Newbie 1714 (Game Over)

[mhsmith0]

My first newbie game loss here just made me feel sick. That said, that fundamentally yuck feeling I had from that loss made me a better player. The losses make you stronger, the wins boost your morale. I wish you a reasonable blend of the two going forward.

[Raskolnikov]

Yeah this was pretty bad luck for town.

-d1 quickhammer+return wagon
-ranger killed before getting a real chance to lynch scum
-beeboy being sick and not getting to contribute as much as usual
-fox being busy outside the game and not getting to contribute as much as usual
-my partner replacing in as mhsmith d2 with hands completely clean of the d1 interactions
-both zyf and beeboy scumreading sick which was so frustrating for him as it was already game over from his pov

I'll try to give feedback tomorrow but I think you personally did a really good job at obvtowning; you couldn't have known about vandit and the only thing you could've done was be more open minded about it being mhsmith instead of sick there (though I was scum what I was saying on sick being town and mhsmith kind of IIoAing wasn't really wrong I think). I really want to see ranger's feedback if she was following this game after her death!

[Raskolnikov]

^directed to zyf

[mhsmith0]

I'll also admit that I loudly whooped and hollered when I found out that FOX was in fact the cop. Being right on a read like that is SUPER fun. Second time I was right about nailing a cop (first time was Fruit Salad, where I sucked at blending in but was solid at PR hunting... and my wolf buddy crunkus was AWESOME, carrying that team into 3p LYLO against basically an all-star town despite a newbie and an afk'er as his teammates - we lost in the end but it was CLOSE and the graveyard meltdown was pretty GOAT too ).

[mhsmith0]

I'll try to give feedback tomorrow but I think you personally did a really good job at obvtowning; you couldn't have known about vandit and the only thing you could've done was be more open minded about it being mhsmith instead of sick there (though I was scum what I was saying on sick being town and mhsmith kind of IIoAing wasn't really wrong I think). I really want to see ranger's feedback if she was following this game after her death!

You were kinda right there, although what I was going for was laying the foundation for more in-depth "analysis" going forward. I feel like that particular instance (the VCA and dead reads) was reasonably consistent with how I'd have done it as town, although honestly it's easy to just tell yourself that *shrugs*

[mhsmith0]

I really would recommend that people who are interested in how to improve and how to learn to scum hunt look over what I posted at
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 1#p8008971
some of those are AWESOME resources, by players who are really really really good

[mhsmith0]

specifically, wrt ranger NK, see sjg's advice for wolves:

A good night kill target is someone who is:
1. Unlikely to be protected
2. Can contribute to the town in a positive manner
3. As a bonus, may have a power role.

That fits the Ranger kill to a t (except MAYBE #1, although there were plenty of possible doc/JK targets on the board).

[Raskolnikov]

Agree with mhsmith about the losses thing; a win you might feel good and brush over mistakes and mishaps but in losses they haunt me and force me to remember them in all the next games.

And about hating to play as scum... even though everything went scum's way this game's made me so panicky and nauseous at times and especially day 1 I had to force myself to post because I really didn't want to. Although come lylo when the game was pretty much in the bag I calmed down and kind of enjoyed trying to get the beeboy lynch setup.

Oh I think I'll go into it a bit since it might seem strange to have done that instead of just wanting sick; I knew sickofit was a safe lynch down the line but I thought it would be more satisfying to lynch beeboy instead of the low hanging fruit, win the 1v1 but most importantly end the game a lot earlier than a sickofit lynch would have came.

I felt like framing it as a 1v1 I could hold a vote on beeboy after or before sick without zyf/sick immediately seeing it as scumclaim and we would have decent time holding that vote for mhsmith to come hammer later even if he wasn't online at that time. It would hold for even a day or two I think, and even zyf didn't seem sure on me/beeboy so I thought there was a slight chance he'd even be convinced.
But if sickofit was voted and I then voted him people(zyf!!) would probably snap unvote and dislike me for being hypocritical, and trying to me+mhs quickhammer there would be like scumclaiming if it went wrong but a slow normal hammer would have taken days and days and let people reconsider.

Also that approach got sick to like me more and pushed me/sick more so even if I was lynched he'd get return lynched.
I think if I went super hard scumreading sick
a) he wouldn't like it and I couldn't rely on his vote on others then
b) people would find it really strange that no one doubts the sick lynch and it would weird them out and maybe make beeboy reconsider
c) something in our interactions could then happen which is a thing people rule us out as partners and therefore look at other partner options for me.

But realistically that was kind of an unnecessary risk and I think a lot of people would say it was really bad and they would've seen it as obvscummy if they were playing. Probably wouldn't have risked it if mhsmith didn't look so towny that I felt I had the insurance (even if I was mislynched he'd still win).

[mhsmith0]

Yeah, I mean I was going all out at looking towny and being acceptably indifferent to a rask lynch. Not flagrant bussing, not flagrant avoidance. Just a townie-looking process of sorting that slot. It's so, SO easy to screw up in LYLO and accidentally out you and your buddy by mis-handling the process. I was as careful as I could possibly be to avoid making any obvious slips.

