Scummies Nominations 2021!

[Alisae]

I'm not sure if all of the changes that went through to awards was actually caught on the community but I don't know if it was actually announced what was changed.
I don't remember all of the changes off the top of my head but Best Setup and Best Mechanic have been changed.
Best Setup has been limited to Normal and Opens and Best Mechanic has been limited to Themes.

[mastina]

Paragon of Mafia Hunters
04/11/2021	mastina	PookyTheMagicalBear	Pooky has been TEARING through scumteams this year, utterly decimating and eviscerating them. While the game ultimately ended in a scum win, in College Basketball Players, Pooky correctly identified all three mafia , being on the eliminations of the two and insisting, begging the town to eliminate the third scum. (The town didn't listen, thus the scum win, but Pooky was dead by then so he did as well as a townie could do.) He earned a N1 nightkill in Mini 2200, in part due to having 2/3 of the scum south of null. In Warehouse 13, Pooky was singlehandedly the cause of the town win--while the playerlist was basically an allstar list of legends, no individual town player had every piece of the puzzle and were hard-disagreeing on the rest...but Pooky by sheer force of will alone convinced the town that he was correct on his piece, and then after being elevated to conftown status from this, went on to then help the town identify which pieces they had correct, guiding them to one of the hardest possible town roflstomps of all time (in a setup that was, if anything, scumsided, no less!). It started on D1 but was truly cemented on D3. In Draft Mafia, he did it again , this time by nailing the Pizza hydra as scum and in helping eliminate both the remaining scum. He basically caught the entire scumteam, basically by himself. And most recently, in Two Day Penultimate Mafia, an Open game with what amounts to a White Flagesque mechanic where the town only needed to eliminate one scum in order to win, where eliminating one scum on D1 would be an instant town win...Pooky NAILED one of the crucial scum players, not to mention correctly identifying a second scum player. While the game was ultimately abandoned, had it not been, the probable end to the D1 was a compromise elimination on Pooky's correct initial target of choice, which would've meant that had the game not been abandoned, the likely outcome of the game would be a town win, again, singlehandedly thanks to him. Pooky is wrecking scumteams left and right; he is utterly DESTROYING them in basically every towngame he is in. Pooky is basically a one-person scum wrecking crew, able to singlehandedly win town after town after town the game. And the legend of Pooky is only growing game after game.

[fferyllt]

Paperback Writer
04/12/21	fferyllt	penguin_alien	Warehouse 13: The Mafia Game	penguin_alien outdid herself as a thematic writer in Warehouse 13. Which isn't easy! She's a deft and creative game flavor writer who always weaves the game events with impeccable, on point flavor. Not only was the event/flavor weaving amazingly well done, and not only did the role cards encapsulate each character's relevance to the game as well as to the theme. As players, we expect these aspects of a high-flavor game and some of us probably take that level of writing for granted. PA went so far beyond that, though. Each artifact (a fascinating game mechanic in its own right) was described in loving detail. Every communication - every death notification, every artifact transfer PM was lore-accurate and flavoricious. Even the private thread titles was built on Warehouse 13 lore -- not lifted from the series -- built upon it. The game in toto was an extrapolation of the Warehouse 13 world in a mafia game setting. By comparison, many theme games weld pieces of flavor onto a mafia game format. In this game, penguin_alien melded the Warehouse 13 concept and mafia game frameworks into a captivating whole that I'm struggling to do justice to in this write-up. The feature of her writing that impressed me most during the game was the dialogue. PA nailed the voices of every character who spoke in the game scenes. These weren't simply lifted from episodes. The dialog was crafted for the game, for the event, and served to further players' sense of being in the Warehouse 13 world, not just playing a game about it. This is a level of writing that I think will inspire other theme mods to up their storytelling levels and strive to make their games equally immersive.

[SirCakez]

Nth both Pooky and Penguin (again)
Pooky completely destroyed me in Warehouse 13 despite my best efforts, he is truly impressive.

[Spiffeh]

Nth Pooky and Penguin

[Fumuki]

Nth Pooky

His reads are good from what I've seen of him

[Jake The Wolfie]

I intend to get nominated and win Hannibal Lecter

one of you Modderfrickers better rand me 3rd-Party

[Menalque]

Post of the Year
23/04/21	Menalque	GeorgeBailey	this post in his chess thread with bugspray	I feel like very little needs to be said and I enclose the post below in its entirety. The only thing wrong with it is that it wasn't made in a space where more people were likely to see it.

Also, sorry for the absence.

I was just trying to make site improvements in case you ever run that mishmash game again.

Spoiler:

[Ythan]

Saved for exploitation.

