Blitz 1: C9++ (GAME OVER!)

[Rob14]

Setup:

Firebringer - VT
Ythan - VT
Vedith - VT
EspeciallyTheLies - VT
OceanWind - Mafia Goon
Titus - 1-Shot Vigilante
Kraeg - 1-Shot Cop
Ranger - Mafia Goon
Flubbernugget - VT
Persivul - Mafia Roleblocker
Kop - Doctor
BlockyMan - VT
Marge - VT

Night actions can be found in the Dead PT.

Scum PT: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=64077
Dead PT: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=64127

Don't read the Dead PT if you like political correctness. <3

[Rob14]

Two questions for all players, by the way:

1) Any general thoughts on my modding of blitz? Anything that should be done different/better specific to a blitz game?
2) What were your thoughts on no flavor? Did it detract at all?

[farside22]

Rob: what did you pm to merge that you deleted right after?

[Titus]

Rob and I continue to have this debate on claiming early. Again, town didn't do a letters claim. Town lost. Proof is in the pudding.

I said Ocean and Persivul needed to die. Cursory VCA says Ocean had to die.

Instead of lynching scum, we lynched who felt good.

If it wasn't for ETL/Ythan, this would have been one of my best towngames ever. No one actually thought I was scum when lynched.

ETL, you can quibble over word choice but you lynched me because you thought you were better than me. I had Ocean with his awkward half baked responses. Persivul was obvious after his push on me.

The role of PRs in this setup is to trap the scumteam.

I am fully capable of admitting when I am wrong. You're incapable of seeing someone else might be right.

GG to everyone.

Rob, you were a fine mod.

[Rob14]

Rob: what did you pm to merge that you deleted right after?

I don't even remember. I think maybe I meant to send something to the farside account but sent it to marge instead?

[Kop]

Lesson learnt.

[Rob14]

Titus - you realize that:

1) Scum successfully fake claimed.
2) Every claimed PR came under suspicion and died fairly early, except Kop, who was pressured in LyLo.
3) Even with full setup info toward the end, including fake claims, town failed to crack the setup or gain any meaningful info? They actually cleared two scum based on setup.

Like honestly I think I could have posted the full setup in the first post and town would have done worse, not better.

And your partial execution of your strategy (multiple VT claims) directly contributed to town losing. You can hardly say that your full strategy wasn't executed and town lost, so your strategy is optimal. You've said you're a lawyer and better at logic than reading people, so surely you see that your logic there is incredibly faulty.

[Titus]

1) One happened because town didn't massclaim.
2) Kop was conftown by letters and Ocean should have been lynched for that. PRs shouldn't be obvtown. A little pressure is good.
3) Towards the end is too late. Scum can tailor fake claims. If the scums fake claimed mason, they'd be dead.

The logic is fine. The strategy is binary. Either it was executed or it wasn't. There is no partial credit. Seeing that town lose every time when such a mass claim isn't done makes it strong proof.

[farside22]

Just red the dead qt.
Etl self voting and saying my play is ban worthy is a joke right?
I was at work when you self hammered and I was scum reading persivul.
The fake claim through me and Kop just voted whomever was wagoned.
But yea, sure apparently no one is good at playing the game but you.

The lynch of Titus was the worse, killing Kop at least would have kept a good player in the game that could confirm here role.

[Rob14]

Titus, town hasn't lose "every time" such a mass claim isn't done. That's blatantly wrong. The town win rate on this setup is around 50%, mafia is around 40%, SK is around 10%. Your strategy was partially executed. I'm not saying lump that in with full execution; I'm saying that you can't lump it in with no execution, because your partial strategy negatively affected town's chances of winning this game.

Mass claim is literally never the answer in a well-designed setup. This is a well-designed setup.

[Kop]

I'll admit this is probably one of my worst games that I played. Got a lot wrong this game, and just never recovered. Sorry peeps.

[Ythan]

(wistful trombone music)

[Persivul]

This post isn't intended to be mean, just accurate.

This may have been the worst display of town play I have ever seen. I'll just hit the big points and let ETL yell at you all for the rest.

Like ETL has any standing to yell at anyone. Let me address ETL first:

1. It's...just...a...game. Relax and have some fun. I let it get to me and took a few months off, and I've learned my lesson. You apparently haven't.

