Texas Justice Mafia - Game over!

[mith]

My initial first thought was that ZONEACE's first night move was terrible (and lucky, obviously), but a couple thoughts from during day 1:

Killing on the first night is actually no worse than a random town lynch (and that's how they usually turn out in no/low-info games) the first day, from an individual townie's perspective.

If it does work, it gives an essentially confirmed innocent if one of the scum doesn't come out to claim the kill, and huge odds for the kill cycle plan. Even worse for the scum if they do claim the kill, because then you just lynch both and have a 2 Mafia/14 or 12 townie situation (depending on whether you lynch right first or not), which is a bit worse for the Mafia I think.

If it doesn't work, you still get a confirmed innocent (again, if the Mafia lies about it, lynch them both, and you come out ahead, at least), which I suspect helps the odds on the lynch-cycle plan a bit more than having that extra townie alive (possibly not, though, I haven't run any numbers).

The problem, of course, is that if more than one vig uses their kill, you have a big mess, and the Mafia *can* then safely claim a kill.

A worse play, I think, was the quick second vote without letting Kerplunk speak (I was hoping for a good argument), but again, that turned out lucky.

[mathcam]

Yeah, I had similar thoughts (on both points). If I had to put money on it right now, I might conjecture that optimal townie strategy on night 1 is to kill at random with probability 1/14 (maybe slightly less), and not kill 13/14 of the time. Then, on average, there's one kill in the morning, and we're in the situation you descibe above.

On the other hand, the confirmed innocent was almost more of a convenience than anything else...having someone that we could trust to make a random list without having to resort to the stock market or anything like that. If ZONEACE had been included in the list, that's just one more person obstructing the possibility that 2 scum are next to each other (though he did make the lynch on the following day easier).

Cam

[Fuldu]

Nope, cam. If ZONEACE had been included on the list (because he hadn't taken his shot already), unless he'd ended up between PB and Kerplunk it would have just been you and Kerplunk in the morning, a town loss. You lose a lot more of your chance to win by eliminating the second chance you relied on than you gain by adding an extra person to the mix.

[ralphmerridew]

Suppose that, instead of making a single loop (A kills B kills C ... kills A), the town had paired off. (A kills B kills A, C kills D kills C, ...).

The scum's chances of surviving the night would be reduced (they'd have to get both of a pair, instead of just being adjacent), though if they did survive, victory would be certain. With three scum alive going into the night, I don't think it makes a difference, but with four I think it would have.

[Malaprop]

Welp, that was a pretty neat game.

ralphmerridew: Nice strategy.

[silgado106]

Well great game everyone I guess hehe.
The game would have been a bigger challenge had Zoneace not killed IS, but well that really helped us out so it turned out for the best. I also had a hand at killing scum (PeaceBringer And my random vote on Tigris was a nice coincidence too) but yeah, I don't think randomly really counts

[TBuG]

I was kinda hoping cubsfan was scum I was hoping it was cubs (So I survived) , Talitha (so I would get credit), and ca (to make lynchoing oh so sweet )

[rite]

Zoneace's lynching Kerplunk w/o hearing an arguement was a bad play. To be honest, I thought he lost us the game.

In any case, hurrah!

[PeaceBringer]

yawn that is all I have to say-- yawn--

[Cubsfan4life]

Huh?

[mathcam]

He's saying it's boring how hard we kicked their ass.

You know, it's not like you

tried

to do any better, PB. You just sat there going along with the plan, hoping that the list turned out lucky for you. If you had

really

wanted to, you probably could have cast enough doubt in my plan, or presented a sneaky counter-plan which would have actually benefited you guys.

Cam

[Save The Dragons]

yawn that is all I have to say-- yawn--

Translation: Thank you mith!

Oh...by the way...

Thank you mith!

[Malaprop]

Yeah... the mafia played the night as well as they could, but they really could've done better in the day beforehand.

[Kerplunk]

You know, it's not like you

tried

to do any better, PB. You just sat there going along with the plan, hoping that the list turned out lucky for you. If you had

really

wanted to, you probably could have cast enough doubt in my plan, or presented a sneaky counter-plan which would have actually benefited you guys.

I'm not so sure, Cam. Your plan was solid, everyone agreed with it. If there are a few who don't agree with it and the plan goes through (it was a solid plan) then it's obvious who was scum on the next day (if there was a next day).

I think we handled it quite well. If it wasn't you who lived through the the night then it was going to be a lot harder for ZONEACE to figure out the scum.

[mathcam]

Yeah, but there was a pretty big chance that the list was going to come back worse for you guys than it did. I'm by no means saying you played poorly, just that you had relatively little chance of winning playing the way you did. I was just responding to PB's claim that the game was boring...it was only boring because the mafia sat back, played along, and hoped for the best. Maybe you could have counter-proposed a new plan. Maybe you could have divided the town in two as to which plan was best, and ended up getting tempers riled enough so that we started lynching each other. Every day that you get to go by before the town puts the plan into action is a better chance for you guys to win.

Cam

[mith]

I think the main thing the scum could've done to throw a wrench into things is say that one of them killed IS. They'd have to make it geniune looking, obviously, or the town just lynches both and we're down to two scum. But there's no way to prove someone *doesn't* have a shot (or does, for that matter), and it would cast doubt on ZONEACE being confirmed. As soon as PB posted "I guess we have one confirmed townie unless anyone else wants to take responsibility for the shot.", they were in trouble.

[mith]

You will all be pleased to know that mafiascum.net gets the "Who played this variant better?" award for TJ Mafia.

Texas Justice on The Grey Labyrinth

[mole]

Bah, you just can't accept that my plan (and amazingly good luck) was unbeatable.

[Kerplunk]

Woohoo!

edit

: Oh wait, I was mafia... Well, still a good job!

[mathcam]

LOL @ Kerplunk.

But just because we did better doesn't mean you guys did worse.

Cam

[mith]

I didn't mean the town did better, I meant the players as a whole did better.