I nominate Whysper for best replacement. She has replaced in to many games and has been shown to be capable of playing well even when she starts playing after game start.
I nominate @ATNoName for Best Town Performance - Single Player (large game) in Thing Game - Joy Flavor. Almost forgot to post this after waiting the 3 days after the game ended.
He turned things around from being top SR for the day by calmly explaining his actions and then proceeded to get town to vote the actual 2nd wolf. And a couple other quotes from people explain just how great he played!
I nominate the UPick: Return of the Darkness town for Best Town Performance, Group (Large Game). (For reference, thatās Marl, Nightingale, Gorta, Mist, Jane, Zone, Eli, Chloe, Marshal, kat, Arctic, ATNo, and sulit.)
On a macro level, the town collectively played very well, clearing villagers, creating accurate PoEs, making good use of their mechanical actions, and just generally boxing in all the wolves to the point that there was never a point when we felt like we werenāt fighting an uphill battle. As early as day 2, several players had narrow PoEs that included the entire wolfteam, and even more had PoEs that included 2/3 remaining wolves. Furthermore, this wasnāt a case of a few players carrying; nearly every single villager did something notable to contribute to the effort. To prove this point, I will list off something notable for each village slot in the game:
Marl: Marl had high WiM for the entirety of the game, and did a good job of motivating people to not be complacent.
Night: Night correctly poisoned Derps; although he was a PoE slot, Nightās choice to poison him over any of the village PoE slots sealed his fate.
Gorta: Gorta didnāt get misexecuted, and in fact was widely considered consensus town until endgame, despite normally being PoEād.
Mist: Mist correctly cleared several villagers who otherwise could potentially have been misexeād. In particular, she correctly cleared Night before anyone else in the game, and stuck by that read even when others tried to PoE them.
Jane: Jane correctly cased me early on and never let up for the entire time they were alive. Furthermore, they were able to confirm both themself and Chloe by getting a successful protection on Chloe N1; with the other forms of KP in this setup, this allowed town an extra town-controlled kill.
Zone: Although Zoneās reads were largely ignored, they were frequently fairly accurate. He was one of the only people to do in-depth vote analysis for EoD1, and the conclusions he drew were largely correct.
Eli: Eli played substantially out of his meta this game, which represents substantial growth as a player.
Chloe: Chloe was obvious town, and put out high-quality analysis throughout the game. She repeatedly shut down unwarranted tinfoils and did a good job of steering town to kill in the (correct) PoE.
Marshal: Marshal spent basically the entire game correctly casing wolves. On day 1, when she came under pressure, she responded by catching and burying Derps. She was also one of the main pushers on me, and correctly rejected the narrative that Derps was spewed clear.
kat: kat managed to accidentally SHC two villagers with her fake parity check, which is really funny. She also responded extremely well to pressure on her slot, even when frustrated.
Arctic: Arctic played a major role in burying Wind. Additionally, he managed to get himself killed N1 despite not being a āstandard SPKā due to having the most accurate reads of any living players. Had he not died N1 he was likely going to attempt to target Derps, a wolf, with his vigilante shot.
ATNo: Despite replacing into a slot that had openwolved and given up, ATNo did not accept his fate, but instead continued to do his best to solve the game. Although he eventually died to a non-targeted vigilante shot, he managed to avoid being executed despite his slotās previous openwolving.
sulit: On day 2, sulit posted a readlist that literally had the three remaining wolves as the three bottom slots. She was a consistent solving force throughout the game. Also, although it was an accident, her mechanical play successfully outed PKR as scum.
Overall, the collective excellence displayed by both the village team as a collective, and by every individual villager, makes them extremely deserving of this award.
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
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.
Context and lengthy explanation within
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.