2. In this game, ETL was excellent at identifying scum. She was horrible at getting them lynched.

Scumhunting requires both.

When someone spots a 10-point buck but misses the shot...that's not good hunting. When the deer turns on him and kills him, that's even worse.

3. I read Rob's comments on your self hammer and think he's blinded by friendship. That was ridiculous, but I was pretty sure you'd do it. IMO that wasn't strategic, it was emotional, and was the worst play by any town in the entire game. (Titus' outing a possible cop crumb was probably second worst - doubt I could have lynched her without that move).

1) When a mason claims, he immediately claims his partner or he dies, period. If it's a true claim, he'll die overnight and you'll lose the benefit of a conftown in the next day. If it's a false claim, making him claim will give you a second scum if you ever lynch him. There is no benefit to a town mason not to claim their partner after they claim, since it just introduces insane WIFOM in later days where scum can counter-claim the mason partner in LyLo if the first one is dead.

2) Masons are not confirmed until one of them dies, ever. The benefit of masons is being able to bounce ideas off conftown within the mason group as well as being able to confirm a townie via your flip. There are no other benefits to masons. Equating a mason claim with conftown is as bad as equating a cop claim with conftown before you get any usable results. It's awful.

Excellent points which I'll keep in mind. I've never played - or faked - mason before and didn't really think it all the way through. As noted in the PT though, in my mind we did it mostly for fun. IIRC I said that the better strategic play was not to do any fakeclaims, but Ocean really wanted to so this seemed safest, since an even number of letters doesn't change the SK in the setup.

3) Kop was conftown in Day 4 because without his claim, the setup would have a serial killer. No-one realized this, ever. The masons were not conftown in Day 4 because with or without their claims, there would not be a serial killer. You know there's no serial killer because of the lack of second kill, or at least you can infer that with a very high probability.

I realized it. In your last post you said, "If Persivul goes all-in vs. the doc claim, he's going to get destroyed." Depends on what you mean by all-in. I almost noted that Kop could be an SK who didn't kill either as a gambit (unlikely but possible) or because he had been roleblocked consistently by scum (highly unlikely - that's what I was leading up to when I asked him if he had crumbed the role, which could have put the RB on him). This might have helped Ranger in the end if it went that far. But, I didn't think it was necessary the way Marge was posting.

4) No, you shouldn't no lynch in LyLo. Good lord.

Yeah, I like how you put it in the dead thread. Note that I could have kept my mouth shut about this but pointed it out. Same thing with the Kop claim - I noted it fit the setup and refrained from challenging it. Town didn't play a good game, but I disagree that scum was bad as well. We made mistakes, but also made enough good moves like this to maintain the high ground. We spotted the active town's mistakes (Titus on claiming, ETL and Marge lying in their charges on me) and exploited them with IMO a fair amount of skill.

5) No, you shouldn't claim letters/roles in the early game, period...

Yep. Titus is just plain wrong on this. You don't claim at all on D1 with this setup. It only helps scum. I would have loved a massclaim D1, but had to oppose it as that's what I would have done as town.

6) The scum team was

incredibly

obvious. I'm not just saying this due to modsight. Persivul egged ETL to self-hammer and then said she should be banned for it. Ocean was incredibly opportunistic. Ranger did not scumhunt in a single post, and there were serious relational tells between him and Persivul (major coaching from Persivul, in particular). Persivul scum-read Ranger all game, but kept pushing counter-wagons whenever a wagon was starting on Ranger and

never

placed a vote on Ranger.

This isn't a scum win; it's a town loss

.

Again, I disagree with this characterization. You can play scum your way. I'll play it mine. As town or scum, I often say things in early game that put me in the spotlight, but I'm a good defender. That's my thing. I love it when someone like ETL aggressively pursues me on slim evidence. That style of play usually turns off other less aggressive town, and it often leads to the accuser overplaying his hand, as ETL did when she said I voted Marge while having no interactions with her. Once I showed real posts with me and Marge interacting, ETL's case on me was lost. Mafia is not just an analytical exercise, it's also emotional.

[OceanWind]

That worked out well. Persivul and Ranger were great partners and we all complemented each other very well.

