Gambits

[Helz]

So this is just some ramblings on how I view Gambits.

In my opinion the value of a gambit is always established in its prep work. Simple questions to ask yourself may include:

What information will this gain my team?
How should I interact to draw this information out?
What risk does it bring to my team?
How can I limit that risk?
What is my 'escape plan' to reveal it was just a gambit and avoid a lynch?
What can I do prior to executing the gambit to increase its value?

One thing that can make a large difference is seeding. I have seen this done very effectively to both increase its chances of drawing out information as well as to 'escape' pressure and reveal it was a gambit. For an example:

I'm having trouble shaking the feeling that Jake is scum.
Not that he couldn't be town. But his interactions with Tom look really bad.
Sheriff may be required to sort that players alignment.

That post looks innocent enough but it sets up a play for me to fake claim as Sheriff with a peek on someone. I could reference it to show 'See, I seeded here softing I was sheriff and would check Jake. I checked him last night and he came back Mafia.'

Then after the gambit has run its course I could point to it again and say "Read the first word of each line, I'm Not Sheriff. it was a gambit."

Using seeding effectively can both prevent a misslynch as well as increase the faith others will place in your fake claim.

I would also recommend thinking through what specific behaviors would indicate which alignment if you are counter claiming or voicing a fake night action prior to executing.

Imo the best gambits are those that do not focus the entire day chat on you or put you in a 1v1. The more subtle the better and in general I avoid them. In my experience the majority of the time someone pulls them it just outs a TPR or causes a misslynch. I doubt there is a single player on this site that can name a time they have seen me shut down chat and place myself in a 1v1 with a fake claim.

[OzyWho]

Idk how people got the stomach for gambits tbh. I could never do it. I'm very limited as a player ngl.


I know that there are communities out there who frown upon any sort of lying whatsoever:

Eliminate (Lim) All Liars is a longstanding mantra in the mafiascum.net community.

^^How common is this policy/principle/attitude across the wide world of FM communities?^^

[Marshmallow Marshall]

I used to limit myself to "does the potential reward for my team outweight the risks for my team?", and I'm pretty sure many people who ask themselves any questions before getting into a gambit do the same. Gambit optimisation planning is a relatively rare additional step that makes for very advanced plays, and that's an interesting path.

Focusing the entire chat on you and you only is a terrible idea, because you lose a lot of information. Creating a thunderdome between you and another player is an interesting way to gather information, though: it forces people to pick sides and to reveal things they sometimes do not want to reveal. What matters is that you cancel the entire gambit on the very day it started, and that you do not lie about having a red check on someone or stuff like that.

[DJarJar]

@Oberon

Shall I post out the whole alphabet for you? :P

[Renegade]

I've seen these so called "gambits" aka "big brain plays" fail spectacularly rather than be successful so I always vote to eliminate them.

[Marshmallow Marshall]

@Oberon

Shall I post out the whole alphabet for you? :P

Lol no thx its ok he dnt ned tht ...

I've seen these so called "gambits" aka "big brain plays" fail spectacularly rather than be successful so I always vote to eliminate them.

If you ask yourself Helz's questions from the OP, you should be good. Even the "is it going to hurt my team more than it will help it" usually is good enough to prevent shitty gambits. The issue is that some people ask themselves no questions at all and just go "it'll be fun" and "what could ever possibly go wrong?"... and then, it goes wrong and isn't fun at all.

[theoneceko]

forget all this serious talk,, playing like a jester is the best strategy every game no matter WOT!!!

UWOWU HEWWU!!!

[Voss]

I also nearly always vote for liars.

[Oberon]

Sometimes anti-town is just what you need. :P

[Oberon]

Example. Town is retarded and doesn’t believe me X is scum. So I fake claim Sheriff and get them lynched and they flip Mafia. A very successful gambit :P

[Oberon]

Idk how people got the stomach for gambits tbh. I could never do it. I'm very limited as a player ngl.


I know that there are communities out there who frown upon any sort of lying whatsoever:^^How common is this policy/principle/attitude across the wide world of FM communities?^^

That’s just plain dumb.

