Round 67: Grab Bag 2: Electric Boogaloo

Leo E. wrote:Night 4
Rofl – Block Cael
Axel – Synthesize bomb on Rofl

The one night I was roleblocked was the ONLY night I didn't preform the kill.

Awards!

MVP Award
Zink was pretty much the only one whose night actions actually did something.

Useless Award of Near-Perfection
Rofl did the following things with his four powers:
1: Investigated a mafia night 1.
2: Attempted to kill said mafia night 2. Unfortunately bulletproof.
3: Attempted to protect his mason... the night after his mason was killed. This relationship has communication problems.
4: Roleblocked the mafia member who had performed every night kill up until this one. Incidentally, he was the target this night.
Had each of them worked out a tiny bit different, he would have all but guaranteed an early town victory.

YA BLEW IT Award
Axel's fear of the third party, while totally justified, made him avoid instalynching Gamage and sealing the mafia win. But worse was the disastrous and totally unnecessary fake reveal, which basically outed him as mafia and gave more than just Gamage reason to distrust Cael.

Non-Town Town Savior Award
French single-handedly lost the game for himself and saved the town in one day.

Genre-Savvy Award
Gamage knew how not-bulletproof he actually was.

Leo E. wrote:Useless Award of Near-Perfection
4: Roleblocked the mafia member who had performed every night kill up until this one. Incidentally, he was the target this night.
Had each of them worked out a tiny bit different, he would have all but guaranteed an early town victory.

It just figures I would be unlucky enough for something like that to happen.

I think it was your avatar.
Totori wouldn't have fucked that up.

I still think that we're playing with absurdly overpowered Mafia teams.  One coward's indecisiveness is all that changed this from a Flawless Mafia win to a Town win.

Edit: To add, Link and Axel were both on in Skype at the same time to have forced the lynch. So Gamage's argument about "Link not being on to jump the lynch with Axel" was wrong, even if he guessed the members right.

AWWWWW YEAAAAAHHHH
Shout out to French and Rain for working out stuff for me~
Link, didn't you once say you were going to stop trying to kill me because it always backfires? ;-)
Very nice round Leo, enjoyed it muchly. Props.

[1/21/2014 3:18:41 PM] Link Lab: I want to say we should kill Zink but I know for a fact it's gonna end up backfiring on me. It always does.

Caelun_Niveus wrote:I tried to convince Link and Axel to lynch Gam but NOOOOOOOO.  Gotta stick with their guns and worry about the third party.

French Connections wrote:Tbh the Halolzian victory usurper is still somewhere in the game. Mafia ought to be more afraid of that than anything else.

Tbh you have me to thank for that. :D The game was going to end in a Mafia victory, as there was no usurper role that could steal victory (you guys had the majority, and I could only win if Zink [my recruit] and myself outnumbered the town) so I felt the need to bait them to kill the only vanilla claim left alive (Rain). I was hoping Rain would take the fall for being a neutral, and then Zink and I would control the majority. Especially after I claimed to be a peeker/cop-style role. Sadly you buggers chose to kill me instead, after I clearly made out Rain and Zink to be better alternatives. T__T

In regards to Mafia, the only one that I couldn't get a read on was Axel (until the derpy alchemist claim). After playing with Link as Mafia, his typical "first in" throwaway vote kinda made that one giveaway and Cael's vendetta against Gamage helped make that one clear in R4.

Leo E. wrote:Awards!

MVP Award
Zink was pretty much the only one whose night actions actually did something.
Non-Town Town Savior Award
French single-handedly lost the game for himself and saved the town in one day.

Not only do I feel cheated of a win, I also feel cheated of an award. xD I would have lost the game had I not helped the town. :P And Zink only had the intel because of me~~~~~~~~~

Great round Leo, it was surprisingly balanced (I'm used to crazy imbalances in your rounds xD) and the R6 suspense was great (until Axel claimed, I had no idea whether the 3rd Mafia was Rain or Axel, and was worried the game was going to end prematurely). Can we have votebot next time? :3 I lost a lot of time going through voting patterns this game... >_<

French Connections wrote:you guys had the majority, and I could only win if Zink [my recruit] and myself outnumbered the town

You're win had two conditions actually.

If you're cult outnumbers the town
AND
If the mafia is defeated.

If we had lynched Rain, you would have lost.

Yeah but Gamage would have (theoretically) sided with us, because I'd have proven that I'm not Mafia by getting Axel lynched as well as preventing a ridiculous bandwagon on him the round before. Granted you could have still killed me the night afterwards, but I was always at risk of getting Night Killed.

The ideal (and onlyplayout that would have worked for my victory) was:

Lynch Axel, kill Rain.
Lynch Link, kill Zink.
Lynch Cael. Win by default because of a standoff between Gamage and myself.

Eitherway, helping town was the only way to prevent a Mafia victory (and secure my own).
A small addition to my role: I couldn't use any of Zink's powers while he was under my control. Which is a massive shame.

Well when your win condition is to outnumber the town and all third parties are defeated, of course I'm going to be paranoid about any third parties stealing the win. I'd rather accept a town win than a third party win. Of course, it turns out the third party WASN'T victory stealing for the mafia.

But yeah, probably should just called myself a clueless townie like most of ya at the start.

Eh, whatever. You guys deserve the win and it was a fun game.

French Connections wrote:Yeah but Gamage would have (theoretically) sided with us, because I'd have proven that I'm not Mafia by getting Axel lynched as well as preventing a ridiculous bandwagon on him the round before. Granted you could have still killed me the night afterwards, but I was always at risk of getting Night Killed.

Axel
Link
Cael
French
Zink
Gam
Rain
>Lynch rain
>we figured gamage was bulletproof, so kill Zink or French


Axel
Link
Cael
French
Gam

Mafia control the vote. The only way you would have had a chance was if we wasted out kill on Gamage, believing him to be the third party.

