MTG Salvation

Good job gents!

@Iso-Can you explain to me the read on Nacho? What read was it that you got him on so early? I'm totally impressed.

@Nacho-From my point of view you were playing an excellent scum game, especially considering how bad of a situation you found yourself in. Could you explain your mindset from the time you were alone forward?

You're all welcome.

@TS: I had the massive response to you from ages ago typed up but I lost it when my browser crashed. Sorry.

As for the Nacho read, thanks! I first felt Nacho was off for meta reasons but the yo-yo effect with him, Cyan, and Chris on my wagon was really what kept me on that read.

I feel really bad for Nacho, whom played as well as a scum could while the scum team still had a chance. And kind of bad for NV, whom had an excellent Day 1. But you did effectively out yourself just to get Iso killed, when it was simply not believable for you to be town there watching SC.

I don't even know what to say re: Iso.

iso for town MVP.

me this game:


sorry nacho.

I mean, I annihilated the scumteam. I really wanna read that QT.

I'm just annoyed that NV's gambit to get me lynched actually worked. That's twice now that someone has lied about an information role result and gotten me lynched as a result.

I wasn't gonna completely destroy them until after my win was solidified, anyway.

I'm pretty proud of my own reads this game. And pretty pissed that I got lynched with an illegal vote in a league game.

@Hunt-By the way I left my last day thinking I was going to have a good case against you but you looked much better to me on the reread and I thought your dealings with SC were very convincing and real. I would have had you cleared as town on that alone. I didn't get a chance to tell you because I got night killed though = (

Separately, behaviorally Tom starting pinging my scum radar harder and harder as the game went on and I am infinitely curious how the teammates were dealing with this.

oh hey it's finally over! good job team. I'm sad you shot me, cyan, but you always think I am scum so I can't be too mad.

This game was fun but awful for me. I had fun being the traitor but it was hard to know what to do. I was getting really aggravated by some legit slips by Tom and just never had the time to create the case. It wasn't even bussing, it was a case I would have made as town too.

@Iso: I'm curious how you peggede as scum too. Especially so early.

Quote from Jobie »

This game was fun but awful for me. I had fun being the traitor but it was hard to know what to do. I was getting really aggravated by some legit slips by Tom and just never had the time to create the case. It wasn't even bussing, it was a case I would have made as town too.

@Iso: I'm curious how you peggede as scum too. Especially so early.

Yeah, that was what made it hard to read you in my opinion. It became painfully obvious Tom was scum and it was hard to tell who was bussing and who was just town pointing out the obvious. One thing I will say in Tom's favor though is that I never felt like he was bussing Nacho. To be that came across as scum trying to get a good player lynched.

Oh my god it's finally over.

Lots of things genuinely pissed me off about this game. Oh well.

Sorry team

Shout out to Cyan, Citric, and GJ who screwed me over completely at the end. GJ, if you had investigated Vaimes over Huntzilla I would have been able to single-mindedly push him in order to get him lynched first, where then you would have investigated Hunt, Cyan would have blocked me, and I would have shot Cyan, which would have pushed it to me-Huntzilla in 4p, with me cleared by a roleblock shot and Hunt cleared by a rolecop shot, which I likely would have won.

Citric, without you reviving GJ when you did, none of that would have been a worry. If you brought him back earlier, I would have been able to deal with him earlier and if holding onto that shot for one more night would have meant you never would have got the chance.

And Cyan, I was hoping the Rhand vote of yours wasn't going to go through: I figured if the day lasted longer I could rebel against the Rhand lynch and post more that day so your paranoia against me would have more time to fester, but of course didn't have the chance. Good play at the end; it would have been much harder to get me lynched without you leading the charge at the end.

I'm OK with the scum QT getting released.
I'll have more to say when I'm back home.

Also, do the nomination threads only go up at the start of the next year?

If so, I'd heavily encourage everyone to vote Iso for best town player, period: the scum team as a whole didn't play poorly, and his reads were incredible the whole way through; I haven't seen a town player play that well in the years I've played mafia and although his SK play was garbage (if you didn't shoot Sir Chris N1, you probably would have won: night kills should always always always hurt the team in the lead as an SK if you aren't protecting yourself), I think town play like that deserves recognition.

