Legit thought that zurvan was last neutral.

Now that I'm at a computer, I have a couple mechanical thoughts. This in no way is a criticism of this game because this game was awesome. Nor is this wolf-whining - the village definitely deserved to win this game.

I absolutely loved the anti-claim mechanic. I think big mishmashes need more of this.

An announced roleset makes it extremely difficult for the wolves I think. Being able to eliminate or pinpoint wolves/villagers based on mechanical process of elimination is tough enough, but when everything is spelled out it really is difficult to wolf.

Some nitpicking - I think the wolf bodyguard role isn't really advantageous to use and I think if I was wolfing again I would only use it if the most powerful wolf needed to live another day.

again, though - the village would have won this no matter what but it's tough to watch them completely pick things apart mechanically and not have a way to wriggle out.

also, I'm a bit upset i fooled gad and monte because now I'll really be d1 mislunch fodder.

Awesome game VR and KM.

I think we could have had some pretty deep cover wolves had things gone right on D2.

Sigh.

Probably wouldn't have matter too much. Village killed it pretty hard

Yes, if I had it to do over again, I would give the wolves a night angel in place of a bodyguard, and maybe split the Torturer into two roles, although maybe not.

I would definitely keep the backup mechanic, but I wouldn't specify it for a specific minion either.

So a few tweaks, but on the whole I felt like the game was not hugely unbalanced (I know traz has a lot to say on this as soon as his eyes are fully open again, though, so I am mentally preparing for my critique!)

Balance is hard for me to critique when the wolves got trained as hard as they did, so I'm definitely interested in his thoughts. Seems like any game with such a small neutral team is going to inherently have a wider span of outcomes since nerfing neutral KP early is going to really affect the game state, as neutrals are generally considered to be a balancing mechanic.

With that said, I likely don't have much of a grasp of how many vigs were handed out, as I mechanically couldn't win or utilize them, so it's hard to say how much wolf underperformance affected their win percentage wrt winning prizes. I will say that, outside of the d2 situation, it didn't seem like many wolves were pseudo-mechanically outed; they just caught a bad rand wrt high volume players that clear themselves well actually randing villager and they couldn't kill them fast enough (and IRTM didn't have enough vigs either)

It was soo much fun playing with you Treep!! We couldn't have made it as far as we did without tag teaming the thread. Wish I'd been able to be around to help not get you lynched (or at least kept things on aao instead of cracked). Hope to play with you again soon!

I love having a round table with the last three people to run games with in depth design!

I agree about the bodyguard--I also learned that in my game. Kukraprout was Che Guevara who was a bodyguard and the wolves almost never actually used his ability because it wasn't advantageous. And it kind of made me realize it's not a great role for the wolf team (though it might still be good for the village team). In this particular game I think the wolves misused it badly though--the bodyguard is almost always going to out 1 wolf to keep them alive for another day. So it should only be used on a PR (not just on another vanilla wolf like in this game). But all in all going forward I don't think its going to be a role in include in future designs.

But to echoe what bigger said--this game seemed amazingly well balanced given all the complexity. Easy for me to say as the winning team I know.

I think it’s really difficult to judge the inherent balance in this game

One reason is that, as previously mentioned, a lot of villagers did a very good job of clearing themselves with good votes and generally villagery posting which always makes it hard for wolves. The other thing is that it was almost exclusively villagers driving the general discussion and understanding of the mechanics, which served a double purpose. It made it so that things that were likely, but not certain, become generally accepted as fact (and happened to be true), and it also helped those people look more and more villagery when those assumptions came to fruition.

I agree with both points about the bodyguard, I think the role is one that is difficult at best and counterproductive at worst, but I also think it was used incorrectly in this game as I stated earlier in thread

The other things that happened that make balance hard to judge is that apparently the village ran pretty darn well on rands in general, which is always going to have a big impact, and the way the day 2 thread split played out almost could not have been worse for the wolves. I don’t know if that’s going to be inherently true or if it was just some combination of good village play and suboptimal wolf play on that day, but it ended up being a huge equity swing beyond even the immediate swing of Master dying.

My overall big picture thought (I could be wrong) is that it didn’t seem to me like the wolves had an overall big picture strategy in mind when using their powers, it looked like they were just kinda using them as they thought they should in the moment. I think that combined with some of the aforementioned things that went well for the village pretty much doomed the wolf team.

