Mafia [MAFIA] [GAME OVER, TOWN VICTORY] The Classic Setup: Game 1

...lol, the sad thing is, I was actually sort of hoping I'd be the nightkill this time. XD

Ah well. I'm almost positive Ghost is Mafia. Like, I'm 85% sure of it. @Calxiyn, what do you think? We're probably right, and if we take Ghost out, town will win. But if that 15% part of me that isn't sure is right, and Mish fooled us, the Mafia will, tomorrow, equal the amount of townies (one, lol) and overrun us.

Either way, this was a really good game, and I had fun.

I trust your judgement on this more than my own atm. XD So what do you think? Do we even need to bother with discussion, or do you think we should vote now?

 

If Mish fooled us she would totally deserve MVP, a SPECIAL MVP.

When we were talking about it yesterday, it was a tie sort of situation between Mixt and Mish, but we were sure of Ghost and Cstar. Now with Mixt dead, and both of our sureness on ghost I think it's safe to say that Ghost, for all the reasons we said is Mafia.

(If Ghost is I'll be super happy, not just beside we win but she and Cstar both fit into the analysis of the Mafia M.O)

But honestly I'm not lynching so I can be right, I'm lynching so we can all win xD if their roles were reserved I would still take out the right one anyway.

Mish convinced me yesterday of her townness, and if she had been like that all game I think we would have no doubt, she's really good at making analysis posts and she was holding out on us xD

Anyway yeah I think we can just vote now. Ghost and Cstar didn't really say anything else after we caught them out so I don't think Ghosf can defend herself today xD

##Vote: Ghost

 

Okay, cool. Thanks.

##Vote: Cstar[DOUBLEPOST=1468588188][/DOUBLEPOST]Sorry, sorry, I haven't even got out of bed yet and I literally just woke up. XD

##Vote: Ghost

There, that's better. XD

 

N'aww, now I wish I were mafia.

##Vote: Ghost

 

DAY 5 FINAL VOTE COUNT:​

Ghost (3) - Marushi, Calxiyn, Mish

Not voting (1) - Ghost​

With 4 players alive, it takes 3 votes to hammer.

HAMMER. DAY 1 HAS ENDED.

VOTES ARE LOCKED. DO NOT POST.

Ghost has been lynched. He was Mafia Goon.

The Mafia have been eliminated. Town wins.​

Survivors:

@Marushi
@Calxiyn
@Mish

Postgame begins now.

Mafia Chat: http://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/68FetmPtF3nN
Graveyard Chat: http://discord.gg/xYjNrX7

 

Spoiler

"I'm suggesting we kill Krowley and hope we can point some blame at Cal or Al. I have a feeling one of those two are the cop, and I think they might know Midnight's alignment."

"Cal totally guessed my strategy either it really was amateur or she is just really good at this."

"Yes it would be a better strategy to kill Cal ourselves debatably but I think we're pretty close to convincing the town to lynch her themselves."

Hahaha. I love reading the quick topic it's like 25% about myself.

"Judge just handed us the victory pretty much." dramatic irony.


But yes that was a great game everyone! I'm glad you were able to trust me on this one Marushi :P

 

Feel free to talk while I assemble thinkings.

 

Good job everyone! Having seen who all the Mafia were there were a couple of moments where I feared for the Town (Judge clearing Mixt for instance) but you all pulled through. Nice work guys!

 

I’m kind of prewriting this under assumptions about how people may have felt about this game’s ending. I know some people might feel like it was an unsatisfying win but I think you guys shouldn’t think so because you guys won fair and square.

Sure. Mixt got modkilled and it sucks but things in real life happen, unfortunately they ended up modkilled instead of switched because there were people who just went inactive and dropped out which is a shame because emergency situations are what the subs I think SHOULD be for.

Anyway, if anyone was feeling like I kind of just “gave up” and the ending with the confession it really wasn’t supposed to be that way. I was hoping because of previous events in the game where people overanalyzed things that maybe my last comment could have eventually led to people thinking Mish, Ghost, and I were a scum team because of how we ‘didn’t think of Mish as mafia until Midnight died’ without clear explanation.

