It's an extra kill regardless of who placed the mark. If the scum have no reason to fear it, it won't matter to them if it was Town, a Survivor, or the other scumteam that was doing it. Plus there is that anyone you suspect enough to want to kill you should be lynching. If they pass the suspicion enough that you no longer want to lynch them, you probably don't want them dying when the other firestarter ignites.
Not really, since if even if scum are NK-immune, if town placed it on scum then it isn't another NK. And I've definitely read games where there's players that were suspect the whole game, but kept just barely dodging the lynch.
Also, a scum team grabbing one firestarter AND can arranging for complete NK immunity seems like a stretch to me. Staffs are also going to be a town priority pick probably even over firestarter, and two of the Talismans had a Mirror chat attached. So this would require one scum team getting a lot of the early picks, but only getting one firestarter.
I would agree that a mechanical argument does not seem to be a great use of town time on Day 1. It'd be nice to know how many mislynches can be handled, but I don't think we can reasonably make that number concrete this early. I feel like we'd be better off just generally scumhunting at this point, even with as little information is available to us. At the same time, hard to point at anyone yet -- the only person that's been called out so far seems to have a very coherent defense, and the only person that did the calling out seemed to have a perfectly reasonable reasoning for pinging on it.
The biggest question with the number of mislynches we can afford isn't how many scum there are, it's the firestarters + the dynamics of two scum teams at LyLo. If there's any reading material on two-scum-team LyLo, I'd be interested.
Also, a scum team grabbing one firestarter AND can arranging for complete NK immunity seems like a stretch to me. Staffs are also going to be a town priority pick probably even over firestarter, and two of the Talismans had a Mirror chat attached. So this would require one scum team getting a lot of the early picks, but only getting one firestarter.
Not really, no. There are a lot of items in that sack, it's not like Town priorities goes "Staff of Life->Defense Talisman->Everything else", and even if only two out of three scum have night kill immunity, that's still seriously kneecapping the chances of the Firestarter being of any use to Town.
Don't have time to dig for a quote, but I remember ComiTurtle confirming that the douse goes away if you manage to survive the fire. There's also no real difference from igniting Night One and igniting after the scum ignite. Both will result in a single person being burned.
Ah. I must've missed that, my bad then. Given that, then I think I can agree that just igniting the thing at Night One is probably close enough to optimal to be worth it. I do agree that scum will concentrate their NK immunity as they get thinned down, and it slipped my mind. Even if they don't have full team NK-immunity now, they probably will later unless they get particularly unlucky.
The biggest question with the number of mislynches we can afford isn't how many scum there are, it's the firestarters + the dynamics of two scum teams at LyLo. If there's any reading material on two-scum-team LyLo, I'd be interested.
As would I. I can't say I've seen anything like that in my cursory wiki browsing and reading historical games. It really depends on how the firestarters are concentrated too, I think. 2 on one scum team is something of a nightmare, but if they're on separate scum teams I think cross-fire makes it a lot more variable.
In either case, 2 scum kills + 2 delayed scum kills per night and the necessity to maintain a majority over at least the larger scum team, then town needs to have at least 6 people at all times and at least 2 people for each unlynched scum to survive a potential ignition? That doesn't seem quite right, definitely double check that. I don't know that we can afford any mislynches though, in that case. Hopefully, someone that isn't scum has a firestarter, just to bring these kill numbers down a lot.
Actually, I'd wonder if LyLo is even a useful metric in the case that both scum teams have multiple kills/night. MyLo might be a better metric to aim for, just because it's always possible for scum to nuke each other's potential majorities with no town interference.
And here I was wondering if the discussion skipped the random voting sheeping phase. You need the "Vote" after the [x], or you'll just copy mesonoxian's vote.
Not really, no. There are a lot of items in that sack, it's not like Town priorities goes "Staff of Life->Defense Talisman->Everything else", and even if only two out of three scum have night kill immunity, that's still seriously kneecapping the chances of the Firestarter being of any use to Town.
It's not like scum priorities are necessarily firestarter > staff > Talisman > everything else either tho. And I think this is missing the crux of what I was saying which was that it's easier for scum to get both firestarters than to arrange total NK immunity.
[X]Vote Mesonoxian
One of these days I will not sheep vote this guy. Did you know I sheep voted him in my first game, and he turned out to be Scum? THAT SUCKED!
Ooof. Uhh...
Well.
