On January 24 2012 16:56 Meapak_Ziphh wrote:So here’s a little bit of my perspective on this game. I came in with a ton of confidence after responsibility and thus had a pretty good faith in my own scum hunting abilities. Secondly, I had requested Vet from Flamewheel because a) I’m really done with dying night one and b) I wanted to see if I could get shot if I tried. From the standpoint of fulfilling my role for the town this game I actually failed, if I’m not getting shot night one or at the very latest night two I’m doing it wrong. I’ll just take you all through my thoughts of how things went.
I started the game fairly certain that I would be town. When I got my Vet role I immediately set about trying to be as noticed as possible. I didn’t necessarily need to be right, I just needed to make sense and look like I would be right somewhere down the road. Unfortunately for me personally, with BC/L/Bum/Foolishness/Incognito/Bill in the game I was at a recognition disadvantage. These players WILL take up discussion in the thread regardless of what I say (short of claiming scum
). However several things worked initially in my favor. L was gone for a lot of the day, Foolishness was making people suspicious, Incog had attracted his share of detractors, Bill was being Bill, and BC was the only person making sense. In this opening I decided to run for mayor. Now from the start I knew I wouldn’t win. Big names have the advantage of being memorable and I just wouldn’t garner the support with those guys in there. But I needed my name getting mentioned as someone who was making sense. The way I saw it, if my name wasn’t mentioned in a positive light at least once every two pages I was failing. As a Vet, it’s my job to appear as protown as possible and to make mafia scared. They don’t even have to be scared of what I’m doing right now; they need to be scared of what I can do.
So I got my mayor campaign underway with GGQ as my lynch target. I was mentioned several times day one as someone who was making sense, however as I had expected, discussion of the big names drowned out any noise I was making. When BC made his mason claim I saw an opportunity. I had expected people would get all over him for it like they did, however at this point I was getting significant town vibes from him and so I took his side and supported him early after his claim when a lot of people were screaming at him. I still have no idea why he claimed, however I was confident he wasn’t mafia and wanted to be seen as unafraid to stand up and give an opinion. Similarly with the whole Palmar deal, when people started calling for his head I stood up and defended him because I assumed he had a plan, and I felt reasonably certain that scum wouldn’t just roll over like he was.
When day one was over, I felt pretty good. My read on Palmar had been correct, GGQ had only acted worse, BC had been elected and despite the Palmar lynch I still felt good about him. However when day rolled around and I hadn’t died I was super pissed. I read my filter and decided that I hadn’t been active enough or aggressive enough to warrant a shot. Never did it cross my mind that I was simply wrong. With the newfound resolve to take the thread and force it where I wanted, I came out day two guns blazing.
This was my biggest mistake of the game. I still feel that my case on GGQ was good, hell Incog agreed for a while. But in trying to be aggressive I allowed myself to tunnel. Now I don’t think I’ve ever hardcore tunneled someone before. Ever. I’ve played almost 20 games and I’ve always tried to remain open towards new developments. However in my quest to gain attention and seize control of the thread (since at the time it seemed like neither foolishness nor incog felt like leading) I put blinders on and ignored everything else. I defended Incog and Sandroba whenever I wasn’t going after GGQ. Incog I thought was obvious, he had called ciry and he agreed with me on GGQ. However I flat out screwed up on sandroba. I’ll confess, I never read his filter the entire day 2 and just assumed he was town since he had pushed GGQ, my assumption was that since I was the only one pushing GGQ, a mafia wouldn’t want to draw attention to the case and since GGQ was mafia… Not one of my better moments all around.
