Starry Night [Game Over]

[Shiro]

I'm not sure that the town would turn against Gaiden.

I would've shielded gaiden forever

You say that now but the paranoia of why the IC wasnt killed would hit in at some point

[Alisae]

if I somehow made it to second dance I would turn against Gaiden

[Creature]

Also, does the scum team necessarily have to make the kill on the IC when IC is paired with town?

Gaiden wasn't really someone to be paranoid about tbh

[Kagami]

I do agree that that's a gambit worth considering more than previous scumteams have, but I'm not sure it would have worked out in this case.

[popsofctown]

pops, I had a question.

Why didn't you hammer Dunnstral - Bitmap?

The trajectory of the game as a whole wasn't good so the longer dance2 lasted the better.

GR-Pops 4-player winstate looked virtually impossible so the timing of Bitmap's inevitable death became irrelevant.

It's like in chess, you don't trade your knight off for your opponent's knight when you're a little bit behind, because simplifying the board makes it less likely something happens that changes who's winning. You keep both knights alive as long as you can.

[Vi]

Was watching this game from a distance because it looked like people were having fun in the beginning. These were my notes for where I was at during intermission. It fits perfectly with my scumhunting trend line.

Spoiler:

Here's some kind of amalgam of what I've been thinking throughout. I don't have any special knowledge and anything confirmed or contradicted by flips is based on what I was thinking prior to that. Not much effort was put into the game beyond reading the posts that looked like things I wanted to read and skimming the rest.

Alisae, Cephrir, unwnd all obvtown
lupin (now Creature) is obvtown? This was several days ago and I've already forgotten why but I remember thinking about it one night and going "wow, that was kinda Town" although I may be confusing them with unwnd
pops started off obvtown, has tried to not be since, and failed

Kagami is playing a 9.8/10 Town game here where 10 is actual perfection. I don't think I've seen better IC play. If it weren't for pushing the momentum of the game behind that awful Ceph lynch I would be counting minutes before the game ended so I could put a post in the Scummies thread that glowed so brightly that people would think they were using mafSilver.

Gaiden managed to do one thing (i.e. barely scrape up to being Town enough to be the IC's date) very very right. I don't really know how, but when KagamiGaiden happened I was in full agreement.

My top scumread was Oversoul.
Oversoul hasn't been in the game for like 120 pages but it's still Oversoul.
Their successor Golden Robster actually has pretty decent chances of surviving to endgame, which is to their credit.

I am not on the "Bitmap is so scum they're actually Town" wagon.

Everyone else is at best equal to a generic replacement. The only one of the remaining players whose posts I can clearly remember is MariaR; spending the whole game saying "STFU you can't read me" doesn't put them anywhere near the Town bloc.

Well there's also Firebringer. My read on FB is that this is definitely FB.

The fact that I only noticed when typing this post that Dunnstral has been in this game the whole time, and was surprised by this (I thought they replaced lupin), means they're probably sleeper scum.

OkaGamma was a push I had no objections to.
I had serious objections to DeasCeph. DV was not a bad flip, but not at the cost of Cephrir and not when Ceph was Townreading DV, someone they paired up with for knowing IRL.

I feel like somewhere along the way people lost sight of the 2+ gentleman scum idea from pre-dance? Or maybe it was 2+ ladies. If people in this game can't remember what they are then I give myself a pass. but yeah that theory happened

Death priority from none to lots is:
*Kagami - SXTLHGaiden
|
*unwnd - popsofctown
|
*DeasVail - Cephrir
|
|
*Ankamius - MariaR
*Firebringer - Shiro
*OkaPoka - Gamma Emerald
|
*Dunnstral - Bitmap
*Golden Robster - Creature

Tiers are unordered. I think Ankamius is more likely Town than not but don't feel especially confident in it, and anyway MariaR is tied to them. I would not be very surprised if both Firebringer and Shiro were Town, but I would sigh very deeply. OkaGamma's position is not really to my credit; they were the least-resistance option in a pile of too many unTowns that I would have been okay with removing without a lot of actual confidence in striking gold.

But TBH at this point scumhunting is overrated; there is a bare minimum of success needed to win this game as Town and I think I've scraped up to it. From my position as someone who has no stake whatsoever in this game I would be okay with whatever results from everyone except unwnd+pops leaving the dance (assuming Kagami+Gaiden are killed during Intermission). That's the shortest path to resolving the game, it works as long as both of the remaining scum are not paired and neither unwnd nor pops are scum, and I don't think I need to see any more.

P.S. plz don't play league of legends

Spoiler: tl;dr

I always miss one, and I usually miss them hard.

--

I couldn't have played this game. It would die for long stretches and then a dozen pages would show up when I'm out doing things, and those dozen pages would have :stuff: going on. Besides, I think it would have been a lot less fun for everyone - myself and everyone else - if I were directly involved. So thanks for being entertaining for a few days, everyone.

But I still want to hang out with Ceph and pops doing anything

except

playing social manipulation games.

Also, does the scum team necessarily have to make the kill on the IC when IC is paired with town?

In this particular case I think it was the right move.

[Kagami]

In the end, the balance doesn't really ~feel~ too bad.

The game seemed close enough to me, and while the scumteam played a good game, the town also played a very strong game.

Maybe it leans one way or the other, but it feels like a solid game was played, and the town earned a win.

[popsofctown]

I think the problem is the mafia don't get to review the IC partner's future play when they decide whether to NK the IC and that makes it brutally risky not to NK the IC.

