Newbie Mini Mafia LII - Page 27

Newbie Mafia LII

The game begins with people voting right off the bat. There’s a light hearted atmosphere where people are poking at each other rather than discussing policy which is a good start for town.

Amiko comes in with an intro post that pretty much reads like a brand new townie player (because scum newbies are much more nervous about their play). OnceKing starts the game off by making a small case on how Amiko’s opening case is scummy. Cavalinho sheeps onto it. The back and forth between Amiko and Cavalinho is good as they are both making each other take stances.

The game starts to get sidetracked into setup discussion, blue actions. Valenius and Lord Tolkien are guilty of this and hopefully people will call them out on it. Discussing blue roles in the early game is a no-no. First off, it doesn’t move the game forward, and second people who talk about blues become prime targets for mafia to shoot in the night. If you’re blue, you just outed yourself. If you’re not, you’re wasting time discussing things when you should be scum hunting.
I can’t be too critical of this because it’s a newbie game and people are just figuring things out, but the sooner people start scum hunting the better for town. The more experienced players should start herding the newer ones in this direction to promote a good town atmosphere.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20813861

Cavalinho posts a giant post on Amiko that basically boils down to ‘don’t cop check active players’. Someone should totally call him out on it. This is the kind of play that scum loves to hide behind.

And yeah OnceKing calls people out and says ‘let’s focus on scumhunting and less on setup’. Perfect, pro-town play.
TheDragoon makes a decent entry into the thread. His buddying up with Cavalinho may or may not be good, it depends on his scum cases.

Amiko, Cavalinho and OnceKing start discussing with each other and from the feel of the conversation I think they’ll all come out looking pretty decent. Sharing thoughts openly, having clear explanations for things and scum hunting in general are all good town behaviours.

A bandwagon on LordTolkien seems to be forming and to be honest it’s actually not that bad of a wagon. LT hasn’t contributed much of value, has a lot of policy talk and is asking very general questions that make it sound like he’s not really pressuring people and he’s not being open with his reads. His list post of suspicions is weak content-wise as one of his reads is based on an unflipped player, and another is an OMGUS. Also, commenting on himself is not helpful and saying things like “if I were blue” is only going to get him in trouble.

LordTolkien’s best plan of action is to start really analyzing and picking out actions from other players that he finds scummy. This might be hard, because the first instinct is to defend oneself from attacks, but if that’s all he does he’s only going to look worse and worse.

theDragoon makes his first analysis post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20817275
It starts off well, however the biggest problem with this post is that it doesn’t come to any conclusion. The ending line is: “He'd be one of my lynch targets on day 1 just because I want to see if he's scum pretending to be blue. If he does get lynched and ends up flipping blue then it looks bad on me. However, I don't feel too strong about this one to vote him just yet.” So he’s saying, I’d lynch him to see if he’s scum, but I don’t feel like lynching him. Really wonder if anyone is going to pick up on this wishy-washiness. Notice too that the post is fluffed up by blue speculation. This is a trend that was started by the townies so Dragoon actually blends in with this, but if you really look at the post he’s using a lot of words to say very little.

Fortunately for Mafia, LordTolkien seems to be content with speculation and at this point in the game it’s looking like he might be one of the main targets for the lynch.

OnceKing and LordTolkien start pointing fingers at each other. Their defenses are completely WIFOM (I’m mafia and such and such OR I’m town and such and such). LordTolkien’s counter-case on OnceKing is completely OMGUS, and it’s unreasonable to suggest that town “trade” LordTolkien for OnceKing, as either alignment. The better response would have been making a case on why OnceKing’s actions make him scum. If LT can’t do that, then he’ll just have to accept that OnceKing is town but on the wrong track – In which case, it’s up to LT to find scum and point OnceKing onto the right track.

