Mafia 33: Checkmate - Game over!

[SpeedyKQ]

I just realized that the way this game is set up, a random bandwagon has better than even odds of hitting someone we want to get rid of (the half of the players that are of the opposing color plus whatever mafia happen to be in my color).

Yes, but that shouldn't be used as an excuse to mindlessly bandwagon.

Vote Fuldu.

Why don't we, just for the fun of it, try to lynch scum?

At least I'm guessing that for now the plan will be for all of us to try to find scum, since there won't really be a way to detect blackness vs whiteness from peoples' posts.

[SpeedyKQ]

As far as mass claiming goes, I agree with Lt. Origen. Claiming roles would just let the scum hide among the pawns and pick off the power roles. Claiming colors shouldn't help or hurt either color on day one, but it gives more info to the mafia, and you can't expect everyone to tell the truth anyways.

It should be interesting once somebody gets close to lynch and they claim a color. Should players of the same color back off the bandwagon to protect their teammate, or is keeping color a secret more important?

And

FOS BabyJesus

for messing with quotes. I'd rather not bandwagon to a claim before five people have even posted, but quote-hacking is surely not cool.

[SpeedyKQ]

Yeah, it was pretty obviously a joke in this case, and not a huge deal. But I'd rather not have to try to figure out when it qualifies as blatant humor, and just never see it done. Maybe "tsk-tsk" would have been more accurate than "FOS" I don't think BabyJesus is especially more likely to be scum than anybody else at this point.

We'll eventually need a bandwagon, but I think the rate at which people are piling onto BJ is unhelpful.

[SpeedyKQ]

I'd almost always rather lynch than not. I don't know how many nightkills we'll have to deal with relative to our one lynch, but if this is all we get we might as well use it. I expect there will be (or already is) one person who we agree is more likely than average to be scum.

[SpeedyKQ]

I think the only thing we can be fairly sure of is that there should be the same number of mafia in each color, to keep the colors balanced. Whether there is more than one mafia and/or serial killer, and whether they are the same pieces or different pieces are open questions.

I have to admit that I'm not really thrilled with the idea of leaving the color issue to random chance. The plan now is to take out all of the scum and then hope your own color happens to be ahead at that point? I wish there was some way to use our skills to influence the color battle, but mass claiming is probably bad, so I dunno.

Anyways, I'll

Unvote Fuldu, Vote Internet Stranger

for the sake of having more than one bandwagon.

[SpeedyKQ]

My best guess is that with four kills we have one mafia and one SK in each color. But there could be group(s) that can make multiple kills. Maybe even one mafia of four players, each of whom gets to make one kill per night?

I think it would be most in-flavor for this game for the two colors to be identical in every way, but we have no way of knowing this.

I'd like to see Yoko either post or be replaced. But I hate bandwagons on people who are about to be replaced, because once the replacement happens, everyone jumps off the bandwagon and it just wastes everyone's time.

[SpeedyKQ]

I too find it odd that Strykker said he trusted IS, but wasn't willing to vote for Yoko. I think this disparity is the issue, not the trusting of IS itself. Scum often try to play both sides.

This is a bandwagon I can live with.

Vote StrykkerVerde.

[SpeedyKQ]

This is what blows me away (not literally, thankfully):

A sniper had shot them both. The two white rooks, Vikingfan and Coron, rushed to his aid, but were soon mowed down by the sniper as well.

Doesn't that make it sound like the same one sniper took out all four people!?! And all four of them are white besides. That seems really unlikely to be a coincidence, but it sort of messes with any ideas I was forming about the game setup. It gives the impression that at least some people (the mafia?) know all of our color identities.

So far all of the same pieces have had the same roles (all rooks roleblockers), so I'm expecting that pattern to continue. I don't think Pooky's scenario is very likely.

And that whole "Omerta" business makes it sound like two mafias. One white and one black, you'd think. Maybe the number of kills each mafia makes varies from night to night?