[Oberon]

I've seen these so called "gambits" aka "big brain plays" fail spectacularly rather than be successful so I always vote to eliminate them.

Sounds like you’re afraid someone may have a bigger brain than you.

[Helz]

Example. Town is retarded and doesn’t believe me X is scum. So I fake claim Sheriff and get them lynched and they flip Mafia. A very successful gambit :P

If you think about that situation you are gambling your 'read' against all the other players reads at the risk of outing the real sheriff, being wrong and misslynching a townie which would probably mean your lynch the next day (resulting in 4 dead town when you include night kills), and interrupting the progress every other town player is trying to make that day.

You basically have to act from the position of both being certain you are right as well as feeling you are a better player than every other townie in the game for that to make sense and your risking loosing 4 dead townies + outing the real sheriff for the 'value' of maybe lynching 1 mafia.

All in all I would say if you are confident in your read that a player is scum its more appropriate to advocate that read to the town. If they refuse to listen it may be more of an issue with your ability to push a read rather than their ignorance; and your growth as a player in communication would directly improve your odds of winning in this situation.

[Oberon]

It’s not always your fault for people not believing you, and it’s easy to blame the person voicing the read rather than accepting that maybe you should get better at reading people. If no other means is available to you to lynch a scum, then you take that chance that the sheriff doesn’t out themselves to counterclaim you and if they do, you just need to be more convincing than they are.

I’ve seen situations where even a 100% solid mechanically confirmed red check didn’t get people lynched, and that’s not the sheriff’s fault. That’s just people being dumb and easily misled.

[Oberon]

Also, a sheriff being outed may be preferable to the town over say the town constantly mislynching person after person for no reason.

[Marshmallow Marshall]

forget all this serious talk,, playing like a jester is the best strategy every game no matter WOT!!!

UWOWU HEWWU!!!

Aye, playing for everyone's fun including yours is the most important. That involves at least trying to win. Fun also lies in skillful plays and theoretical discussion, though, but that's not mandatory if you don't enjoy it!

Sometimes anti-town is just what you need. :P

noooo lol

That’s just plain dumb.

No it's not. It's pretty rare town lies are pro-town - at least mechanical lies. Lying on your reads to draw conclusions from people's reactions to them is perfectly valid everywhere and won't get you scumread (I did it on MS, it worked). It's not too restrictive and prevents the meta from going into INFINITE WIFOM REEEEEEEEEEEEEE like what had happened to us. Also, you don't have to antagonize anyone who has a different point of view .

[Oberon]

If you lynch everyone who lies, you risk lynching people pulling off a gambit. In any case there are legitimate town reasons for lying. You do not need to tell the truth simply because you are town. Paging Dr. @blinkskater

[Oberon]

Aye, playing for everyone's fun including yours is the most important. That involves at least trying to win. Fun also lies in skillful plays and theoretical discussion, though, but that's not mandatory if you don't enjoy it!

noooo lol


No it's not. It's pretty rare town lies are pro-town - at least mechanical lies. Lying on your reads to draw conclusions from people's reactions to them is perfectly valid everywhere and won't get you scumread (I did it on MS, it worked). It's not too restrictive and prevents the meta from going into INFINITE WIFOM REEEEEEEEEEEEEE like what had happened to us. Also, you don't have to antagonize anyone who has a different point of view .

The last reply was directed at the people Ozy was talking about not Ozy.

[Renegade]

If you lynch everyone who lies, you risk lynching people pulling off a gambit. In any case there are legitimate town reasons for lying. You do not need to tell the truth simply because you are town. Paging Dr. @blinkskater

Honestly you two have recently had gamethrowing gambits that have blown up spectacularly for your team.

They are dumb and makes it miserable to play a game.

[Renegade]

Always lynch gambits end of story.

Then they will stop gambiting.

[Oberon]

That’s the essence of gambits! If they always succeeded they wouldn’t be called gambits. High risk, high reward. :P

[Oberon]

Always lynch gambits end of story.

Then they will stop gambiting.

