TWG CXVI Postgame

[Kaiveran]

Town Wins!

A# Minor (Normal Townie, axed Day 1)
BlackDragonSlayer (Red Assassin, fission mailed Night 2)
ThatHiddenCharacter (Red Ward, stabbed Night 2)
XiaoMigros (Red Cold Target, stabbed Night 1)
TheZeldaPianist275 (Blue Ward, axed Day 2)
SpecsFlyer17 (Blue Assassin, fission mailed Day 2)
The Musical Poet (Blue Hot Target, survived to the win)
threalmathguy (Normal Townie, stabbed Night 1)
davy (Blue Cold Target, axed Day 0)
Toby (Red Hot Target, stabbed Night 2)


The "Hot Sheet" for this game is now available to view.
The Assassins may reveal their private communications with me at their own discretion.

–

So how'd you like the setup?

It worked out to be balanced in theory, and it felt like every side fought hard for the win; it was just a matter of who edged out who in the end. Sure there was a bit of prisoner's dilemma on that last Night, which is always an unfortunate position to be in, but given the amount of strategizing and information trade that information every move, it's definitely an improvement on most previous ideas within the "Royal Setup" concept – that is, where the Wolf-like faction(s) have to hunt for hidden information that the Human-like faction has. A lot of previous such setups have bad breaking strategies, and the original "Assassin in the Palace" optimal play is literally to just shut up axe someone randomly every Day to avoid leaking info – which, like, might as well shoot craps at that point!

Still, I think there are some weird incentives it could do without. A change I've been thinking of is to have Color-only flips, but have the Assassins themselves learn the full identity of whoever they kill. That way, the Human/Town team can focus more on Assassin-hunting and have the Wards act as more of a bonus, without locking the Assassins out of the loop wrt. what they actually need to do to win.

[A# Minor]

inb4 everyone else


... anyways, that was fun! yey for the first human victory since this revival!




also lol, I was axed

[SpecsFlyer17]

Really fascinating game, thanks for hosting.

I think it was balanced. The concept of "dying as a human not being bad" made it interesting. Sorta hard to play as an Assassin, as like davy mentioned, defending yourself could paint you as an Assassin.

I LOVED the davy lynch on D0. He was my Cold Target, so it essentially gave me a free shot on night 1. Plus, it was messy, it painted a ton of the last minute voters as suspect, and it removed a player who was super involved and had great insight. That was a bad lynch imo.

Unfortunately, I whiffed on my N1 kill and hit Xiao, who was BDSs Cold Target. I played it off as "Oh the Blue Assassin must've just killed his own Cold Target", but that was actually me. BDS, why didn't you go after Xiao on N1? You went after Math instead. Just Assassin hunting? It worked out for you though.

On D2, I panicked in my brain when TZP threatened me, but I kept it off the keyboard and I'm glad I did. Then, I panicked again when TZP got all the votes, but I think I did a decent job of not rushing to his defense. Good plan though. Granted that's about the time I had to go AFK, so it may have been a fortune time to stop talking haha. Anything I said probably would've just incriminated me as TZPs Assassin.

N2 doomed me, but not sure I could've helped a whole lot of it. BDS went after his Hot Target, which Toby had claimed. I probably should've taken Poet's claim at face value and just went for her, but I got greedy and went Assassin hunting. Taking out THC and BDS ultimately doomed me, as the Ward-Hot-Assassin combo was unwinnable. Curious to see how a Specs-TZP-BDS-THC D2 would've played out. Being the lone Assassin in a 3 player day phase with your Ward is a bad spot to be.

If Insta's were in play, I may have tried to prey on Poet's rookie status with a "If you're really the hot target, vote for yourself, u wont m8" or something stupid like that to force an insta. But that's desperation play and I bet she's better than that haha.

Really fun game, thanks again everyone. I'll definitely stick around the forums for future games. Its super cool.

[SpecsFlyer17]

Oh also, BDS being the other Assassin caught me by surprise. I was sold on you being town. Curious of if you felt the same about me.

