Mafia 96 - Murder in Emerald City (Game Over!)

[iamausername]

I'll leave it up to the mafia, mason, neighbour groups if they want to give the links to their quicktopics, but there's one Quicktopic I shall link to myself:

VALHALLA

where the dead gathered to discuss the game after their respective deaths.

[iamausername]

I think that with the unevenly sized scumteams, I probably shouldn't have gone with a night start. That's the one thing I think I did wrong with the setup. Night starts are always going to make for a swingier game, but this one had a chance of leaving the Ceruleans pretty screwed from the start, and it just happens that that chance came up this time. Of course, it didn't help that Mastin is psychologically incapable of self-preservation.

The WIFOM traps that the town fell into with the mason pair and two neighbour pairs all being town worked exactly as I was hoping, though. I enjoyed all the confusion around mole's claim, and the way that KMD not claiming led to Lowell's lynch. (BTW, I think KMD would have had to claim immediately after mole did to stand a chance of being trusted, and having not done that, he made the right play by not claiming at all.)

Strangely enough, I think ZazieR being killed N1 was the best thing that could have happened for the Vermillions, because as soon as that happened, Kublai was free to coast through to the endgame with everyone assuming he was town. It also helped that the power roles revealed themselves at just the right times that no one ever had much cause to wonder why the "confirmed" town player was being left alive.

Anyway, thanks all for playing, and congrats to the Vermillions. Kublai definitely deserves a lot of credit for the miller claim, but I think SerialClergyman impressed me the most throughout the game, especially managing to talk Xyl and SpyreX around to the idea that he was town on D4. Xyl also impressed me a lot by managing to conjure a fleeting moment where it looked like the town might have a chance on that day, when a Vermillion win had been looking fairly inevitable since about N1.

[SerialClergyman]

I have no problem with linking to our quicktopic but I'll wait till one of the others agrees so we have some sort of consensus.

Wow about the Baltar investigation. KK actually apologised for his miller claim at the end of D1 fearing he'd be knocked off - classic!

I think you have to give a lot of credit to Zazie for KK's obvtown reputation. Her work in distancing him day one was truly a spectacle. When I replaced in I didn't know how I was going to disagree with her really powerful and strong case. In the end I made up the arguemtn about egos gettign in the way (sorry VP and Mastin - it was purely about trying to not get involved with kk and zaz).

I think I ended up having to do the most heavy lifting, but i think that's because I was the least experienced.. yesterday was a real grind, I tried a number of different arguments and styles to try and ditch suspicion. Faraday has a habbit of cruising through the day without picking up votes - even did it today!

Much of yesterday I spent tryign to distance Faraday and buddy ckd, figuring I could at least take someone with me, and xyl nailed me and faraday perfectly from the outset.

I was surprised you hit masons ckd - you really did risk both masons being killed and then you're in real trouble.

[SerialClergyman]

PS Valhalla is an EXCELLENT idea. I wish all games had it.

[Xylthixlm]

Xyl was on point...just hit the wrong scum first.

he should have seen that I wasnt part of a group...I had no friends in this town...

You know when I said I'm horrible at guessing who is on which scumteam? That was true. Honestly, I'd be better off throwing darts at a dartboard.

Also, I'd like to whine about the Lowell lynch. If I say someone is town

don't lynch them

. My scum reads are unreliable, but my town reads are almost always right. When I win it's by finding the town players and lynching everyone else.

[SpyreX]

If that all hadn't spilled out that near deadline I would have tried to swing ALL the way around the horn to Faraday.

As it was.

[iamausername]

PS Valhalla is an EXCELLENT idea. I wish all games had it.

Me too. (I didn't come up with the idea myself; it was inspired by this here MD thread.)

[VP Baltar]

Mega props to KK. I'm seriously impressed that you and Zazie pulled that off. I too was fooled.

I'm sort of mad that I had to get axed so early and I probably played the cop wrong by going after Mastin so hard, but I just couldn't believe that anyone could act that scummy and not be lynched.

Overall I'd say at the time of my death my reads were pretty off, but I suppose that is pretty typical for me in large games.

I'm surprised Faraday got as far as he did. SC looked town to me, so I know to keep my eye on you in the future.

I'd definitely like to hear why kmd didn't claim. That seems silly and a bit of a distraction for the town.

Good job Vermillions.

[Kmd4390]

Wow, I was dead on about Serial. Not on Kublai though. Well played.

Ok, why'd I claim vanilla? Well. I didn't claim when Molest did because he was never in any danger of being lynched. After that, everyone had come to the conclusion that the neighbor was scum, so I saved my own ass. I didn't claim during Lowell's situation because I thought he was legitimately scummy and worth being lynched.

Good game scum.

