How much of this game is luck? If Scene/Greek/Lift hadn't confirmed each other early and instead ZFR/Adalia/Blotunga/Dedo establish governments early. As soon as we had the first 4 Liberal presidents they had a problem.Their Hitler was on the worst spot on the board for them. Then only 1 Fascist got into government all game.

At 3-0 even if a fascist had got into government, he is almost forced to pass fascist policy and not gain credibility.

Well I'm shocked that RWarehall/Ashwald turned out to be Liberal. My early fascist prediction was RWarehall, ZFR, Adalia and Blotunga. Maybe my overly enthusiastic and flawed investigation/analysis of ZFR came across as scummy and threw both RWarehall/Ashwald off. This player must have also have suspected other Libs who were suspecting him as a player and thought it was a fascist attack.

@ZFR I'm guessing you regret not confirming yourself early? If you got confirmed early you could have been trusted later and maybe brought other Fascists in later too.

@Dedo I'm guessing you discarded the L card. Should you have investigated and confirmed Hitler. Why did you vote against the ZFR presidency?

A key moment was ZFR rejecting Chancellorship and myself rejecting the ZFR Presidency. If ZFR gets confirmed it's a different game. And then we have Adalia/Dedo who may get picked on their way back to Greek.

ZFR might have been wise to 'test' one of Adalia/Dedo/Blotunga instead of picking Scene 'in order to stop the risk of trusting only a few players who could include Hitler'

But really I do think luck of the draw played a major role in our win as Liberals.

Wouldn't have worked. Blotunga was almost non-present at that point so going after such a random player while having popular choices would have been a dead giveaway something's up.

See #1368 to get an idea of what I was going for. If you remember I was supporting ZFR initially but once it got clear he is in a bad spot I switched sides and went in the other direction to try and execute the backup plan. Unfortunately it didn't go as I was hoping.

To put a bit of my own input into this, I feel like the fascists got mad unlucky. This is the first game in a good while I've seen where there was never a 3-fascist draw on the first go through of the deck. By the second deck shuffle, the liberals already had a ginormous lead. Not to mention that the table setup didn't help any, with all the fascists at the end of the line and having little chance to muddle things up as president until far later on.

Big thanks to Adalia and Ashwald for hopping in so late yet swinging it hard with the best in spite of having to do a bunch of catching up.

This is a good point. We didn't trust Brasas anyway though because he could have been team with Dedo. They really needed an F president in play after that and accusing Brasas maybe have been the best route to that.

The basic reason was: keep greek termlocked. Otherwise scene chooses greek next and after they pass L we have 2 pretty much confirmed liberals. Would be difficult to pass a government without either if them as chancellor after that.

The secondary was huuuuuuge mistake I made. Zeo knows. But more on that later. Dont like typing on mobile.

Good game everyone. Not surprised with the outcome despite trying as hard as I could. And I almost thought I'd convinced Lift to pick me too...

It would appear the game is very swingy. I really don't think the Fascists had a chance unless greek had randomly picked one of us for the first government (or we'd followed Brasas' advice and got to the end of the board quicker). With us all huddled at the end and no 3F liberal government to cast shade it was always going to be an uphill fight.

I tried my best but cristi's absence and the strong lead basically condemned me to not got into government so the best I could do was discredit scene and greek (though you both did a good job of that yourselves).

I'd probably play another game in the future despite the strong element of luck as it's definitely not as intense or time consuming as Mafia.

Thanks for hosting Zeo :)

Yes, there is a strong element of luck. At a real table, that is offset by more possibilities of reading your co-players (or misleading them, if you're a good poker player). But the luck is also offset by the negative feedback mechanic. The more liberal policies of one kind are on the table, the higher the probability for 3F becomes. Which is something the fascists can work with.

But yes, in this game the fascists were hampered by positioning and by lurking. Stepping in for cristi was mission impossible (as was ashwald's position, but as a liberal that was a less severe problem) and blotunga really was too silent over long stretches to be choosable for anything. Hitler HAS to look liberal and invested in the game, so that people start to trust him.

But yes, for a while I considered testing adalia or ZFR. In the end going with Brasas seemed the better idea. But it was a close call for me.

Good job, guys!

Good job to both of you. Thanks for hosting zeo & wyrm!

OK, I'm back home with access to a laptop, so:

As mentioned, the reason I didn't want to be chancellor was because I didn't want greek's termlock to end. If it did, scene who's next would definitely pick greek, and if they pass an L it would mean 2 confirmed liberals that would be tough to fight against. I even mentioned it in my PRO-CON analysis so my fellow fascists would see it, though of course I put it under PRO.

But there is another reason...

... I thought Lift was Hitler.

Yup. I made a terrible mistake because I must've quickly glanced at the PM from zeo and then my memory played a trick on me. I thought my buddies were dedo and Blotunga and Lift was Hitler!

