Newbie 2128 - Manila Noir - Postgame

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hello all. i'm a returning player (last game here was like 7 years ago) and decided to start fresh with a new account. i can see there have been several rule and policy and meta changes since i left so i may take some time to settle in.

@mod

- i'm on V/LA through Aug 1 but i expect to have availability to post at least every other day.

for now here's an RVS vote to get things going.

VOTE: SmileyDude1
what are you smiling about?

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@ ender I've just come back from a long hiatus. Lots of things confused me after coming back.

Are you saying you're gonna post every other day?

i just mean i will make an effort, despite being on a trip, to post at least once every other day and i can't guarantee more often than that until i'm back to my normal schedule. however, i am fairly likely to have more opportunities to post than once every other day.

Icebreaker question: How much experience do you guys have in Mafia

my experience with online mafia is about 20-something games played on this site from roughly 2009-2016. almost all were the newbie format at the time, which if I remember right, only included VT, cop, doc, mafia goon, and mafia roleblocker as possible roles. so the other roles possible in the current format are new to me.

i also played a good amount of offline mafia around a decade ago, but only with normal roles (VT, cop, doc, and mafia goons).

this is my first mafia game of any sort in roughly 7 years.

let's start this game with a side-game of

hot

and

cold

. every other player gets one guess as to who my mason partner is today. It'll work like Guess Who - you can either guess the name, or state an observation as fact. the extremes listed in colour earlier are as specific as i'll get but i'll tell you if your guess is colder or warmer than the previous person's.

MikhailTal's slot is a mason.

Hot

.

why are you claiming so early?

as far as i can tell there are only a couple of possibilities, but let me know if i've missed anything.
1. you're mafia false-claiming with a gambit to fish for town PRs to counter claim. i guess the motivation here would be to sacrifice yourself early to give your partner an advantage by outing a town power role that can then be night-killed early.
2. you're telling the truth. but this is unhelpful. by claiming now, you've ensured mafia know the exact setup from the very start of the game, which removes any worry they might have had for N1 about being blocked by doc or jailkeep, or identified by cop or tracker. and you've either guaranteed you'll be the N1 kill (because mafia would want to prioritize eliminating a confirmed-town slot and to remove town aligned roles that have the ability to talk privately any time), or you've given mafia the opportunity to potentially get two free kills by picking a random townie to kill N1 and then WIFOM you to death D2 about how come you're still alive as a confirmed-town slot.

neither of those options is helpful for town in any way i can come up with. even if you are confirmed town and don't get night-killed, you don't have any action available to you to gather any additional information. so whatever the case may be, unless you're able to convince me how this is beneficial to town, i'm not going to participate in this fishing expedition to guess your supposed partner.

and i'd encourage everyone to ignore this claim entirely for D1 and see how things go N1, and if anyone is a town power role that conflicts with him being mason please do not counter claim D1, because that will just ensure you're the kill N1 and we lose the benefit of your action.

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posting to remove my rvs vote since while i read through what happened since my last post.

UNVOTE: SmileyDude1

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okay, after doing iso's on everyone so far here's where my head is at. there are still several slots that lack much substantial input.

the main content so far after Tal's claim, has been the back and forth between iavh and starfire.

looking at iavh:
if he is scum, he would have a lot of motive to push for a Tal wagon whether Tal is actually a mason or if Tal is scum also. Assuming town!Tal, scum motivation would be to get rid of a town PR during the day so that N1 kill doesn't have to go toward that. Assuming scum!Tal, scum!iavh would have motivation to distance himself heavily from such a rash early false claim. that doesn't mean iavh can't be town and just find Tal's claim IA and scummy, I personally don't see the claim as AI right now, and i also am feeling like a D1 lynch of Tal is not town-motivated.

he also is quick to use his scum read on Tal to draw connections to starfire by claiming she's chainsaw defending Tal. i personally don't like trying to look for scum pairs before the identity of one of the scum is known. there's nothing wrong with looking for links between people but i'd say let's first focus on finding one scum, and then once we know who they are we can analyze their interactions with everyone else more closely.

looking at starfire:
she started off by reading Tal's claim as 'rvs banter' and 'not a play at all'. scum!starfire would not have motivation to write off the claim as nothing, unless it's a starfire/Tal pairing. she changed her mind from Tal's claim being 'rvs banter' to it being just a bad play that is NAI. since i agree that the claim is not necessarily AI I don't see this change of mind as scummy either. the remainder of her posts have been calling out iavh for trying to wagon Tal, with the assertion that he really started pushing after i made my post which she says served as the catalyst for iavh to push harder.

between the two of them if i had to pick one, i feel like iavh's play so far has more scum motivation, so he earns my vote for now. VOTE: iamveryhappy

@Political Clout your only post is just a vote. in a game where text is all we have to go on, posts that lack substance are unhelpful. please clarify why you found the post you quoted scummy enough to warrant your vote. and please give your thoughts on what has happened so far.

@Maduisha and @Wayward Son, what are your thoughts on the back and forth between iavh and Starfire? have you noticed anything from anyone that raises your suspicion?

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As I repeat, has anyone caught on that the one claiming mason isn’t anything to defend themselves while heavily relying on someone else to defend them?

i don't think he's relying on starfire. i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he hasn't had a chance to check the thread since his last post. the longer time goes on the less benefit of the doubt i'll give, but for now i'm not reading into him not posting again yet.

Note that both scum!me and town!me would be on the claim there. Scum, it’s a lhf, town, it’s a fake claim. It’s just… not justified at all

there is no reason town should elim Tal yet. again, you and i are reading his claim differently (you read it as scum, i just read it as anti-town, which isn't necessarily the same). not every anti-town action deserves an elimination. if he can't adequately explain what he's doing or if he does further anti-town stuff then i may be swayed toward him being scum. but as i said in my post above, an early mason claim like this comes across as much too risky a gambit for scum of his experience.

i'm not saying we don't keep an eye on Tal, i'm saying that if we elim him D1 over his claim and he is town (whether he's mason or VT), we gain exactly 0 new information, scum doesn't have to use their NK to get rid of a power role, and we start D2 in the same position we're in now, except with two fewer town roles.

if instead we spend today looking at other people, we force mafia to kill Tal during N1. I'm not saying that's a good position for us to be in, but i am of the opinion it's a better position for us to be in than what i described above.

so imo town!everyone should set aside his horrible decision to claim for D1 and we can revisit tomorrow if needed. by going so hard against Tal, all i see is scum motivation from you. that's the reason for my vote.

Mason claim also stated that they with their partner “decided there was enough compensation or whatever”. Also calling bullshit on that. You just don’t have any compensation after all after I get voted, and if you are real you get shot and good job you lose a try hard this game and a PR d2

my read of his post was that he hadn't consulted his alleged partner about his decision to claim. i don't know what he meant about compensation.

So I’ve decided that it’s just not worth it to claim like that and it’s just… bad. It’s not just a bad claim, it’s a terrible one. I’m ready to see the claim flip red or chicken out and go “I’m vt don’t get me”.

Slight change to the post above

you're 100% right, it's a terrible claim. it's a bad idea to try it as scum, and it's an even worse idea to do it as town. but i don't think we need focus on him (on account of his claim alone) D1 if he's going to likely be the N1 kill anyway.

The vote just now was really bad btw
I’m sure mason claim gets on me for smth while I don’t like it I can’t change it. That leaves me at V-1. If I unfortunately die to the hammer or the nightkill vote any of the counter wagons that are occurring now, I’m sure both flip.
I’m talking about star and tal jsyk

wait that's E-1? one sec, i did a tally as i was reading ISO's but i may have made a mistake.
UNVOTE:
just in case. it's not that i'm not happy with my vote of you, but i definitely don't want the day to end so soon, we still have over a week for discussion and we should use as much of it as we can.