Did you legitimately bulletproof Cyan, and why were some nights 0 kills?

None of my inventions did anything. We predicted when Cyan would use his protective shield and no killed in order to legitimize my claim.

I'm eager to see the scum QT if for nothing else to see what coordination you guys had early on and how annoyed you were with me.

I only ever used one Protective Shield, I was 'saving' another one. The fact that the items didn't actually work makes for a pretty cool role.

GGWP town.

Thanks for hosting, Taredas.

Fair enough. I mean, you fooled me. Behaviorally, I wasn't as sold, but the inventions themselves worked. The problem as I saw it was you painted yourself in a corner, and obviously you had no way of knowing, but the power on the town made sense for few if any, mafia to be powerless.

@Cyan: Is that how you knew Nacho was lying?

I didn't really do much this game.

I was hoping to pull a NK after I was Mod-confirmed as I gained an extra life of sorts once it happened. This was a fun game, I just didn't feel like it needed me after Day 2.

Good game everyone.

Wish I had been able to finish it out, oh well. A win is a win.

Quote from Jobie »

@Iso: I'm curious how you peggede as scum too. Especially so early.

I forget who said it but the way you kid-gloved tom until called out on it set me on edge with you.

Quote from Nachomamma8 »

Also, do the nomination threads only go up at the start of the next year?

If so, I'd heavily encourage everyone to vote Iso for best town player, period: the scum team as a whole didn't play poorly, and his reads were incredible the whole way through; I haven't seen a town player play that well in the years I've played mafia and although his SK play was garbage (if you didn't shoot Sir Chris N1, you probably would have won: night kills should always always always hurt the team in the lead as an SK if you aren't protecting yourself), I think town play like that deserves recognition.

I'm not sure what you mean. If Chris didn't flip, I had no credibility, and therefore, nothing stopping me from getting lynched. As an Untargetable SK, I'm basically required to play to the town win con to maximize my effectiveness. Killing Chris was the only way I lived past Day 2.

God, finally.

Iso <3

I'm nominating Cyan for the imaginary category of 'most fun to play with'.

Also NotVoxx's parting gif was beautiful.

Yeah, sorry I suspected you Vaimes. I just could not comprehend NAcho as scum with the plays he made and the confirmed items, while Hunt did not do a good job of standing out as town, meaning there was a margin for error.

No doubt that Citric's shot should have been a single shot, but in a 20 player game, the town essentially had 6 hostile units to deal with, and 2 night kills. Iso going into scum hunter mode was probably the biggest swing to the scum more than the set-up itself, but I almost feel this game could have gone completely in the other direction, despite turning into Mafia, Town Liar edition. And despite what Iso's says, his role was not lasting to the late game so he would have had to start shooting townies eventually.

"Iso is the enemy."

I am the antidote.

Quote from Prophylaxis »

As the primary reviewer, I would like to take this time to apologize for the balance/swingy nature of this game.

I severely underestimated the power of the two-shot Reviver after seeing it be used to mediocre effect in Final Fantasy Mafia II, and that role should have definitely been a one-shot or be a suicide-reviver which came up in review (sacrifice itself, revive a player).

My major miscalculation is that I expected the Serial Killer to scumside and be killing more townies than scum. Iso + the mafia duking it out virtually all but guaranteed a town win. The town was egregiously powerful this game, but I OK'd it because in my experience five scum and a Serial Killer was traditionally very difficult for a town to defeat.

I will hopefully conclude the League Season 1 in a couple of weeks, but I hope you all enjoyed this game despite errors in the review.

Scumchat: http://www.quicktopic.com/51/H/iL9Xh9yBvfHCw

Okay this addresses the majority of things that pissed me off about this game.

One of my pet peeves as a host reviewer on other sites is how much mods seem to like "fun" roles which are in fact quite cruel to the scum team. I am actually a fan of no neutral parties in most games, for example, as they heavily reduce the skill level and the dynamic of mafia, and reviver is just... such a cruel role to ever use in such an unrestrained way. Nullifying night kills like that is just so mean and, frankly, cheap.