Nope, I’ll keep gambiting to drive you mad

[Helz]

Nope, I’ll keep gambiting to drive you mad

I didn't make this thread just for you and I am not asking you to change the way you play. But you really should put more thought into the gambits you pull. There are ways to do them that mitigate the damage to your team and that more effectively draw out useful information. I kinda feel like you do not even have an objective half the time when you make claims. That you literally just do it for giggles regardless of how that impacts the fun of the other players.

The boy that cried wolf is a thing and your probably gona be pissed when you really are a sheriff with a red check and everyone blows you off because you have abused their trust for so long.

[Oberon]

I didn't make this thread just for you and I am not asking you to change the way you play. But you really should put more thought into the gambits you pull. There are ways to do them that mitigate the damage to your team and that more effectively draw out useful information. I kinda feel like you do not even have an objective half the time when you make claims. That you literally just do it for giggles regardless of how that impacts the fun of the other players.

The boy that cried wolf is a thing and your probably gona be pissed when you really are a sheriff with a red check and everyone blows you off because you have abused their trust for so long.

I figured that out, no worries. I agree my claim last game was a little dumb but it wasn’t really a gambit, I figured I was probably going to get lynched and figured what the hell may as well out a few TPRs. I was very surprised when I didn’t get lynched, cuz I REALLY wanted to die

[Oberon]

Gambiting can be very successful. What is bakermir’s claim last game if not a gambit? It’s 100% anti-town if there is an actual Caroler, and 100% anti-scum in how it worked. One game blinkskater outed the entire scum by... some weird FPS I still don’t really fully get that involved lying out of his ass about roles in a hidden setup. 100% anti-town and yet 100% successful (he used it to create a PoE that included all of the scum).

The sheriff example I gave is literally yet another gambit that can be very successful. If people are stupid, and my only way to lynch scum is to lie about my role and push them, I WILL do it.

[Helz]

I figured that out, no worries. I agree my claim last game was a little dumb but it wasn’t really a gambit, I figured I was probably going to get lynched and figured what the hell may as well out a few TPRs. I was very surprised when I didn’t get lynched, cuz I REALLY wanted to die

Oh no, Last game it worked out well for you. You strongly disrupted town conversation and never got lynched. My last comment was thinking about that time you claimed to be a neutral and it got you lynched. I think I have only played 2 games with you ever where you pulled a fps claim.

Im just a little surprised your not more interested in the conversation. Gambits seem to be the thing you love most about Mafia and this is a thread talking about how they can be used more effectively.

One of the tells I would look for would be if a player maintains exclusive survival focus. Or the difference between arguing you are wrong vs seeking explanations for why they would be red checked (Like a bus driver or a framer). Its also damning if they just shut down and quit speaking when they feel the jig is up.

[Helz]

Gambiting can be very successful. What is bakermir’s claim last game if not a gambit? It’s 100% anti-town if there is an actual Caroler, and 100% anti-scum in how it worked. One game blinkskater outed the entire scum by... some weird FPS I still don’t really fully get that involved lying out of his ass about roles in a hidden setup. 100% anti-town and yet 100% successful (he used it to create a PoE that included all of the scum).

The sheriff example I gave is literally yet another gambit that can be very successful. If people are stupid, and my only way to lynch scum is to lie about my role and push them, I WILL do it.

That was a very good gambit. It prevented your team from claiming the PR and also convinced them that they knew all PR's. It also semi-confirmed to him that you guys had in fact killed a PR if he thought that through.

Honestly I pull gambits in almost every game I play. I am just obsessively subtle and do them without making overt claims so players rarely recognize what I am up to.

[Oberon]

Go a bit deeper with your gambit. Seed that you’re fakeclaiming Sheriff and get one of your teammates lynched. Then say you’re not actually Sheriff. And then waltz to victory mislynching Town after Town.

[Oberon]

I’ve never thought of seeding, but couldn’t scum pull off the same thing and later say, see I seeded it?

[Voss]

I’ve seen situations where even a 100% solid mechanically confirmed red check didn’t get people lynched, and that’s not the sheriff’s fault. That’s just people being dumb and easily misled.

I don't think this is relevant to gambits. Perhaps it's more related to not acting optimally in mechanically confirmed situations?

