Chess - Game Thread [Concluded]

[GeneralHankerchief]

GG all, congrats to Monty, and thanks to Sooh for hosting!

This was a really weird game for me so I'm not really sure how much I should contribute, so let's just put in a couple of general comments now:

1. Strategy: In pregame and D1, the goal the mafia team agreed on was to take control of the thread, keep each other as consensus towns, and, most importantly, keep Logic the strongman alive so we could ensure a kill on Pizza or Winston without having to worry about doctor protection etc. Obviously this blew up in our faces for a number of reasons - Pizza was too persistent, hit the right target, and we weren't townreading each other as much as we initially agreed on. By the end of the day, it became apparent that our Plan A had failed utterly, and I don't think any of us were prepared for an alternative.

2. The Dp101 CFD: I usually don't like to talk about my own approach in terms of playing games for a variety of reasons, so here's a little secret: sometimes, as mafia, I do things just to do things. This is generally done to combat the whole "mafia have a specific agenda they need to accomplish and you can use this knowledge when hunting them" tactic. This was the case for the Dp CFD attempt on D1. I can't speak for Zack, but I honestly think I would have done the same thing - though perhaps to a lesser extent - as town. This kind of fell in line with Plan A completely falling apart. I knew it wouldn't change anything, we didn't really have a fallback plan in place at this point in time, so I just wanted to have some fun before the guillotine dropped. It wasn't desperation - we knew Logic was drawing dead - it was just stress relief.

3. Thoughts on game balance: The initial impression judging from the roles we had access to was that town didn't have much in the way of power roles. A one-shot strongman is a decent role but isn't exactly superpowered, and a mafia/town lover team is actually an additional crutch for us. In addition, the fact that the thread remained open at night was rough, as over the years I've gotten used to completely putting the game out of mind at night and just recharging the batteries for the next day - meanwhile, the town was continuing to solve. Because of the public nightchat, I think the mafia being offered the choice of being allowed to stay in scumchat to help out or not is reasonable enough of a compensation for this. In addition, the Choxorn role seemed fine, and the Dp tiebreaker role... man, I'm just glad Monty killed him instead of Pizza that final night.

I have other thoughts as well but I think this will serve for now. Again, a big thanks to Sooh for hosting this and everybody for playing!