2018 Syndicate Mafia [END]

[G-Man]

I never used my double-vote because I never had a strategically acceptable opportunity to use it.

I wasn’t sure anyone would figure out who I was. I went full-on meta early and dialed it back little by little. Having just been bad in Image Mafia helped my approach in this game. I tried to keep my head on straight and not overthinking things too much. It worked but it also didn’t hurt that a game of 10 players featured three low-posting civvies.

[S~V~S]

I was just amazed at the civvies lynching each other. We had contingency plans for me getting lynched daily but it never happened.

And G Man thank you! It was fun being bad together again.

[Epignosis]

[Epignosis]

G-Man, you suck at being me:

Oh, this thing started? Terrific. I’ll be around for the start of Day 1 because Day 1 is going to start while I’m watching the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, and Astros make me some money.

I'm fading the Astros today.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

[Golden]

I successfully identified who was behind each sock except gman and long con.

Was I obvious before or after I dropped the act?

About ten seconds in. So was svs. Took me a little longer to get epi, and I only got Sloonei right at the end.

[Golden]

Did anyone know I was me before I dropped the meta-act?

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Mafia lair

[speedchuck]

lol at you guys being worried about me still having protections.

I was roleplaying glorfindel guys.

[Long Con]

Great job guys!

There’s no way we were ever going to win this. Literally the only person who suspected svs was gman and it was wholly unnecessary lol, you had the game on lock.

... I guess you mean, out of the living players at endgame?

[Golden]

Great job guys!

There’s no way we were ever going to win this. Literally the only person who suspected svs was gman and it was wholly unnecessary lol, you had the game on lock.

... I guess you mean, out of the living players at endgame?

I wasn’t sure what you were thinking for sure.

[Long Con]

Great job guys!

There’s no way we were ever going to win this. Literally the only person who suspected svs was gman and it was wholly unnecessary lol, you had the game on lock.

... I guess you mean, out of the living players at endgame?

I wasn’t sure what you were thinking for sure.

That's a strange things to say, considering Dom was red on my list pretty consistently, and I was voting to lynch him until he lynched me instead.

[Golden]

Great job guys!

There’s no way we were ever going to win this. Literally the only person who suspected svs was gman and it was wholly unnecessary lol, you had the game on lock.

... I guess you mean, out of the living players at endgame?

I wasn’t sure what you were thinking for sure.

That's a strange things to say, considering Dom was red on my list pretty consistently, and I was voting to lynch him until he lynched me instead.

If someone uses gimmicks instead of words, I cannot decipher them at all, so I can’t retain any meaning from them. At that point I also had svs down the bottom though to be fair.

[S~V~S]

Great job guys!

There’s no way we were ever going to win this. Literally the only person who suspected svs was gman and it was wholly unnecessary lol, you had the game on lock.

... I guess you mean, out of the living players at endgame?

I wasn’t sure what you were thinking for sure.

That's a strange things to say, considering Dom was red on my list pretty consistently, and I was voting to lynch him until he lynched me instead.

I gotta say that was pretty shocking for me, I had just voted to save myself by voting someone else (Golden, I think), and while I was still trying to decide if I had to waffle more, Marmot popped in and said, "Let's lynch Wilgy!!" I was like, Awesome! Let's do it! So I would blame him for that more than me I did not think I could get away with lynching the person who kept red lining me, I would not even have tried had Marmot not suggested it.

I think with this player roster, had participation been higher, you all would have had us creamed by day 3. My skating was not as obvious with no one else posting, either.

[Ricochet]

Pretty lengthy burglary, ey?

[G-Man]

What’s really funny is I was going to pull a ‘unless you’re a coward, you should nk vompatti’ move tonight with no idea the baddie was gman.

That bit will never get old, will it?

lol at you guys being worried about me still having protections.

I was roleplaying glorfindel guys.

