White Flag Mafia [TM2015] (Game Over)

[theelkspeaks]

Llama, did you spend tokens on this game?

Not sure I like this question.

VOTE: Oversoul

[theelkspeaks]

qq means either "cry" or "quit" depending on who's saying it (the latter usually referring to oneself, i.e. "I'm going to qq this argument right now.")

As for my vote, it was mostly me thinking that most of the RVS was pretty standard (null) RVS, but the question oversoul asked seemed like an attempt to start token WIFOM, and I feel like token WIFOM is an antitown thing to start, because a player who spent tokens to be town could still very well have rolled scum (or vice versa) without it being that unlikely.

[theelkspeaks]

So guys, how does ika have 4 votes already? Like he's kinda not saying much of anything useful, but I don't see anything abysmal in his posts either, it feels more like "pre-game banter" from a player who doesn't have reads yet.

I'm keeping a moderately suspicious eye on this wagon.

[theelkspeaks]

So guys, how does ika have 4 votes already? Like he's kinda not saying much of anything useful, but I don't see anything abysmal in his posts either, it feels more like "pre-game banter" from a player who doesn't have reads yet.

I'm keeping a moderately suspicious eye on this wagon.

What's wrong with a wagon?

Might just be a playstyle thing, might be from playing on another (non-mafia but having mafia games) site with different rules and a meta resulting from that, but I tend to think a quickly building wagon without a solid case, especially at the start of an early day, probably has at least one scum. Don't have good rules for identifying which of the votes is the scum though.

[theelkspeaks]

Might just be a playstyle thing, might be from playing on another (non-mafia but having mafia games) site with different rules and a meta resulting from that, but I tend to think a quickly building wagon without a solid case, especially at the start of an early day, probably has at least one scum. Don't have good rules for identifying which of the votes is the scum though.

Why would you need rules? Can't you just look at the votes and see if any of them seem off or scummy (e.g. Cheery Dog or from your perspective maybe Bluetoffee)?

but neither Regfan nor CES has towned very hard yet.

Were you expecting us to?

What I mean by not having rules is that I don't have a fixed method (3rd vote, 4th vote, etc. is always scum) but rather have to look at the individual votes.

64 - Correct Psyche, I was more interested in trying to get you to join the ika wagon.

67 - I just know you're gonna elaborate on this, Zach.

68 - This post is pretty bad by elk. Who is suspicious on the ika wagon? Why?

If you don't like the wagon, why are not inquiring about the people on it?

VOTE: Elk

83 - Ika, if you think scum is voting you, you should probably do something about that.

I feel like the wagon itself grew suspiciously fast but I'm still trying to figure out who was responsible for it.



As for the meta/gamerules thing, what I meant is that I play some mafia on elementscommunity (a non-mafia site with some mafia games), which has 72 hour days, plurality lynches, lynches being finalized at deadline and not whenever a player reaches majority, and significant player tendency to pile on players who are already getting lynched. This play may have made me overly suspicious of fast wagons, so I think that oversoul's attempt to start token WIFOM is worse (since knowledge of my own biases against early wagons makes me hesitant to dive too hard into that wagon, at least for now).

[theelkspeaks]

i don't really understand what you mean by that llama

Town usually go depth-first and put some time into analyzing one player, then another. Scum focus on understanding the game as a whole so they can make sure the day doesn't head down a path that will hurt them.

I actually disagree with that. As town, I find I need to understand where the game as a whole is going before I can see who looks scummy. As scum, I'd prefer to try to see how far I can push a player than to understand the game as a whole.

[theelkspeaks]

Elk, what is your opinion of Cheery Dog? Also, why would an analysis of the votes for ika take a long time? There are like 100 posts in this thread and only 4 votes for ika.

Getting to Cheery in a second, but the problem with the ika votes is that none of them look especially bad to me, so I'm considering the ika-voting players more closely and trying to get more to read them on.

