XCOM 2: War of the Chosen Mafia Game Thread

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Please just vote me so this limbo nightmare can be over ok lol I'm amazed any of you are actually just taking Zetsu at her word and now just calling bullshit at the convenient claim NOW of all times. It's either I get lynched now or I get lynched in one or two day phases when scum inevitably pivot back to me as soon as town is on their trail. I'm willing to make the sacrifice to keep us all from hitting lylo two rounds from now. Just vote for me so we can move on with our lives.

So the thing here is:

What does scum gain by trading someone who's mostly getting townreads (Zetsu, and to go back to your early question, I townread her yesterday and that's amped up today because it was pretty clear even before her claim she was pushing the wagon in a specific direction that happened to make the most sense to me, and in a way pretty in keeping with her typical MO) for the most suspicious VT in the game? What's the tradeoff? If Jack's scum too, in our world where you and Yugi are both town and all is legit, then shoving you into the grinder today is not gonna save him. It's gonna result in town suddenly turning en masse and looking at him very, very hard.

If this was the make or break phase, oh yeah that's shady as all get-out to claim. But it's not (or, let's say, it better not be or I have some real balance questions bubbling). And if scum misfires on this trade they lose so much more than they do by just doing nothing. Heck, Zetsu herself was setting up a case to take you down tomorrow even if Jack flips scum. That would've been so, so much lower-risk than this.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

MW already voted and made his case. Waiting for him is not necessary.

In seriousness: so pretty clearly I think everyone knows where I stand on desired outcome and yay we're heading that way. Good. Excellent.

A lot of stuff has transpired that's worth talking about though, at least in brief, and a big thing about suddenly kicking to night phase is someone's very likely gonna die over the night phase and if they had some brilliant observation spurred by all this stuff then that sucks for town. One of the big reasons I like to (and wish more people would) post a big ol' readslist near the end of a phase is so that if it becomes my last will and testament it's something useful, especially in light of the info gained by the flip.

Also I feel nice and vindicated about a lot of stuff, including thoughts on Zetsu and Yugi, given the latter's vote and the kinda cheeky statement with it. Yugi and Jace are peas in a pod, in the line of suspicion, and the thought is that like dominoes Yugi will follow a Jace scumflip. Jace tries to hammer himself and misfires. Then asks for someone to seal the deal. And who happens to be strolling along ready to cheerfully do so?

But what, you ask, do scum get from that?

They get to yank reads from town and send everyone into the night phase disorganized, to communicate and plan absent further information/thoughts from others, and it doesn't cost anything because the bad stuff's already happening anyhow.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

if jace is scum i suspect yugi/slam next if jace is town i give zetsu a real long look, imo

Can I get a bit more on the Jace/Jack connection you're seeing here?

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Okay, caught up and such. Tired, out of it.

I'm very down for the thing that's happening. Let's make sure it happens. No matter what it tells us a monstrous amount, and I put good odds that, more than that, it cracks the game wide open. The chain of events thus far has had every characteristic of a rolling snowball of patch-jobs and backtracking off a small initial screw-up. It's the sort of thing that can completely unravel a scumteam because someone used the wrong word and nobody wants to bus.

Obviously reads are contingent upon the flip here. I've talked about the whys throughout the phase and last phase so this will be a bit quicker, annotated only where stuff has changed/isn't expressed in my other posts/I really want it on record:

Townish:

-Blizzard: Strongest town vibes for me from accumulation of little things--no huge plays, peripheral to the discussion, but has been always feeling like town thought process.

-MS: The stuff I said earlier--MS' play basically screams town a step or two (or three) from actual active engagement, but with enough half-baked attempt (complete with getting weird stuff blatantly wrong) that I just don't see it for scum.

-Paige: Despite my "always suspect!" spiel Paige's play has read towny to me in most all respects except one. Good vibes throughout, legitimately prodding and pulling up info, and I like a lot that they're now on the Jace train but still flirting with Jack's push because as scum busing Jace there were so, so many opportunities to commit harder and reap the cred for it.

-Zetsu: Zetsu's play is classic of her town style and also makes 0% sense to me as scum. Even if Jace somehow does flip town I struggle to see scum Zetsu because her play just does not lead to anything good as scum except, like... a bizarre WIFOM double bluff of the "EVeryone knows I'd never be so incompetent so I get town cred for acting scum by acting town by..." variety.

