Mini 1073: Autumn Mafia - Game Over!

[Oso]

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How does one play one shot vig well?
Should the shot actually be saved for later on or used early?
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I've never played a Vig so this is just what I've heard here and there. Normal multi-shot vig: VIs, flakes and lurkers who you think are scum in addition to anyone you think is obvscum.

One shot: The person (alignment ultimately doesn't matter here) who would cause the most confusion in LyLo if you can't bring yourself to shoot a scum read you aren't sure of. So I guess that would mean hold off shooting until later. In this game: Paruda.

Under BaM, if I were a Vig (one-shot or unlimited) I think I'd push to discourage lynching lurkers and potential mod-kill candidates and limit myself to shooting them provided it didn't hose up town and unless I got a really strong scum vibe, I'd stay away from active players. Doing that under these conditions would probably put a neon sign on your back that you were the vig. "I'm against lynching lurkers/flakes" and then they start showing up as second kills is pretty definitive to a scum team I would think.

[Ythill]

IMO, an early shot is better from a one-shot. Removing multiple suspects on D1 makes D2 a lot easier, both because of the extra cardflip for analysis and because, at worst, a potential red herring is removed. It also sets up a good D2 full-vig claim for drawing the NK away from other PRs.

[ICEninja]

I'm surprised people still seem to think that I had this defeatism because town faced long odds. As I said in the game, I've faced pretty crazy odds being in a 4 town vs 3 scum lylo and winning it, and enjoying doing it. I was just so pissed off at Fernando for flaking on us, PerArdua for flaking on us, and for the mod to be using a rule set that doesn't deal with flakers very well. We were just stuck in a situation where town players were not playing and badly hurting town, and no the game is not fun when people are doing that. Therefore I did not enjoy this game very much.

You won't find me defeated in the face of long odds. I've pulled through before and I'm going to do it again.

I feel like a single shot vig should shoot day 2. During day 1 your likelihood of killing a townie is pretty high. You have more flips to work with day 2, and a better idea of who is scum, and you also have more time to discover players like PerArdua who, being alive, will damage the game. I've been in several games where there has been a townie that simply had to be policy lynched because of something stupid, and a vig shot would have seriously eased up on town.

As Ythill said, if you claim vig during day 2 and announce to town who you're going to kill, you'll draw scum night kill towards yourself which can often be a good thing, especially if no other town PRs have died yet. This also more or less confirms you as a townie for day 2, thus increasing the likelihood that town is going to nail scum on day 2.

Also, I feel like you can have a better idea of who to avoid shooting because of PR tells for day 2. It is also good to shoot anyone who has claimed VT but doesn't get lynched.

[Oso]

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I was just so pissed off at Fernando for flaking on us, PerArdua for flaking on us, and for the mod to be using a rule set that doesn't deal with flakers very well. We were just stuck in a situation where town players were not playing and badly hurting town, and no the game is not fun when people are doing that.
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You won't find me defeated in the face of long odds. I've pulled through before and I'm going to do it again.
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Agree with the first, glad to hear it on the second.

As I said before, this isn't a slam of AGar as I think he bent over backwards to make the game go despite the ruleset but I hadn't played under BaM before and hadn't really thought through the ramifications but BaM goes into my pile of rules that I don't really want to play under again. Despite the win and the hammering I did on you(ICEninja) in my last post, the win/loss of this game had less to do with actual game play than with players who didn't even attempt to play, namely Paruda's and Fernando's slots. All the other slots that left got replaced. If I were town, I wouldn't even have had a real big problem with Llamarble's shot choice for Night 1 because at least he was present and participating.

As far as I can tell, and I don't know if it is particular to BaM in general or just this game, the winners are the team with least flakers. It was good that I finally got to play under this ruleset though. If you had a group of people who you knew were going to participate from beginning to end (which leaves me out as I replaced), then the short deadlines/mod-kills wouldn't be a problem. But for the normal run-of-the-players that /in for minis, I think BaM is tailor made for a short game where the winner is determined more by those who decide not to participate rather than the play of those who do. It does take a bit of the sting out of losing I would think but it also took a lot of the fun out of starting out on the team that won. "Deer in the headlights..." is the term that came to my mind when Fernando flipped cop although I didn't say that to anyone. And that was reinforced by Netlava's leaving and the general demoralization that came with lynching the cop because even if you suppose all three scum(three being the normal guess for a mini-normal) were on the wagon (we weren't, Equinox was off) that left 4 townies on the wagon. Probably all of the town realized that the town, rather than scum, had lynched the cop.

Which was exactly the wrong way to think. Town had lynched a player that was an excellent candidate for mod-kill at the end of Day 2 and

THAT WAS ALL

. That he happened to be the cop was Fernando's fault, not the fault of any other players in the game, including AGar. The fact that the cop just got stretched had an effect way out of proportion to the actual damage done.

[Llamarble]

You know, in retrospect town may have come closer to winning than I thought.
Before I hammered I had the idea that if Xine wasn't scum, the lack of a quickhammer meant two of her wagon were.
I quickly rejected the idea because of my town reads on Ice and Equinox (and the fact that Xine being scum explained the issue just as well if not better) and hammered, but given there was still time left in the day, I should have at least considered the logical alternative.

