Chess - Game Thread [Concluded]

[Kagemusha]

How so?

Maybe i just dont quite clearly understand this lover mechanics as ive not witnessed one before where one is scum and one not.

[Csargo]

I thought we were essentially renamed masons, until ATPG said otherwise.

[Montmorency]

If Csargo was my lover and my whole team had died - did we elope?

Are we living happily ever after in Szeged?

[reinoe]

@Montmorency

Not the greatest team performance but easily the best solo hero for a scum I've ever seen. Congratulations. I don't know I I'd have ever suspected you if I were in the game anyway. Why did you kill me?

[Montmorency]

@Montmorency

Not the greatest team performance but easily the best solo hero for a scum I've ever seen. Congratulations. I don't know I I'd have ever suspected you if I were in the game anyway. Why did you kill me?

On N3 the choices were DP-Slaan-Pizza, but the specter of a doctor, and not wanting to kill predictably straight down the Lock-Town list, led me to choose you as a kind of trick shoot.

Probably not the best option. But I made loads of blunders over the course of the game, and I somehow made it through. I guess Bobby Fischer was wrong when he said, "All that matters on the chessboard is good moves."

[Kagemusha]

But I made loads of blunders over the course of the game, and I somehow made it through. I guess Bobby Fischer was wrong when he said, "All that matters on the chessboard is good moves."

A good move in chess might not be good move in mafia. You sold yourself to Csargo, Pizza and the rest of the town. Rest of the moves were not that important. No matter how i look at it. Im amazed how you pulled this through and seemingly with ease.

[Montmorency]

A good move in chess might not be good move in mafia. You sold yourself to Csargo, Pizza and the rest of the town. Rest of the moves were not that important. No matter how i look at it. Im amazed how you pulled this through and seemingly with ease.

@Askthepizzaguy

I think the lesson of this game, and XCOM, and FrenchRev is that town rolling scum in the beginning of the game is quite vulnerable to infiltration by lone wolves in the "sweet spot" of middling collective rankings on alignment or POE.

If Csargo's life hadn't been linked to my own, our team could have expected to win the game from the end of D1, despite Logic's lynch, and despite Zack and GH being doomed in the POE - all because I was very townie to Pizza, but not in the Lock tier.

[Sooh]

If Csargo was my lover and my whole team had died - did we elope?

Are we living happily ever after in Szeged?

If you wish, but the mafia-chessteam delegation won the tournament. Csargo lost his game. He can still live happily ever after with you though.

[Sooh]

stupid browser.

[Sooh]

Maybe i just dont quite clearly understand this lover mechanics as ive not witnessed one before where one is scum and one not.

I mean, Csargo would have to die for town to win, if that's what you mean.


And Csargo, I understood quite early on that you didn't know the distinction between lovers/masons/neighbors. Masons are the only ones guaranteed to have the same alignment. Otherwise the pairings may or may not be mixed alignment wise.

[Logic]

I mean, Csargo would have to die for town to win, if that's what you mean.


And Csargo, I understood quite early on that you didn't know the distinction between lovers/masons/neighbors. Masons are the only ones guaranteed to have the same alignment. Otherwise the pairings may or may not be mixed alignment wise.

I still don't know what neighbors are.

I've heard of lovers as a scum/villager pairing, but never seen one before.

[Winston Hughes]

I knew it was Monty.

[Montmorency]

I knew it was Monty.

Can we get a sample from the Dead Chat?

[Winston Hughes]

No, hang on, that's a total lie.

I had no idea.

Magnificent play, man.

[Winston Hughes]

Honestly, I went through reinoe, Slaan, Fred and just about everyone else, up to and including a late tinfoil on pizza.

[Choxorn]

Honestly, I went through reinoe, Slaan, Fred and just about everyone else, up to and including a late tinfoil on pizza.

Same here. At the very end I was finding it suspicious as hell that Pizza was somehow still alive.

[Montmorency]

#Winstontoostrong

[Sooh]

No, hang on, that's a total lie.

I had no idea.

Magnificent play, man.

I was just going to say :P

[Csargo]

I mean, Csargo would have to die for town to win, if that's what you mean.


And Csargo, I understood quite early on that you didn't know the distinction between lovers/masons/neighbors. Masons are the only ones guaranteed to have the same alignment. Otherwise the pairings may or may not be mixed alignment wise.

Yeah, that really messed me up, not knowing there was a distinction between them, I would have played it differently if I realized earlier. I don't think I would have ever tried to lynch Monty, but I wouldn't have tried to survive as much as I did. Hindsight.

