Things I Like - The Mafia Game - Game Over

[#HBC | Kary]

Boom wishes he got the joat role lol

 

[Pythag]

Boom wishes he got the joat role lol

I wish he had too.

 

[Malakandra]

I wish I could have traded roles with Wam lol. Or atleast targets. It was nice having a power role though, even if I don't feel like I used it to its full capabilities.

 

[BoomFrog]

I wish he had too.

Nah. You used it better then I would have.

 

[bessie]

Congratulations mafia team on a very impressive win!

Thank you giraffelasergun for running this game!


Brief shout outs:

Gorf /Heury/Osie – Sorry I did not have an opportunity to interact with you, play again soon!

Dark Horse – You were not even on my radar which means I totally read you as town the entire game.

somitomi – I’m still having trouble reading you because you’re a remarkably consistent player. Which is a good way to play.

LaserGuy – Town. Why does the game always spiral out of control once I’m out of it?

Pythag – Good use of your power you played this just right. I was still reading you as non-town until the end though.

FrozenFlame – I think this is the third game we’ve played together (two were on xkcd) and I still feel as if we have never directly interacted, which is unfortunate because I feel we would work well as a team; perhaps next game.

Chaco – I can’t fault you for getting stuck in a tunnel, as I am a notorious tunneler myself, but at the same time you need to keep your mind open to all possibilities.

Wam – Welcome to the forum, I hope you enjoyed your only game where most of the players didn’t know your meta and you made it to endgame. I think that won’t happen often going forward.

Malakandra – You played very well, your instincts are good I recommend you do not make a conscious effort to alter your playstyle.

Kary – Remarkable play, I had nothing on you except your focus on Zen early game, but I would have tunneled you to oblivion for it given the chance.

fontisian – MVP, extraordinary game! I still can’t believe how well you worked this, I would have been all over you D3. We should probably plan on being on the same team in future games.

BoomFrog – O Bioluminescent Master, you know I love you but you sure do try my patience.

Sabrar – Now no one can eliminate you N1 in any game we both play. You’re welcome.

Xivii – Thank you for sharing your slot so that I could play, and for the unique perspective on the Zen thought process. Given the opportunity I will use this information against you in future games.



Some game thoughts:

I feel the setup was town sided. I thought the JoAT was going to flip indie.

I think town focused too much on putting together scum teams and that is what lost the game for town, I feel D2 especially was a waste. I don’t do much team analysis and that is why.

Maybe more later if I think of anything else

 

[Wam]

I don't normally do shout outs but I think both pythag and fontisian deserve one.

Pythag you were the only reason it was even close for town!

Font well done for getting that far. Even managed to have me doubting if pythag was as confirmed as they should have been.

 

[BoomFrog]

I think town focused too much on putting together scum teams and that is what lost the game for town

I have been reflecting on my failure and I agree this was what did it. On objective scumminess I'd have yeeted Fonti D3, but when she showed she was happy to go for Pythag, DH or LG I couldn't place her on a valid team. The highest suspicion was Fonti-Pythag since Fonti drove the yeet off pythag, but then D4 that proved incorrect. Team analysis is valuable and has been a reliable tool in 80% of the games I've played town, but in that 20% town has always lost. (Newbie New Year being another example). I need to have a point where I say, alright, nothing makes sense, so there must be some real bussing going on and I'm just going to go for the scummiest person.

Also, I played D5 wrong. I let pride cloud my priorities. If Fonti was town I didn't need to worry about convincing Fonti I was town, but if Fonti was scum I needed to convince FrozenFlame to yeet wam first. This is the exact post where I lost the game: #2995 I was growing suspicious that Fonti's choice to yeet me first was opportunistic, but I convinced myself that was just the smart play from Fonti as town or scum. I should have changed to addressing Frozen instead of Fonti.

 

[#HBC | Kary]

here's my abridged player thoughts:

wam: don't voteblock yourself.

also, I look forward to getting misyeeted next game because I continue to play anti-town

 

[LaserGuy]

Quick shout outs:

Fontisian - Really exceptional game. Even though I was reading you correctly most of the time, you are so slippery and so good at maintaining your tone that it's very difficult to pin you down and I was constantly doubting my read on you at every juncture.