@mod - can we get an official tally?

I’ve settled my mind on being the lamb today for red flips tomorrow.

save the AtE, your mind being settled has no bearing on my vote.

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ok by my tally, my vote would put iavh at E-2, but just in case i'm still misreading something i will hold off reinstating it until mod gives us the official tally since it's been 4 pages and plenty of room for user error on my part.

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@mod - please double check. you have keria on iavh but his only vote was for wayward son

. he quoted a post that vote iahv so maybe that's where the confusion is. iavh should only have wayward son and starfire as votes on him right now.

humaneatingmonkey: Thanks for noticing!

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Are you voting happy for elimination here because to me that's exactly what it reads like. Are you aware that a day in MS is 10 irl days?

i am using my vote to apply pressure, and to indicate who i am currently feel most comfortable with eliminating if it comes to it. the same as you are doing with starfire.

i'm well aware of how long days are and i'm well aware that we should make the most of them. hence my subsequent unvote when there was confusion over the vote tally. since the official vote count still (according to my count) has a miscount, i am still holding off on reapplying my vote until we are 100% sure.

i'm not trying to cause a quick lynch if that's what you're getting at.

mmm
answer the questions btw

please indicate to whom you are speaking.

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i'm not trying to cause a quick [redacted] if that's what you're getting at.

sorry, old habits. i meant "quick elimination"

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Don't misrepresent what I said. I didn't say we shouldn't examine tal today. I said that his claim shouldn't be the basis for a vote or elimination during day 1. Please reread my post. I clearly said if he does anything else anti town or scummy that should be taken into account.

As for what I mean to accomplish with my vote for pressure, it's to gauge iavh's reaction, which I already have to some degree. But now I'm on my phone so I'll wait until I'm back at my computer later today before I do any further analysis.

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I just don't know why it's difficult to understand. We shouldn't eliminate tal day one solely based on his claim. We should force mafia to nk him if they want him gone instead of doing their work for them. Then day two if he is mafia and was lying, then that means we have power roles that can counter him. But they just shouldn't do that today because they'd get nk'd and lose their action.

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you're getting shit from my reaction lol
understand my sarcasm first

do you find sarcasm to be a pro-town response? do you find it helpful in getting someone on your side in a discussion?
do you find it pro-town to react in a disingenuous manner?

Big sorry if I misunderstood as that's how I interpreted what you said. If you're voting happy to apply pressure in the form of a reaction then what do you think happy is doing with mikhail tal?

iavh is trying to eliminate Tal. point blank. he said before if he had 3-4 votes to give him, he would. he's blinded by the badness of the claim and just wants to kill tal and see the flip. yes he may 'just' be trying to put pressure on Tal to see his reaction, but who knows. we won't know until Tal actually reacts, and can see how iavh reacts to his reaction. i'm only going based on the information i have, which at this point isn't very much.

because when I read your 86 it looks like no matter what happy does he is condemned in your eyes. if tal is scum or town you assign scum motivation to happy.

because iavh is currently acting in a way that has scum motivation, in my eyes, regardless of tal's alignment. i see more anti-town motivation behind iavh's actions than pro-town motivation so far. that's why i voted him and intend to re-vote him (when the vote count is confirmed and corrected) unless new information comes forth or he starts acting in a way that i see to be protown instead.

but don't construe that to mean that "no matter what happy does he is condemned". no one is condemned yet. i am always open to new information coming out. i am always open to having a discussion and seeing if my opinion can be swayed back. tunneling people is never helpful. keep in mind the day just started, there is still over a week left for us to figure as much out as we can, and i don't intend to only look at iavh during that time. but he is currently my biggest suspect at the moment.

To me everything that has happened feels like misunderstandings upon misunderstandings but we need to sus out which ones are being obtuse on purpose and feigning ignorance. Hence all the questions I'm asking.

i appreciate your questions. questions are pro-town. questions force people to explain themselves and their thought process, which can only help us figure out what's going on. so please continue.

since we can examine mikhail tal today what question what would you ask mikhail tal since he is currently the subject of great debate? because you're making an association with a slot that hasn't really said anything to a player that has been the most active has been responding to questions isn't scared of the thread, and it appears doesn't really care what happens to them to me that all screams town.

i would ask him what his intention or plan was with his claim, if he actually planned to reveal his alleged mason partner, if he actually thought that was a good idea, and why he thought that starting the game with a mason claim would be beneficial for town. i want to know his mindset and reasoning. there have been 4 pages of discussion and theories now from everyone except him, so understanding his thought process will help us try to figure out what his motivation was, and whether it actually is deserving of a vote like iavh thinks. maybe it is. we will see.

You're assuming a lot in what random people might do. and you're claiming that your plan is the most optimal while yelling it in the thread. If I was scum I would just leave mikhail alive after I read your post.

as i said above, i am open to discussion and open to having my mind changed. i'm not the town leader here, i'm not saying we have to do anything a certain way. i'm just trying to present what i see to be the best option for us to take. i've presented my idea and i've given the reasons i think it is the most optimal course to take. so far no one has told me any specifics of why my idea would be negative for town.

i welcome you or others to tear apart my proposed plan and let me know why it's bad, and we can discuss and figure out what a better course of action would be.

you're

absolutely

convinced of the process of how the day and night are going to go and trying to convince us that what you're claiming is optimal it feels like you are operating with more information than what everyone else has.

i'm not absolutely convinced about anything. the claim put us in a bad position and all i've been trying so far is figure out which of the options we have in front of us is least bad for town overall. unless tal is actually scum, i don't see any way eliminating him D1 will be beneficial for town. i'm not ruling that out but i think it is less likely than the alternative at this point.

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@Keria
i also avoid making read lists. if you want my opinion on a specific post, exchange or interaction, i'm happy to indulge, but i don't plan on making a full list. as it has already been stated, such lists tend to give scum information about who most people find most and least pro-townie, which can given them advantage when deciding on night kills,

i skipped bringing you up in post 86 because i pretty much agreed with what you had been saying up to that point, and didn't have anything to add or ask at the time. i asked for those other two's opinions specifically because i hadn't seen much input from them yet, whereas you had been a bit more active.

i am a little curious what it is that i've done that gives you a scum vibe. you said i've seemed like i'm "trying really hard" to look like town, but it would helpful to know if there is anything specific i can address to try and ease your worries about me.

you've also mentioned you think i and starfire could be a scum team. aside from the fact that she and i are both voting iavh, is there anything in particular that gives you that vibe? or is it just that she and i are your top two suspects now, so it makes sense to look at as us a potential team?

not sure about Starfire or ender. i think this is a possible scum team tbh

sure. i think it would make sense for scum to push for a Mikhail elimination because then they wouldn't have to waste their night kill on him. fading a town PR day 1 would be a huge swing for them

interesting back-to-back statements considering that i have no interest in a Tal elim today, and from what i gather from her posts, neither does starfire. i do agree that pushing hard for a Tal elim is scum motivated, hence my recent and pending vote on iahv.

speaking of which, i just saw that our lovely mod fixed the vote count in their last post, so i'm reinstating my:
VOTE: iamveryhappy

that's E-2, to be clear. note: since we're still very early in the day, if someone puts him at E-1 too far ahead of deadline i intend to unvote to prevent an early hammer.

and with that, let me segue...

