if successful. This only fails if the strongman is dead by that point. Odds are not in favor of that outcome.

The absolute MOST this game could get in the way of conftown is two players: a cop innocent and the innocent child. The doctor is easily bypassed, be it through strongman or redirect. This leaves said conftown wide open to the nightkill.

The town absolutely needed more, or rather more accurately, the scum needed WAY FUCKING LESS than what they had.

Ultimately, I don't think it mattered that much as far as the outcome of the game is concerned. It was not poor setup design which made the scum win this game. But that doesn't mean the game had good setup design, because it most definitively HAD poor setup design. In short, while it didn't contribute to the scum win, the game was still mechanically scumsided. Scum would and did win without setup-based merits, but the setup was in favor of them. NOT the town.

[Mulch]

Then how were we PoEd almost day 3 despite killing the best town power roles

[mastina]

I mean being obv is fine if ur always the second choice.

Third choice, actually. And one I didn't pursue rather deliberately since I didn't think I could win against you without you more blatantly revealing your hand. I couldn't lynch you D4. The only way I'd be able to lynch you D5 is if you reacted poorly on D4 in such a way where the case on you would write itself without me needed to do so.

I do acknowledge you had solid play on D1 tho. It's just that after that, you got worse and worse. I was expecting this trend to continue. Your D2 play was worse than D1 (rather, Mulch's post at end of day was HILARIOUSLY scum, but it was only one post so there wasn't more evidence aside from it). Your D3 play was much worse than D1 and significantly worse than D2. (And this time both heads were responsible.) The commentary about backing off of LLD with the faked hydra dynamic felt dead on the money, but it still didn't feel like enough.

Today I was anticipating your D4 play would look even worse than D3, and with it, I'd be able to lynch you in the future.

You towned it up, but you can't keep that level of town up. It's too much effort, too much work. And I picked up on it. I just didn't have the confidence yet to commit. I was too afraid of being wrong, of it being paranoia, of my original townread being right and that it was just a degradation of townplay. But by POE if nothing else. You were a scumread. And there were reasons to scumread you outside of POE. And combining the two is why I would have lynched you...but not today.

[mastina]

Go read our gladiate, its conflated with forced redirect.

I did read the gladiate. You couldn't use both, but you could use the forced redirect and that is NOT a scum role, inherently. It is a role which scum benefit from more,

yes

, that is true, but only a moron sees a forced-redirector and assumes it's a scum role.

The forced-redirect doesn't involve yourself, either. It doesn't force your targets to visit you, it forces them to visit each other. This means that you can GUARANTEE that their abilities hit one another rather than hitting scum. And using this power is not innately scum. You can use this power as scum on two town players with whatever believable justification you can bs up, there's literally hundreds of ways I can think of to claim it.

So no.
Still not a guilty to a rolecop, unless incompetent scum ASSUME it's something they can never claim.

[mastina]

This is definitely, 100%, scumsided.

Then explain after lynching a vig and a cop day 1 and day 2 we still were almost PoEd out day 3 and had to panic in scum chat

That's called you being fucking idiots to have fucking panicked, and the town not being absolute fucking morons (even if they were mostly moronic) by fucking scumhunting.

The strongest town roles were out of the game by D3.
But you were called scum NOT by town roles.
You were called scum by fucking scumhunting.

That aint townsided roles.
That's townsided play combined with scum panicking about nothing.

We had NOTHING role-wise to counter you by that point. EVERYTHING we were doing which was correctly clearing town players and correctly POEing and calling scum players was done by scumhunting, not role, merits.

We lost the game on play, we could have won the game on play.
Don't fucking pretend otherwise.

[mastina]

"like a fucking IC, global motion detector, cop tracker, and vig + other stuff flipped
three of those give full to semi clearing info"

The IC was ridiculously conditional. NOT ONLY was it one-shot (meaning if it failed once, tough luck), NOT ONLY did it require them as the HAMMER VOTE, it ALSO required a scum lynch. FURTHERMORE, even as conftown, even if the role succeeded, LOL WHOOPS GUESS WE STRONGMAN KILL THEM. And there's nothing to fucking counter that except for the strongman already being dead. It's a role which rewards good townplay but has to be ridiculously specific.