[theelkspeaks]

Cheery:

ISO #s
0) standard RVS, nothing special
1) calls reads good that include a scum-read on him. Kinda awkward, maybe trying too hard to be town (scum would never agree with a read on them, would they? is the logic he's hoping for if he is scum)
2) contributes to token WIFOM but others let the cat out of the bag first. not great but not terrible.
3) denounces token WIFOM somewhat. Last sentence makes no sense to me.

Kinda lacking in content overall but nothing that triggers my scumdar besides the aforementioned mild lack of content.

[theelkspeaks]

I actually disagree with that. As town, I find I need to understand where the game as a whole is going before I can see who looks scummy. As scum, I'd prefer to try to see how far I can push a player than to understand the game as a whole.

Can you link me a game where you did this as scum?

As far as I remember I'm yet to roll scum on this site.

Offsite, http://elementscommunity.org/forum/foru ... ngaia/144/, especially posts 152 and 156, which despite not looking like huge pushes to a player from here were two of the bigger pushes in that game.

[theelkspeaks]

*is sad about the replacement*

The replacement occurred after my teammate copper told me to say hi to TTH and that he expects TTH is town and can carry the game.

VOTE: Psyche

[theelkspeaks]

Mostly because TTH is my strongest townread and while struggling to find scum so far, I can back the scumread of my strongest townread with a vote.

[theelkspeaks]

BBT and llama are town.

Psyche is still scum.

Waffling back and forth on Cheery Dog.

[theelkspeaks]

Specifically, the BBT/llama argument feels like 2 town players with contrasting opinions but both legitimately trying to get to the bottom of what the best way to lynch scum in this game is.

[theelkspeaks]

That's all it takes to be town for you?

Zach is scum.

[theelkspeaks]

That's all it takes to be town for you?

Zach is scum.

Since this wasn't clear to everyone, I'm saying that Zach's "Oh, so this is all I have to do to sell you that I'm town" attitude sounds like a scum indignant that it was that easy to get town-read by BBT and he still wasn't being.


As for my teammates, it's mostly been just copper and I looking at this so far. The scumread on Psyche is a combination of following my townread's read and copper's read. I wasn't convinced at first, but I'm feeling it more now than I was - though copper convinced me of it last night after my last post.

[theelkspeaks]

I don't know why I agreed to work on a public holiday, I do have the next two days off though so big rereads coming up then.

Llama, can understand and agree with the BBT, Zach and CES reads. Don't get your town read on Elk even remotely, comments you're town-reading are part of the reason why I'm scum-reading him and I'm not alone in believing that on my team, mind asking Nacho and Ffyer to at minimum ISO him and give me their thoughts on him because I really really don't like a) His avoidance of my point that if "Token discussion = anti-town" him voting Oversoul over me makes no sense and b) The timing and placement of his Psyche vote as well as attempting to claim he always scum-read him (Maybe get them to ISO me to see our teams thought process re; Elk too?). Think Ika should be much higher on your town list, much much higher.

Elk, I want Coppers (and your) explanation on the Psyche scum-read and the exact progression of how you came about having it as I don't buy Post 369 at all.

You know we don't have to actually solve the game, right? I'm just aiming to win it in three lynches and that seems pretty doable.

Solving the game is the fun part, no? Gives me something to do during breaks at work, on the bus, instead of being able to fall asleep. Okay, maybe I'm just crazy but I like to feel like I've got a very good grasp on the scum-team and have a solid group of town reads I'd bank on and I'm not having it this game yet.

I actually feel like there's probably one scum within the Zach, BBT thing. That whole fight feels forced to me.

BBT touches on this above (We're both agreeing on something, the universe will explode) but this stance makes no sense whatsoever (Thinking something is SvS or TvT does make some sense but SvT doesn't) as it implies that one of them would be town in this conversation acting awkwardly making nothing stopping from both people being town. The whole "1 scum in X/Y" is something I see scum using a lot to a) Make it look like they're taking a stance at the moment while not really and b) Allows them to line-up reasoning to throw down a vote based on flips alone later (Especially in this setup). So explain why you think the whole fight is forced for me and why you think there's probably one scum in them as opposed to both being scum or both being town.

