Note: I didn't read most of the game, just doing these based off the setup reveal.
Balance thoughts:
I think this setup was very Town-sided.
The Mashmellow Man role was *fantastic* for Town and very Town-sided. If the Mashmellow Man is about to be lynched, he can simply claim his role and Town can switch to different target, confident he's going to get nightkilled at some point. I think the role is stronger than a normal doctor.
Power roles give a lot of information. Even though the Mafia had a good number of ways to disrupt the mechanics of Town roles, the context, motivation, and content of claims would provide alignment information anyway. For example, Slimer's Ascetic ability (Not of this World) and Architect's role hijack ability are much less likely to be Town roles than Mafia ones. (Mafia could fakeclaim, of course, but that comes with its own risks, especially given the vanilla-detector.)
Mechanical Play thoughts:
If I was in this game and rolled Town Ghostbuster, Town Gatekeeper, or Gozer the Ubermacht I would have claimed D1. I would also push to fire the Ghostbuster's power as soon as two claimed (See: this game ending before the any ghostbusters used their ability).
That is to say, which deck have you most enjoyed playing in a "solitaire" game where you race to deal 20 points of damage (or reach some other win condition).
I suspect the answer is some sort of Storm deck, but I'm not familiar with all the variations of Storm throughout magic history.
Tubba's Clairvoyant role was both strong on it's face and a secret totally broken mode nobody noticed.
First, it could confirm other player's claims (Example: "Is there a role named 'Town Thief' in the setup?" to confirm Pizza's claim)
Second, since we could claim flavor names with impunity, Tubba could have asked us to mass-flavor claim and then use his ability as a super cop.
Example: "Is it true that ((There exists Town role PMs whose flavor names is 'Megan') AND (There exists Town role PMs whose flavor names is 'Blade'))" would result in "Yes", which would have townfirmed both Jenna and King Torg. A "No" would give less info than a single guilty but still good info to have a 1 in 2.
(Note: I'm pretty sure the correct thing to do as mod if somebody comes up with the second is do a hotfix rule patch, but it would probably require townfirming the Clairvoyant at least to avoid pulling the rug out from underneath them.)
I'll post the set up later, but suffice to say that enough of the town roles are unconfirmable and their overall power level was weak enough that I didn't feel it was especially town sided. Maybe slightly due to site claiming meta, by which I mean people here tend to trust claims more than distrust them in my experience.
I'm used to open setups where claims are extremely powerful which biases me somewhat.
Just forcing scum into awkward CC situations is extremely good for Town though.
King Torg could have easily given Town two more mislynches to play with, which would have been a disaster for us. I would probably have to bus Killjoy and hope to mislynch both of Tubba and Anak.
On the otherhand, I probably could have gotten pizza mislynched D3 if I had trust Killjoy's reading of the situation more and confidently fake scumread pizza.
I think the setup was slightly Town-sided, 4 Town prs are a bit much and everything except the Tracker was plausibly able to get ahead on kills.
Early on in scumchat I said 3 town prs was on the high-end but in the last few weeks I've learned more about setup design and just how scumsided 3 scum vs. 9 Town is by raw numbers, so 4 seems reasonable.
Town had pretty much the worse possible luck mechanically. Tracker died N1, neither Colin nor Pizza ever did anything, Meg got mislynched.
There were a couple of mechanic misplays I think? Colin and Pizza could have probably held off their claims, which allowed me to roleblock them with impunity. King Torg should have gone off N1. D2 would have been very different if grapefruit was dead and King Torg had a townfirm in his pocket.
Pizza's message was mostly re-iterating his townreads, main thing he didn't share in-thread was changing from Killjoy being scum to Tubba (so he now thinks it's grapefruit/Jenna/Tubba)
His evidence:
1) Tubba had massively less activity D3
1) Tubba delayed lynching grape (pizza interprets this as hoping we would lynch killjoy instead)
3) Grapefruit behaved rather content on his way down D3, indicating something is wrong with the consensus world view.
Additional note: I don't technically have mechanical confirmation that the message came from pizza, it is mechanically anonymous. It was obviously written from pizza's viewpoint though.
@Everyone: Pizza mentioned in his post that he would try and send the one shot message, can anyone confirm having received it? Not sure if his death would interfere with it going off.
I got the message, stayed quiet hoping scum might fakeclaim receiving it. Will spill its contents before Day ends.
