Wow, we pulled it out. Good game all, fun times all around. General reminder that my histrionics were scumtalk.
Town MVPs are Meeple and Sopko.
Meeple I actually feel bad about. He didn't do anything really wrong all game, nor did we target him overly much. His defenses about the mistake business were the towniest responses I could have imagined anyone giving. Unfortunately this didn't translate to him being able to do anything productive for town as he was too busy giving defenses of himself that nobody listened to.
Sopko hung back a lot, but eventually was the only person to pick up on the real case on me - being overdramatic in my efforts to save my own skin. This is why he had to die Night 2.
Honest analysis follows, please read with thick skin.
By and large, this game went entirely according to plan. Mid-day 1, Rat and I profiled everyone in the game and thought out what they'd likely do and what we'd likely do. For the most part we were correct. Our must-kill list at the start of the game consisted of Corwin, QR and Excal. Excal's a dangerous opponent with good lategame analysis - Rat especially fears him. Cor's too unpredictable in who he'll attack and has a strong backlash when attacked himself, meaning town will never go after him (timezone helps as well), and we can't mislynch him either without sacrificing whoever does so. QR had a conference invincibility shield and a strong metagame hatred for me. Sopko, Meeple and Kilga were neutral, and Cid's lack of content set himself up as an easy mislynch for whenever we wanted to cash it in.
Town as a whole displayed a strong tendency to attack random small details. Many people seized onto my initial interaction with Rat and Sopko and ignored the folks who didn't show up until later. As should now be ironically clear, we were playing straight to get a feel for things early on, and it worked well. We turned this around by attacking Excal on a convenient meaningless detail, using Cid's initial attack as setup to build the case on him later, and deferred heavily to Corwin and agreed with him to keep his heat off of us. First mislynch get!
Our night 1 action was the largest and by far most important decision we had to make all game. Since we'd checked Excal off the list via lynch, the choice was between killing QR or Cor. We knew well that leaving QR alive would be a death sentence to me, no matter what, whereas Cor was much more unpredictable. In the end we decided to tango with the evil we knew, and removed Cor from the board.
Day 2 was smooth sailing. QR latched on to me and wouldn't let go, just as planned, while the rest of town either joined in or hopped on Meeple, the token detail/minor mistake case of choice. I voted Cid at the start of the day for lurking, then I removed my vote once he talked and QR developed, and never mentioned Cid again. This was planned setup to make Cid look bad after I flipped, as I had little intention of staying alive. I put up token Epic Defense and Epic Offense - these were required to maintain the game as it was, so that after I flipped scum, town would continue to attack small details and not look farther, even though they had very little chance of saving me that day and (more importantly) would clear Kilga. The plan quickly became to use Meeple and Cid as the other two mislynches. Rat's calling me on the 4/7 thing really was a huge scummy mistake, which fortunately nobody else latched on to as town had their preferred cases already and only Soppy seemed to be really paying attention. It did let me fling attacks at Rat, which we'd otherwise been lacking - I'd planned on us having to stage a fight around the hammer, but thankfully things turned out to where Rat could hammer without it and cash in on big town cred.
Night 2's kill choice was between Kilga and Sopko, with a side order of QR/replacement. Kilga was cleared, QR's getting a replacement maintained and improved the invincibility shield, and Sopko was actually thinking for himself. In other games, the cleared townie or the bad mislynch target would have been much better choices, but town's attitude here made Soppy the obvious call, so we could keep the game predictable and under control. (And no, Shale didn't let me hang around for the kill - this was all planned well in advance.)
So by day 3, the die had been cast and all that remained was to see if the plan would work or not. It went flawlessly and the day turned out to be a formality. Rat got his hammering cred, and Cid and Meeple had their cases slapped down fast and hard, giving Rat the amusing choice of which townie he wanted to hammer.
Night 3 was obviously between killing Kilga or Gate. Either was a valid choice. Kilga was cleared and Gate could take credit for the good things QR did (lynching me) while being able to brush off her single-mindedness. (Incidentally, I feel strongly that Shale should not have allowed a replacement that far into the game, for this reason. Gate was able to come in with a huge advantage because he would not be held accountable for any mistakes QR made.) If it had been me alive, I would have killed Kilga, as Gate was extending Rat much more 'confirmed town' cred than Kilga was and was more clear. I still think that would have been the better choice, but Rat was the man on the spot and I can't argue with his results. Gate having attacked Cid also helped add to the case on Cid, as that's who scum-Cid would have killed.
