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    posted a message on 2017 MTGS Mafia Awards - Winners Announced!
    Wow, I am honored. Thanks for the kudos once again, MTGS folks.

    Some comments and thoughts-

    It is a bit of an irony that a year I consider some of my best town work of all time, I didn't manage to win a single game as town. In most instances we got really close, down to just one left or just one wrong vote, or just one wrong guess on my part. All it takes is one wrong answer sometimes.

    It's a testament to the level of skill that I faced from (most of) the mafia teams I was up against. The Low Fantasy team was nothing to sneeze at, they were crushing things all game. The Dark and Stormy team had Reaverb Tau, on maybe the best mafia performance I've seen in 10 years, and that is difficult because I had just gotten off a game on my home site featuring Montmorency, also giving his all-time best game, carrying a team of four when the first three got knocked out in just the first two rounds of play.

    In short, over and over again, the towns I was a part of gave their all, and we just got beat by better teams or better individual players.

    Dark and Stormy night is the game I'm retiring on, and I'm happy to see the efforts toward town were at least found to be useful or entertaining to some people, even if we didn't bring it home.

    What you can say is that it only highlights the even more extraordinary level of play from the scummos we faced off against. If I was the best villager or a representative of the best villages you went up against this year, it just tells you how awesomely you did.

    When I won the mafia-aligned player award a couple years back, I think it was because I gave a level of acting townie and giving off fake analysis that people simply had to put in their town-aligned pile. As such, if you ask me, Reaverb Tau did the same thing this year. He was the reason I got beat in my hardest working, and final, attempt at finding scum. And he did it in a way I just couldn't possibly scum-read him for.

    Tom, in the Low Fantasy game, is probably the biggest reason why that town lost, in my view. Even though he wasn't really trying to act like a townie, he was a good leader and organizer behind the scenes and tried to get the others to not be too rustled by me.

    He is correct, I am just one villager, just someone you can silence with a murder. You can't be intimidated by any one villager. Just play the game and get at least one wolf past the goal line. That's the whole super bowl.

    Good captaining by Tom, good individual performance by Reaverb Tau.

    Shout out to Shadowlancer for being tough to figure out as either alignment but also managing to spot basically everything that I could not. If only I knew how to work with him better, we'd make a winning team.

    Shout out to everyone who put up with me. One of the reasons I'm giving this up is because I can't rest until the game is done, and in any format, whether it be 2 days per day phase or 2 weeks or more, it's too much time. I always have to be doing and saying something, and that drains me and takes away from my real life. And people come to expect that level of effort from me, or else I am suspicious.

    So, I can't keep going anymore. The circuits are officially fried. I might not play with any of you kind folks again.

    But, I have to say, as the guy behind Askthepizzaguy, so many heartbreaking losses in a row is a rotten taste to retire on. Yet, you folks showing me the effort at least was appreciated... makes a lot of the bad taste go away.

    And for that, and the honor of even being nominated, I thank you.

    Posted in: Mafia
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    posted a message on Low Fantasy Mafia - Game Over - The King is Dead! Long Live The King!
    Day 1 pocketing: Tom begins by giving town reads to EL and Kabazame, reads which he never really questions or reviews very much. He just attempts to pocket both players for the entire game. He also gives Study Latin an easy town read which he doesn't return to. Pockets Toastboy. Pockets Vaimes as soon as he sees him. Continues pocketing Kabazame even while Kabaz is getting votes, does not offer a meaningful defense of his town read. Note that Tom marks them down as townie for flimsy reasons right away, and then never returns to these reads. Right away, you know this isn't real town solving. Town solving is harder than early day 1 snap reads you never re-examine.

