I agree that the setup did favour the scum. The whole "partner chat" thing is a slight town advantage - but the lover mechanic was more heavily scum-favouring, mostly because the mafia know about the potential lover status of up to three pairs, while each individual townie knows about only one. It also can result in LyLo situations where the town can lynch scum and still lose (we tried to set one of these up but flubbed it). This was compounded by the low amount of town power. A single doc vs a roleblocker is pretty close to the town having just a confirmable townie, which doesn't cut it in a game of this size.
A major aspect of the setup that I have to criticize is the voting rules. Three of the four days went to the deadline lynch, and the fourth (day two) would have gone there too had Seprix not voted himself. This is really to the detriment of both sides. For the town, it stagnates the game if everyone is sitting around waiting for a lynch to happen. In this game, the scum were really in control of the thread from day two onwards, but the voting rules made it much more difficult than it should have been to push mislynches home. This was most prominent on day 3, when I smelled blood and tried to push the gkrieg lynch home a couple of days before the deadline. He racked up 4 votes, but wasn't lynched until the deadline, giving him time to go back and figure that I might be scum.
Now for some play commentary:
-As mentioned previously, I haven't played mafia in a couple of years, and you have to go back 3 or 4 since I've played regularly. As such I was feeling very rusty at the start. My faust case was a bit of a feeler, but my post 203 was incredibly scummy (a cheap attempt to push a faust lynch disguised as an attempt to generate discussion). Fortunately, Silver was the first to pick up on this, and nobody really came back to it after he dropped the point.
-The Jimmm bus was kind of unilateral. He hadn't actually posted in our scumchat since the day started, and it just felt like there was very little incentive to leave him alive if he's a lynch candidate in that situation. In the end, it turned out to be the correct decision, as Haddock was not going to get lynched.
-Faust's question to Joseph was actually very good, and was the overwhelming reason that we didn't kill the lovers N1. This did end up working out for us, though, as the town didn't consider the full implications of the question.
-Seprix was simply too easy to push on day two. The lovers lie at the last moment was bizarre to say the least, and Seprix following it up by stalling for time made for a very easy case. However, the town got distracted by RR/Joseph. Annoying, but at the same time really the moment that we knew we'd win the game eventually.
-Gkrieg's self-defense on day three was just not very good. I alluded to this at the top of 1270. It is true that it isn't really scummy, but it doesn't make for a convincing counterargument for the townies watching. Then there's the tonal disconnect between the defense and the "can't believe I'm getting mislynched" attitude, making it a very easy vote for a demotivated townie to make.
-On night three we meant to kill iguana but failed to submit in time. In the end I guess we can say it cancelled out the modkill and call it quits, right?
-Day four was simple enough. Almost all the potential townie leader figures were dead (aside from maybe iguana), leaving an opportunity for myself/Silver to step up and finish the game. In the end, this wasn't really required, as there was enough anti-Awaclus sentiment (stirred up by Silver over the course of the game) to end it there.
I'll finish by thanking EFHW for a good job modding the game, especially with the replacement bother and despite my issues with the setup. I had fun, and I'm sure I'll sign up for another game here at some point.
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Topic: Mafia 82: Speed-Dating Mafia - Game Over - Mafia Win! (Read 127140 times)