Team chat about this game (all times US East Coast)

me March 31 ~5PM: after replacing into the last game I played I forgot how much day 1's suck. struggling to read people.
copper ~10AM April 1: BBT/Cheery town, CES/ika scummy (he didn't explain here)
copper ~noon: actually you know what TTH is town and appears to be playing really well here, tell her I say hi and that she should just win this game already, her scumread of psyche is probably right.
me ~1PM: I don't see psyche-scum, why is psyche scum? I've got null on psyche and town on ika
copper ~3PM: partly the psyche is because he's trying to save ika from lynch, so you'll disagree with that part, but the other part is the very forced tunnel on BBT for being terse, looks like faked scumhunting
copper ~3PM: also what about CES, he's my #2 behind Psyche
me ~3:30PM: You know what I can see the Psyche, yeah that does look bad. As for CES he's kinda null-to-scum for me, contrast of "I wanna RVS" with "loljk I had a reason for that" seems a little off but kinda weak. Agreeing with the BBT town read btw after iso-ing.
copper ~5PM: BBT and anti are acting town with respect to you and your wagon, CES is always disagreeing with their reads, so watch him.
copper ~4AM April 2: look at the wagon on you, it flared up when you voted Psyche, but ika said his team flipped to town on you right after two people refused to vote you. ika/Psyche/CES, gg. Remember watching TTH play? She's super strong early game as town.

copper was scum in my Open 577 and TTH played by far the best of the town in that game, for the explanation on that one.

[theelkspeaks]

re:tokens: can someone link the post where zoroaster changed it?

Not sure whether Aeronaut's self-preservation is town or scum, it feels like my previous experiences self-preserving as town to some extent, but I feel like the motive for self-preservation is hard to decipher, as both alignments want to self-preserve.

How experienced of a player is Aeronaut?

[theelkspeaks]

ika wagon would be a waste, let's save him til we can read him better in a day or two.

[theelkspeaks]

ika's play here feels kinda like some of his play in Hilariously Unbalanced 2, where he was town (in a hydra with mollie) - in that game he went back and forth between super-argumentative and the way he's playing here.

that's a decent part of why I think his wagon isn't great.

[theelkspeaks]

ika's play here feels kinda like some of his play in Hilariously Unbalanced 2, where he was town (in a hydra with mollie) - in that game he went back and forth between super-argumentative and the way he's playing here.

that's a decent part of why I think his wagon isn't great.

I'm currently the only one on it, does the wagon not being great mean anything towards my alignment?

There seemed to be a couple people thinking about wagoning him, so I was saying I didn't like the idea of wagoning him because

[theelkspeaks]

Let me re-read Aero and get input from my team.

[theelkspeaks]

I might be biased because most of Aeronaut's scummy play was directed at me, but he's feeling pretty scummy to me when looking at his ISO. Teammates haven't gotten to reply yet on him.

Consider this intent to hammer, so if anyone has any final reasons not to, let me know. (And yes, with ika here, putting someone to L-1 is hammering).

[theelkspeaks]

Copper is concerned about the fact that the Aero wagon was done while he was RL away for a few days and with it being a counterwagon to ika and Psyche, wondering whether the inherent delay for Aero to return made him a good wagon choice for scum because the time it took for Aero to respond to it would dispel pressure from ika/Psyche.

Both he and I think that Aero's actual posts are scummy though.

[theelkspeaks]

VOTE: :Aero

[theelkspeaks]

VOTE: ika

This recent BBT vs. ika is definitely not TvT. At least one of those two is scum, and I already had a townread on BBT, so ika it is.

[theelkspeaks]

ika's insistence on semantic troubles with the claims being made against him seems kinda like a non-town way to respond to a push. Focusing on the wording instead of the content feels like just trying to discredit it.