    Day 1 scumming after townies: Tom throws shade on Shadowlancerx (calling him "manipulative") and then walks back that accusation over many posts. He attacks BluesEclipse. He trashes Rodemy and accuses him of being a hypocrite, accuses him of having double standards. Accuses Jey K of pocketing him and after that, harasses her for the entire game. Says that rodemy and jey k aren't partners, but gives them both a scum read. Then, he realizes this doesn't make any sense, and says that because rodemy is "voting people for silly out of context *****" why can't he do that to his buddies, which is badly forcing a conclusion. He's starting with the conclusion and then inventing reasons why it is true, and this invented reason is not even close to being plausible. Scums after grapefruit with manipulative questions and aggressive accusations. Continues throwing tons of shade on rodemy and grapefruit. He's passive-aggressive towards Killjoy and makes question-statements which are meant to play to the room. By end of day he's attacking Grapefruit, JeyK, Zionite, Killjoy, and rodemy.

    Day 1 defending scumbags: He calls Tubba "meaningfully townie" immediately. Puts Anaklusmos as "pretty town" after 4 posts, never does serious analysis on either Tubba or Anak. Promotes Tubba as "noobtown" after KillJoy says it. Does not meaningfully discuss Lngrrr, puts this space as null.

    He lynches Grapefruit and kills Rhand, who is possibly one of the best town solvers I've ever seen.
    ____________________________________________

    Day 2 pocketing: Attempts to pocket shadowlancer after calling him manipulative the day before. EL calls Tom out for trying to buddy and pocket him, check out post 590 showing their exchange. EL totally calls out Tom and Lngrrr's behavior. 686 is basically his only reason to ever mark Shadowlancer down as town, and he rides on that all game instead of doing any actual work on that slot. All of his town reads are based on paper thin reasoning if any, and lazily never re-examined.

    Day 2 scumming after townies: Immediately opens the round by going after Killjoy, Rodemy, and Jey K. Piles on Jey K when that proves to be a popular choice. Does not push KillJoy. Post 655 pressures Jey K to go after KillJoy. By post 735, Tom, Lngrrr, and Tubba are all attacking Jey K and rodemy. Anaklusmos will join this group in shading these people as well. Goes after Zionite in 802. JeyK, Zionite, and KillJoy are the three wagons by end of Day 2, pushed by Tubba and Tom and Lngrrr and Anaklusmos. Each of them had some combination of Jey, Zion, and Killjoy as at least 2 of their "suspects" that round. Nice teamwork on that. Killjoy is his top scum read this round and pushes Jey K instead of trying to persuade people on Killjoy, showing absolutely no sense of urgency. He moves to Killjoy with 20 minutes left to go and no argument made why Killjoy should go before JeyK. Then he moves back to JeyK, puts this person at L-1, and he and one of his "suspects" Lngrrr decide to lynch Zionite instead before he has a chance to log on and defend himself or claim, which means they get to try to lynch JeyK on day 3, while claiming that JeyK is the one they should have lynched the whole time. Posts 839-844 show Tom and Lngrrr working together to keep JeyK alive instead of pushing this person to death, so they can push this person day 3 instead.

    Day 2 defending scumbags: Still has Lngrrr as null on Day 2. Eventually begins to call Lngrrr scummy, but always through connections to other people, who he always suggests lynching first, for example Jey K. Posts 586 and 587 are Tom and Lngrrr poorly distancing from one another. Compare their interactions with one another to any townie's cases and pushes on their actual suspects, and see if you can spot the difference. If you're any good at this game, it should leap right out at you. Post 611 he mentions Anak, but doesn't really do work on him. 627 he's talking to Tubba and mentions Anak, but there is no work being done on either slot. 640 avoids talking about Anak by simply saying he's town, doesn't say why. 676 mentions Anak but again doesn't do anything but generically call him townie because of his 13 posts so far, which read scummy to me. In 699 he lists five people he's willing to lynch, KillJoy, JeyK, Lngrrr, Rodemy, and Zionite. My wager is that 4 of them are town and Lngrrr is the scum, which means his list is worse than rand. He's naming a scum but hiding it inside five names, which is the opposite of being worth town credit. Killjoy's Iso looks amazing, he's never scum, Zionite was town, and Tubba's behavior toward JeyK and the vote analysis I did shows that slot is also townie, and rodemy looks strongly townie enough from his ISO that I'm willing to call that slot a solid town read. In post 800, when he names people he's willing to lynch, Lngrrr isn't on the list. 818 is some of the gentlest distancing I've ever seen in a game, between Tom and Lngrrr. In 821 he smears JeyK and Killjoy as being on a scum team with Lngrrr, which is, again, the only time he mentions that this slot is scummy, when he can use that to push on someone besides Lngrrr. As an aside, post 844 is some really bad acting by Lngrrr: "Holy schnikes it is 8 to lymch?!?!"