[SerialClergyman]

kmd - when you get a chance to have a look at our quicktopic you'll see the night before yesterday I said to the guys that I'm the only one left in your wagon analysis and you would come at me hard from then on - we just made the decision that rofl was more likely to bend people to his will and I felt I might be able to just deal with your suspicion.

So you got me, but couldn't get much momentum. I guess that's the problem with wagon analysis - it might be really convincing to you, but you ahven't got the scumtells and suspicious behaviour that other people need to commit.

[SerialClergyman]

While we wait for KK or Faraday to OK posting the quicktopic in thread, I found the relevant bit from right after Nam's lynch.

Thoughts on dynamics -

KMD will gun for me today. See http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopi ... 70#1770770

It will also be pretty reasonable reasoning, although I might be able to argue against some of the assumptions he's made. On the MM wagon, he'll have himself, 2 masons, Faraday, me and Lowell. So the last 3 are the 3 he'll suspect from that wagon. Then I was on the Mastin wagon, the other two weren't.

Then I was on the Nam wagon.

So it's possible I can deflect him onto Xyl or Lowell or even you, Faraday, but with Nam gone I'm sure he'll turn to me. Whether he can actually get a wagon going is another question though. Still, given how we can deduce that he'll be narrowing down his suspect pool towards us, he might be one to take out.

I actually deliberately stayed on Namttam all day to try to coast through the day avoiding the lynch and for some reason everyone just decided he was a good guy to vote and suddenly I'm there. I was hoping the Xyl wagon would get up, rofl would start suspecting me of being Xyl's teammate and when he flipped non-Vermillon I'd be semi-cleared. Still, I can't see rofl going after me over Xyl tomorrow, although he did drop his case on KMD completely.

[Xylthixlm]

So you got me, but couldn't get much momentum. I guess that's the problem with wagon analysis - it might be really convincing to you, but you ahven't got the scumtells and suspicious behaviour that other people need to commit.

Scumtells are seriously overrated.

[Kublai Khan]

NIGHT 0
VP Baltar investigates Kublai Khan

This part is my favourite. Kublai is fucking psychic or something.

Yeah, that was a weird move on my part. I'd never done anything like that before and we definately didn't plan on it. When I saw the thread open and Mastin posting, I just figured "what the hell?". With a 4-man group with a godfather, I figured it would slightly raise the chance that SC (then revaillark) would get investigated and not me. Zazie did a great job going after me and I figured on Mastin going after me if I went after him.

I think the town did a great job. There were a lot of great town mafia players that I think we needed those few lucky breaks to get the win, but I think my partners did a great job taking full advantage of every good piece of luck we had.

Sotty7 was killed because we wanted a target that was good, but not so great and well known (like roflcopter or elvis_knits) that they'd be protected. Zazie recomended him, so apologizes that you didn't play.

We were trying to eliminate the vig to reduce the number of potential cross-kills, so we offed Kise based on something he said on Day 1 about promising not to kill me. In retrospect, ckool5000 was the vig as SpyreX pointed out, but it didn't look that obvious then.

So once ckool5000 was outed as the vig, he was a good target. Plus he worried us since he posted his train of thought and he was a damn loose cannon! Down to 2 kills a night.

roflcopter.. eh.. thinking back I think it was mostly to eliminate the towniest leader. I tried to lead a bandwagon against him the previous day, but he just kinda dismissed me. He was going to be too tough to lynch (and could potentially be scum), so bam.

We chose to kill Hayker over Wickedestjr because Wickedestjr seemed to be somewhat more manipulable. He vote-hopped a few times whereas Hayker stayed put with his vote. But it didn't matter, at that time we knew that curiouskarmadog was the last Cerulean because of his hiding target. We didn't kill CKD outright because we figured town might wonder how Vermillion *knew* that he wasnt a hider and that might out me.

I was worried about Xyl listed Kmd4390 and SpyreX as more town than me. I was definately taking more bold chances in trying to push for town lynches then I would have if I hadn't claimed miller. Seeing that Xyl & Wick already voted CKD, I couldn't wait for the mass claim (was really worried about trackers, ironically) to be done so I could vote CKD. I think SC was just hovering and waiting for Faraday to vote.

BTW, I don't blame you for keeping quiet about the neighbor thing, Kmd.. You would have probably been lynched for it. I was positive the last Cerulean was a neighbor.

Crazy game... I can't believe I rode a miller claim to the endgame and won. Plus I got a revenge lynch on Mastin along the way... (Ha!)

BTW Mastin.. You shouldn't be so surprised that other players really dislike your self-described anti-town play. You'd be a much better player if you played a little more pro-town.

Top notch game, iamausername!

(BTW - I'm okay with posting our QT)

[Kublai Khan]

Also, I saw you post in that MD thread saying that you would be using a "green room" thread. I couldn't wait to see it...

