Talisman Mafia

[choxorn]

You messed up a bit at the end when the empowered Pig had you thinking Visor was innocent, but other than that, yeah. We were happy when you thought Visor was innocent, cause it basically meant we'd be getting 2 townies killed every night instead of 1.

I'm happy about the Rooster powering up the Pig there, but that was pretty much the only time it ever got lucky for us. Just to say, the thing about abilities that only work once are balanced because they only work once, and letting them work more often at random kind of messes with things a bit.

 

[Turquoiside]

I've deleted some of the Night Action PMs, but as best as I can gather these were the events that took place during the night:

Night One​

Earthling roleblocks choxorn
Kennigit kills Bsmith1068
Mafia don't send in a steal order

Not really much to say for now, the lack of orders is almost certainly due to the server's unexpected collapse. These are written in the order they occur by the way, which is:

Rooster enhances a Talisman [start of the phase]
Dragon roleblocks a player [Prevents use of all Active (NOT: Rooster, Dog, and Tiger) Talismans]
Everything Else [Protections, Scans]
Thefts [1. Mafia, 2. Drew]
Kills [1. Pig, if Mafia is NOT the Target 2. Mafia, if not targeted by the Pig Talisman]
Tracking

TK rolled the enhanced ability Night One, but since he hadn't - and couldn't have - used his ability it did nothing.

Night Two​

Verarde protects Takhisis
Mafia steal the Sheep Talisman from Jarrema
Jarrema scans Kennigit and discovers that he is Mafia
Kennigit kills sirtommygunn, releasing the Snake Talisman
NinjaCow kills landlubber, releasing the Sheep Talisman the team had just acquired

Ah, Night Two . Living in the moment, I thought this would be the most important one in the game: after all, one mafia was killed and another was locked as the next boot. Even better, the scanning Talisman the team had lost wound back in their hands. But in hindsight, it was a lot less important than all that. I'd argue Day Two was more important regarding the death of landlubber, because as far as I can guess, NinjaCow targeted him because he missed that phase (Mafia inactivity was really unfortunate this game). And after Kennigit's slip up during the Day Phase (the one where he suggested Talismans may not give abilities) he was incredibly lucky to make that Night Phase at all. Although there's a good chance Kennigit may have been able to talk himself out of the noose or been able to get help from the other Mafia w/o the hard truth of a scan weighing on him, I think he would have been lynched regardless of the scan result. As for the Talismans, none of them would ever be useful in finding another scum; the Snake Talisman stayed in the system for two phases and the Sheep hopped owners virtually every day w/o confirming anyone of complete innocence. This phase was just a formality after the previous day that produced impressive results. I'm not trying to downplay how well the Town overall played here though, because sticking to a lead and following through with them is impressive by itself.

Night Three​

Verarde's Talisman is enhanced
Mafia don't send in a roleblock
Verarde protects himself and Jarrema
Olaf protects choxorn's Talisman
Mafia don't send in a steal
NinjaCow64 attempts to kill General Olaf
Mafia attempt to kill Jarrema
taillesskangaru revives Earthling

This is now the second night the Mafia team makes NO direct progress. Topsecret was gone by this point (I would have tried replaced him earlier if the timing wouldn't have made it clear he was scum), leaving choxorn responsible for every action. And although it franky sucks for choxorn that he had to play for his entire team, if anything led to the Mafia's loss it was missing those two steals.
In general, I think the team might have seen they didn't have a kill and so they saw their team as weak and maybe thought stealing wasn't important. Thefts were JUST AS IMPORTANT as kills. The Townie team was indeed stacked with many characters who can't be killed outright due to their powerful Talismans; it was the Mafia's job to take these abilities for themselves. Imagine if on Night Three the Mafia had stolen Jarrema or Olaf's Talisman. Even with only one player participating, they'd still be the favorites to win. Talismans are the focus of this game, and keeping two of them in the hands of the Town was bound to come back to bite them. You can argue that the town was too well protected for the Mafia to have a fighting chance...but that was a DIRECT consequence of missing two early night phases. Keeping the Rooster, Dog, Rat, and. up until the very end, the Tiger Talisman all in the hands of the Town was a bad situation that ended with the expected results.
Tangent: However, if the Jarrema kill had gone through the Dark Hand might have had a fighting chance. General Olaf wouldn't have lucked into an extra life N4, and if the Rooster Talisman is recirculated I think the only options for the bonus would be DaveShack(if he wasn't voted it) or NinjaCow. And if events proceed like they did we'd have a Final Four scenario, where No Lynch once again becomes an option. All it takes is one of NinjaCow, DaveShack, or TK to opt for it, and a very careful night phase for the Town to lose. So nice choice Verarde

