Sorry this has taken a bit! I started the writeup a week or so ago and lost the unsaved text in an involuntary reboot.
This game was the second playing of a 9 player setup that Micc created for a open setup contest. He won the contest, and this game was a lot of fun to play.
Here’s the game design:
setup
This is a 9 Player Open Setup which contains the following roles:
2 Arsonists
6 Trees
1 Firefighter
Setup Notes:
Arsonists have a single factional night action. They may choose to prime a single target, or to ignite all previously primed targets.
Firefighter blocks the priming of a target ONLY on the night in which they are being primed.
Trees become Tree-stumps upon being lynched, allowing them to continue posting in the thread.
Firefighter, Trees, Tree-stumps, and Arsonists are all vulnerable to being primed and ignited.
Players are not told when they are primed, Arsonists are not told if the priming was successful.
Tree-stumps cannot vote, and do not count as a vote for endgame purposes.
Arsonist Role PM:
[Player Name],
Welcome to Micro 379: Forest Fire!
You hate nature, and trees, and things that are green. The sight of the forest outside of your home fills you with disgust. In fact, if the whole thing went up in smoke and flames you wouldn’t be bothered one bit. Actually…that kind of sounds like a good idea…
You are an Arsonist, along with your partner [Player Name]. You may post in the thread and vote as you see fit. Your additional abilities are listed below.
Abilities:
- Factional Communication: During the night phase you may talk with your partner [Private Topic Link]here[/Private Topic Link].
- Factional Pyrotechnics: Each night phase either you or your partner may take one and only one of the the following actions:
Prime a target for ignition by dousing them with gasoline.
Ignite all previously primed targets by lighting them on fire and thus killing them.
Win Condition:
- You win when only Arsonist aligned players are left alive, or nothing can prevent this from occurring.
Confirmation:
- Please confirm in-thread.
Tree Role PM:
[Player Name],
Welcome to Micro 379: Forest Fire!
Your leaves are green, your roots are long, and the creatures of the forest marvel at your very sight. Your life is simple, and quite frankly, that’s exactly how you like it. Kind of makes you wonder though…how long will things stay that way?
You are a Tree, and aligned with the Forest. You may post in the thread and vote as you see fit. Your additional abilities are listed below.
Abilities:
- Stumped: Upon being lynched you become Tree-stumped. This means you will still be allowed to post in the thread, but you will not have a vote. Being killed in any other way overrides this ability, and will cause you to be removed from the game.
Win Condition:
- You win when only Forest aligned players are left alive.
Confirmation:
- Please confirm in-thread.
Firefighter Role PM:
[Player Name],
Welcome to Micro 379: Forest Fire!
You love nature, and trees, and things that are green. The sight of the forest outside of your home fills you with joy. In fact, if the whole thing went up in smoke and flames you might just consider suicide. Dang, you better keep your eyes open…never know what might happen…
You are a Firefighter, and aligned with the Forest. You may post in the thread and vote as you see fit. Your additional abilities are listed below.
Abilities:
- Fire Prevention: Each night phase you may choose one other player to douse with water. The doused player will be immune to being primed for ignition during that night phase.
Win Condition:
- You win when only Forest aligned players are left alive.
Confirmation:
- Please confirm in-thread.
Game thread is here: Micro 488: Forest Fire
The player list had 4 (and eventually 5) hydras. All of the original 4 hydra heads had a great deal of experience with each other, as well as varying amounts of experience with the non-hydra players. Sometimes I refer to games like this where a majority of players are able to read each other well as “meta-circles”. If the players with a lot of experience playing with each other are a majority and mutually townread each other, then the less familiar players may get lynched by process of elimination (for good or ill).
In this game, one of the hydras in the meta-circle was scum, and one of the less familiar players was their partner.
Regarding my/my hydra’s play in this game, Empire had become scary-accurate at reading me (and he obvtowns himself as town easily most of the time). As a town hydra I started the game feeling confident that I didn’t have to worry about being mislynched. That confidence turned out to be a little premature! My partner, Nachomamma8 was extremely time-crunched and had a scumread on a god-tier player (the Rancid Broderick Drake hydra) because of the way they attacked a player who had a somewhat weak (but still quite town) entrance to the game. Due to the time crunch, I wasn’t able to understand Nacho’s scumread well enough to convey it to the rest of town, and that lack of a coherent reason for the scumread caused suspicion to swirl around us at times. Rancid flipped to scumreading us and pushed that read for a good portion of day 1.
Still, it was a strong town and we easily lynched the scum player who wasn’t part of the meta-circle. Nacho was against that lynch.
If I’m reading people honestly, I have townreads of varying degrees on everyone except for Yuriko. This means I am reading the game wrong. The only thing flipping Yuriko tells me is if I’m reading the game wrong (yay), or if I’m reading the game super super wrong (boo). Saying that I am not willing to lynch Yuriko today or that I don’t want to lynch Yuriko today is probably being overdramatic, I do think she’s the likeliest to flip scum but I’m not ready to flip her right now, especially since a Yuriko townflip would honestly just break me.
He wanted to hunt for the non-obvious scum, and worried that Yuriko would flip town, and then the lack of any other decently strong scumreads would end up being a disaster later in the game.
The scum player in the meta-circle had quite effectively beaten off our day 1 push, and we had reluctantly concluded they were probably town before day 1 ended.
So, on the next game day, we settled on another player outside the meta-circle for the final scum. That lynch was almost a foregone conclusion before they were replaced by Metal Sonic and hitogoroshi in their newly minted Gyre and Gimble hydra.
Metal Sonic had just played a profoundly good and nearly successful scum game in the 2015 Team Mafia series. He had gotten one of my teammates (Nacho) lynched, and while doing so, had convinced us he was mistaken town. After that experience, I was on high alert and it took more convincing than usual for me to back down from my scumread of their slot.
This was the first (and so far only) time I’d played with hitogoroshi, though I’d played in a couple of fascinating games that he designed and hosted. Metal Sonic when replacing in as town back then was quite good at making himself obviously town. But, hitogoroshi was an unknown quantity (though his reputation indicates he’s scary-good at the game). The amount of quality analysis they were able to put into the game quickly rendered them unlynchable, and process of elimination (as well as Metal Sonic and hitogoroshi’s scumcase on Rancid) sold the day 2 lynch target to the rest of town.
One of my favorite parts of this game was the opportunity to play again with Soft-spoken, who had a strong reputation at Epic Mafia. Empire, Regfan and Bbmolla are also Epic Mafia veterans. All the polite gasps of admiration as they shared their EM pedigrees was one of many delightful moments in this game.
The win, itself, was almost anticlimactic. Rancid Broderick Drake had done a fantastic job of mollifying suspicion on Day 1. Although the easy mislynch disappeared thanks to the Gire and Gimble hydra replacing in, I think process of elimination would have eventually led to Rancid being lynched. The game would have been considerably closer, though.