Town? Town me wants Night Power, because that's the vulnerability. Maybe something informative but most information items aren't as clear-cut. So Staff, Shards, Masks.
Scum me is thinking chaos and information denial- As Scum that comes with a nightkill, so that's the Night Power handled there, I think?
I am not that versed in baseline Mafia much less Arch-Demon.
Defensive of some kind as town, staff is best followed by Cage (Cage is good in both directions - get it wrong and you've blockd scum. Get it right and hopefully you've saved town at the cost of stopping their power) followed by talisman. Maybe an amulet if possible, those can be very powerful if you survive. I'm not a good vig shot I'd try to avoid that if possible. Masks are good, if available. Tracker > Watcher normally, though with 4 coins floating around nothing is reliable. (When I asked about the item set I was thinking of two firestarters, an ancient mirror which can do who-the-hell-knows what, depending on who got it, the 4 coins, 5 masks, lack of wands and amulet coins, etc. I was perhaps thinking a bit too much about what it means for poor Comi trying to resolve things, rather than for gameplay. For gameplay it's pretty similar, just with 2 firestarters out there potentially causing all kinds of havoc.)
Scum is variable, as it depends on the team and your relative position in the choices. As demons you can pseudo-coordinate your picks by knowing your pick places ahead of time. Fiends don't know their positions but have plenty of picks to make up for it. Either way: generally get one defensive item and one offensive item each. Mirror chats are very useful for scum, since it can be used to trick and mislead town, or figure out competing scum.
Obviously, I have to argue in the hypothetical that ignores my actual pick, and I can't say I've much experience in either side of this debate.
Given my inexperience I'd be tempted to try and snag one of the mirror shards if at all possible. I know the people on the other side of the shard are likely going to try and manipulate me, but it would be another useful source of information in general as town or as scum. Failing that, one of the defensive items in either case? Obviously, as scum, I'd also follow the team's overall strategy, whatever that may be. I think I'd argue for the above or a Firestarter though, and the scum quick topic would likely make me less interested in getting a mirror shard topic compared to extra night kills. My ideal pick from this particular sack, in all cases, would be the Mystic Cage.
I can't say I don't have romantic dreams of managing a psychically inspired Voodoo Doll kill though. That would be tempting too, depending on how late I was in the sack.
Thanks, that clears that up. Given that, I'd agree that igniting the Firestarter night one is probably the safest option for town, just to prevent multiple rounds of people getting killed off if it ends up stolen.
And here I was wondering if the discussion skipped the random voting sheeping phase. You need the "Vote" after the [x], or you'll just copy mesonoxian's vote.
Personally, if I had a firestarter and was town, I'd probably want to just burn the ignition Night One to make sure it doesn't get stolen from me. Too much kill protection to expect it to get scum, and the amount of coins flipping people about means it isn't great for trying to target scum anyways.
Hm. So you're of the opinion that the possibility of giving scum an extra night kill n1 is worth the risk reduction of fiends stealing it? Seeing as I'm already of the opinion that a town aligned player really shouldn't be using it I'm inclined to agree.
I think the primary utility of a vig is that it's additional town-aligned kill power. A towny with a firestarter would be dousing people they consider to be
suspect, probably the person they consider to be most suspect every night. So whenever ignition happens, every time they're likely to have either gotten scum or doused someone who town would have been very likely to mislynch anyway.
Also I'm going to clarify that I'm talking about the utility of a towny with a firestarter dousing every night, I haven't been arguing for them to ever actually ignite. So the scum deciding to ignite would give a towny with a firestarter the extra kill, not the other way round.
Except in a normal game of mafia there isn't usually a way for scum to steal their ability to night kill, and turn it into an extra night kill with a few limitations relative to their normal night kill.
Fundamentally the issue with using the Firestarter as a town aligned player is the existence of a scum role that can use as many items as they own subject to internal rules of the items in question, and well to put it bluntly if Fiends did not get a Firestarter their ability to do multiple night visits makes them inclined to grab items that might detect them visiting multiple houses alongside well positioned to gather information on which players have items with night actions, which means using a Firestarter has the possibility of having a risk that fiends get to information to narrow down who grabbed it.
Hm. So you're of the opinion that the possibility of giving scum an extra night kill n1 is worth the risk reduction of fiends stealing it? Seeing as I'm already of the opinion that a town aligned player really shouldn't be using it I'm inclined to agree.