Something that’s hard to remember when you first start playing Mafia is attacks are not personal. If someone is attacking you, it’s not their fault if they are wrong. After all, how can you expect them to be right, they have the same information you have (except they know their own alignment and not yours). If you’re attacked, the best response is to calmly explain why their points are invalid, and then provide a counter case on who you actually do think is scum.

LordTolkien seems to be a good candidate for lynch. Although he is saying a lot, too much of his words are trying to orchestrate lynches or ‘trades’, and not enough on actual analysis why people are scummy. Definitely see the pressure of having multiple people on him getting to him. The one thing going for him is that he is posting a LOT and being active, so maybe he might be able to gather his thoughts in time to avoid being lynched.

N1ko’s entry into the game is extremely scummy and should be jumped on right away. His first post is an excuse. His second post is a random town read with no explanation, but he’s also wishy-washy on it. It’s also very very strange that he would think IAmRobik is specifically VT but not know if the person is blue or red. That is, he thinks the person is town (VT), but he’s not sure if the person is scum-oriented (red) or town-oriented (blue). This sort of cognitive dissonance is very telling of a scum trying to weave his web.

Finally IAmRobik calls people out on policy talk and setup talk.. However it’s a bit late for that as the thread has already moved away from this discussion.

OnceKing calls n1ko out right away. There’s still a chance to gracefully get out. IamRobik also puts n1ko as #1 scum.
N1ko’s next post where he outlines his reads on people actually feels pretty good though. He lays out reads and reasons for them, and votes his most scummy target. The only issue I have with his post is his line at the end ‘but I’m not too confident on it’. This may actually dispel some of the heat on him and point it towards the more scummy looking townies.
As the game progresses, town seems to be all over the place. There isn’t any strong push towards one or even two people, which is the perfect atmosphere for scum. N1ko had some pressure on him but since his contribution post the weaker townies are now under heat. OnceKing did pick up on the wishy-washiness of N1ko’s read and I think it’s going to hurt N1ko in the long run. Still, he’s not in danger on D1 and maybe, maybe D2.

IAmRobik and OnceTown are obvious townies trying to figure out the game. Valenius could be up there in towniness, but his strange vote on IAmRobik doesn’t make sense. It’s pretty much an OMGUS, and the other people he’s ok with voting (LT and Amiko) he doesn’t seem to have very strong cases on. LordTolkien looks the worst at the moment by far, and I’m wondering if he’s making use of his coach to help steer him in the right direction.

The game moves forward with Amiko starting to provide some reads and Cavalinho going on an OMGUS rampage. He votes N1ko but he provides no explanation for it. He may be right, but there’s no weight to his words without evidence to back it up and his omgus on Amiko isn’t helping his image.

LordTolkien posts a big post with a bunch of names and it looks like he’s trying to contribute, but there’s too much WIFOM and rehashing of his defenses. One thing of note is that he spends a lot of time explaining his town reads but only a few sentences to explain who he thinks is scummy. It should be the other way around.

Cavalinho says “Quite frankly, I think all of the people involved in the majority of this discussion right now are town, and we should be focusing on the people that don't include much at the moment.” Which is actually quite impressive. It’s very hard to take a step back and look at the general flow of the game like this. It’s quite common, and definitely true in newbie games, that the most active people in the game are town regardless of how stupid or incomprehensible they may be playing.

LordTolkien said this: “You are correct: I'm looking for a lynch on Day 1 that will have the most impact for town in Day 2, given the unlikelihood of us actually lynching scum. If I'm that lynch, so be it, I'm fine with it.” While this may just be a playstyle choice, I’m of the opinion that you should always be voting the scummiest player, and if it comes down to choosing between people who are not your prime suspects, then pick the scummiest looking one of the ones available. Lynching for information is weak play because scum has the ability to play around the lynches and make themselves look good. For example, right now if LT is lynched, theDragoon looks much better because he ‘correctly read’ LT as town.
In general, there’s too much speak of ‘godfather’ and blue roles in this game.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20821234

N1ko comes back in the thread with an actually really impressive post. There’s just enough confidence in the subtext to brush away the wishy-washiness from his earlier read. His points against Cavalinho are also very clever, and bringing up Cavalinho’s defensiveness is a good attack that won’t give him backlash in the future. Even OnceKing backs off just a bit after this post.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20821417

Beneather seems to be a low post count player. His ‘return’ into the thread to vote Valenius is well thought out and well written, pointing out what Valenius has done and why those things make him scummy. His activity leads a bit to be wanted as he should be sharing reads on at least two or three other people, but his posts themselves are clear and thought out.