My sharp increase in aggressiveness and activity also backfired. While it was intended to look protown, it actually got people nervous. No one in the game had ever seen me play like that and a lot of people were understandably skittish of associating with me. I could see this happening at the time, however when GGQ flipped scum I figured people would come back to me. I got in a stupid spat with toad as well; however it probably helped me a lot in hindsight. Caught up in the moment I decided that toad must be wrong since his reads were so bad (he was pushing sandroba -_-). However upon reading back through his filter, I couldn’t find anything overtly scummy and at the same time I was exposed to a lot of `roba’s posts which started me thinking a bit. Obviously I couldn’t pull a 360 and stop pushing GGQ (especially when I still thought he was scum), however I was opening up to voting for someone else. When Incog swept in with his macpo case I saw my opportunity, jumped off the GGQ ship and voted macpo. Macpo died, I was even more certain that BC/Foolishness/Incog were town, but I still had GGQ to lynch and I hadn’t actually made myself look more protown.
When the day came and I still hadn’t taken a shot I was starting to get frustrated. I’ve been killed night one three or four times and now that I was trying to get hit it wasn’t working. So I changed styles for the third time in as many days. This style is probably the closest to how I’d play VT except with more analysis. Because of my tunneling GGQ, I felt like I had locked myself up to a certain extent; however I realized I needed to do some reading and find some more scum. It was through this reading that I came upon opz and bum. The problem was, both were gut reads with very little substance. Also, I was bleeding credibility in the thread as both townies and mafia were taking potshots at me. I was in no danger of being lynched, however my opinions were in danger of being relegated to the place WBG’s were.
I did have a few things going for me; I read through my own filter a lot and was pretty familiar with anything that could be possibly construed against me. This allowed me to respond accurately and without contradicting myself in a timely manner. I was also pretty sure that the “Big three” couldn’t lynch me. Call it ego or whatever, but I think I could have fought off a lynch. Plus town was skittish of them working together so I think a combined effort by them would have set too many people off. Plus I had the added benefit that Incog thought I was town, in his own words he thought I was trying to be “the town hero” which was surprisingly accurate for my day two goals. Given this sense of security I felt free to go after opz even though I knew my case wasn’t very good. A lot of it did rely on kill WIFOM and sheth’s old analysis. However I personally had faith in Sheth. His analysis and subsequent death had an eerie feel of déjà vu about them from responsibility mafia. With the case against opz I was able to relieve a bit of the tension that came from being locked into one person
At this point I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be hit. I had so far failed to put any major pressure on the mafia and while I was right about bum and opz, I didn’t have the credibility to effectively go after them. I started scheming up ways of grabbing the spotlight during the night. I eventually settled upon a plan to fake claim DT at the start of night four. I’d claim to have gotten scum checks on GGQ night one and opz night three and that I had got role blocked night 2. I was still sure about my reads and wanted to give the mafia a reason to shoot at me. However the dawn of the day squashed any hope in that plan.
With GGQ’s death I was 100% certain that the mafia was setting me up with frankly pissed me off, they obviously thought I would be the easiest mislynch and that just made me mad. Thankfully, the whole BM drama from the previous day was still going on and I was able to lie lower and collect myself. I’ll speak briefly about the BM situation for a sec. At all costs I wanted to avoid losing Incog. For me, no matter how anti-town Bill had acted there was still the chance he was telling the truth. I have to give you props here Bill, you said post game you were trying to play dopey `ole Bill who would do things off the cuff, I have to say well played sir. I didn’t buy it 100%, I didn’t even buy it 50%, but losing Incog would have been too big a blow. However with Incog’s death and the whole Bill or BC thing going on, I decided to take this day to get my reads straight and be ready when Bum/opz came for me the following day.
At this point I felt like the thread had an equal chance of going after me as it did leaving me be. I was certain after Incog’s death and BM’s subsequent bumbling that he would flip scum which would leave BC as all but confirmed. With both Foolishness and BC calling for my death I wasn’t so certain I could fight off a lynch if both mafia and town was against me. With this in mind I asked BC to mason me in hopes that I could change his mind. As luck would have it, GGQ’s death had already started to change it, but me masoning him ended up being the smartest thing I did. Between the two of us we solidified opz and bum as the next day’s targets and we (or at least for me) cleared toad, BrownBear, slardar, bugs, ja22, and p4ndemik. We (or again maybe this was just me) did have a misstep when we started getting suspicious of hiro. This was mostly my fault however we were prepared to go after hiro once bum and opz were dead.
