Mafia XI - 1931 - Day 7

[Irbis]

EDIT EDIT
No, the masons aren't next to each other.

No, but if you check, masons and lovers (with one exception) all follow perfect progression every five positions :P

One change on a list and you could have described every role's position by equation :P

[Andre Fairchilde]

Did you know that before he showed this?

I didn't realize this, or I would have freaked out weeks ago

[mangosta71]

The thing with random assortment is that it will occasionally give you something like that.

[101jir]

just kindof an interesting fact, my ancestors were bootleggers. They had branches all over Minnesota, and we suspect that they may have had a chain going to Chicago, although we don't know for sure. My great great grandfather (grand uncle, something like that) was secretive about it until his death, so we never knew for sure how far it went.

[Lex-Kat]

I would never have noticed anything like that. I always alphabatize my spreadsheets, when I do them. Even if the narrator doesn't.

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{table=head]Player|Role
Aemoh|Mobster (Citizen)
Alarra|Police Chief (Baner)
Atreyu the Masked Llama|Northsider (Wolf)
theBushranger|Mobster (Citizen)
Byers2142|Mobster (Citizen)
Calar|Mobster (Lover)
cd4|Mobster (Lover -> Beast)
Critical|Northsider (Wolf)
Deathslayer7|Mobster (Citizen)
Diva De|Outfit Gangster (Mason)
Elder Tsofu|Northsider (Wolf)
Eldritch Knight|Mobster (Citizen)
Eternal Drifter|Mobster (Citizen)
the Fiery Tower|Mobster (Citizen)
Fin|Mobster (Citizen)
Gray Mage|Mobster (Citizen)
Griever|Mobster (Citizen)
GrlumpTheElder|Murder Inc. (Wolf)
Happyturtle|Mobster (Citizen)
Helgraf|Mobster (Citizen)
Internet Flea|Northsider (Wolf)
Istari|Murder Inc. (Wolf)
Korias|Outfit Gangster (Mason)
Lady Tialait|Mobster (Citizen)
theLaughingMan|Northsider (Wolf)
Leta|Mobster (Citizen)
Lex-kat|Mobster (Citizen)
Mangosta71|Private Eye (Scryer)
Matt K|Murder Inc. (Wolf)
Memetics|Murder Inc. (Wolf)
Mordokai|District Attorney (Fool)
Mr. Zolrane|Mobster (Citizen)
Murska|Mobster (Citizen)
101jr|Murder Inc. Boss
Orzel|Outfit Gangster (Mason)
thePhantom|Mobster (Citizen)
PirateMonk|Mobster (Citizen)
Qwaz|Murder Inc. (Wolf)
Ramsus|Mobster (Citizen)
Sanity702|Outfit Gangster (Mason)
Saposhiente|Northsider Boss
Szilard|Murder Inc. Devil
Thufir|Mobster (Citizen)
Trixie|Mobster (Citizen)
V Junior|Northsider Devil
Zanshin|Mobster (Citizen)
[/table]

Did I miss anyone?

[memetics]

Well, I'll be danged. Great job Istari! :-) The last of the gang, and the one to keep the lowest profile. I was sure that once the "hit list" of our names had been released (more on that below), there was no way we'd win this game. As it turns out, that just served to balance the game against the auto-lynches and other bad luck experienced by the other two sides.

I'd like to post an analysis here, mostly from memory - please forgive the length (as I'm going back over and revising before posting, I can see that I remembered a lot, and my post got pretty long) - I'll try to couch some parts in spoiler tags. I had meant to discuss things with the other dead-ites earlier via PM, but apologies to them: RL took me away for a while (and is still trying to drag me away, kicking and screaming...) Just a few quick detailed notes from memory, though... (I do have a detailed spreadsheet I'm willing to share, but would like to update it, and also I kept most of the vital PMs from the game, so if need be I can dig those up and post them here, or else share them via my website. I have 90/100 PMs in my box right now... lol ... good thing this is my only WW game!)