TheDragoon states his ‘second thoughts’ on Cavalinho being town. In my opinion not the best move. N1ko is looking like a possible lynch so what TheDragoon should be doing is pushing hard against his current scum read LordTolkien, rather than trying to spread more confusion so late in the day. His response to OnceKing’s pressure on thinking that LT’s mention of the mafia QT is a slip should have been handled more confidently. (“It is a slip because townies don’t really think about the QT” rather than “it might be reaching”).

I say “should have been handled more confidently” but that’s just my opinion. Confidence and conviction is a townie trait, but applying them in the wrong situations is scummy. Being unsure and lost is scummy, but by definition townies are this way and so calling someone scummy for lack of confidence is also not a sure thing. There’s a fine line between too much and too little that really makes the game of mafia the psychological hell that it is.

Cavalinho gets lynched in a three way tie between himself, LordTolkien and N1ko.

- End of Day 1 –

General Comments from suki
Day 1 definitely has been one of the less organized Day 1’s that I’ve seen from newbie games. The fact that six, SIX people had votes on them and the highest vote count was TWO is a horrible result for town. This kind of confused atmosphere is the perfect environment for scum to hide and muck about in.

If I had to make suggestions on what could have been improved from town on the whole today, it would be:

1) More scumhunting
2) Less defense
3) Much much less setup discussion

Points 1 and 2 kind of go together. One of the main reasons why town was having a hard time finding scum was because every time someone made a case, the attacked person would write a big defense post and that’s all they would do. Too much time was spent defending oneself and justifying actions, when that time should have been spent pressuring people and making reads.

Sometimes, you have to just let someone have their case against you and move on. “I see your case and I see why you think I’m scummy, but I’m not. Here are the people that I think are scum and why.”

Point number 3 should be obvious. Look at how much time and effort was spent conjecturing what the setup could be, how many mafia are on the other team, why X player’s actions could be possible if he’s godfather or what have you. How much of that actually helped find scum? How much of that actually provided something solid that people could grasp on to as scum behaviour?

I’ve found that the best way to approach power roles in this game (and perhaps particularly so in TeamLiquid style mafia) is to pretend they don’t exist until something happens that proves they exist. An extra shot in the night. Someone being saved. Any discussion about those roles beforehand is just WIFOM and just as easy for scum to make as town.

Now, criticisms aside, I think despite the situation that town put themselves in, I think they’re doing a lot of good things as well. First, they’re very active. Even the people who are under suspicion are staying active and talking, and if this keeps up in the following days then things will eventually turn to their favour.

Some good things that people are doing:

OnceKing is asking pointed questions that help discern alignments and force people to take a stance and generally encouraging a pro-town environment.

Amiko is being very open with his reads and scumhunting, also quite pro-town.

LordTolkien has started to take a step in the right direction at the end of the day as well by questioning players, and his post count is quite good for Day 1. Out of all the players he probably has the most potential to improve, but I really like the effort he’s putting into the game.

IamRobik is playing a good game as town and calling people out for talking too much about setup, etc.

Valenius is contributing his reads but unfortunately is being drowned out by the other players.

Beneather is making solid posts although he needs to speak about more people.

Specific comments to Cavalinho since he was the Day 1 lynch:

Cavalinho is free with his reads, but he needs to be more decisive. “This person is scummy, this is why.” While he was making analysis and providing reasons, it seemed to be drowned out in his large posts.

