Newbie Mini XV

I absolutely love playing mafia irl, and I recently played my first forum game: Newbie Mini XIV. I enjoyed the game, and I'm looking forward to playing again with Golden, s0sltice, and Miltonkram. I encourage you all to skim our filters from that game so you have a basis for comparison. Only Miltonkram was mafia.

Mainly because I love playing so much, I will consistently be checking and reading the thread and I'll probably be one of the more active posters. I'll maintain my own list of scumreads and make public cases against my top targets. I'll also help in any way I can to organize lynches when deadlines roll around.

1) make reading the thread a priority
2) periodically post your opinions and contribute to the discussion
3) try really hard to be online in the hours before a deadline. We need to organize majority lynches and it's not easy if a lot of people are offline.

Setup A: 1 roleblocker, 2 goons, 1 cop, 1 medic, 7 VT's
Setup B: 1 roleblocker, 2 goons, 9 VT's
Setup C: 3 goons, 1 medic, 8 VT's
Setup D: 3 goons, 1 cop, 8 VT's

I think that there is actually a strong case for not lynching on day 1 in this game. In the setups without a medic, namely B and D, I am pretty sure that not lynching on day 1 is strictly optimal. I think that lynch vs NL is a wash for setup C, and I'm undecided about setup A - that one's pretty complicated.

If anybody would like to hear more of my reasoning, just ask and I'll be happy to provide.

Fun fact: Depending on how wisely we spend our NL, we have between 13% and 17% chance of winning setup B assuming random lynches. So we need some really solid scumreads regardless of how strategically we play.

The most important thing for us to do is find scum. However, it seems foolish to scumhunt before the majority of players have even looked at the thread. So I think our biggest goal for the first 12 hours or so is to generate discussion. Then, we turn our attention to scumhunting. Here are two things that everyone can comment on:

1) Lynch or NL?
2) Should we lynch inactive players or let them get replaced?

Will all inactive players be replaced or is there a possibility that they just die? If a blue inactive player is modkilled, will their role be transferred to someone else? What if they are mafia?

D1: 12 remaining lynch #1
D2: 10 remaining lynch #2
D3: 8 remaining lynch #3
D4: 6 remaining lynch #4
D5: 4 remaining NL
D6: 3 remaining lynch #5

D1: 12 remaining NL
D2: 11 remaining lynch #1
D3: 9 remaining lynch #2
D4: 7 remaining lynch #3
D5: 5 remaining lynch #4
D6: 3 remaining lynch #5

My logic does NOT depend on us mislynching in any way, shape, or form. I'm just saying we get 5 lynches either way, and that by NL'ing D1 we get the most information possible prior to each lynch. It's just math.


On the contrary, it is very likely when we start with an even number of players. If we get down to 4 (very likely if we never NL), we should certainly NL. I think we can all agree on that.


This applies to heist's criticism too.

A day 1 NL gives us MORE information to work off for our first lynch. Think about it. If we lynch day 1, we have 48 hours worth of discussion to go on for our first lynch. If we NL day 1, we have 120 hours of discussion and a round of night actions to consider for our first lynch. And we end up with 5 lynches either way: it doesn't cost us a lynch (assuming no medic saves).

I agree with heist that the results of lynches factor into future lynches. But this is irrelevant to the issue of a day 1 NL. We still have 5 lynches. We can still consider the results of a previous lynch when we are making our second lynch etc. I feel like I'm just repeating myself now.



I think your accusation of me is rather hasty. My discussion does have the best interests of town at heart. The point of the discussion was two-fold
1) Try to convince you guys of a superior line of play
2) Give people something to talk about in their first posts

While I was not wildly successful in my first goal, you cannot deny that I have succeeded in the second. If you look at the thread since the daypost, the lynch vs nolynch question has certainly gotten people posting. We need posts to generate scumreads. We need scumreads to lynch scum, which is the primary goal here.

I'm providing my opinions of cattivik for two reasons:
1) He has been accused by enough people now (heist, golden, eishi_ki, suki, miltonkram) that he is in danger of being lynched today
2) heist explicitly asked for my opinion on cattivik

I think Cattivik is most likely townie

The fishiest thing about him seems to be his insistance that I am a 'confirmed townie'. Let's go through the scenarios here from your guys' persperctive. What seems most likely?
1) Cattivik is mafia. I am town. He goes way out of his way to defend me to gain an ally.
2) Cattivik is mafia. I am mafia. He defends me to the death.
3) Cattivik is town. I am town/mafia. He has a strong town-read on me and isn't afraid to share it.

Now I know for a fact that I am town, so I can rule out scenario 2. But I think even you guys should be able to conclude that scenario 3 is most likely. Both scenarios 1 & 2 seem like really bizarre, risky mafia play. Mafia can suck up to active townies and/or defend fellow mafia without being so blatantly obvious about it. Scenario 3 seems like typical brazen townie play. He is also very agressive and seems confident. Townie characteristics.