If I had:
Since Ice was almost definitely town in my mind for both his initiation of the attack on Oso and his earlier posts, that would have meant an Equinox and Me=Weird scumteam.
I still probably would have lynched Xine since the odds of our wagon being on scum seemed way higher to me than the odds of both scum being on our wagon.
But I would have at least gone through and read things from a "Oso/Equinox/M=W" scumteam perspective, and starting with the right assumption might have gotten me to the truth...

So note to self: Never be lazy! And if this specific situation comes up again, I'll look a lot more closely into the possible scumteams on the bandwagon. I'm not sure it effects scum strategy too much unless you think a player who is logically certain of who the scumteam are can convince the rest of the town. Your votes are on them in the first place because they're the likeliest lynch.

Xine could actually have used this same logic even better than I could have,
since without a quickhammer she could determine for certain there were two scum out of the three players on her wagon.
(Quickhammering is the absolute dominant strategy for scum not on the wagon since it just wins instantly)
From there she could build cases against players who from her perspective were almost certainly scum (2/3 probability even if she chose completely randomly).

I guess she didn't get a chance because I hammered her too soon.
I hammered kind of fast because I didn't feel like there was enough activity for anything really interesting to happen in the interim, so I guess it kind of goes back to what Oso said about town being demoralized.

[Ythill]

If you had a group of people who you knew were going to participate from beginning to end...

That's the long strategy of the BaM rules. The people who flaked from this game are should longer be allowed to sign up for BaM games, and the extreme pace scares off some more methodical players that don't get blacklisted. Eventually BaM will have a dedicated player group that don't ever flake, and enjoy quick, decisive games. That's the theory anyway.

I guess she didn't get a chance because I hammered her too soon.

I make this mistake a lot. Even with short deadlines, patience in LYLO tends to help the town, but it's easy to forget in the heat of the moment.

[Me=Weird]

About why we killed Zinive instead of ICE, I think we just decided a known PR was a better kill than someone who might not be, turns out that was good as ICE was jailed.

Before I hammered I had the idea that if Xine wasn't scum, the lack of a quickhammer meant two of her wagon were.

The problem with this is that the only person to post between L-1 and the hammer was you and Xine. Who obviously wasn't going to quickhammer herself.

[Equinox]

Were there any other aspects of my play I should improve on?

Be careful with the breadcrumbing/softclaiming. There were a couple of things you said prior to the mass claim that made me guess you were the vigilante (though I didn't expect the one-shot).

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I have to agree with Oso that the thing that shot town was the apathy. For all of Day 3, I was banking on ICEninja, Llamarble, or Netopalis not re-reading the game and then catching some of the hesitation in my play. Only Netopalis re-read, and by then it was pretty much sealed.

Because of this game, I may consider using the BaM ruleset in the future... Even as scum, I really hated the fact that those two had logged on but didn't bother to participate or make even a one-liner stating, "Hey, I don't want to play anymore; replace me."

Me=Weird, you really coasted under the radar. I have to admit that I wasn't confident you'd make it, hence sending you to do the dirty work all the time; I feared someone would accuse you of lurking, yet nobody considered it at all.

AGar, thanks for modding. Everyone, thanks for a good game, and I hope to play with you again in the future!

[ICEninja]

I was banking on ICEninja, Llamarble, or Netopalis not re-reading the game and then catching some of the hesitation in my play.

Don't ever bank on me not reading stuff and catching you on things. This was probably the only game you would have ever been able to get away with that =)

Me=Weird, you really coasted under the radar. I have to admit that I wasn't confident you'd make it, hence sending you to do the dirty work all the time; I feared someone would accuse you of lurking, yet nobody considered it at all.

Once again, in any other game I would have definitely been hounding him for more content. I'm pretty harsh on lurkers when I'm really playing (as evidenced by my day 1 play).

[AGar]

I'll continue to mod BaM, for the record.

Also, notably about BaM - it doesn't forbid replacements completely. Every replacement I made I believe was perfectly in line with the ruleset - it's up to my discretion. I won't modkill someone like Oso or Netlava, who ask for my replacement, because they can't make the commitment. I have modded an F11 game off-site, using a standard newbie ruleset. I wanted to pull my hair out. Making sure everyone was posting every 72 hours, making sure prods were in line. BaM is a ruleset I've enjoyed playing under and something that works well for me. I do realize it is probably too rigid for mini normals, as they have a much more loose player base and the games aren't intentionally swingy like themes can be, but it matters not, because I'm not going to be modding another mini normal. Ever. Lol.

I'm starting to architect my next game, I think it'll be a large normal. I have... ideas.

Also, I'm going to knock heads with one of the BaM mods who started with it about adding FeRnAnDo along with PerArdua possibly to the blacklist. While I can't 100% prove that he picked up his prod or not, the fact is he hardcore flaked and only didn't get modkilled because he got lynched first.

[Papa Zito]

fin.