Make use of formatting to help organize your posts and make it easier for people to read. Also, if someone is pressuring you it’s probably better for you to answer things that you find important and then ignore them. After all, you have better things to do than defend yourself.

I think these two things (reads being hidden in posts, feeling like you need to defend to much) contributed to your mislynch the most. However, don’t feel like you played horrible because you only had two votes on you which shows just how confused in general town was.

Also you seemed to be getting very angry at the game, especially when you were lynched. This is normal! Lol. Just take a step back and try to realize that everyone is just trying to figure out the game just like you are (except scum, those dirty bastards). Try not to take things personally and the game will stay fun even in the worst of times.

Comments to Scum:

Overall, scum are doing a good job of staying in the background and letting town eat itself from the inside. This is the perfect environment for scum, so all they have to do is sit back and encourage the mayhem. The only reason N1ko is under suspicion is because of his lack of confidence (which is normal to feel when you’re scum!), but otherwise both players are playing quite well.

- End of comments –

NIGHT ONE

There’s general discussion that people should avoid talking about their reads to avoid directing Mafia’s night kill. This is wrong. Night is the best time to analyze the lynch and the events of the previous day, because after the kill, everyone is going to be focused on the night kill and the previous day will be drowned out.

LordTolkien is suggesting ways to improve scum hunting in the next day and although his idea is a bit too rigid, it’s good that he’s trying to take a town leader position and improve the town atmosphere.

Hopefully someone will take the reins in the night and get everybody to talk about their reads because town needs every opportunity to force people to talk and keep talking. The worst thing to happen in Day 2 is for people to be unmotivated and for all discussion to die down. The best way to avoid this from happening is just keep the activity high throughout the night.

Amiko’s vote analysis is a good effort and a step in the right direction. Encouraging analysis by doing it yourself is very pro-town.

Scum decides to shoot IAmRobik, which is a good choice as he is one of the stronger players in the game despite encouraging a silent night phase.

DAY TWO

Day two actually starts off very pro-town. People are providing their reads, and LordTolkien’s definitely found his groove it seems like as he is now scum hunting and helping push things forward.

TheDragoon’s first post in the thread on Day 2 is actually quite clever. His whole argument is WIFOM, but it’s WIFOM in a direction that is beneficial for scum. Even if Val turns up green and N1k0 red in the next two lynches, theDragoon hasn’t implicated himself because his arguments do make sense from a townie perspective, as a townie who is trying to read too much into the lynch.

Activity declines really quickly though. Whereas town had a bad atmosphere on Day 1 but everyone was posting, now no one is posting even though a good town atmosphere has been set up. This is somewhat common in newbies, for whatever reason.

Just remember that in Mafia, if you’re town, you never want to get lazy or discouraged and you want to keep activity up and encourage everyone else to do so as well. I think the statistic is town will mislynch 75% of the time on day 1, which is actually worse than if town were to select someone at random and lynch them for no other reason ( I believe it’s a 26% chance to hit scum). Can’t remember where I heard the numbers but the important thing is, you’re going to be wrong and that’s okay. The important thing is to keep posting.

Valenius comes out with a gigantic post that goes over his read on IAmRobik prior to and after the night kill, as well as reads on pretty much everyone in the game. One of the problems with a huge post like this is it is easy to get lost and forget what points the poster is making. I would suggest in large posts like these having a ‘tldr’ or summary section that summarizes everything in a short paragraph.

N1k0 looks like he’s becoming more and more popular for being lynched, particularly for making statements of people’s alignments without having good reasond to back them up. Being lurky is also going to him soon as now he has the least contributions next to Beneather. Marv (scum coach) is telling them to hike up their activity, and activity is definitely one of the reasons why people are seeing theDragoon as town and N1k0 as scummy.