Medium I guess:[/u]

-Boogie: For some reason I townread Boogie yesterday. It is no longer yesterday. He's trending down due to my quibbles all phase but can be hard to get down pat. There are many people being actively much scummier but he's out of the trust circle.

-Goose: Goose's flailing, prodding, etc. is a good sign. Not a single vote besides the game-starting joke is not. Goose is a late-game player but that does not mean let him coast to late game with no questions because he's also been pretty formidable as late-game scum more than once IIRC (I may not--not going to Tapa ><)

-Jack: This deteriorates really, really fast if Jace flips town. Like, really fast. I think the character of the exchange is very genuine but could easily be proxying for different causes. Said my piece on the giving up, etc.

-Ricky: Very quiet and chased a couple weird angles today but I'm too tired to make heads or tails of it--very worth another look but the bells aren't ringing yet.

Oof:

-Irina: Irina is in the interesting spot where her play has been all over the place enough I can see her on a scum team with more or less anyone. Lots of opportunism and a mentality I read as pretty scum-centric.

-Jace: We know the story here, doesn't bear repeating.

-Yugi: Yugi rockets up the rankings should Jace flip town, but I do not expect that to occur. Everything has been lockstep damage control from his end, while still throwing off enough chaffe to have plausible deniability. And with that slightly theatrical flair he favors when the villain!

---

Guess I was wrong there's reasons for everyone but pretty abridged/succinct. Ish. I guess.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

I think that's probably it for me this phase--I will not be back until after the flip.

Please please please absolutely for sure 100% have more than just one person on deck for the hammer. There are so many ways stuff could get screwed otherwise (like, say, Jace and Yugi chain unvote the second they see Zetsu on as deadline nears and whoops, suddenly we have to wrangle two votes in 15 minutes or we splat and get nothing and the night phase happens and then tomorrow is just Today Part 2, that is sure a thing that could happen).

[Zetsu]

Should I hammer now, on the off-chance we get a double-unvote gambit to try to get us to lose the dayphase?

[Zetsu]

(I don't really expect much activity between now and tomorrow afternoon)

[Yugikun]

ngl I don't think there's any point in defending myself because I can just say 'i like bananas' and then toben will just go 'that's it. this is proof that Yugi is GUARANTEED SCUM because ONLY YUGI WOULD DO THIS WHEN HE'S SCUM BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT SCUM YUGI WOULD DO FOR SOME REASON"

i asked the game if they wanted me to vote for Jace, Jace said 'plz' and I went for it. that's literally all i did.

[General Goose]

Fwiw Jace I believe you're town but I don't think it's good trying to cut a day phase prematurely short - you can still win as town even if you're dead, so moving yourself into hammer doesn't strike me as a supersmart move

[dmboogie]

if jace is scum i suspect yugi/slam next if jace is town i give zetsu a real long look, imo

Can I get a bit more on the Jace/Jack connection you're seeing here?

i mis-brained, i meant if jace is town im sus on slam

[Yugikun]

ngl I don't think there's any point in defending myself because I can just say 'i like bananas' and then toben will just go 'that's it. this is proof that Yugi is GUARANTEED SCUM because ONLY YUGI WOULD DO THIS WHEN HE'S SCUM BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT SCUM YUGI WOULD DO FOR SOME REASON"

i'm honoured by the idea that I am this mastermind who has been stealthily planting seeds into the ground but that's not how I have played or would play as scum

if you're so sure about what my scum playstyle is (when I haven't even played as scum in 2-3 years) please tell me when I have ever taken risks

[Zetsu]

[Grand Moff Hissa]

i asked the game if they wanted me to vote for Jace, Jace said 'plz' and I went for it. that's literally all i did.

Okay but (and here's the kicker):

You asked if you should vote the guy teetering right on the edge who just tried to self-hammer, and he himself goes "YEAH YEAH DO THAT!" and you're like "Yeah good enough sure" apparently. Right as a whole long discussion about why being in that range early is bad news is going on, and, again, the one who called the shot is the giga-suspect guy who just tried a ploy and not any of the other ten players in the game (excluding you and him) who might have less-biased reasons why it might be a good/bad idea.

[Yugikun]

slightly fair but way different context. scum had like, basically 0 chance of losing after that lynch and everybody knew I was kiriyama anyway.

[Yugikun]

Like, the only other thing I can actively remember was... whatever I did when I went 'lol I'm scum' in TV Tropes Mafia but that got me votes and immediate bad attention that lasted nearly the entire game. Pretty sure that's a good reason to never try something like that again.