Mhsmith0/Commentary2016

Game Commentary:

Lambert Simnel Conspiracy

1) Welcome to mafia! You get to play against Harb and UDC, with Keirador as a mafia-aligned 3p role. Good luck!

2) Losing to a mafia sweep is always embarrassing, but I do take comfort in getting NK'd on N2 (as basically an IC with a crappy one-time use power) over the non-CC'd jailkeeper. I'd gambited to try and draw that kill, and even though my scum-hunting sucked I was pretty happy to have at least made that contribution to town.

3) My direct scum-hunting sucked (tunnelled townies GregorV on day 1 and sjg on day 2), but made some good observations:

- crappy/lazy town = veteran mafia team.  In the game there were three vets (Harb, sjg, Keirador) and one near-vet (UDC).  I then proceeded to tunnel the one town in the bunch.
- called the Harb-Keirador fight on D2 as BS on both sides (though thought Harb was 3p and Keirador mafia).  Didn't quite have the guts to hard-sell a lynch of one of them.  Probably my biggest game regret.

4) For a first time effort, I feel I was legitimately decent. This doesn't really make me feel all that much better about losing though. OTOH, this does seem to be a pattern in my town games :|

Fruit Salad Mafia

1) First ever game as mafia. Got tunnelled pretty hard by sjg and UDC on day 1, barely survived as the counter-wagon to the day 1 mislynch, and day 2 was basically "lynch smith day".

2) Caught the cop (IAWY) before game post #100. My game sucked otherwise but I feel legit proud about that catch.

3) The town roster in that game was: sjg11, UpsideDownChuck, soah, trafficone, luckbox inc, revival (subbed for orangerake), LordJVK, Inawordyes, Cuthalion... and IAWY was the cop. That's a SUPER hard window of plausible mislynches and a wide range of really, really good townies. Actually, looking at that roster again, I'm mainly just happy that I survived the first lynch. Jeez, talk about a tough draw for newb!scum...

4) This was also my first taste of "terrible luck with subs", a frequently annoying aspect of the variance that keeps biting me. Had Revival subbed for Calvary (my afk teammate) instead of OrangeRake (an afk townie), we'd have won. Instead it went the other way around. Alas.

Micro 600

1) My first ever win at mafia... and I played mediocre at best. I really feel like I'm learning an important lesson about the correlation between effort and results here :lol:

Newbie 1691

1) KAAG was my first ever legit wolf catch. Took until first LYLO to do it, but I feel like that was a good catch. Was very happy with it.

2) Mislynched Almost50 on final LYLO. That one was tough. Both sides were plausible mafia. A good lesson there in needing to try EVEN HARDER to game-solve, I guess. Also, another experience w poor luck w subs, as A50 basically started howling (looking like a wolf) from post #1 after he subbed in at LYLO. Still, I was the guy who made the call at final LYLO. Just need to do better in the future.

3) The graveyard chat from that game makes me smile every time I feel like I'm playing like crap. So that was nice.

Disney Princesses

1) Subbed into a mafia slot on day 2, got lynched on day 2.  :(

2) This was a 17 player game, with 1500 posts day 1, and over 1000 day 2, with day phases 36/12 hours. Way too many posts in way too short of a time frame for me to handle. Lesson very much learned there.

3) I almost got crunkus mis-lynched. The attempt got me lynched instead, but almost still counts for something. Solid town save by Revival to turn the tide on that one.

Resistance: The Shield

1) I felt like I was basically outed on like page 1. Wasn't fun at all.

2) Somehow we still nabbed mission fails on the first two missions, and on the second mission, we very nearly got the mission leadership to pass back to me (which would have been an auto win per game rules). Unfortunately, condude subbed in for Ugluk, and got EM to make the mission proposal that town desperately needed to make (even though it failed) to get out its conf!bias hole. Alas. (note: that's terrible luck with subs game #3 :crying: )

3) sjg (my spy-buddy) played well enough to merit a win. Too bad he got partnered with me :lol:

Open 635

1) Subbed in at MYLO, and wasn't the mislynch or on the mislynch wagon. Also correctly FoS'd RC, but couldn't convince the town to question the town read, or put together a solid case in time to avoid the outcome.