[Sooh]

Yeah, that really messed me up, not knowing there was a distinction between them, I would have played it differently if I realized earlier. I don't think I would have ever tried to lynch Monty, but I wouldn't have tried to survive as much as I did. Hindsight.

My bad. I assumed people here knew what lovers were, or that you would try to look it up when you saw it wasn't masons. I can try to add a link to an explanation next time I use roles that I'm not sure have been used here before, in the interest of fairness.

[Sooh]

Just something so simple as rand has so much to say for a game. Had Slaan or Pizza been randed into the lover pair instead, the game might have been very very different. It certainly would have made things trickier for Monty :)

[Montmorency]

Just something so simple as rand has so much to say for a game. Had Slaan or Pizza been randed into the lover pair instead, the game might have been very very different. It certainly would have made things trickier for Monty :)

I think this might be more like a significant structural advantage, that if the whole team save one is eliminated early, they will have an easier time of surviving to the endgame than in normal circumstances, so long as they stick to the middle of the pack.

This is what happened in FrenchRev and XCOM as well. The "sweet spot". In FrenchRev admittedly it was multidimensional given the multiball setup, where Choxorn turned out both universally town/null-read, and perceived as much less of a factional threat by people in the other 3 (4 including Mafia, but that was just him anyway) factions. But the principle remains.

So, why did town roll in Representative Democracy and Swords & Sorcery?


In RepDem, I still struggle to interpret the effects of the unique voting structure. But it was a scum-town-scum-town lynch, at which point Zack resigned because someone false-peeked him. However, had that not happened, Zack had a decent shot of making it to endgame, being nullish, if on the scummy side, in terms of aggregate reads.


In Swords & Sorcery, massive PR proliferation, fierce networking, townie mindmelds, and the destruction of half the Mafia team in the first round isolated remaining scum immediately, next of whom was lynched D2. D3, the SK was lynched. D4, final-scum Snerk used his power to end the day prematurely, then resigned/suicided, because he just couldn't escape Town's wrath.

In this victory, the final scum, Snerk, was universally POEd, so he just didn't have much chance from D2. And if it were up to me, the game would have been much closer. I wanted to lynch atheotes instead of Visor, the second scum, and I wanted to lynch Csargo instead of Snerk. So in lynches rather than in role-action and networking, I was more of a hindrance. Thinking of everything wrong townies can get you even with a bad early game by the solo-scum, we can understand why wrong townies with a good early game by solo-scum can determine the game course, even 4, 5, 6, lynches out.


Lesson is I think, lock it in D1 and ride the wave all the way to LYLO for Mafia; pick who dies in your team on that basis, if it comes down to that. For Town I think the policy lynch for 'scum rekt' scenarios should be, always start from the middle of the pack. AND DON'T LOCK MORE THAN 3 PLAYERS AT A TIME.

This deserves discussion. Speaking of which, where are my scomies at?
@Zack @GeneralHankerchief

[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!

[Slaan]

Just something so simple as rand has so much to say for a game. Had Slaan or Pizza been randed into the lover pair instead, the game might have been very very different. It certainly would have made things trickier for Monty :)

Oh I probably would've been just as bamboozelt... lovers on my homeforum always win together, so if they are town/wolf they are essentially 3p with the wolfpartner having access to wolf chat so I'd assume that monty had no reason to lie to me and I'd just assume that we were v/v without ever looking at it >_>

[Fredwood]

Grats monty, wp. I had come to the conclusion that it could have been anyone but Pizza, this POE was annoying.

Funnily enough I started scum reading Slaan for his positive read on you. I should have pursued the nag on you after the ISO, but I legitimately couldn't get why anyone why someone would just seemingly make up reads...I mean I guess I should change the approach, but I'm not really sure how to handle that. Even without the Slaan stuff, I'm not sure the outcome would have been much different, maybe we get a CSargo lynch, but we had the chance when we lynch Barto, I was right on my read on Csargo though, just lynching less townie over slightly more townier townie at that point.

[Winston Hughes]

I know there were bad vibes around some points in this game, but honestly I think that was just because the standard was so high.

Between the usual suspects bringing their a-games, the org legends rolling back the years, and the newcomers showing exceptional game, this was an intense environment from start to finish.

[Csargo]

My bad. I assumed people here knew what lovers were, or that you would try to look it up when you saw it wasn't masons. I can try to add a link to an explanation next time I use roles that I'm not sure have been used here before, in the interest of fairness.

I shouldn't have just assumed. Should have looked it up. Now I know for the future.

[Montmorency]

I shouldn't have just assumed. Should have looked it up. Now I know for the future.

And knowing is half the battle. Just don't forget to make the same mistake twice.

Always make the same mistake twice.