I really did shoot myself in the foot at the end, and I didn’t think there was any way whatsoever to come back from my clearly obvious mess-up so I figured the best I could do was hope to confuse and maybe get people to think I was going to heavily after Mixt because they were town. But then I knew Mixt got modkilled the next night and knew at that point there wasn’t much I could do.

It was a really strong town play, especially Judge as the cop. I unfortunately got my head wrapped in Cal maybe being the cop but by the time I was going to suggest killing Cal, Judge had basically cleared her.

So while the ending was a little lackluster, congrats to the town. I’m going to take this as a big ‘what not to do as a mafia member’ lesson.

 

Well that was a good game. XD I read through the chats and everything, but I've never even sort of used Discord before, and when I signed up just now, it won't let me see any of the new messages, so yeah, idk what I did. XD

I will note, though, that just because I want to be right doesn't mean I think I am right, and I tried to be open to other ideas and rethink everything I did and said if it didn't line up with someone else's ideas, especially Cal's on day 4, because she had really good instincts throughout the game. Though, I would also like to say that just because I didn't say something sometimes didn't mean I didn't see something. Sometimes, I was going hard against certain people I thought were probably town just to see how many people would agree with me, or I pretended to agree with someone I thought might be Mafia to trick them into thinking they had me fooled. I actually did think that Mish was probably town during the majority of day 4, but I was mainly pushing against her to A. Get people to provide me with evidence to support it, while I also tried to look for it myself, and B. Keep pushing at her so that the Mafia would keep pushing too, and maybe slip up. And also, a little bit of C: Because I thought she was probably town, and I know that I'm almost always wrong, so I assumed that I might be wrong about her being town, and was trying to make myself view everyone as guilty until proven otherwise, simply because if I thought she was town, she'd probably turn up Mafia. XD[DOUBLEPOST=1468606265][/DOUBLEPOST]But yeah, that was a really draining game for me. XD I was trying something new: In my last games, I would nitpick everyone's posts and get into huge wall-posts quote wars with people to try to prove they were Mafia, and I also posted all my reasoning for how I got there and every single thought I had, and that did nothing for me except prove to people that I was trying so I was probably town. So this time I was trying to be more inquisitive and directly deal with people, instead of combing for tiny tells and stuff. Obvi, lol, I still have a LOT to learn. XD

 

That was close WOW

I can't believe we managed to pull it out at the very end. Good game to everyone.


I'll definitely have to check out the quicktopics and dead chat in a bit haha.

 

Spoiler

 

Was entertaining to watch from the outside. Good job all.

 

You all did wonderfully! I enjoyed being able to read and watch how everything played out.

Maru, you did an amazingly amazing job and thank you so much for taking over for me <3 I really appreciate it and damnnnnn gurl. You did like a million times better than I ever could have.

Congratz everyone!

Oh and @Judge Sunrose I really thought for a second there that you were Mafia in the end. You totally had me dude.

 

Well said. Town deserves ample credit for keeping their head in the game and making good plays. Solid first win.

I do, however, feel fucking TERRIBLE for Ghost :'D

 

Postgame​

Be forewarned, I am harsh and unforgiving. I have trouble giving comforting feedback, but do not mistake that for disdain. I want you all to keep playing, so please don't be scared off by my criticism. If I care about a particular issue, that means I want you to improve on it.

This couldn't have happened with you guys, so thank you for playing, and hope to see you again next time!

Town​

The Town in this game finally got a win! For a game full of new players, this was a slam dunk. They also nearly lost multiple times. They had an amazing cop who made some bad choices, and ultimately their victory hinged on mafia making a mistake instead of Town reasoning. That said, you came through in the end, and that's what counts, so congratulations.