On the other hand, BBT's consecutive single word posts feel a little off also, not sure if that's town frustration or a scum player trying to be very insistent.

[theelkspeaks]

copper has been focused on games other than this one currently, so it's mostly me again.

It's a fair point to say that claiming something is SvT is hard to do, and a better claim would have been that both sides in that argument look scummier than they previously did for having had the argmuent.

ika's insistence on the semantics is a thing scum have incentive to do.

BBT jumping all over ika's "bad town play" if indeed ika is town is a thing scum have incentive to do.

The repeated one-word posts there insisting on zero content felt kinda off to me, enough to damage, but not nullify my townread on BBT. I'm still townreading BBT, just less than before.

I was townreading ika less than I was townreading BBT, and ika's behavior in that argument pushed him all the way into my scumpile, so I voted him.

[theelkspeaks]

aaaaand copper is no longer part of my team now apparently. ...

[theelkspeaks]

theelkspeaks: Bulbazak wants to know if #387 is paraphrased.

Ank, explain that CES scum read for me especially in light of your "reads reset" comment in Post 683.

I hatehatehate his comment about one slot in his scumlist being town making the rest more likely. Nothing about that post looked town to me.

Right, so Oversoul's town. theelkspeaks is probably town. I feel okay about Regfan. ika still looks slimy, but I'll wait to see if GIF replaces in and try to read him instead. CES is scum.

I have no idea why Llamarble was killed. My theory of most of the scum being off wagon combines the factors of how scummy Aero looked, how the wagon formed, and where the nightkill was. (With the idea being that scum would tend to kill where they're not hiding.)

Can you go into detail more here please?

It's the zachrulez (tm) wagon analyzer that consists of how I see things from my own point of view. It should be pretty easy to actually see that point of view. I think my position is pretty clear and that your question delves more into gaining activity by making a theory argument that won't actually make any real productive mark in the game.

Don't even try this crap. If it should be so easy to see this point of view, then it shouldn't be difficult to explain at all either.

If Aeronaut was so scummy, why would scum be off the wagon? Scum would just as easily have hopped on to get towncred.
How does the way the wagon formed indicate scum would be off the wagon? I can't think of a single situation where scum would specifically want to all be off of a town wagon unless they really needed that slot alive, which I strongly doubt is the case here.
Why would Llamarble dying indicate scum would be off the wagon? This one just mystifies me, since it more likely indicates that town were the ones that started the wagon... which means scum would want to hop on for towncred.

387 is paraphrased and is from the PT (rather than an IM, I just formatted it like that for easier reading)

[theelkspeaks]

My team just replaced 2/4 members, so hopefully we'll have some fresh takes on this soon.

[theelkspeaks]

I've gotten a bit behind due to finding replacements for teammates and trying to get us all settled in, as well as an exam. Catching up!

[theelkspeaks]

So very many V/LAs!

Zack's point about Cheery does seem to be pretty spot-on from a look. That definitely makes me feel worse about cheery than before.

[theelkspeaks]

I'm going to ISO CES now and see what I think, I'll try to get feedback from my team.

[theelkspeaks]

Why CES?

Why not anybody else?

Because he's the leading wagon right now and I want to try to sort him better.

[theelkspeaks]

I think Aneninen was mixing me up with someone else there - in Elements Mafia (where all games are opens or semi-opens with unlimited private communication between anyone who chooses to) setup spec and attempts to break the game are pretty common, as are attempts to coordinate power roles to "solve" the game. I've generally been one of the advocates for actually scumhunting, though occasionally used what spec there was to my advantage, and when I moderated a game there, I tried to push the trend towards less "breakable" games by introducing safeclaims to the meta. The mafia won that game and town complained that safeclaims were unfair afterwards *facepalm*, but ideas for making the game less breakable have persisted, so I'm happy with that.

As for my team now, Aronis read part of this game but is still going. He thinks my BBT town read might be wrong, and also suspects ika, with CES being null and anti/tammy/anka being town reads.

