Well played, Nacho! And well fought, trent, but alas, it should not be.

Now that was a smurfy game!

Ok, just read the Mafia thread :)

@Trent - hope things are looking up for you mate
@Hunter - did you at least consider claiming neutral survivor? what made you think you were on the block for Lynch D3 if you had not used the shot?


INCOMING SIR!

You almost got it mate. I can both critique you and reassure you. But let's see what you're up for heh? ;)

Reading the QT... you are one strange player... I would not call it gut since you were right even non PR me would give you a hard time on that D1 end... but it was plain luck you got the JK N1 - the opposite you were trying for.

That "misread" ended up giving Nacho his drealm... although I think I would not jail him N2... counterfactuals though...

As for bussing... I pretty much town bus you every game :) why should I change that as scum? Need to town it up regardless...

PS - also see my PPPS at Nacho

Well thank god the Mafia QT thread confirms I was not that far off on you (in details I mean)... WIFOM being WIFOM one never really knows. Want to see you town for a change... one thing I rem thinking was I have no clue how you town for proper compare... although Tammy's spark comment seems insightful in hindsight...

Let's see... I think you won it on the long term, but it was on the edge the whole time. Drealmer getting me basically made the best out of a very bad situation for scum D1. 1:1 even PR for PR so early made the game lean town - what the math ignores is who the individual players are. On scum thread 193 you were prophetic although I found it an ironic comment. Your strategic lurking and NK choices were what won you the game ultimately - but if trial had a couple more games under his belt I think (if I'm judging him well and how he learns) they're the reasons he'd vote you. Forest and trees basically.

My attacks on trial were whatever - you made me consider scum|trial more than otherwise and that was in fact my big dilemma. Feeling like I was on you for slipping on how you defended him, being obvi town and risking pulling a kill like I ended up pulling. Versus letting go on you, which was dangerous (you're slippery mate... and I mean that as a compliment) and lurking more to leverage the PR. I do think I could have played better - I'm still a relative noob afterall.

But fundamentally, if Trial gets mislynched D1 I think almost every other player around ends up lynching you for the town win. And Trial mislynch would look bad on me sure, but I got a PR claim to lean back on and seeing who angles to mislynch me will be interesting. Also it could have been scum|trial... it was scum|Nacho afterall and I thought Drealmer was the mislynch instead... Noobs and drealmers should be prepared to be sacrificial lambs basically... ;)

PS: have you modded games / designed them? Or just play?
PPS: I don't think swearing / overreacting would shake anyone from you mate... that's yog style (and a facade half the time at least - he's a much more methodical / studious player than he gets credit for... I think?)... yours is almost the polar opposite? I get the feeling you "surf" these games for the most part... but maybe I'm wrong about you... I haven't actually gone read your games elsewhere... anyway despite my trying to act differently from game to game I think there's a core that's always there and the convo you two had in game about me being like or unlike scum|brasas in oakwood was a weird moment - pulled me out of playing.
PPPS: come to think of it, that's what drealmer has I think - not good gut calls - but good character judgements.

Sorry for my lackluster performance there at the end, the family situation was very distracting and draining. Loved the game bler, it was a lot of fun. Very nice scum game Nacho, you are very persuasive like yogs. You made the correct NK with Darko and I think that won you the game. Also, very good game gogtrial you make a good mafia player. You have the mindset for it and I look forward to playing with you again.

there's numerous factors here:

1.) I have a lot going on up in this brain - multiple complex thought matrices that overlap and that are all at once running through and constantly refining each other - and they are hard to separate to explain individually a lot of times, and then

2.) there's a fine line of actually disclosing too much of my thought process - be as helpful as I can to my team always and maintain being hard to read as much as I can at the same time, which alters my play a bit, yes, but, I think it's ideal actually as I see what being predictable/easily meta-readable does

but to resay: I definitely wanted to kill you/lift if you/lift were a PR, regardless of what it meant for my D2 outcome, that was the gut-gauged move. "Worst case is if brasas or lift is PR and they live, I've got to kill either of them to make sure that doesn't happen" - modkill made it easy - and the 2 factors there were "NO chance I am 1v1ing with lift and winning if he is JK, I highly doubt I can 1v1 with brasas if he is, but with how it's gone with lift in this game, brasas is 2nd to lift" - anyone else being a PR (doc, cop, JK) and I was willing to try my bullshit against their truth, but, HAD HAD HAD to play against worst-case scenario (as I often do)