N1k0’s decision to target the lurkers is probably going to be his end. Also the fact that he included himself as one of the lurkers who should be looked at is a mistake. There should be no reason why he should include himself in the list of suspects if he’s town, since he himself knows he’s innocent. From a strategy perspective, targeting Valenius was a bad move because if N1k0 ends up dying before Valenius, town might clear Valenius of suspicion and that will put theDragoon in a bad position since theDragoon is pushing the Valenius lynch.

And now OnceKing jumps right on N1k0 with a pretty good case. “Note the tone of fear and not wanting to stick out in his posts” is a pretty damning piece of evidence.

Town atmosphere seems to be getting back on track with LordTolkien’s post. Unbeknownst to him, he’s made some pretty critical observations and asked some great questions.

Directed at theDragoon:

Directed at N1k0:

The way the scum team handles these two questions will be critical to their success, both in the short and long term.
The bandwagon on N1k0 picks up quickly. His responses are also still timid, which is the biggest reason why he is in trouble here. Basically, N1k0 played scared and that’s why people are on him. He was too afraid to make any reads and thus all his contributions fell flat and town picked up on it.

N1k0 fades out without another word. It’s interesting that theDragoon is the only person who didn’t vote N1k0. This might actually work in his favour.

General comments on Day 2 from suki

Day 2 was pretty straightforward. Town activity dropped a ton, but several people still made big posts and contributed reads which is very important. Due to N1k0’s day 1 play, he was in the spotlight on Day 2 and it seems like he just choked and wasn’t sure what to do so he died a pretty silent death.

It looks like Valenius and Beneather are going to be the main targets for the next day. theDragoon seems to be in a good groove so it may take a day or two for him to even start to be under suspicion.

The biggest factor to catching theDragoon will be whether or not town picks up their activity from this successful lynch and makes it hard for theDragoon to blend in.

- End of comment –

Night 2

Not much to say. Reads being thrown around by town. TheDragoon looks to be under pressure but I think his approach is really impressive. Calling Valenius confirmed town is a great move and I think it will get people off his backs. Appealing to emotion by saying he wanted to be the one guy that got it right (that N1k0 was green) is also very sneaky.

Day 3

Due to his lack of participation in the game, Beneather is the obvious lynch for the day. I don’t think there’s any reason for town not to lynch Beneather. It’s unfortunate that scum gets a free ride on Day 3, however this is just the nature of newbie games.

theDragoon has a tough LYLO ahead of him as he is the most suspicious person after Beneather, however at this point I think that the game could go either way. If town stops thinking, dragoon can cause enough confusion to take the win. And if theDragoon doesn’t play his cards well enough, then town can just go with their gut feeling and lynch theDragoon for town victory.

Amiko posts a case on theDragoon:



This is a good point.



This is mostly wifom. Town shoots who they think is most likely to be scum. A better argument would be, theDragoon put N1k0 as scummy for two days in a row and didn’t lynch him. This is much more scummy behaviour.



This point is just wrong. Mafia is an egotistical game. There are players who don’t really care if scum gets lynched as long as their #1 target is lynched. theDragoon’s reasoning that he didn’t switch because of pride was a very good townie reason to fake.



Didn’t read the links because they were broken. However contradictions like this are very good for catching scum.

Overall, Amiko’s post brings up good points.

TheDragoon then posts his cases. One thing I don’t like is how he’s entertaining all the remaining players as being suspicious. He should have at least one town read, probably LordTolkien.

His point on Amiko bandwagoning on N1k0, as well as N1k0 saying Amiko was likely godfather are pretty good points against Amiko. However, note that the case is WIFOM. There’s no analysis of the underlying motives – Amiko did X, which has scum motivations not town motivations.

He seems to think Valenius is town but if that’s the case he shouldn’t say ‘just in case’. Same with LordTolkien. The biggest issue with theDragoon’s case is he doesn’t straight up say, Amiko is the best lynch on the final day and instead resorts to wifom cases.