    He lynches Zionite instead of pushing his "top scum suspect" JeyK, which is what he should have been doing if he was townie and actually believed JeyK was scum. Then he murders Vaimes.
    ____________________________________________

    Day 3 pocketing: Still pocketing Latin in 941. In 1165 he's still pocketing shadow while also leaving himself space to pretend this read doesn't exist because he's shadow. Convenient. Still hasn't done any actual work on Shadow which confirms or denies that easy townread.

    Day 3 scumming after townies: Tubba and Tom both open the day lusting after JeyK, because they obviously were saving the mislynch so they could get 3 mislynches in a row. KJ, JK, and rodemy all get pushed by Tubba, Tom, Anak, and Lngrrr on day 3, But here's the crown jewel:
    874, Tom and Lngrrr both use these kinds of arguments against each other, smearing townies with false associations to one another. That's why it is a massively obvious tactic.893, I'm never going to not lynch both Tom and Lngrrr after this. They're sharing a strategy of getting a benefit from bussing one another, which is to smear a townie at the same time. Since they're both doing it around the same time, it is a deliberate scum strategy that they are both participating in. Tom does it multiple times in other posts as well. Look at his ISO.

    You always lynch Tom and Lngrrr on Day 4 and Day 5 after these^ posts.^

    In 1218 Tom is flailing badly because he needs that JeyK lynch so badly, while his vote is on Lngrrr. 1220 Tom really wants JeyK lynched, but his vote is elsewhere. He really, really wants to convince me that JeyK is scum.

    Day 3 defending scumbags: 856 "Down to lynch any of" Killjoy, Jey, and Lngrrr, while always seriously pushing JeyK in his content. His vote may move, but his suspicions and arguments and biggest pushes are always designed to kill JeyK before Lngrrr regardless of his vote placement, which never stays on Lngrrr for very long. 874 implies that the best solution would be lynching Lngrrr. Watch his play that entire round and tell me it was really his top priority. 886 and 889 Tom and Lngrrr "bus" each other. Watch how long it takes for them to find something shinier to vote for. 903 proves his big theory about Lngrrr being scum by pushing on JeyK instead. His comment on Tubba in 941 is just stalling. Marks down Anak as suspect in 949, but he drops this immediately. In 950, Anak is back marked down as neutral, and in 962 Anak "Seems townie". That's 3 different positions on Anak in under 15 posts. He mentions Tubba many times but refuses to do any work on the slot. In 1007 he actually states outright that he thinks Anak and Killjoy are scum, but not together, and if Killjoy flips town, he doesn't want to "risk" the game on lynching Anak. That's scummy independent of Anak being scummy, but it sure looks like they're partnered. 1151 Tom actually makes an almost serious push on Lngrrr, watch how long it takes for him to wander away from that. In 1158 he's still forcing associative reads on Jey, and calls Tubba scum, but we have to lynch JeyK to prove that these other people are scum, not these other people. Watch. And in 1219 he says that he's "not really seeing Tubba as scum", because "Pizza is just seeing newplayer tells". Eat a lynch, Tom. 1221 he defends Anaklusmos again. 1231, Tom's past several posts have been "please don't lynch Tubba or Anaklusmos, please lynch JeyK while I leave my vote on Lngrrr for bussing credit". Tom's never a townie. He's also planning on "making his vote useful", which means his vote on Lngrrr is still purely for show. 1232 "Lngrrr still my preferred lynch by a wide margin" he says, while 90 percent of his arguments have been directed at JeyK. He never hammers Lngrrr or really pushes it, and no one else is voting there, so it's safe.