2) There's truly nothing quite like "well this can't be the mafia team, because they're all here and haven't quick-hammered yet"

...

mafia team then quick-hammers

3) I get told I played well in another town loss. Almost like this is a pattern at this point. Really need to start just slacking off instead as town :lol:

Micro 610

1) Was anti-town, got lynched D1. SO typical :( Bonus points for Radja (the player most familiar with my town game from Newbie 1691) voting me literally 20 posts after I sub in :(

2) IMO the setup was really hard to blend in as anti-town, since all town knew the important info (other than SK identity), and anti-town didn't. Much harder to fake knowledge than to fake ignorance, IMO.

3) Took the final shot, missed the final shot. Alas. My reads weren't totally off; target was around the middle of my list. With more time in twilight *glares at mod* I MIGHT have figured things out... but probably not.

Plague Mafia

1) One of my worst town performances ever in terms of reads. Had a solid town read on El Conq, and he was one of the two mafia. Hard-core tunnelled Keirador on D3 and he was town. At least we correctly lynched shadowfriend on D3, so it wasn't a total loss.

2) I do think this was a scum-sided setup. Waiting on full GM spreadsheet reveal to know for sure. Edit: oh wow, yeah that was scum-sided. I'd guess town MAYBE wins 1 of 3 in that setup over the long run. We mislynched twice, lynched correctly, and then lost N3 due to the "secondary" VC for mafia. And we'd had an outside shot at losing N2 after two mislynches.

3) "And mhsmith is a freaking workhorse. I'm glad he's working on things that have nothing to do with us."

grumble grumble

Star Fox Galactic Mish-Mash

1) Came into a wolf slot under heavy fire. Fake-claimed cop with "oops the last guy forgot to submit an order N2". Somehow BS'd my way through it to the end a couple days later :D

2) Second time I played a game without really trying very hard, and second time I won. Hmm...

3) Dot (post-game): "mhsmith was such an obvious wolf :("

Mini 1782

1) I'm now 2/2 in correctly pointing fingers at the RC slot as being a wolf (though in this one the case was more about Titus, RC's replacement)

2) One of the more functional towns I've been in, despite the poor lynch of Lowell on D5.

3) At least in ONE of my games where I pointed a dead finger (correctly) at Titus, I didn't eat the loss *grumble grumble*

Mini 1775

1) Town-sided game that mafia won anyway :(

2) My D5 compromise on Lowell was bad, and my participation in the D3 Exp push was terrible. Other than that, though I feel like I legitimately played well.

3) Mod comment in dead chat: "You did damn well smith. I was surprised when you pulled the last scum out of your hat." *blushes*

4) Hats off to Titus for subbing in for Sakura/Riabi and taking it home for the wolves. I think a LOT of players would have failed to avoid the noose in her spot (probably including me).

Newbie 1714

1) First MS win as wolf. I may dislike wolfing but I'm not quite as abhorrent at it as I used to be. Progress.

2) Another successful cop catch for Smith :D

3) There were a few things here and there that town could have possibly caught on to for Rask or I, but by and large I think we successfully avoided making the game easy for town, and that's a really big part of being successful as mafia.

Open 644

1) Scum-sided game that the mafia swept :(

2) Even worse town showing by me than in Plague Mafia. In fairness the whole town sucked, but my reads were poor and I couldn't get out of my tunnel on ploben (who was actually town)

Mass Effect Mafia

1) I performed adequately in this one, and got a multi-ball win. I'll take it! :D

2) I managed to get shot by BOTH scum factions in the same night. "Fear kill". Clearly :p

Open 642

1) Panther (Mafia) played well. I think it's best to avoid other comment at this time.

Mini 1815

1) Wolves rolled the dice in a massive way on N1 by having their most town-read member (who was also PR) shoot the IC and got caught red-handed.

2) I didn't play great by any stretch, but I was adequate I think. Got to some of the right places and wasn't an active detriment to the town. I'll take that performance.

Rio de Janeiro Mafia

1) I think that was a somewhat scum-sided setup by MU standards (and wildly so by MS standards btw), and town won on day 4. Go us!

2) Pushed the same villager days 1 and 2, but day 3 I hard swung the lynch from me to the lurker wolf, and from there it was 6v1 and pisskop tracked the last wolf N3 for a nice and relatively painless town win.

3) Overall I think I played adequately. Some issues here and there, and my early game was poor, but I did enough to be a valuable member of the town. Far from town MVP, but even further from wolf MVP. I'll take it.

