Serum & Steel 2: The Rise of Phyrexia--Endgame

[fferyllt]

Thank you Shadoweh!

Like I said in the dead thread, I did one good thing this game. The rest of my decisions were mostly bad.

[Natirasha]

So, my first real game on Mafiascum that I'd consider 'noteworthy' was the original Serum & Steel. I'm a real big fan of Magic(as anyone who even has a cursory knowledge of me knows), and once I came back, I knew I wanted to restart my 'trilogy' of games I tried in the past.

Coincidentally, the Mirrodin block had a sequel during my absence from Mafiascum, and, well, it seemed like a perfect way to restart the series. I always felt the serum & metal mechanics were interesting and had room for another game, so it all kinda worked out I feel.

So, doing a sequel does a lot of things. I wanted to keep the legacy of the first game, while twisting some of aspects of the first--Glissa is one example of that, that I feel was done well. She had two potential versions, and who knows what one she was. The 'Sunblast' flavor, another example, to help prevent flavorgaming and act as a red herring. They served their purpose.

I felt, with the amount of metal around, I needed multiple kills to help the game move forward. The multiball came off of that, especially since the Scars of Mirrodin block had a strong factional theme. This gave me the pseudo-narrative I always try to find for mafia games--The previous inhabitants of Mirrodin, led by Memnarch, were fighting to remove the two incoming forces.

Onto the nitty-gritty. The original setup had Garruk's role be a town/third party depending on which form he was, but Kdub quickly talked me out of it. Otherwise, the setup was mostly published as submitted.

I tried to flavorfully split the factions--the Mirrodin Pure had an easier time 'blending' with the normal populace, and that's how I framed them. The Phyrexians, I felt, could have a flavor of trickery and slowly taking over town power structures--abusing the serum mechanic, granting additional votes. Of course, they didn't actually use the powers to the way they could. Without fully stating it, I wanted to make it obvious that Karn was the one to give serum too--he had two abilities! They didn't, and Titus played a very heavy-handed game day one that got her killed. The Mirrodin Pure faction played much better, until Falcon's ill-timed survivor claim. Spoiler alert, I have said before in Mafia Discussion that I will never use a 'basic' survivor in my games.

As to the play, I have really nothing to say. The last days were painful to watch, and the first days were okay. The town had a few good moves from Tammy/Shadoweh's seruming, but otherwise kinda ran around with no direction.

This game was fun, and I had other thoughts that I've forgotten at the moment, if they come to me, I'll post.

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

Other scum PT was fun to read. Thanks for modding Nat.

[Tattletale]

GG!

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

I think Pie played really well overall from other scumteam and I actually thought Titus had a good day game. It was just unfortunate that she couldn't balance it to not look too obviously town.

Setup-wise, I think everything's been said in the dead thread. I don't think having a town doc and a scum doc was a particularly good setup design as it was just asking to be cc'd. Survivor was probably the best claim I could come up with at the time but I think I should have gone with something more intricate. In some ways, we were OP as well as the other team couldn't kill us but I pretty much agree with Pie's thoughts that it wasn't very balanced. It was still fun and I think this was the best outcome possible for everyone.

[Natirasha]

See, I thought your faction was way more powerful overall. I agree the scumteam balance could use work, though.

[Natirasha]

The doctor doubling up actually did come up in our review, but given the players didn't know their role and the fact this was a relatively low-powered game in a way, I messed up there. I agree that it could have been better done though.

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

Yeah, but putting in a role just asking to be cc'd severely cut off that balance. It would have been very much better if there was not a replica town role of a scum role and you nerfed the power of our faction a bit to compensate. A Doc isn't normally very useful for scum who have the power to protect all their buddies as long as they were alive so you can kinda see that my immediate thought was that it was meant to be a "town" looking fake-claim. Granted there was a vig but it was still a stretch to imagine a role just to protect from the vig.

Pedit: I agree.

[pieguyn]

this dead QT was fun to read

sorry F-16. and i'm sorry if anything else i said this game offended anyone. i think the stress of being scum just got to me really hard :/

this is the first time I was able to get invested in a scum game, and I think I got a lot of experience from it. there were a lot of times when I was like "OMG what do I do here", since I had no idea what I was doing half the time. I just hope ppl stop trying to read me based off my tone/conviction and nothing else.

gg all and thx for the game Nat, even if I still think this setup was really ridiculous

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

Don't worry about it. I just hope you didn't think that I actually feel trying to get someone to replace out is a legitimate scum strategy.

[pieguyn]

I never actually thought that, sorry if there was any confusion over it. what I meant was just that I thought you were deliberately trying to antagonize Tammy, and then the replace out happened unintentionally. although it doesn't look like that was the reason behind the replace out to begin with, so I'm not sure what happened

oh well

[pieguyn]

I think Pie played really well overall from other scumteam and I actually thought Titus had a good day game. It was just unfortunate that she couldn't balance it to not look too obviously town.

<3 thanks. I don't think I played that well tbh, I thought it was obvious since like D2 when I was lol pushing mastin for no reason. your team played better imo

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

The only thing that seriously tipped me off was that PV scumread because there was no way either of us should have been scumreading him in this game.

[Shadoweh]

Can I say that I'm annoyed my role pm lied to me? >:V
BLINK IS NOT INK! I don't care if the Inkmoth's ability is to fake it, my role pm was clearly untrue!

[Natirasha]

Can I say that I'm annoyed my role pm lied to me? >:V
BLINK IS NOT INK! I don't care if the Inkmoth's ability is to fake it, my role pm was clearly untrue!

I never said that there was another Blinkmoth Nexus, just Blinkmoth!

I know this was kinda underhanded.

[Shadoweh]

That's what I'm saying. >:C There isn't another Blinkmoth anywhere.

[Shadoweh]

Oh yeah, and sorry for lying at the end about seruming Kagami. >_>
If I'd done that it wouldn't be prisoner's dilemna. Either I kept seruming Kagami and she won because I was making her unkillable, or I didn't and Pie won when Kagami serum-died, it would have meant town couldn't win in 3pLYLO. Peregrine was also obviously lying about being bp related to factions, if that were true I daresay he would have told people it was multiball ages ago!

[Cephrir]

:ptsd:

[Kagami]

Thanks for modding nati~

[Kagami]

I have some little quibbles with the setup, but the idea is broadly nice.

I think the endgame we saw here is going to arise very frequently in a multiball setup with multiple bulletproofs. The original version of PV's role would have been better, imo, and you shouldn't have backed down on it.

[massive]

Thanks for modding, and let us know when the next Magic-themed game is coming, so I can pre-in.

I now have all day to read the dead QT which I'm sure I will dread.

[Antihero]

lol i trolled kagami into thinking i was scum

that would have been awesome, but sadly that was not the case

[Antihero]

both scumteams thought the other was going to kill me

...awesome...

[Kagami]

Indeed~

All signs pointed to mhork-scum, and I was correct about him mixing up the two games because he was scum in both, but I found it hard to believe that the scumteam with a serum-giver would have a mailman.

[Kagami]

(leaving you as scum in large part by PoE)