[Helz]

Go a bit deeper with your gambit. Seed that you’re fakeclaiming Sheriff and get one of your teammates lynched. Then say you’re not actually Sheriff. And then waltz to victory mislynching Town after Town.

You are describing a deep wolf play. I personally favor them but I am with the 'hard busses are totally cool' school of thought. There are many great players who argue against bussing.

I’ve never thought of seeding, but couldn’t scum pull off the same thing and later say, see I seeded it?

For sure. It just adds substantial credit to your claim in that if it was a gambit you would have had to plan to do it in advance. Its not a bad move for players to seed their roles although they have to be careful to do it in ways that others won't pick up on.

[Renegade]

This is not on topic but I'm not getting notifications for quotes of me in this thread... ??? ugh

[Helz]

Further on your point of scum seeding a claim- Its not often you will see that. Scum will usually avoid committing to a role claim because one town flip could box them out. I have done it as scum but when I did I had seeded 2 or 3 roles I could reference back to later.

[Oberon]

I don't think this is relevant to gambits. Perhaps it's more related to not acting optimally in mechanically confirmed situations?

You’re right. Incidentally you were the Sheriff in my particular example.

[bakermir]

Oh no, Last game it worked out well for you. You strongly disrupted town conversation and never got lynched. My last comment was thinking about that time you claimed to be a neutral and it got you lynched. I think I have only played 2 games with you ever where you pulled a fps claim.

Im just a little surprised your not more interested in the conversation. Gambits seem to be the thing you love most about Mafia and this is a thread talking about how they can be used more effectively.

One of the tells I would look for would be if a player maintains exclusive survival focus. Or the difference between arguing you are wrong vs seeking explanations for why they would be red checked (Like a bus driver or a framer). Its also damning if they just shut down and quit speaking when they feel the jig is up.

Yeah this is a good thing to consider.

That was a very good gambit. It prevented your team from claiming the PR and also convinced them that they knew all PR's. It also semi-confirmed to him that you guys had in fact killed a PR if he thought that through.

Honestly I pull gambits in almost every game I play. I am just obsessively subtle and do them without making overt claims so players rarely recognize what I am up to.

Oberon's gambit would be considered NAI as he have done it in the switcher game before too. Your observation is correct though as I certainly believed in what I thought to be true but I failed to put enough time or effort to help other townies see to it.

I am gonna stray offtopic a bit here because I believe gambits can be done right but only if you have a good grasp of the site meta or your name is Helz or Frinckles. My gambit failed because town lost(they didn't follow my vote on Oberon/SJ) so the end result is not what I wanted but I did expect it since I did semi quit that game as being on cold turkey IRL and how the game was progressing. Also to be fair; I don't have a good knowledge of Sc2Maf meta and history..

I think it all depends on the circumstances, how the game been progressing. In many mafia games I have found at least one or two scum being involved in dead air wagons, sometimes on D1 and most often on D2. I think this comes from how town!pov players having to combat their fears and paranoia while scum can fake such emotions and can not be distinguished one from another that easily on D1. Change in tone and mindset is usually what gives scum away looking back at their D1 and D2. Now, I don't really have much history of sc2maf FM, only a year.. however, we do have a slightly different meta on Sc2Maf than let's say MU as I played a fair amount of games there last year. There are things we do here that would be like "WTF" to those people and some stuff they do were "WTF" for me when I first got exposed to them. I have seen scum players there giving it away on their first 5 posts or so into d1 due to lack of experience, another observation would be you can rarely find a town player ever fakeclaiming a role etc.. They do it on D1 sometimes but not really hard claims.. Games are more tame so to speak. Sc2Maf is a bit wilder especially when it comes to claims.. Just like wise FrosyByte once said, you need some hunter biden crack so you can fakeclaim on sc2maf lol

