Qatol's Mafia VII experience

Ok I started off running for mayor before the game even started because I didn't want to be killed right away like the previous game. LTT had already agreed to vote for me because he liked me better than any of the other players. I guessed Ver would also vote for me, and hopefully that would be enough for a bandwagon victory.

Anyways, I got my role and immediately went into a 3-way chat with incognito and Ver.
We basically talked strategy and my campaign.
The important part of this was that I read incognito as innocent and ver as a little jumpy. I continued to talk to incognito about suspects afterward while ver. (Really the point of these early chats are to get a feel for each other and possibly get some early strategy worked out. Strategy doesn't work quite so well with multiple godfathers in the chat though.) Ver read me as lethargic and likely mafia in this as well apparently.

Then I noticed Heavonearth was doing posts in the thread and he did a really suspicious vote for semioldguy. I'm busy yelling at him via PM and he isn't answering. So no fek contacted me and gave me his AIM as well as heavonearth's. I found out he hadn't gotten any PMs at all from me and traced it back to BC writing his name as heavenonearth (surprisingly, the PMs did NOT bounce). Anyways, the plan with those 2 is they were just going to write clue analysis in the thread all game. Enough activity to keep off the inactivity radar but nothing really useful. Finally I got into contact with semioldguy and L.

We obviously knew there was something up with the game, though we weren't sure it was 2 families, especially after I asked BC about it and he told me that would be "too fancy". We considered that there were just a ton of CKs as well. Around this point LTT roleclaimed to me and I told him I had a role which could make contracts with him. While trying to figure out the particulars of his role, I accidentally revealed I was mafia to him, but because of his role, it didn't really matter, especially since I was going to let him kill chuiu.

My strategy for myself was to keep the town disorganized and running in circles for as long as I could. I fully expected to be a suspect and to die at some point. However, I was simply buying time. We also seriously considered having me fake a DT role and run the game like it had been in the previous game. I would call out semioldguy and then use LTT's checks as my future "rolechecks." (This plan was aborted when 2 of the DTs died night 1.)

Anyways, I was doing a lot of talking with various players trying to figure out a good target for my mayoral lynch that wouldn't be too suspicious. Heavonearth made an inactives list for me (I was hoping the blues would stand up for themselves). Then I talked to my contacts about the people who DID defend themselves. That was where the bockit PMs came from. Funny thing was I totally wanted to lynch 0cz3c, but I thought the backlash would be pretty bad if he flipped town. So I took the "safe" choice and lynched inertinept.

Shortly after the lynch, my PM box just went insane. I literally got 150 PMs in this week from various players trying to be helpful (Tricode, Pyrrhuloxia, and Heavonearth stand out in my memory). This actually messed with me pretty badly. Among other things, it meant that I didn't have the time to do proper behavioral analysis to bluesnipe, so I figured I had to hit top players. But I had also posted a medic protection list so I was nervous about hitting anyone on it. I settled for players that didn't quite make the list.

Around this point semioldguy told me that rage was being super quiet in the thread, but was definitely around in the staff IRC channel. I figured that meant blue. The problem was Bockit mentioned it as well. The list of people who could know about Rage was small and I had 2 members of my family on it, so we decided Bockit HAD to be a night 1 hit. I also had a small hunch that Bockit had a role. I figured if he was red, the hit would just miss though. Our original list was Bockit, Mynock, Showtime!. All players who are good/needed to die but were unlikely to draw a medic. Then Showtime! contacts me and tells me he is NOT protecting Mynock. This kinda threw a wrench in the hit list, so we totally reworked it, us being afraid of getting me outed too quickly. We decided to take a chance that Ace would fall through the cracks again and hit him. The last hit was kinda a throwaway, but I think L suggested Nemy? I don't remember who exactly did that one. Ver was never considered because I was pretty sure I could string him along long enough for medics to get bored with him.

