Day 2 arrived, and we waited pretty eagerly. My gambit had paid off, but at the same time, we were in damage-control mode with Insanolord, which became damage-control for BeautifulShy.
The plan today was to exploit Khushrenada's protection actions as best as possible.
And at first, it seemed not one of you took the bait, though I suppose only two players could take the bait.
Not one player, outside of Khushrenada and the mafia, contacted me for advice or with the goal of forming an alliance, or anything.
If I recall correctly, I started this day out with two pieces of advice to my mafia. First off, the longer Insanolord and/or BeautifulShy go without being voted out, the longer it should take before other members of the mafia face too much skepticism.
I had initially planned for Insanolord to continue pretending he was the investigator, as outlined at the end of my last post. I gave it some thought, and realized the choice wasn't really mine. I presented him with two options: He could continue pretending, like I would do and like I imagine Khushrenada would do in his place, or he could come clean to the players he messaged about having a role, which is what most players would do. He chose the latter, unfortunately.
The second, a much, much more meaningful piece of advice for any player in the mafia: When you are in the mafia, you know you're guilty. But every other player out there? They're innocent. That means any apparent action you take to keep them alive? To them, it has a great chance of being an action to save someone who is a townie, and can go a long way toward building trust, whether it is merited or not.
I followed that second piece of advice the second day. I reached out to nickmitch, and basically said I'd like to try to put together a force to save him, but had little reason to do so. I had already voted for Fatty_the_Hutt in the thread, who was literally a scapegoat. Had I been a townie, I would have certainly voted for Insanolord on Day 2, unless he had contacted me and said he was the investigator, in which case, I would have voted someone who went after him the day before without anything better to go on. I used Fatty just because he mentioned every player participating, and tried to color as an effort to place blame on everyone but himself, calling it a mafia tactic.
To be honest, I wish I could have gone somewhere else with this vote. Players who participate are awesome. Players who discuss things, post, and analyze are why I enjoy this game. But I was the godfather. There wasn't room for that. I needed a scapegoat, and he was the only player posting for whom I could think of an angle of attack.
My move to save nickmitch paid off, and he confided his role and that he didn't investigate the day before. He also confided that he was fairly certain Insanolord was mafia, as Insanolord had messaged him claiming to have nickmitch's role. That's when a new plan was concocted. One to cast doubt on nickmitch and try to turn him into a villain for a day. I had thought the plan was pretty clever, myself. I was hoping it would make the third day easier. We'll get into that later.
The difficult part? Convincing nickmitch that instead of voting out two players who were obviously mafioso, it would be smarter to leave them in the game for a round or two to analyze their actions and get hints on the other members of the mafia. I provided nickmitch's name to Khushrenada as a means of adding trust, and provided Khushrenada's role to nickmitch in effort gain his trust and influence his actions. In doing so, I managed to convince him to leave Insanolord and BeautifulShy to vote out for another day, investigate a player (I gave a list and honestly don't even remember who was investigated) that did not have a role, and take part of a vote for a player (Fatty_the_Hutt) for virtually no reason.
I had set a plan in action, as well, to publicly expose nickmitch the following day. The townie alliance was extremely limited in size. It was me, Khushrenada, and nickmitch. It appeared larger in part because of Mop it up. BeautifulShy and Insanolord were instructed to stay away from this bandwagon in hopes of at least being able to say they didn't vote out a townie.
Unfortunately, this meant I had to hit Khushrenada this night. As Khushrenada stated, we often play together, even on opposite sides. He makes the game more interesting, as I think was clear he feels I make the game interesting as well. I could go through interesting moments throughout mafia, but he hit quite a few of them in his post, and a lot of them came from times we worked in conjunction or against each other, or even that one time we hosted what was probably the most complicated game overall.
All things said, because the pieces of my plan came together and fit so neatly in my mind, with a townie losing the vote, Insanolord & BeautifulShy living for another day, being able to convince nickmitch to investigate a no-role townie, and change his vote, the lack of investigation on day one, because all these things fit together, I had confidence I could spin a narrative together that he was mafia who faked his role because the pressure was on, and then used information I provided to make a hit on Khushrenada. The plan moved forward, the hit was sent, and the mafia lived through Day 2.
Edit note: Don't let Khushrenada fool you, either! There was definitely enough evidence at this point between him and nickmitch that he was well on the way to figuring out my duplicity! He might be acting humble, but if he had been alive in the game by Day 3, if this occurred with someone else as the doctor and Khushrenada as a random townie? There is no way he would have allowed nickmitch to be voted out within his power. I didn't target him because I knew this about him, not at all. More, it was just more elements of the plan that all somehow fit together by chance. In my plan, the doctor had to die. For the plan to work, Khushrenada could not be in the game. Had he not been the doctor, I would not have put a hit on him at any point at this time, and instead, I would have had to form a much different plan that involved being much more discreet.
Topic: Mafia 73: Phoenix Wright: Turnabout Mafia: Endgame thread. (Read 11587 times)