@iavh

I smile. I wait until tomorrow. I build suspense on purpose. I can see you will be really mad about the thing I'm going to do. I'm going to enjoy you asking me what it is and not answering it. I know you are going to find a soft in this post. Have fun!
Here's some extra stuff:
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to carry its fat body off the ground. The bee flies anyways because bees do not care about what humans think. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Ooh, black and yellow. Let's shake it up a little!
There are some mistakes there that I might have done on purpose.

i don't quite know what you're doing here. i have a suspicion which i won't reveal, just in case. but i will say, either way... please dispense with the theatrics.

if you have something to say, then say it plainly. if you have something to breadcrumb, do it discreetly. otherwise it's not a breadcrumb. if whatever you have to say should wait for D2, then wait for D2. but posting cryptic garbage with a smug attitude about how angry you think it will make people is just unhelpful. the sarcasm, smugness, and appeals to emotion are not swaying me in your favor. quite the opposite.

do you have any other scum reads (or suspicions or thoughts on any players) besides the two we know about (mikhail and starfire)?

----

other questions for other people:

@SmileyDude1
you've just essentially said that you find everyone either pro-town or null. if you had to pick one person today to eliminate right now, who would it be, and why?

@Wayward Son
aside from mikhail you're the only other player who hasn't posted since page 1. i look forward to your thoughts.

@MikhailTal
care to join us? i can understand if your weekend has been busy, but dropping a claim like you did and then disappearing altogether for this long is massively irresponsible and unhelpful.

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well i guess the next step is to wait until starfire returns and reacts to MikhailTal pointing at her as their mason partner.

@MikhailTal in what way do you see this playing out favorably for town? can you please explain your thought process?

[ender]

@MikhailTal you've asserted yourself and starfire as masons. If starfire indeed confirms that she is your mason partner, the only way she would go along with that is if she is in fact your mason partner, or if she is your scum partner. since so far her play has been very reasonable and competent, I don't see any other possibility in which non-mason-townie!starfire confirms being your mason partner.

if she does confirm that, then the only way we can know if you're masons or scum is by eliminating one of you and seeing your flip. for example, if we elim one of you and you flip mason, that would confirm your claim, but would mean that the other one of you is the obvious NK choice for D2 since scum most likely won't want a confirmed townie to remain in the game. so then we'd enter D2 with no new information, two fewer town-aligned players, and no remaining town power roles.
if, on the other hand, we elim one of you and you flip scum, then we proceed to elim the other of you D2 and that's game, easy-peasy. while that latter option is favorable for town, it would be breaking the mod's rule #2 "play to win" on your part as scum, and it would be bad play in general so i don't think it's the likely outcome.

alternatively if starfire objects to your assertion, then things become much less straightforward. that means either you're lying or she's trying to prevent one of the above scenarios from happening. if this happens, i'm not even sure where we go from there. all we'd have at that point is confusion and chaos, and scum thrives in chaos.

now looking at all of those outcomes, please tell me which one (aside from the one that would break the 'play to win' rule) is advantageous for town.

feel free to let me know if there are other possibilities i haven't considered, but that's what i've come up with at this point.

i know there's possibility of town PR counter claim that can also affect those scenarios but haven't thought too far into the implications of that.

annnnnnd iavh just claimed. UNVOTE: iamveryhappy that's what i figured you were alluding to in your bee movie post @iavh

so i guess this is where we stand. one of @MikhailTal or @iamveryhappy is scum.

[ender]

also

@mod - the vote count at the top of this page is once again wrong as of when you posted it but right as of my unvote in my last post.

i voted iamveryhappy in #170 which should have brought him to 3 votes, aka E-2.

humaneatingmonkey: Thanks!

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oh and it should be clear but

if there are any other town power roles in play, i.e. a doctor, please do not claim

.

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before they pointed the finger at Starfire, i was wondering for a second if mikhail was townie fake claiming mason just to fish for reactions. it's not a good pro-town play, either, but it was a possibility. but leaving the game alone for so long after doing so would make that an incredibly risky option due to the opportunity for counter claims and wagons to form. plus, fake claiming as town is... probably never good pro-town play. and anyway, now that they've named their supposed mason partner, they've doubled down on their claim. in my mind it's clearly either a real claim or they're scum.

i'm still struggling with understanding scum!MikhailTal's train of thought coming into the game with a claim like that, though. They would know that every setup has at least one town power role, and that except for literally column C, row 1 in the setup table when faking a doc claim, there is no other opportunity for a fake claim to work because real PRs would be able to counter it, like we see happening right now. and choosing mason with the idea of outting your own scum partner as your mason partner is probably the worst fake claim they could have made as scum.

so i have to wonder, how did scum!Mikhail think this would go any differently?

even if they're legitimately mason!Mikhail, the plan to out themselves and their mason partner day 1, knowing that setups with masons cannot have any other town power roles, is absurd because as soon as scum know who the town power roles are, they are going to be highly motivated to eliminate or NK them asap. so mason!Mikhail had to know that this plan would result in both them and their mason partner being dead early in the game, potentially even before D2... wasting a day and leaving town with no power roles and two fewer town-aligned players. that only increases scum's chances.

i'm also wondering if perhaps scum!mikhail picked a random person who isn't their partner to throw us off. surely scum!mikhail wouldn't throw away the game by literally outing themselves and their scum partner 7 pages into the game right? so we should be wary of their association with Starfire, regardless of how she reacts to being named, until we know for sure if mikhail is mason or not.

(side note... my mind has been racing even to the point where i was wondering if there was a Mikhail + iavh scum team. but... no it, that could only work if the setup was column C, row 1, with iavh claiming doc. all other setups have other town PRs that would also counter claim. and even that scenario would fail by day 3 when the 'doc' is still alive. so nevermind. but still interesting to think about)

anyway, like i said earlier, assuming both of them are playing toward their win condition, there has to be one scum in either @MikhailTal's slot or @iamveryhappy's slot. so now we need to decide which of the two should get the D1 elim.

despite my previous inkling that @iavh was scummy for his tunnel on @Mikhail, i think it is more advantageous to elim @MikhailTal first, see how he flips, see how the night goes, and proceed from there.

so i am stating my

intent

to vote @MikhailTal unless anyone can convince me i'm wrong or that they have a better plan.

[ender]

exercise reading literacy and you'd maybe notice that

we never claimed mason

and

our mason partner could be nobody

?

(bold emphasis mine)
i don't know if your definition of 'claim' requires certain wording, or a ritual, or maybe it has to happen at a certain time on the second tuesday of the month in a leap year for it to count, but my definition of claim is very simple and very standard: "saying or leading others to believe you are a certain role". or, as the wiki puts it more simply:

A roleclaim (or just "claim") is a statement of what your role is. (Reference)

i don't know about you but your first post certainly looks like a claim by both of those definitions, and based on the reactions of every single other player in this game, i think they agree.

and therefore, regardless of whatever you think you did or whatever you meant to do or whatever you want us to believe you did or not believe you didn't do... the fact is, you did claim mason. here, let me show you:

let's start this game with a side-game of

hot

and

cold

. every other player gets one guess as to who

my mason partner

is today. It'll work like Guess Who - you can either guess the name, or state an observation as fact. the extremes listed in colour earlier are as specific as i'll get but i'll tell you if your guess is colder or warmer than the previous person's.

MikhailTal's slot is a mason.

Hot

.