The day ended with BM’s death and the modkills. It was kinda disappointing to be honest, with the stuff that was starting to happen that night, BC and I would have realized that hiro was legit and started looking elsewhere. With Bug’s help (who had just started showing interest again) we could have lynched opz easy and bum as well without too much difficulty. However the game ended before I could get redemption for my earlier tunneling of GGQ.
Now I’m going to talk a little bit about play style. In my opinion (preface, all the following is my opinion), there are two types of players, those who put in effort and those who don’t. Of those who try, they’re broken down into two groups as well; the analysts whose page long write-ups catch scum with chilling accuracy, and the diplomats who control the thread via frequent posting.
The analysts are by and large older players. Ver is probably their king. They don’t need to post a lot, they save their words for their magnum opuses which absolutely destroy the scum team. They’re rarely pressured except by newer players who don’t understand their power. They’re not always effective early game but if given time they
will find you. They’re the type who get shot night one (at least by a competent mafia team
) every game because of the threat they pose, even if it means double or triple stacking. Incog played a fairly typical analyst style this game.
The other type is the diplomat. I use diplomat very roughly, because the players who fall into this category are anything but diplomatic. Palmar is probably the best example of a diplomat. He doesn’t need huge posts to find scum, he instead relies on constant thread presence and extremely aggressive sometimes bullying behavior. The diplomat applies constant, doglike, pressure which breaks down the veneer scum hide behind. They don’t always get killed night one because their actions sometimes get misconstrued as scum intentions. However, the diplomat actually had a better chance of finding scum day one. Unlike the analyst, diplomats don’t need a day or two to start seeing patterns, instead they bully people around until they find someone who doesn’t react appropriately.
Now these are both gross generalizations. After all, Incog found a scum day one and analysts like him have done it before. However I’m using it as an example. My preferred role is that of the analyst. I don’t have enough time to dominate a thread 24 hours a day, and neither do I have the personality to go after people like there’s no tomorrow (and when I do I lose track of the bigger picture). In short, I don’t have the features of a diplomat. However, analysts rely a lot on their names. Take for example Sheth versus Incog. Sheth wrote an analysis of opz, was it great? No. Was he right? Yes! Incog wrote an analysis of BC, was it good? Yes. Was he right? No. However who got more attention? We spent a significant portion of day 1 debating Incog’s incorrect analysis. Sheth’s analysis got shot down in an extremely scummy manner and no one batted an eye. This is nothing against Incog, it’s just illustrating a fact that in order to maximize the analyst role you have to have an established name to get people to listen to you over the chaff in the thread.
Contrast that to the diplomat. A lot of newer players play the diplomat effectively and without a name like Incog. They don’t find the whole scum team alone, but three or four diplomats in a game of 30 can easily win it for the town. Especially since diplomats aren’t as high level targets as analysts, they have greater survivability.
Now I’ll cut to the chase and explain why I brought this up. Most games I play a second tier analyst. Sure I don’t destroy the scum team but I may nail one and I’ll at least establish my innocence. However as a Vet I felt like I needed to be more active to gain the mafia’s attention. Thus on day two I tried to play as the diplomat. I thankfully had some time which allowed me to be fairly active; however I was still constrained since I just don’t like playing the diplomat style. This is why I changed so drastically on day 2. I needed to raise my profile, and since my name isn’t big enough to get hit as an analyst (especially in a game stacked with big names); I tried to go it as a diplomat. The results of course are in the thread. Day three I was in damage control mode and tried to return to my normal style without drawing suspicion and day four I was in PM land with BC.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the game a lot. Despite not getting hit, I still had a few good reads and I learned a valuable lesson about tunneling. I may try playing the diplomat all game long someday if I have the time but I think I’ll probably just work to improve the analyst.
GG all, thanks for hosting FW and Jcarl!
EPT
