Some Mafia Game Day 1

Try this excercise.

Assume for a minute that Palmar is Town. He has just claimed Insane Detective because:

1.) He checked bumatlarge on Night 1 and got innocent

2.) He checked wbg on Night 2 and got guilty, and then wbg flipped innocent.

3.) bumatlarge must be Scum

You're almost/surely in a LYLO situation.

What's wrong with his claim?

likewise for bumatlarge:

1.) He's been useless all game

2.) near LYLO a detective claims he is Scum

3.) bum claims PGO even though as far as we know, no one has died by PGO since some kills were blocked prior nights

what's wrong with this claim?

*yawn* wrote:Try this excercise.

Assume for a minute that Palmar is Town. He has just claimed Insane Detective because:

1.) He checked bumatlarge on Night 1 and got innocent

2.) He checked wbg on Night 2 and got guilty, and then wbg flipped innocent.

3.) bumatlarge must be Scum

You're almost/surely in a LYLO situation.

What's wrong with his claim?

likewise for bumatlarge:

1.) He's been useless all game

2.) near LYLO a detective claims he is Scum

3.) bum claims PGO even though as far as we know, no one has died by PGO since some kills were blocked prior nights

what's wrong with this claim?

Ya palmer needs to get lynched lol

Spoiler:

The problem that I have with the first scenario is that Palmar said that he was leaning town for Bum, BEFORE he checked bum. Bum wasn't lurking, he wasn't under a lot of pressure. Bum was not a good DT check. (I'm not a DT expert, so please tell me if I'm wrong about this.)

In addition to this, he was saying things like "wbg is 100% scum" before he checked him. As a DT you know that people are going to look back at your posts when you die, and saying things like that will get them lynched when you flip DT. You don't say things like that unless you've checked him. What if he had gotten an innocent check on wbg? He just turns around without any reasons and says he's innocent? Might as well claim DT.

The whole thing just seems like poor play. Maybe there is some wacky mechanic going on, but I can't see Palmar playing this poorly as a DT.

---

The second scenario is harder for me to call.

Bumatlarge can, and has played better town than what he is showing. People have off-games so I don't like to put a lot of stock in that sort of meta read. The fact that he claimed PGO makes it much harder for me to read, because I don't know how to play PGO. You want mafia, but not medics, so I would guess some sort of blue claim would be the way to go, and that's what bum did, but the rest of his play seems too detrimental to the town.

The easy thing for me to do is write it off as them both being scum, and just playing for a safer longer game. Chances are it's not that simple though.

(Assuming *yawn* is Ace)

Ace, please. I'm in this round table to learn. I've explained why I think what I think, but you seem to disagree with it. Tell me how I'm wrong. I want to get better, but it's hard when nobody will point out where I've gone wrong. I take no offence at my arguments being trashed, or being called an idiot, cause all I'm looking for is to get better, and most learning experiences come from failures, not successes.

If you think I'll become a better player if I have to figure it out myself, then fine, but I feel like I've gotten stuck in my current groove of thinking, and I'm having a hard time getting out.

So what's wrong with my arguments?

I'm not saying you are wrong at all. I obviously have all the answers but I'm just throwing questions out there to help you guys figure stuff out. As I noted in the past - some of the reads you guys have match up with my unbiased analysis. There isn't anything to be wrong about.

*yawn* wrote:I'm not saying you are wrong at all.

Exactly.

I know that I'm not right with everything I've said so far though, but nobody has pointed out anything. I realize this is a bit selfish of me, to expect that any of you would go out of your way to help me improve, but I thought that was part of the purpose of the round table.

It's not about being right or wrong for me, it's about being right for the right reasons. Anyone can make wild guesses and hit one scum team, but that's not good play. I would rather be wrong about all the scum team because of bad logic, then be right about the entire scum team because of bad logic, because if I were right, then it would encourage me to use that bad logic again.

Oh, and I stand corrected. You did point out that i shouldn't use connections to non-flipped players in analysis of living players. (i.e., the connection between bum and palmar.) That's the sort of thing that i don't realize is bad play until someone points it out.