Nah I'm not faulting you for the play Axel, with 3 Mafia still alive, you guys weren't risking much by aiming for a Neutral kill. The main issue was that the most legitimate Mafioso took the fall, making it hard for Mafia to argue their claims in a minority 2vs3 situation.

Caelun_Niveus wrote:
>we figured gamage was bulletproof, so kill Zink or French

Mafia control the vote.  The only way you would have had a chance was if we wasted out kill on Gamage, believing him to be the third party.

Not quite. You weren't majority if Gamage, Zink and I were alive and you killed Rain. We wouldn't have lynched Rain, that's for sure.

Edit: I think you're talking about the standoff round. Yeah you guys could have pushed for an instalynch but imo, if I was Mafia, I'd have been more concerned with a cheap Neutral victory usurper.

I was actually going to do something with my role this time, too.

French Connections wrote:Not quite. You weren't majority if Gamage, Zink and I were alive and you killed Rain. We wouldn't have lynched Rain, that's for sure.

Three out of five isn't majority?

Also

French Connections wrote:The ideal (and onlyplayout that would have worked for my victory) was:

Lynch Axel, kill Rain.
Lynch Link, kill Zink.
Lynch Cael. Win by default because of a standoff between Gamage and myself.

In hindsight, it would have been
Lynch Cael, recruit axel, kill rain

Link
Axel
French
Zink
Gam

Then you control the lynch.

True, but Leo had told me that I couldn't recruit the Mafia at the time, so that wasn't going to play out. And I'm confused, you'd never have gotten the 3/5 majority unless you guys had pressed for the game to end (which I think you guys were smart for doing, although it cost you a free win).

As for the standoff round, our suspects for third party were Gam (maybe an alchemist with brightpowder), French, and Zink.  Rain was out.

Had we jumped Gam, we would have killed one of the others.


I still say we need to balance the Mafia more. WAY too powerful.

Eh it was a fairly balanced round imo. Town just lacked more tools than they usually get and a lot of sheeping was taking place because of the abundance of vanillas and no-pms allowed. I think town got screwed over a bit because I neutralised one of their power roles for virtually the entire game (by getting a lucky recruit).

We almost had two flawless mafia victories in a row. And the mafia contained a broken Alchemist role as well as a bulletproof and a framer.

Only Axel's botched roleclaim, basically saying outright "I'm Mafia", turned things around.

The framer wasn't really a problem (it's very hard to use correctly), nor was the bulletproof (given the amount of vigilanty kills in the game, you guys needed some protection). Main issue was the alchemists dropping like flies and Zink getting roleblocked all game until I died.
If anything, I'd say the cultist role was overwhelmingly underbalanced. I could only recruit from a pool of 3 players, and 1 player would kill me had I recruited them. Furthermore, any recruits would lose their powers after recruiting them. I'd have just preferred a usurper victory; at least then I'd have stood more of a chance. :P

I still say that we need less power roles, and/or change the way we reach lynch.  As is it seems ridiculously easy for the mafia to just sit back and kill the town as they lynch themselves.  

As long as they don't bring too much attention to themselves (say, buy only casting their vote with no argument), the chances of picking a scum to lynch are disturbingly slim.


They should be forced to argue and control the lynch in their favor, instead of only sitting under the radar.

French Connections wrote:After playing with Link as Mafia, his typical "first in" throwaway vote kinda made that one giveaway

..........Once again, seeing patterns that aren't specific to me playing as mafia. I do that almost every single game. I'm pretty sure I've done that since before these forums existed. I'm going to assume it's just because I have been mafia in 4 of the last 6 games but at this rate, I'm apparently less suspicious if I play completely differently from how I normally play.

Also, Zink, you were my only choice at that point in the game. Not that it mattered since you killed me as well.

well that was a good round. Admittedly I was an idiot for trying to lynch Gam but at that point in the game I was frustrated that really nothing was happening and I was so sure that he was mafia for stupid reasons.

Caelun_Niveus wrote:I still say that we need less power roles, and/or change the way we reach lynch.  As is it seems ridiculously easy for the mafia to just sit back and kill the town as they lynch themselves.  

As long as they don't bring too much attention to themselves (say, buy only casting their vote with no argument), the chances of picking a scum to lynch are disturbingly slim.


They should be forced to argue and control the lynch in their favor, instead of only sitting under the radar.

That's the general idea though. The first 2-3 rounds are information gathering rounds for the town. Based on who they investigate/roleblock/lynch, they can piece the puzzle together from R4 onwards. If you're unlucky enough to have a bunch of power roles not achieve much (as was the case in this game), then that's too bad. Mafia are equally at risk from random lynches (although the probability is slimmer, they're a minority; so a random lynch ends up hurting them more). The current lynch format gives away quite a bit of info about other players.

And Link, this relates to a larger conversation we had on Mafia strats that occurred a few months back. For instance that you should never try and Night Kill someone that voted for you nor mix votes together among other Mafiosos. It's true that I had nothing but gut instinct to go on this round, but you're a very calculating person and my hunch of you being Mafia was reinforced by what was happening. Especially in R4 when I refrained from bandwagonning Gamage because I noticed that Cael was pushing for a kill on him; and Spp was killed in order to frame Gamage [I had thought that Spp was Mafia until then]. After Axel's reveal, by crossing your three vote patterns together, the sheer perfection of neither of you three voting for the same target just felt bizarre. On Halolz, Mafia generally behaves very randomly; this all felt staged. Sorry if I looked too deeply into it and judged you as Mafia for all the wrong reasons. :/ And I haven't taken part in many of the last 6 games, so I'm just relying on this round and the last 2 games as Mafia we played together.

Anyway, well played all. =)