Micro 634

1) three game winning streak whooooooo

2) subbed in, immediately spotted the cop (so did the wolf lol) and then nailed the last wolf early d3. Not town mvp here but a SOLID performance overall.

Danger 5 Two-Fold C9++

1) I thought I might do better as a wolf in multi-ball. I thought wrong :lol:

2) I will say that I tried a LOT harder in this game than I normally did. Really tried to bring my town game, warts and all. Alas, it wasn't meant to be :(

Open 646

1) Hard fought win. Karnos did poorly, getting lynched D1, but his wolf bro Transcend carried effectively until 3p LYLO.

2) I'm actually really proud of how I did in LYLO. Was a suspect going in, and fought hard once I knew for sure that it was Transcend (after he voted me and Giga didn't hammer), doing a really good job shining a spotlight on all of the scummy stuff he'd done all game. Of course, a better job would have been if I'd done that a few game days prior... :p

Mini Normal 1829

1) Subbed n3, used bodyguard to protect a near lock town clear (and I suspected he MIGHT be the SK, so if he hadn't been shot I'd have had an interesting chance to push). Then watched town blow it from dead thread with six alive and only one mafia left.

2) Bad setup. The design of it was simply wrong and unbalanced. To look at it a different way, if it was tracker / 2-shot vig / 3-shot gunsmith vs all goons you'd say that town probably didn't have enough power, especially since tracker and gunsmith can accidentally out the vig.

Then if you add in a mafia doctor and a town 2-shot bodyguard, it becomes even more scum-sided, because now the doctor acts as a counter against the tracker AND vig AND gunsmith. The anti-vig ability is especially problematic, as it means that the vig will remove a potential mislynch with a missed shot by changing it to evens (a really really really big deal), while having substantial chance of having a kill on scum blocked by the doctor, AND having no ability to re-add a potential mislynch by stopping/protecting against a night kill (since bodyguard only redirects the kill to himself, instead of preventing it like a doctor).

And then if you add in a mafia vanilla cop and a town ascetic, at best that's a wash, as town's primary ability is simply the number of power roles, but scum has an active counter to that in an unlimited shot role to ID who is lynchable (since they can't claim) and who needs to die at night.

Micro 645

1) I think it was probably a town-sided setup, though apparently scum had pretty solid flavor fake claims.

2) It was fun to hydra with shadow_step. It was unfortunate that we ate a bullet N1 as a town PR, but since it wasn't a function of them PR-reading us, I'll just take it as a compliment, and hey, we won anyway :D

Newbie 1747

1) An unusually strong town performance on my end. I popped in and suspected four players (2/4 were mafia), including two top suspects (1/2), and voted/pushed the mafia roleblocker D1, eventually getting him lynched. From there it wasn't too tough to clear out the game, even though the jailkeeper needlessly full role-claimed on D1. Didn't get the sweep on D2, but a D3 win is still pretty nice to have.

Hydra Game 7

1) Scum sweep, which always sucks, but we fought to save a pretty obvious town on D1 (who got EOD lynched for no good reason), and then we ate a bullet.

2) UpsideDownChuck is a GREAT player. He really excels at either alignment. It was a pleasure to hydra with him.

3) Bad day play + bad PR usage + PR lying about his power usage (when it was a power set that got inherited by another town after his death) + VT fake-claiming cop in LYLO = lol village

The real folk blues

1) Joke voting phase aside, I pushed/voted three people on two game days: Kraska, RachMarie, and Nosferatu. All were wolves.

2) It was a very large game that I didn't quite have the energy for, and I probably could have stood to be more active.

3) lolololol Panzerjager at breaking the game by outing his full scum team on day 2.

Mini normal 1844

1) Overall a reasonably well played game on my end. Day play wasn't great, but was obv!town and never really in lynch danger. At night I made good use of my powers both times I had them, clearing a townie n1 and protecting the tracker n3.

2) The hood http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=68868 is worth commentary on its own. Post 46 is the first one after the D3 lynch of cloud (mafia), and basically from that point on (or soon afterwards) Io and I started to suspect each other, try and manipulate each other in thread, and only increase our mutual paranoia. As the odd night weak doctor (not weak visitor) I was trying to downplay my role and push Io onto night killing Hermie instead of someone with useful abilities, and Io was trying to mess with me in turn. Very fun times.