Day 4 also went according to plan. Cid could, by that time, very easily see what the deal was, but Kilga's judgment was the only one that mattered and the case that we had been building on Cid all game (with assistance from himself and a bit from Gate) turned out to be insurmountable. Past mid-day 2, the only thing that stood in the way of our win was not being able to kill Kilga, which made me bite my nails at the end watching, as we were relying on his mostly random judgment and Rat didn't refer to much of the stuff I set up on Cid. Had QR not been replaced, though, I think our win would have been even more assured.
-------
What can be learned from this?
Scum plan. Scum play dirty. Metagaming does exist and work - but it is infinitely more useful to scum than to town. For town, metagaming is unreliable. Scum have control, and can fake their usual style or change it up, whichever they see fit. Trying to draw metagaming tells from posts is a guessing game. But as scum already know everyone's alignments, they don't need to play guessing games and can easily metagame to predict townie actions and plan their own play accordingly. The more predictable town makes itself, the easier it is for scum to do this. This is why it is advantageous for people to vary their playstyles as town and make metagaming as unreliable as possible.
A lone scum is unfindable. They are just another townie trying to save their skin. Nobody wants to get themselves lynched. The best, and really the only, way to find a lone scum through anything other than chance is to look at previous cardflips and ties to the other scum you've found. As soon as I flipped scum, the best thing to do would have been to go through everything I posted with a fine-toothed comb, and think "Why would scum-Alex say and do this?"
In this particular game, a bit of thought would reveal that I had to know I was going to die and flip scum - so why am I tying myself to Meeple so heavily? Meeple should have been treated as 75%+ confirmed town, not lynched. Of course, this requires some situational analysis and WIFOM. As described, from the start of the game I had laid a giant trap leading to an El Cid lynch for folks who did pursue this direction and look at my connections. So the real question to ask is "Was town being predictable?" The truth was that neither Cid nor Meeple was scum. Kilga was somewhat on the right track when he talked about Rat's interactions with me, but by that time, it wasn't reliable, because...
In this game town lynched on all the wrong reasons. Everything that I said as scum about small details and mistakes being no better than random chance, as they can be applied to anyone? That is all true and I stand firmly by it. We got the Excal mislynch on such details, and I intentionally argued in favor of ignoring them as scum to make town keep looking at them after I flipped. The main point QR pressed against me, my "twisting Rat's words" and attacking him? Totally off base. Rat and I were both scum. I wasn't twisting his words or seriously attacking him. We were playing straight early on to get townie reactions and gauge the game. I WAS scum, but that wasn't why QR was attacking me, and lynching scum via lynching me was pure chance. This argument is what gave Rat a not insignificant amount of townie cred.
The other thing of note is that Cid and to a lesser extent QR set themselves up the bomb. There is nothing wrong with having limited time to read and post and it is very possible to play a great game under serious time constraints. However, doing so requires that you do significantly contribute on the occasions when you can - because the things you DO post are all your fellow townies have to judge you by. Cid wasn't scummy because he didn't post much. He was scummy because of what he posted when he did - a single small-detail argument on Excal, and then echoing the party line on Meeple and me, with little or anything original, and then sticking to Meeple day 3. By day 4, when Cid had to look at others and come up with arguments to save himself, it was already far too late. There was nothing he *could* say at that point that would make up for earlier, nor was there any rational way for Kilga to conclude Rat was the scum. The game had already been lost when everyone stuck to Meeple; if they hadn't, Cid would still have been mislynched day 3, but Rat would have been in much more trouble and probably found on day 4.
QR, had she stayed in, would have been in a similar position, but Gate replacing her mitigated it. While I expected her to target me, I didn't anticipate the degree to which she went *only* after me - but as scum I certainly welcomed it. My comments on her play shortly before she left were intended to set her up as well, and leave town wondering about her lack of content and WIFOMing if I would tell her to do this as a scum gambit. (And, for the record, I indeed would have, if she had been my partner this game.) While none of these points were logically invalidated by the replacement, Mafia is a game of psychology as well as logic and psychologically nobody would seriously buy into taking Gate to task for them. This is why I feel late replacements give unfair advantages to whichever team gets them - look at games in the DL and how often replacements get lynched. They never do, until there are no other good choices. While players dropping out is regrettable, it has no easy answer, and once significant gameplay has occurred it is always better for balance to modkill than to replace. Even in the worst case, it's better to punish the team the departing player was on rather than the team they were not on.
Regardless, thanks to everyone who participated. It was quite the game.