That said there were some things that went against the village - aside from Gad getting nuked the neutral claimvig surviving deep into the game was a huge equalizer against the village gaining too much equity through mechanical clearances, and there were a decent number of village self owns (including mine) that happened.

All in all I think the village made mostly good mechanical assumptions and they also turned out to be almost universally correct, and they did a good job collectively of taking in new information and adjusting their conclusions accordingly. When that happens in a game like this the village is going to win more often than not imo

Looking back at it, the best play on D2 was probably not to have any wolves in the second thread. It would have allowed us the opportunity to focus solely on the main thread when formulating the sun darkening plan and we wouldnt have had to feel so pressured to pull the trigger the moment both threads had a village wagon lead.

balance seemed fine to me

only thing is that the anti claim is a bit swingy (if apprentice dies early, the village can just massclaim) and maybe it could be made factional

So since I said basically nothing about balance here I think a couple of the tweaks VR mentioned to make the wolf team incrementally stronger would have been appropriate, as I think this is probably a villa weighted setup to some extent, especially given how (relatively) easily the village won despite the single biggest anti-village clearance mechanic (neutral claimvig) surviving literally the entire game. They got 4 kills off of it directly, but they also kept villagers from discussing their powers ITT for the entire game which, if they had been able to discuss, would have made their lives so much easier

Just as a thought - I might have made the neutral claimvig function like the voice of reason and be able to continue to use their power after death to reduce some of the swing associated with that one role dying early. They could leave the game if and when the neutral team was eliminated

The neutrals actually had two anti-claim mechanisms. The claimvig was flashier and more obvious, but being able to absorb unused powers from nks was huge, and from reading DVC was basically their only path to victory by end game. That made claiming really dangerous for the villagers, because it let the neutrals target the most useful powers night to night. That would have been more relevant had the wolves stayed in longer, but I think that's a major balance factor

Bodyguard is a pretty standard role but it's a pretty weak one. It has a place in game design but I think it's important for designers and wolves to realize its limited usefulness. The bodyguard ability is only useful to protect more important wolves with powerful abilities. Dying to give a vanilla wolf one day is clearly a mistake.

The bodyguard in the politics game was probably a bad design choice since none of the other wolves were especially important or powerful, but that game has been discussed to death already.

Handing out kill-power through events seems like a dangerous thing to mess with in terms of balance and I have no idea how to judge how much is too much but it's easy to imagine a game going sour quickly in either direction from those mechanics. I don't feel like that happened at all in this game. My impression is the balance seemed really fair. The wolves got crushed from a combination of mistakes and the village playing really well. The neutrals had a decent shot if a few things went a little differently or if the main wolves just lasted a little longer, and an sk or a 2-person sk team shouldn't have 1/3 equity anyway.

I appreciated the strict anti-claim punishments in this game. I don't think every game should have people terrified to hint or claim their role but I consider that a valid design space which was not only fun to see here (imo) but was also more or less necessary for the design to work.

yeah, even if you guys didn't intend to use that, having any wolves join the 13er seems suboptimal

That was on me - I joined the event not realizing what it was. Then I think bigger may have joined as well to help me out. So the village got that one completely right.

Thanks, Sun here's hoping I apply these lessons in future games

bigger definitely fooled me, though which is why it's cool that the villa played so well overall, because we covered each other's misses

ggs

thx for host

thanks vr! good time!

gg everyone

Maybe I could have squeezed more power out of my role but given I had used all my posts til 1am my time and several people were saying I posted nothing I decided to just get some immediate value out of my role by killing a likely wolf, force people to have to push elsewhere and get people to vote for the mason option to confirm 2 villagers.

Great flavour, gg

I didn't even have time to rail this game, but it looked awesome

I thought the balance seemed fine, although as a vanilla I might have gotten more frustrated if I had gotten an event prize that could clear me.

There was only one healer night vote anyway and with my work schedule it didn’t matter, I was fortunate enough to clear myself without a claim. I do like the anti claim mechanics quite a bit tho. Keeps things spicy.

Awesome game and flavor, VR/mods!
Way to go village at the end game, particularly sgt rj!
Sorry for annoying everyone.

@wahoopride

I’m quoting this for posterity. I had Sun lean villa as well. I really should just retire. There is literally no chance I ever top this. It’s all downhill from here.