One last thing in his favor: Judging from his early posts I didn't get the feeling that he really understood my NL logic. If he were a mafia defending a townie, I think he'd at least want to have a solid grasp on what I was saying.

Now I'm not going to say he's a 'confirmed townie' but I think he is most likely town, and I would not vote for him given current evidence.

On a related topic, unless you think someone is in danger of being mislynched, please try to avoid talking about how townie you think they are. If we all agree player X is town, and we are right, we just gave mafia a really easy kill for the night.

One last thing. Did Cattivik really just change his name to Vivax? Seriously?

Xalatos, s0sltice, golden, suki, and miltonkram(?) all find him suspicious. I'm not sold on the case against him. He has promised a defense and I don't want to do all his defending for him so I will try to be brief.

Firstly, I disagree with Xalatos and heist that he only made safe generalizations in his first few posts. I see where you are coming from because he hasn't actually made any reads yet, but he did say a couple of odd things that have earned him some flak, such as his suggestion not to use past games as a guide and his idea about a 'town leader'.

His triple post within the span of 14 minutes caught my attention. I think that scum generally take longer to construct posts for several reasons: being nervous about making a slip, making sure it sounds townie, running it by their scumbuddies, etc. Especially on his first posts of the game. Obvioulsy not solid evidence, but I think it's in his favor.

This is a newbie game. Just because you don't think he's helping town doesn't mean that he doesn't think he's helping town... Hope that made sense.

As long as he can convince me that HE thinks that he's helping town, I see no reason why he should be mafia. I'll be interested to hear his defense.

As of right now, I consider him more suspicious than Cattivik, but I don't see any really good evidence that he is mafia.

Here are his first two posts in which he ponders Miltonkram's vote on me. I believe suki that he didn't know the rules about changing votes, but I still find this post a bit off.

First of all, his logic doesn't make sense to me. He recognizes the vote as confusing and thinks the reasoning behind it 'flimsy'. So far so good. He seems to be suggesting that Miltonkram might be mafia.

But then he analyzes the possible outcomes of the vote from the perspective that Miltonkram is town. Notice that suki considers the scenario that I am mafia. At that point in the game, it looked pretty damn unlikely that me and Milton were both mafia. So why is suki analyzing what a townie Miltonkram stands to gain from that vote? What's the point of that analysis?

Then he says that he's leaning toward Miltonkram being town. Makes his previous analysis even more pointless. He also pays me a nice compliment, which is definitely something a mafia might do: try to ally with the active posters.

Finally, I can think of one really good explanation as to why he realized his mistake: He might have gone back to the mafia QT where his scumbuddies set him straight. Just a theory. But I'd like to hear suki explain how he realized that he had misinterpreted the rules.

In Summary
his first post contains some confusing, pointless analysis where he seems to be putting suspcion on Miltonkram, but then backs off of it

There's a lot to talk about here, and in my opinion, a lot of evidence against suki. I'll try to break it down.

+ Show Spoiler +

OK so before he said he was leaning toward Miltonkram being town. s0lstice stated he was suspicious of Miltonkram. Now suki piles on some suspicion, but is so damn wishy/washy about it. He describes Milton's response as "lackluster" and his actions as "interesting". Then he concludes by saying "I'm keeping my eye on you." All this seems scummy to me. He changes his mind about Milton, bandwaggoning with s0sltice, and is quite noncomittal about it.

+ Show Spoiler +

This also seems like scummy analysis. He piles suspicion on Eishi_Ki, but then says he doesn't think eishi_ki is scum. Again, what is the point of posting this analysis? It seems to me like he's just trying to make it look like he's doing analysis, without actually accusing anybody.

Also, remember how he complimented me on my posts before? Well here he is sucking up to Xatalos, who is another active poster and was directing a lot of discussion.

+ Show Spoiler +

He hasn't even mentioned unforgiven before, but now he jumps on the bandwaggon, simply agreeing with everyone else who thought Unforgiven was suspicious. Suki, you said you'd be willing to expand your thoughts on Unforgiven. I'd appreciate it if you did.

+ Show Spoiler +

Not the most damning statement, but certainly doesn't convince me he's town. He's trying to seem like a helpful noobie townie who is willing to go along with popular opinion and lynch lurkers. Take that for what it's worth.

+ Show Spoiler +
Really bandwaggony here. Heist, eishi_ki, and golden had all already accused cattivik. Suki basically just repeats their reasons and adds cattivik to his 'scum list'.

I don't think that this is necessarily scummy, but as you will see later, he becomes quite wishy/washy about Cattivik.

+ Show Spoiler +


States some pretty fluffy, non-controversial stuff. Doesn't take a hard stance on who we should lynch.

+ Show Spoiler +

s0sltice addresses cattivik's accusers and defends cattivik against them. Now look how suki tries not to take a stance. He's "inclined to agree" with s0sltice. Whereas just a minute ago Cattivik was on his 'scum list', now he "supposes that both sides of the argument seem pretty petty". But he's "not so sure that you can say Cattivik's actions stricly read town". This is about as wishy/wasy as it gets. Scummy behavior.