And rask siding with sick made it SEEM like zyf/beeboy against sick/rask as the "factions", which was useful in the event that rask got lynched, which I considered reasonably possible though not one of the likelier outcomes. I was trying to weave a story that tied rask and sick together pretty aggressively; I hadn't made that case yet, but I was heading there.

PS One key moment of the game was day 1 where sick and sad were both L-2. I was busy trying to sell a way in which there was wolf-driven "resistance" to sick's wagon and I was really struggling to find "evidence". The closest thing I could get was indiciative of a zyf-sick pairing, which was very obviously not the actual pairing. Failing to find a good story to tell on that end definitely held up my "analysis" for a while. i didn't want to just glaze over it (which was suspicious) but I also didn't want to highlight it (since it could potentially make it obvious that sad/sick actually had been a pair of town wagons on D1). Figuring out who "made sense" as a sick partner was actually super tough given that environment; it was a task I really didn't want to have to deal with, but knew that once I started down the VCA road, i needed to figure something out on. Or at least I thought I'd have to...

[Raskolnikov]

specifically, wrt ranger NK, see sjg's advice for wolves:

A good night kill target is someone who is:
1. Unlikely to be protected
2. Can contribute to the town in a positive manner
3. As a bonus, may have a power role.

That fits the Ranger kill to a t (except MAYBE #1, although there were plenty of possible doc/JK targets on the board).

As a side note I was also terrified at the prospect cop would check ranger since she was IC and somewhat scumread, and we'd then have to deal with cop-inno ranger directing town.

[mhsmith0]

Also, as wolf chat will show when it's released, I was debating pulling out the "I'm garbage at wolfing" card if needed. In a regular game that's a card I could maybe have played, but I really, REALLY thought it was unfair play to try it in a newbie game. I'm seriously glad I was never in a spot where I'd be tempted to try such a cheap tactic.

[mhsmith0]

i kinda wonder what would have happened here if my hammer submit had been like 10 seconds later lol. oops i guess.

[mhsmith0]

@Rask: unvoting there was actually a bit of an error IMO. I wanted to lull people to sleep, so they "knew" I wouldn't pull that stunt. And then pull that stunt when their guard was down

[Raskolnikov]

I unvoted after I saw your vote, I was mashinng refresh.

Also while I was mashing refresh I was angrily thinking WTF WHY AREN'T YOU HAMMERING CMON WHAT ARE YOU DOING MAN

[mhsmith0]

I wanted to snipe the town credit and then snipe the actual hammer. Was SUPER worried about getting outed by sick unvoting at the wrong time lol

[Raskolnikov]

Haha, everyone's gone and we're like here bragging and going into our plots like comic book villains do

[mhsmith0]

[mhsmith0]

lol like multiple pages of content between hammer and game close. almost like i'm a blabbermouth or something

[Zaicon]

Final Vote Count - Day 3

beeboy (3):

Sickofit1138, Raskolnikov, mhsmith0

No Vote (2):

beeboy, Zyf

beeboy,

Vanilla Townie

, has been lynched!

Sickofit1138,

Vanilla Townie

, has been endgamed!
Zyf,

Vanilla Townie

, has been endgamed!

Raskolnikov,

Mafia Goon

, wins the game!
mhsmith0,

Mafia Goon

, wins the game!

Night 1 Actions

F-oh-ex investigates Zyf.
dvds12 kills Ranger.

Night 2 Actions

F-oh-ex investigates Sickofit1138.
mhsmith0 kills F-oh-ex.

Mafia Thread
Dead Thread

[ReallySick]

I fuckin knew Fox investigated me too. Just had the wron person I use my evidence on.

Feedback would be greatly appreciated for me as we'll.

[Zyf]

Yeah, I was trying to get a vote at the bottom of the page then an unvote on the next page to fuck with the scum, but i couldn't get it quite right..
I even got top post and second post -.-

[Zyf]

WOW.
Rask even when ranger died they didn't think you were scum.

Jeez.

[Raskolnikov]

Uhhhhh. Okay I might have been too paranoid there. But I'm sure if she stayed in the game she'd have figured it out or something as opposed to reading from dead thread... maybe she would have asked me a question that made me uncomfortable and catch me that way?

But kill alternatives were beeboy (which I think would be fishy with his scumread on me) and f-oh-x and they felt a lot less threatening. I didn't want to kill you either zyf since you liked me and your towniness and activity made you a strong influence on the game which meant your reads were high influence too.

And regardless of reads there is "pushing the game forward" and ranger would have made it a more active game and raised critical thinking in everyone. Beeboy and f-oh-x were really inactive so it's an impact thing too.

[Raskolnikov]

I mean everyone questions it but I don't see a counter suggestion
Obviously f-oh-x in hindsight for the cop but I didn't manage to PR read him because I'm bad at PR reading.

[Zyf]

Uh yeah.
Having an IC/SE closer to me who, y'know, /wasn't scum/ would've been super handy.
So in that sense it was a good play