So, as best I can recall:

Saposhiente kept dodging bullets

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I was suspicious of Saposhiente early on and kept putting her on top of our back-up hit list (what Andre would use if we forgot to send in a night kill / abduction order), but then others kept getting put on our list ahead of her, based on what was happening in-game. In hindsight, of course, we should have stuck with our (my) suspicion and whacked her early. Too bad we didn't. :-)

One mistake we made was targeting Helgraf instead of Saposhiente - right after Helgraf got the mayoral protection - d'oh! Wasted kill opp.

The accidental 101jir "Hit List" (naming Murder, Inc. members!) ...

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101jir's PM to Diva De, copying us on it, identified everyone in Murder, Inc. but GrlumpTheElder and Szilard (who was getting lynched soon anyway):
Recipients: Diva De, Istari, Matt K, memetics, Qwaz

Gentlemen - hello. I am a Mason.
I was contacted by a player claiming to be the Seer, who knew my role. I have lived since then. He also claims to have cleared another player, which we shall know by the end of the game day. I think we should all play nice and start getting our votes in order.

BTW, thanks for stickin' up fir me. Did the srier check me or something? Cause I imagine that it would be hard to trust me otherwise. Especially after dat mess yesterday. We really should get everyone to vote V Junior. Then Gray Mage. Gray Mage is smart, but he is bending his logic over backwards to defend V.

The thing is, I don't think Diva De even noticed that the PM had been Cc'd to the rest of us ... until we over-reacted and had Qwaz send a response to her trying to make it sound like 101jir had copied us to try saving himself from lynching (showing us he'd been "cleared") ... I think if we'd just kept our mouths shut, this would have passed without incident. At the time, of course, we weren't thinking clearly enough to wait and see what would happen; we were just thinking of damage control. (Diva De, do you remember if you even noticed what was happening before Qwaz PM'd you? Here's your PM back to Qwaz:)

Hi all,

I'm assuming we're all receiving this since we weren't on your bandwagon yesterday? While I understand you want to live Murska's turned out to be a citizen so there was probably a wolf or two on his bandwagon. So i'm not sure you should be sharing Diva De's infomation around so carelessly. Hopefully you haven't sent out too many of these PM's.

Come to that without an in-thread claim of Mason I don't think I trust the infomation anyway. A Mason claim needs to be public as lack of a counter claim is usually the accepted proof.

I don't really see the arguement against V Junior. She seemed to just be trying to prevent another AL. Unless there's a good reason i think i'm going to join the wagon against you 101jir. We took out Murska yesterday and yours was the other big wagon. Good way for the village to gather intel.

I do apologise if you turn out to be a Citizen but as with Murska yesterday you're the best we've got.

Gentlemen - hello. I am a Mason.
I was contacted by a player claiming to be the Seer, who knew my role. I have lived since then. He also claims to have cleared another player, which we shall know by the end of the game day. I think we should all play nice and start getting our votes in order.

BTW, thanks for stickin' up fir me. Did the srier check me or something? Cause I imagine that it would be hard to trust me otherwise. Especially after dat mess yesterday. We really should get everyone to vote V Junior. Then Gray Mage. Gray Mage is smart, but he is bending his logic over backwards to defend V.

I sent this only to peole I could trust - you were not on that list. Scrier cleared 101jir

Diva De's response at the end here is what makes me think she didn't even notice 101jir's having Cc'd us - until Qwaz PM'd her with a copy.

(Oh, and if I'm guessing correctly that Diva De never saw the Cc: list from 101jir, then she never realized Istari was on that list, because I don't think Qwaz copied him on Qwaz's response to Diva De - since his PM box was full. So it seems likely the only reason Qwaz and I were suspects is because our active responses put us on the radar.)

Anyway, I spent several game-days trying to convince Diva De that I was a villager, even going so far as to try defending her from the lynch - because we were afraid she A) had a "hit list" of our team from 101jir, and B) had a network to act on the information. When it turned out that nobody was voting with her, we realized she probably didn't have much of a network - and then with both City scryers dead and all the masons dead or auto-lynching, it became obvious why.