[SpeedyKQ]

Yeah, I'm not sure how to interpret the scene either. It says very clearly that one person killed all four white pieces, but I can't figure what kind of insane role could to that. Maybe it was just literary license.

[SpeedyKQ]

I've seen Pooky make big leaps of logic when he's pro-town. Not neccessarily helpful, but his theories don't convince me of his scumminess.

I've gone through the posts by player to see if anyone has been falling through the cracks of a game this big. And so I proudly present SpeedyKQ's official lurker/non-participant list. All of these folks have not yet posted today, and have posted 5 or fewer times total:

StevieT92 - 5 posts, last posted April 10
sycko999 - 2 posts, last posted March 30
warpdragon - 3 posts, last posted April 10
Yoko Kurama 1 post, on April 7

And so I

vote Yoko Kurama

and

FOS Stevie, sycko, and warpdragon

. And could we have modprods for all four?

[SpeedyKQ]

Unvote Yoko Kurama.

I'll switch to sycko. As Thesp mentioned, he has been inactive yet is not being replaced. The one time he did post, early in the game, he was very aggressive and self-righteous.

Vote sycko.

I'd also be willing to join a bandwagon on IS. I see no reason why he should be as sure as he is about Pooky or Olio.

FOS Internet Stranger.

[SpeedyKQ]

I'll be here today and tomorrow, then gone until May 21.

So this is what we have left:
2 White Pawns
2 White Knights
2 White Bishops
1 White King

4 Black Pawns
2 Black Knights
1 Black Bishop
1 Black Rook
1 Black Queen

The only piece we know nothing about is the knights. I'd guess they are color cops, so that each side would have 3 alignment cops and 3 color cops. I'm starting to think that each piece maps to one role, but the alignments may be scattered about randomly?

I don't know how this game is balanced, but with 4+ deaths per night, 16 players dead, and only one of them scum, I'm getting a little concerned. If there is a white and black mafia, there must be at least three more bad guys left, seven more if we assume 3-man mafias and serial killers! We only get one lynch in proportion to all of those kills, so I'm wondering how much power we have to influence the outcome of the game. It looks like one component of our strategy will have to be hoping the scum teams start doing a better job of picking each other off.

[SpeedyKQ]

I'll be here today and tomorrow, then gone until May 21.

So this is what we have left:
2 White Pawns
2 White Knights
2 White Bishops
1 White King

4 Black Pawns
2 Black Knights
1 Black Bishop
1 Black Rook
1 Black Queen

The only piece we know nothing about is the knights. I'd guess they are color cops, so that each side would have 3 alignment cops and 3 color cops. I'm starting to think that each piece maps to one role, but the alignments may be scattered about randomly?

I don't know how this game is balanced, but with 4+ deaths per night, 16 players dead, and only one of them scum, I'm getting a little concerned. If there is a white and black mafia, there must be at least three more bad guys left, seven more if we assume 3-man mafias and serial killers! We only get one lynch in proportion to all of those kills, so I'm wondering how much power we have to influence the outcome of the game. It looks like one component of our strategy will have to be hoping the scum teams start doing a better job of picking each other off.

[SpeedyKQ]

I seem to have missed something. Why are we voting for Iammars again?

[SpeedyKQ]

A vote count would be good. Looks like we need a prod on help im a bug, maybe others too. I'm surprised by how little talk there has been for the last week.

I'll

vote Dranko20

. I really don't like his vote on Crola. I can't see any reason why an honest player would perceive a vote on a dead person as scummy. Scum can't win by lynching the dead, so I don't see why Crola's voting for a dead person should provoke a vote from Dranko.

[SpeedyKQ]

I disagree, SpeedyKQ. I think it suggests a disinterest in who you choose to lynch, which is more commonly a scum trait than a town trait.