Hey, I wasn’t taking any chances. Sock or no sock, we’ve got too many crafty players around here to take a claim like that at face value. Why did you protect ‘Marmot’ Night 1? I was dying to ask in the game thread but I was worried that asking might give me away.

[Golden]

I thought glorf might be lying about the second shot too. I would have been equally cautious.

[S~V~S]

I thought the Glorfindel role play was very well done. I did, however, also think lying was possible since Chuck wasn't actually Glorfindel. The only person I can think of who would take roleplay to that level, not lying because Glorfindel would not lie, was in the baddie chatroom with me

I could see G Man taking it to that level, but off the top of my head, prolly no one else. So now I will add Chuck to that list.

[speedchuck]

Why did you protect ‘Marmot’ Night 1? I was dying to ask in the game thread but I was worried that asking might give me away.

I thought 'Marmot' looked the most town.

So now I will add Chuck to that list.

I'm not good at roleplaying, so I grabbed a gimmick. :P

[Long Con]

Great job guys!

There’s no way we were ever going to win this. Literally the only person who suspected svs was gman and it was wholly unnecessary lol, you had the game on lock.

... I guess you mean, out of the living players at endgame?

I wasn’t sure what you were thinking for sure.

That's a strange things to say, considering Dom was red on my list pretty consistently, and I was voting to lynch him until he lynched me instead.

If someone uses gimmicks instead of words, I cannot decipher them at all, so I can’t retain any meaning from them.

That is literally - LITERALLY - the most disingenuous thing that has ever been said on this site. WTF dude?

And since I can talk now, I will respond to some perplexing things you said during the game, some of which I can't understand coming from a Civ:

Wilgy has the exact same rainbow list to me, but places me at deep orange. Doesn't that seem disingenuous to you? It does to me. Like his read of me is all based on meta-roleplay, no substance. It stinks as much as bare feet.

Ok, so how does having a similar rainbow list, but still suspecting you, mean anything at all? First of all, there's nothing inherently disingenuous about it. I suspected you. Period. That has nothing to do with where anyone else is on either of our rainbow lists, and, like, seriously, can you please explain this logic?

1. I post a rainbow list
2. You follow it with a nearly identical list
3. I analyze your posts and find you suspicious, re-post list with you in the red
4. You say "how can he have the same list as me and also suspect me??"

You copied MY rainbow list dude! Is that REALLY the kind of logic that makes sense to you? So, next time I'm bad, I just have to wait till a Civ makes a rainbow list, and then make an identical list, and then if that Civ ever suspects me, I can call them disingenuous and get them lynched?

.... you... you can see how that makes no sense at all, right?

...Like his read of me is all based on meta-roleplay, no substance.

Ok, and LITERALLY NONE of my read of you was based on meta-anything:

Spoiler: show

Because there was no poll. Then I went climbing. I forgot to come back and actually put the vote on the poll.

You know who isn't themselves? Golden. He's only posted an image and something about Dom not liking baseball. That's just wrong, something is off.

Marmot

[VOTE: golden] aubergine

You are suspicious here because YOU are casting suspicion based on meta-crap. PHONY meta-crap, because that's not really Golden, so being "not himself" is a given.

Looks like I'm breaking a tie. you can thank me later.

Marmot

Trying to get cred for something undeserving. Again, this is not suspecting you based on meta.

In my experience, Dom is not a player that "chooses" to go after someone. He probes endlessly of anyone.

That quadruple post from Jay seems very uncharacteristic.

How much does that mean in a game where everyone is faking? In my opinion we will have to look past that sort of thing.

This man is town.

Marmot

Handing out a town-read based on someone stating the obvious was suspicious to me. ONCE AGAIN, this has nothing to do with meta-anything.

Where glorfindel goes, I will follow. Besides, I’m feeling whimsical.

[VOTE: JaggedJimmyJay] aubergine

Epignosis you should join us to be honest.

Marmot

Given that JJJ was a Civ, this struck me as some suspiciously anti-Civ stuff: vote-following to lynch a Civ, AND pushing another player to vote a Civ. Do I need to keep saying after each point that there was nothing remotely "meta" about this suspicion?