(bold emphasis mine). Not only did you specifically say your slot is mason, you also used "Hot" as a way of indicating that it was a correct/true statement.

and not only did you claim mason, you also indicated that Starfire is your mason partner, as shown here:

[xia] absolute pleasure to be playing with pc, we've been preoccupied and still come back to a beautiful game anyway! refreshing to see someone so proficient at depersonalising in a good way

guy who's very happy hero calling based off of 5 messages is based behaviour and obviously it's in the rules that based is towny

starfire is of course our Spirit Mason teammie

, leeeet's not talk about ender, keria's kinda scummy and prolly trying to mislim

my teammie

rn, dude number 1 who's smiley hmmm you can be a teensy bit towny why not

not super sure why so many folks reacted this way to the unnamed one's metagame, i feel like it's pretty normal to be able to compartmentalise conversations in this game? understandable that you'd all wanna eke out whatever town credit you can if a few vacuous statements is gonna do the trick so fair~ a lil on the nose when there's already so much to work on though lmao

(bold emphasis mine)
and now you're trying to say that what you said there in bold wasn't actually you claiming Starfire to be your mason partner. granted, i don't know what a "spirit mason" is. but i do know what a mason is. if "spirit mason" is something different than "mason", then given its similarity and the implications

you know

it has if it is misinterpreted, it is your responsibility to say it is something different when you use the term.

your [xia] labeled posts are full of flowery phrases and non-conventional ways of saying peoples' names ("guy who's very happy hero", "dude number 1 whos's smiley", and later "my brother in christ"), so naturally i disregarded the term "spirit mason" as a non-conventional way of saying "mason". so did iavh. so did keria. which is exactly what you expected and intended, no matter what you say now.

so in summary, you claim mason in your first post, and then you come back after 7 pages of everyone else in the thread talking

about your claim

, you out your supposed mason partner, and then you try to gaslight us by saying you never claimed? bullshit.

this is all ridiculously dogmatic for a game with almost zero hard information as of yet. no, town or mafia can claim to be our spirit mason partner at their leisure and the idea that it's alignment indicative is willfully choosing not to critically think.

of course no one is going to claim to be your "spirit mason partner" or "mason partner" or scum partner or anything unprovoked. the whole idea of being a town power role is to try and blend in as a normal vanilla townie while having some extra advantage (in mason's case, knowledge of another confirmed town slot, and a private thread with day and night talk). claiming without reason just gives up that advantage and puts you in the crosshairs of both scum and town. so no... no one is going to claim "at their leisure", unprovoked, with no need, and risk giving that up.

the idea that seeing a d1 mason duo claim flip is in town's interests ever is patently ridiculous.

yep. it is ridiculous. why would we want to flip

two town roles

so early in the game? that is horrible for town, i'm glad you recognize that now. i wish you recognized that sooner.

but right now we're dealing with a situation where someone (you) is claiming a power role, not only for yourself but also for someone else. which means now there are two people who are allegedly confirmed town power role. on its own that's bad enough because that just tells scum who needs to be eliminated. but now we also have a counter claim against your claim, which is the natural response for a town power role slot that sees someone else claiming as a town power role.

i'm not saying you're not mason and i'm not saying Starfire isn't your mason partner. I'm not saying iavh is cop. i don't know. i don't know anyone's role but my own. but i am saying that it is impossible for both things to be true. it is impossible for the game setup to contain a cop and two masons. therefore, someone here is lying. and lying about roles is anti-town.

because we know the setup cannot have both a mason and a cop, and because lying about roles is anti-town, the pro-town thing is to eliminate one of the claimants to gather more information about which side was lying.

that is why lying as VT would be extra bad, because it means we end up eliminating a townie and outing an actual power role that will probably be night killed or else will probably be the next day's elimination.

the idea that this is causing chaos is also laughable

of course it's chaos. you're just trying to minimize the impact of your horrible decision to claim.

it's exactly one additional consideration to make amongst the literal billions you could be making at any moment. what if aliens have abducted you and you're hallucinating every bit of our text you're reading? that seems more chaotic but you aren't talking about scum thriving in hangar 18

huh?

what's advantageous for town is for interactions to happen d1 and interactions are happening d1.

i agree. interactions are good. discussion is good. unprovoked claiming, gaslighting, fishing for counter claims, etc. is bad. learn the difference.

PRs are a crutch and alluding to them doesn't magically make them appear unless

someone

starts being a bit too obvious about it. how is mafia supposed to know whether starfire and I are vanilla towns playing as open lovers or not? keria sure seems like mafia that doesn't know as we speak

you shouldn't be "playing as" anything you aren't. play your role. play to win. don't play to confuse.

also it doesn't matter because iavh isn't the actual cop and is just reaction testing as town.

and you have intimate knowledge of this fact? the only way you could know if he is "the actual cop" is if you are "the actual cop" or if you're mafia and your mafia roles don't align with a setup that has a cop. and if you are cop and you started out the game claiming mason, then god help us.

the fact is, i don't trust you in the slightest. i was willing to keep you alive into Day 2 before you outted your supposed partner but now that you've done that and we've got a cop counter claim on the table (which feels more believable than your mason claim), i think eliminating you today is our best course of action.

VOTE: MikhailTal
E-1

please wait to hammer while discussion is ongoing.

we still have 7 days to deadline so as long as discussion is still moving, we shouldn't end it prematurely.

[ender]

you keep trying to say "i never said exactly xyz", and no, you didn't. but a lot of things are implied and assumed based on convention and collective experience.

find a single place that 'hot' or 'cold' are defined as being related to how likely i or anyone is to be the mason, anywhere

when using 'hot' and 'cold' to categorize statements, 'hot' is traditionally used to indicate proximity to correctness, and 'cold' is traditionally used to indicate that you're getting further from being correct.

it comes from the game where an item is hidden, and a person is told to search for it, while being given clues such as "warmer" and "colder" and "hot" to indicate whether they are approaching it. it's the same thing here.

you said

i'll tell you if your guess is colder or warmer than the previous person's.

which indicates that you know that those temperature words have the meaning i've indicated

you told people to search for who your mason partner is, which implies you are mason and have a mason partner, and then you used those temperature words to indicate how correct the statements were, according to you.

so by pairing 'hot' with your statement "MikhailTal is a mason", you indicated that your statement was accurate and correct. which is essentially the same thing as claiming.

this whole thing reads as you wanting to claim but trying to give yourself an out in case it backfires. well, it backfired and now you're trying to use that 'out' and i'm not buying it.

keep insulting my intelligence and acting like you're the pinnacle of good town play, it's doing you a lot of good.

also do not dare conflate my and xia's positions again. we are plural, you do not get to use xia's posts to discredit mine directly.

i won't begin to imply i understand the dynamic your DID brings to the discussion. i don't. this is my first experience with it. and i mean no disrespect or insult or anything of that nature. game aside, i'm being sincere.

but when your slot says something, your slot says something. you're not two different slots with two different roles. you're collectively one slot, one role. and i don't know when to expect you or xia, etc.
so yes, i am going to use what your slot says when i am talking about your slot and responding to your slot. if that's insensitive, i'm sorry, but i don't know of another way to handle it.

anyway, i don't think we're getting anywhere, and i would like to know what other people think about this whole situation. especially Starfire, since she was named.

[ender]

well that's far from ideal.

i'll be keeping my vote where it is for now, but i look forward to hearing from each of the replacements when they join.

and in the meantime i plan to read back over things myself and see if anything new jumps out at me.

[ender]

given the sudden burst of activity overnight i'll need some time to read through it. i plan to answer any questions directed at me in the past several pages but if anyone has any specific questions for me to ensure i don't miss them, please re-ask them here.

for now i wanted to respond to this:

Scum are likely to think Town is real claiming, thus be confused by the softing.