Night Four​

General Olaf has his Talisman enhanced
Mafia roleblock General Olaf
General Olaf attempts to protect Earthling's Talisman (The Sheep)
Earthling scans DaveShack
Mafia steal the Sheep Talisman from Earthling
Mafia attempt to kill General Olaf
NinjaCow kills Takhisis, releasing the Rabbit Talisman

This was a fairly reasonable phase for the Town, so now is a good time to point another issue with the Mafia's gameplay: their steal choices. Although killing and stealing from two separate players removes abilities from the games faster, it can mean that some nights will see the team make no progress. Losing a team member and hitting protected players repeatedly resulted in a weaker Mafia team this time.

If I had been playing, I would have stolen and killed from the same target. This eliminates any chance that their target's Talisman will save them (which they should expect to happen ... what else would the Immortality or the Tiger Talisman reasonably do?) and means that the Mafia is in control of most of the Talismans that get released for voting. The only Talismans the Townies see are from the vigilante (and of course the Dog and ~Tiger are immune to him anyway) or dead scum. It also makes role (read: ability) claiming even easier, because the person who originally owned that Talisman is too dead to say otherwise(Remember that the dead could talk using thread info, but could not PM living players or reveal role info).

Since it was enhanced, they couldn't steal from Olaf tonight anyway. Understandably, the mafia only got the ability to both kill and steal after Kennigit died, so they didn't have a lot of time to fine-tune a strategy I like I had. But when they did send in actions, the Mafia didn't choose the best targets.

Night Five​

Ninjacow has his Talisman enhanced
Visorslash roleblocks DaveShack
General Olaf protects Earthling's Talisman
Visorslash steals the Ox Talisman from Mergle
NinjaCow attempts to kill Visorslash, but the Monkey Talisman combined with the Enhanced Pig Talisman saves him
Visorslash attempts to kill DaveShack, but the Dog Talisman saves him
Jarrema tracks Tailless

I think that by this point the Mafia had a decent shot at winning. Visorslash won a major advantage by being targeted by NinjaCow the same night he was enhanced; instead of being killed he was temporarily cleared of any suspicion. But he makes the unfortunate steal choice of Mergle instead of taillesskangaru. From his confession and even from the Mafia QT, it seems like most of the Town (perhaps not Olaf) knew that TK owned the Rat Talisman. The Rat Talisman is the only logical thing that could have revived TK....so why was he never the target? I think TK had confessed this the phase after Earthling was revived, so it ought to have happened even earlier. Regardless, this steal did give Visorslash a vote (as Shendu he hitherto didn't have one....that's 1:6 votes at the start btw) and was not a bad talisman to have in theory. To their credit, you can see the Mafia did couple their roleblocks and kills, which in theory produces the same effect as stealing and killing. I think Visor may not have known the Dragon only blocked active abilities; I don't think he ever got the Dragon Talisman's PM, he was only told that his team had a roleblock.

Jarrema tracks TK, but essentially this wasn't useful information. At this point no talisman is going to help the town find Shendu. I'm not sure what to think about Olaf protecting Earthling. I think this shows is that only Earthling and TK figured he had the Rat Talisman. This makes sense; Earthling could've guessed from him PM's pic that the Rat Talisman revived him and TK revived him.... The Mafia were not alone in missing this piece of information; Mergle didn't seem to know, Olaf didn't, and Jarrema didn't seem to know either. But who knows, maybe DaveShack or NinjaCow figured it out?

A Steal + Kill from DaveShack would have been incredible this phase if the Pig Talisman hadn't been "enhanced". Visorslash would survive anyway and they'd have only four people left standing going into the next phase. But who knows if that would have actually helped him? Tailless' analysis pointed to DaveShack at the only real other suspect besides Visor, though for all I know he wasn't a suspect at that point. Regardless, Earthling would have been a much more pragmatic kill and leaving him alive long enough for him to figure out the rest of the game was an unfortunate choice.