If you think scum (mafia + sk) has too much killing power, give town more skill choices. Roleblocks, doctors, what have you. I mind less when the town chooses a night action that requires thought to be useful. Those are, in my estimate, the best type of roles: those that can reward rather than those that are GIVEN to a faction.

This isn't commentary on how the game played out in this particular iteration, I won't take anything away from anyone who won, merely that this game setup really bothered me as someone who balances games himself.

Revive should never be used lightly.

Also Proph correct me if I am wrong but didn't people who were revived drop dead after 1 day in FF2?

edit: they were revived with 1 hp, was was essentially 'dead again whenever the scum wished'

So yeah you really, really should have taken that into account when you remember how 'medicore' it was in ff2.

i really want to know what happened with the ambassadors. that whole thing was so weird.

yeah iso's role was ridiculous beyond belief tbh.

It was kind of a perfect storm of bad stuff this game, so I didn't enjoy it much at all, but I don't think that's really anyone's fault. D1 just lasted waaaaaay too long, IMO, and was a struggle to stay engaged with. D2 started with the triple whammy of Chris dying, TS getting revived, and tom imploding and getting turbo-lynched, and once a little more information about the setup came out, it just didn't feel like Nacho and I ever actually had a chance, which is a pretty tough sell when I'm trying to stay motivated. I don't pretend to understand setup balance, but it certainly felt super, super unbalanced, even trying to separate my bias where I'm a huge pillar of salt because I was on the wrong side of it and channeling, basically, this emotion for like 1.5 IRL months playing out the string.

Quote from Cyan »

Wow...I would be out of my mind with rage right now if I had been assigned a mafia role in this game. I honestly don't know how they were ever going to win.

Between that and being on the winning side of the always NK enabled, double voting werewolves in Vanillaville 2, I think I'm going to stick to open setups from now on

Quote from Iso »

Quote from Jobie »

@Iso: I'm curious how you peggede as scum too. Especially so early.

I forget who said it but the way you kid-gloved tom until called out on it set me on edge with you.

Quote from Nachomamma8 »

Also, do the nomination threads only go up at the start of the next year?

If so, I'd heavily encourage everyone to vote Iso for best town player, period: the scum team as a whole didn't play poorly, and his reads were incredible the whole way through; I haven't seen a town player play that well in the years I've played mafia and although his SK play was garbage (if you didn't shoot Sir Chris N1, you probably would have won: night kills should always always always hurt the team in the lead as an SK if you aren't protecting yourself), I think town play like that deserves recognition.

I'm not sure what you mean. If Chris didn't flip, I had no credibility, and therefore, nothing stopping me from getting lynched. As an Untargetable SK, I'm basically required to play to the town win con to maximize my effectiveness. Killing Chris was the only way I lived past Day 2.

Chris claimed mason recruiter. If you had a strong scumread on him, you should have known that his options were: confirm himself with a scum buddy, or fall on his sword the next day. You shouldn't be worried about getting lynched on Day 2 when you can genuinely scum hunt, and you should have known that you would get a little more swing with the town after TS-Bur (is that who we lynched D1?) town flips.

But the problem was, as soon as Chris claimed, "Yeah, I confirmed myself to so-and-so scumbuddy!" lynching his scumbuddy does not confirm his alignment if his buddy flips scum, and I needed the momentum to get tom lynched because everyone was just so convinced that tom was just being Simple Tom and not actually scum. Nobody was listening to my cases. It also didn't help that The most feasible way for me to get the lynches I needed was through a domino effect...

hey, i was never gonna confirm chris.
that reveal was fully in character. i was gonna play the part of townie with a qt and no confirmation, and tare really did message me saying he wasnt going to bother creating the qt.