Starfire and Ender both seem to basically just ignore the fact that Happy is very obviously softing, and like Happy was basically telling them that he is softing, yet they both seem to think it's more reasonable that he is scummy for what he has done, then reconsider that Mikhail is bad, this is more likely to come from scum, because they know they are bad and thus not Mikhail, whereas town are going to go "Ok, Happy and Mikhail are trying to both claim contradicting roles, something is wrong here, let's wait and see"

i'm sure my logic isn't always the best, but i feel like i tried to explain my reasoning as thoroughly as i could, and reading back through it, it still makes perfect sense to me. mostly everyone that has scumread me so far has just told me that my logic is bad but hasn't explained why. so if anyone who is scum reading me could explain their suspicions i'd be happy to discuss.

i admit i didn't notice that iavh was softing at all until his 'bee movie' post (144). or maybe a couple of posts ahead of that one where he said he was going to do something day2 that would anger people. a counter was the only thing that came to mind when i tried to think through what he could be talking about.

if there were any previous hints dropped they went over my head. i do plan to iso him to see if i can figure out what i missed that you're saying was "obviously softing" and "telling them he is softing", unless you're referring to those posts i just mentioned.

my point of view leading up the counter claim was that i did not feel that a mikhail elim was productive for D1 at the time. and in fact i felt pushing for a mikhail elim was scum motivated based on the information we had at the time. remember this is before mikhail pointed at Starfire as their alleged partner, and before iavh claimed. so all we had to work with was that mikhail was claiming a town PR. so to just elim that slot right away felt incredibly reckless. mafia would want any confirmed town slots gone asap, so i felt that if we did elim mikhail and they did flip town, we were just doing the mafia's work for them. by focusing elsewhere and keeping mikahil alive into N1 we would force mafia to choose whether they wanted to NK a claimed town power role. i know my reasoning isn't perfect because in the latter case, mafia doesn't have to kill him and could try to build WIFOM on him day 2, but by then if we did have other power roles (e.g. cop) they could investigate him n1 and be able to present their findings if it came to it, and we'd have the additional information from whoever they did NK.

but everything i just said above changed when mikhail pointed out their supposed partner (Starfire) and then iavh claimed. now we had a counter claiming town PR. i admit i wasn't really entertaining the idea that mikhail could be fake claiming as VT so in my mind they had to be either mason or scum. maybe there's the flaw in my argument, but let me proceed. with two claimed power roles, there is an easy way to figure out who is telling the truth: elim one and see the flip. and in my opinion, when weighing between a claimed mason and a claimed cop, it is more beneficial to elim the mason first because they don't get a night action, whereas the claimed cop at least has a shot at getting a result.

so if we elim'd mikhail and they flipped mason we'd know that iahv was lying. and based on scenarios i ran a while back, it is practically impossible to win if scum counter claim each other D1, so the idea that mikhail scum claimed mason and iahv scum claimed cop is out the window as far as i am concerned.

so lacking a lying VT fake claiming power role, the steps to identify who was telling the truth seemed pretty clear to me as explained above, hence my vote change from iavh to mikhail. i can see that several people think Mikhail's slot is VT and they were just trolling or making a really bad play. and after taking a step back for a few days i think i'm starting to agree.

UNVOTE: Alianna

i'll withold my judgement for now, while Alianna takes some time to read through and form her thoughts.

[ender]

i admit i wasn't really entertaining the idea that mikhail could be fake claiming as VT so in my mind they had to be either mason or scum.

just to clarify my reasoning here further, i had no reason to expect a player to troll with their claim. i expected all players to be here playing their roles in good faith and following the rules (particularly "play to win"), which would preclude them from fake claiming as town. now since they've been banned and i've seen how they were acting i'm not so sure they were playing in good faith or playing to win.

[ender]

i admit i didn't notice that iavh was softing at all until his 'bee movie' post (144). or maybe a couple of posts ahead of that one where he said he was going to do something day2 that would anger people. a counter was the only thing that came to mind when i tried to think through what he could be talking about.

VOTE: iamveryhappy

Care to explain?

sure.


1. i initially voted him in 86, well before the softing in 144. to prevent any potential scum hammer to stifle discussion less than 24 hours into Day 2, i didn't intend to put him at E-1. so when there was confusion about the vote count, i unvoted and was waiting until the vote count was fixed/confirmed. once that was done, i reinstated my vote as you pointed out in 170

2. even though i had an idea of what he was trying to do with post 144, i didn't want to essentially clue in everyone else that may have missed it. a soft claim isn't a hard claim, and rather than out a town PR based on their soft claim i was continuing business as usual until he was ready to hard claim or until i was ready to move my vote to someone else. in any case, i stated my intention to unvote if he got put at E-1 too early in the day so i wasn't concerned about an early hammer.

hence my unvote as soon as he did hard claim.

[ender]

I disagreed with the way he was softing. A soft claim should be visible to the discerning eye but shouldn't draw attention to itself. This was me asking him to either be more discreet, get it over with, or wait until day 2.

[ender]

Also lets assume Happy didn't claim, what exactly was the plan, since your now voting someone you think is a PR.

As I just said:

and rather than out a town PR based on their soft claim i was continuing business as usual

until he was ready to hard claim or until i was ready to move my vote to someone else

(bold emphasis mine)

i.e. i was planning to go back over the thread to look at other people. it just so happened that he claimed 7 hours (and less than 10 posts later), so i hadn't had a chance to do that, but i took that opportunity to unvote and then moved my vote to the slot i thought was the best choice for resolving the claim vs claim as i explained in my recent posts.

[ender]

@ender can u explain how you ended up on bith mik and iavh wagons?

i think i already did in my answer, but let me summarize again once and for all.

1. my read on Mikhail was not VT troll. therefore, my read on him was either scum fake claim or real mason claim.
1a. on the possibility that he was mason, i didn't want to do scum's dirty work for them by eliminating a claimed town role. if they wanted him gone they would have to night kill him to get rid of a town power role.
1b. on the possibility that he was scum, i was suggesting a town PR counter claim D2 (i said multiple times for any town PRs not to counter D1 so that we could at least get 1 night action before a counter without losing the town PR to a night kill if Mikhail was in fact scum.)

2. because of my read on how best to handle the situation (and i kept on waiting and no one would provide an alternative suggestion, they just kept calling my suggestion scummy), i saw iavh's continued push on Mikhail to be scum motivated. Scum would want to push to eliminate a town power role during the day instead of having to use a night kill, so I figured if we have the other option as I explained in point 1, why should we push hard to elim the claimed mason D1 and essentially (assuming Mikhail was town) waste an elim.

3. because i read the push as scum motivated, i therefore saw iavh as scum. this may have blinded me to whatever hints he was dropping at his upcoming cop claim (if there were any before the ones i noted in previous posts). i also admit i let his playstyle (which i read as sarcasm and flippancy in some cases) get to me and that certainly informed my vote.

So that's the reason for my vote on iavh. Now let me explain the flip i did from iavh to Mikhail.

1. when Mikhail called out Starfire as their alleged mason partner and then iavh counter claimed, the optimal strategy in my mind changed due to new information.

2. because we now had two town PR claims, that means that one of them had to be lying scum and one had to be the real power role (remember, i was not entertaining the possibility of mikhail completely trolling the game as vanilla townie).

3. with only those two options in mind, the path forward was clear. eliminate one of them, see the flip, and move forward from there. so we needed to pick one to eliminate, and between cop and mason, the clear one to elim would be mason.
3a. if we eliminate one and he flips town power role, our next elim would be the other because it is a physical impossibility for the setup to have both.
3b. if we eliminate one and he flips scum, we essentially have a conf town power role (who may get NKed but may not depending on the setup, if we have a doc for instance). <--- maybe this is where my logic falls apart? i don't know, it still sounds right to me.

4. because we would have the possibility of a night action from a claimed cop (if a doc is also in play), it made more sense to me to then eliminate Mikhail.

i know a lot of people find my thought process scum motivated, and i can't really do much about that, but even after explaining it what feels like 6 times, i still don't see any reason it is wrong (

except

in the case of a troll VT mikhail).

i've spent a lot of time re-explaining my position here and in previous posts, so i hope this is very clear, but please ask further clarifying questions if you have them. i'll be out for a few hours soon but expect to have more time tonight to finally go back over everything, especially the posts from the replacements, and try to decide what i think the best next course of action is.