This claim finger pointing only makes sense if both are mafia. If Bum is not mafia, there is no reason to do this. The mafia is in a comfortable enough situation and the town obviously has little clue of what's going on that unless Pandain is secretly smurfing and dictating mafia strategy, they wouldn't make such a poor move. But let's say mafia screwed up really badly. Does this mean bum is innocent? Of course not. His role claim is very suspect (ridiculously overpowered, even if mafia has an also overpowered 2kp and a likely day vig), his play is completely anti-town and selfish and completely contradictory to the point of his role. He wants to draw fire by being an active threat to the mafia, which he certainly isn't trying to do.

As many have pointed out, Palmar's claim is absurd and doesn't match up with his actions. He must be lynched. However, would a planned mafia claim have so many holes? This was an act of deliberation, not impulse. It feels much more like Palmar's claim was intentionally bad. If Palmar is mafia, there is a very good reason for him to be doing this: if bum is also mafia. That way the mafia create a situation of "someone must be lying" and paint it as mafia vs townie and give themselves an assured lategame. They want palmar to die, not bum, because a) bum will have an alibi for surviving the entire game b) if palmar lives, having to keep up the claims is much harder than bum doing nothing like he has all game. So Palmar's claim is made intentionally bad and, depending on how the thread plays out, mafia will likely be applying pressure to lynch him, or possibly playing both sides. A situation has like this has another mafia purpose: to split the vote. A no-lynch today would be disastrous for the town, and it could quite conceivably happen.

If the above is true (naturally waiting to confirm this like ace said by killing bum and not building a house of cards), I'm certain the remaining mafia will be trying to push the agenda of "one of bum/palmar must be mafia, the other town." They won't necessarily be able to be differentiated with townies also doing that, but it's pretty clear if mafia will pull such a move their entire team will support it, so anyone who doesn't make such claims is most likely town.

Veritus wrote:...his play is completely anti-town and selfish and completely contradictory to the point of his role. He wants to draw fire by being an active threat to the mafia, which he certainly isn't trying to do.

This is what I don't get. How do you draw mafia hits, but not medics? Is there a way to do that? The only way that i can is to make a blue-slip/act like a blue.

Do you just assume that there is no medic, and take the risk? Obviously it's not a large chance that there is a medic AND it protects you, but losing a medic is big.

The only way that i can is to make a blue-slip/act like a blue.

How is this not going to draw the medics again? (or detective). Most importantly playing anti-town entire game just because of potential danger of hitting medic is not a good trade-off.

Kavdragon wrote:

Veritus wrote:...his play is completely anti-town and selfish and completely contradictory to the point of his role. He wants to draw fire by being an active threat to the mafia, which he certainly isn't trying to do.

This is what I don't get. How do you draw mafia hits, but not medics? Is there a way to do that? The only way that i can is to make a blue-slip/act like a blue.

Do you just assume that there is no medic, and take the risk? Obviously it's not a large chance that there is a medic AND it protects you, but losing a medic is big.

You can't control if a medic will protect you or not so really you just focus on the mafia. They have more information than everyone else (they know who is town and who isn't). Medics don't. If you build a case against someone that is mafia, mafia will go after you since they know you're right while medics don't. So just play as pro-town as possible. Also, being a "vet" makes mafia want to hit you and not necessarily makes medics want to protect you.

Now that bumatlarge has flipped I'll post the part of my analysis dealing with the PGO:

--------middle of Day 3

bumatlarge finally claims PGO. A note on PGO (the one that kills anyone who visits them):

There are lots of venom filled and angry discussions about this role. Some consider it too swingy (it isn't), some state it's game breaking (possible, but not likely) and some feel it punishes the Town (somewhat true. A bad PGO player will end the game for the Town very fast).

This is the thing about it - as PGO you are rewarded for playing in a manner that attracts SCUM NKs and sways away Town PRs. Doing this usually means being an active contributor and getting Scum lynched. DTs probably wont visit you, Vigilantes wont shoot you - Medics might
check up on you. Which brings us to the other ugly part of PGOs: claiming.

Some think PGOs should claim early on to avoid getting Town PRs capped. IMO you should just keep telling any prot roles to leave you alone.

Even if people figure out your PGO that'll save some Town PRs. You might get policy lynched but thats better than endgaming the Town. Of course if you're playing well and it's only a medic that might die, think carefully before early claiming.

