By the way, did you actually take NK immunity?

I was ready to gamble that you didn't, should it come down to that.

"I was one (admittedly very unlikely) mislynch away from taking numerical control of the game. I was also a very likely D2 lynch. I got far closer to my wincon by claiming -- why would we ban a legitimate tactic?"

First, there's no way in hell anyone could ever win with it. That alone should be enough to disallow it. You at least theoretically had a chance to win this time, but everyone sees the necessity of killing the SK in that situation now. Second, it kills the balance. It's generally optimal for the SK to maintain balance between town and mafia, but if the SK's actively helping town, even if there are plans to betray eventually, it takes a perfectly balanced game and throws it off. I don't like that.

@yj no I didn't lol

It's not about whether the tactic would always or even most of the times succeed. I completely acknowledge it's a long shot, but as I said before, SKs across all meta don't win. Their odds of victory are in the 16-20% range in most setups. I think it very clearly got me closer to my wincon than the alternative, since I went from a likely D2 lynch target to living to... what D4, D5, lost count lol. It didn't work in the end, but that's no basis by which to ban something. If we're gonna ban claims, how come the SK isn't allowed to claim truthfully but other roles are?

And you can maintain balance by being really onesided in one faction's favor for a while. We do this all the time in Diplomacy, it happened last game in M2 -- damian was a FAR bigger help to the town than I ever was in our respective games, but that's not being brought up because damian did it "the right way" by not being open about it. Again, for all the big swing I supposedly threw for town, I got one ML away from being able to take over the game by numbers, and the game ended in a final-3. If I swung the game so much for town and it STILL came down to a final-3, doesn't that indicate I helped rather than hurt balance?

The tweak I'd recommend is removing the SK lololol

There wasn't going to be one when I GM'd. While I was definitely overselling the extent to which I hated the role, as part of my gambit, I really DO dislike the role itself, a lot. I think it's a pretty bad role:

- There's not much in the way of counterplay. The mafia have to get him lynched most of the time (ironically they didn't this time), but they can't openly hunt for the sk, because a smart town is going to recognize that people who spend an inordinate amount of time hunting the sk are probably in the mafia (since town is hunting for BOTH of them and doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time on either). The town have to catch him almost by luck...
* Our results: In M1 the sk got killed basically for being inactive, which isn't alignment-indicative; in M2 we only got the sk because we were able to use process of elimination after damian took out the other likely target instead; and here I gave myself up on D2.
* Theorycrafting: The main way you catch mafia is by looking to see who's relatively disinterested in finding the bad guys and looking for weird associations after one of the mafia flips. Neither of these works for the sk, because the sk is scumhunting too (in order to identify mafia to keep the balance he needs to win), and because the sk is a one-man team (which means there are no associations to look at).

- The role tends to be super swingy. This is pretty easy to see; as for why it makes it not a good role IMO, it speeds up the game (typically... this one it didn't because I only got to kill one person lololol) and leaves less of the outcome in the hands of the players as a whole. A lot of games with the sk come down to who the sk kills when. So the sk has a lot of influence, but rarely ever wins itself... not a good formula for balance IMO.

It's like Italy in Diplomacy imo. Win chance is abysmal compared to other powers, but its early choice of who to attack really swings the balance of power in the Western and Eastern triangles

Well played YJ and Ghug, great finish even if it didn't go our way.

You must be excited to play as town for once, pj.

@Eden- I was with you until you dissed Italy- Italy is easily a top 4 power and probably top 3 depending on whether you like Russia.

oh yeah, irony of ironies, I like playing Italy

I should clarify, it's like the popular perception of Italy...

GG all :) Sorry I was so useless for the town in this one, but I'm glad to see we won anyhow.

Italy, ehh, it's better than Germany and worse than Austria. Which I prefer out of the five that aren't Germany and Austria really depends on who's playing and what my mood's like.

That you claim any country besides perhaps France to be better than Germany baffles me.

As far as I am aware, Russia has the most solos on this site. Italy the least. Take from that what you will.

@Eden those are good points, you might be right.

Wow, we won. Well that was good thing to come across. I would talk a lot, but I don't have much time, up here. So I'll just cast my votes town MVP: Ghug (though I did almost shoot you N 1) Mafia MVP: YJ (At the beginning I thought it would be Warden, but he did kind of get himself killed day 2)

imo mvp's are clearly ghug and yj for town and mafia respectively

with that said a lot of people on both sides played pretty well. the mafia team set yj up very well and maniac, semck, uclabb were excellent for town imo. honestly everyone that didn't replace out played spectacularly imo, and big props to bo for replacing into a tough slot and playing it out, too

Yeah, I think Maniac deserves a lot more credit than he was getting in game. I don't know if it was intentional, but the bad ideas were a pretty good play for a power role, and the day two vote switch was excellent.

Vash, why'd you almost shoot me?

^^cuz you're sketch as fuck.

I wish he had shot you though. You would be dead, I wouldn't have pressed on PE so hard because there would be 2 kills and it wouldn't have SKconfirmed PE for me, PJ/Warden probably wouldn't have been outed on D2/N2 respectively.

Yeah bloody wish we'd let the kill go through. Maniacs switch was genius, I was cursing so badly for falling in to his trap. But yes some of the ideas were crazy.

MVP to YJ and Ghug tho. Really enjoyed playing with Warden and YJ - was some nice improv going on.

Yeah, that would have sucked.

Would love to claim that my bad ideas were intentional, but they weren't I really did think they were good ideas at the time.

Well, you're an honest man anyway, Maniac, and really, your bad ideas were more than balanced by the quality of your reads. We'll all know to give a wide wide berth to whatever procedure you suggest, but hang whoever you tell us to. ; )

MVP goes to YJ and Ghug for bringing it home.

Thx semck, I think I'll steer well clear of suggesting any procedural changes in IV. I'll also never role claim so early again, was kicking myself for that.

could have just not rb'd me n1, i was shooting ghug too lmao

who i DID think was scum, but also didn't care to figure out whether i was right or wrong gg

like i woke up a few hours before n1 resolved, saw A BUNCH OF SHIT from ghug to reply to and thought to myself "why bother? just kill him"

Lol #icaughtyou

Man, literally everybody in the game who could kill anybody almost killed ghug on N1.

I would have been so pissed.