I can see what you're saying here. I don't know, the whole exchange just makes no sense to me. It was obviously a mistake on Crola's part, but all it took was for Crola to realize the mistake and unvote for Dranko to unvote. So I still can't understand where Dranko's thinking was.

I'll

FOS Yaw

for pushing an Iammars vote for almost no reason. There is nothing of any substance in the exchange between Nanook and Iammars. He gave a single-line response to a joke Nanook made about claiming purple with only 2 votes. As far as I can see that is the only interaction they've had, and you're convinced they're scum buddies?

[SpeedyKQ]

I thought that a lack of interacion between two players was supposed to be the scum tell, but I don't buy either argument.

[SpeedyKQ]

Alright, there were two brief instances of banter between Nanook and Iammars, not one, but I really don't buy that it proves anything. In my experience this isn't a tell, and it bothers me that we're ready to start lynching people for off-hand joking comments from day one.

I thought the conventional wisdom was that scum are afraid to talk to each other, so if you find one scum you look at who has never interacted with them. I've never liked that strategy, but I think this is dumb too.

I'm not intending to stand up for Iammars so much as I am saying I don't like Yaw's reasoning.

Unvote Dranko20, vote Yaw.

[SpeedyKQ]

I am starting to feel that it must be a split motive-role game. Otherwise the singleton serial killers would have to be kings or queens, and we have already had one of each be cleared. And it seems unlikely we would have so many kills without serial killers.

[SpeedyKQ]

Crola, I think you completely missed Olio's point.

What we have left:

2 White Pawns, 4 Black Pawns
2 White Knights, 2 Black Knights
2 White Bishops, 1 Black Bishop
1 Black Rook
1 White King
1 Black Queen

My memory tells me that the OP and/or deathscene for Nanook used to say that he was "black mafia", rather than "scum" as it says now. Am I losing my mind?

[SpeedyKQ]

Yup, a black claim means nothing - as long as black is ahead, a white claim would be suicide if we start lynching for color.

I still disagree with the way the Iammars bandwagon started, about the joking with Nanook. But BabyJesus's point about being on every bandwagon is more reasonable, and "black pawn" just seems like the saftest claim for scum to make.

Unvote Yaw, vote Iammars.

I'm not sure if that is lynch or not, depending on whether the mod counts Dranko's vote.

[SpeedyKQ]

Let's say that the deadline for 9:00 EST

tonight

* is not tentative, but official. Don't forget to send choices to both me and big_kahunia.

*Bah! I am stupid.

Deadline is tomorrow Sunday the 26th. Sorry. Bad backup mod.

[SpeedyKQ]

I'll keep the thread locked until the real deadline tomorrow. Anybody who has submitted choices may change their mind if they want.

[SpeedyKQ]

As the sun rises, three screams rise from the black ranks:

BabyJesus, black rook (roleblocker), has been killed.
Pie_is_good, black queen (vigilante/alignment cop), has been killed.
rolandofthewhite, black bishop (mafia/alignment cop), has been killed.

And one scream from the white ranks:

Fuldu, white bishop (mafia/alignment cop), has been killed.

3 players left. Two votes to lynch.

[SpeedyKQ]

Night falls with no lynch.

Send choices to big_kahunia. I'll leave it to him to report the final results when he gets back from jeepfest.

[SpeedyKQ]

Yeah, Pooky had no motivation to be honest. I would have been absolutely floored if he really did roll the die. Well played by him. I can't understand StD's no lynch vote at all.

I am liking games with multiple scum groups less and less. As long as the two mafia teams are anywhere close to evenly matched, I think the town always wins. Game was still lots of fun, though.

Kudos to the black mafia, you managed to stay at the bottom of our scumdar list pretty much the whole game. We more or less managed to suspect everybody but you at some point or another.

Also props to Yaw for having the WHOLE TOWN thinking the colors were evenly matched, when really black was winning. Classic. You would have got away with it too, if it weren't for the mod error.

And finally, thanks to big_kahunia for taking over modding duties and letting the game live.