Unfortunately bum hasn't been very active or leading lynches on Scum. however, when stacked up in a way that says "either bum is lying or Palmar is lying" it looks better. Palmar's thrown around over 9,000 accusations in this game. The DT claim just seems off - he's already saying there is a Framer/GF or he's Insane. While having a handy excuse ready for the flip he already knows is coming isn't an indicator he is scum, when taken along with the mass finger pointing and his past posts it turns his scum reading from "suspicious" to "very likely". The claim was bad. But it accomplished 1 really good, possible game ending move that for a Town thats already doing bad:

----stuff omitted-----


Palmar just buried himself but I don't think most people would catch it. Assume for a second Palmar is a Detective for real. He never mentioned that his role stated he could be a variety of sanities - and this is important: Palmar is adamant that he is insane because of the
conflicting check with Jackal. 3 things here that makes it an easy lynch:

1.) Palmar never even questions if Jackal is really a cop. He takes it at face value immediately. Scum slip.

2.) When did Palmar claim that this Insane DT with respect to Jackal's claim?
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=11349212

It was before Jackal claimed. He was parroting the Insane DT thing as an excuse in advance. Once Jackal claimed he ran with it and no one except bum(obviously) ---stuff omitted----

3.) The MAJOR point that should lead to Palmar's lynch. If you are a Town DT, and I never told you what possible sanities you could be and you're in LYLO - you would atleast post the possibility that there could be role tampering. But he immediately wants to get rid of bum. In an almost LYLO situation. Not something a smart Townie would do so quickly.

------------------------------

PGOs play just like any normal Townie would. There isn't anything super special about the role except it possibily rewards the Town for someone "playing well" and buries them for someone "playing like shit". Palmar's claim should have never held up but stupid town + a lazy bumatlarge is the reason this wasn't an instant lynch of Palmar 2 hours into the day.

Spoiler:

AKA

Ya palmer needs to get lynched lol

I had a feeling at the end that Bumatlarge was just being a bad townie, but I couldn't figure out the logic behind it. That makes me angry.

The fact that Jackal wouldn't switch votes after it was obvious that Palmar was town, along with the "why isn't the game over yet?" post made me lol so hard. Mafia with their pants caught down.

The politician, like sandroba said, has never made someone post their vote in the thread, (after all, what if BA was off for the rest of the night?) Also, as sandroba pointed out, having a politician and some sort of anonymous double vote power makes me think that BA is also scum.

Given the all-in nature of the play, i would also suspect that the remaining member of the mafia is Mig or Chaos13. (As they were the other two votes on Bum)

House of cards anyone?

---

Hesmyrr wrote:

The only way that i can is to make a blue-slip/act like a blue.

How is this not going to draw the medics again? (or detective). Most importantly playing anti-town entire game just because of potential danger of hitting medic is not a good trade-off.

Detectives are supposed to find scum, not blues. If you blue slip I would hope that you don't get DT checked. Medics probably would protect you. I didn't think of that at first cause the way that i play medic is protecting the most helpful people in the thread, as I think they pose the greater threat to mafia.

That's how I see it anyways.

Having read through Jackal's posts once more, i'm getting a "bum" feeling about him too. If there was one player that i would brand as stubborn enough to not change his vote after BA voted Bum (and said he wanted to vote palmar), I would say it's jackal. He was sure that the three players telling him to vote were mafia, and from his point of view, it looks like the entire team is trying to swing his vote so they win. It's still bad play, but It's bad play that I can see coming from jackal.

So I retract my previous statement that Jackal is scum. I'm...undecided. His claim makes no sense to me from a mafia perspective, and it didn't "support" Palmars claim as everyone has been saying. (Palmar's claim didn't say anything, and any claim would have supported it:

Palmar is either insane or wbg was framed.

If palmar is insane, the wbg is town and Bum is scum.

If wbg was framed then Bum is town.

The only claims that could counter this is bum being PGO, or a DT checking Bum and wbg as well. (And getting both innocent)

Interestingly the only way that Jackal's DT claim is true (palmar and wbg are the same alignment) is if mafia did in fact frame wbg. In which case Palmar wasn't lying about his reads. Half truth is more dangerous than a full lie, as they say. It'd be very interesting if jackal isn't mafia, and mafia actually did that for Palmars elaborate claim. It may not have saved Palmar, but if Jackal is indeed a DT, then he may have dragged him down with the half truth.