Now LordTolkien posts his case. He says Valenius bussed N1k0 day 2 because he was first to vote for N1k0. While this is a tempting argument, scum rarely does this and this should be seen as a point in favour of Valenius being town. LT is correct that Robik was killed to get rid of the players who voted N1k0 day 1, he reaches a bit too far by saying it implicates Valenius and clears theDragoon.

The biggest issue with LT’s case is it’s also based on WIFOM, like theDragoon’s.

At this point, the players should be looking at each of the remaining players’ actions, and analyzing their motivations behind those actions. Every players’ cases have flaws, but Amiko’s cases are the best at this point – not because he’s right, but because he looks more into the inconsistencies in theDragoon’s play and the motivations behind his actions.

One thing that sets theDragoon apart from every remaining player is his filter size. His filter is only two pages long. Two pages! Everyone else has been much more active, much more contributing. This should be a major red flag for the remaining players. One of the main ways to clear people as town in normal games is if they are extremely active and post a lot. There are very few players who can post in high quantity as scum, it’s very difficult.

Amiko makes a big post talking mostly to theDragoon. He really needs to make up his mind himself, rather than talking and seeing whose answer makes more sense. The reason is this is LYLO. Scum can say whatever they want and not care about having to live another day. They just have to sound good, and they win. At this point it’s most important to look back at the game as a whole and answer questions like:

Whose actions make most sense from a scum perspective?
Who has the scummiest connection to the flipped mafia?
Does it make sense that both these players are alive right now?
(Better players than me can probably chime in here since I’ve only been to LYLO once).

The point is, as town in this final stage of the game, you have to rely on yourself and on your reads, and when you decide who is most likely to be scum, you have to convince the townie to believe your case. The scum wants to appear like he’s doing this, but try to vote the person he thinks he will be able to most likely get the majority vote on. He will say everything and anything he can to trick the remaining townies.

theDragoon posts, in one post: “After the n1k0 flip, I really thought that Valenius was town but now everything is adding up to Valenius being mafia.” AND “In summary, the night kills were on people who suspected n1k0 and Amiko. Based on the night kills alone, Amiko is the most likely mafia.” If I were in LYLO with theDragoon I’d lynch him every time because he is not making sense. There is only one mafia at this point.

Valenius posts a masssssssive post and to be honest I don’t know what he said cuz I stopped reading when I realized it was a novelette. This post basically confirms him as town. Like, is scum going to post that giant wall? No way.
That said, the post ends without any sort of conclusion. This makes me very sad. I have no idea which side Valenius is taking at the end of that, and I doubt even if I did read the whole thing whether it would be clear at that time either.

Alright, I've finally gotten to go back and re-read everything in this QT.
Am I allowed to post the link to my QT? I presume I can discuss coaching here since nobody here is actually playing any longer.

Overall my thought process for most of the game was fuck the fact that I'm a power role, I just want to go as hard as possible as long as possible and force mafia to either kill me or step up and try to outargue me. I think the way I played the first day was really sloppy and I tunneled on LT way too much. The initial statement I made on Amiko I feel still was fine as it gave us a direction and point to discuss off of. However what happened afterwards was simply terrible, Cav piled onto Amiko without adding anything new (which I wouldn't properly differentiate from scum parroting until after he flipped), LT went onto Amiko for what I felt were the most dubious of reasons.
My reads at this point were:
scum? - Amiko, LT, inactives (Beneather and N1k0 have not posted yet)
town? - myself, IAmRobik
no idea - everyone else

Elaboration on why I felt Robik was town -- he asked some random question that I felt was obviously an attempt to pressure a productive response out of an inactive. More or less a gut read without anything substantial to back it up.
In fact I was completely unconvinced by Amiko's defense of himself but he made a large post here that I thought was reasonable (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessag...8¤tpage=7#139). The second quote he had off Cav was dumb imo, I think it's completely reasonable for a townie being willing to rescind his vote to get more reads.
Afterwards I went onto LT. My reasons were... kinda legit. Actually I used the same reasoning a lot to push the case forward on N1k0, but afterwards I felt that perhaps LT is correct in that I didn't take context of his posts into account properly. The reason why part of the reason why I scumread him for discussing setup at all was because I think discussion of town policy and "what should x role do" and "what if there are y mafia in the game" is silly -- as town at its most basic the game is "vote who you think are the bad guys". That's why when he said he wanted to vote for information I wanted to kill him IMMEDIATELY, as I recall in many past analyses it's been written by many people that the reason to vote for someone is because you think they're scum.

