[M][N]Oil Futures Mafia - Page 2

Hapahauli

United States9305 Posts

May 05 2020 22:43 GMT

#1486

Day 3 - BRRRR.MONEY COUNT
Votes:

Jockmcplop: (4) Trfel, Chezinu, Koshi, Vivax

Chezinu: (1) Jockmcplop
Trfel: (1) Alakaslam
Vivax: (1) GlowingBear

Koshi: (0)
Alakaslam: (0)
GlowingBear: (0)
Grackaroni: (0)

Not Voting: (1) Grakaroni

Jockmcplop is set to be lynched with 4 votes.

until End of Day

Hapahauli

United States9305 Posts

May 06 2020 02:04 GMT

#1508

Day 3 - BRRRR.MONEY COUNT
Votes:

Jockmcplop: (3) Trfel, Koshi, Vivax
Vivax: (3) GlowingBear, Alakaslam, Chezinu

Chezinu: (1) Jockmcplop

Trfel: (0)
Koshi: (0)
Alakaslam: (0)
GlowingBear: (0)
Grackaroni: (0)

Not Voting: (1) Grakaroni

Jockmcplop is set to be lynched with 3 votes.

until End of Day

Hapahauli

United States9305 Posts

May 06 2020 12:49 GMT

#1633

Day 3 - BRRRR.MONEY COUNT
Votes:

Jockmcplop: (4) Trfel, Koshi, Vivax, Grakaroni,
Vivax: (3) GlowingBear, Alakaslam, Chezinu

Trfel: (1) Jockmcplop

Chezinu: (0)
Koshi: (0)
Alakaslam: (0)
GlowingBear: (0)
Grackaroni: (0)

Not Voting: (0)

Jockmcplop is set to be lynched with 4 votes.

until End of Day

Hapahauli

United States9305 Posts

May 06 2020 16:49 GMT

#1665

Day 3 - BRRRR.MONEY COUNT
Votes:

Jockmcplop: (3) Trfel, Vivax, Grakaroni
Trfel: (2) Jockmcplop, Alakaslam

Vivax: (1) Chezinu
Grackaroni: (1) Koshi
Koshi: (1) GlowingBear

Chezinu: (0)
Alakaslam: (0)
GlowingBear: (0)

Not Voting: (0)

Jockmcplop is set to be lynched with 3 votes.

until End of Day

Hapahauli

United States9305 Posts

May 06 2020 18:21 GMT

#1727

Day 3 - BRRRR.MONEY COUNT
Votes:

Trfel: (4) Jockmcplop, Alakaslam, GlowingBear, Koshi
GlowingBear: (3) Trfel, Grakaroni, Vivax
Vivax: (1) Chezinu

Grackaroni: (0)
Koshi: (0)
Chezinu: (0)
Alakaslam: (0)
Jockmcplop: (0)

Not Voting: (0)

Trfel is set to be lynched with 4 votes.

until End of Day

Hapahauli

United States9305 Posts

May 07 2020 21:14 GMT

#1864

Anyone interested in some post-game analysis/commentary? I can type something up tonight. Open to suggestions as to format (player grades, mafia analysis, game themes, etc.).

Hapahauli

United States9305 Posts

May 08 2020 15:27 GMT

#1900

Game-Thoughts:

There is a simple narrative to this game:

"Mafia was more active and coordinated than town, and therefore Mafia won a flawless victory."

Mafia had an over 450-post QT, were discussing strategy non-stop, and there was even an instance of a rather long three-way mafia chat in the actual game thread! Is it even possible to draw lessons from such a one-sided game?

While this narrative is "true", it is deceptive in what it omits. Mafia did not stomp. When you look at how close GlowingBear and Jock came to getting lynched this game, it is apparent that Mafia's margin of victory was razor-thin. I believe the proper narrative to this game is:

"Mafia made some significant strategic mistakes, but they clawed their way to victory by being active at the right times.

I am going to unpack this "narrative" throughout this post by looking at:

1) Mafia's Strategy and Bussing
2) Mafia's Bursts of Activity
3) The Kurumi Lynch
4) The Shockeyy Lynch
5) The Trfel Lynch

Hapahauli

United States9305 Posts

May 08 2020 15:29 GMT

#1901

1) Mafia's Strategy

glowingBEAR
04-29-2020
12:40 PM ET (US)
JOCK I'm working and can't play right now but I must say I'll hard bus you man :/ that Koshi bit was baaaaad

At least one of us will look townie.