Kary - You also played a very strong game. I never really suspected you at all and am kind of disturbed how often your thoughts and mine synced up all things considered. You and fonti really put on a master class in scum theatre.

Chaco - Sorry for giving you a hard time this game. I genuinely did not realize that you were intending on playing this game differently and it pinged me pretty strongly because you've been so consistently townie in our previous games. Pretty much everything followed from that. I'd like to think I was coming around to the idea of you being Town by the end of D2 and maybe if you had lived we could have figured this out together. I will probably have to moderate my own approach in future games anyway as sitting on a bad tunnel really hurt my read accuracy this game.

Dark Horse - Sorry you had to go. You play tonally very solid and you're another slot that I never really seriously considered as mafia until you replaced out.

Frozen Flame - I was really impressed how well you were able to pin down Kary the moment DH flipped. Looking back I think your content this game was really solid outside of one notable thing and you were on the right track more often than not.

Pythag - You used your role effectively in clutch moments and kept Town in the game when it counted. I also felt you managed to do a very good job of making yourself appear townie without obviously drawing attention to yourself as a strong PR.

BoomFrog - I will have to spend some more time looking at your content this game and trying to figure out why you didn't come across as townie to me this game. Then again, it may be that my meta on you just isn't as good as I think it is because I haven't played against you as scum since Crossover I don't think (also, as we've discussed, the bar for passing as Town was very high this game... just unfortunate the scum was just that good). I probably gave you too hard of a time for not including team analysis on your case for fonti and should have just accepted that you were unsure and stuck with that... I just didn't understand what you were trying to do.

Sabrar - I was happy to see you playing as Sabrar this game, even if it continued the unfortunate tradition of you being shot N1.

Synchronicity (Xivii and Bessie Hydra) - I think you guys had a bit of bad luck and maybe some timing issues that hurt you more than anything else. You were on the right track with Kary and fonti and I think if you had made it to D3 you probably would have been able to put this together. I wish I had been able to save you in D2 but I had already spent too much of my townie credit earlier in the day and didn't have the influence I needed to push the Town votes off of you. Your contrasting styles complement each other very well.

GLG - This was a really fun game with an intriguing setup. Thanks for hosting!

Somitomi - I think you made some solid reads early in the game and FWIW, I was pretty sure you were Town basically right from the start. I feel like your cautious style and (relatively) low activity probably makes you an easy target on this site, and a lot of the pressure against you was definitely coming from scum.

Malakandra - You played a very solid game and did a good job checking all of the townie boxes. I think in D2 especially you ended up too deep in your tunnel and were making a lot of assumptions that weren't justified, particularly, assuming that wam was scum and then making a bunch of reads based on that (FWIW, I was guilty of similar things myself). Worth noting that of the six wagons that hit 4+ votes on D1, (you, Gorf, Frozen, Chaco, wam, somi), only the Gorf RVS wagon actually hit scum; all of the others were Town and most of these were driven by Town. Wagon analysis can be very useful, but it's hard to make it work with only a single townflip.

Wam - Your luck with the neighborizer is kind of hilarious. I was pretty firm on you being Town by middle of D3 and I think you came across tonally very Town in LYLO. Despite that, I'm not sure if there was much you could have done to beat fonti at that point. But I noticed that you spent most of your time in LYLO trying to convince fonti of things, when you should have been trying to talk to pythag, who was more likely to be Town by your analysis.

 

[#HBC | Kary]

Spoiler: why boomfrog is wrong and a clown (why baker joat is broken and a mistake)

The Jaot role is tricky because in general the role as written is going to be far weaker then like, 2-shot cop. But the 1-shot of redirect has a high variance. Like, if you ran this setup with a dozen other groups, I bet none of them would have the same result. So many things had to line up for that play to have worked.

Pythag had to miss with the cop check (because if he hit he'd have claimed the clear D3 probably, but scum would know he was JOAT). He has to lie as town convincingly during mass claim, which is risky and skillful play. And he has to correctly guess the NE target and not get role blocked and guess a scum target.