Props to EspeciallyTheLies/Titus/Marge for calling out the scumteam. I do think a large part of the scum win was due to the town not coming together at crucial moments. I had several people calling me scum at various points: ETL, Titus, Firebringer, Flubber, Marge but they all never came together at the same time. If I have any advice, it would be for ETL to not self-hammer out of frustration. If you hadn't hammered yourself, I would have hammered you which would make me look a lot worse the following day. You denied town the information that would have come from my hammer. For Flubber and Titus, it was easy to keep pushing you because you never responded to my arguments. Firebringer was right in that not responding doesn't necessarily come from scum but it's something that can be used to paint you as scum and regardless of your alignment, you shouldn't allow yourself to be an easy target.

EspeciallyTheLies - People that think being good at this game is solely about having good reads and not about convincing others to join you is taking a very superficial understanding of good play. Despite the fact that several of you had called out much of the scumteam, you helped us lynch Titus. Marge helped us lynch you and Ythan, and Kop helped us lynch Marge. It's easy to say in hindsight or from modview that the scumteam played "badly" but good scumplay is not being "townread" by the entire town which is near impossible. Good scumplay is about turning town against one-another even if some townies have correctly guessed at your identity.

Good job modding Rob.

[Persivul]

Congrats to the scum team yadda yadda yadda.

Most of the time, I have good things to say about how both teams played. Unfortunately, this game was an utter embarrassment for both sides.

Meh, I think it went well from our side. Heck, we were confident enough to fakeclaim PRs just for the fun of it.

The mafia won, not because they played well - in fact, they played horrifically - they won because the town

played even worse

. The entire scum team was clearly visible and obvious by mid-D2. I pointed out every, single thing that was wrong with what they were doing, and

I was ignored

.

Key point bolded. If you can't sell a wagon, that's your problem, not town. As noted in my last post, you were an excellent scum spotter in this game, but you were a terrible scum hunter. Hunters kill. Bird watchers spot.

I named each and every single one of the scum team from the jump. I made and posted clear cases to show why I thought so. I continually showed how what they were doing was scummy. There were so may

rookie mistakes

- dual chainsaw defending, opportunistic voting patterns, fake-claiming masons... and the town fucking fell for it.

There was ZERO critical thinking. I had hoped that my flip would help. I had hoped that people would wake up and go.. hey she was town, who was pushing her? FUCKING. NOPE.

I am fucking ASHAMED to have been part of this game, part of this town, to the point of blacklisting half of you.

I'm sure being on your blacklist makes them happy. But again, look in the fucking mirror. You called town stupid for not following you during the game. Do you really think you're going to build wagons like that? Further, you gave me plenty of ammo - the change on your ocean read without explanation and the false charge about me not interacting with Marge were horrible, and made defending and even mislynching you easy. Course, the self hammer helped a lot too. If anyone should feel humiliated after this game, it's you for that self hammer, and for insulting town instead of building consensus.

Kop, I just... I am literally without words as to how fucking... stupid... you have been. No lynch in LYLO? Hammer without even thinking about what's going on? PROTECTING THE FUCKING ONE PERSON I TOLD YOU WAS SCUM BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT? On FF you might be able to get away with #YOLO actions and votes. Not here. On ms.net we like to think about things and what they mean before doing something.

Before doing something like self hammering?

Titus, no one fucking voted you out of fear. No one EVER votes you out of fear. You know who typically dies a lot on D1? VIs. VIs get lynched on D1. Strong players get nightkilled N1. Getting lynched D1 isn't a badge of honor, it's a fucking embarrassment. You really need to check yourself. You did not get Ranger or Persivul, and you handed the PRs to the scumteam on a silver fucking platter. And even in death, after the mod EXPLAINED TO YOU EXACTLY WHY THAT'S A BAD THING, you stood by your faulty logic insisting that you are right. You are totally incapable of introspection, and it's one of the major reasons I despise playing games with you. You are never able to admit that you might be wrong.

Well yeah, you're right about Titus.

That's it. That's all I have to say. I don't have any desire to carry on a discussion with fucking any of you.

What a fucking shitshow of a game. You should all be deeply humiliated.

Pot-kettle-black.

[Persivul]

Two questions for all players, by the way:

1) Any general thoughts on my modding of blitz? Anything that should be done different/better specific to a blitz game?