hah, I hoped hoped hoped it would throw you off + make everyone go "hmm that is the same brasas" or even more "hmm that WAS the same brasas and now he's acting weird let's kill him!" and get you killed without drawing too much attention to myself - something I could probably only do in your 1st or 2nd mafia game and so that was probably my 1 shot, maybe I should have played that harder

hmmm, yeah, I do think I am a superb judge of character and behavioral motivations of what makes up those characters - but if I start to overthink the things and let brain rule, I usually go askew, if I keep with the gut, I tend to go correct - this is why meta is huge for me I think, because once I start to *know* someone's psychology, I can read them realllly fucking well (I think?)

PS - I was sooooo certain the setup was A and not 2, too, that was all gut-logic from my view

PSS - I'm always a mislynch

@brasas That thought did cross my mind and I thought I could claim Jester or survivor on d1 but after defending drealmer & him turning out to be scum I felt there was too much heat on me to pull that off. (Could've definitely been wrong about that, still new to this so my read isn't good now) Also should've posted more on d1, kinda regret that.

For some time on d3, I actually felt day might go to no Lynch again because people weren't posting for a while.

Not this game you weren't ;)

But on the actual topic, you're like me on speed is what you're saying...

Yeah. I think it's never good to lurk - whatever your alignment. :)

Don't worry about it, mate. You're more than justified and did very well overall. Your gut was spot-on, but still worked against you in the end because of how it was perceived. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Have had time to read QTs and think about everything a bit, now.

I noticed chiefly how things which apparently are obvious to lots of people aren't obvious to me yet. Particularly Trent's D1 behaviour, which to me seemed floating and barely involved, made all the observers think he was a dead giveaway for town. (Me figuring him as scummy happened when Hunter asked me in mid/late D1 who I'd vote for right now, and I answered him and Trent.)

Similarly, riding a vote all the way seems like such a dead giveaway for scum to me, for the town-cred which you could claim as a result; real town would be more uncertain, change wagons as new information would come in, etc.

Very much not in tune yet with the common belief-system and experience here. And yeah, Nacho seems to have realized that more fully than Trent and made good use of it. I was aware of the risk I invited in by asking both of them to go at each other. Mostly tuned out the specifics of their exchange, and looked mostly at the types of points they brought, which didn't do much at all.

I suspect I might've gotten a bit cocky due to spotting Hunter, and in that vein wanted Trent to be playing a masterful scum game, and thus blinded myself to the signs that this wasn't what was happening? Possibly; all I know for certain is that with the momentum to Nacho on D3, and then this opening on D4, it really felt like I was being led purposefully to a mislynch, and that I had to fight against that.

(If there'd been more expansive reasoning from Trent, either in D4 opening post, or in his answer to my "when did you figure me for town" question, I probably would've gone along, but oh well - me misreading Trent is in the end really on me.)

...Aaanyway - I expect I'll continue to learn, and have in any case had a blast here. After my early mistakes and all of Brasas's pushing on D1, I really had not expected to survive all the way to the end game. Hope to someday (soon?) undo the damage I did here to Town's win percentage. (And then hopefully not by messing up as scum!) :)
And thanks for all the positive reactions, everyone!

Note that context matters. Trent plays kinda that way as scum too, but there were a couple differences here. Trent will jump D1 wagons (as scum or town) but it was reasonable that he stayed put on Drealmer mostly b/c:

a) this was a very quick pace D1 compared to a normal GoG game, so there wasn't time to shift go through what his normal progression might be. He made a gut call and stuck with it for 2-3 RL days. That's pretty typical for him.
b) he pretty much always finds Drealmer scummy D1
c) Even knowing Drealmer's alignment in advance, I thought it was a bit more obvious here - basically for the reasons Lift jumped on Drealmer for. It was like Drealmer was <trying> to play to his town meta on purpose, and not just going with the flow in his usual crazy way.

To the extent you erred, I think it was that you
1) made it about Trent vs. Nacho. Aside from the prior-made point that Nacho is a top-tier wolf, the proposition you laid out just suited his playstyle more than Trent's. He was almost always going to win that battle.