Anyways, we had the day post. When Bockit died, I was seriously pissed at BC. First of all, there were 2 mafia families. Second of all it said in the rules that mafia are not allowed to hit other mafia. When I called him on it, he changed the rules (edited the OP). I was also pretty annoyed at the other family for killing Pyrrhuloxia because I was directing his clue analysis. However, I noticed that it took a LONG time for the day post to come up. I assumed that this was because the other family took a long time to send in their hits. I decided that this was likely because they were waiting for their leader who was inactive. I also knew that Ver wasn't around much. I was really pissed at BC for changing the rules on me, so I contacted Ver and told him I was mafia.

He replied he was also mafia. We realized that the families stood 0 chance of winning on their own with so few members/KP so the 2 families united. We checked with BC and confirmed that we did not have to kill each other to win. This was within hours of Bockit's death. We decided we had to milk that hit though and keep the town confused about it. You will notice that I made a post about not trusting medic saves any more. I was hoping this would keep the medic who protected Ace from claiming to him.

Anyways, this day was the superlong one. Mikeymoo sent me a PM accusing Monoxide and later posted in the thread about it. However, conversation was totally stagnated and I wanted to keep it up because I wanted to give Ver material to get reads. (Ver was gone during this whole day btw.) Anyways, I posted another inactivity list and called out a few players with input from showtime and chuiu. They were also the ones who suggested the double lynch. I figured that because they were pushing for it, I could start a decent debate about it.

JeeJee came back and flamed me pretty hard and Ace and Malongo called out my comment on double lynch. I got Malongo to back off with a few PMs telling him I was trying to generate discussion, but JeeJee and Ace didn't back off. Chuiu and Showtime! basically left me out to dry on the double lynch idea. I thought I was in pretty bad shape when Ace said he would write up a long accusation towards me. We actually had mafiosos make long posts to try and spread out the accusations a little and let the atmosphere clear some. Instead, Ace never made his post (apparently he fell asleep instead). I went inactive for a little while in here because a defense of myself would be premature and I didn't want to dig myself in any deeper. I actually DID spend 3-4 hours on a really long defense, but never posted it because Ace's accusation never came.

Then Versatile called Ace out. This was actually a huge break for us. It gave us a viable lynch target and we knew she wasn't red. L also jumped into the debate (and we were really enjoying it because he was accusing Ver not Versatile). Anyways, we just pushed for her lynch to put suspicion on me/Ace. I was just hoping to trade myself for Ace at this point. It was a pleasant surprise that she flipped veteran. You will also notice that Ace called both myself AND L out at this point, but I tried to keep the attention on just me.

A few people were defending me at this point, most notably Tricode, who I had been prodding around via PM since around the time of my mayoral lynch. Ace also helped this situation by devolving into a debating strategy of "tl;dr" and an "invisible list." I asked a vigi to hit Ace and for myself to be lynched. I did NOT expect Caller to be the one to go through with that though.

Around this time, semioldguy says he has a strong hunch that Vivi57 is a DT and should be doublehit because he was asking for more clue analysis. Literally 3 hours later vivi roleclaimed to me. He had checked me against the "clumsiness" clue that JeeJee was accusing me with. It came up negative (I was the archer) and he decided to take a chance on me. This actually kept us from hitting him (which was really good because he was triple protected). I also had incognito post it for me (I had been talking to him since our early conversation). Incognito really wanted the DT's name out of me, but Vivi didn't want me to pass it on.

Thankfully, Ver came back at this point too (so I didn't have to do hit lists while arguing with Ace). We figured it was probably safe to hit showtime! since we had waited a cycle and Rage was also safe. Ver, LucasWoJ, 0cz3c, LTT, and I basically came up with the hit list at that point (mostly Ver would propose someone and then we would argue about it for a while). LTT seriously considered hitting Chuiu at this point, but decided he didn't want to have to go through the effort of pretending to freak out at the person who killed chuiu. So instead we had him target Fakesteve who was a guess at a blue.