    So it's clear what Tom's strategy is.

    He's not really solving the game, as you can clearly see by his snap judgments of the folks he called town, and the people he's pushed as scum mainly being townies, while defending Tubba the scumbag. He's manipulating townies, pocketing townies, making bad associations before flips to smear folks like Jey K, saying people are scummy but is unwilling to push them hard and keep his vote there, or convince people that they are, if their names are Anak or Lngrrr. But he's willing to suggest several players are scum with them, he did that with Tubba (just before calling Tubba a townie, remind) and Lngrrr. He never did any work on EL, Kabazame, Toastboy, Shadowlancerx, Anak, or Tubba, but those reads never changed (except with Anak, they changed to mafia, neutral, and town in the span of a few posts.) He tried hard to save and protect Tubba all game.

    Dude's the scummiest thing that has ever existed and must be set on fire and thrown in a wood chipper, followed shortly by Lngrrr who is also obviously scum. On the scum team, Anak is also doing terribly in my esteemed opinion. I'm always lynching him after those two die, because he's also pretty much lock scum. But Tom is bussing Lngrrr and Lngrrr is bussing Tom, and I think we should grant them both their wish, as it's very very very clear they are both scum together. Day 3 proved it beyond any doubt in my mind.

    Tom scum flip also makes EL town and Jey K town and Killjoy as well, independent of their isos which make them town anyway. So lynch Tom first, and you'll be able to get 3 town reads off of it when he flips scum.

    Posted in: Mafia
  • 1

    posted a message on TWO TAKES IT - ONE MORE NEEDED
    In
    Posted in: Old Sign-ups
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    posted a message on MTGS Mafia Awards 2015
    Sir Chris and I recently scummed together for the first time on MafiaUniverse and it was an opportunity for him to tell me about this awards thread. I would have responded sooner but I didn't want to link us together while the game was ongoing.

    In any case, I really appreciate the nomination and the votes for best individual scum performance, and wish all the best to the other winners, nominees, participants and hosts.

    Been watching for sign-ups here but I seem to either miss them completely or the setup for the game isn't vanilla enough for me. Also, joining these games is quite a commitment. Still, I have fond memories of a lot of you folks and would consider playing here again if the game and lineup is right.

    Smile

    Thanks very much!
    Posted in: Mafia
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    posted a message on Final Fantasy Mafia II - Game Over - Fiend Victory!
    Quote from Sir Chris »
    On the one hand, my reads were on point.
    On the other, the body wasn't willing.

    A disappointing game for me. Nothing Seppel did wrong or anything.

    Pizza I politely request a rematch in a normal game.
    <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KAp9sFVdERQ&quot; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/KAp9sFVdERQ&quot; width="425" height="350" movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/KAp9sFVdERQ&quot; wmode="transparent"/>

    It wouldn't be a fair fight. Now you've seen how much I'm full of *****- I've got no chance. I'm like a henchman without a nametag.

    I can't face off against you, you're too good.

    But I accept anyway because honor and stuff.
    Posted in: Mafia
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    posted a message on Final Fantasy Mafia II - Game Over - Fiend Victory!
    @ Proph

    I do what I can, people needed to engage with the game and have it be fun. It's more fun when people talk to you.


    One of the responsibilities of the big bad evil people is to act sort of like a DM or player-controlled enemy character in a roleplaying game, understand that you're not the hero, you're there to be the challenge, your purpose is to create an antagonist for the heroes to fight against, you're almost like a co-host of the game, without you, there really is no game and nothing for townies to hunt.

    It's another reason why I generally don't lurk. Providing challenge to the town involves engaging them, provoking them, trying to mislead them, and trying to get them to engage with the game and invest in it. Regardless of role I don't like it when players get down on themselves, or one another, and if people aren't having fun, is problem.

    There was a lull in activity and energy in the early midgame and that gets largely countered when you take the time to engage with every person who is playing and challenging them to think and giving them something to think about and discuss.