It was good. I liked your idea in dead thread about giving ranges of start times for phases. Something like "Submit actions within 24 hours, phase will start within 28 hours" would be cool.

2) What were your thoughts on no flavor? Did it detract at all?

Didn't detract at all for me.

[Persivul]

Just red the dead qt.
Etl self voting and saying my play is ban worthy is a joke right?
I was at work when you self hammered and I was scum reading persivul.
The fake claim through me and Kop just voted whomever was wagoned.
But yea, sure apparently no one is good at playing the game but you.

Yep, ETL is really full of herself and I see no reason for it.

[Kop]

I don't know why I thought no lynch was a good idea, somehow I thought it was mylo when I posted that, not lylo.

[Persivul]

EspeciallyTheLies - People that think being good at this game is solely about having good reads and not about convincing others to join you is taking a very superficial understanding of good play. Despite the fact that several of you had called out much of the scumteam, you helped us lynch Titus. Marge helped us lynch you and Ythan, and Kop helped us lynch Marge.

It's easy to say in hindsight or from modview that the scumteam played "badly" but good scumplay is not being "townread" by the entire town which is near impossible. Good scumplay is about turning town against one-another even if some townies have correctly guessed at your identity.

Worth repeating. I think we played a very good game. You can successfully play scum by never being under suspicion. You can also play scum successfully by being in the spotlight but defending and counterattacking skillfully.

ETL wants to say we played bad but the rest of town played worse because she doesn't want to admit that we outplayed her, which we clearly did.

[Titus]

Scum played well here.

Oh and another notch. Mislynching Titus D1 outs the scumteam. Y'all just managed not to get lynched this time.

[Ythan]

Marge your play and wagon were shit and I wasn't wrong about either of those~

Titus been raging nonstop in dead qt since the flip lul~

[Ythan]

Titus I had hoped this game might clear you of that amateurish "I was perfect even though I got myself lynched d1" mindset.

[Persivul]

Scum played well here.

Thanks! Nice to hear some saying we're not a bunch of idiots.

Oh and another notch. Mislynching Titus D1 outs the scumteam. Y'all just managed not to get lynched this time.

Nah, it was plausible once you outed the possible cop crumb. Sorry, but that was a big mistake. It makes no sense for town (including vig) or scum to do it, but it could make sense for SK. You handed that one up on a platter.

[Kop]

And it turned out he wasn't even a cop, so it wasn't even a crumb.

[Rob14]

You're right that it's good as scum to play town against each other, but when the town plays this badly, you don't have to do much. I mean, your scum team voted together all game long, and no-one challenged that or gave any pause. Especially Days 3 and 4, but also somewhat Day 2. When you are quick-lynching townies repeatedly, someone needs to stop and think "why are these wagons materializing?" Someone needs to do VCA (which was completely absent this game). Someone needs to do

something

other than continuing on from the last day like you have no new information from flips and kills.

Trust me when I say it's not modsight. I've modded enough that I have a pretty good idea where scum are making a mistake that could be caught versus a mistake that should be caught. When I read as mod, I look for things that could be problematic, but also things that I know I would challenge as town. In this game, I would have:

1) Lynched Titus Day 1 for role fishing, since that's what she did.
2) Pressured Ocean as playing opportunistically toward the end of Day 2 - this is one of my top scum-tells that I look for

Those are things that would have happened for sure. The rest of course changes because a lynch on ocean would mean everyone would play differently. And who knows, maybe with competent town, scum would have played better. Let's say the game state at all times was the same and I was just magically inserted, though. Here are a few things I 100% would have pushed.

3) Mason claim with no partner claim. That's a lynch, immediately, unless they claim.
4) Persivul coaching Ranger. Coaching is a serious scum tell that rarely gives a false positive (assuming you correctly identify what is coaching vs defending). I'd be going after Persivul here, and then Ranger when he flipped scum.
5) After ETL flipped, I would analyze her wagon and her reads now that she's conf-town and look at those cases. No-one really did this except maybe marge.

Persivul, you played the best scum game imo out of all players in the game thread, although I think your actions in the scum thread (especially regarding mason claiming) were not so good. There were definitely some things that a reasonable townie should have questioned, though, including your coaching of Ranger and soft-defending him while having him as a scum read. Those are not things town does, and those tells are extra great because they give you 2 scum for the price of one.