[catboi]

Mad Scientist
26/04/21	catboi	Chara	The Binding of Isaac Mafia	There were a lot of interesting roles in this closed smalltown setup, but I'm nominating this for the Eve role in particular. When eliminated, the Eve role opens a PT with the player of their choosing, designating them as her Raven. The game then enters a special twilight phase where a new elimination is chosen by the Raven. The elimination can be on Eve still if the Raven so chooses. he catch comes in that the Raven is not allowed to post in the PT. This created a fascinating dynamic where I had to read and evaluate the trustworthiness of the Eve player, Costello, while not being able to speak to them directly. We wound up communicating in veiled codes to get my intentions across. Having a one-way line of communication open was an interesting challenge and that it was tied to such a strong role, whose power was alignment-neutral, was a great invention that made the game a memorable experience.

[Alisae]

Technically it was Isis that made that setup!

[catboi]

I was actually told that role was tweaked by chara, it can be a co-nom, Idk

[Chara]

Isis deserves the nom for that one. i did tweak the Eve role (her elimination was originally intended to lock the thread, but in my implementation this didn't happen) and made some other minor decisions regarding other roles, but the setup is undeniably Isis.

[Aristophanes]

Unless you are asking not to be considered for this nom, I am going to count it as a co-nomination

[DkKoba]

Rising Star
15/05/21	DkKoba	Anya	Mini Normal 2199: Baseball, Mini Normal 2205: RotITGBSMoD	Anya has crashed onto the MafiaScum scene with a roar, with outstanding performances from 2 games her and I both had the pleasure of being the same alignment in. In Mini Normal 2199, Anya correctly had Norwee as a scumread, and took them down, utilizing their role efficiently. While her and I did butt heads early on, without her I do not believe that we would have reached the proper PoE that we did that won the game overall. Soft guiltying Norwee and clearing KittyTacky were 2 good uses of her role. Her nightplay was insanely good and town would have been in a much worse spot without it. When Anya became tied to Kitty, that shifted the momentum needed to eliminate flow trap which completely dismembered the mafia's chances of winning. In Mini Normal 2205, Anya was on a scum team with Green Crayons and Osuka. Green Crayons ended up subbing out and I subbed in and tried to help hero the game with a fakeclaim. Where Anya steps in is that they played a distancing game so well that even if I were to get eliminated, they would have been able to endgame pretty easily. I personally am very reluctant to give this kind of praise to scum teammates unless I feel they have sufficiently played a good scumgame that can match mine, but the gamestate awareness Anya had with setting up the game for a scum win was definitely very good. While we did not get to see Anya fully shine because my slot did not end up getting eliminated this game, which was expected by us, it was definitely on track for Anya to help us endgame. If Anya was not part of this scumteam, I do not believe that I would have won this game. Overall their play feels very strong, aggressive, and very good and from a new player that is very impressive and deserving of a Rising Star nom. I will continue to add more games if I feel fit as the year goes on, but being halfway through and having 2 strong games like these is already a very nice sign.

[DkKoba]

White Knight
15/05/21	DkKoba	MathBlade	Open 809: Charge Me Up!	This game was a wrap as soon as day 2 rolled around, however I want to say that MathBlade's replace in helped shift momentum towards town incredibly and their view on the game was top notch. On day 2, they replaced into the game. Almost immediately he is rereading day 1 and pushing good content into the game. They call out NDmath right away, who ends up as scum, and then later on quote a votecount and call out Robert as scum, and then several posts later, A50 scum! Damn he got the whole scumteam pretty fast on replace in. This PoE creation was a contributing factor in a game where people were chasing the LHF slot Yesiree and such, and put town on track to win the game. While this isn't directly after their replace in, I want to also bring attention to their play on day 3 when NDMath fake guiltied me to take me down with them, MathBlade was able to actually read between us and call out NDmath as clearly fake, while other townies were just reading the guilty and moving on. They refused to get off track on the solve and ended up eating a nightkill for it, but since their replace in it shows they were on the right track and pushed town into the correct direction despite the town's insistence on doing otherwise. It also was enjoyable to have someone actually believing in me being town when I was fake guiltied.

[SirCakez]

Goodfellas
20/05/2021	SirCakez	Petapan, Not_Mafia, Momrangal, Menalque, Ydrasse, Skitter30, Lilith2013	Mini 2206 - Deja Vu: Perpetual MELO IV	This absolutely ridiculous scum team snowed many experienced scumhunters and players with extensive meta with each of them. Many town players expressed feeling that this was the hardest game they had ever played. Despite Momrangal getting caught day 3, the final two scum players Disaster Cartel and Venus Fly Trap pulled out the win day four by totally manipulating notscience and myself with masterful posting and emotion manipulation. One of the best scum teams I've ever faced.

