I notice they didn’t wait to see if Koldanar was really going to not cooperate before killing him.
I didn’t vote as they required … I imagine they either wanted me to vote for who I felt was townie, and be open about it, or vote for confirmed town (i.e. Captain).
My interpretation is that TexCat misplayed the attempt to get cult to work with mafia. She should have offered the idea to cult as a choice. But laying it down as an ultimatum was kind of gross and wouldn’t get any traction at all. I’d rather lose than deal with that sort of crap. Rather distasteful.
Not that approaching with rose petals would have worked either. Mafia was clearly killing cultists. That’s not a good way to start a coalition. Though I can’t blame them for that either. They accurately saw that 5 living cultists would be an unlynchable block that would spell doom for mafia. Stupid Johnny Bravo harping on cultists teaming up with Mafia. It was never going to happen and he made me spell it all out!
I think Koldanar was wrong not to go along with the Mafia plan, and that the Mafia were very wrong to kill Koldanar. I get not wanting to give in to blackmail, but I think it is anti-game for players to do anything other than focus on meeting their own win condition, and let the other sides sort themselves out. And AFAICT the Lutha would have been able to basically force a win by cooperating with Mafia.
In the best case scenario, where Town had lynched the Patsy and Koldanar had redirected the Patsy kill onto Klutz, there would have been 2 of every side left, Mafia could have claimed and Mafia + Lutha would have clinched a win (Lutha couldn’t guarantee a win by siding with Town, since the Mafia would have had time to kill them both before the game ended).
In the scenario that did happen, if the Mafia had killed a confirmed Town, we would be at 4 Town, 2 Lutha, 1 Maf. If town lynched the Mafia, game over, Lutha win. If town mislynched, Mafia + Lutha would constitute a majority the next day, and could have won. Of course, that would have required the last Mafia to claim, so Lutha could also have won with Town if they preferred, but they would win either way.
BUT in that 4-2-1 scenario, if Lutha were openly hostile to Town , Town could lynch both Lutha and end up in a 2-1 endgame against Mafia.
SO ITSM that optimal Lutha strategy would have been to SAY they weren’t going along with the Mafia strategy, in order to stay on Town’s good side, but actually to do so. If Koldanar had redirected Scathach onto Klutz, nothing would have happened, so Town would have had no way of knowing he had tried to betray them.
Mafia should have thought this through and kept Koldanar alive on the chance he was following this strategy.
The plan only works if Mafia are making an offer that Lutha can’t refuse. Town clearly isn’t going to start lynching Lutha, so if Mafia aren’t going to kill them either, Lutha have pretty much won and don’t need to care much about what the other teams do. Mafia might well have been wise to let Lutha figure that out for themselves rather than making an explicit threat, though. Certainly couldn’t have worked out worse for them.
By the way, I’m using “stupid” in the I’m frustrated sense, not in the JB is actually stupid sense.
I DID think really hard about this bit, I won’t lie, on the off chance I was wrong and Hawkeyeop was the scum.
Ultimately, though, it is a game - and win con isn’t the only thing I got out of this game 
That part of the plan was…not well thought through. Town had a majority, so there was no way a confirmed Townie would be lynched. The only ones to benefit from you two voting for Klutz would have been Town, since you would have basically confirming yourselves as Scum. Town presumably would have put the Patsies on hold and lynched you the next two nights, leaving Mafia no better off than they were and you having lost.
All Mafia would have gained is that they would have found out for sure if you were with them sooner than they would have otherwise. Either way, they should still absolutely not kill you, since you might well have been lying about your intentions and killing you takes their best case scenario completely off the table.
If their plan had worked perfectly WRT lynching the Patsy and redirecting the kill, but they daykilled you instead of a Town, after lynching Scathach and another daykill, it would have been either 3-1 or 2-1-1, neither great positions for Mafia and not the forced win they would have had if they had daykilled correctly. Sad.
Overthinking further: given the uncertainty about Koldanar’s real intentions, wouldn’t it have been best for hawkeye, if lynched, simply to not use his revenge kill? That would have led to 2-2-1, where Town has a mislynch available if the Lutha are siding with Town and is at LyLo if not.
Using the kill on Scathach, the best case scenario is 3-2-1, which is pretty rosy for Town but not a sure win, while the worst case scenario is a sure loss.
Correction, Mafia would have been much better off, as it would have been 3-2 with Town in double LyLo. Still, it should have been obvious to them that you weren’t going to agree to this.
Thing Fish got spoilers he requested. Anyone else?
Thanks!
I’m going to ride this out unspoiled.
Me! Me! Spoil MEEE!
… please?
Done
Strong disagree.
I think one has to be put into the situation to appreciate the weirdness of being a third party neutral/survivor. I hadn’t appreciated the oddities until I was put into the situation and I realized, “crap.”
Day One I played normally, not having given my role too much thought beyond a few breadcrumbs. Day One was quite enjoyable.
Day Two I realized that being right about who is mafia ran counter to my win condition. I had thoughts about TexCat, or maybe it was buff tabby-- I get them confused, (I was thinking SK) but didn’t state them because of my win condition. It was… less fun than Day One.
It wasn’t until I threw away my win condition and allowed myself to play for fun that I actually had fun again.
Looking back, and not as a complaint, but more of a post mortem, I’m not sure that survivor roles add much to the game of mafia. Would the game have been more or less interesting with the 5 cultists assigned to scum and town roles instead? I can’t say it would have been more interesting overall, but I don’t think it would have been less interesting either.
As it is, being third party was good for me in that I didn’t devote as much time to the game as I usually would.
Also, I would point out that the role of SK traditionally has an impossibly hard win condition. But generally, we are OK with SK roles because SK’s are fun and fun to play. The ability to enact a kill is a large part of what makes an SK fun. So even though SK’s rarely (practically never) win, they are still fun based on non-win-condition factors.
I’d like access to the spoiled thread if there is one?
Bump?
I swear I thought I sent this already. Sending now.