I'm not sure a towny shouldn't be using it. Or at least, they shouldn't be obvious that they aren't. If the firestarters are split up, that means that whichever scum team(s) has one can't rely on them, since any given ignition might take out as many of their own group as it does anybody else. That provides an opportunity to find and kill whoever has it and take it out of play. If they can know for sure no one can douse them, they can pretty much pick their moment to ignite their victims, knowing it poses no threat to them to do so.
Hm. Depends on a few factors in each case, for me. As Town it'd be affected substantially by whether or not I'm a Freedom Fighter; if I am, I'd want items that coordinate well, like Staff or Coin (subject to my FF-group's overall strategy, of course). Otherwise it'd vary based on my pick position. In an early slot I'd focus most on denying especially dangerous items to Scum (e.g. Firestarter, Amulet), while in a later one I'd probably focus more on general usefulness (e.g. Staff, Mask). As Scum it'd depend on my team - Demon pick strategy would probably vary substantially based on what exact pick positions everyone got, so it's hard to generalize, though obviously the items I noted as "dangerous" above would be appealing for that reason. As a Fiend I'd likely want to get my hands on a bunch of active items to leverage my ability to use them all at once - with the team having a bunch of picks it'd also be tempting to try and establish some sort of monopoly (e.g. Staff, Coin, one Mask type or another) to simplify Night considerations. Obviously also subject to team strategy overall.
And I think this is missing the crux of what I was saying which was that it's easier for scum to get both firestarters than to arrange total NK immunity.
Is it really? I mean, getting both firestarters would require early picks to avoid Town denying them to the scum, but night kill immunity only needs two to three items of... Seven I think? On phone atm.
Like, assuming a dwarf on their team, they only need a staff of life and a defense talisman, or a cage and a defense talisman, or any other mix of those items for night kill immunity. If they have two items for it then they're *mostly* immune, and when one of them gets killed then they are immune. Night kill immunity is a little easier to get than both firestarters.
@ComiTurtle Just to check does the widget detector divide the list when visiting multiple players into sub lists divided by house, or would it just give one giant list? Also any player with the widget detector would only detect the Ferryman's coin if they themselves are the target correct?
I'm not sure a towny shouldn't be using it. Or at least, they shouldn't be obvious that they aren't. If the firestarters are split up, that means that whichever scum team(s) has one can't rely on them, since any given ignition might take out as many of their own group as it does anybody else. That provides an opportunity to find and kill whoever has it and take it out of play. If they can know for sure no one can douse them, they can pretty much pick their moment to ignite their victims, knowing it poses no threat to them to do so.
Hm. Perhaps, but the issue from my perspective when you combine scum having more items, and being able to coordinate their item selection alongside posting strategies make allow them significantly more able to mitigate the danger, which is before factoring in things like they have very little if any reason to direct the survival strategies outside of players belonging to their faction.
Essentially a quick glance at the species sets gives a bit above ~19% chance of there being a 2 man scum team, and even for a 3 player scum faction the widget detector can consistently inform them if a Firestarter hits 2/3 of their teams, which with a Staff of Life makes the risk of getting hit minor compared to the gain due to scum being split into two factions. So I'd expect them to at a minimum be undecided in public, and keep in mind for fiends with the widget detector can cover all three while pulling doubly duty with say an owl mask to get a list of players who visited.
Still the real kicker is that for fiends the only item really that has a leg to stand on being more worth arguably of comparative worth to a Firestarter is the Widget Detector, and the reason being their ability to use multiple items a night gives the ability to gather up to 5 locations worth of item usage depending on the answer to my question above, or at a minimum from the perspective of survival gives them detection of firestarters targeting them alongside who they need to cover in future nights.
@Yun So to... TLR Scum can do nasty things with a FireStarter or Widget Detector, right? Things like 'and now we know about ALL THE ITEMS!' or 'night three, BOOM! We win Demon/Fiend Losers!'
