WW24 post mortem

[Mal]

Well played by Takaram. In the end, he had the vilagers fighting each other.

I don't know if the whole Hunter concept i working... Thoughts?

Do you think defenders shgould be allowed to team up?

[Deleted]

The only question I had was that are all 3 defenders getting a shot each, or is it like the werewolves to where they vote on a single person?

[Mal]

Apr 7, 2013 20:34:34 GMT -5 @tredania said:

The only question I had was that are all 3 defenders getting a shot each, or is it like the werewolves to where they vote on a single person?

Defenders don't know who the other defenders may be. One nithh, Rando, Ater and Thomas all defended Ater. Another night, two of them defended Mark, etc...

I suppose that all three of them defending one person would give the WWs an advantage because they would have to choose one a night, whereas in theory, up to three people can be defended.

One thing I would change is dumping the Elder. I don't know how fair it is to have defenders lose their abilities if the elder dies.

[Ater Nox]

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Hunter. I think it's too much blind luck involved for the villagers to find them because they aren't working in a team. I think they also speed up the game a lot, which could be good or bad depending on your point of view. The way the game is being played at the moment, I think short games give the advantage to the wolves because of the 'No Vote' phases at the start. While the seer may get two days of scanning, it means there is a lack of clues and leaves the villagers perhaps too reliant on the seer. I don't know if this is something that the players need to address, or something that shows the game needs to be changed.

Having defenders know each other from the start means that they can alternate between protecting each other and be unable to be targeted by the wolves. It could be interesting if there were two defenders that worked together to protect one person, similar to the WWs killing one person. I don't know if giving the good team a heads up on their allies makes things too easy for them, but I think it could work as there would be less people being defended each night.

Overall though, it was a good game and fairly close in the end. Out of curiosity Mal, were all the misses by bad guys due to defenders? I think I might have gotten one but I'm not sure about the others. Thanks

[HumanSanity]

I think the Hunter idea does work-ish. Probably you need at least 15 people for it to work correctly. Tak was dang clever the entire time. When I saw him post his vote I was tempted to change for whatever reason but decided not to. Good game overall

[Mal]

Out of curiosity Mal, were all the misses by bad guys due to defenders? I think I might have gotten one but I'm not sure about the others. Thanks

Sorry. Here is the night phase breakdown...

Night Phase 1:

Ater Nox defends Ater Nox
Rando defends Rando
B.T. defends B.T.

Cal assassinates Bath

Lanza scans Tak

The Changelings kill Aersoldorf

-------

Night phase 2

Cal shoots Thomas

Thomas defends Mark
Rando defends Mark
Ater defends Mark

Changelings try for Mark

Lanza scans Control

Thomas killed by Jem’Hadar

-------

Night Phase 3:

Changelings attack Mark

Rando defends Rando
Ater protects Rando

Cal shoots Gunny

Mark killed by Changelings

------

Night Phase 4:

Ater Nox defends Ater
Rando defends Ater

Cal shoots Gunny

Changelings attack Nox

-----

Tak kills Ater
Cal kills Rando


Notes: Cal shoots Gunny two nights in a row. Gunny was the elder so it takes two shots to defend him, but since he is unprotected he dies.

On night two, Cal got to Thomas as he defended Mark. Had noone else defended Mark, Cal still would have prevailed, but Mark would also have survived, having been defended.

On night 3, Mark was now out in the open so to speak as he was ineligible to be defended since all 3 defenders protected him the night before.

Had Lanza not been taken out early, he may have got Tak airlocked after Control, and this would have likely made the game turn out very differently.

Also, notice how on Night one, the Werewolves went right at Aerso. I assume they did this because he's a great player and this crippled the villagers in the later rounds.

I know after I won the Tron themed game that Cal ran, I couldn't get past the first day phase without getting killed because I had been a werewolf and I sacrificed another werewolf so we could win.

So Defenders: Instead of defaulting to defending yourself on the first night, maybe defend a player who can help in the later rounds?

Also, I did not see the defenders defend Werewolves or the Hunter this game, which is a good thing. One thing I did notice was that defenders defended defenders a lot. I'm not sure why because they didn't know who the other was, and the list of players was alphabetical so there is no way anyone could figure it out from that.

[Ater Nox]

I'm impressed Lanza scanned 2 WW straight up.

It does look like all the defenders had a very similar idea on who to defend each round.

Thanks Mal.

[Deleted]

I'm also impressed about Lanza, though I'm curious why he didn't try to single Tak out like he attempted to with Control. Especially since he figured out Tak first.

The defenders could have figured out who each other were, though. Even just guessing, there could have been ways just from reading posts that they could have figured it out. Or they were just really lucky in their choices.