Holy crap! And then it all becomes clear. Jackal is a DT. His play makes perfect sense. He checked palmar then wbg. He actually got the same alignment, and that's why he was convinced that Palmar was innocent. After all, who in their right minds would frame the man they are killing? Bravo Mafia for a convoluted plan, that might actually work.

Now to speculate on non-confirmed details: Mafia are going to try hard to get jackal killed. BayonnetAnderson fits that bill nicely.

Sorry if the reasoning is crazy. I'm really tired, but that seems so plausable. I'll look at it tomorrow and see if It's as bad as i suspect it might be.

Wow, I didn't actually expect PGO to be in the game.

Anyways, town now has to figure out if mafia actually went all in on the Bumatlarge lynch. Presumably they knew it was not game ending, which begs the question: Did they put all their eggs in one basket?

Palmar is scum, that we can be assured.

Chaos, Mig, BA, Jackal. Do three out of the remaining 4 scum really lie here?

Jackal has claimed Parity Cop, and certainly seems to be sticking to his guns. Posts like this:

No. I gotta go with the info I have. If Palmar is GF I'm fucked. If Palmar is GF I have no idea why he would have made the claim he did. He was in no danger of being lynched. If Palmar is GF town loses because of a random happenstance when I chose him for my null point. I gotta go with what info I have.

Make me think that he is likely town.

BA I'm not so sure. He wrote a solid breakdown of the situation detailing Palmar as scum and Bum as PGO. Good enough that if he was mafia it ran the risk of blowing Palmar out of the water. I suppose if he was mafia and he's trying to bus Palmar it makes sense. However it makes very little sense to have BA do this and then flip to voting Bum at the last minute with some BS politician claim. Presumably this means BA is telling the truth about the politician, which clears him.

Mig on the other hand seems very scummy. He's voting for Bum, but not pushing a case that bum is scum. Instead he's pushing a case that the players voting for Palmar are scummy. This is total bs. He also makes 1 big slip here, though not necessarily a scum slip:

On September 15 2011 09:08 Mig wrote:
For any townies that are on palmar right now.

Look at the people who are on his voting list, Bum (shady), sandroba (unbelievably shady), Xt (lists no reason for his vote and is flying way under the radar), BA as jackal just pointed out was gunho for lynching sandroba/bum yesterday but now out of nowhere is siding with them, GGQ.

Do you really believe all of these people are town? Would jackal/palmar both randomly fake claim dt out of nowhere today? I mean seriously tell me why they would do this? Especially when they could very easily have pushed for sandroba today.

Also look at this from a balance viewpoint. If jackal/palmar are both fake claiming dts then town has just one medic (which roleblocks its target), a double voter and possibly 1/2 vigs. If that is the case what possible sense does it make for town to have a PGO? It would be incredibly op. The jailbreaker would roleblock the PGO (I assume) so the PGO would literally have no town role it could randomly kill besides the vigs. PGO's are generally only used in cases where there are plenty of townie roles they could accidentally kill because otherwise they are way way too strong since they are virtually guaranteed to kill a mafia, if they aren't lynched.

So seriously use some common sense. Look closely at the people voting palmar right now and look at the fact that it makes absolutely no sense for there to be a pgo in this game when there are no townie roles it could accidentally kill.

Unless I'm mistaken, which is very possible, no one has every mentioned a double voter up to this point. So Mig is either the Floridian(double voter), or he is on the scum team with the double voter.

Also his vote post for Bum is basically an indictment of Sandroba(an easy target), as opposed to actually pushing Bum as scum:

Basically I have to either trust that palmar/jackal are town or bum/sandroba are town meh

I just can't believe sandroba is town. For 6 days he does absolutely nothing and shows he doesn't care at all about the game. Then now he comes in and plays to emotion acting pissed off about how everyone besides him is useless? Where was this emotion/effort at any other point in the game? I just don't buy it. It's so inconsistent with his play this entire game.

And there was seriously no reason whatsoever for palmar to claim dt as mafia at the start of the day.

So

##vote bumatlarge

Gotta think Mig is scum.

Chaos I haven't looked at yet, but as I recall he hasn't done much this game. Certainly he could be scum.

There's a big problem with my thoughts here though. I think it very unlikely that Mafia have both a Floridian, and a vote-buying politician, as that is a lot of voting power. However, I also thought that Ace wouldn't put a PGO into his game, so what do I know. Also, GGQ presumably has a blue role, so lets see what he does with it.