How the Town can improve (everyone should read these):

DO NOT SPECULATE ABOUT THE COP.
More than half of the town outed themselves as "not the cop" by speculating or asking questions in public about the cop role. This is a terrible idea. If Mafia were smart about it, they could have narrowed it down to Judge or Mish within the first two Days with all of the information flying around. It's a miracle the cop survived. Some examples:

The Mafia could have already known that Calxiyn, Cat~, Marushi and Midnight Star are clearly not the cop. Count the lynch, and you have 5/10 potential cops eliminated in the first Day. That would be a travesty against a more experienced Mafia.

Provide cover for the cop.
Next time, try to become the person the Mafia kill so that the cop can live as long as possible. If that means pretending to be the cop by being "too sure" of someone's reads, that's fine. The Town win is more important than any Vanilla's survival. Calxiyn did a great job by strongly clearing al215, and might have been night killed if it weren't for all of Town calling her out for it. This was something a player did right, so take notice and never, ever, try to stop another player from drawing the cop hunt onto themselves. One of those times you might actually make the mafia notice and kill the real cop ahead of their time.

Force inactives into the light and don't stop until you have a read.
Every player you suspected up to Judge's reveal was someone who was already in public crosshairs and had already posted a lot of content. You were not going to bring up any new information by pushing for people who are already on the radar. Secondly, there are more types of inactives than non-posters. A player should only be considered an active player when they are hunting mafia and have clear reads on the table. When you press someone, don't stop at getting them to post, because anyone can do that, including mafia, and it doesn't help you for them to just post. It helps you when you can have a strong opinion of what they are. Press them until you know where you stand on whether they are Mafia or not. You need to get enough information to have a read on every player before you cast your vote, with special exceptions for players you think are confirmed to be mafia. If they become inactive again, press them again, or consider that they are only acting in self-interest instead of to a Town win condition.

Never say, or believe, that you have no reads.
If you have no strong feelings about someone, then force them to post more. Do not let your null reads stay null. If someone posts content and you still have trouble finding logical or intuitive reasons to suspect or clear them, then go with your strongest feeling no matter how weak until proven otherwise. Even if you are wrong, other players will react to it, and fellow Town can figure out what you're thinking and how you fit into the narrative. If you are afraid to put yourself out there then you will become an obstacle to your teammates who will think you are mafia for leaving yourself too open to interpretation.

Vote for scummy players, not just misunderstood ones.
Do not waste time on the G-dogs, because lynching players you can't understand is not your win condition.

Avoid WIFOM arguments.
WIFOM stands for "Wine in Front of Me". It comes from The Princess Bride scene where the Man in Black challenges the Cecilian to a battle of wits. Watch it here.

It refers to a scenario where someone is trying to predict what the other will do, but the guess depends on whether they know that you know that they know that you know... Ad infinitum. "Would the Mafia kill Krowley to get rid of someone on cstar's back, or is that just what they want me to think?" If you can't tell, then don't even consider this line of inquiry. It will only confuse you and everyone around you when they read your post. Whether this kill was one or the other will come to light when a pattern forms with other actions in the game. Wait until it makes sense in a larger context instead of making a value judgment right away. Town wasted tons of time talking about whether they agreed with an assessment of why mafia killed Krowley or not, and no information of consequence was added for those posts. Addressing it immediately will hurt Town more than leaving it alone.

On to the individiual reports.

Town MVP
Judge Sunrose
Town Cop​

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

Judge almost single handedly decided this game by successfully investigating three people who did not die before his reveal. Then he pulled off a master stroke and posted a fake reveal that he read someone as Mafia. Nova and I were chearing when he even called out cstar's vote as a bus vote. Judge would have been well on his way to curbstomping if he hadn't wanted Mixt to be Town so hard that he cleared both of his amazingly correct suspects. It's a miracle Town recovered. He wins the MVP award for the information he provided, no matter how wrong his conclusions may be.