The cop was one-shot.
The tracker you had a FULL FUCKING UNGATED NINJA to counter, NOT EVEN going into rolestopper (which means the tracker/cop gets "no result") or redirector (which means the tracker/cop targets town) possibilities.
The vigilante was LATEGAME, and you had a ROLESTOPPER to stop it, a COMMUTE to stop it, and a REDIRECTOR WHICH WOULD GUARANTEE THE VIG SHOT TOWN. A. Fucking. REDIRECTOR. Which would ENSURE. A TOWN VIGILANTE. SHOT TOWN. IN THE LATEGAME. That's a recipe for a guaranteed scum win. Imagine scum the day before lylo 1v1ing a town player. They win the 1v1 through a series of lies. The vig shoots the lying scum, knowing they have a shot on scum...only LOL WHOOPS GUESS REDIRECTOR MEANS THE SHOT IS ON TOWN, scum insta-endgame when combined with their own nightkill.

The global motion detector means nothing other than confirming abilities were used in the way they were claimed to be used--and with a competent scumteam telling minimal lies, that means nobody gets caught.

The town had a few powers in terms of offense--but literally all the scum's powers are counters for literally all the town's powers, both offensive and defensive. The town had nothing which the scum could not reasonably bypass. And that's absolutely shitty game design, no two ways about it.

[mastina]

"something has to be off with how the nhoods kids are confirming each other"

And yet.
There WASN'T.

That shit was by play.

Not role.

By PLAY.

The neighborhoods were confirming each other.

And simultaneously, doubting the other--something you conveniently overlook because as scum you saw both of them confirming each other.

There was zero role-based reasons. I didn't townread Hardcore Monkey for their claim (which was made known to me at the same time as it was everyone else since it was made public first). I didn't townread Chara for its claim. HardcoreMonkey and Chara did not townread me for my role, it was a shitty troll role which was NAI. They townread me off of my PLAY.

The neighborhoods, balance-wise, are net-zero. They are not. alignment. indicative. NAI. Null. Net-null, zero, zilch, power-wise. Mechanics, game-wise. They mean absolutely NOTHING. It was purely off of play that our neighborhood was a masonry. It was purely off of us all townreading the others' play that we were saying we were town.

And you cannot say otherwise.

[Ellibereth]

On phone.

But i think the disagreement is that I think town players correctly reading ppl in their nhood is expected play while you think its good play.

Probably because we're each signifigantly better at opposing alignments?

[mastina]

Then how were we PoEd almost day 3 despite killing the best town power roles

Because you fucking sucked play-wise to a certain extent.

You played well enough to win--and that's it.

Not more.

This was not a stellar scumgame, and you'd have to be absolutely arrogant to believe it was (aside from maybe Maki who has right to that).

It was more a scum win than a town loss.
The roles being ridiculously scumsided also did not factor into the scum win.
Given that, you deserve a certain level of acknowledgement.

But don't pretend you were playing some amazing game against an OP town.
The town was ridiculously underpowered given your scum abilities; the town made misplays; the scum made enough good plays to win and moreso than these other two factors; that the scum won by play more than the town lost by play more than the balance contributed to the outcome, does not mean that the scum play was godly-good.

Just good enough.

I won't claim you didn't play well enough; you decidedly did.
I will claim that you didn't play amazingly because you didn't aside from Maki.

[mastina]

I think town players correctly reading ppl in their nhood is expected play while you think its good play.

Neighborhoods are ridiculously easy to manipulate as scum, that's why I wasn't trusting of the claims that Kokichi was scum "off of hood reasoning" and to a lesser extent, Kaito. I demanded IN-THREAD reasoning for that very reason.

I also very specifically said to my neighborhood that it was NOT the right decision to townread me off of my neighborhood content. Neighborhoods are a scum player's best friend. That's why they are NAI. Because any half-way competent scum player can with a ridiculous level of ease blend in seamlessly and become the epitome of town in the neighborhood regardless of in-thread opinion, thanks to a simple factor--

The smaller your audience, the easier it is to tailor your arguments to that audience. With an audience of ~13, you have a LOT of work to do; with an audience of ~3, you've got minimal work to do. Scum are going to be townread in neighborhoods; town are going to be townread in neighborhoods; we as players have no way of knowing what combination of town/scum the mod will use; this is why neighborhoods are NAI, net-neutral. They provide nothing.

