I second this nomination. (Best town performance, group - UPick: Return of the Darkness)
I had not been in the game the whole time but while I was present and during reading both pre-flip and post-flip, the town collectively worked out how to bury the wolf team and not really give us room to be able to get out of it.
Arete mostly touched on individual reasonings which I too had seen
town has been playing really well here recently
itās kinda scary
if i didnt play in SFoL 66 i totally wouldve nominated that game for the town team performance award
Lets see if it continues.
We donāt want a repeat of Unimeko 2 and SFOL 63 for starters. Or Wild West FM for that matter.
or Shortnight 2
Althoguh tbf itās because the scumteam was really good
Legacy Award Nomination (the game was still in 2020, sad):
Best Scum/Neutral Performance (Individual) - Whysper - Countries FM
You could also nominate this for:
Best Fakeclaim - Whysper - Countries FM
Given the fact Whysperās fakeclaim strategy was the primary reason for her success. Iām nominating her for the former, but I think both fit.
This needs some context.
Whysper replaced into the game at the start of day 3, into a lowposting, flaking mafia slot. The mafia had been doing decently until that point, but as soon as Whysper replaced into the game, they lost two members to a NK multi-kill, bringing their numbers down to 3/6. Most vocal townies had been killed by then, but not all of them, and the game was far from over. It definitely still could have gone either way.
Whysper immediately made her slot look better than her previous slot holder did. While she was still in most peopleās PoEs, few were willing to kill her first. The fact one of her mafia partners had significant thread influence and had pocketed several villagers definitely helped, but nevertheless, Whysper posted well enough to dodge the villagersā suspicion for the most part.
In the mafia chat, she proved cooperative and ready to help out the mafia team, but she does not really shine until day 5.
On day 4, the NK had been voted out in a kamikaze effort by one of Whysperās partners after the wolves rolecopped said NK. The partner then died to the NKās bleed from day 3, putting the wolves at 2 remaining members.
The problem was that Whysperās only living partner after that, min, was secretly bled by said NK at the end of day 4, and would die at the end of night 5, leaving Whysper alone against several remaining townies - assuming she would survive day 5.
Whysper came up with a plan to leverage this situation to the fullest possible extent. Previously, she had claimed 1-shot bulletproof when asked about her role, after some discussion in wolfchat. The claim was sketchy, but believable enough given the lack of flipped townies with bulletproof vests. However, Whysper invented a scheme to spin that claim as a fakeclaim. Her āreal claimā would be a backup vigilante.
She decided to use minās impending death as proof of her claim. She and min agreed in wolfchat that min should not claim they were bleeding, to make this scheme succeed. Since no townies knew min was bleeding, minās inevitable night 5 death would be completely unexplained, since the NK did not claim to have bled them while they were still alive. Min had previously fakeclaimed hider, which Whysper also used to her advantage, asking min to hide behind her on night 5 in the day 5 main thread. After all, hiding behind a bulletproof is a good idea from a mechanical perspective.
Then, come day 6, min is dead and flipped mafia. Whysper announces herself as the backup vigilante who shot min to test their hider claim. After all, if they were a real hider, they wouldnāt have died from the shot, and would be confirmed to Whysper - giving the town a clear to work with. Instead, there was a dead mafia, and Whysper was credited with the kill.
The villagers, not knowing that min couldāve died through other means, bought the story hook, line, and sinker. From their perspective, there was no other explanation for minās death, and Whysper leveraged this information disadvantage perfectly by inventing a plan based around it alongside min in wolfchat. It was a plan that spanned multiple days, but effectively made Whysper lock clear to the remaining townies. After all, if Whysper did NOT kill min, then how did min die?
However, Whysperās performance did not end there. Now the last remaining wolf in a final 5, she had to win the game for the mafia. And she was facing difficult odds despite the fact she made herself lock clear to the town. Among the other townies still alive was a confirmed mason, a mechanics cop previously pocketed by Whysperās partner, and a player whoās been pushed by mafia. All three of them were on varied levels of clear depending on who you would ask.
And Whysper participated in yeeting the mechanics cop.