How you can improve:

Form character judgments, not wish lists.
You ended up clearing Mixt despite his scummy behavior, and that single mistake almost cost you the game. I believe this happened to a larger problem with your mindset. You do not use your instincts. You caught mafia and they froze up on you, and you didn't see it because you somehow convinced yourself that the probability of them being mafia due to pure numbers overshadowed their actual behavior, as if you couldn't form an opinion based on what they did. Next time, form opinions on individuals based on their actions, not on your actions. If you roll the cop again, do not let the fact that you have confirmed information make you completely disregard your own instincts. If you formed reads outside of your night results and probability tables you'd have had this game dead to rights.

al215
Vanilla Town​

What can I say? You did a good job in this game, you put in the effort, scared mafia into killing you, and brought some good information to light. You just happened to be wrong and focused on mechanics too much (that last one goes for everyone).

How you can improve:

Do not let your feelings get in the way of logical reads.
You let your feelings about certain players influence your reads. Whenever you feel angry, imagine you are not in the game and come at it from a "Why did they do that?" perspective.

Calxiyn
Vanilla Town​

You became a major suspect in the early game for unnecessary posturing and style choices, such as painstakingly styling your text with multiple colors. One of the things you did right was putting a strong town read out in the game and drawing the cop hunt to you. Unfortunately, that backfired hard due to other factors. Putting so much effort into presentation takes away from the content and portrays you as caring more about the stage than finding mafia. You managed to turn that around when you came around in the end and presented solid reasoning, ultimately winning the game despite Marushi's attempts to control the lynch.

How you can improve:

Cut down on preparation, get to the delivery.
The less time you spend trying to look like you know what you're doing, the more time you can spend making logical arguments like you did in the end of this game. You became a suspect because you distanced yourself with prepared statements instead of conversations. Mafia is a team game and you need to keep that in mind on the early days too.

Cat~
Vanilla Town​

You managed to take a highly controversial slot and turn it into a good town slot. You did a good job with what you were given and helped the town win. Congratulations.

How you can improve:

Do not give away your role.
One of the recurring errors town made this game was giving the cop advice. I am surprised the Mafia didn't catch on to it. You might not get a chance to get away with that mistake, so avoid it at all costs next time.

. : tale : .
Vanilla Town​

I have to be honest, I thought you were Mafia for the longest time and told Nova that when he started helping. It was only after I double checked my listings that I realized it was Mixt instead of you. I got that impression because you put on a show while being wrong about Mafia. Apparently others got it too.

How you could improve:

Shift your focus to content.
You can find Mafia if you devote the time you put into putting on a show into gathering or revealing new information. Even plain words leave a big impact with evidence to back them up. You had a habit of making posts for show like Calxiyn. You would have had time to have longer conversations if you spent less time on showmanship.

Don't settle for the easy lynch.
You pushed the G-dog lynch without thinking they were scum and all of your other votes sheeped (or echoed) other people. You only went after obvious targets. There are times when you want to consolidate on a lynch, but those should only happen when you have to, to avoid a tie. You never brought up something out of the mainstream. Even if you thought they were scum, this was a bad move because it allowed the other Mafia to coast by effortlessly without producing new information. Next time try to lynch your hardest scum reads first, not the easiest ones.

G-dog
Vanilla Town​

You got lynched Day 1 because no one could communicate with you and you struggled to convince others of your reads.

How you can improve:

Write coherent messages and remain calm when others do not understand.
You speak just fine on the Discord chat, so you should be able to speak with the same fluidity if not better on here. You have the time to think about and revise your posts before submitting them unlike on a real-time chat client, so take that time to make sure you are doing more than confusing your fellow teammates. It would be easy for a Mafia player to coast by while pretending not to understand anything, so it is important that you do your best to keep up, and make others believe you are doing your best by showing it.

Krowley
Vanilla Town​

You were not active enough to be useful, but what you did offer scared Mafia, so that's something.

How you can improve:

Spend less time on each post to push out maximize information and avoid subbing out.
You got into this game and felt that you would struggle to meet the post requirement, but five posts is not that difficult if you just post your thoughts and do not worry about the quality as you seem to. Next time, make sure that you find a way to balance your time between organization and actual posting so that you don't spend all of your time on the former and none of it on the latter.

