*It still surprises me that no one but TexCat caught when Hockey Monkey used the Scum boards <> coding. Glad my panic over that was quelled.
*I feel bad about ragging so hard on Professor Pepperwinkle. It is part of the game, but he really did not play so poorly. Professor, if you are reading this I only went after you because it was my job. I didn’t mean any of it.
*This game has changed my outlook on Mafia in one very strong way. I really do apologize to Chronos and Normal Phase. It is cowardly to remove an opponent merely because they are good. Strategy, misdirection or a genuine attempt to stop someone who is on the right track… those are all good reasons for a Scum kill. But no one should be killed just because you fear them. That punishes good players. The best way to defeat a good player is just to play better yourself! I will never support again as Town or Scum any kill based solely on fear that another player is better than I am. If I cannot win with my wits, I should not win.
*I overplayed our hand at the end. For anyone who doesn’t want to read the 1100+ posts of the Mafia thread, the Koldanar misdirect was a sham. We never ever intended for Koldanar to do any misdirection. We had TexCat say that completely to throw off Town. The plan was to get the real Patsy lynched, and Scathach was to block the real Patsy. That’s all it would have taken. The extra Koldanar twist, while confusing and fun, probably was too much over the top theatrics. I fall in love with over the top theatrics too easily-- as was demonstrated by my play at endgame.
*Claiming Town had already won as a tactic to get wolves to join us and go after Town Power and was a good idea, but it was too much of a distraction ultimately.
*When I claimed the Doctor Seward Switch, I remember thinking this will only work for a short time. Wolves will probably figure it out. But maybe it will cause others to supposedly see why I was so ready to believe the Toe Jam claim. In the end it did not matter. I was hoping someone else would mention my switch claim on Day 13 before I finally had to post it. Error on my part again.
It is very frustrating that my case on Zeriel turned out to be right. It was made up on the fly just to make a case. Then I just stuck with it for three Days. We did not want to kill wolves, we wanted to kill Town. I cannot believe that crummy case turned out to be right. Grr. Sorry, Zeriel.
We also did not intend to kill wolf when we Day killed jsgoddess. We thought she was a Town cop. I didn’t even much believe the Boozahol case either. This is a funny game.
I don’t know about the others, but I felt the best way to survive was Vanilla town. Until Crys spilled the beans on day 2 for such an odd gambit. I planned on breadcrumbing and holding my cards CLOSE until as close to end game as possible.
I also planned on hopefully finding a killer and misdirecting them as I pleased, but I misread my powers and tried to use them every night, leading to some confusion for me.
And I was entertaining the notion of doing exactly that with my misdirects until the Mafia came for me! Remember, I wanted to be left the hell alone!
Kudos to Johnny and Captain, that was an awesome endgame, both to be in, and watch.
Oh, and Johnny, so you don’t think you’re too insane :
[QUOTE=NAF1138]
Welcome to the game; you are The Pontiff of the Cult of Lutha
ALIGNMENT: Third Party (Non-Hostile)
YOU WIN along with all members of the Cult, living or dead, if any of the five Cultists of Lutha are alive when the game ends in any other way. Please note that there is an unlikely endgame scenario in which the Cult could be the only winner of the game; we’ll leave you to puzzle that out for yourself, if you’d like.
[/QUOTE]
I assume they meant it’s only Cult left at the end, but it might have had something to do with the investigation powers the deacons had.
Y’know, Biotop, you kept on complaining about the cult not playing how they should have… but in the end, the Cult of Leave Us The Hell Alone sided with the team that was willing to Leave Them The Hell Alone. And Kodanar’s decision to not join you as a matter of principle, even though he lost in the process, really wasn’t so different from your decision to kill the cult as a matter of principle, even as you were losing.
Biotop - you also played a great game - when I was spoiled, reading your Mafia board messages were very entertaining, and you never gave up! It’s funny you mention the Doc S switch - I felt that the Town switches would only be held by Mafia and Wolves so I was certain you made a huge mistake in claiming that, but no one really listened to me and I ended up just doubting myself. Grrrr.
And thank you mods for running such a massive game!