[A# Minor]

I had a feeling that you were the assassin, but I never would've suspected BDS

[The Musical Poet]

looks like I won the award
luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing

[SpecsFlyer17]

Also this killed me:

A#: 
BDS: "this is not a satisfactory response"

[A# Minor]

looks like I won the award
luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing

granted to you by The One and Only A# Minor ™

[A# Minor]

Also this killed me:

A#: 
BDS: "this is not a satisfactory response"

SAME XDDD


basically half of the things you guys said about me made me laugh way too hard

[The Musical Poet]

I just realized that I'm the only person alive. so that's very cool

I didn't really like BDS's vague descriptions of himself which led me to pm THC. although he never responded

[SpecsFlyer17]

looks like I won the award
luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing

Not only you, you won it for the entire town!

[The Musical Poet]

Not only you, you won it for the entire town!

No no, I meant that I was the only person that didn't do anything to help Town and still won.

[ThatHiddenCharacter]

I just realized that I'm the only person alive. so that's very cool

I didn't really like BDS's vague descriptions of himself which led me to pm THC. although he never responded

I honestly had no idea how to respond to it.

[The Musical Poet]

I honestly had no idea how to respond to it.

but at least respond instead of leaving me on read

[BlackDragonSlayer]

Specs, what the h e c c were you thinking with the night kills?? The reason I didn't nightkill Xiao is because Xiao was a strong D1 lynch candidate; I had no reason to try and waste a nightkill on Xiao for that reason (my suggestion of "only desperate red assassin would've nightkilled cold target Xiao" was a surprisingly honest one). Plus, there was very little reason not to go after your corresponding hot target the night after that, unless you assumed that Toby and Poet had lied about which color of hot target they actually were and the other assassin was somehow operating under the same belief.

The reason I claimed normal human was specifically to try and force you to claim (I had no reason to claim assassin when you still hadn't claimed yet, in the off-chance either TZP or Toby were lying about their roles deliberately to try and get an assassin to claim and screw things up). If you had claimed (thus confirming all information in the game) I would've explicitly approached you in PMs to tell you that I was planning to nightkill Toby (and in fact, I put my nightkill on Toby before he even claimed hot target ). You claiming normal human meant to me there was still a chance TZP could've been the assassin, and if I had switched my kill to TZP on that hunch we wouldn't even have gotten to the final day phase.

At best you would've hit the assassin directly and gotten the slim chance of convincing the remaining players to hit the opposite ward (1/3 chance of lynch going in your favor vs. 1/2 chance of winning final KitB with 2 assassins/2 wards), but that was a gamble that was much more risky than just hoping the other assassin realized that hitting the hot targets was the smartest way to go (which is the strategy I ran with once most of the cards were on the table). Hitting both hot target at least guarantees an assassin wins rather than town.

I genuinely thought davy was an assassin (and I stand by the fact that his plan would've played directly into the assassins' hands; letting assassin davy run free with that plan would've been devastating for me. Plus, if davy was an assassin and survived the day, there's a good chance we would've just nightkilled each other the first night ) after he started pushing back so hard against my initial response to his plan, and was surprised when he flipped as the blue cold target. After that, I killed mathguy on the off-chance he was the assassin and so that his presence wouldn't get in the way of pushing a Xiao lynch. With the A#/TZP lynch I figured it was an assassin/ward situation and A# didn't have any better choice except to desperately hope that voting for herself caused people to spontaneously switch to a different lynch (Toby?).

also when thc pm'd me suggesting he was my ward i just stared blankly at the screen, completely at a loss for words, for like 30 minutes


As for balancing of the game for potential future runs, I have a few suggestions:
- Either add one more normal townie or get rid of one, to help mitigate the possibility of a final three scenario like the one we got where one player is confirmed and lynching either of the other two results in a town win (final lynches need to be dramatic, y'know? )
- Possibly make it to where wards only kill their corresponding assassin if they're killed by the other assassin. The dynamic of people openly suggesting that they should be lynched, knowing full well they're a normal human, has interesting potential, but ultimately makes it much more likely for town to willfully pursue sub-optimal lynches by getting distracted by that fact.