How votal analysis works: (since a few posts by players this game has made it seem some players don’t know)
1) Scum tend not to vote one-right-after-the other on wagons. This is a manifestation of scum’s desire to be seen as “reasonable” more than wanting to actually find scum - they tend to want a Townie to “confirm” a wagon is reasonable before jumping on. Scum players do this instinctively without thinking about it. I think this tell is underused, because I recently analyzed a game for this tell and discovered scum voted together around 1/4th the rate you’d expect if player alignment didn’t matter for the probability of being wagon neighbors, and the scum specifically attempted to dodge this very tell.
2) Wagons on Townies tend to contain some scum. This has nothing to do with the “statistics” that any group of 5ish players is likely to contain a scum and everything to do with the fact that as a mislynch acquires more Townies it becomes a more and more desirable target of scum to vote on. Similar to rule of 3, this means wagons contain a scum/Town ratio with less variance than a completely random group of players.
3) Scum don’t like bussing. There are two specific places where scum are extremely unlikely to bus - when there is another wagon on a townie of similar size, or very early (First 3 votes).
All these are subject to being given more or less credence due to context. Votal analysis isn’t a magic formula and more a system of detecting scum behavior which is likely to fall through the cracks otherwise, and to determine how your reads interact before players involved have flipped.
Vote Count 1.8 DoTArchon - 3 (Jenna Tolaria, King Torg, A Bear)
osieorb18 - 3 (DoTArchon, Tubba Fett, Killjoy)
And here's the proof DoTA is Town.
A Bear's vote there is ludicrous bus if DoTA is their buddy. They could have easily voted Osie and inflamed that wagon, but instead they tied DoTA's wagon. Coloring DoTA as Town and Jenna as scum in future votals.
In retrospect the fact they didn't is evidence Killjoy is their buddy. This is an avoidance behavior, and is part of the reason that scum tend not to go right after each other on votals - they feel an instinct to spread out.
Note that King Torg has just moved from DoTA, breaking the 3-3-3 pattern.
From between when it was 3-3-3 with Osie’s vote on Bear and Torg breaking it, the following players posted:
Shadow
Killjoy
TubbaFett
(myself for completeness)
That implies these players didn’t really care which of {DotArchon/Osie/A Bear} got lynched. If any of these are scum, it’s probable they couldn’t move the lynch away from a scumbuddy in that list.
Ok so this is mostly confirmed, we're down to Killjoy/TubbaFett maybe not working with A Bear.
One thing I didn't notice last time is that either TubbaFett or Killjoy would be moving on to the DoTA wagon next to A Bear, which weakens the evidence somewhat. I also saw players post about a Killjoy post which tries to make the A Bear wagon seem like a less possible option:
Hmm, I don't know whether to believe the scum have to be in Tubba Fett / Killjoy because of that wagon or continue scumreading Colin-slot for not voting the entire day, bleh. Tail end of Osie wagon is shadow/Voxx/A Bear, but Colin wasn't around to possibly interfere so.
I would say that being off the mislynches D1 when A Bear could have been lynched is slight positive for Colin-slot.
Jenna is either attempting to gaslight the thread or isn't reading the thread properly now to understand why people believe they misrepresented what pizza said. I think I'm done interacting with Jenna unless a third party prompts me to.
My role is definitely weak, commute is basically worth.... I dunno. 0.1 wolves. Not even that.
The difference between a comma and a period is the difference between expounding on a topic and saying two separate thoughts in deceptively close within a paragraph.
Balance thoughts:
I think this setup was very Town-sided.
The Mashmellow Man role was *fantastic* for Town and very Town-sided. If the Mashmellow Man is about to be lynched, he can simply claim his role and Town can switch to different target, confident he's going to get nightkilled at some point. I think the role is stronger than a normal doctor.
Power roles give a lot of information. Even though the Mafia had a good number of ways to disrupt the mechanics of Town roles, the context, motivation, and content of claims would provide alignment information anyway. For example, Slimer's Ascetic ability (Not of this World) and Architect's role hijack ability are much less likely to be Town roles than Mafia ones. (Mafia could fakeclaim, of course, but that comes with its own risks, especially given the vanilla-detector.)
Mechanical Play thoughts:
If I was in this game and rolled Town Ghostbuster, Town Gatekeeper, or Gozer the Ubermacht I would have claimed D1. I would also push to fire the Ghostbuster's power as soon as two claimed
(See: this game ending before the any ghostbusters used their ability).I suspect the answer is some sort of Storm deck, but I'm not familiar with all the variations of Storm throughout magic history.
Roleblocks hit Town prs 4/4 times this game.
First, it could confirm other player's claims (Example: "Is there a role named 'Town Thief' in the setup?" to confirm Pizza's claim)
Second, since we could claim flavor names with impunity, Tubba could have asked us to mass-flavor claim and then use his ability as a super cop.