    It took a long, long, long time to bring down the town, and it would have been an utterly joyless and honorless endeavor if all the townies just simply checked out or resigned.

    I really would rather play against a town that wants to defeat me really badly and has energy and enthusiasm.

    It's sort of like an NFL football game- you kind of don't want your opponents to be missing their top players or for them to be injured, or lose by penalties, or any other sort of thing.

    You want your opponents to be fighting fresh, with enthusiasm, at their best, wanting to win, and feeling like they can.

    Regardless of how you feel about Tom Brady or Bill Belichick, or all the nonsense with the cheating accusations, some of which might even be true, especially past accusations of that, something that is generally agreed upon is that Bill is one of the best coaches of the modern era and Tom is one of the best quarterbacks, and if you face off against the Patriots, and Tom is out due to injury that season and they're missing their best players and Bill came down with syphilis and died, well, you haven't really beaten the Patriots, you beat their second stringers. It's a win but it doesn't feel as good as actually defeating the hall of famer championship level team you expect.

    I like Peyton Manning, I like Aaron Rodgers. I get excited when my team plays against them. Because who cares if you beat a team that's 2 and 10? Who cares if you beat their backup quarterback? I want to see the very best of my opponents because it makes for a more interesting and engaging contest.

    No-shows, injuries, second stringers, that's not what I want. I want the top people at their best.

    PS you replacement players really stepped up, like I said. Much of the core of the town's brain by late middlegame was comprised of replacement players who didn't have to invest as much in this game because they probably didn't feel like it was their own, if they replaced in late.

    We don't have a game if we don't have the participation. Letting the game run its course without any fire or passion seemed like a disservice to our game hosts and our fellow players.

    I always want people to get involved. I never want to see folks feeling left out or ignored or feeling like they're not being heard.

    Sometimes it might be to my advantage as scum if they're ignored, but, there's more to the game than getting a win due to safe and passive moves, or because the other team lost too many players midway through the game to put up a real fight.

    I didn't want to lose any of you, and I hated that we lost a couple opponents due to inactivity, especially those who looked like they never intended to be inactive. I bet you any money RelmArrowny would have been a terrifying opponent if he hadn't left the game.

    That's not how I want to win, and it's not how I want townies to lose. I also didn't want Garland to die from inactivity, then it felt like we didn't really beat him, he just left.

    I felt like we beat him fair and square, as square as finding a new player scum due to mass claim really is, and the damage we gave him and the arguments we used to keep the focus on him.

    I never want to be spotted a free townie death, I never want to lose players due to heated insult matches between them and other players, I never want people feeling excluded, and I don't want extra information. I think at one point the game mod posted something we weren't supposed to see in our scum chat, and deleted it, but we would have gotten a copy of it in our emails. Thankfully he pointed it out and I deleted it.

    Extra advantages aren't fun. I like the game to be as fun and in keeping with the host's idea of balanced and by the rulebook as possible.

    That's my approach. Then it feels better when you do prevail, against the odds, or if the game was pretty balanced even. Winning games lopsidedly with extra advantages isn't glorious or dramatic at all.

    Blah blah blah wall o text.
    Posted in: Mafia
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    posted a message on Final Fantasy Mafia II - Game Over - Fiend Victory!
    Yeah, the part of the scum chat where I posted at myself for like four straight hours and like 20 straight posts or whatever was an indication of my high stress levels.

    This was no cakewalk. We were fighting from behind and fighting a losing battle at times, most of the time.

    There was one point before we knew about X Dance where I felt we were in really decent shape, and then Vezok exploded into a pile of flaming meat, and I started to freak out a tiny bit.

    THAT COULD HAVE BEEN MEEEEEEE
    Posted in: Mafia
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    posted a message on Final Fantasy Mafia II - Game Over - Fiend Victory!
    Quote from Megiddo »
    I can't believe the town let you live as long as they did.




