EPTMovIe Star Mini Mafia Analysis
So for the most part I'm going to ignore the obvious since that's been beaten to death so much already. Before I put it to rest, though, I want to bring up a couple of points that I think every player should take away from it as lessons (I happened to notice some interesting things myself and it'll perhaps help my own play even though I was omniscient)
1.) When you have a large conflict in a game, always try to trace it back to where it originated. Ask yourself as town if the people who are involved are the same as when it began. If there are missing players or people who have shifted or even meandered on away, ask yourself why. This question should have been asked about Mattchew this game. He spawned the VE vs marv conflict and basically he and his team sat back and munched the popcorn while town imploded. This is true even for cases on players. If a player says he'll make a case on a player or says something that indicates willingness to pursue a lead, but then doesn't, suspect them. They're not lining up words with actions and thus should be suspicious.
2.) Ask yourself if a play has merits from the perspective of mafia. For most scum players, a thread derailment like that would be pretty useful, but almost all mafia are very hesitant to do something like that themselves. (unfortunately the two players involved in this case are probably capable of doing it, so it didn't help here a great amount.) however, with that said, slOosh brought up a great point: in a game that is this small, it is highly unlikely that scum will do something that blatantly risky on day 1. He has an excellent point here and it should be heeded. Indeed, he was one of the only players who was on the "right" side of that issue this game. (also notable was risk.nuke, who correctly, IIRC, identified both marv and VE as town) Generally the correct play is to kill someone who is blatantly antitown, since the best solution for an antitown player is to kill them and move on. That prevents scum from playing safely like that and it teaches town to actually play selflessly instead of making the game about themselves.
3.) I don't know if it was intentional, but Mattchew's play from a scum perspective was pretty good regarding this situation. I once asked Ver how I could push a scum agenda without appearing to push one. He gave me some examples of Ace manipulating townies (and I saw this firsthand when I hosted Wheel of Fortune) and it opened my eyes to the possibilities of creating conflicts between townies where conflicts shouldn't exist, and then shifting the blame onto your targets as you please.
Now, from my perspective it didn't seem like Mattchew did this intentionally. (If he did, kudos) However, the play he did is exactly the kind of thing that wins the game for mafia. If ideas are planted in the heads of townies and the real source cannot be traced, the kind of destruction they will cause will be unstoppable.
prplhz did something similar although more obviously. He feigned to be a frustrated townie with MrZentor and effectively got a policy lynch on him for free. It damaged the scum team later in ways they couldn't have realized (rastaban was SK and if they killed him d1 it would've been far better) and it can never work again, particularly as there was nothing wrong with Zentor's play this game. However, because prplhz effectively faked his attitude, there was no repercussion at all for the Zentor lynch. Literally no one was held responsible when the responsible party was scum. Good play on prplhz's part. Town here should've asked themselves if a town prplhz would do the same thing as a scum prplhz in this situation. There were a couple posts that hinted toward prplhz saying something along the lines of "I'd like to kill Zentor because I have no better reads" (though not this obviously) but it's understandable that they were fairly hard to notice.
Town Overview
Town was kinda crippled by inactivity outside VE/Probulous/marv and slOosh day 1. Partly this was due to half of the thread being the posts of two players and partly it was due to complacence on the part of certain players. It additionally didn't help that the cop went afk and didn't send in an action n1.
I remember that in the obs QT several people said something like the thread was hard to read. I would agree with this sentiment: I started doing notes as I read along but I found it increasingly difficult as the posts became less and less focused and more and more emotional. Confirmation bias was very rampant; people would call others scum and then twist every single little thing that they read to try and force the evidence in thread to conform with their reads. I found it hard to believe that players were being very objective or clear-minded after the wagon on Zentor gained speed much faster than the one on rastaban.
If rastaban had been lynched on d1 both scum and town would have been in far better positions going into d2. Unfortunately after he lived he received very little attention from then on, particularly as two of the most clear-headed townies were shot that night.
Unfortunately for slOosh he really had no good targets to jail on n1, because it was almost assured that he would be the night kill. This was apparent by about halfway into day 1. Rastaban made a good choice in his shot of Zephirdd as well. I imagine that if the cop were actually active the target of choice would have been rastaban (as the runner up to the wagon on d1) partly because marv/VE were very likely to be frame targets. Of course we'll never know as the cop went afk and I replaced him later.
I questioned marvellosity's choice not to shoot on this night. It was the best night for him to shoot VE because if he was actually certain he was scum as he kept saying, a shot on VE would kill a scum and confirm himself at the same time. (of course it would only do the latter as we know now, but still) As marvellosity held the shot I was hoping that he had made the realization that VE was town. After all, if he still though VE was scum, why would he bother letting VE live to the next day to crap up the thread some more? In hindsight now that it's apparent marv was still convinced VE was scum, not shooting him that night but shooting him the next night was very bad. On n2 he should have shot Mattchew instead of VE knowing that if VE was scum he was going to get roleblocked. The only way VE would die is if he was town. Very poor choice for marv on n2.
xsksc, Zephirdd, and slOosh all played relatively well for the short amount of time each were in the game. I remember thinking when I was reading their posts that if they collaborated with Probulous + VE + marvellosity and ended the shitstorm, and then consolidated the reads and figured out which ones they agreed upon and which ones they didn't, scum and the SK would be in a world of trouble. However this never happened and each half of the town playerbase continued to do what it was doing as before.