The move was skillful, risky and a bit lucky and had a high payoff. I don't think it was unfair, and it wasn't bad modding to include it. It is high variance (a low chance for a big swing) and I totally get how that feels unfair since we are in the reality where it happened. But being mad that pythag tricked you into thinking he was a baker is like me being mad that Fonti tricked me into thinking she was town.

It's very easy to use a town bus driver to great effect when town has other power roles. No offence but if pythag can manage it its not rocket science.
It actually becomes even easier to use when town is doing badly, because there are fewer obvious townies and more mafia to hit. It's like a huge catchup mechanic for town, and what can scum do about it? Correctly guess and roleblock them?

We're talking about a role which has a built-in ability to mislead scum by giving bread. The vast, vast majority of roles do one thing only, even in PR madness setups. Sure, I got outplayed by Pythag because when I asked him whether he considered NOT using his ability, he only called himself dumb in his SECOND post a couple minutes later. If I was a better mafia player, I would have realized that his slight hesitation was a clear tell that he had a literally-never-seen-before baker JOAT and played accordingly.

I'm not mad because I got fooled by Pythag, i'm mad because I signed up to play mafia and this role ****ed with that in multiple ways.
a) It's not reasonable to expect scum to find and deal with this role. I think I covered that already.

b) It's bad design to have a role that only sometimes completely dictates the game. If you saw a town warlock, who Night 1 gets to guess 3 players, and if they correctly hit all 3 mafia, the game just ends there- you'd probably realize that it's a stupid role that undermines the ability of everyone else to play the mafia game. It doesn't add texture or make for interesting situations. It defeats the object of playing in the first place. Sure, that role would also take skill to use successfully- but that should never come at the cost of the rest of the game.

c) The game is balanced around mafia being able to kill every Night. Something like a doctor save can be hugely powerful for town, clearing the doctor and the player who was saved. But even then the town will be in Mylo as opposed to Lylo, and will still have to fight to yeet mafia. Being able to simultaneously save and kill a player literally set us back an entire Day phase, throwing a huge wrench in all of our plans. Scum are meant to be the informed minority and part of that is being able to predict how the game will play out. Suddenly being put into overtime in what is purportedly a normal mafia game would take the cake for the stupidest situation I've ever been in playing mafia, except I once got my alignment changed in between two cop checks on the same Night.

Suggesting that me being mad at some bull**** role is the same as you being fooled by fonti is completely wrong, for two reasons. One, it diminishes the depth and strength of my distaste for this nonsense. I'm sure you hate being wrong but I would rather quit playing mafia than play with this kind of baloney, and I've been playing for eight years now. Second, you deserved to get fooled. You saw all the signs that were there and you ignored them. Pythag played a bit like he had a PR, and hesitated at one point. If he had claimed town bus driver cop baker joat in his first post, and I assumed he was joking, maybe you would have an argument here.

 

[BoomFrog]

Expectations getting broken is always frustrating and everyone's got a different line for what an acceptable role is. I do totally agree the setup was town-sided and the role was hyper swingy.

 

[#HBC | Kary]

Expectations getting broken is always frustrating and everyone's got a different line for what an acceptable role is. I do totally agree the setup was town-sided and the role was hyper swingy.

can you please not say something concise and reasonable because then I feel like I'm not allowed to be mad anymore

edit; as a postscript, I don't think that 'people have different opinions and expectations' is a good argument. I think the role is too much, and should at least come with a disclaimer. I will say it loudly and clearly because I think this kind of roles are insidious and I think they're bad for the game.

 

[Xivii]

Kary, think you gave up too early. Your plans aren't always going to go the way you want them. They are going to get disrupted and you have to adjust. Overall, your play was incredible. Even though bessie and I thought you were scum, you were playing too townie for any of our arguments to have any effect. I should have claimed N0 cop #necromafia.

Fonti, would you mind if I started a religion in your name?

Somi, I honestly did start go get town vibes talking to you at the end of the day, but under the high pressure, I didn't know what to do. I'm even more impressed by your scum play seeing how identical it is to your town play.

 

[Xivii]

Chaco, I knew that when I was town reading you and defending you D1, you'd get the idea I was trying to pocket you. I just feel like I understand how to read you now after the past three games so even with your playstyle change, I still felt you were town.