    I pretty much only get lynched when I'm a townie. Or there's a town detective. Then I always get lynched because I always get scanned because, uh.... I pretty much only ever get lynched when I'm a townie and people take note of that.

    Can't read my, can't read my....
    Posted in: Mafia
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    posted a message on Final Fantasy Mafia II - Game Over - Fiend Victory!
    Oh, Kamikaze, you and KoolKoal had some really good interactions with fellow scums which allowed me to argue how townie you looked.

    It's really refreshing to see teammates who understand that distancing is not always bussing, sometimes it's just having interactions which appear disconnected, and subtle, less dramatic.

    Despite my pressuring, questioning, and spotlighting Vezok, I was more distancing from him than bussing. Same with Megiddo.

    The other thing is, when I've argued at length that someone is clear, people don't usually see that as a scum defending another scum. Any link between me and you, or me and KoolKoal, seemed to be discounted.

    Sometimes the best distancing is to curl up in one another's arms and say how townie you look to me, I suppose. People are worried that links you together, but scums do that to townies and townies do that to other townies more often.

    People don't typically assume it's 2 scums involved.
    Posted in: Mafia
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    posted a message on Final Fantasy Mafia II - Game Over - Fiend Victory!
    Quote from Seppel »
    Pizza, I read your wall. Smile
    For anyone who wants to complain about balancing issues, let me repeat that the town was almost assuredly going to win until Sepiriel attempted a fancy play that backfired on Day 13.

    Also, if everyone in the town had targeted Bur the night he used Enemy Skill, all 3 remaining mafiates would've been caught instantly. (Even if Bur died, Hooker was alive to resurrect him.)

    If you look through the spectator chat, you'll see how we thought so many times that the town was going to win... yet they just didn't make the right plays. And they weren't hard plays either.

    The game was balanced so the town had the equivalent of 7 mislynches. Any more would have been insane. And that's all I'll say about that. Smile
    I am admittedly biased because I am scum this game, but as a very experienced game host, the points raised here are quite valid.

    If anything the mafia's numbers didn't mean a whole lot, given how town had a wide range of abilities that cleared several folks or made them visible/accountable at night, or could kill scumbags. Since only one scum could assassinate per night, and our other abilities paled in comparison to that power for almost the entire game until throw was developed and the summons were, the town was more powerful than scums were.

    We could have taken out some of the more problematic powers sooner, e.g. Cythare and Hookerpunch were left alive too long, but it took us a long while to kill off a lot of other folks who needed to be rendered dead and were never going to be lynched this game.

    When town has the ability to win the game even when they're at 3 versus 3, that tells you how powerful town's team was in comparison to the scum's team.

    In fairness, it is much harder for them to coordinate, but some obvious avenues of advancement were left on the table, particularly with regard to quicken, summons, cure/protect on the revived townies a lot sooner, and Bur's enemy skill. And the vig hits on townies could have been on scums.

    It might be harder for town to competently wield the amazing powers they have, and scum might be more deadly with fewer powers because they're coordinated, but that mismatch on one side is compensated for by the mismatch on the other side. That's why it's a playable game.

    If town coordinated properly scums never win. I even suggested a blueprint for how nights should go once the mass claim happened. Who picked up the ball and said "Bur, you X, Cythare, you Y, and Jskura, you Z, while Proph, Rhand, and MisterSins do A, and Sepiriel does B, while Pizza does C"?

    Those abilities would have complemented one another to a forced outing of the entire mafia team due to enemy skill alone, and I noted that in the scum chat.

    And the mass claim itself could have happened many rounds sooner than it did, causing further problems for us.

    Town left enough good tools in their toolbox that despite some scum miscues, we caught up to them.

    There were some issues with the setup but unfairly favoring any team wasn't one of them, even Garland would have been fine with a non-botched claim. We had scanned Dante, he came back not Garland, so we moved on. He probably wins the endgame if he doesn't get outed by the mass claim, because we were in no position to deal with several weakened townies, let alone a nigh unkillable stealthy monster with dual night abilities.
    Posted in: Mafia
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