EPT
My previous posts can be found here if you're really bored :p
1k Post
2k Post
Lord of the Rings Mafia
Role: The Witch-King, Lord of the Nazgul, Mafia Roleblocker
Lesson Learned: Don't be afraid to take a risk as scum, but consider the consequences
Passivity is one of the leading reasons why scum teams come up short. They sit back, choosing their spots to push a lynch, and then by the time day three or four rolls around, they're stuck defending a poor track record and a lack of contribution. The easiest way to survive a lynch, is to stop town from considering you in the first place. When people continuously start bringing up your name, others are much more likely to take a better look at what you've done. Plenty of times players are considered town because "scum would never do something like that". Well why aren't more mafia teams doing things that wouldn't be expected of them.
In this game, I went with a silly tracker claim on day three to out chaoser as the serial killer. I accused chaoser of shooting last night with the tracker claim. We had a strong sk read on chaoser based on his posting and the fact that he took a hit. Worst case scenario is that we're wrong, he denies the hit, and I admit that I'm not really a tracker and that I was trying to simply trap him into claiming a hit. Instead, we're able to out an anti-town threat and I've got a blue result that I couldn't possibly have guessed otherwise.
It's important to take into account the long-term situation, however. In retrospect, I think the claim was one day too early. After the claim, we were forced to bury the roleblocks in the scum hits, since I was forced to provide a reason why I was still alive. Additionally, we didn't take into account that even though the serial killer was outed, town didn't necessarily want to kill him off immediately. This really came back to haunt us when chaoser became town aligned due to the theme of the game. The tracker claim bought me a few days, but after a while, it became a burden, forcing me into another fake claim (pm logs), and eventually my death.
Pick Your Power Interesting!
Role: Role Swapper, House of York
Lesson Learned: PMs are incredibly town favored
I've played in several PM games in the past, but only one other time as scum. People will argue that PMs are mafia favored due to their ability to plant ideas or fish for roles, but that is only under the assumption that the town isn't as skilled. A real time conversation as mafia is incredibly difficult. You're forced to give up reads on the spot, without time to write up a carefully written and reviewed post. It is much more likely to scum slip, simply due to the amount of information being revealed.
Here is an example:
This game I'm scum buddies with sandroba. We've spent some time chatting in scum irc.
Kavdragon approaches me on day one wanted to chat. He asks me if I've talked to sandroba yet. Sandroba wasn't online at the time so I have no idea how to respond. Kav has likely asked sandroba the same question and if I respond incorrectly, we're both outed as scum. I can't wait for the real answer because the chat is in real time. Luckily, I managed to respond correctly, but it would have been a huge blunder if I was wrong. With PMs, the scum team is forced to plan for situations like these, which can be incredibly difficult.
Team Melee Mini Mafia - Couples Therapy
Role: Parity Cop
Lesson Learned: Even though you know you're town, you still have to prove it to others
This is a pretty common problem for townies. You know your own alignment, so any case against you can't possibly be valid. However, you still are required to show others that you have the town's best interest in mind on day one, else you're going to wind up in trouble down the road.
This game I remember making a specific comment that I knew might get me in trouble. It was a mini game, so I posted a town list, leaving the two scum in a pool of 5 teams. I was extremely confident that my list was correct and posted it thinking that it doesn't matter what others think of me, its likely the truth. I ended up getting crucified by town and scum alike and was forced into a role claim. Things happened to work out in the end, but this certainly wasn't the ideal situation and I should have worked harder on day one to establish my pro-town intentions.
TL Mafia XLVII
Role: Vanilla Townie
Lesson Learned: An 80 person game is probably not the brightest of ideas
There were good intentions to this game, hoping to revitalize the player-base with a huge game, but in reality this game turned into a giant headache. Town players are always more likely to get modkilled because they don't feel the same connection that scum buddies have. The mafia team pitied the town so badly that they offered a draw midway through the game.
Responsibility Mafia
Role: Mafia roleblocker
Lesson Learned: Communication is the single most important skill when playing as mafia.
This game was interesting since we had a scum team made up of three distinctive playstyles. L and bugs prefer to push mafia objectives, syllo prefers to play a careful, conservative game, staying out of trouble early, and I prefer to play a pro-town approach, setting myself up for late game. However, if everyone has different goals in mind, things are going to turn ugly if everyone isn't on the same page. On day three, things really went bad when L attempted to push a mislynch, I opposed L, and syllo missed the boat on both sides. We really should done a better job talking things over. Several of ours hits and night actions were submitted or changed at the last moment since we hadn't adequately discussed them in irc. A scum team without an irc channel will almost always fail. Due to poor planning, the game barely fell out of our grasp and I suffered my first lynch in 24 games.
TL Mafia L
Role: Medic
Lesson Learned: Different games require different approaches to scum hunting.
L was another large game, though slightly more manageable with 50 players. Normally on day one, I'll try to town hunt. Those who don't make the list I consider as lynch candidates the following day. If a certain player appears exceptionally scummy on day one, I'll push them, but usually that isn't my priority. In this game, however, this strategy wasn't very feasible. The amount of players in the game was too large to create an effective list of scum candidates by this method. The amount of time I was putting in wasn't giving me the results I wanted. Sure, I had a quality list of 20 town players, but that is of little use when there are 30 other players that could possibly be scum.
Thanks to everyone that makes the games so awesome to play. See you in another 1k ^_^
I think I was in all of those with you.