[ender]

You realize the issue is that what you are saying is flat out scum reasoning right?

Your voting a PR until they claim or until you can viably change your vote, this is scum reasoning.

again, it was done to prevent calling any more attention than was required to his softing. maybe it wasn't the best way to handle it, but i had already stated intent to revote after the vote count was confirmed, so to not do so would require an explanation, which i wouldn't be able to give without clearly stating i had caught onto iavh's soft claim.

Ender-JasonWazza does not look good at all for ender. If you notice the softing, you surely either ignore it entirely or find a good excuse to move your vote. Ramping up pressure on someone you consider to be likely a PR just doesn't make sense, and the justification of "not wanting to make it obvious" is weak.

i didn't ramp up pressure, the pressure was already there. the vote i reapplied to him was a formality more than anything because i had already voted him and stated intent to revote, as i said above.

again maybe it wasn't the best way to handle it but it is what it is at this point. and as i said back then, i was not planning to let him get to E-1 because in my mind it was still too early in the day for a hammer of any kind, whether on him or anyone else, and putting him at E-1 would be my endorsement of an early hammer.

-------

i can get what you're both saying about "only scum would care how they look and feel the need to make appearances to try not to look scummy". and that is patently false. the goal of the game is to eliminate scum and not eliminate town. so as scum i would want to make myself look townie, and as town i would want to make myself look townie. so yes, i did place/re-apply my vote despite his softing... and then i removed it as soon as new information came along.

[ender]

sorry, ended up staying out later than i expected last night so i wasn't able to dive in like i wanted.

@ender who are you now looking at as possible scum?

literally everyone in the game.

but i think you're actually asking who i think is likely scum, so i'll answer that question as well.

in fact i'll do you one better. i said before i don't give town reads or read lists. but if i'm likely to be the elim for today, a read list may have some benefit after my flop.

1. Maduisha - has a light scum lean for me. would be townie but there have been a few small things that have pinged my radar, granted they aren't much on their own. but generally i feel like she is sometimes very careful and sometimes the opposite, and she doesn't stick to her guns. she voted Koba because Jason told her to, without checking the vote count. she felt the need to call herself outright town (522) to pre-emptively wave off any critique of her actions.
2. Political Clout - pokes and prods, asks a lot of questions. it would be nice if his votes were paired with some reasonings, but i'm guessing in a lot of cases he votes to gauge reaction anyway. he didn't like my thought process on how to handle the claim and counter claim, but it seems like no one did. currently a null lean.
3. Jason - interacts a lot, asks a lot of questions, and even though he doesn't like how i handled everything i can see his suspicion coming from town mindset.
4. iavh - what can i say? i misjudged him early on, but i buy his claim at this point. if there's a doc in the setup, you know what is needed.
5. Alianna - her slot has a soft townie-fake-claim read that i hadn't allowed myself to consider originally. i'm no longer of the opinion that eliming her will give us the information i had originally thought it would. i'm liking her play more than Tal's, to say the least. I also like that she didn't just parrot all of Jason's case on me, seems like she's putting effort into her read. null-town read.
6. SmileyDude1 - light scum lean. the only player (not slot, player) with fewer posts than him this game is Wayward, who only posted on page 1. Raw post count isn't necessarily a tell, but i like to keep an eye out for anyone slipping under the radar. The content of his posts is pretty light as well. he gave a couple of short read lists but he hasn't really gone after anyone other than light prodding of Starfire. he hasn't had to react 'in the moment' to a lot of what has happened so far which makes it easy for him to come in later and react in line with the overall 'town-approved' sentiment.
7. DkKoba - i didn't like their initial action of voting me admittedly "pre-emptively". they hard scum-read me from the start and i was originally thinking they were just parroting an easy scum read, but the fact that they were willing to listen to my explanations, see where i was coming from, and change their mind gives me a town lean. especially since i'm apparently an easy elim, it would be very tempting as scum to just pile on.
8. Starfire - this slot is hard for me to get a read on. her activity dropped of after saturday and there isn't much to go on since then aside from a vote on Keria/DkKoba that seemed to be well reasoned enough. null for now.

despite the fact that i'm at E-2 i'm not so convinced that there's a scum on my wagon yet. but probably watch the circumstances around the E-1 and Elim votes if they happen.

i'm going to hold off on a vote for now while i continue to think and analyze, since no one yet jumps out at me as obv-scum.

[ender]

since I'm at E-1 with a stated intent to hammer, here's my claim fwiw: Vanilla Townie.
do with that what you will.

[ender]

despite my town read on koba, it has crossed my mind that he could be scum intentionally buddying up to me now for town cred because he sees that the wagon is most likely going to succeed without him needing to vote me.

if that's not the case, then i do appreciate the kind words of encouragement koba lol

i'm not liking Maduisha's decision to vote me based primarily on gut/PoE. sure, gut and PoE are good tools to use but a vote should be based on something more concrete, like words or actions.

I didn't like Ender discussing the possible night actions of the mafia in the open and using that logic to build arguments from

discussing potential eventualities/night actions can be wifom, sure, but i feel like there is merit to it in some situations and i don't see it as scummy regardless. but i'm the one on the chopping block so i'm biased.

but answer me this... what motivation as scum would i have to publicly expose my thoughts on what night actions i would take in different scenarios?

VOTE: Maduisha (this is E-2)
as my strongest scum read for what i mentioned in my read list, and currently the only other possibility for a D1 elim than myself, this is where my vote will go

[ender]

nah I just genuinely know the feeling of being miseliminated in a manner like this after trying, I would probably give like a super half baked defense as scum that doesnt try to genuinely dispell the stuff people are pushing u for - although like now thinking, my past scum MOs have been to hard defend a town wagon (but to be fair to the context- I was defending you while *I* was a wagon and didn't even flinch from that when it shifted to you and stayed consistent, whereas as scum I will only shift over once I see pressure building on someone to position myself for cred)

(Also why it's objectively ridiculous we are being paired at all because why is my positioning *like that* here if I am your scumbud lmao, being informed means being able to convert people's positions into positioning yourself knowing the right answers - something I feel PC did with maduisha back when they vanity voted the slot)

yeah that makes sense. i don't actually think you're likely scum at this point. so far your play has felt town motivated. but one can never be too sure so i figured i'd put that possibility out there.

[ender]

ender to me feels so...rigid? linear? I'm not sure 1 dimensional I think is a much better term. he saw mikhail tal claiming and basically said let's not bother with mik and let the mafia sort them which I think fair-ish and when happy was going at mik ender decided to vote them, then mik got cc'd and then said okay I believe the cop claim now let me vote mik. The play overall just feels a bit like it's exactly what you would almost expect. but I'm not sure if I believe this like in everygame no one ever does what you expect.

if no one does what you expect, why do you expect it? anyway, how is "he did what i would have expected him to do, he must be scum" a reasonable scum read?

the major thing for me is if ender is town does he actually believe the mik claim so early does he not question it? does he not think someone going after mik might be town motivated especially since if vanilla they don't know the setup at all.

of course i didn't just believe it. but as i've explained numerous times, i didn't feel eliminating a claimed mason day 1 (solely based on their claim, that is) would be in the best interest of town, since if they are actually mason, that would be doing scum's work for them. that doesn't mean i believed Mik and that doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to look at Mik/Alianna's slot and that doesn't mean that if they did something scummy they shouldn't be voted.