Few months ago I had a hidden setup game with scum MartinGG on MU where I fake claimed towns MVPR while I was citizen and it was WTF for people post game when they read my role. In that game I was able to convince people into my reads to correct lynch on MyLo then we won with scum concede but again it was easier for me there to project my town vibes to people while on Sc2Maf people don't care much about your PoV besides your claim. I often struggle on this site to get myself heard so it naturally isolates me in most of the games. As towns goal is to find each other, we often have experienced scum players here trolling the town players masterfully and push them into isolation from each other. Another example; You can often find mafia goons gettin bussed offsite games while on SC2Maf I have only seen one instance of such play and it came from MartinGG in that game where they bussed their partner Marshmallow Marshall on d1, forgot the game name but I was observing it. So in SC2Maf not all players but on average I would say majority of town players every game fail to find each other when there is a good scum team in the game or town simply don't have enough motivation. This gives scum more space to move around when it comes to interactions and potentially gambits. This creates a massive quicksand in reads where players often circle on slots and unable to make a push and end up joining the dead air wagons like last ladder game was a great example to what I am talking about.

If there is a good example of town finding each other in a game, I recommend all to read the Scum Town game hosted by Mike recently. I was able to find all PR's and help them find each other subtly. I was in a position to win the game if I were scum and they knew it but I did managed to give town vibes to those people and scum were destroyed once town members found a middle ground for trust.

What does this have to do with gambits? Well, I am not a fan of gambits town pov but if the site meta is different than you often find players with different backgrounds disagreeing with each other on some fundamentals they believe on. I have learned this the hard way as I experienced more and more games onsite/offsite with some players here.. You can find VM players like Mike having a different tone, FM players having a different tone and then mod players like me being different but there are areas where our thoughts can find the middle ground and this is why I like SC2Mafia because we got a diverse player base unlike other sites and those sites do tend to get monotonous.

I am probably never doing a gambit again if I ever play a game here. I am into fun but I don't wanna ruin other people's fun so the whole point is; be responsible when making gambits as town as it is nearly impossible to make every other town member happy about it. So many different players and so many styles, especially a site like SC2Maf, I have been doing a lot of noob stuff but in order to get respect of other players I guess a player needs to be more responsible with their actions.

[Oberon]

Nah. I’m an advocate of making the most ridiculous, annoying, and mind bending gambits you can think of. Fuck being responsible. Go all in. YOLO. Lynch scum and make town ragequit while you’re at it.

[SuperJack]

I tend to plan Gambits after I have played them. That way no one knows what I'm actually doing, not even me.

[Marshmallow Marshall]

General reminder: don't forget Mafia is a team game, and when you're making a gambit as town, you MUST make sure it's good for town. Else, you're hurting your team and yourself.

Always lynch gambits end of story.

Then they will stop gambiting.

That's a little extreme: some gambits are perfectly valid and good, they just have to be well planned. You bring an important point up, though: punitive meta is a thing. If people start pulling stupid gambits all the time, we're going to end up with punitive meta against gambits. That would be sad, but that would also be a natural reaction.

And Renegade, people don't get notifications for quotes in the FM section. Imagine the spam if you received a notification every time someone quoted you in a game lol.

[Oberon]

I tend to plan Gambits after I have played them. That way no one knows what I'm actually doing, not even me.

Nice

[Oberon]

General reminder: don't forget Mafia is a team game, and when you're making a gambit as town, you MUST make sure it's good for town. Else, you're hurting your team and yourself.


That's a little extreme: some gambits are perfectly valid and good, they just have to be well planned. You bring an important point up, though: punitive meta is a thing. If people start pulling stupid gambits all the time, we're going to end up with punitive meta against gambits. That would be sad, but that would also be a natural reaction.

And Renegade, people don't get notifications for quotes in the FM section. Imagine the spam if you received a notification every time someone quoted you in a game lol.

No offense but teamwork is overrated. :P
I don’t even think real teamwork exists unless you’re with people of similar capabilities as yourself. Then it’s teamwork. Otherwise you end up with having to filter through millions of retarded opinions which you could really do without just to push a lynch through.

That is why I have a huge problem with the idea of voting - not just in Mafia, but in general. I was playing this game a few weeks ago and I came across this Machine Commune of Robots that didn’t really have a hierarchy of leaders in the traditional sense; more of a computer hivemind. When they decided what they wanted to do they basically DISCUSSED it (there was no voting as far as I could see), and the best idea was what they picked, and the verdict was unanimous. That is what I want to see, but unfortunately discussing usually means you have to convince people who are, let’s say, not looking at the game as you are (and I mean this in a negative way), and usually it’s quite hard to convince people, because, unsurprisingly, people don’t want to be convinced of things. This only works if you have good reads, but the problem is, EVERYONE thinks they have good reads! So you’re fucked.