Harry Potter 7

1) 2-0 in large mish-mash games WHOOOOOOOOOO :D

2) I died to save Harry Potter. Can't complain about that.

3) Villager was CRUSHING when I died (like 3 wolves and 2 neutrals left out of like 25-30 players), and then just fell apart HARD late. Took a neutral vote to lynch the last wolf because lol village was in absolute full effect. My meltdown in dead thread wasn't quite epic, but I was increasingly salty as the village was ignoring confirmedtroll's increasingly open wolfing. I don't know how bad my meltdown would have been if we'd lost.

4) AllInBluff was peeked Voldemort (key wolf superpower) N2 and spent all of day 3 lol-catting. Definitely the entertainment highlight of the game.

Newbie 1753

1) Town perfect sweep in my IC debut WHOOOOOOO :D

2) Two newbie goons against a cop is a fairly difficult setup for scum to do well in. By and large, the two scum left the agenda pushing to town, which means that they were largely at the mercy of whatever town decided to do. On both days, there were wagons that nearly hit town, but by the end of the day there was enough momentum to shift the lynch to scum.

Open 656

1) Sub in, get auto win before posting. NICE :D

2) Karma payback for Mini Normal 1829 I think.

Open 658

1) Pretty embarrassing town performance. I got hard-tunnelled d2 for no good reason at all (including by all three masons), and was lol-hammered pre-claim by a VT, on d3 transcend utterly gave up (after strongarming my bad mislynch on d2) including a horrible self-hammer and completely half-assed fake scum claim, on d4 titus was scum-hammered by fitz, and on d5 town decided to ignore the scum-hammer and mislynch a random townie to end the utter silliness.

2) Oddmusic (the slot inhabitant prior to fitz) I thought played pretty well in terms of having townie tone and avoiding suspicion. BK also had a pretty decent scum game. Not really sure anyone else had any kind of game to remember.

Multiball (lolempoof)

1) sign up for multiball, get a troll game six-faction cluster instead.

2) town was thoroughly mediocre as a whole, but lol multiball and lol crosskills

3) at least my faction made it to final three, but wasn't meant to be :(

Newbie 1756

1) Subbed in at 5p LYLO on a lurker / scummy town slot. Voted scum, pushed scum, didn't get lynched myself, but a townie was voted and I was endgamed anyway. Sigh...

Turbo Games of Note

mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/2365-98-less-invisible-turbo

A win over a Visor/nacho duo who binked the cop n1. Doesn't get much better than that. Especially since that's the only loss ever Visor has suffered as mafia in a standard turbo, and the only time ever he was lynched D1 as mafia in any format ever. Once in a while I have a pretty good showing :D

mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/2545-Phighter-Phights-Phish

A particularly fun and successful turbo (fake peeked and lynched a wolf D2, ate a bullet N2, and town cruised over a Phighter/Nacho team)

mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/2948-Smith-Rands-A-Weird-Vig-Turbo

Got lynched D1 as innocent child, still won. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!

mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/3027-the-first-turbo-in-4-months-where-lissa-rands-seer

The only standard turbo I've ever won as a wolf (have a bunch of losses as a wolf in those). Alette carried, I helped (and binked cop!phighter N1), we swept together :D <3

mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/3145-lissa-will-rand-seer-say-sup-and-get-binked-like-all-the-others-turbo

One of my saltiest losses ever. Cop got himself lynched D1, and we still game-solved to get down to final three, where the last wolf should have been lynched, and I ate the lynch instead. Very much a :( result.

mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/3695-late-night-vig-party

A wolf win where I got lynched D1, and got my partner shot N1, and town lynched/vigged just about every single VT without hitting the last goon. Maybe the strangest turbo I ever was in.

mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/4597-The-Signup-Took-Longer-than-the-Game-Will-LOL

I flagrantly went against my wolf meta (bussed all the way though day one and re-bussed on d2, while doing a crap job of seer hunting), and somehow barely managed to get just enough town credit to avoid the noose. Also hammered d3 before seer could claim his villa peek, finally binked the seer n3, and then d4 won the 1v1 with the guy who the seer peeked n2. Overall a much better effort than normal for me as a wolf. Very happy I was able to pull one off, especially on the heels of my town loss earlier that night.