Boom, you must stop letting AtE affect you! I was flabbergasted when you bought into Fonti's AtE at the beginning of D3. Your giant case was also spot on. I was sad to see it thrown out. It may be because I just haven't seen you as scum in a while, but like Chaco I also feel like I have a solid way to read you. I think bessie and I had you as solid town throughout. Although Day 2 did have some fry, his eyes narrowed moments. Do you think you'll do the interview questions btw?

 

[#HBC | Kary]

Kary, think you gave up too early. Your plans aren't always going to go the way you want them. They are going to get disrupted and you have to adjust. Overall, your play was incredible. Even though bessie and I thought you were scum, you were playing too townie for any of our arguments to have any effect. I should have claimed N0 cop #necromafia.

I was miserable and couldn't play any more. I had felt frustrated and handicapped by not having a 3rd member to work with. I was not lying during Day 3 when I said I stopped caring or thinking about the game. Then the Day phase got dragged out by 48 hours and osie didn't post anything of substance. To have that slot flip and reflect badly on me, I knew I would have to fight to control the narrative and pretend it was nothing to do with me. When I saw frozen feeling validated, full of energy from the scum flip, I couldn't fight that. The game had become twice as hard and we were not rewarded for our efforts at all. I thought about posting my role PM I was so tilted. I'm glad I replaced when I did. I know it wasn't fair on fonti, but I hope she will understand. I was miserable and couldn't play any more.

 

[BoomFrog]

Boom, you must stop letting AtE affect you!

Reading AtE is one of my major and very successful tools. I just need to temper it with other considerations, but I'd be crippled if I threw it out. Chaco and pythag reads were pure AtE this game. And I got over the AtE of Fonti mostly, the reason I balked at the end D3 was I couldn't form a scum team for her. And I knew if I missyeeted town!Fonti then I'd be next and we'd lose.

Edit: D5 I think I had succumbed to the AtE, it's true.

Do you think you'll do the interview questions btw?

What the what now?

 

[Xivii]

Laser, I'm amazed by how quickly you were able to read Mala and Somi. There's a type of player (I'll call them type J ) like you, me, fonti, and bessie where I think one of our biggest weaknesses is being too much in our own heads and not having enough trust in one another's insights. Any one person can only see so much through their narrow perspective, so optimal play requires utilizing one another to cover each other's blind spots. When there's enough people telling you that your case is faulty—such as with your Chaco case—it should be cause for reevaluation. Again to bring up B99, if we had trusted each other's insights more, it would have saved us from going down so many wrong paths!

 

[Xivii]

Reading AtE is one of my major and very successful tools. I just need to temper it with other considerations, but I'd be crippled if I threw it out. Chaco and pythag reads were pure AtE this game. And I got over the AtE of Fonti mostly, the reason I balked at the end was I couldn't form a scum team for her. And I knew if I missyeeted town!Fonti then I'd be next and we'd lose.


What the what now?

It's such an easily exploitable tool though. You said after Sumting that you couldn't use it on me anymore. What makes you feel that's not the case for everyone else?

You were nominated to be interviewed a while back: https://smashboards.com/threads/dg-interview-thread-walrus-toasted.295686/post-24062892

 

[BoomFrog]

I was miserable and couldn't play any more. I had felt frustrated and handicapped by not having a 3rd member to work with. I was not lying during Day 3 when I said I stopped caring or thinking about the game. Then the Day phase got dragged out by 48 hours and osie didn't post anything of substance. To have that slot flip and reflect badly on me, I knew I would have to fight to control the narrative and pretend it was nothing to do with me. When I saw frozen feeling validated, full of energy from the scum flip, I couldn't fight that. The game had become twice as hard and we were not rewarded for our efforts at all. I thought about posting my role PM I was so tilted. I'm glad I replaced when I did. I know it wasn't fair on fonti, but I hope she will understand. I was miserable and couldn't play any more.

Reading the scum chat it was clear that you were ligit on edge from the beginning. Keeping moral up as scum is hard, a big part of Fonti's contribution was keeping moral up. I agree it was best for you to replace out, I don't think anyone faults you.

Oh hun, you could have posted a case with that level of fire against Boom.