I always think about what does it mean to play to your win condition and what does that actually look like in games. Do I believe ender's play so far is town motivated not really. why? he isn't solving the game simply trying to appease everyone.

my entire strategy so far town has been trying to solve the game. i've explained it over and over. i attempted to use logic to decide what the best path was to identify scum based on the claims and counter claims we had while attempting to limit the townie casualities along the way.

mik has claimed okay let's not touch them
happy is going after mik okay let's vote them
happy is cc'd mik okay let's vote mik

that's quite an oversimplification of my thought process that i've explained god knows how many times now. yes, when you say it like you said, it sounds scummy. but please work in good faith and don't misrepresent my actions.

it wasn't just "mik claimed okay let's not touch them".
it was "mik claimed mason. if they're actually mason, let's not elim them day 1 and see what happens overnight and re-evaluate day 2".

it wasn't just "happy is going after mik okay let's vote them".
it was "happy is going after mik after i've explained why i think it is scum motivated to go after mik so hard day 1. because i see scum motivation in his actions, i'll vote him".

it wasn't just "happy is cc'd mik okay let's vote mik"
it was "now that there are two claims, the best way (in my experience so far) to resolve a claim/counter claim situation is to elim one and see the flip. between the two of them, we shouldn't elim the claimed PR that has a night action before we get to N1, to give them a chance to use their action at least once if we're lucky, so the first elim should be the claimed mason"
if you remember, i wasn't really on board with the idea that Mik could be trolling as VT, so in a claim/counter claim situation in my mind, one or the other had to be scum. if we flip one and they aren't scum, we could then reasonably assume the other is. (i also wasn't worried about a scum!Mik + scum!iavh with both of them fake claiming, because that would just bait a third claim from whoever were the actual PRs in the game in that scenario)

what merited discussing night actions in this situation? I feel like you were fairly active and as soon as people started looking at you, you quieted down a lot.

as part of my overall strategizing and thinking through what was going on, i also considered what night actions could come as a result of our D1 elim choice. it's a natural progression.

it may have been missed, but i did say in my first post that I'm on V/LA through Aug 1 and could only promise a post every other day. obviously i've posted quite a bit more often than that, but there have been times where i've been away from my computer all day and then got back and was too tired to parse and reply. but i've answered every question that was presented to me, and given my thoughts as much as i've been able.

if a townie has a bad idea and several people tell them it's a bad idea but then the townie goes over the bad idea and says well I don't see how it's a bad idea should town keep that type of player around?

yes, you should keep townies around even if that don't always have optimal strategy. the goal of the game is voting out scum, not voting out badly reasoned townies.

if town 1 don't know the players alignment and 2 are seeing a refusal to change their mindset?

i have changed my mindset, though. i've softened to the idea that Mik was actually just trolling us.

from my point of view you are going after the easiest possible lims here first after happy for going after mikhail tal and then after mikhail tal for being a pr who is cc'd. Alianna hasn't technically retracted the pr claim by neither confirming nor denying that it is real. do you think alianna is town? like if you are about to be limmed and are town you should be putting forward you absolute best town reads that are for sure town and your absolute best scum reads none of this null/lean stuff.

again, you're oversimplifying my votes. i wouldn't expect Alianna to dig into a counter claim battle with iavh that was started by her predecessor that has been site banned and is considered a troll. and really i think simply pushing aside Mik's claim was her best course of action.

so far, yes, i find her to be town based on how she seems to be actually thinking through things, doing analysis, listening to what others are saying, and making town motivated decisions so far.

i'm not going to make up more solid reads than i have just to make you happy. i don't know anyone's alignment any more than you. i've given my read list, and to summarize where i'm at since my list:
my town leans are Koba, iavh, Alianna and Jason.
my scum leans are Maduisha, and Smiley.
you and starfire are harder to read for me.

regarding you... since i know my alignment i can see town motivation behind you unvoting me to give me a chance to continue to speak before the end of the day. but i can also see scum motivation in the way you oversimplified my reasoning in the quotes above to make my actions look even more scummy and 1-dimensional than they actually were.

starfire, as i mentioned in my read list, hasn't done a whole lot recently, other than a little bit of conversation with Koba

[ender]

hey, i'm here. just read day 2 but i don't fully understand what just happened so i'm going to read it over again when my brain is a little less fuzzy. i expect to post something substantial tomorrow.

[ender]

damn these one-week days days move fast. sorry i haven't given this the attention it needs. since i got back from my trip i've been pulled in several directions, and now i have a headache. but we only have 3 days until deadline so let me see...

ok so... clout flipped mason, iavh is claiming to be his partner. his soft claim with his 'typos' early on spelling clout is pretty convincing imo, and i think i'm fine with him fake claiming cop as a sort of wifom against scum's nk selection

aside from me and him, that leaves five suspects:

i'm still feeling a town lean on Koba so far and unless i'm just completely misjudging him, that leaves two scum among the following four

Alianna
Smiley
Starfire
Delta

i need to redo iso's on each slot before i commit to anything but my gut is still leaning scum on smiley, and if i had to pick another of the other three, it would probably be starfire. (not because of any way they've interacted, it's more of separate suspicions at the moment. i don't like to try and find a scum pair from the start anyway, i'd rather find one scum, then find the other)

[ender]

my main townread on Koba was from their Day 1 play. they seemed like they were scum hunting, and for bonus points, they didn't hammer me when they had a convenient chance to hammer an easy wagon that could be hand-waved away Day 2. i try to think of how i would play as scum in their position and i probably would have seen the wagon building on me and hopped on board. that doesn't automatically clear anyone who wasn't on my wagon, but i was at E-1 at the same time that Koba was the only vote on Maduisha, and with Koba's activity, they definitely had the opportunity to hammer. it would have been trivial for them say that PC or Jason had swayed their mind and then hop over. instead, with only a few days left in the Day they went through the trouble of spearheading the Maduisha wagon from the ground up. of course, Mad flipped townie so that isn't any better than if i had been limmed but at the time I was also comfortable with a Maduisha elim, hence my vote.

what i don't understand is how I've flipped in Koba's reads from pretty solid town to essentially one of their top scum suspects at this point. I know I haven't been engaged much Today, but did something else change?

my scum lean on Smiley is softening with his activity day 2.

it feels like there's a scum between Delta and Koba with all the back and forth going on, but i can't decide which right now.

i really need to sit down and spend some time iso'ing and watching interactions so i can contribute a bit more Today. i'll try to get that done tonight since we only have about one more irl day left.

[ender]

if i'm not mistaken, both koba and delta are at E-1, with me as the only person not voting yet. no pressure, eh?

so, i've iso'd jason/delta and koba (as well as several other people) I'm still feeling like Koba is the more townie slot between the two of them

the "scum slip" delta pointed out doesn't really feel like a scum slip to me. i can see where he's coming from, but with a claimed cop, a doctor was in one of the two setups we could have been in. and i think it's reasonable to make statements that consider the existence of a doctor exist (as long as they don't attempt to fish/out the doc) for the purposes of theorizing.

i'm going to withhold my vote for now to allow discussion to continue and to give myself some time to ruminate on it in my sleep and come back with a fresh mind when i wake up. as of now i intend to hammer delta prior to deadline, barring any new information or realizations.

[ender]

well i don't know if it's okay to speculate on the mod error. i wasn't here when it happened but i have a pretty strong guess about what it was, based on context clues. regardless, i don't think it was that they made the wrong kill.

anyway, gdi, i'm wavering back and forth at this point. i really don't like being the deciding vote between two competing wagons.

last night i was pretty sure i was going to vote Delta, but he's talking sense. and reading back over Koba's iso again, my read isn't as strongly town.

some things i've noticed:

why do ppl think with a mod error announced that the kill was supposed to be PC lol

well i guess thats easy to see from my POV bc i know thats a kill realistic only in a scum!me world and i know that isnt the universe lol

essentially reads to me as them admitting that PC as NK is only realistic when they are scum, and then trying to use mod error speculation as cover.

they also had their vote hopping around early on in day 2 until they landed on Delta. started with starfire (795), moved to alianna (812), moved to smiley (823), moved back to alianna (878) and then onto delta (895). kind of like they were just trying to see if any of them would gain traction.

i did notice the compliments, and they do stick out in a game of mafia. prior to the end of the game i know i should assume everything said during the game is potentially just a tactic. i pointed it out when Koba did it to me (650) and it really stood out when they complimented Smiley (1034). i'm flipping back and forth on whether they're genuine or a tactic for pocketing.