Quote from Iso »

But the problem was, as soon as Chris claimed, "Yeah, I confirmed myself to so-and-so scumbuddy!" lynching his scumbuddy does not confirm his alignment if his buddy flips scum, and I needed the momentum to get tom lynched because everyone was just so convinced that tom was just being Simple Tom and not actually scum. Nobody was listening to my cases. It also didn't help that The most feasible way for me to get the lynches I needed was through a domino effect...

mason recruiter means that chris's alignment is confirmed to the player he targeted and the player he targeted's alignment was confirmed to him.

and yes, you had us on associatives, which meant getting one good lynch was equivalent to getting a couple good lynches. which meant that you had 5 good scum reads, and realistically only needed to get any one of those 5 scum reads lynched. no one listening to your case today doesn't equal no one listening to your case tomorrow; shooting Cyan instead would have removed a big town leader from the game and given you the opportunity to take control, considering he was the big obstacle to most of your day 1 pushes.

I wanted Cyan alive for the extra non-Iso kill power floating around. I learned in my last game as SK not to completely kill off the mafia immediately, so, yeah. I was gonna durdle about for a Day or two to keep you guys alive until I had the endgame wrapped up in my favor.

all i'm trying to say man

shoulda durdled harder

too hard too fast too soon

I'm still a little shocked my role was 2-shot reviver. Like, that was an order of magnitude greater than the best role I've even heard of in a reasonable mafia game.

Good game all though. I think realizing how important my role was caused me to play with almost complete focus on using my role correctly than scum hunting, which probably shows from how the game went + what's in the scum QT.

I'm surprised it was still relatively close towards the end, so props to Nacho for the ridiculous amount of fortitude.

@NotVoxxicus
As I'm often reminded, this is why I don't try to read you (but at least this game it strongly worked in my favor to do so :P)

oh yeah props to NV for tricking me.

Quote from CitricBase »

@NotVoxxicus
As I'm often reminded, this is why I don't try to read you (but at least this game it strongly worked in my favor to do so :P)

So what was your ultra secret town tell that I would have had to basically luck into (twice) as mafia? Just for posterity's sake.

Had fun. Will chat later.
@TS
Good to know. Thanks
@Hawk
Your question mid game... answer = for the points

Quote from Iso »

But the problem was, as soon as Chris claimed, "Yeah, I confirmed myself to so-and-so scumbuddy!" lynching his scumbuddy does not confirm his alignment if his buddy flips scum, and I needed the momentum to get tom lynched because everyone was just so convinced that tom was just being Simple Tom and not actually scum. Nobody was listening to my cases. It also didn't help that The most feasible way for me to get the lynches I needed was through a domino effect...

I was also on Tom and pushed him hard when his behavior (soft) confirmed him as scum. When I got revived I railed hard on him till we lynched him. The problem early on a lot of people had with your attack on Tom was that it seemed to be overbearing. I couldn't get that you already had a 100% scum read on him that early on unless you were hard bussing which was believable. That was one of the main reasons I wanted to vote you, because I could see strong scum motivation for bussing Tom early so he didn't give away the rest of the team. But to expend such energy on him so quickly wasn't something I've seen town players do before, I don't think. It just seemed like "Eh, he's such low-hanging fruit".

I'd have done the same as town!

Quote from NotVoxxicus »

Quote from CitricBase »

@NotVoxxicus
As I'm often reminded, this is why I don't try to read you (but at least this game it strongly worked in my favor to do so :P)

So what was your ultra secret town tell that I would have had to basically luck into (twice) as mafia? Just for posterity's sake.

It's been awhile and I don't remember the exact part, but it had to do with some emotional leakage into your posts that I couldn't fathom you doing on purpose and that you'd have to accidentally tap as scum. As in like emotion X makes WAY more sense from town, there's no way his mindset aligned as scum to leak X when it really doesn't seem on purpose...twice.

Oh sorry to GentlemanJohnny for reviving you WAY later in the game. I would've apologized earlier but I was dead Jim!

I planned on using one super early on (partly to counteract that downside to the ability), hence TappingStone coming back, but looking at the dead TPR's available (especially with Tordeck's slot not pickable via modkill so no doctor revival) I didn't really have many options.

Quote from Iso »

I'd have done the same as town!

Except you claimed a role that as town, the mafia had zero way on interacting with. Like even if we did get NV before you, you had to know you were on borrowed time with that claim. There was no way that "lynching that role out of paranoia" would ever have feasibly passed a reviewer on the town side. It was so obviously neutral, it hurt.