Outside of this we had the remaining town players who had moments of good plays but for the most part were silent ghosts who were only present in name. Shraft, risk.nuke, and MrZentor all existed and did things, but went completely unnoticed because of their relative complacence. They did very little to push their reads or establish themselves as town. This is why they all lived for so long or were mislynched. Why would mafia or the SK be interested in killing players that look almost exactly like themselves?
Mafia Overview
You guys did just enough to win, but in the end your laziness caught up to you. You all didn't prepare adequately for a lylo situation. In lylo you need to play far differently from how you have played up till that point because no longer can you lurk and live. When all the loudest players are dead by virtue of you killing them, you expose yourselves and allow the remaining players to see how truly empty your filters are.
Thus, when lylo is reached you need to make that last strong push to get a mislynch and win. On this, you all failed miserably in letting your roleblocker die without as much as a peep of resistance. Partly this was due to you all being too scared about what the other players thought, and partly it was due to being caught completely off guard.
All game you should have been hunting the SK. That's priority number one over almost everything else because if you hunt the SK successfully you actually can establish yourself in the heart of town while eliminating your greatest threat at the very same time. On day 1 you had the golden opportunity to do exactly that, but you all chose the lazy route to mislynch someone (MrZentor) who could easily be mislynched at almost any point in the game. Were you scared of MrZentor? Why would you push a policy lynch on a nonscary townie so hard on d1 when you have almost any other option available to you?
to prplhz in particular: you need to be less scared of what townies think about you. At many points close to the end of the day I remember that you would overthink situations and start contradicting yourself. Remember that the townies in the game don't know your alignment. If you're calling another townie suspicious the only person who knows you're wrong is the guy you're calling out. If you start making weird hedges just to convince yourself you're not looking scummy by calling a townie out, you end up calling attention to yourself.
Observers will recall at some point in the obs QT I said "prplhz is overthinking way too much" and this is what I was referring to. Mafia who concern themselves too much with their own appearances will end up looking exactly like what they're trying not to look like: wishy washy, scared scum.
to Mattchew: you played okay overall given the events in-thread, but if the thread was quieter I can guarantee that you would've been under a lot more pressure. On an individual basis a lot of your posts came across really weird. You obviously didn't care about the lynch (outwardly) on most days and this is partly why you got so close to being lynched on d2. Luckily you got saved by a townie who was off his game, but in future situations remember that as mafia you need to play just as you play as town. Forget about being right and lose the fear about being caught and you'll be fine.
Snarfs: you needed to make a bold play at lylo. The failure to claim anything screwed your team because it doomed you. You are by far the most valuable member of the scumteam as the roleblocker because you can stop any blue and the SK in his tracks. Without you, it becomes very difficult for the scumteam to survive. I think if you had put town into a situation where they had to choose between you and another person, and you (with the help of your team) influenced to pick the other person, you would've won the game instead of losing at that point.
For most of the rest of the game you went unnoticed, which is fine, but it raises problems when you're closer to endgame as you become more and more exposed with fewer players alive.
Some Endgame Thoughts
Because of the way the lynches and night kills worked out, rastaban needed to hit scum at 3/3/1. He should have shot Mattchew on n2 (because of the failed d2 lynch) but he changed his shot at the last minute to xsksc. This really damaged his chances of winning because he needed the two factions to be roughly even in terms of power. However, he helped mafia greatly by helping them kill more townies. Mafia at this point should be preparing for a lylo situation in which they can win if they lynch the SK. They needed to prepare an SK claim or some sort of blue claim to keep the lynch between themselves and either one of the townies or the SK. However, they did not and thus they started to get picked off. This was a blunder on their part as they basically had the SK down to rastaban/Shraft (I recall someone saying this in the QT) but failed to deliver. They trusted marvellosity's read instead of doing their own work and it backfired on them.
In a 3v3v1 situation mafia wins if the SK is lynched and also wins if a townie is lynched and the SK is roleblocked. Snarfs should have claimed SK or some sort of blue here to stay alive. Without the roleblocker, there is nothing stopping the SK from killing the scum. At this point, Snarfs hiccuped and let himself die, screwing over his team. You can only lurk for so long before the game of numbers catches up to you and bites you in the ass. This is precisely what happened; with so few players left, mafia were sitting ducks. Their filters were terrible and it was blatantly obvious who they were. They needed to do something drastic to prevent the lynches and they didn't.
Somehow Shraft got lynched, which was a minor victory, but without a roleblocker the SK was still too dangerous. Perhaps instead of shooting marvellosity on that particular night scum should've shot at Rastaban.
note: I'll touch on rastaban's play later in an edit. I gotta go for now.
