A lot of people have their own takes on Mafia but generally most follow one of three takes:
1) The Mechanist
They look at the mechanics of the game, limitations of role balancing, predictions of actions at night, reads based on votes so on and so forth. These people tend to be hardest to read in general, because whether they are Mafia or Town they play a mechanical way and tend to always run the same algorithms in their head.
2) The Harvey Specters
They play the men/women not the odds. They think the game comes down to psychology and nothing else. In this game FourtTrouble has been self-confessed to this ideology/perspective. Unlike Mechanists, who tend to front with ego when covering for a scumtell, these types have ego regardless, they only get quiet and humble when they're satisfied they've towntold enough and want to observe others.
3) The Snowballers
Day 1 and Night 1 are a piss-take to this type of player. They observe the game as it goes along, draw both mechanic and Harvey Specter type analysis and conclude later on in an extremely educated manner but are very weak in the earlygame.
I would say that I am a type 4 player I perceive pressure in the game and act according to it.
Mafia isn't won, in my eyes, by stupidity vs cleverness, nor by social ignorance vs suave charm. Both play elements in the dynamic but ultimately it comes down to perceived pressure as well as literal time-based and mechanics-based pressure of either side. Mafia slip the most when they perceive extreme pressure, town tell the worst when they perceive lack of pressure.
This sounds simple and almost as if I am a Harvey Spectre camouflaging myself.
I am not.
What I do is different to reading people and exploiting those reads in itself. I analyse the genuine pressure and then compare it to the real pressure and draw reads, judge my own moves, craft my reads (some of which are sometimes fake) from that to even out the pressure at all times or unfairly push it in favour of my side and agenda in the game.
Coal has perceived very odd bursts of pressure in this game if he is town. He begins encouraging everyone to discuss the theme and roles-to-character links in the first post of the game, yet he does this by preying on Oromagi. When Oromagi doesn't budge and I begin pushing on him, he defends FourTrouble being town to someone else (I think it was Pie) and keeps going onto Oromagi, demanding reads from Oromagi.
This is not pure fluff, it's pressureless aggression however and Coal clearly knew that as all of a sudden he let go of Oromagi. As soon as the cop CC happened, he suddenly was calm, laid back and watching from the sidelines making a remark like 'sheesh now you complicated things'. This implied he hard-read FourTrouble as fake and me as real yet also read FT as hard-town. After Earth outs as miller he insists on not lynching the millers says 'you know why' to FT and makes some odd remark about a guy named Tim on DDO.
Then when I don't relinquish the push on him in the slightest even after the chaos he'd hoped had taken all the flack off of him, he returns to lynch Earth and say 'you know what whiteflame? Wanna bandwagon RM heh-heh?'
This is showing me that pressure is only perceived and displayed in Coal's agenda when Coal feels he is under heat. It also tells me that for some reason Coal perceived absolutley no heat in the triangle between myself, FT and Earth. The reason I can be fairly certain he didn't fake the 'lack of heat' is how he acts so rapidly and obviously when it comes back onto him.
Now, we as town, regardless of Coal's pressure-perception, have at worst revealed a day cop 1x JOAT who just wasted their power on a miller and was CC'd by a night cop.
We gain nothing, fuck all unless we go 'this situation is alright if we keep the pressure going'. Mafia got lucky, the shit hit the fan and town got hit so far, but now that we have the 'shit' in our hands, we can smear it on them and make them squirm. It is up to us to do it, it is up to us to make the scum crumble under the pressure before they have enough time to think.
It's that simple.
so whiteflame I asked you if we bandwagon Coal and he claims good enough, you are next. Are you okay with that or are you scared if he's a strong PR?
It was a connected question, not in two parts.
I will lead this town to absolute victory if you allow me to.