[skitter30]

White Knight
23/5/21	skitter30	morning tweet	Mini 2206 - Deja Vu: Perpetual MELO IV	Morning Tweet repped in mid-day4 with super on-point posting and analyses and managed to completely overturn the game. She didn't *quite* manage to eke out the town win, but she came ridiculously close, and I believe that if conditions were slightly different (if she had repped in a bit earlier, or if the game had dragged on a bit longer), she absolutely could have. To set the stage: Perpetual melo is essentially a best-of-5 setup: if town manages to get 3 scumflips they win, and if scum gets 3 town misflips scum wins. Scum got misflips on days 1 and 2, and the win was in sight. Day3 had became a bit dicey, and I ultimately decided to bus scum-mom, knowing that in doing so, town-infinity (or town-notscience) would be neatly set up as the final misflip day4. And indeed, when day4 started, infinity was in quite a lot of hot water, and her flip looked fairly inevitable. In my mind, scum had all but won the game at that point - all that was left was waiting for town to actually cast the crucial quickhammer-enabling votes. I had to go v/la just then, but I was fairly confident that I would return two days later to either a win or basically the same situation. Instead, I came back to the game basically being set on fire by MT's rep-in: she read the entire 150 page game, correctly identified all 3 living town, and more crucially, correctly identified the scumteam and exactly what we had been doing all game. She was actively trying to block infinity's misflip, and trying to get scum flipped instead. And she nearly succeeded too, getting the key town-votes to at least waiver and rethink the misflip wagon. She single-handedly turned a scumstomp into a near town win. I give her massive props for her on-point analysis and effort she put into trying to turn the game around for town, even if she didn't quite succeed. Just some quotes from spectators in the dead-pt to show just how good she was: Spoiler: Morning is actually balling out holy shit WHAT THE FUCK IS IN THIS BAT'S FOOD HOLY SHIT EVEN AFTER CATCHING UP SHE STILL HAS VFT/DC okay who PM'd her the scumteam not only are her bulging muscles made entirely of extra brain tissue this is the bravest bat i have ever seen in my life torn between wanting to win and the fact that morning tweet inarguably deserves to win and if she doesn't pull this off for whatever erason it'll be the greatest tragedy ever committed in a mafia game morning tweet is glowing with energy right now

[SirCakez]

/nth MT

[fferyllt]

Agree, /nth MT. Her replace-in play was amazingly on point and impressive!

[Menalque]

if nth's are being taken into consideration again this year, also /nth, the bat was terrifying

[Nancy Drew 39]

Paragon of Mafia Hunters
04/11/2021	mastina	PookyTheMagicalBear	Pooky has been TEARING through scumteams this year, utterly decimating and eviscerating them. While the game ultimately ended in a scum win, in College Basketball Players, Pooky correctly identified all three mafia , being on the eliminations of the two and insisting, begging the town to eliminate the third scum. (The town didn't listen, thus the scum win, but Pooky was dead by then so he did as well as a townie could do.) He earned a N1 nightkill in Mini 2200, in part due to having 2/3 of the scum south of null. In Warehouse 13, Pooky was singlehandedly the cause of the town win--while the playerlist was basically an allstar list of legends, no individual town player had every piece of the puzzle and were hard-disagreeing on the rest...but Pooky by sheer force of will alone convinced the town that he was correct on his piece, and then after being elevated to conftown status from this, went on to then help the town identify which pieces they had correct, guiding them to one of the hardest possible town roflstomps of all time (in a setup that was, if anything, scumsided, no less!). It started on D1 but was truly cemented on D3. In Draft Mafia, he did it again , this time by nailing the Pizza hydra as scum and in helping eliminate both the remaining scum. He basically caught the entire scumteam, basically by himself. And most recently, in Two Day Penultimate Mafia, an Open game with what amounts to a White Flagesque mechanic where the town only needed to eliminate one scum in order to win, where eliminating one scum on D1 would be an instant town win...Pooky NAILED one of the crucial scum players, not to mention correctly identifying a second scum player. While the game was ultimately abandoned, had it not been, the probable end to the D1 was a compromise elimination on Pooky's correct initial target of choice, which would've meant that had the game not been abandoned, the likely outcome of the game would be a town win, again, singlehandedly thanks to him. Pooky is wrecking scumteams left and right; he is utterly DESTROYING them in basically every towngame he is in. Pooky is basically a one-person scum wrecking crew, able to singlehandedly win town after town after town the game. And the legend of Pooky is only growing game after game.

He also correctly nailed Bell and jjh as part of the hydra Bear HUGS in Happy Face mafia.

[Nancy Drew 39]

And caught 2 scum in both FL v Hectic and Nancy Drew v Titus.

[petapan]

White Knght
26/07/21	petapan	Dannflor	Not Quite Normal Multiball	Replacing into a slot that had not only faked a scumslip but fakeclaimed a role that did not fit the setup, Dannflor amended the claim to his true role, vanilla townie, and seemed resigned to dying as his slot was being run up, only to post so hard and so townie that enough people started having doubts and decided to give him time, with him becoming a top townread of the masonry that took charge of the game. This lead to a turnaround into a day 1 scum elimination, and continuing from there, with Dannflor staying alive to endgame. Truly an impressive turnaround for a slot most would have written off as doomed.

[unwnd]

Nth