After a bit I stated that I felt a split situation on votes would be good and I stand by this statement... I certainly didn't expect the decision to be SO split (2 votes for a lynch?? ugh, terrible but I didn't want to just whine at the town afterwards for not clumping up more on votes because I didn't see the POINT of saying such a thing) -- I ideally would have wanted a 3-6 split or a 4-5 split. The idea here would have been that mafia either piled onto a wagon to push it over the edge to save a teammate, or spread out amongst the two wagons because both would be town so they wouldn't particularly care who'd be lynched day 1.

Anyway... LT and I got into a shouting match which probably made it kinda clear that we were both probably town and just stinking up the town atmosphere but I was tunneling WAY too hard to notice this. I think at this point the day was basically over and people were just pointing fingers at each other like a bunch of idiots lol...

so day 1 what I could have DEFINITELY FOR SURE done better:
1. Work on constructing solid cases against players -- nobody did this well at all actually but that doesn't excuse it. I wanted to make posts that were concise but this resulted in me glossing over a lot of details to the point where I was actually called nitpicky because it looked like I was only attacking random points without any cohesion. This was probably true.
2. Pressure inactives better. Turns out the post I got out of N1k0 is really what I used to get him lynched later but I feel like a complete idiot trying to make people talk. I "could" vote for them but I think policy lynching inactives is pretty stupid... what suki said at the beginning of the QT about policy lynching lurkers if done at all should be done early makes a lot of sense but I don't think it's a good way to lynch scum. I guess what it gives you is that if you DO end up voting an "inactive" who's just scum lurking then mafia have to show their hand a bit to force the lynch onto some other inactive (but this isn't very difficult either is it?)
I'm guessing that point 2 could have potentially led earlier to the lynch of N1k0...?? who knows. It didn't happen and in retrospect he slipped up pretty obviously but hindsight is 20/20. Unfortunately I was tunneling too hard/didn't feel that anyone was making logical enough of arguments onto the inactives to justify me switching off LT. At the end of the day I *felt* like my case had relatively more substance than just "look at this guy, he's contradicted himself!" without saying where but clearly this wasn't so.

So during the night I randomly got scared of being NKed and just avoided saying anything. This was a terrible reason and I discussed why later in the topic actually right before being NKed (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessag...¤tpage=19#362). I saved Amiko because he was a stronger town read. Looking back... sure, I can understand why I did that. I wouldn't blame myself for doing that again.

On day 2... I don't remember precisely what it was that inspired me to look at N1k0. Amiko's vote analysis was pretty legit so I actually went off on the direction and asked myself who was it that didn't say ANYTHING about the huge topics during the day. I actually discussed this before in my QT wherein I said that I felt that I word vomited way too much and didn't apply pressure properly during the first day and it was brought up that people who don't have opinions on big issues are scummy too. In hindsight this is clear but often in the heat of the moment I have trouble evaluating situations objectively. So I went back through the filters of Beneather, N1k0, Valenius and theDragoon. Beneather was posting very little and I didn't have a lot to go off of but he had this random ass vote on Valenius that he was alone in -- he didn't comment on my spat with LT at all but I felt the direction he was heading off on by himself was... okay? I couldn't tell at the time if he was just trying to contribute but not stick out or just look for an excuse to vote someone randomly.

theDragoon... gosh I don't even remember. I distinctly remember townreading him at one point then going back through his filter and being like geez why did I townread this guy, did I really just think he's town because he agrees with me?? That's so stupid lol
Anyway going back and looking again I think I passed over him a bit because he had a definite opinion on me at the very least, so he passed my (very weak) criteria of "willing to take a side".