I wasn't townreading Chara off of Chara's neighborhood content, nor Hardcore Monkey. It was off of their IN-THREAD posting that I townread them. And I told them to do the same for me, because that's the only correct way to read players in neighborhoods--off of what's PUBLIC, not what's private.

Being correct in a townread, if you're relying on neighborhood posting, is luck. Not skill, just luck of the draw as far as I'm concerned. Being correct in a townread, if you're relying on IN-THREAD posting, is probably skill. Sometimes lucky, sure, but it's usually just you having gotten the right idea.

You ARE talking about a game hosted by the fucking mod who put a scum-scum neighborhood in the game--yes, he received harsh criticism for that decision come postgame, but that was a reality lesson in what GIF's viewpoint on neighborhoods is; they can have any combination of town and scum in them and when they have scum in them the scum WILL get towncred from it. I expect nothing less. So I wasn't reading my neighborhood partners as town because of their posting in it and I expected them not to read me as town because of mine.

[Kokichi Oma]

What was the point of me being a doctor if mafia has an unlimited strongman or whatever that was?

[Kokichi Oma]

I wish Kaito would have listened to me about Maki. But I was wrong about Pinky

[Ellibereth]

Only skimmed but I think i've have a 100% nhood readrate over a nontrivial samplesize so i'll politely disagree for now

[mastina]

I won't claim you didn't play well enough; you decidedly did.
I will claim that you didn't play amazingly because you didn't aside from Maki.

Another way of saying it:
Scum played good, but not

great

.
I will acknowledge scum played good, because they did.
I will acknowledge town made many mistakes, because we did, and further acknowledge these mistakes were not the reason scum won. Scum won because they played good rather than because town made too many mistakes.
I will acknowledge the setup did not contribute to the outcome of the game, because roles did not contribute to the scum winning. Scum won because they played good rather than because they had those godly-good roles.

However, that doesn't mean I'm wrong. The game from a theory standpoint was HILARIOUSLY scumsided. It being scumsided role-wise isn't why scum won, but it is still a fact.
The town made many mistakes, but also was close to correct. They were more wrong than right overall, regardless of how much this contributed to the town loss.

So the scum played a good game--but not a GREAT, really impressive, game (possible exception, Maki).
And I maintain that thinking otherwise is arrogance.

[mastina]

Only skimmed but I think i've have a 100% nhood readrate over a nontrivial samplesize so i'll politely disagree for now

You are also a Paragon nominee.

I'm telling you that us town plebeians can't do that shit.

Yeah

, I am the poster child for the mason gambit, claiming neighborhoods are masonries. Yeah, my success rate so far is disproportionately high. However, I'd be the first to admit. My "masonries" being so? Purely luck of the draw. Not skill. I don't have a magical, mystical, reads-my-neighborhood-correctly, skill. I just treat them as if they're town and most of the time because statistically speaking players are more likely to be town I end up being right.

My neighborhood accuracy reading-wise rate would in fact be exactly what you'd expect it to be. 60-80%, leaning more towards 75%. 3/4ths of the time townreading them I'm right, but sometimes I am disastrously wrong. If I tried to actually read my neighborhoods rather than just assuming they were town. I would encounter trouble every single time. Because I CANNOT read them nor should anyone claim they can.

Yeah

, there are certain neighborhoods where you can read the people just fine. If I got a neighborhood with Ginngie, fuck yes I'd be able to tell she was town or scum from it. But if you're paired with some random scummer, as I was this game? NOPE. Noooooooot a clue. We figured it out EVENTUALLY, but it took in-thread posting for us to do so because we don't have that close connection with them.

[HolySpiritTurtle]

Re: Doc and strongman, you can basically consider the doctor the ability that only works after the strongman dies, like enable/disable mechanic without actually using those mechanics.
Because enabler role sucks.