When Shiro started playing to her townmeta I had some longshot angles to try to mislynch Firebringer instead although I think he played a pretty towny game
If the IC's partner starts townspewing that's it, game over. Anime guy reveals all 5 pieces of Exodia from his hand and wins the game.

[Alisae]

Vi is cool

[Vi]

Q: How bad an idea would it be for scum to deliberately pair together? I looked through all the previous games and I think it has happened at most once?

It's risky af but it screws with the theory really hard (for instance, scumbloc > superbasicallyconfTownbloc in 2v2)

[Ankamius]

I think merchant's daughter was closer to the optimal dance setup even though the coin mechanic was kind of ridiculous in practice I think

[popsofctown]

I have a design philosophy that might get conmingled with the balance philosophy here, there is some wifom to "why didn't they kill the IC" but I hate WIFOM. I played years and years of netrunner and always hated playing that Jinteki card that you can tempt your opponent with that is either a treasure or a bomb and they don't know which and you have to trick them into guessing wrong.

[FakeGod]

I think the problem is the mafia don't get to review the IC partner's future play when they decide whether to NK the IC and that makes it brutally risky not to NK the IC.

When Shiro started playing to her townmeta I had some longshot angles to try to mislynch Firebringer instead although I think he played a pretty towny game
If the IC's partner starts townspewing that's it, game over. Anime guy reveals all 5 pieces of Exodia from his hand and wins the game.

Yes, but there is something that can beat the IC-town pair that doesn't require the scum team to expend their night kill.

[Ankamius]

Q: How bad an idea would it be for scum to deliberately pair together? I looked through all the previous games and I think it has happened at most once?

It's risky af but it screws with the theory really hard (for instance, scumbloc > superbasicallyconfTownbloc in 2v2)

a SvS pairing is risky

if it's on a pairing that has lasting equity, town requires an extra strong TvT pairing read to beat it

but if it goes bad, then scum is just mega screwed lol

[Ankamius]

Q: How bad an idea would it be for scum to deliberately pair together? I looked through all the previous games and I think it has happened at most once?

It's risky af but it screws with the theory really hard (for instance, scumbloc > superbasicallyconfTownbloc in 2v2)

a SvS pairing is risky

if it's on a pairing that has lasting equity, town requires an extra strong TvT pairing read to beat it

but if it goes bad, then scum is just mega screwed lol

*one more strong TvT pairing read

[FakeGod]

Dunn-Mariar S-S should have won their dance!!!!

[Oversoul]

I think the problem is the mafia don't get to review the IC partner's future play when they decide whether to NK the IC and that makes it brutally risky not to NK the IC.

When Shiro started playing to her townmeta I had some longshot angles to try to mislynch Firebringer instead although I think he played a pretty towny game
If the IC's partner starts townspewing that's it, game over. Anime guy reveals all 5 pieces of Exodia from his hand and wins the game.

Admittedly stopped reading when I replaced out, but I felt like Gaiden would have been easier to deal with then Ank or MariaR.

[Kagami]

Q: How bad an idea would it be for scum to deliberately pair together? I looked through all the previous games and I think it has happened at most once?

It's risky af but it screws with the theory really hard (for instance, scumbloc > superbasicallyconfTownbloc in 2v2)

We would have won Valentine's Dance with me paired with IC ~and~ two scum paired if I hadn't been extremely RL busy post intermission. Had I hammered Reck (and there was no reason for me not to if I had realized he was L-1), I'm pretty sure we don't lose.

[Bitmap]

Ank, did you really think I was scum the whole game or were you loosening up towards the end?

[popsofctown]

I think S-S pairing is just not correct

I'm flattered Vi remembers who I am.

[FakeGod]

I think S-S pairing is just not correct

but it beats exodia the forbidden one

[Ankamius]

Ank, did you really think I was scum the whole game or were you loosening up towards the end?

idk when I went from "scumlock" to "can't ever townread"

but it happened and I legitimately could not get past it until you flipped

[Ankamius]

actually I think I was mostly just tilted because it felt like trying to lynch narna in undertale all over again

[Vi]

Q: How bad an idea would it be for scum to deliberately pair together? I looked through all the previous games and I think it has happened at most once?

It's risky af but it screws with the theory really hard (for instance, scumbloc > superbasicallyconfTownbloc in 2v2)

a SvS pairing is risky

if it's on a pairing that has lasting equity, town requires an extra strong TvT pairing read to beat it

but if it goes bad, then scum is just mega screwed lol

I mean compare the alternative (i.e. how pops feels now)

plus I've kind of reached the point in my post-career where I'm like - it's a game, and there will most likely be another one like this one (esp. since this is #7 in the series), so why NOT #YOLO and if it doesn't work you move on to the next game and try something else

Vi is cool

actually now that I think about it
I'd hang out with you too (I already have ofc and would again)
but

definitely

not playing social manipulation games
because

damn

you were getting vicious

I'm flattered Vi remembers who I am.

you dork
even if I had forgotten you, your posts in this game (regardless of alignment) were #quality enough to start over

[popsofctown]

Yes. S-S does beat Exodia. But if you view mafia from the paradigm that mafia players are like D&D characters with a stealth stat that roll a D20 against their skill check every time they post and might shout "scum!", each player's failed skill checks in the pair indicts the paired player.

I think maybe that paradigm is much more 08 than "people with known town metas are gonna play into their own town metas and get townlocked all the time". So much so that S-S is correct? I'm not sure. S-S pairings are definitely the best way to fight the latter paradigm.