[Helz]

No offense but teamwork is overrated. :P
I don’t even think real teamwork exists unless you’re with people of similar capabilities as yourself. Then it’s teamwork. Otherwise you end up with having to filter through millions of retarded opinions which you could really do without just to push a lynch through.

That is why I have a huge problem with the idea of voting - not just in Mafia, but in general. I was playing this game a few weeks ago and I came across this Machine Commune of Robots that didn’t really have a hierarchy of leaders in the traditional sense; more of a computer hivemind. When they decided what they wanted to do they basically DISCUSSED it (there was no voting as far as I could see), and the best idea was what they picked, and the verdict was unanimous. That is what I want to see, but unfortunately discussing usually means you have to convince people who are, let’s say, not looking at the game as you are (and I mean this in a negative way), and usually it’s quite hard to convince people, because, unsurprisingly, people don’t want to be convinced of things. This only works if you have good reads, but the problem is, EVERYONE thinks they have good reads! So you’re fucked.

I disagree on a few points. One thing I do every game I play is triangulate my reads with other players I town read. The last game we played you can probably find several points where I was bouncing ideas off bakermir and seeking out his opinions. There are several reasons for this:

-One is that if you look at your thought process as a closed loop system you must inject new information into that system to expand the potential conclusions you can draw. Other people will have a different take and consider things you have not which is useful for challenging your own bias and creating new lines of thought for your own analysis.
-Another is that it helps to trade your ideas to them for the same reasons. Everyone should form their own analysis but explaining your thought process to them allows them to look at the situation though your perspective and potential reach the same conclusion you did which eliminates the need for persuasion.
-Also people are receptive to open discussion but flatly resistant to having a view pushed on them. When you seek out and try to understand their views they are much more likely to seek out and try to understand yours. The way you are speaking you have very little respect for others reads and just want others to follow your read. Thats a very bad foundation to build any cooperation on.

I personally think the greatest thing any player can do to improve is to re-read games after they played them. While doing so they can look at what they were right and wrong about. Everyone says they would like to improve but few actually have the discipline to really 'work' at getting better. They just collaterally improve (or stay stagnant) as they play games.
One of the major useful things of this is that it dispels the terrible human nature of bias in data selection. As you said 'everyone thinks they have good reads' but I believe the cause of that is because people cherry pick their reads. At one point in the game they FoS every player in the game so its easy to turn around and say 'See, I called this guy scum here' on the scum players and you can usually find some point where you suspected every scum player at one point. That looks great until you put it in perspective that at one point you also suspected every town player at one point. This sort of process can go a long way to actually helping people understand how good their reads are.

For me last game is about as good as I get. I pegged Mike's alignment + defend target (although I was wrong on his role), I was wrong on Light_Yag and Renegade but dead on for literally every other player in the game with all 3 scum in a PoE of 4 when I died. I can look back at that and without bias be proud of my reads that game, then turn around and realize I should have more aggressively advocated to lynch in my reads. It allows me to see where I did well but also where I played poorly.

By doing this consistently over multiple games you will start to see patterns and realize where you should focus to improve as a player. But to be blunt with you a lot of what you are communicating to me suggests you should focus on your communication. Gambits are not an appropriate substitute for being able to explain and push your reads and the fact you struggle with that part of the game does not mean teamwork is overrated for the game; it means that teamwork is ineffective for you personally due to your deficiencies in that specific area.

[Renegade]

And Renegade, people don't get notifications for quotes in the FM section. Imagine the spam if you received a notification every time someone quoted you in a game lol.

This used to happen though... I feel like something changed.

[OzyWho]

Now, I don't really have much history of sc2maf FM, only a year..