Marushi
Vanilla Town

​

You came, you saw, you almost lost. Your desire to be in control and be right was so strong that you ended up tunneling all of the Cop's town reads. Your first act coming into the game was to to clear yourself as not-the-cop, which hurt Judge's chances. After Judge called out cstar's bus, you were still so quick to judge cstar as Town that you almost lost the game along with Judge's Mixt clear. You tried too hard and missed the forest for the trees. It is no exaggeration to say you became the best player on the Mafia's Team. Consider this game a lesson in taking a step back and letting others take the reins.

How you can improve:

Let other people make their own decisions.
I know it can be tempting to play like me, but you ended up shooting yourself in the foot every time you said "we need to this" or "the cop should do that". You talked endlessly about the Cop and whether they would do that as the cop, or as Mafia. You said what the Cop should do, or shouldn't do. You definitely cleared yourself for the mafia as "not the cop" and made it difficult for the cop to make their own decisions without looking like the mafia. Next time, let other players do their own things, especially when they might have better insight into the game because of their cop role.

AVOID WIFOM ARGUMENTS.
Almost all of your cases and reasoning relied on suppositions of what Mafia would do or wouldn't do in any given situation, and not on what actually happened. You cleared cstar because she voted for Mixt and you didn't see why she would do that as Mafia. It is okay to use WIFOM to suspect someone, but not on itself. No one WIFOM incident can determine an alignment. Every mafia is bound to have one such act that might clear them, because they want you to clear them. There are no such things as acts Mafia will not do. Judge what you think actually happened, no matter what could have happened.

Base your cases around who is Mafia, not who is town.
Anyone can act like town because they either are Town or want to look like Town, but only Mafia have a predisposition to act like Mafia. The only exception to this rule is when the person is cleared by a Cop or other mechanical role. There are no such things as acts Mafia will not do. It is pointless, and more often than not, you will clear a Mafia who is trying to look like town. Some players have incredible instinct and will clear someone as town based on how they feel about them, not what they do. That is more valid than what you did here. If you do not have this ability or it is often wrong, then you should never try to play based on town tells, because it will cost you the game. Judge did the same thing a few games ago where Vivi asked how many mafia they were (as mafia), and Judge took it as something only Town would say and defended him, to Town's demise. If cstar hadn't slipped up here, you'd have fallen for it.

Stop thinking in on/off.
On the other hand, don't automatically think that every vote is a bus from now on. I can see you taking extreme positions, flipping, then taking the other extreme position. You think you know what Town and Mafia tells are. You see one, you jump on it, and you stick to it. They turn out to be wrong. Every game you gain new extreme positions, but they are like buttons. Someone presses one, you jump to a conclusion, and have a lot of trouble moving from it. Getting new buttons doesn't change the problem in your way of thinking. You have trouble thinking in a spectrum. There are no extreme positions. There are no easy tricks, no win the game quick schemes. Let that be a sobering fact.

To fix that, consider your feelings about things they do. Trust those feelings, because they are a spectrum and they will get more accurate with time, unlike on/off switches.

Midnight Star
Vanilla Town​

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

You got too afraid of making guesses without reasons to back them up and as a result you passed up your correct instincts about who the mafia are. You ended up being suspicious and just accepting it because of your stubborn insistence on saying nothing without evidence.

How you can improve:

State your reads, including based on instincts, until they are overturned by overwhelming evidence.
Sitting back and applauding people for their analysis doesn't catch mafia. Staying detached and not taking sides doesn't catch mafia. Calling people out on base feelings and seeing how they react, and giving Town a track record to judge you by, does. Next time you find yourself without any purely logical reasons to suspect someone, go with your instincts anyway. You don't need to survive or even be right to help town, but you do need to leave a legacy for them to gather from after you die.

Mish
Vanilla Town​

Laziness if the mother of all bad habits.

You stayed suspicious and were unable to convince anyone of your cases until late in the game. You did not have the drive to cite posts as evidence or do any real case building other than defending yourself from lynchings. When you got that drive, you did a great job of pinning down the reasons you were right, and ultimately helped town win the game. Good job.