Oh are you shitting me.

@Radfield
I thought he was referring to

iGrok, Double Voter shot Day 2

?

Yeah my bad. That's totally what he was talking about.... I obviously haven't been reading well enough.

Anyways, that pretty much settles that Mig is scum. Where did the anonymous vote come from though? Another double voter? The politician? This is a wild and wacky game

On September 15 2011 20:31 chaos13 wrote:
Yeah unfortunately the quickest way for an SK to win is to side with mafia and kill a townie.

This really sticks out to me.

Traditional SK's have to be the last one standing. He is assuming that the SK is a survivor. Anyone know when the last survivor SK on TL was?

Fun fun. Bayonnet had me fooled for a bit at the beginning. I bought the "townie made a mistake and shot a blue" thing. Towards the end he was creeping back on because he wasn't contributing, and the voting thing got him on my scum list. Don't know if I would have shot him though. Well done Zona.

I said earlier that Chaos was scum, but I hadn't looked back, and lately he'd slipped off my scumdar. (Mostly because others were more suspicious, and he was very ignorance for me) Oh well. Should have looked back.

Oh, and just to point out: Bayonnet was pushing really hard for Jackal to get vig'd. That works well with my innocent jackal theory.

For the last scum player, I don't think it's jackal (for previously mentioned reasons), and I don' think it's mig, because the last mafia wouldn't say something like "The last mafia is me or this townie". They would try to avoid being near the lynch. (Especially with all the other players that mafia could try to tag.)

That leaves GGQ, xtfftc, and Sandroba. I haven't done a proper analysis yet, but I'm leaning Sandroba at the moment.

Well, BA flipping scum is a good reminder to me of one of my biggest flaws as a town player: I tend to accept claims at face value. That is to say, I assume mafia will generally make the optimum move. When zone claimed, I accepted it right off because that claim makes very little sense from a mafia perspective, likewise with Palmar until I came here and read this thread.

After day 2 BA looked extremely scummy, especially if you assume that BA is GMarshal. However his politician claim at the end is so transparent that I was thinking no mafia would ever make such a bad claim. Lo and behold, a second bunk claim by mafia, and it got them into more trouble.

Anyways town needs to shut up about the SK. Since you don't know if there IS a SK, you obviously just try to keep lynching and killing scum. Palmar first of course. Mig second in my eyes. With the lawyer flip, Jackals claim becomes more legit.... But then again, I tend to accept claims at face value.

Excellent play by zona this game. A lucky break on night 1 with being jailed, but that was all zona needed to keep pegging scum. Nice to see him(her!?) playing again.

Why isn't Palmer being auto-voted?? All town needs is someone to state, yo, bum is PGO, palmer said he visited him and that he was red. That means he should be dead. Scum

Nvm lol, he was. Sandroba...why you so bad...-_-

Right, so looks like Jackal actually hit upon the last mafia. (xtfftc) Interesting. If my theory is correct, then he is "same" as Palmar, a framed "wbg" and thus is mafia. Jackal needs to defend himself though. People are assuming that he's mafia, when he has a pretty reasonable explanation for why he voted Bum.

That makes xtfftc the person who would presumably have the power to put in an anonymous vote, which is exactly who they want alive in an end game. Now that Palmar has flipped goon, it also makes sense that mafia were actually busing Palmar, and then tried for a no-lynch scenario once bum was so high in the vote count.

With the chances of Xtfftc being shot somewhat low (if the thread is anything to go by), I'd say that mafia actually have a decent shot at winning.

Why don't you think that Palmar was covered by the lawyer on night 1?

Mostly because I forgot that the Lawyer role was in play.

Which means xtfftc could fall either way. So scratch that previous comment.

BA pushed for Jackal to be vig'd before he flipped, and it seems to me that he's clear because of that. If mafia wanted to distance themselves from scum jackal, they would have called for his lynch, so that people would see that it was scum calling for his lynch, and then not lynch him. Scum called for his vig, which would mean that the shot would be fired before it would be seen that mafia are calling for the shot.

Maybe I'm just getting tunnel vision with the whole innocent jackal thing. His play has been...lacking, behaviorally. He's not played pro-town, and he's not defending himself like he should be. Those rase flags for me.