What is your FM experience btw?

another observation would be you can rarely find a town player ever fakeclaiming a role etc.. They do it on D1 sometimes but not really hard claims.. Games are more tame so to speak. Sc2Maf is a bit wilder especially when it comes to claims..

I find it strange how SC2Mafia players fake claim so casually, yet they rarely give cop cover as let's say MU do.

Similarly, in Season 2 of Mafia Championship, players from all the smaller communities had to be taught to give cop cover by fake claiming.

For example, in this game, SC2Mafia play a classical Cop 9'et setup - but they don't cover the cop even though the host put that strategy out there. Yet we have no problem claiming random shit in other games.

Few months ago I had a hidden setup game with scum MartinGG on MU where I fake claimed towns MVPR while I was citizen and it was WTF for people post game when they read my role. In that game I was able to convince people into my reads to correct lynch on MyLo then we won with scum concede

I'm surprised you carried Town against a scum Martin. Can you give the link (it wouldn't be hard to find it myself though, if it's a bother)? I would love to read that final MyLo day.

but again it was easier for me there to project my town vibes to people while on Sc2Maf people don't care much about your PoV besides your claim.

Sounds bad. Are they even scumhunting?
Like a cool inconsistency catch would be: "Your last given read on them was townread. You say you're suspicious of them since post x, but looking at your ISO I can't find any evidence of that because you've only shown a confidence in them being town. Can you show a post where your doubt on them was reflected in any of your posts?" - if people don't care about other people's PoV, how do they scumhunt?
(I feel like I should know the answer myself)

we often have experienced scum players here trolling the town players masterfully and push them into isolation from each other.

We should start introducing policy lynches against chaos makers so that, in time, people start to play the game properly.

I do think that Chaos isn't good for town and they shouldn't condone it.

Another example; You can often find mafia goons gettin bussed offsite games while on SC2Maf I have only seen one instance of such play and it came from MartinGG in that game where they bussed their partner Marshmallow Marshall on d1, forgot the game name but I was observing it. So in SC2Maf not all players but on average I would say majority of town players every game fail to find each other when there is a good scum team in the game or town simply don't have enough motivation. This gives scum more space to move around when it comes to interactions and potentially gambits. This creates a massive quicksand in reads where players often circle on slots and unable to make a push and end up joining the dead air wagons like last ladder game was a great example to what I am talking about.

I bus Oberon every game. Just can't get that lynch on him, dude is holding his own way too efficiently.

Ftr, I don't think Town has anyone to blame but themselves when multiple games in a row D1 ends with barely 200 posts and 0 info.

If there is a good example of town finding each other in a game, I recommend all to read the Scum Town game hosted by Mike recently. I was able to find all PR's and help them find each other subtly. I was in a position to win the game if I were scum and they knew it but I did managed to give town vibes to those people and scum were destroyed once town members found a middle ground for trust.

I haven't read that game, but Oberon said that the game was "Mechanically solved quite quickly."?

What does this have to do with gambits? Well, I am not a fan of gambits town pov but if the site meta is different than you often find players with different backgrounds disagreeing with each other on some fundamentals they believe on. I have learned this the hard way as I experienced more and more games onsite/offsite with some players here.. You can find VM players like Mike having a different tone, FM players having a different tone and then mod players like me being different but there are areas where our thoughts can find the middle ground and this is why I like SC2Mafia because we got a diverse player base unlike other sites and those sites do tend to get monotonous.

I can only imagine how playing on this site must feel for players not used to it's meta..

I am probably never doing a gambit again if I ever play a game here. I am into fun but I don't wanna ruin other people's fun so the whole point is; be responsible when making gambits as town as it is nearly impossible to make every other town member happy about it. So many different players and so many styles, especially a site like SC2Maf, I have been doing a lot of noob stuff but in order to get respect of other players I guess a player needs to be more responsible with their actions.

I think I would only make invisible gambits like Helz. But are those even gambits then though? Gambits in what sense even? In that you hope someone reads your post a certain way and you get to WIFOM them?

But, yeah, I totally agree with you. Gambits are a no-go for me in general.

I personally think the greatest thing any player can do to improve is to re-read games after they played them.

I like this idea. As you already said, can see what missed during the game and eliminate post-game bias and turn into something more objective.