Please don't be mad at me, that's how I play as scum ://///

Vivax
04-29-2020
03:23 PM ET (US)
You can always bus, but don't overcommit to it. We just need to post enough to be able to find townie bits giving us an excuse to stop it.

glowingBEAR
04-29-2020
03:43 PM ET (US)
Don't be afraid of bussing me. I've always won a game of mafia because my scum mates bussed me and I flipped.

Mafia QT posts. Read from top to bottom.

One of the coolest things about spectating the mafia QT was watching Vivax and GlowingBear argue and debate about "bussing" teammates. Vivax was in favor of playing a simpler mafia game, whereas GlowingBear was adamant about the important of "distancing". Who won the argument? In this game, I think Vivax did.

GlowingBear spent a lot of time and effort distancing himself from Jock early in the game. GB scumread Jock very early and pushed his lynch. Ditto for Jock. Despite this, both GB and Jock were at the top of quite a few scumlists (and were very close to getting lynched). Trfel had a post later in the game on the associations between GB and Jock, despite their best efforts to distance:

On May 06 2020 11:20 Trfel wrote:

Show nested quote +

I'll be here on and off for the next few hours, I'll be taking a sauna with my dad (shout-out to raynpelikoneet!).

Look at the associations between the GlowingBear, Jockmcplop, and Alakaslam team. Notice how Alakaslam is trying to vote anyone other than Jockmcplop, despite having Jockmcplop in his POE list. See how GlowingBear townread Jockmcplop Day 2 despite having no reason to do so (I think a page or two ago I showed why his reasons are invalid). Note Jockmcplop's lack of involvement and desire to play this game. He's a very strong town player, and I know he'd have more pushback against his lynch and throughout the game than this.

...

I feel that distancing did not work as intended for a few reasons:
1) How you distance is more important than the fact that you distance. Talking about your mafia teammates is always going to be a risk - you know your teammate is mafia, and the more you post about him, the more about your mafia mentality (extra information) you will unknowingly reveal. In this case, GlowingBear un-did a lot of his Day 1 distancing work by town-reading Jock on Day 2!
2) In a similar vein, why you distance is more important than the fact that you distance. It is unclear to me what the plan was here. GB seemed to think that he would get "bussed by his teammates" at some point, but why pre-determine this? Maybe GB gets universally town-read by the thread, and if so, who cares about distancing?
3) First-impressions are powerful. Towns have a tendency to latch onto early-game suspicions, and those suspicions, rational or not, are very hard to overcome. If you read the thread, GB and Jock established themselves through their "distancing" as scummreads early on, and as a result, they fought against their reputations for the rest of the game.
4) This town was inactive, especially early on. Why give them clues when you can keep them in the dark? Wouldn't it have been easier for mafia to just push mislynches with their superior activity?

A good illustration is about midway through Day 3. Vivax is almost universally town-read by the thread. GlowingBear posts a "case" on Vivax:

https://tl.net/forum/mafia/558949-oil-futures-mafia?page=75#1481

... and then gets promptly sheeped by several townies, putting Vivax in danger. Why is this necessary? It feels like distancing for the sake of distancing, rather than distancing for an objective.

Vivax had some excellent posts in the QT in response:

Vivax
05-06-2020
03:27 AM ET (US)
It doesn't matter.
Cred for bussing is overrated. As far as I'm aware I've done it to keep suspicion from Koshi and rayn off me, but that didn't require any of you to flip.

Like, what do you think I'm going to do if I get lynched later? Say that I can't be mafia because I voted for you? It never works when everyone knows bussing happens.
If I had Holyflare on my team and everyone was townreading him I wouldn't see a reason to bus him either.

Vivax
05-06-2020
03:33 AM ET (US)
It doesn't help your teammates if you scumread them before you flip.
Just pretend that I'm actually town this game, would you be scumreading me here when you want to get my vote off you? You'd rather try to figure out who of my scumreads are town and push that one instead.

I know I sound super patronizing and made that mistake enough times myself but it's really the only thing worth doing. We all bussed way too much and it's hard to get out of.

Overall, the art of playing as mafia is the art of telling people what they want to hear, as opposed to what they need to hear. If a town wants to mislynch itself, why not give the people what the want (mislynch townies), as opposed to distancing without a clear plan? There are games that you have to bus and distance as mafia, but I do not feel that this was one of them. What was the town going to do if mafia just kept pushing mislynches?

Mafia made these strategic mistakes, yet played super well on a post-by-post basis to overcome a bad strategy.