Kary, I just want to say that you really digging into Fonti D3 was a critical part of winning the game. If you'd followed the above advice I think I would have put 2 and 2 together and believed in the Fonti-Kary team.

My main worry this game is that we get boned by some night actions

 

[Xivii]

Pythag, your play was hot the last half of the game. I don't think I've ever seen that side of you. Were you playing under the radar during the first half intentionally? Or was the game just moving too fast? It was frustrating town reading you and you having town read us at the start only to scum read us out of nowhere . How come you investigated Sabrar btw?

wam, good to play with you again! I'm Zenni on xkcd btw. I'm not sure if you picked that up. I was both the one to make that meta point in favor of you being town and the one to vote you.

Mala, your confidence was frustrating. I could see how you thought I was doing the same thing as Sumting though, especially with the call for Boom to yeet Somi over wam. I was also surprised by the way you dismissed my Kary case. I think the biggest improvement you could make to your play is to continue reevaluating throughout the day. Day 2 it felt like you came into it with the idea that wam/Sync was scum and then spent the day trying to push that yeet through rather than trying to figure things out. Once you're under the belief that you're right, it keeps your from seeing other possibilities.

 

[Pythag]

Pythag, your play was hot the last half of the game. I don't think I've ever seen that side of you. Were you playing under the radar during the first half intentionally? Or was the game just moving too fast? It was frustrating town reading you and you having town read us at the start only to scum read us out of nowhere . How come you investigated Sabrar btw?

not sure what you mean with my later play, only thing I did that made a difference in my opinion was the bus drive.

I wasn't trying to play under the radar, I actually wanted to specifically apologize to you, and the rest of the town because I ended up not having the time that I thought I would, so most of my posts in the beginning were on my phone while I was at work. But, that isn't that great for good reads, and leads to more 'seat of the pants' decisions and what have you. None of that is exactly pro town, and I don't like letting the team down!

The big write up I did right before yeeting laserguy was the time I truly got to sit down at a computer and sort things out.

As to why I flipped on you, I think it's because I was townreading Kary harder than you. I really need to trust my gut when I noticed like twice that Kary was missing the point, but I literally thought 'kary's too smart to miss the point, is xivii missing the point?" Then when you turned on me, I was like..oooooooh, yeah, xivii IS the instigator in this. I saw that as you arguing in bad faith, so I just went with it.

It's kinda annoying the more anti-town Kary is the more I town read him. lol.

I investigated Sab actually because I thought he would be the most unassuming role.
Figuring that mafia could potentially target the people talking (like chaco) or the power players, or something. Sab seemed innocent enough because of his stance on how he made reads and played the game. Little did I know literally all of us targeted Sab that night.
Ahh well, live and learn.

 

[Pythag]

No offence but if pythag can manage it its not rocket science.

This is town!Kary

 

[fontisian]

Kary, think you gave up too early. Your plans aren't always going to go the way you want them. They are going to get disrupted and you have to adjust. Overall, your play was incredible. Even though bessie and I thought you were scum, you were playing too townie for any of our arguments to have any effect. I should have claimed N0 cop #necromafia.

Fonti, would you mind if I started a religion in your name?

Somi, I honestly did start go get town vibes talking to you at the end of the day, but under the high pressure, I didn't know what to do. I'm even more impressed by your scum play seeing how identical it is to your town play.

Depends on the details.

 

[osieorb18]

This was a rough one. I think #HBC | Kary was a huge part of the win, couldn't have pulled it out in the end without his bussing.

Yeah, I wasn't going to be able to add a lot other than avoiding messing things up.

 

[Xivii]

not sure what you mean with my later play, only thing I did that made a difference in my opinion was the bus drive.

I feel like you say something like this every time I compliment you. I thought your play was great N3 forward and you made all the logical choices from there. You also outsmarted scum with your claim.

 

[Pythag]

I feel like you say something like this every time I compliment you. I thought your play was great N3 forward and you made all the logical choices from there. You also outsmarted scum with your claim.

Yeah, it happens. I’m incredibly hard on myself, amd always want to do better, it’s hard to see the positives for all the negatives, so thank you for that

 

[Xivii]

Depends on the details.

Tisi?

 

[fontisian]

Tisi?