Then she went to final 3, killing the mason along the way.
But her job was not done. Whysper still needed to get a misyeet. One player she was in final 3 with, Nightingale, was not lock clear and arguably her best target for pushing because of that. The other, an_gorta_pratai, had been pushed by wolves extensively, and his role claim (a role that checks for tailored flips) was unique enough to seem towny.
But Whysper was not interested in going after Nightingale, at least not by simply arguing Nightingale isnāt lock clear and then voting him.
She was interested in giving a convincing final 3 performance. Even though some may think she had the game in the bag unless she openwolfed, she still wrote posts like these.
And however convincing you may find them while reading them now, the players in the final 3 definitely found them convincing.
Notice that wolf!Whysper had just called village!gorta more likely mafia than Nightingale, and it prompted a āreally good postā response from gorta. That is how convincing she was to the remaining players. But that was not the only post Whysper wrote that day.
Gorta has absolutely no doubt Whysper is town.
Then, Nightingale enters the thread.
Nightingale is convinced Whysper is not the wolf, too. Nightingale does not even bring up the possibility. And this is not an example of them being bad at the game of mafia, not by a long shot, although some may wish to say that. Whysper was just that convincing, from the moment she claimed to this final 3.
Nightingale, despite acknowledging that wolves had pushed on gorta, would sooner believe that Gorta is a lost wolf than that Whysper is mafia.
That is how compelling Whysper was.
And then, the game promptly ends.
Whysper pulled through a final 5 and final 3 while making herself seem so towny none of the remaining townies even considered a world with her as mafia. Not even in a single post. Through a combination of mechanical and social play, she put herself in the best position I have ever seen a wolf put themselves in. Her victory was by no means going to be easy, and yet she made herself look like it was predestined.
Gonna throw out one of these for @GEYde while im at it
flavor in their setups is usually really funny
we need more flavor appreciation
Legacy Nomination:
Best Scum Performance (Group) - Ritual Mafia 4 - Alice/KyoDaz/Wazza (starting scum) + Marshal (converted D2) + EVO (converted d3) + katze (lost wolf)
This doesnāt require a writeup as long as the one I made when I nominated Whysper. Wolves controlled this game from start to finish. Even when the villagers happened to be correct, the thread influence of the wolves was too strong, and they pulled the game back into where they wanted it to be.
The fact some of the best wolves on the playerlist randed wolf definitely helped them, but I think this still deserves a nomination just due to the sheer dominance the wolfteam had. They controlled the entire game, and this is no exaggeration. Nothing happened without them orchestrating it. You may notice that two wolves have flipped, but both times it suited the wolvesā agenda, since they were sacrificing their members for mechanical benefits.
After sacrificing Kyo for mechanical benefits and converting Marshal day 2, one of the louder town voices, there was a massive snowball effect. From day 3 onwards, most of the analysis in the thread was done by wolves, and they spent a large amount of time meming in the scumchat about how wrong the townies were. It was understandable! Most townies had wolf-infested towncores. No wonder they did when most people doing the solving and analysis were wolves pretending to be solvy townies. One of the highlights of their thread dominance was how they killed a townie on night 2 and then proceeded to debate in the thread whether the townieās last will was fake or not, when they had TMI on it being real. In hindsight, it looks like they are openwolfing and getting away with it scot-free.
From day 3 onwards, the game continued as smoothly as before. Even though in LyLo one of their members was voted by a villager, they had no trouble shifting the momentum and voting out the final villager, sealing the game in a wolf victory.
Ritual Mafia 4 was one of the most onesided games I have ever seen. You could say town lost the game at rand, but really, the wolfteam made it onesided. No game starts onesided.
Iāll nominate Mashal for Best Town Performance (small game) for her performance in Sonic the Heghog FM (played offsite on MU in our subforum.) While her first few days werenāt anything special, she turned up the dial and managed to box in both of the remaining scum once i died. She managed to narrow the scumteam down so much that it was near impossible for scum to win even after she was nightkilled just before final 3, letting gorta and whysper quickly cleanup the last mafia.
