M73 - Fowl Play - Game Thread [HIDDEN]

[BesharamSabi]

Keep going demon. Stop the town apathy.

[DemonRHK]

Eden engaging bewildered townies with superior gamesolving and math.

[DemonRHK]

Jamie and Eden talking about how to get the scumbos.

[DemonRHK]

Bona hard at work preping part 4 of his case theory.

[President Eden]

reporting back that I’ve stared at the vote counts for an hour and found nothing interesting

[Bonatogether]

Bona hard at work preping part 4 of his case theory.

[President Eden]

basically I keep confbias to shit and circling around these people

Fluminator
TheFlyingBoat
worcej
rdrivera2005
BesharamSabi
BusinessLamp
pyxxy

and really the first four out of that list, and really only like Flum and maybe Boat. sorry Flum.

maybe I’ll get somewhere more productive by actually sitting down and theorycrafting Flipper strategy, because right now in my mind it’s still far from certain that Maniac was actually the Flipper.

[DemonRHK]

Pyxxy comments as a new player in the wake of N2 arguments.

[DemonRHK]

All players waiting for bozo to show up and take part in the game.

[DemonRHK]

Blamp hard at work...

[DemonRHK]

Chaqa coming back into the thread when D4 starts.

[DemonRHK]

Worc trying to stay under the radar.

[DemonRHK]

TFB, shortly after ending up as a lead wagon AGAIN.

[DemonRHK]

Ok, I think that's everyone at least once. I'mma get water, more booze, and stream somethin. Byyyyyyyeeeeeee

[Fluminator]

If the JOAT is able, I think it now makes sense to shoot either Flum or rivera.

I vote rdr

The bulk of the ghug "not voting scum" case collapses with Maniac as scum.
Jamiet lying when not under pressure to take out Maniac makes no sense as the alternative.

Rdr's reaction look like defeated scum who've lost 2 of their partners.

Find a game where I surrendered as scum? The biggest advantage of being town is that you don't need to stay alive to help the team. I don't mind being Vig shot if you are the kill tomorrow or vice-versa. You are scum tryng desperately to find s way out from the trap you got.

I'm having fun because I already know I'm dead soon. So I'm catching as many scum so I can be smug again in the God thread.

[President Eden]

Flipper Theorycraft

TL;DR: Choosing to flip as Cop, Doc, or JOAT is actually incredibly risky in a way that’s not obvious until you actually have to make the choice, so it’s a pretty unlikely pick in the debut of this role. People who kneejerk suggested a town PR as the right strategy are almost certainly not the Flipper and may not be mafia at all. Choosing to flip as Miller provides minimal gain to your team and can be actively detrimental. Choosing non-Godfather mafia roles doesn’t really get you anywhere meaningful. Choosing to flip as Godfather is strong and probably the best default option. Flipping as VT is probably worse than Godfather but stronger than people appreciate.

…

What are some things that the Flipper accomplishes for the mafia?
• Introduces doubt to the veracity of a flip (obviously).
• Enables counterclaiming battles and “bait” plays to draw out PRs.
• Further hampers reliability of Cop scans with fake Miller/GF flips.

What are the realistic options for the Flipper?
• VT
• Cop
• Doc
• JOAT
• Miller
• Godfather

The only options that can actually be written off as suboptimal in all cases are the Goon and the Janitor. These options don’t actually provide meaningful deceptive value and are for all practical purposes the same as doing nothing.

• Cop/Doc/JOAT – Fairly obvious implications. Initially seen as the “obvious” play, I actually now believe this is a very boom-or-bust move that only a few players would be willing to risk, if the implications of the move were properly understood.

• Miller/Godfather – Implications are also obvious. Discussed at length already.

• VT – Everyone is dismissing this play, but I think it’s much better than people think.

Let’s start with a town PR. What does flipping as a town PR accomplish? Way less than you think.

This line has a huge issue which only becomes apparent if you actually play the role or else put yourself in the position of someone who is: which role?

If your answer revolves around analyzing the power of each role, stop. The problem has nothing to do with the relative strength of the roles you can choose and everything to do with the logistics of the role itself.

The Flipper:
(1) Must decide its chosen flip by EOD1;
(2) Cannot discuss the flip with teammates before choosing; and
(3) Gains no deceptive value until it dies.

All three of these make it really hard in practice to use the Flipper as a way to attack town PRs. Because you have to decide your flip by EOD1, it’s really hard to know which role you should pick for maximum baiting and believability. It’s incredibly unlikely that you have a bead on any town PR (and if you do, just shoot them or RB them). More importantly, you have no idea how the roles are going to be distributed. What happens if you pick JOAT or Cop to try to cause a mess with fake scans, and your chosen role is actually assigned to the towniest player who ever towned? Or what happens if you end up really suspicious and “have to claim”? You can very easily end up in a spot where your role has no real deceptive value because the roles you targeted belong to very townie players.

The upside is obviously huge if you can pull something off, particularly in conjunction with the Janitor sweeping up the real role, but there’s also a real risk of wasting the role’s deceptive power altogether, and you have to make the choice before you have any meaningful intel as to whether you’re the former or the latter. I think only somebody with a very high degree of confidence in their ability to either (1) sculpt a plausible narrative all game that they are the role they pick, or (2) bullshit their way out of literally anything, could actually be comfortable with this line.

Moving on, we’ve got the “deceptive” roles, Miller and Godfather. I think the merits of this path have been discussed at length already, and I don’t disagree with the larger conclusions we’ve already reached, so I’ll keep this briefer.

• With the Miller, your ideal line is that the Cop scans the actual Miller somewhere down the line. This is not a very powerful use, and in fact could even be dangerous to your teammates, as it deprives them of the out of claiming Miller if scanned! It does mislead the town as to how many mafia are still alive, but not in a way that’s actually beneficial; the town will realize upon not losing when they “should” that they killed the Flipper along the way.

• The Godfather option is much more compelling, as it adds a second layer of doubt to innocent Cop scans, which are probably the most dangerous aspect of the game for mafia to handle. Now to be 100% sure innocent scans are good, you need to flip two Godfathers. It does become fairly apparent what happened once the second Godfather flip happens, but ideally your real Godfather doesn’t flip at all.

Finally there’s the little old VT. There’s an underrated upside here, which is that it casts doubt on every VT flip. It’s easy to say “oh, well that suspicious guy who flipped VT is just Flipper”—but that encourages confirmation bias in the town, which is good for mafia. You also basically have no idea how to work out who the Flipper was to any level of precision; you can just kind of pick the sussiest flipped VT, but again, that’s fueled by confirmation bias. That disguises associative tells to a much more considerable extent than appreciated.

[Fluminator]

Cool theory bro

[Fluminator]

That probably sounded dismissive.
Pretend I said it in a buddying and non sarcastic tone.

[Fluminator]

Because that's what I intended.

Linguistic tone can be hard.

[Chaqa]

TLDR Maniac scum gottem boys