Night Six​

Earthling has his Sheep Talisman enhanced
Visorslash roleblocks General Olaf
Earthling scans Mergle and NinjaCow64
Olaf protects Earthling's Talisman
Visorslash steals the already-used Tiger Talisman from General Olaf
Visorslash kills Earthling
Ninjacow64 kills Mergle

The end game... there's little to say about it though. Both the kills were very logical, the enhancement and scans were unimportant. It's just a shame Visor had attacked Olaf before.... if he hadn't his shiny new talisman would have still protected him for a phase. It was a great steal, but things worked out poorly for him and is wasn't useful to him once he did. Visor's choice of a roleblock was also sensible, considering he had no way of knowing Olaf couldn't protect his own talisman. Then again, even if he could it wouldn't be a smart way to spend a protection. The Mergle kill by Ninja was great for the Mafia; it got rid of one of the few players who had fully role-revealed. but Earthling's death came about two turns too late. Earthling's last scan left everyone in the game innocent, confirming, to him at least, that Shendu was immune to night abilities.

I really appreciate all the comments guys, and I'll try to answer the other questions as quick as I can! It'll probably sometime tomorrow, after I check through this wall of text for the numerous errors I've left in.

Next up (At the latest, Tuesday ) : Mafia Play Comments

 

[NinjaCow64]

The interesting thing was though, if I hadn't had my talisman enhanced, I would have targeted Verarde. The only reason I didn't target him that night was because I thought that it was more likely that I would be able to save Virsorslash from suspicion than Verarde. If Virsorslash hadn't had that monkey talisman, this game would have ended that night.

 

[choxorn]

In defense of the Mafia:

Missing Steals: Like you said, the server is largely to blame for us forgetting to steal anything Night One. Plus, landlubber and I talked in the mafia QT to figure out something, decided "Steal at Random" but we never sent in orders because we never actually decided on anything. The missing orders on Night Three were because topsecret went MIA and I didn't know, and I was a bit busy that day. Sad, cause I suggested stealing from NinjaCow, TK, DaveShack, or Verarde on Night 3, and stealing any of their talismans (or attempting and failing to steal TK's) would have helped a lot. I actually think I did send in something, but it was late, and I forgot what, exactly.

Basically, I didn't send in orders for my inactive teammates on those two nights because I didn't yet know they were inactive, waited a bit for them to post something in the quicktopic about what we should do, and ended up forgetting to send in any orders, which is a lot easier to do if I'm the only one in the QT. That's no excuse, and I should have just sent something in at random on those two nights if nothing else, but it is an explanation.

As to targetting Olaf on night 4, he had claimed to be able to protect people from having their talismans stolen, of course I wanted to kill him, and how could I reasonably expect that his talisman would get powered up and save himself again, any more that I could have reasonably expected that he protected my talisman when I claimed it had been stolen, or any number of other things that happened in this game? Yes, I should have killed Earthling, but I assumed that he'd be protected, what with being a confirmed innocent with the scanning talisman and all, and that attempting to kill him would be a complete waste of time. I'm honestly surprised that Verarde forgot to send in orders more often than we did.

I can't really say anything about what Visorslash did, I'd have to let him do that. I too am a bit disappointed he didn't kill Earthling on Night 5 or steal some other talismans, but oh well.

And just miscellaneous things, yes, we couldn't combine the kill with the steal until Night 3, and I already explained why we didn't on Nights 3 and 4. And I don't care what else you say about our kill choices, we were unlucky. Losing 3 of our kills to 3 different protection abilities and an enhancement ability is absolutely unlucky, regardless of whether our kill choices were bad or not.

 

[Takhisis]

To prevent the mischief from the server bblackouts I just had a five-day-long Day phase and to hell with it.

 

[choxorn]

That might have been kind of silly, but it probably would have been a good idea to extend the night 24 hours when you saw only two people sent in orders and there was a good reason why some orders might be missing (the server).

 

[topsecret]

I was inactive because one of my family members was extremely sick and I had to leave town (and I was too busy to get to a computer.)