Feels good to be able to get that off my chest finally. You try to throw this crap at me when I can talk, and you will be lynched very quickly, and I think I made it pretty clear why it would be deserved.

[Long Con]

Screwed up the quotes in the spoiler tags... the "You are suspicious here because YOU are casting suspicion based on meta-crap. PHONY meta-crap, because that's not really Golden, so being "not himself" is a given." is the explanation for the first Marmot-suspicion.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Let’s be mindful that the game is over, gang.

If I had to pinpoint a reason why the civilians lost, I would need about 0.3 milliseconds to decide: the game ended with fewer than 200 posts. Every single civilian was a low-poster. That made it much easier for both mafia members to assert control over the thread.

Nobody is going to be able to make educated reads in that environment. The lynches were close to guessing. The same thing happened in the Gatsby and Phenon heists to a lesser degree.

[G-Man]

I think the low post count was a blessing and a curse for the baddies. It was a blessing because less discussion makes it harder for civvies to formulate reads. It was a curse too though because the fact that the whole game was light on posts meant it was easier for civvies to digest and scrutinize our posts. One bad post can disappear in a sea of game posts and even within a player’s ISO but one bad post in a small sample size like we had here has the potential to be damning.

Overall, I didn’t let myself feel comfortable or confident that we had it in the bag until maybe the last 10 minutes, when it became clear that nobody was going to swoop in with grand ‘a-ha!’ theory and bust one or both of us. Hiding my baddie play behind roleplay was, I think, a big reason why I was able to succeed. I agree though that we wouldn’t have pulled it off if there had been more discussion and/or more players. Size, roleplay, and lack of discussion were the trifecta that propped us up.

[mention]S~V~S[/mention] did you figure out it was me behind the sock? I wouldn’t have guessed you were my partner in crime had you not slipped up in the thread. That being said, I didn’t try to figure out who was behind the sock accounts because it didn’t matter much to me.

[S~V~S]

I think the low post count was a blessing and a curse for the baddies. It was a blessing because less discussion makes it harder for civvies to formulate reads. It was a curse too though because the fact that the whole game was light on posts meant it was easier for civvies to digest and scrutinize our posts. One bad post can disappear in a sea of game posts and even within a player’s ISO but one bad post in a small sample size like we had here has the potential to be damning.

Overall, I didn’t let myself feel comfortable or confident that we had it in the bag until maybe the last 10 minutes, when it became clear that nobody was going to swoop in with grand ‘a-ha!’ theory and bust one or both of us. Hiding my baddie play behind roleplay was, I think, a big reason why I was able to succeed. I agree though that we wouldn’t have pulled it off if there had been more discussion and/or more players. Size, roleplay, and lack of discussion were the trifecta that propped us up.

@S~V~S did you figure out it was me behind the sock? I wouldn’t have guessed you were my partner in crime had you not slipped up in the thread. That being said, I didn’t try to figure out who was behind the sock accounts because it didn’t matter much to me.

I thought you were MP at first, you said something about no one expecting you to be playing. And the "Indeed" not once but twice in chat. But when you called me "John", yeah I knew then. I think it is fun to guess, I had only one right though, actual Dom being Golden. I thought Glorf was Quin, but I had Mac called for Epi. Otherwise, it was all a surprise, although in retrospect, I should have called Golden for his syntax, stuff like this, "Wilgy has the exact same rainbow list to me"; North Americans generally say "as me". But since it wasn't important and I was mostly afraid to come in here, no biggie, lol.

And this is why I don't play many heists, it is super hard to be bad in this format, and I applaud those of you who do well at it without being able to hide behind socks.

[Dom]

I'm sorry I forgot this game was happening.

[Sloonei]

Unless I'm forgetting something, I have been mislynched three times on the Syndicate:
Arrested Development Mafia (hosted by JJJ)
The Search for Quin (hosted by JJJ)
and now 2018 Syndicate Mafia (hosted by JJJ)

[Epignosis]

Let’s be mindful that the game is over, gang.