I looked at the thread and noticed that Caller had claimed to have killed Ace. I thought it was a little goofy, but I wasn't going to complain. Either way, I also noticed that Malongo had decided to take up a leadership role and there were several people trying to defend me, most notably Vivi57 (who was convinced I was innocent thanks to his cluecheck). Surprisingly, JeeJee was also one of my defenders. I just kinda let the town dig its own grave at this point. However, when the votes were kinda close, I had a few of the mafia push me over the top. You will notice that there was a whole string of votes by mafiosos for QuickStriker at this point. We also managed to defeat the double lynch. I didn't really post too much during this cycle other than another Inactive list (thanks again heavonearth) and a list of suspects that weren't being considered. However, my post was pretty much ignored.

That night was probably the scariest one for the mafia. Camlito came out of NOWHERE and just started ousting mafia left and right. We thought we were ok at first with his long post but his next 3 were just scary good. We modified the hit list to double hit him (assuming he had a medic). LTT's check was originally put on RebirthOfLegend (to fish if he was a veteran), but we changed our minds and put it on Fishball because the guy is really hard to read.

Another thing we learned during this day: 0cz3c and LucasWoJ had the same hostmask so we asked if they were roommates. It turns out they are twin brothers. Craziness.

Finally, Chuiu contacts LTT and informs him that they are both CKs. LTT was really freaking out at this point because his win conditions were to pick up 4 town documents. If a player has one, he got to hit the player for free. LTT assumed that Chuiu had the same conditions and that he was in trouble (because LTT had picked a document off of Fakesteve). LTT even asked us to put Chuiu on the hitlist for a little while. Instead, we found out that Chuiu had completely different victory conditions (though we didn't know what they were). LTT made a contract with Chuiu to kill a possible blue (BWdero) that we didn't quite have space for on the hitlist thanks to the Camlito x2.

Side note: I spent much of this day wanting to troll the thread really hard. However, I had to manage Vivi and keep his rolecheck off one of the mafia. I TRIED to get the rolecheck onto Ver, but Vivi wound up rolechecking Mynock instead. My "stayin' alive" video would have made more sense right after I avoided the lynch, but it wasn't worth the risk.

I told Incognito about Vivi's rolecheck and was amused that he went to Ver with Mynock as a suspect (he apparently suspected them both but figured they were in opposite families). I guess he decided I was lying after he pushed me really hard for a name, but Vivi didn't want it given up. Incognito roleclaimed Vigilante to Ver at this point. He was already on the hitlist, but we got lucky because BC didn't notice a medic PM from Fishball which should have kept Incognito alive. It probably didn't matter though.

I basically had 1 purpose during this day: to troll the thread as hard as I could. Me dying would not decrease KP at all. Losing Ver or 3clipse would hurt our KP. I was basically just trying to make the town forget about Camlito's analysis. (I posted something about uniting the mafia and CKs, but really all of this was a distraction.) This plan partially worked because Heavonearth was forgotten. However, Ver and 3clipse were not.

BC sped through the night pretty quickly this time since he was basically ready to call the game (since the town had STILL failed to decrease the mafia's KP at all), but wanted to give LTT the chance to kill Chuiu.

I was just an observer for this day, but it basically came down to BC just wanting the town to give up since they were totally out of useful blues (1 vigi without a hit and 1 BG left). The mafia talked it over and decided to ruin the double lynch in order to make it impossible for a town comeback.

A basic summary of our strategy was for me to keep the town occupied as long as possible with accusing each other. This was mostly done by me talking to people and emphasizing townie targets as suspicious. Then those people would write up accusations and the mafia would draw them out. Obivously, it didn't last too long, but it kept the town busy and our KP high long enough for us to snipe the blues.

It's not what you know, it's what you can convince people to believe. This is really where the Mafia game is won and lost and people just don't get it. In this game you are a mafia mayor and I know this because I read it correctly. Does it matter? Not really, because now I have to convince the town that you truly are. Likewise we all know quickstriker and JeeJee are innocent but in the grand scheme of things it means shit - people believe they are guilty. Once you get people to believe certain things about other players you can start either dividing the town and standing back silently watching them devour each other as mafia, or as a townie bring them all to focus on a few people. The idea is all the same - persuasion is much more powerful than outright facts. If you can lie skillfully or find a crucial mistake to exploit while keeping a straight story people will often trust you easily.