If you want to make a logical read, you kinda have to do at least more of the work yourself.

Trent's D1 activity was a lot like Wyrm's (confirmed town) and while different than Lift's was supported by Lift's. In a huge game sometimes you do have to crowd out the noise to focus and do the best you can with limited resources, but this was a small enough game that you reduced your data points [probably unnecessarily]. If townwyrm can camp on Drealmer most of D1, without doing much else, it's hardly damning that Trent did. Lift didn't do much besides Drealmer either - b/c he was a) suspicious, and b) actually mafia.

So in essence, you punished Trent for being right both on Drealmer and on Nacho. ;)

2) Got a bit too focused on why scum!Trent would leave you alive. The reality was that, as a new player, there were very few scenarios where scum did not leave you alive just out of numerical necessity. The troll kills (Brasas, Wyrm, Darko) were just all more dangerous than you regardless of who was scum, and all of them had eyed Nacho warily IIRC. He pretty much had to gamble on you and it paid off.

You could've looked back at who those NKs were eyeing to see if there was a pattern. There won't always be, but I think there was here. Also, y'know, WIFOM.

On the whole you played a good first game, so yeah, hopefully just pick up a few lessons from this run and come back and pick up a few more next time around.

Plus the whole role name thing. That was awful and should have rung a million bells, but I feel you were too caught up in your scenario by that point. In which case, why even invite them to fight it out if you're not going to examine their posts?
You live and learn though, no biggie.

That's a very good point, which I indeed completely ignored. I re-read the thread a lot, focussing on different points, but mostly on people's interactions with confirmed scum or hypothesized scum - and not at all drawing parallels with confirmed town. Useful! Thanks!

I had thought Drealmer's flip would townclear Lift/Wym/Trent, but the way D2 played out that didn't really happen. Town collectively didn't use that day well to share perspectives.

Which, as an aside, is one reason Nacho's hammer should've drawn more attention, not the formatting problems.

By the time D3 rolled around and that conversation could have happened, two more analysts were off the table (Wyrm/Jmich) who could've been valuable on D2 when scum!drealmer was pretty much in the bag.

The mod kill N1 didn't help (right or wrong) either, on top of losing Brasas N1.

So with all that, the first real meaningful discussion is D3 in an F5 with sk/mafia both trying to hang the other, and only 3 townies, only one of whom is really trying to analyze. So collectively the game ended in an F3 where the lack of prior analysis meant new-player gets to be the decider without a lot of foundation by confirmed townies to paint the picture.

And as noted, especially given his prior fake VT hints, Trent probably would've been wiser to propose Nacho claim first.

So I don't think it's all on you by any means. But maybe on D2 don't rush to vote the confirmed scum precisely B/C he's in the bag.

If town had stopped there and said "What does it mean when Drealmer" flips town/scum/whatever then everything else is different. Of the 5 people on that D2 wagon, 2 were anti-town who wanted to move things along quickly for a reason. ;)

That was my main issue in D3. Bookwyrm's town flip made it impossible for me to go after Nacho for that hammer since he seemed so eager to see us rush through the Day. How do I accuse Nacho of that when the person who wanted someone to go ahead and hammer has already flipped town.

I did propose backing off, but Wyrm (one of my more solid town reads) was explicitly against that, which for me also was a factor in not seeing Nacho's hammer as more suspicious than Trent's hammer on D3. (Now, in retrospect, I figure Wyrm's goal was to see who'd hammer and thus cut things short. But of course if that was his goal, he never got to explain due to being killed that night. Doh!)

I think one of the things I was trying for, was building trust between mutually 'confirmed' townies. But that's hard with people playing cards so close to their vest, which in turn is probably an effect of just lots of experience. Hard to mix with. (I can already see myself being mislynched next game due to trying to emulate a bit too much. *g*)

Given his "For the love of God, just kill someone!" comment in the observer thread, I just think he was a bit bloodthirsty this time around. ;)

Edit - and even townies can have bad ideas, not to mention are usually pursuing multiple ends (finding scum, town-clearing themselves, hiding a PR/teasing a PR, etc.) that are often in conflict.