Full Contents:
1x Amulet of Command with Mirror Shard
1x Ancient Mirror
1x Blade of Demon's Bane
1x Dueling Rose
1x Hell's Herald
1x Item Inspector
1x Mystic Cage with Mirror Shard
1x Rope of Darkness
1x Talisman of Defense
1x Talisman of Defense with Mirror Shard
1x Talisman of Defense with Mirror Shard
1x Token of Exchange
1x Twin World Telehat
1x Voodoo Doll
1x Widget Detector
2x Eagle Mask
2x Firestarter
2x Item Eraser
3x Owl Mask
3x Staff of Life
4x Ferryman's Coin
I think if we are going to really get into the nitty gritty of pick selection we have to look at the sack holistically and take into account some factors (not in any order per say):
A) Faction
B) Access to non-thread communication (Masons, Scum etc)
C) Player's preferred aggression level
A and B are still 2 very different considerations: For example Neutral Factions such as Elves/Dwarves/Gnomes/Orcs may wish to select Mirror Shards with a higher frequency - as having access to back channels increases your odds of survival due to having a private location potentially to bargain - therefore even if theoretically the items with shards are more useful in the hands of town or scum (as I think everything with a shard has a valid use case for both factions) that back channel makes those shard items still a high value pick for neutrals in hopes they hit either another member of their faction of someone who fulfills condition B.
The next tier up for items for 'I want this' are items such as Ferryman's coins, Rope of Darkness, or Mystic Cage (regardless of shard) - these are items that allow a player to exert a level of control over the game - I'd normally add Battle Wands to this set as well as they give instant feedback. I'd still prioritize night powers as a more likely higher pick for town because that's when town (especially non masons) generally lack control due to scum being able to communicate at night. Day Powers are still good but I think the night ones would go first with the exception of maybe Hell's Herald (albeit I think a scum team that picks Hell's Herald and a Voodoo would be very nasty).
Next in the pick order are what I would call 'Ole Reliables' - this is your Staff of Life, Talismans, Masks - they either require more skill (Staves) or are still powerful but without that direct idea of 'control' (Talismans), or require both (Masks). Masks are useful to either side realistically as for town watching people you think are going to get killed can really flip the game on it's head, but Scum absolutely have a use case as they can watch their target and cross reference if they got healed and kill a healer - or track and see what townies are doing and use it to sus out if they're a higher or lower priority target - or even use them for frame jobs. I think scum have slightly less use for Staff and Talismans as compared to maybe last roll due to less general KP in the sack but they might still be useful especially if they didn't get a firestarter.
The lower tier picks (and I say tier as in 'least likely to get picked first' rather than 'these items suck') are stuff like Item Erasers/Inspectors, Exchange Tokens, Widget Detectors - they just aren't as flashy and kinda tie more into the setup itself rather than universally loved and useful picks. Not to say they suck though - Item Erasers if you know someone has a Firestarter or neutering a bus driver can be just as good as killing some of these people if they are messing with your night actions or have you doused.
Firestarters are the pick I think ties most into C - I think there's an arguement that an aggressive townie could early pick one as a denial if they are comfortable in not having a second pick - they just as easily could be like battle wands last game though and nobody cares about them till there's nothing left. I actually think their the most boring to speculate about unless someone steals one and outs the person who picks it or someone is caught dousing (and even then they have to wait till ignition to confirm that) it's not like we have really a way to tell if they're in play - essentially that they are the least useful to speculate Day 1 in particular as the earliest we can even get results is if they douse and ignite N2.
@Yun So to... TLR Scum can do nasty things with a FireStarter or Widget Detector, right? Things like 'and now we know about ALL THE ITEMS!' or 'night three, BOOM! We win Demon/Fiend Losers!'
Hm. Well it is important to keep in mind I'm commenting on item selections based upon early item selection by scum, but there are some nasty combinations, which we don't have any hard way to determine atm. Take it with a grain of salt though as once again I don't know the order of sack selection.
Also this is a bit of a long shot but if you were town and got the 25th spot in item selection, then claiming this will tell us how many demons and fiends there are.
Out of curiosity how exactly are you coming up with the notion that there are 25 items in play? Because we have a 16 players meaning 16 items, a minimum of 2 demons, and 2 fiends giving a floor value of 16+2+4=22. Like at a quick glance the only way to get 25 spots for item selection is for us to be in a block B1 scenario as that would be 16 players +3(3 demons extra items) + 6(3 fiends extra items).
Also at a glance possessed roles do not give extra items, and fiendish aligned races i.e fiendish orc only give an extra item.
Like at a quick glance the only way to get 25 spots for item selection is for us to be in a block B1 scenario as that would be 16 players +3(3 demons extra items) + 6(3 fiends extra items).
He was checking if we were in that scenario, since admitting you were 25th is a small price to pay for the rest of town to know so much more about the game composition.
R Scum can do nasty things with a FireStarter or Widget Detector, right? Things like 'and now we know about ALL THE ITEMS!' or 'night three, BOOM! We win Demon/Fiend Losers!'