No.

 

[Chaco]

Lmao it still hits the same.

And yeah Xivii I didn’t know how to feel about it, and you mixed with Bessie was making me paranoid. I was properly reading the interactions but completely tunneling on you. So yeah I have to work on that.

Boom you’re exactly right it’s a great tool, but it’s almost very easy to be fluid when you have a style like that. Personally I don’t think my tone changes at all from town to scum, but it’s been years now. I’m perma rolling VT. Lol.

Pythag you did awesome literally just as hyped in the spoiler chat with the claim and the drive. You did great.

 

[Strong Badam]

Quite the LyLo this was. Didn't catch much of the game but what I read was pretty good. Cool stuff and congrats to mafia!

 

[#HBC | FrozeηFlame]

Yeah, I wasn't going to be able to add a lot other than avoiding messing things up.

ah yes, exactly as I thought

osieorb18 how far are you in the catchup? any thoughts? I know its a **** ton of reading to do not trying to be an ass, just low on time here

if you're scum and your mates are just coaching you to roll over and die to not create papertrail not gonna hold that against you lmao

 

[#HBC | Gorf]

also crazy that legit all three scum put in for replacements this game, not a great reflection on the dedication of smashboards players to their scum team lol

Trust me I hate myself for not being able to give it what I should’ve been able to give. I LOVE playing scum, I like it more than playing town (someone had said that they say that they’re always scumread as town and town read as scum when they’re scum. I actually AM always scumread as town and town read as scum lol). There were a couple of times through the game where I legit realized I didn’t understand what was going on because of the difference in format (I usually seldom phone post unless it’s a quick take, but this time I have no computer to play on). I hate that I had to sub out but it was for the better for my team and for the game as a whole. I’m still taking the w though

Also maybe I have the privilege of information but I really can’t believe that you guys all had a boner for Dark Horse at the beginning of the game. It took me being relentless against him to finally make a hard stance in spite of the fact that he was trying to be present the whole time first 24/36 hrs. Idk to town!me that’s early scum play 101

ggs to everyone though.

 

[osieorb18]

ah yes, exactly as I thought

I mean, it was more that I just came out of a tiring scum game immediately after a tiring town game and I was about to go on hiatus when I was like "I should make sure GLG's game is okay first."

 

[Xivii]

Frozen, I'd say you were one of the key assets to this game as it came to yeeting DH and Kary. Despite my tunneling, there were some times where I had strong town pings on you, I just could not get over your Fonti read ಠ_ಠ. Also, I'm just straight-up paranoid after CV.

Bessie, excellent reads:

Spoiler: bessie's first read list

Woof
Synchronicity
Sabrar
LaserGuy
Malakandra
Dark Horse
BoomFrog
Wam
Chaco
FrozenFlame
Pythag
somitomi
Gorf/fonti
Kary
Grr

I think we did pretty well as a hydra, utilizing each other's insights. Although, I think I threw you off some, particularly with Malakandra. There's something I've been thinking about. You've stated that you don't do behavioral reads, but I honestly think you do instinctively. It's like your right brain is highly active, but your left brain doesn't know how to communicate with / translate it. I noticed this with your early Gorf/Fonti read here, your read of pythag in Flavorless, and your read of Hari in NNY (and perhaps of scum in TWWOWS) as I stated here:

I get the sense from Fonti that I do from your read on pythag in Flavorless and Hari in NNY in that they are on the peripheral of your scumdar but haven't quite locked it in.

The fact that Fonti did turn out to be scum supports my theory. You tend to have these edge of consciousness reads that you put on the back burner and those reads tend to be the most accurate. So something to try out is to be particularly aware of that process in the future. Perhaps halfway through the Day, assess who you've been background speculating to be scum, try to work out where those feelings are coming from, and to put them into words. We must hydra again.


btw @all a large portion of the posts that were made were hybridized. So if you couldn't tell which head it was some of the time, it was because it was a mix of both of our words. Even within a single paragraph. So it wasn't that one post was fully zen or fully bessie all of the time.

 

[Xivii]

GLG, great hosting as always. You were on top of everything. I enjoyed seeing the things you liked and Zero Escape is now one of my favorite things to have played/read.