Well, after much thought and discussion, I believe the best strategic plays were the following:
1. Vudu forms the townie alliance.
2. Nickmitch survives two votes and self-protects to win.
Really, that's about it. I could probably mention or two other things but they would be minor and all tie into these two big events.
Yes, the townie alliance failed but it wasn't all Vudu's fault. There were many other factors. Let's look at what the townie alliance did in this game. After Vudu survived the vote, he immediately rallied the townies together. Doing so allowed him to find the killer and get him voted out that day. Now, thatguy may argue the effectiveness of doing so but let's see what it did. The death of the killer meant the townies only had to fear one death per night. This allowed them to keep the numbers advantage for a long time and eliminated what could have been a powerful threat later.
The townie alliance also allowed the doctor to learn who the crucial townies were to protect. Now, in hindsight, it may have been better to have the doctor wait on his protections instead of immediately revealing Pale was important. Plus, with the townie spokesman, the townie alliance could have revealed investigation or plans/suspicions through an anonymous source. That didn't happen. Considering Silks would die from non-voting, it's hard to say whether the townies were right to use doctor protections right away or not. Needless to say, by using those powers right away and exposing powerful townies, it put the allaince in a race against time versus the mafia.
While the townie alliance got the killer, the next two days were townie vote outs. That's to be expected with a large number of people all claiming to be townie. Things did turn around for a moment when the Godfather was found. That gave the townies another edge as it prevented the mafia from making a hit, thus allowing the detective to live longer and find another mafia member, Mario. Thus, by the time most of the powerful roles were dead, half the mafia was gone also. In fact, after the Mario vote out, Nickmitch almost was killed the next day which most likely would have ended the mafia's chance of victory.
So, while the alliance fell just short of it's goal, the impact on the game was significant and actually created a lot of positives for the townies. Still, it's hard to ignore the negatives that occured because of it as well. The biggest being lack of direction for the rest of the townies when they died which shouldn't have been the case.
As for Nickmitch, it's hard to criticise his work. It seemed like he was going to go down twice and with it, the chance of a mafia victory. Not only would the mafia lose a powerful role, nickmitch was also the godfather and his death would prevent another hit, further harming the mafia. But he managed to evade death twice and then played his hail mary by self-protecting. It didn't guarentee his win at first but through a bit of chance, it ended up giving the mafia the win. While his hit choice may have been questionable, you have to give credit to a player able to outwit other players twice when they correctly believed they were right in voting him out. He could have used a different strategy with his protections as well but since his method worked, why quibble over various what-ifs?
Most people seem to think that Nickmitch made the best strategic play in this game and I'll probably lock up my last qualification based on that Day 8 event but I will wait a few more hours to see if anyone has anything else to add that might make a better choice or differing view.
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