Only on the 22nd of April, days after adalia joined and around the time dedo was selecting his chancellor, I got a PM from zeo "By the way, if it isn't clear, Adaliabooks is now on your fascist team." which made me go back to check and realize my mistake.

With that in mind, I absolutely couldn't accept the chancellorship. If I did:
_ scene selects greek next and they pass an L policy.
_ Lift Hitler is next and he has to pass an L policy to maintain cred and a chance of winning.

So we have 3 L policies, 2 confirmed liberals and I'm really in a tight spot. If I pass L in my government, that would be 4 L policies. If I pass F, I'd expose myself to kusu, lose cred and give kusu investigation powers which my cause him to expose another F, maybe even Hitler (or to confirm scene/greek even more strongly).

Maybe if I didn't make the Lift-is-Hitler mistake, I'd have played differently and accepted the chancellorship to either gain credit or pass an F policy. Though incidentally, the way the cards were, I'd have done neither. kusu would have likely passed me 2L, next scene and greek would pass an L, and after that Lift would have probably selected kusu (who'd have been confirmed instead of me) for the 4th L and pretty much game-over. So at least my mistake made the game more interesting... I tried declining without raising much suspicion and it went the way it went.

I'm curious to hear what you think of this, because this was the only time I wasn't sure how to proceed. In my situation, would you have accepted chancellorship and risked scene/greek pair gets confirmed. And would you have accepted it if you thought Lift was Hitler?

(to be continued...)

Did you consider picking a conflict with scene? Accusing him of receiving FL and passing F?

To be honest that's what I thought your plan would be. After that you could investigate Brasas and confirm him as L the way you did for some WIFOM potential. scene would have been set against Brasas (dedo is fascist therefore his buddy Brasas whom he confirmed must be fascist too) and with all the conflict it might have been easier for us to push for adalia as president (who could reasonably claim he pulled FFF since either you or scene obviously buried an L).

The way it happened, although you confirmed Brasas and we managed to get a man in that camp, as greek mentioned Brasas was "strictly stronger" than you, so there was no reason to pick you over him.

I think the lack of night chat and lack of plan coordination hurt us here. I wasn't sure what your plan was: did you intend to get into their camp and then have me expose myself so you gain cred, or the opposite did you plan to expose yourself later and drag Brasas down so our camp gains cred.

(to be continued..)

Heh. I deliberated a lot over what pronoun to use, "you" or "we" before finally deciding on the former. I thought it would muddy the waters even more, and maybe even give RW some doubt.

If I only knew you planned doing the same, I wouldn't have made the post. Man, it would have been nice. Sorry I ruined it :(

I'm really curious about your impressions. As Hitler, who did you think your fellow fascists were?

LOL! This reminds me of a very similar thing - initially I also misread my PM and I was under the impression there are only 3 fascists and didn't know ZFR was one, too. But yeah, your mistake is far better :D:D:D

As for term-locking greek - I don't think that would have been that bad since you can't really go around it indefinitely anyway. Sooner or later he'll become available again. Also, that early in the game governments seem to be more likely than not to get approved as there aren't good arguments for negative votes. Sabotaging your own government seems to only stall things for a bit for greek while gaining nothing that valuable in return. If you get elected you can at least pass an F or gain cred so we're not falling too much behind. On the flipside it got all the wrong attention which ended up giving greek even more solid foundations to lean upon.

I honestly have no idea how to play this game so the above may be entirely wrong.

I did but I can't really remember why I decided against it. I think it was again based on the long con hoping to get exposed so I can damage liberals while making fascists + RW look better. Also, scene was never as trusted as he believe he was supposed to be so it was even easier to make him look bad if I vouch for him and then get exposed.

Absolutely, I never intended to be government ever again. Maybe president if things prolonged enough but nothing more. I already passed my F, so I was looking for a way to try and provide a passage for you guys to do the same.

No worries, it's all good :)

I actually tried to make myself look bad when I was constantly nagging about how possible it is for actual bad luck and whatnot. People questioned my why I insist on making sure the bad draw is considered - I was hoping they'd read that as me knowing F policy will be enacted because I'm F and the whole thing to start getting traction. In the end I was given breathing room instead. That annoyed me actively :D

Congratulations Liberals. Good game everyone

Dang, it's a long one, with lot's of texts. I really enjoy this game at first, but after a while I lack of time to catch up with all discussion and have to speed-read and decide what to do with the situation, so my involvement becomes minimal. Finding time to read becomes hard, and to replaying is even harder because of so many text to consider. Sorry about that

Also since the game has ended, I finally can say my confession. Due to getting disconnected with situation, back when I nominated dedo as my chancellor it was actually Random.org because I just have no idea who should be nominated. I only think about the reason after being asked why :p