Valenius ignored the topic almost entirely. I scumread him off of that.

N1k0's post after reading it several times I just couldn't understand the point of him saying anything that he said from a townie's perspective. As I had previously mentioned in my QT I hated that I had explicitly posted random thoughts that were completely unnecessary to post and I felt that I had made other people end up doing it too so then I couldn't fish out who was posting dumb stuff because they were influenced by my dumb stuff and who was posting dumb stuff to look like they were contributing, but ultimately I decided to seal the deal on N1k0 especially as after I made my case on him he didn't even bother TRYING to address it.

Ah! I remember what set me off onto N1k0 now, Valenius made a post accusing him because he had been completely wrong about his prior reads which I thought was a silly criteria for marking someone as scum but I wanted to see what the reads were (were they wishy washy for example, which they completely were) to make sure.

So what could I have done better on the second day? Here's what I think for sure:
After catching N1k0 I should have just gone fucking IN and kept scumhunting like mad. I kept waiting for him to defend himself and realized too late it wasn't coming, instead I should have been building cases and rereading posts to look for the other mafia member and just fucking nail all of them to the wall at once. Instead I sat around twiddling my thumbs and just died despite my "efforts" to shift the hit towards Lord Tolkien instead of myself (rip).

Ultimately I think I played... alright. I really feel that I did better than most of the other players though there's no good way of knowing -- Cavalinho and Robik both died before me so who knows what they could have done better in my position. Of course all the more experienced players here are right though -- this was my first game and it really shows (even ignoring that excuse... all play was super sloppy and extra newbie for a newbie game as Promethelax said at the beginning of the QT). Still by explaining my thought processes through much of the game I hope I can shed some light on why I made which moves I did (and maybe earn brownie points?? omg), perhaps lower the amount of disappointment that I'm sure some people had about play this game and get some constructive criticism.

I thought he was town because while everybody was arguing back and forth about other stuff he would weigh in just a bit on it and then go in some completely different direction with his reads.

Ex. day 1, he pops in at the very end of the day and goes "uhhh yeah guys I think it's Valenius" when no one was really looking at Valenius before. I think this speaks to being a lazy townie because I don't feel it fits into what a mafia member would do -- someone in the mafia member would likely instead just try to skirt around the big issues of the day and just not really accuse anyone.

I dunno, because he's inactive there's not a whole lot to go on. Honestly had I lived I may have wanted to lynch him too (?). I'm not sure on that though because it's just way too easy of a free lynch for mafia to take and it would have been a day closer to LYLO were he town.
Like, look how completely unanimous the vote is. Everyone's on Beneather. So this day has even less discussion than the previous day, and by God was day 2 completely boring! At least stuff happened on day 1, but on day 2 here's what happened:
1. people are suspicious of valenius
2. i am suspicious of N1k0
3. N1k0 doesn't try at all and dies
Here's what's happening day 3:
1. Beneather is inactive
2. Beneather is dead
Nobody even talks about anything because they're just like "yep we're set on this lynch now", there are 4 votes on him and zero votes elsewhere so there's nothing TO talk about ("why are you voting for Valenius instead of Beneather?" for example, I'm not yet convinced Valenius is town lol) and town just wastes 48 hours where they could be scumhunting as opposed to... I dunno, sitting around agreeing to lynch Valenius. This is just so ideal for mafia where they can sit back and say things that mean nothing (Valenius: "If Beneather turns up Blue/Green, I'm going to be pissed. His other games he seems to just randomly go afk and never post again, and those were a mix of blue/green games." for example) while stalling for time, which is what mafia want to do anyway that I just can't see Beneather really flipping red atm.