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I return yet again with my mafia blog, summarizing the games I have played over the last 1000 posts by identifying a thought or lesson that I have come away with. As always, I have to get in my plug for the mafia subforum that can be found here. Newbie games are hosting quite regularly or you can jump into a normal game right away. I'd definitely recommend giving it a try if you haven't already.
Past blogs:
1k Post
2k Post
3k Post
4k Post
Chrono Trigger Mafia
Role: Chrono
Theme: Rallying around obvious town players wins games in all blue setups
All blue setups are incredibly abusive. Rolling mafia is generally a huge pain in this type of game because you're fighting an uphill battle from the start. In a standard game of mafia, town leaders are able to be picked off rather easily, but in blue setups there are almost always multiple defensive roles running around, making even a double stack a risky option. Once a couple of town players establish their innocence, the hole only gets deeper and deeper. Other townies start granting these town leaders additional abilities and the mafia is left with no option but to sheep these players, blending in until they reach the point where they are exposed by process of elimination. Even if the mafia manage to eliminate one or two obvious townies, two more pop up the next cycle through the use of night actions. The mafia's best bet is to usually rely on the town missing on early game vig shots and ending the game quickly before things get out of hand.
In my opinion, themed setups are really our weak point from a balance perspective. This isn't directed at Chrono Trigger and GreYMisT certainly does a great job with all his games, but overall, themed games seem to place a much smaller emphasis on balance. Personally, I wish there were less themed games where everyone was a blue and more themed games that were more fine tuned revolving around a smaller group of new and interesting roles. Even when you have multiple people reviewing a game with 30 blue roles, it's near impossible to consider every role and every interaction. Furthermore, the games tend to be really volatile based on the actions on day one and day two. Either town comes out with an overwhelming victory or mafia wins in a close, but quick, manner. Themed games don't always have to revolve around night action analysis to be entertaining.
Themed Game Mafia
Role: Tommy the Fireman
Theme: Indecision is a mafia killer
This was another game where I felt mafia was at a disadvantage based on the setup, so the goal was to end the game as quick as possible. We were in a position where we could win with a single mislynch, but there was a risk that night actions could ruin our plan if we all exposed ourselves. There wasn't a clear lynch that day, but our team required a pair of misplaced town votes to pull off the mislynch and voting as a group could expose our position. We already had a townie with a vote on another townie and we had to make decision whether or not to show up one by one to push the lynch or play reactionary and allow the town to come to a consensus. What ended up happening is that we waited it out and the town player with a misplaced vote ended up correcting his vote. By sitting back and not carrying out our plan, we were punished by losing control of the cycle. In the end, things ended up working out as we managed to secure the mislynch in the final hour of the cycle, but had things not gone our way, I'm pretty sure we would have ended up losing the game and throwing away our strong position.
The Game Mafia
Role: The Devil
Theme: Time is the single biggest limiting factor of being successful at mafia
I don't care how experienced or intelligent you are, if you don't put the time into playing the game, you aren't going to be as successful as you could be. I spent more time on this game than I'd like to admit, yet it probably wasn't that apparent based on my measly four pages of filter. As a town player, it's really easy to translate time spent on the game into productive posts. When given an equal amount of time, a town player will always have more to show for their work, than a mafia player. So much effort goes into watching the thread like a hawk, preparing to deal with a variety of scenarios, falsifying non-existent reads, and proof reading yours posts to ensure that you don't slip up. However, if you are willing to put in the effort into producing several solid pieces of analysis, the rewards are great. Identifying players that don't care enough to take the time to produce a solid piece of analysis is the easiest way to spot a mafia player. Most players are far too occupied in simply blending in that they are simply unable to output the same quality of posts as they would as town. If more mafia players were willing to put in the effort necessary, I think the skill ceiling would significantly rise.
Carnival Cruise Mafia
Role: Jailkeeper
Theme: Townies do so crazy things sometimes
This has absolutely nothing to do with Carnival Cruise, but I was shot night zero so I didn't follow the game very closely. It's always dangerous to assume that people are playing optimally. Other individuals approach the game differently and its not always easy to follow their thought process. Something that is pretty common to see during a mislynch is a statement along the lines of "This player must be scum, because there is absolutely no chance they would do this as town." More often than not, these players flip green. The biggest challenge is getting past your initial conclusion and determining the motivations behind the action.
Bastard Mafia
Role: V
Theme: You're always more aware of your own play style than anyone else.
Coming off two try-hard games as scum, I was pretty exhausted by the time I rolled mafia yet again. I decided to experiment with a new post style, spamming the thread with high content, low quality posts. I figured that people would attempt to compare my town friendly mafia player from the previous two games with this game and conclude that I couldn't possibly be scum. What ended up really happening is that not a single person picked up on the change in play style and I got myself in trouble for not producing enough content to be viewed as town. Thankfully I had a broken role where I could rig the lynch every cycle, but that is beside the point.
Roulette Mini Mafia
Role: Town
Theme: The easier lynch isn't always the best lynch
This game I had a pretty strong hunch that that Vivax was mafia going into day four. While I almost never am absolutely positive on a read, I was pretty confident that I was correct with this one. On day four, I was unsuccessful convincing town to lynch him and a player who had a green detective check was lynched in his place. Frustrated with the results of the cycle, I spent my time attacking prplhz for his resistance to the Vivax lynch. Association reads are really dangerous if neither player has flipped and I fell into the trap of declaring prpl guilty based on his interaction with Vivax. As plenty of players already had a mafia read on prpl, it didn't take much effort to put together a convincing case on him, even though Vivax should have been the correct player to continue pushing. When prpl flipped town, Vivax had lasted two cycles longer than he should have and town was put into a dangerous position that should have been easily avoided.
Hope you see you in a game in the near future!