Counterintelligence and Misinformation:

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We really worked hard to discredit Diva De and her scryer by pointing out that her scryer had cleared 101jir, trying to convince everyone (especially Diva De) that her scryer was the fool because of it. What everyone seemed to have forgotten is that the Boss scries as Outfit citizen - meaning that her scryer could well have been the true seer. We wanted even the seer to have self-doubts, so as to limit the influence Diva De had in pointing at Qwaz (b/c of the hitlist-and-PM fiasco, as it turned out) - or at least to slow them down. Fortunately, this pressure seems to have helped lead to the naming of Mangosta, and the Northsiders took care of Mangosta soon afterward, which "solved" the danger to Murder, Inc. of the villagers' scryer; then it was just down to finding and eliminating that pesky Northside Devil - a difficult task, to be sure! (Particularly as they'd only lost wolves - even though they'd lost 5 members - and we'd already lost both of our power roles in two consecutive lynchings.)

Day 1: 7 no-votes = 7 Northsiders? Wrong!

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At the start of the game, we noticed seven people who hadn't voted on Day 1 - and there were seven of us Murder, Inc. people, so we guessed that those seven were the Northsiders, trying some evil plan like all lying low together. Turns out we were almost completely wrong, as only one of them was a Northsider - and we wasted a lot of time focusing on them / that theory, since there was only one Northsider in that whole group, and a bunch of that group ended up being regular Outfit citizens and autolynching:

Fin (Outfit Citizen - autolynched)
Griever (Outfit Citizen - autolynched)
Lady Tialait (Outfit Citizen - we scryed her [only one we knew in advance])
Mordokai (PI or DA - Northsider night kill, Day 2)
Pirate Monk (Outfit Citizen - Murder, Inc. night kill, Day 2)
The Fiery Tower (Outfit Citizen - autolynched)
Trixie (Outfit Citizen - Murder, Inc. abduction, Day 4)

Playing the Newbie Card

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My original plan was to lie low the whole game, trying to stay under the radar and just focus on my "New Guy in Town" barbershop RP, playing the "newbie" card whenever I had to be at all active in the game. (the "new guy in town" thing could have been seen as a hint as to my role - Murder, Inc. outsider hitman - but I'd decided on the barber thing before learning my role, so it was really just a convenient fit that I thought I'd reveal if I lived to the end of the game.)

When the "hit list" got out to Diva De, I switched tactics, trying to sound like the "reasonable villager" newbie and trying to help point lynches in any direction but ours (Murder, Inc.), but particularly trying to steer the city toward lynching Northsiders, because I figured it was the only chance we had of Grlump (the only one not on the hit list) winning the game for us. We assumed that everyone on the hit list was going to get whacked soon. (Of course, I realized only too late that by being so convincing a newbie, I might have been persuading the Outfit that I was one of them - but I was concurrently painting a huge target on myself for the Northsiders. Perhaps I was just *too* convincing.) (Internet Flea wasn't fooled, but then again, we whacked him before I launched into my "logic" act. Which was pretty good logic - too good, as it turned out.)

I figured out too late that as soon as I started speaking up in-thread trying to rally the Outfit, the Northsiders would feel the heat and whack me in self-defense. I was hoping Alarra would bane me, but I didn't want to request it directly (via Qwaz, who had earned her trust) and push our luck. Turns out it would have been worth the risk, as I was dead anyway without the bane, and Qwaz, too, the next day.

The Last Northsiders

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At the point when I was killed, we still had no idea who the NS Enforcer (Devil) nor Boss were - and they were the only ones left. With the NS having the only remaining scryer, they seemed to me to have a huge advantage. Guess we got lucky when we *finally* went ahead with the plan to abduct Saposhiente, and luckier when V_Junior finally auto-lynched, although to be honest we were about to abduct her when we decided she'd probably be auto-lynching, so we chose a different target instead. (I'm really interested to see your PMs with Istari, Grlump (any of them after I was killed); please do post them! I'm curious to know how you finally arrived at the decision to abduct Saposhiente.)