Example: "Is it true that ((There exists Town role PMs whose flavor names is 'Megan') AND (There exists Town role PMs whose flavor names is 'Blade'))" would result in "Yes", which would have townfirmed both Jenna and King Torg. A "No" would give less info than a single guilty but still good info to have a 1 in 2.
(Note: I'm pretty sure the correct thing to do as mod if somebody comes up with the second is do a hotfix rule patch, but it would probably require townfirming the Clairvoyant at least to avoid pulling the rug out from underneath them.)
Just forcing scum into awkward CC situations is extremely good for Town though.
King Torg could have easily given Town two more mislynches to play with, which would have been a disaster for us. I would probably have to bus Killjoy and hope to mislynch both of Tubba and Anak.
On the otherhand, I probably could have gotten pizza mislynched D3 if I had trust Killjoy's reading of the situation more and confidently fake scumread pizza.
I think the setup was slightly Town-sided, 4 Town prs are a bit much and everything except the Tracker was plausibly able to get ahead on kills.
Early on in scumchat I said 3 town prs was on the high-end but in the last few weeks I've learned more about setup design and just how scumsided 3 scum vs. 9 Town is by raw numbers, so 4 seems reasonable.
Town had pretty much the worse possible luck mechanically. Tracker died N1, neither Colin nor Pizza ever did anything, Meg got mislynched.
There were a couple of mechanic misplays I think? Colin and Pizza could have probably held off their claims, which allowed me to roleblock them with impunity. King Torg should have gone off N1. D2 would have been very different if grapefruit was dead and King Torg had a townfirm in his pocket.
Scumchat(s):
https://discord.gg/MtScnsz
https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/iaL4pS33pNwBu (Very little activity)
Here is the actual message Pizza sent me, since I'm pretty sure the bbc code is only recorded in the PM I received.
Pizza's message was mostly re-iterating his townreads, main thing he didn't share in-thread was changing from Killjoy being scum to Tubba (so he now thinks it's grapefruit/Jenna/Tubba)
His evidence:
1) Tubba had massively less activity D3
1) Tubba delayed lynching grape (pizza interprets this as hoping we would lynch killjoy instead)
3) Grapefruit behaved rather content on his way down D3, indicating something is wrong with the consensus world view.
Additional note: I don't technically have mechanical confirmation that the message came from pizza, it is mechanically anonymous. It was obviously written from pizza's viewpoint though.
A few weeks ago I would have said definitely not but since then I've learned a lot about how scum-sided 3 scum 9 Town is by raw numbers.
Actual Analysis
Assumptions: Nothing but flips
shadowlancerx - 5 (DoTArchon, Vaimes, Voxxicus, osieorb18, Jenna) (L-2)
Had to make this one myself, up to #56.
This is pretty much "Either DoTA or Jenna is a wolf" and spoiler it's not DoTA
Day 2 lynch confirms this:
That is also "DoTA or Jenna is scum". So we have double confirmation of that fact.
Huh look more Jenna/DoTA anti-alignment.
Also oww that 3 flipped townies and a 4th flipped townie. Not unheard of but bleh.
And here's the proof DoTA is Town.
A Bear's vote there is ludicrous bus if DoTA is their buddy. They could have easily voted Osie and inflamed that wagon, but instead they tied DoTA's wagon. Coloring DoTA as Town and Jenna as scum in future votals.
In retrospect the fact they didn't is evidence Killjoy is their buddy. This is an avoidance behavior, and is part of the reason that scum tend not to go right after each other on votals - they feel an instinct to spread out.
Ok so this is mostly confirmed, we're down to Killjoy/TubbaFett maybe not working with A Bear.
One thing I didn't notice last time is that either TubbaFett or Killjoy would be moving on to the DoTA wagon next to A Bear, which weakens the evidence somewhat. I also saw players post about a Killjoy post which tries to make the A Bear wagon seem like a less possible option:
which is right where I was counting him as "being passive about A Bear lynch".
So at this point I wouldn't put this as good for Killjoy. It still looks town-y for Tubba Fett though.
Hmm, I don't know whether to believe the scum have to be in Tubba Fett / Killjoy because of that wagon or continue scumreading Colin-slot for not voting the entire day, bleh. Tail end of Osie wagon is shadow/Voxx/A Bear, but Colin wasn't around to possibly interfere so.
I would say that being off the mislynches D1 when A Bear could have been lynched is slight positive for Colin-slot.
----
I would like you to claim this Day phase because I don't entirely trust anybody else detect a fakeclaim.
Because Pizza full-claimed way before the post Jenna quoted:
#635 has pizza's full claim
#655 is where Jenna's pizza quote comes from: