Global Werewolf - The Review

Thanks for running it @nornironhorn.

I suppose this is a good place to stick my notes too. @Tokyo said throughout he was new and he wasn’t lying. I’ve not played this game in years and probably only view the threads occasionally when it’s on. This is the second time I’ve been a/the wolf though in about 4 games which must be pretty long odds given how many people moan about never getting a role. Anyway, I put in for this hoping very much to be a humble villager as work is still keeping me very occupied at home. So you can imagine how pissed I was initially to have drawn Alpha Wolf - plus a bit gutted for everyone given how many were playing and the effort you’d gone to setting up anonymous accounts. So I did put some actual thought into strategy over the weekend and read the previous threads to try and do it a bit of justice.

Anyway, as your analysis politely hints at, what followed were several schoolboy errors by me which either went unpunished or I managed to scrape out of.

Running through:

• Helsinki was obviously a random choice of course. I voted for him later to try to go with the majority.
• I worked out the Shakespeare thing on Day 1. Google was my friend there. It initially spat out nothing but playing around a bit I found some French merchandise with that phrase on the front and then from there backed it up to Shakespeare. I didn’t really pay attention to it being Henry V at that point.
• Night 1 kill was also a pretty random choice. Although I took a very newbie punt the Shakespeare quote might be a reference to England and therefore London. Obviously now I know that wouldn’t be a good idea for the seer to hint at.

• I cocked up naming Nairobi in my day 2 message. I’d pretty much pre-written it and wanted to send it early. It was too early as you say. And in my haste I missed the line about the guardian having protected him in the (long) write up until I’d sent it. Whoops.
• I was amazed despite referring to the Shakespeare thing in my message people still struggled to corroborate it.
• I realised Oslo was a mason before the end of day 2 - some doubted I did - but took a gamble on finding who the Beta was with my kill. Plus thought the guardian would surely protect him and so it’d be a wasted attempted kill.
• I chose Rio as I thought slight chance he was Beta, knowledge of whom would have helped, and wanted to accumulate more known ‘good’ players until a bit later in the game when it was more advantageous to kill them. I’ve no idea now why I thought Rio might be evil.

• I had the day 3 Henry V quote drafted in Spanish (flukily in line with the pattern) - but switched it for another quote at the very last minute and translated it into Italian entirely at random. Annoying - but then the seer revealed their pattern, which I felt was maybe a day premature given people soon worked out Oslo wasn’t ever likely to be anything other than good.
• I also worked out the first two had come from the same Henry V speech but wanted to misdirect and so went for the other quote instead as it appeared to hint at something
• I took out Denver on night 3 as he was throwing around loads of theories, implicating lots of people and I knew he was good. Bonus that he turned out to be the guardian.

• I knew I had to get through Day 4 with the final mayor double vote going to someone else...
• ... which it did. I was sure I was done for then but the vote shifted to Elche and I managed to send my gloating message to you just before the cut off. It was a no brainier to take out Jeddah and Kracow.

• Day 5 was fine but then I cocked up again by hinting at being the shaky witness. I’d been mulling the plan and took a punt the shaky witness was dead already. Whoops. This back to the wall bit was probably the most I put into the game. Somehow I managed to haul it back, even spinning enough of a yarn that Athens regretted his vote for me!
• I think I threw in a jibe about some players hyper-analysing stuff and then relying on it. So I had to laugh when Athens posted the screenshot after my message, and just after you said no more posting, proving Quito was the only player to have used the word ‘clueless’ in posts so far in the game. Thing is, me using the word ‘clueless’ in my wolf message was a complete coincidence. Hyper-analysis...
• I didn’t instruct who Beta should kill in my Day 5 message because I thought Quito was Beta. And in my rushed logic I thought it’d be worse to show everyone I had no idea who Beta was by sending him a message seconds before he was lynched, rather than play it cool.
  
• Obviously I then realised the risk of me and Beta going for the same kill or maybe him for me and letting good have another day’s play. I’d decided to leave Oslo, as (no offence) his writing style is quite distinctive and I thought it could still be useful if I needed to mimic someone in a fake backup seer message to sow more confusion. Plus he was the most obviously good player left, mason and all, and I thought if Beta wanted a low risk kill it’d be him. Luckily it worked out like that. I took out Athens because I felt he was most vehemently on to me, though did consider he could be an unwitting ally on Day 6 if he now regretted his vote. In the end it worked out ok as Venice had also voted for me twice and felt I’d have killed him by now if I was a wolf.

• This morning was odd. Nairobi was right to call me out but the early vote was a mistake I think. Istanbul then came into play and, I’ll be honest, I thought at that point he was Beta. So much so that when he voted for Nairobi I jumped straight in and voted the same, but then immediately regretted it. I genuinely thought Venice and Moscow were good and so would realise Alpha and Beta had voted as a block and then vote me out 3-2.

Anyway, in conclusion, I had a really good go at stuffing it up (mostly by accident) and was generally awful, yet instead survived for a very rare team evil win. I enjoyed sending the messages and reckon with a bit more know how I could have played a lot more havoc with it. @Elche’s code within a code within a code was clever and had me flummoxed. So my highlight was definitely the Katrina and the Waves quote to see him out.

Thanks again for running it. I think I’ll retire from Werewolf now as nothing will top winning this game against the odds.

 

Nice write up thanks. I'm a relative newbie at this game so it's interesting to hear people's gameplay to understand tactics and messages, especially from the alpha and the Seer. Grows my personal understanding of the game a bit more.

I'm astounded at some people's reading of the games. Norn's analysis at the end of last game was fantastic and one or 2 cemetery players were pretty accurately guessing players from styles this game. I feel so in the dark compared to them.

Very enjoyable. I'd be happy to run one soon too as think that'd help my own personal game, though managing a full time job while wfh and coping with a 7 week old is challenging enough so write ups would be "X is lynched. X was good" so may be a bit dull!

 

I won't rehash my Cemetery post but two things stood out for me.

Firstly, when I took the view of Jeddah but didn't disclose it. This allowed me to identify all of Team Evil during the day's play. I was really in two minds about lying about who I'd viewed and posting a message from the Seer calling Tokyo Evil but I just didn't have the balls to do it in case I'd got it wrong and it would screw the Seer's credibility and be a pretty unforgivable mistake for the whole game.

The second was how sneaky @Moscow was. I'd already voted for Tokyo, realising the best thing to do was out myself as the Seer and at least try to take a wolf out. Moscow pretended that they were helping but then voted for Quito, meaning a tie was always going to be impossible but no-one picked up on this (including me at the time).

One other thing. I had the two parts to the code, but the Alpha irritatingly forced me to reveal them earlier than I'd wanted. I then had to work really hard to think of other ways to keep showing that my messages were from the Seer. This meant a couple of evenings of the wife getting very annoyed with me as I sat there Googling Henry V and facts about EU countries, so cheers @UEA_Hornet !

 

I'm so annoyed I allowed myself to be swayed from you to Elche - I was ready to double vote you at 11am but held off.

What clinched it whilst revisiting the previous days was you trying to out Fes as the Seer, and it slipped under the radar.