Police Chief Liar

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Szilard scried Internet Flea on night 4, so we knew he wasn't the baner, and that's when we decided to kill him (instead of abduct) to reveal right away that he was lying, sowing some confusion and also trying to cast suspicion on the claims he was making: since he was pointing at some of our members, we hoped that discrediting him by showing him as Northsider would help convince the Outfit members that we were in fact innocent. At the very least, it seemed to accomplish the discrediting part.

Hope I've remembered all that accurately, guys; please feel free to correct me or add to anything I've missed. :-)

Again: yay team! :-) Woot! Way to go, Istari! You're my Gangster-Bro Hero! :-)

-memetics

p.s. Roll Call: we (Murder, Inc.) got smart around Day 5 and started sending the team a "Roll Call" PM at the start of each day ("Still Alive and Murdering, as Qwaz said - lol :-) to help us figure out if any of us had been abducted the night before. I was the first one to get grabbed after we started doing that, but I think it was helpful in giving us information, sooner than everyone else would get it. (Grlump, Istari: did that help much after Qwaz and I were nicked?)

p.p.s. Feedback: I thought the game was really well balanced with the two wolf groups, and I really enjoyed it. It added a layer of complexity that made strategizing even more challenging and fun. Although I'd read a dozen or so older WW-type threads, this was my first WW game as a player, and it was a lot of fun - stressful and time-consuming, poring over the voting records and analyzing everyone's posts to death, but very very fun nonetheless. :-) Thanks, everyone! (Sorry again for working so hard to deceive you, Diva De - I hated having to do that to someone who seeemed so nice and sincere, but yes, it's part of the game - and it was a thrilling challenge in any case!) -m

[Internet Flea]

Police Chief Liar

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Szilard scried Internet Flea on night 4, so we knew he wasn't the baner, and that's when we decided to kill him (instead of abduct) to reveal right away that he was lying, sowing some confusion and also trying to cast suspicion on the claims he was making: since he was pointing at some of our members, we hoped that discrediting him by showing him as Northsider would help convince the Outfit members that we were in fact innocent. At the very least, it seemed to accomplish the discrediting part.

Looking back, I should have had the Northsiders abduct me, to keep my credit for a little while longer.

[Saposhiente]

Yeah, I tried to send an abduction check once after IF was killed and the QT was pretty much dead, but there were no replies .

[Istari]

Yeah those check ins did help, and your general activity level, when you guys hadn't sent out pms, we figured out almost immediately that you were abducted.

Highlight of the game for me was turning that bandwagon off qwaz on day 6

[Diva De]

I didn't know anyone had been CC'd until Qwaz sent me something. And even then, I didn't know who else had gotten it. But by then I had lost contact with all other Masons and had pretty much given up on the game anyway, so I was really surprised to last those extra 2 days or so.

[Lex-Kat]

I didn't want to lynch you. I wanted to lynch your seer.

[Qwaz]

I didn't know anyone had been CC'd until Qwaz sent me something. And even then, I didn't know who else had gotten it. But by then I had lost contact with all other Masons and had pretty much given up on the game anyway, so I was really surprised to last those extra 2 days or so.

Must of just misssed it cause I could see everyone who was copied in. If we'd been BCC'd noone could see anyone else. I worked under the assumption you'ld be noticing and asking questions so I acted. Maybe too soon.

BTW: I'll probably start editing and putting together the MI pms from game start-my death tomorrow. Too tipsy atm

[mangosta71]

Must of just misssed it cause I could see everyone who was copied in. If we'd been BCC'd noone could see anyone else. I worked under the assumption you'ld be noticing and asking questions so I acted. Maybe too soon.

I assume she just didn't look - most people don't check the recipients line on messages.

[The Bushranger]

That sounds like a good idea, Andre. And this was a fun game, even if I didn't have as much chance to RP as I'd like. *kicks the muse*