Warning! Lots o' textAt the beginning of the game, I thought it would be nearly impossible for the third-party to win. Just seemed like the mafia and town had too many inherent advantages.
Silenced trying to rouse votes against me worried me a bit. Enough that I messaged Stratos to see if his offer of a vote was still
available. I asked him to vote against Silenced. I gave him a second choice for lolmonade, but like I told Stratos, that was based on nothing but Khush's reasoning.
I must not have been reading the topic closely enough, since I later realized that Stratos had voted for Silenced already. :p
At the beginning of Day 3, I found out that Steefosaurus had a Neapolitan role. I assumed he was Town, since we had already gotten rid of stevey, who had the Neapolitan role as well. I assumed there wouldn't be two mafia with that same role. But with Khush and Stratos (who I only then knew was 3rd Party) out of the game, leaving just two 3rd Party left, things looked grim. I didn't know much and it seemed like almost everyone except the Mafia didn't have much info either.
But then, like Gandalf the White coming with the dawn at the Battle of Helm's Deep, Silenced came riding with Hope. Being a mason, he knew that lolmoande and me were 3rd party and PMed us. I thought of the possibility of a trick, but it seemed doubtful and since I had to take a real risk at some point, lolmonade and me got together with Silenced to strategize.
So thanks to Silenced, I knew lolmonade was the Killer and there were three 3rd Party again! I already knew that ThePerm was a townie, but Silenced knew he was the Town Vote Changer, so that would be useful for later. And since lolmonade and insanolord both claimed to be vanilla townies, we knew The Browns #1 Fan had to be it.
At that time, I felt that mafia had to be one of the following four: nickmitch, ShyGuy (sorry for the suspicion, pal! Blame Khush!),
oohhboy and Lucario. I figured ShyGuy was the Doctor, but Khush's theory about mafia targeting/protecting itself raised a little doubt.
Lolmonade's idea was that he was on borrowed time, so let's sway the vote to target oohhboy and take out as many as we can while he's the killer. We asked Silenced to see if ThePerm could convince him not to save insanolord from death by inaction, but to change someone else's vote.
Later that afternoon
(realize all this plotting took place on the sacred day of the 19th anniversary of the PS2's US release date or as I best remember it, Majora's Mask Day), I suggested the Killer go after Lucario (for lack of knowing the hierarchy) and that I would investiagte nickmitch and ShyGuy during the night. That confirmed nickmitch as mafia, but since ShyGuy took no actions, I learned nothing more. :p
Day 4 was like Miyamoto had upturned the teatable! ThePerm decided to take out Steefosaurus who should be dead, but was not, Lucario dead but took out The Professional lolmonade. Turned out ShyGuy was not the Doctor and was now dead. And Silenced was offed a second time, now by Saruman, I mean, the Mafia.
Things looked pretty black then. I went from 2 allies to none! Due to the G-Virus, I asked lolmonade, just for confirmation that he had changed sides (not which side). He said he had. At the time, I thought he changed to the Town. I knew nickmitch had the G-Virus as well and figured he would turn to 3rd Party or Town upon his death.
So I reached out to Steefosaurus. I thought it was likely he had become 3rd Party, but wanted to see what he would say. I think he was a little confused about what made roles change and how the viruses worked. He didn't pepper BeautifulShy with a hundred questions and read and reread the rules and roles topic like I did.
So I finally just laid out my stragety for winning. Vote out nickmitch (despite various warnings from nickmitch and the Encriptor). I thought or hoped Steef had some killing abilities, so I asked him to target ThePerm since oohhboy couldn't harm anyone and that would get rid of the player that can alter the vote. I invesigated oohhboy and steef just to confirm things. That lead me to discover that Steef was the jailkeeper (and then reading up on what the JailKeeper did) and nothing on oohhboy because Steefosaurus protected him that night?
Day 5 showed it was two versus two, so my strategy was to vote out oohhboy and jailkeep lolmonade to keep him from killing us. But depending on how the mafia voted, that could throw things off. Steef voted first and then I waited to vote until the last minute seeing what the mafia would do. Turns out they didn't vote.
Then it was just making really, really, reeaaaallllly sure that Steefosaurus jailkeeped lolmonade during the night since he was
leaning towards oohhboy. So Steef saved me from the last mafia hit and it was on to victory!
This was a crazy and always interesting game. I've never went high and low as many times in one game before. And without Khush to help, I had to up my game!
Many thanks to BeautifulShy for answering my endless questions!