How you can improve:

Do the same thing, but not just when under pressure.
If you worked as hard all the time as you did in LYLO in this game, you would be a formidable player, even with me as the Mafia.

Mafia​

The Mafia in this game did a great job of flying under the radar, and their busses almost won them the game. But their failure to find the Cop and a few rookie missteps ultimately led to the downfall of their team. Not for lack of trying, though. Good effort for everyone on the Mafia team.

How the Mafia can improve (everyone should read these):

FIND THE COP.
You bussed, you successfully cased town, you convinced a lot of people there were better suspects. The only reason you lost this game was your failure to find the Cop and kill them before they revealed. You had ample evidence of who was not the Cop, more than most Mafia teams get in a game. Next time, work by process of elimination to find who the Cop is and always kill your top Cop suspect instead of whoever else is getting under your skin. They are nothing compared to a Cop reveal.

On to the individual reports.

Mafia MVP
Mixt
Mafia Goon​

Against all odds, you survived the unsurvivable situation of having a cop on your case with a confirmed scum read. You did an amazing job of playing dumb and gave away no information despite proddings. Despite how utterly scum motived that was, you managed to change Judge's mind and get cleared for a short while after Judge admitted he never read you. Had you not had an unfortunate run in with an emergency, you might have been able to turn this into Mafia's game. You undoubtedly deserve the MVP for your performance under fire.

How you can improve:

Follow through on your busses (if you want to try them).
Ghost was caught as mafia because you made a point of saying that your Ghost vote was a pressure vote and he was never in any real danger. The worst part is, Ghost didn't give you any new information, so your prodding didn't result in any new info but you backed off anyway. You practically admitted you would never have supported a Ghost lynch, which makes your "pressure" pointless, and it ultimately looked like the opposite of actual distance.

When it comes to reading your scum buddies, there are two strategies that work time and time again. You either town read your scum friends or you scum read them. Both of them are extreme. In either case, you take your reads seriously and put your vote where your mouth is, either lynching them or saving them as the mood dictates. You never null read them or press and back off of them. Those waffly methods are too obvious, and more importantly, something a town player has no reason to do, because they don't know they are on the same team as someone they are putting pressure on. Next time, make the audience believe you want to lynch him, or it will only shine a light on how you don't.

cstar
Mafia Goon​

You get the best performance for intentionally staying under the radar. You did an amazing job, especially with the bus on Mixt. You would have gotten away with it if it weren't for your slip. You were a contender for the MVP before Judge did his reveal, but given your reaction to the slip I think you would have conceded if he accused you.

How you can improve:

Do not try to manipulate your scum reads.

You appealed to Mish's Town motivations to get her to empathize with your situation. That is a good tool to convince someone of your side. There is just one problem: You cannot appeal to someone's Town impulses if they are Mafia.

Pay attention to your surroundings.
Cat~, Marushi, and Calxiyn are confirmed Town. There must be three Mafia among you, Mish, Ghost and Mixt. If you find the town, then you know the other three are Mafia by process of elimination. If you are Town, then there is no room for first, second and third suspects. The know the other three people are equally Mafia.

I think you got too obsessed with the idea that you still needed to convince Mish, so you completely missed this vital piece of information. If you realized this then you wouldn't have built a priority list, wouldn't have talked to Mish, and wouldn't have made the slip.

Ghost
Mafia Goon​

You didn't take many risks, but it worked out until you got caught due to things your teammates did. You did a decent job for a Mafia player, staying under the radar without dropping off the map and appearing slightly helpful along the way.

How you can improve:

Do more.
While you did a good job of staying in the background, you took a back seat and let your other two Mafia take control, and you payed the cost for it. Next time, try to be more involved in decision making. Make cases of your own so that you end up as more than a footnote on their moves. For example: You could have made yourself look like Town if you had called out Mixt for his wimpy pressure vote, and it would have increased the distance between you way more than what he did. Try to think about things you can do that can improve your team's chances.

 

LOL accurate.


P.S. Ready for round 2 now.