[SerialClergyman]

2/3 is a majority, I'm sure Faraday won't mind.

http://www.quicktopic.com/43/H/S3sgQUM8zkD

I think SC was just hovering and waiting for Faraday to vote.

Did you get that impression by the flood of fluffly little posts I made since I awoke every couple of minutes to let Faraday know I was here and itching to hammer?

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry - that was impolitic of me. Zazie is of course the 4th member of the team, she just hasn't said anything in thread for months, so it slipped my mind. I've already said that her contribution was crucial to our team and creating KK as obvtown, so it's not a reflection on her game, just that i'm old and tired and she had been missing from the thread for ages. Apologies again.

[Xylthixlm]

-=Vote Count #67: The End of Day Four Vote Count=-

Lowell (6) - Faraday, Hayker, curiouskarmadog, SpyreX, SerialClergyman, Kmd4390

Kmd4390 (2) - Wickedestjr, Lowell
curiouskarmadog (1) - Xylthixlm

Not Voting (1) - Kublai Khan

6 to lynch.

Hey look I was the only person voting scum in this vote count.

Meh. Maybe I could have done better - although Kublai Khan and SerialClergyman got enough townies thinking they were town that I wouldn't have been able to get a lynch even if I had them pegged as scum - but the game was almost totally lost when Lowell was lynched. I was doing my best to stop it.

Also, the town was somewhat underpowered for the scum setup, mainly because of the mason/neighbor bastardry. The neighbors were practically vanilla townies, so the only real town power was two masons, a jailkeeper, a cop, and a vig... not nearly enough to counterbalance the scum.

[SpyreX]

After reading the scumchat sheesh. Now that I'm town you know my start was honest for pete's sake.

I wish CKD HAD killed KMD. I think with KMD dead I would have been all over Faraday without question.

I probably should have thought more about how easy the CKD wagon was going but good gravy that last explanation screamed "I'm scum."

Sometimes I forget in larger games lynching scum can lead to a loss.

In retrospect I still don't understand Namtam's play and I am flabbergasted about Lowell's delay / "you need me" business.

If I had just held on to Xyl / KMD and not got all tinfoil I would have been alright.

Or if I had listened and lynched SC for not taking the lynch-bait.

So it goes.

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry abotu that Spy, really came across as just dishonest.. My bad, you saw a lot more in those inital days than me, but I've never been one for the early parts of a game.

I'm not sure what you meant by this:

Or if I had listened and lynched SC for not taking the lynch-bait.

[SerialClergyman]

Oh, and I thought abotu how easy the ckd wagon was going, but before you voted the wagon was 'Wicked, KK, Xyl'.

Couldn't get more pro-town than that. Would have been very, very hard to pick. I'm actually quite surprised, given there was at least a fair chance of it being lylo, that Xyl and Wicked were so free about their votes.

[SpyreX]

That was part of it.

I meant when, yesterday, you wouldn't vote for Xyl while calling him scum. No numbers added up to it being lylo so it didn't make sense.

I should have held to it - but you did a damn good job feeling honest and town by the end of it.

There's something to be said for being a replacement. No distractions on the early game.

[SerialClergyman]

I was actually confused about that part - I really didn't see that as scummy. Miscalculation by me obviously, but I was arguing honestly when I said if I see two people as scummy and one of them tells me to vote him, I see no reason to obey that request.

I really did change it up a few times. Went with aggressive counter-argument early and ran myself into the ground, then tried to switch it up with a big case on Lowell to look tunneled-town and proactive, and then when that didn't work just tried to play for gut, really try to appear crestfallen. I guess I just got lucky that eventually it stuck.

I think ironically if I was a townie I'd probably have been lynched, because the temptation to OMGUS and just the anger at being unfairly targeted would have gotten to me more and I wouldn't have been able to back down...

You managed to look damn protown very early. I knew causing suspicion on you would be hard because of Achilles non-involvement, but your posts on day 4 with Xyl were really, really formidable. Lowell's non-defence helped us out a lot at that point I think.

[Xylthixlm]

SC, I was totally right about your motivation for not voting me. Your whole "well maybe he has a scum power role" excuse was so incredibly bogus; there's no possible reason I'd try to take a fall for a scumbuddy there, except as some sort of bizarre WIFOM.

Anyways, you were quite good at getting me to doubt my initial read on you. Well played.

[SerialClergyman]

No, I don't claim to have dealt with that bit well at all, I admit totally you guys both had me, I just didn't see it going in and am still not quite sure how you picked it and what you would have expected Serialtown to do in that situation. Was my mistake not switching my vote when I declared that Xyl and Lowell were likely scumbuddies? Or was it not being prepared to switch the moment you asked me to, Xyl?

[Xylthixlm]

I was expecting you to switch your vote if you were town, absolutely.