I agree that CES's iso is difficult to read; I'm still trying to sort him.

[theelkspeaks]

VOTE: Ankamius

Look at the mod iso if you don't see why, just glanced through it and holy jeez.

[theelkspeaks]

basically that Anka's vote is super-duper static, parking it a large chunk of D1 on the widely townread llama, and most of the rest of Day 1 and Day 2 on CES. It feels like a planned scum strategy, though I'm not sure whether he's parking on CES for towncred once CES flips scum or whether he's parking on CES to give CES towncred when Anka flips scum. (Or just to create WIFOM, idk). Anka's votes make me feel really bad about both him and CES, and looking through the mod ISO as I just did before that vote made it much worse (i.e. more blatant) than reading through the game naturally.

[theelkspeaks]

Aneninen also makes a lot of sense as partner to either elk or BBT.

Ank, so you no longer think the Cheery Dog was scum-driven?

Regfan, I gave you a thought-out response and everything and you just disappeared on me. Don't make me doubt your town read on you, please.

Elk, what prompted you to look at the mod iso?

Mostly on a whim, I thought it might be useful to see the progression of votes over time, and it turned out some interesting thoughts.

[theelkspeaks]

Elk, no response to 1504?

Also, are you willing to vote CES toDay? If not, why not?

Didn't see a reason to reply to 1504. You're telling everyone else why you think I'm playing antitown, so it's up to me to try to follow up on my reads more, but just saying "yeah but I'm town" is pretty unproductive for everyone.

I'm willing to vote CES today potentially, I'd say he's probably 2nd in my scumpile right now, or maybe 3rd, but he's not my preferred wagon.

[theelkspeaks]

Also, Anen didn't mention this but ika's whole "I'm not scum just look at my meta, I know my own meta and this isn't how I play as scum" is a super unreliable reason for ika to be town and makes him sound pretty scummy for insisting it.

UNVOTE

VOTE: Ika

[theelkspeaks]

well we have me and CES who can lynch annen

i really dont care and nobody seems to also care how opertunistic elk votes looks.

like im kinda at point of wanting to be lynched o i can take over ZZZX game and not wory about this shit cus if we swap now i have to basicly tell him my thought on shit cus hes not reading this

Opportunistic? I was the second vote on you, right after you've posted several pages of scummy excuses since the last time I posted, AND I thought you were playing antitown at several points earlier in the game and had even voted you for it.

Opportunistic?

[theelkspeaks]

I have no reads?

Have you been reading my posts?

It's pretty clear that I'm scumreading you/CES/Anka in varying order, and townreading BBT/Anen.

Zach is still in the middle, hard to decide how I feel about him.

[theelkspeaks]

Anti and regfan are also in my null bin, for completeness sake.

[theelkspeaks]

Elk, can you explain Anen town read?

I'm struggling to swallow the fact you don't have a read on Anti or Regfan either.

It's not that I don't have a read on Anti and Regfan, it's that sometimes they feel town and sometimes they feel scum, so it's hard to sort them out.

As for Anen, it's that a lot of the things that he mentions as feeling scummy in his catching-up seem reasonable to me, and it feels like he's one of the players in this game trying the hardest to actually scumhunt.

[theelkspeaks]

EBWOP: Also I stole a pagetop from Equinox, so enjoy your drink

[theelkspeaks]

Know CD is probably the best place to throw down a vote given a) I still didn't like his jump on Llama b) I've got several town reads making him more likely scum via PoE and c) The scum-token usage makes him (significantly apparently) more likely to be scum but feel like that would be conceding that CESs early scum read owned me this game already and that's not something I feel like doing, not while we have this much time left anyway.

My team still thinks Aeronaut fits wall-flower scum and that there isn't any real transition in his reads, just questions that try to make him seem contributive, Empires not as bothered as I am about the "Zach v BBT" is SvT saying it could just be bad play (and admittedly he's kind of right) but the real kicker is that he's been very active elsewhere on the site yet hasn't commented on this game despite there being a lot of content since - lack of popping in to comment on Elks super town post reads more like him waiting to see where people would head next. There's a little more to this too but I'll go into that later if needed.