If I had to pinpoint a reason why the civilians lost, I would need about 0.3 milliseconds to decide: the game ended with fewer than 200 posts. Every single civilian was a low-poster. That made it much easier for both mafia members to assert control over the thread.

Nobody is going to be able to make educated reads in that environment. The lynches were close to guessing. The same thing happened in the Gatsby and Phenon heists to a lesser degree.

I would not disagree with that, but two things:

First, all things being equal, smaller games favor mafia simply because there is less time to work through things. Finding four or five mafia over the course of ten to twelve phases is far easier than sniffing out two in three.

Second, in this game, catching subtle differences in people's behavior far more difficult, because everyone is pretending to be someone else. When I said who was good and bad in my post answering Glorfindel's question, I was completely making things up, because I had no bearing on anyone whatsoever. Also, MacDougall was a tough draw for me (I actually didn't choose the person I'd be impersonating), and I really don't know why. I just found it hard playing as him. I mean, we could all abandon making fun of each other and acting, but where's the fun in that?

[Golden]

LC - You could have engaged on my case with you or looked beyond my meta-stuff and talked about my reads but you didn't. So yes, it read as disingenuous. Not because you had the same list and read me bad, not because you read me bad only on meta-stuff, but because you had the same list AND read me bad on meta-stuff without engaging with me on the reads at all. It doesn't make sense to me that you'd agree with my reads but completely ignore discussing them with me. That's what read as disingenuous. (And I honestly don't care whose list was 'first' - doesn't matter.)

Are you saying you were forced to use that gimmick, you couldn't speak? If so, sorry. If not - then I did not understand anything you posted and so my apologies for saying I don't know what your reads were, but I cannot decipher gimmicks. There was a LOT of opportunity for you to engage on my discussion of you and you chose not to - if you'd chosen to even just try to do that much earlier, I probably wouldn't have lynched you. Or maybe you did try and I just didn't understand it.

Also, I probably wouldn't have lynched either Sloonei or you if there wasn't a part of me that just wanted "Golden" to show up and do some real roleplaying. Twas not to be.

[Golden]

First, all things being equal, smaller games favor mafia simply because there is less time to work through things. Finding four or five mafia over the course of ten to twelve phases is far easier than sniffing out two in three.

Second, in this game, catching subtle differences in people's behavior far more difficult, because everyone is pretending to be someone else. When I said who was good and bad in my post answering Glorfindel's question, I was completely making things up, because I had no bearing on anyone whatsoever. Also, MacDougall was a tough draw for me (I actually didn't choose the person I'd be impersonating), and I really don't know why. I just found it hard playing as him. I mean, we could all abandon making fun of each other and acting, but where's the fun in that?

I agree with both of those, but the latter in particular is a mechanic that I think could go in Jay's balance card as mafia-favouring. People like to look down on meta-reads, but they make a difference in finding your bearings for sure.

[Glorfindel]

lol at you guys being worried about me still having protections.

I was roleplaying glorfindel guys.

[dunya]

dunya didn't play. what a shame. they killed off all the high posters.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

dunya didn't play. what a shame. they killed off all the high posters.

There weren't any high posters.

[dunya]

That's what I meant. JJJ and dunya are known to be high posters so they got whacked out

[MacDougall]

Yeah I literally just got super busy right as this game started and was killed before I even had a chance. I actually totally fucked up at one point and posted as my own account but thankfully James was online to delete it. I didn't get a chance to post after that haha.

[Sloonei]

Yeah I literally just got super busy right as this game started and was killed before I even had a chance. I actually totally fucked up at one point and posted as my own account but thankfully James was online to delete it. I didn't get a chance to post after that haha.

The beginning of this game seemed to complicate things in general. Day 1 ended on Easter Sunday. That's typically a busy time for everyone.