It's nice to know that the defenders don't know each other, though. That's one thing I was unsure about, as it would have made the game that much harder for the WW if 3 of the people knew each other to call out any werewolf attempting to pretend they were a defender. The only one who would be able to call them out on it is the Seer, and that's only if they knew already that the person was a WW.

I think the Hunter makes the game a tad harder as well because Werewolves have to balance out killing the villagers/power roles as well as killing the Hunter so that they don't win. At the same time, the villagers have to treat it as if there are 4 werewolves on the field.

However, I don't mind having the Hunter in the game. I was surprised with the fact that it was Cal. I say this because I thought, since they know who the werewolves are, that it'd be someone waiting for the first to die...and then planning their strategy around getting people riled up against the second one. That way, they'd be left with one and ensuring their victory by throwing off any suspicion on that one in case people started looking towards them. In this game's case, I thought for sure it was Nox that was going to end up being the Hunter.

Admittedly, though, this was my first time playing a Werewolf/Mafia game with more than one defender, a hunter, and an Elder. So it was an interesting change for me.

[Aersoldorf]

I kind of like the hunter role. If I would make any changes to it I'd probably take away the requirement that at least 1 wolf remains alive for him to win. I'd also remove his knowledge of who the wolves are and only give him a 50% chance of making a kill at night. Another possible tweak for the hunter/assassin would be instead of a percentage of a successful kill, make it automatic, but only give him 3 bullets. That would force him to pick very carefully.

I am in favor of keeping the elder role. If we feel that defenders losing their power when he dies is too severe, perhaps we could add an option for the defenders to choose to 'defend elder' without telling them who has that role. That way he'd be safe at least every other night.

I don't think that the defenders should start the game knowing who the other defenders are. One possible rule change could be that if multiple defenders choose to defend the same target and the wolves or hunter attack that target one of the wolves (chosen randomly) or the hunter if he's the one attacking would be killed instead of the target.

Those are some of the possible tweaks I've thought of. Not really sure which ones would be good and which wouldn't though

[Deleted]

Apr 8, 2013 0:59:54 GMT -5 Aersoldorf said:

I kind of like the hunter role. If I would make any changes to it I'd probably take away the requirement that at least 1 wolf remains alive for him to win. I'd also remove his knowledge of who the wolves are and only give him a 50% chance of making a kill at night. Another possible tweak for the hunter/assassin would be instead of a percentage of a successful kill, make it automatic, but only give him 3 bullets. That would force him to pick very carefully.

I like these ideas, actually. Although I do like the idea of them knowing ahead of time who the wolf is. It's an interesting wrinkle to the game. But I would say the Hunter should keep one trait, but lose another. For example, they can know who the wolves are, but like Aerso suggested, either give him a 50% successful kill chance, or only give him 3 shots so that he'd have to choose his victims very carefully.

[Benevolent Thomas]

I say keep the game as is but get rid of the Hunter and the Elder. The Hunter makes things much easier for the Wolves and the Elder's only power is to give Defenders their power. Just look how Cal played this game he killed a defender right off the bat and then makes quick work of the Elder rendering the two remaining defenders useless. Now if the Hunter was in less competent hands it could have been a different story, but when I look at this game I notice that the Hunter did most of the work. Don't get me wrong, Tak played a heck of a game despite having his fellow WWs fall due to their own follies, but still... the Hunter looked a bit too powerful in this this game.

[Mal]

I think "Defend Elder" is a great idea.

[Deleted]

I actually like that idea as well. Although at the same time, it's ensuring that at least one of the defenders may defend the elder every turn since they don't have to know who it is. While it makes it easier to make sure that everyone in a power role will keep it till the end, it makes it difficult for the wolves to make a kill if their choice keeps getting defended. That was the issue I had with the fact that all three defenders can defend three different people. If all three defenders are still alive along with the elder, hunter and werewolves, it makes it nearly impossible for the werewolves to go after anyone, and even the Hunter is at a loss since even if they kill off the other two wolves, they still have to deal with the three defenders and the elder.

[Aersoldorf]

With a 'defend elder' option, the defenders wouldn't know who they are defending, nor would they know which night the other defenders were doing it, so they could all end up defending the elder on the same night. But if that is too radical a change, perhaps limit the number of times that each defender could do it, say once or twice per game.

[Benevolent Thomas]

We must remember that the simplicity of the game mechanics is key to bringing in new players and its really the magical charm of WW. I heavily caution against complicating the game further as we still have misjudgments and role related questions every game.

[Aersoldorf]

I believe that the role related questions are simply confusion as to which known role (ie wolf, elder, hunter, etc) each specially named position fills. While I do enjoy the applying of various stories to the game thread, I can see where the constant renaming of the roles may give rise to some confusion)