Vote: Aeranaut

Here's one example of a thing I don't like from Reg - his commentary on CD here feels a bit forced/strategic, and this post looks even worse after the townflip. I'm not good at explaining this particular /thing/ that he's doing here, so if the words "forced/strategic" aren't clear I can try to clarify. I'll discuss anti in my next post, but my roommates are getting ready for dinner right now.

[theelkspeaks]

I'm not even saying that I think either is scum. Just that if there is scum in CES/Reg, it's one scum and no more.

If I was to bank on one being scum, I'm actually more uneasy about Reg at this point to be honest.

you had your shot. twice.

you blew it.

sheep me.

This is one of anti's worst posts. Also his rage in general doesn't seem town-ish, but I've seen players on both sides of the aisle rage, so I can't say for sure.

[theelkspeaks]

Also, Anen didn't mention this

Does that mean you agree with Aneninen's case?

Also, I asked you some questions:

Mostly on a whim, I thought it might be useful to see the progression of votes over time, and it turned out some interesting thoughts.

When? During the Night?

What do you think of Ank unvoting me near the end of Yesterday? What do you think of the Cheery Doglynch?

Bonus questions: do you think Ank's less scummy now? Did you think ika was scummy previously?

Yes, I'm agreeing with the majority of Anen's case there - I disagreed with one or two of his interpretations but agreed with it as a whole, at least.

The ModISO read happened right before I voted Anka, it was an instaneous vote after reading it. Ank's unvote on you at the end of yesterday is a low-grade scummy action to me. The Cheery dog lynch makes Regfan look bad as I stated above.

Ank hasn't really done anything to redeem himself yet.

[theelkspeaks]

I'm pretty surprised that Anen ended up being scum - well done though!

So many people want to lynch CES that it worries me, in a situation where only one more correct lynch wins the game for town, I'd almost expect more resistance to the CES lynch from the scum, but maybe they just haven't posted yet.

[theelkspeaks]

That last part wasn't that clear, let me rephrase. If CES is actually town, we're giving the scum a really easy lynch on him because of how many people want him lynched.

[theelkspeaks]

I continue to believe that ika is one of the scummiest players in the game, and his behavior today doesn't diminish my scumread on him.

[theelkspeaks]

VOTE: ika

[theelkspeaks]

SCUM
ika
Anka
CES
Anti/Reg (tie)
BBT
Town

[theelkspeaks]

CES - VCA void of content? ?!?!?!? !?!?!?

VCA is one of the best scumhunting tools there is.

I mean you can disagree with the conclusions drawn from VCA, but. It exists and is useful!

[theelkspeaks]

It's the Day before LyLo, Regfan strongly thinks you're scum, BBT has unvoted ika and that's the only thing you're drawn to comment on?

VCA is nonsense.

Well it was complete bullshit. I'm trying to decide whether to switch to you or stay on ika, because I think it's you two right now.

But I was mostly hoping to make you actually respond to the VCA instead of just dismissing it.

[theelkspeaks]

Elks complete lack of reaction towards my vote and point about his Anen/Psyche read not making sense in Post 1861 just strengthens my scum-read there (He's just found something fairly minor/irrelevant to comment on there). Can we just lynch obvscum and end this please.

What's the point of commenting on your vote?

You think I'm scum, and I'd rather spend my time actually trying to find scum than trying to get into a "you're scum. No I'm not. Yes you are. Am not. Are too." with you. That's just wasted air.

[theelkspeaks]

I'm convinced that ika is scum, and I'm willing to tunnel him because I think he's playing objectively the most scummy of every player in the game. I know that I'm not scum, but I don't know how to make you believe me, so I'm just going to keep pushing the person I believe is scum.

Just lynch ika already. He's SCUM. SCUM SCUM SCUM.