But to be blunt with you a lot of what you are communicating to me suggests you should focus on your communication.

It's actually funny. Oberon is such a strong player in regards to meta reading SC2Mafia players. But he has like 0 thread presence. He's like the Jester whom everyone underestimates and doesn't take serious.


Edit: a bit

[Helz]

It's actually funny. Oberon is such a strong player in regards to meta reading SC2Mafia players. But he has like 0 thread presence. He's like the Jester whom everyone underestimates and doesn't take serious.

Yeah. Meta reads and gut reads are very difficult to share. I use to never use them at all but now I just use them to catch my attention so I can hunt for real tells.

[blinkskater]

I have some interesting things to add here. When I get out of work i'll share my thoughts. I've tried many different gambits lol.

[theoneceko]

I have some interesting things to add here. When I get out of work i'll share my thoughts. I've tried many different gambits lol.

JESTER GMAMBIT, LOL!!!

[OzyWho]

JESTER GMAMBIT, LOL!!!

This ain't the SC2 Arcade.

But if you want a Jester Gambit in FM, then there's a limited time offer to join the Auwt's game.
Who knows how many years it will take to get another FM setup with a Jester in it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[blinkskater]

So over the year's I've been the facilitator of many different styles of gambits. Long story short, most of the gambits I've tried have worked out for me, and my reads. However the way other players seem to interpret the gambits, make them kind of pointless. A lot of times even with good explanations as to who, what, where, when, and why players don't want to see where you're coming from they see "gambit" and associate it with deception, and most players associate deception with scum. Also as Oberon did mention, I'd say roughly 85% of players I've played with don't want to be persuaded by anyone else and if it doesn't align with what they themselves are thinking than the argument will be regarded as moot.

Now if done right and a good explanation is given as to why you performed the gambit and what you got out of it is key if you are going to do it. I would say involving other players like hard claiming fake claiming a red check on someone, or hard claiming a role you are not as town seldom work, and are selfish plays, that should be avoided imho. Now softing a check or something similar like that if done correctly can be pretty good to test reactions and such, but it should be brought to light later on that day with explanations.

So there was once a game where I pulled a sort of gambit where I acted like I had some more information then some other players. The setup was hidden, so I had a little wiggle room here. I basically gauged everyone's reactions to what I was saying and how everyone interacted with me. I was able to find the general town reactions and tones along with the shady scummier reactions and tones. Then you compare and contrast peoples metas and boom! I then came clean with what I did and why I did it, and my conclusions from doing it. I had a POE of all the town members and the 4 Scum in the Lynch POE. This was Day 1. Long story short nobody really agreed with my reads, ended up lynching elsewhere after I perished, left mechanically confirmed Mafia alive, and ended up losing the game.

All in all pulling gambits from my experience in the trenches end's up with town losing more often than winning.

[OzyWho]

Yeah, I got the impression that, outside of SC2Mafia, Agenda=Scummy end of story.

I'm starting to question though if there's not some misuse of the word "gambit" in this thread.
Because it looked to me like Helz called hidden WIFOM a gambit, and blink called gambit a clever scheme to gain info.

For something to be a gambit you'd have to either risk or sacrifice something.

[Marshmallow Marshall]

Yeah, I got the impression that, outside of SC2Mafia, Agenda=Scummy end of story.

I'm starting to question though if there's not some misuse of the word "gambit" in this thread.
Because it looked to me like Helz called hidden WIFOM a gambit, and blink called gambit a clever scheme to gain info.

For something to be a gambit you'd have to either risk or sacrifice something.

A "clever scheme" in Blink's words is something like a weird fake claim about rolecard specificities in hidden setups, or made up feedback. That is absolutely risky, but that may pay off later.

I tend to agree with Blink's conclusion: gambits hurt town more often than not, because they're rarely well executed. And when they're well executed, town doesn't always play correctly around them. That doesn't mean gambits should be straight up banned from everyone's playbook, though: good gambits, i.e. the ones that follow the "gambit rules" in the OP or at least my rule about benefits > risks, can be very pro-town. They just have to be appropriate and well prepared.