-A-

You can play a more than reasonable game with 7, so anything above that is fine as long as you can get your number of scum where Sousa suggested. Really small games can actually drag out because it's basically all like day 1 of a big game, though. Around 12 seems pretty good.

Yeah, what he said.

don't run a cult

#ShakeItAllAbout

You wouldn't have Aberdeen in the top 4 clubs?

A lot of the memorable recent West Ham teams played a more attacking than normal style of football. The 2006/2007 season the team came up and pretty much kept playing the same way. Benayoun and Reo-Coker at their best, Marlon Harewood scoring an inexplicable number of goals, Dean Ashton looking like a bargain signing. Pardew never really played timid football and that season was one of the most exciting. Next year was the Tevez/Mascherano fiasco, but the football that season was pretty good. Not glamorous, but more positive than a newly-promoted team would be.

Likewise with the 'too good to go down' relegation team. Di Canio, Kanoute and Defoe, Joe Cole and Trevor Sinclair. Maybe not world-beating attackers, but the team played the 'attractive' football these kind of fans are obsessed with. The same kind that Pardew seems to want to play at Newcastle

Yes, I think they're just not in a position to want to spend £25m on a left back. Could also be that they've enquired and he's just decided he wants to go to United or Chelsea.

I guess that when there are two categories and people can't decide which guy they prefer they split the difference.

Tottenham boss Tim Sherwood on inviting a fan into the dugout: "This guy sits up there every week, shouting 'Get him off Tim, get him on Tim'. He is the proper manager, so it was his chance to have a go. He's nicked my gilet too! Football is all about the fans. It's only friendly banter and we should have more in the game."

Sounds like something out of Harchester.

A pale imitation of this story:

"Is there any truth in the story that Harry Redknapp once fielded a spectator during a West Ham game?" asks Terry Williams. "Legend has it that the Hammers were having a shocker and a fan was heckling them. Harry is then supposed to have turned round and said: 'If you think you can do any better, then prove it!'"

Incredibly, the legend is true, Terry. In 1994, Redknapp was assistant manager of West Ham and his side were playing Oxford City in a pre-season friendly when ... well, we'll let 'Arry take up the tale:

"Lee Chapman was playing for us at the time," recounts Redknapp. "All through the first half some tattooed skinhead behind me was giving Lee terrible stick. At half-time I turned to this bloke who had West Ham etched on his neck and asked 'Can you play as good as you talk?' He looked totally confused. So I told him he was going to get his dream to play for West Ham. We sent him down the tunnel and he reappeared 10 minutes later all done out in the strip. He ran on to the pitch and a journalist from the local Oxford paper sidled up and asked 'Who's that Harry?' I said 'What? Haven't you been watching the World Cup? That's the great Bulgarian Tittyshev!' The fella wasn't bad - actually, he scored!"

The fella in question was a 27-year-old called Steve Davies who had given up park football six years earlier. The West Ham board were obviously impressed with Harry's idiosyncratic decision-making: they made him manager a month later.

Was that the first time we've scored in the opening 15 minutes this season?

Yes, according to Opta. Palace now the only team not to have done so this season.

That reminds me of glorious Gotham Mafia where towards the end I was investigation-immune mafia don serial killer

Who's excited to play a big fucking mafia game again?

Agreed. I'm usually of the opinion that they could do with fewer ex-pros as pundits, but those two are amongst the best I've seen.

I keep that stuff confined to the sign-up thread, though

Yes, please.

Getting to the end of those huge games always led to the most fun mafia moments.

Some annoying things are kind of fundamental to mafia and I've been thinking of ways to design around them. Particularly I was thinking of:

1) You don't have anything to go on Day 1

2) Sometimes you die early and don't get a chance to really play

3) It's impossible to have a conversation that feels like it includes more than a few people because of the nature of a forum.

There are also a few vague problems. Traditional games tend to be dry and boring and not provide topics for conversation, but flavourfests sometimes lead to bad play experiences (SWERVE~!)

What else? What are the little parts of mafia that feel fundamental but you wish weren't there?

Depends on your definition of "Random"......

Sure, but then this is the chain of events (the one that has plagued EWB towns forever:)

1) Inexperienced/uninterested townie stops playing.

2) Town loses a vote, lynch becomes slightly pro-scum

3) Day period peters out because scummies don't have to play

4) Mod removes random non-contributing townie, lynch becomes more pro-scum

If town didn't lurk, scum couldn't either. Lynch all lurkers is great strategy in games with one or two of them. In games with 6 or 7 there's no way to tell town lurkers from scum lurkers.

If the town are trying to get stuff done, scum has to follow suit, or it becomes obvious they are scum.

But the town is not one entity. When I play a game of mafia I don't know who the townies are, I can only play for myself. I should not be punished because another player chooses not to contribute. The town is already down a player because this person decided not to contribute and then they get punished further?

Its not a coincidence that Expendables was one of the best games we have had on here in a while.

I do like your point about changing it up after day 1. However, I don't like the idea of separating townies from scum for a lynch. I understand that making it townies only will force the townies to lynch, but if you exclude scum from the lynch, then scum can just not vote and possibly force the town to miss the deadline.

That's viable scum strategy. If the town isn't going to call them on that, then they should be able to get away with it. Its the town's job to hold the scum accountable, not the game runner. Game runner involvement should he negligible, and only occur when the town needs a fire lit under them.

I don't like randomly lynching a townie because a group of other townies was inactive. I understand we need to construct the rules to encourage correct play since it benefits everyone, but ruining one person's game because others were inactive sits badly with me. We like to think that taking extreme actions must by definition have an effect, but in this case I don't think it does.

I don't like randomly lynching townies if there's no lynch result because that incentivises scum players to lurk as a strategy. Randomly lynching townies literally does nothing because the guys who aren't contributing already don't care about the good of the group. If the theory is that a random townie lynch stops townies from failing to contribute then I don't believe that is true for this reason.

2008 was pretty much the peak, right? 2009 too I suppose.

Understood! What would end up happening during day phases is that nothing could ever be accomplished. None of the independents have any reason to go looking for scum, so they just don't. When 2/3rds of the players in the game don't really care who gets lynched, the game tends not to function.

You can't have that many Independents in a game. I don't know if that's a flavour issue, but that town would not be large enough to do anything. Independent = scum when working out your ratios.

Pretty much. Lurking was at an all-time high, getting sign ups for a 15 person game was difficult....and it just stopped being fun. At least in my case.

Reading this made me genuinely quite sad.

I had the same idea, called Siamese Mafia. I've been thinking about it maybe being useful as a Newbie-type game.

My plan is to play more and get better at the game, so it definitely would be a good opportunity. I'll see who's going from the shop since I barely know these guys. The launch party next week's a good opportunity because people come from further afield (especially since the closest other shop recently shut down.)

It seems like competing at the level where you can make money is pretty expensive (even if you aren't building fun decks or collecting cards that aren't intended for competition.) Ever have any good paydays? Even getting a plane ticket's an awesome prize and it still seems hard to get back what you pay.