Night 1

StormCrawler is dead! They were VANILLA TOWN

Day ends Wednesday, 11:30PM EST.

Stormcrawler is an interesting kill target. Selected because of his vote for CV, or a Kill to make us look at CV, and an easy one-two Town punch.

Vanilla us always fun.

If I was Mafia, I'd have probably gone for TSP, but that's me.

vote K-Ness

I'm curious as to why you said Cuban's response was pinging you last phase but didn't switch your vote?

Okay, now I'm worried - I'm thinking like Darqles

Because his response was pinging me but not enough to change my vote to him. Why vote for him yesterday and not try to finish the job today instead voting for me? You came out the gate with guns blazing on him yesterday. This is coming across like you're more talk than action, or you're just looking for something to latch onto.

Storm was definitely a weird target, even more when you get meta and consider his schedule. TonyStarkPrime, Adamical, and you are much better targets since you are all players who tend to lead the day phase.

Side note: I'm curious if Tidge is even aware the game has started.

I do know the game has started. In a vanilla mafia game, with no real town powers, I understand that 'talking' can be considered the only real 'town power' I opted to use 'silence' on Day 1. There was a chance that I'd be murdered by being silent, but frankly I assumed the mafia would ignore me thinking I wasn't paying attention.

I certainly had no information to contribute on the first day. What I have to contribute today is that I am most suspicious of anyone who pushed for a Day 1 lynch in the obvious absence of information.

So here is my list of criteria that inform my suspicions:

1. Anyone pushing for a lynch on day one. The odds were not in favor of randomly catching a mafia.
2. Anyone on a vote train, because of "plurality"

I am also slightly bothered by suggestions (and votes!) against "silent" players. I may be biased because of my own day 1 strategy, but I think it would have been easier to get a lynch train started against a silent player on day 1, and the mafia already knows who not to start a lynch train on.

This may seem a little paranoid, but: I have TonyStarkPrime at the top of my list, with him coming in late in the day, making a general assessment that he thinks DestructoBoy "feels town" (good guess!). He also avoids confusing the plurality issue (assuming no vote switching) and votes for the one player who is certain to NOT come in and vote for himself.

The next most suspicious player to me is adamical. I think his math about "worse case" was flawless, but his conclusion "avoid going for no elimination" was the exact WRONG strategy for the town. Why should the town eliminate a member on day 1 when the mafia is going to do it after day 1? Assuming that the mafia is going to drive a town lynch (10 townnes), there is a 10% chance of eliminating the jailkeeper on day 1 but only a 8.33% (1-in-12) chance of the town lynching a mafia member.

It would have been a bonus for the mafia to force a jailkeep role reveal!


#1 TonyStarkPrime
#2 adamical (whose reputation was defended by TSP)

1. Vote trains are important in mafia, particularly in vanilla mafia. Even more important are players' reactions to vote trains.
2. Voting for no elimination Day 1 is a quirk of HCR mafia that many would argue is a weakness, and in particular it's a pet peeve of the mod.

Wanting no one to vote is wanting no one to generate any information that can be used to evaluate players.

Why should the town eliminate a member on Day 1 when the mafia is going to do it after Day 1? That logic could easily be applied to Day 2, 3, 4... I suppose one valid strategy would be to go for no elimination until we're at Lylo and then start voting. You'd minimize voting out town, but you don't leave a lot of margin for error.

It's also quite an assumption that the mafia is going to drive a town elimination. You are suspicious of anyone voting, but if no town is voting, the mafia can vote out whoever they want. Plurality. When the town is active, throwing out votes, and forcing discussion, then the mafia can't control the day phase as easily. If the mafia is driving the day's vote elimination, then the town has already lost.

As a sidenote, your math is suspiciously off there with the number of town/mafia. You're usually more detail oriented.

How so? I thought we started with 10 town, 2 mafia. (Ok, it looks to be 9 town and 2 mafia... it doesn't change the assessment that a day 1 lynch was a bad idea.)

Assuming that the mafia members don't vote for each other (or themselves), and as we saw plurality was only 3 votes, it is a 1-in-9 chance for a town member to be eliminated via lynch. For the town (with no information on day one) the chance of eliminating a mafia via random lynch is 1-in-11.

I mean, there are 2 mafia, so wouldn't it be 2 in 11? Last I checked, 2/11 would be greater than 1/9, but I'm not sure I follow where the 1/9 comes from to begin with.

But following your logic, we probably shouldn't vote to eliminate anyone today either? That's only a 2 in 9 chance of getting mafia. So we eliminate no one, and the mafia kills, and tomorrow, it would be a 2 in 8. Still unfavorable odds. Let's wait another day when it's 2 in 7, and then 2 in 6, and then 2 in 5, we finally get 50/50 odds when there are only 4 players left. Oh, wait, now the mafia has won.

You're thinking about things in isolation. It's not about the chance to catch mafia in an elimination Day 1, it's about the chance to catch mafia in an elimination during the game. Every day you pass on an elimination, is a day you pass on a chance to catch mafia. It's expected in a game setup like this that the town will eliminate other town. And the 2 in 11 chance day 1 is better than the 0% chance you have if you don't vote anyone off.

I'm using "1" as the number of people eliminated, not the number of people in a category. If I follow you, we should be comparing 2-in-11 (rando mafia elimination) against 9-in-11 (rando town elimination).

I totally think we should vote today, and I'm prepared to vote for TonyStarkPrime, but we have time.

I know that both mafia members voted for a lynch yesterday. Other townies don't have this information (because there is no a priori reason to trust me as town), but this is vanilla.

I know that the mafia members know who is town and who is not.

I highly suspect that the mafia want to lynch a townie at every opportunity more than they want to not lynch a townie.

I suspect that both mafia didn't vote for the same townies, as that would be bloodthirsty. My suspicion here is relatively high, because with paranoid townies and a plurality there is no reason to push and pull a lynch train. Once there was a plurality on a townie, there was no need to jeopardize that lynch by having a tie vote.

There was discussion about targeting silent players, and while I don't base my votes on such things (because of personal schedules) there was some consensus that there was little value in doing such a thing. I do have the sense from other mafia games that it is the mafia who want to avoid being "suspiciously silent"... but in the case of vanilla (with so few townie roles) I see nothing wrong with the town being silent or offering "no vote" if we just want to kibbitz.

I suspect that TSP was told by his mafia buddy to get onto the thread and vote before the day ended, but not to jeopardize the lynch of a townie (primary concern).

Frankly, I don't know why the mafia would go for Stormcrawler. I can imagine lots of possible reasons, but the best I can guess is that (presumably) the mafia wants to get rid of the town jailkeep at all costs and rolled the dice on an early voter/participant in the thread.

I just woke up and all that's here is an exchange between Adam and Tidge. I'm getting Town vibes from both of them. Curious about Shel's thoughts on some of the current players.

But today it's 2-in-9 vs. 7-in-9. What's the difference between today and yesterday? Mostly that we have information from people actually playing Day 1, which would not have happened if everyone decided to not vote.

For the mafia, they can coordinate and only have to dance around and make sure they don't have a plurality. What are your thoughts on TSP?