For me the simple answer is I decided to have fun in this game. Playing the game meant looking for scum. It really is that simple. I identified early on that mafia would be a threat to us. Our only hope was to have other threats be more important. That didn’t last. Also JB harping on me didn’t help at all. He is a frustrating character and unable to see beyond his own thoughts.
I also hinged my hopes on the fact that the team that killed LUTHA would lose. I was correct.
Also also. From the beginning I saw that there were way too many confirmable roles for scum to deal with. We had a lot of vanilla death early on which sealed the deal. The scum path to victory required an unusually high amount of power role night kills, which is very hard to do. Once town decided not to lynch lutha, mafia was toast. It was just a matter of time.
I will say that biotops performance on the last day was convincing to me.
I never figured out what the hell the mods was talking about there. I thought about it and thought about it and the rules as stated preclude a sole lutha win. I just ignored it.
It did not have anything to do with my power The only extra thing I had that I kept secret was that I could talk privately with the lutha I found.
Oh, and Biotop’s argument on the last Day about the switches was an extremely fragile argument. It did not hinge on “as of right now, it seems unlikely that two Townies both have a switch for the same Townie power”. It instead hinged on “As of when Biotop claimed his switch, it was unlikely for two Townies to both have the same switch” and that that was obvious to everyone, and that Biotop realized that it was obvious to everyone, and that there really was one Townie with that switch, and that Biotop believed that there really was one Townie with that switch, and that he believed that that one Townie was still alive and active, and that he was making the smart play at the time. It’s unsurprising that such a fragile argument broke in multiple places: There wasn’t really a Town with the Doc Switch, how the switches were distributed wasn’t obvious to anyone, and it still wasn’t a smart play for Biotop anyway.
The other thing that would have strangled scum was the multi-lynch. Had Town used it at every opportunity, scum would have had an even smaller pool to hide in. The main thing about power roles and lynch and multi-lynch in this game was that without a scum false claim, town was not going to lynch a town power. The worst outcome for Town with a mislynch was the lynch of a Vanilla Townie. And even that helps Town indirectly by reducing the hiding pool for scum.
The resistance to multi-lynch shocked me.
I think early on Town gets nervous about the game. Scum always look ahead in mafia. They run into a wall when their hiding pool evaporates + days and days of information to consider.
Nothing to feel bad about. You played very well. I deserved the ragging, and you weren’t the harshest voice in the game on that score. It made me re-evaluate my play.
Honestly, the reason I never got over my suspicions of you was because you refused to even consider a scenario where LUTHA could be a danger to town. The closest you got was saying “well don’t put Mafia in a position where cult can hand them the win.” Well, duh. And bridges don’t need guard rails - just don’t stand too close to the edge. It’s one of the reasons I kept after Biotop at the end - because he refused to consider what might happen if we were both town.
And in the end, I was right. Mafia’s plan was to get just one more mislynch and then offer the win to LUTHA.
A self-fulfilling prophecy? Eh, I wouldn’t give me too much credit for figuring out that cult would potentially become a powerful voting block towards end-game if they could be convinced to side with scum.
If you’d said, “you’re right Johnny, that’s a potential danger but I think the cult will prove otherwise through its actions,” I probably would have eased up. I just wanted you to acknowledge the danger to town. You wouldn’t. Instead, you told me that I was dead wrong and possibly scum. So you ended up on my list.
You were just hella suspicious, man. I saw in the kibbitz thread that you you’re pretty frustrated with me over LUTHA’s position in the game. I’ll take some of the credit for that, but I’m afraid there’s plenty of room for you on this here couch. That argument we had colored my perception of the cult for the rest of the game. And while I definitely have a tendency to fixate on targets when I think I have a point, I don’t do it to the point of ignoring sound logic.
Koldanar? I would have handed Mafia the keys to the kingdom without a second thought. I definitely respect the principled play at the end, both from you and from Biotop.
Except that we didn’t actually have all that many opportunities to multi-lynch, anyway. I think there were only one or two potential lynches that we missed, and the first one would have required an impossible degree of coordination for Town to hit the thresholds (even the #1 vote-getter didn’t hit the second-lynch threshold).
Poor misunderstood mafia just had to defend ourselves.