Ender, ask yourself:

Why is Koba making a personal appeal to you? Why are they also pocketing Smiley?

the same reason you are. you're both at E-1 and you're both making personal appeals to me because i'm the deciding vote at the moment. and the point is obvious that you're trying to make that scum!koba is pocketing smiley to try to ensure his vote doesn't move.

my guy is just saying things and getting away with it

Why do I never get rewarded for effort when I'm scum LMAO

Nice slip

@Ender have a looky-loo here, they've straight-up admitted it now

they're saying you're able to say anything and get away with it, and then lamenting that when they play as scum they don't get the same leeway. that doesn't indicate they're admitting to being scum right now.
then again, implying that they're not getting that leeway now also therefore implies they're scum.

ugh. i was reading koba so strongly as town until i re-read their iso. going back and forth like this doesn't help anyone. okay i'm going to take a break to eat something and get a little bit of work done. never make important decisions on an empty stomach, as they say (i'm sure someone says it).

[ender]

popping in before i eat dinner to say i'm still intending to vote prior to deadline. i should be back shortly.

[ender]

How does me not posting force happy to vote Delta?

i think they were saying that due to the nearing deadline, if happy is the only one around and discussion has stopped he might feel forced to hammer delta to avoid a no-elim.

but mostly i think they were just trying to stifle conversation. and just prior to that, i feel like koba would have known they were at E-1 and not E-2, so i feel their post was just there to cause confusion and encourage a hammer on delta from anyone who may not have been watching the vote count closely enough and was ready to hammer.

in any case, i think everyone's said what they're going to say at this point. and i don't know how much longer i'll be able to be here tonight so there's no time like the present.

VOTE: DkKoba

they were my strongest townread previously but upon re-reading and watching the interaction with delta i feel like they're the more likely scum between the two.

[ender]

(I haven't dipped. You're just posting a flood so I'm letting you get your thoughts out more or less uninterrupted)

[ender]

I'm about to go to sleep so I'll post my thoughts real quick and then won't be on again for several hours, but... First off how is iavh still alive? Bringing a conf!town into a 2v3 just narrows the pool in favor of town. I don't understand the NK. Chances of hitting scum go from 2/5 to 2/4 which is significant.

I guess it's probably an attempt at wifom to cause a mis-elim, so not worth spending too much time on. As far as I'm concerned iavh is confirmed to be the second mason based on his soft, his claim and the lack of a counter. so I guess we'll just can take whatever advantage we can get.

Second, needless to say, but it's a newbie game so I will, but with only 3 votes needed for an elim and 2 scum alive, please hold your vote until we're in agreement and ready for an elim. Otherwise one townie votes another and scum pile on for a quick win.

Anyway, with regards to my vote yesterday, what it came down to is I didn't give the game enough attention until the end of the Day and it came down to me being the deciding vote. And I guess delta sweet talked me and koba's play looked scummy enough to me to change my mind. Not much else I can say about it at this point, other than I wish I had stuck with my gut from the night before and just voted then. But I wanted to keep the day alive as long as possible so I waited, and in that time I was able to be swayed away from my original instinct.

So where to go from here... with iavh conf!town, that leaves three people besides myself, among which two are scum. Unfortunately I'm probably the easiest suspect now and scum is going to latch onto that I'm sure.

With all that said I'm potentially interested in a delta elim today. but before committing to anything I'd like a chance to reread with the info we have now about alianna.

@Smiley, it's Day 3 and if we don't hit scum today we lose. We have a week left, why the hurry?

If you are going to vote me, at least lay out the case so I have a chance to defend myself.

@iavh why is smiley cleared in your mind? just because Koba said he is conf!town and Koba flipped town doesn't mean he is. Koba doesn't have any more information than you or I do about smileys role.

Personally with smileys encouragement to quick elim me he's pretty much confirming the opposite in my mind, that he is scum that sees the finish line and can't wait to cross it.

I admit I've played poorly this game but everything I've done I've tried to talk through and reason out transparently. Making the wrong choice isn't inherently scummy.

@starfire your thoughts will be very valuable. What do you think about how the game state has progressed thus far?

@delta assuming you're coming at this from the positon that the entire Day yesterday was townie vs townie which led to two townie wagons that scum easily jumped on, who do you think is scum?

Anyway, good night for now, I'll check in when I'm awake.

[ender]

Also, you honestly think scum!me would choose against bussing my supposed partner when I could instead gain town cred by bussing them? You think scum!me would rather go into day 3 looking like the scummiest person here and knowing it would make me the go-to elim pick?

Please don't let Koba's theory about "delta pressured ender" sway you. He was lashing out emotionally after being mis-elimmed, which is understandable, so I can't blame him for coming up with omgus theories. But I'm not an idiot or simpleton or pushover. I just made a decision in the short time I had (which admittedly was my own fault), which had a bad outcome. It sucks but it is what it is.

Also, townies don't need to talk about how upset they are at a bad flip. Scum would feel the need to make it known just how angry it made them so they can look pro town. We've all had two irl days to cool off and come back with a clear head. If you need another night, fine, take the time you need, we have a week. But making emotional decisions isn't going to win the game for town.

I do appreciate your willingness to hear me out.

Okay, actually going to sleep this time, I'll be back when I'm up.

[ender]

okay i wrote a lot but i'm going to split it into multiple posts here to hopefully make it less of a wall.

first, just something i noticed:
Starfire was last active on Aug 10 at 1:57 pm EST. The night started on Aug 10 at 1:00 am EST. that means they had 13 hours to discuss night kill, and i doubt they were both on all 13 of those hours. given how strange it feels for scum to NK Alianna instead of iavh, i feel like the scum team probably would have needed more of a discussion about it, and probably wouldn't have reached their decision so quickly.

this doesn't clear Starfire of course. maybe deliberations were short. or scum!starfire's partner could have made the NK decision on their own. however, it does make me feel like starfire is less likely to be scum than others.

Also, repeating my question that was ignored:

@iavh why is smiley cleared in your mind? just because Koba said he is conf!town and Koba flipped town doesn't mean he is. Koba doesn't have any more information than you or I do about smileys role.

i'm not trying to hear why smiley thinks he's confed or why koba thought he's confed, i'm trying to hear why you do. you were on the wagon i hammered, which means you agreed with me that koba was scummier than delta. so what has you coming into the day so certain of smiley's conf!town status and my scum status?

i know you're on a kindle, but please do your best to lay it out for me.

[ender]

@Smiley you already admitted that you tunneled someone in the past this game and it was a bad thing and it could be factored into scum's strategy here... and then here you are tunneling. what worries me is that you're so sure of yourself coming into a day where one wrong move spells the end of the game.

the question is: why aren't you looking at everyone? we have a whole week to deliberate. we should each be looking at every other player individually and judging them on their play from the entire game, their interactions with slots we now know the flips of, etc. and if it comes back to me, then it comes back to me. but to not even entertain the idea is incredibly irresponsible.

see, here's the problem. i see two people (one of which is conf!town) gunning for me from the moment the thread opens. that's not the scary part. but this is: i know that there are 2 scum in the game, and with @iavh's buy-in scum essentially have the win in their pocket. if smiley is scum, all he needs to do is wait for his partner to show up, convince iavh to vote me, and then he and his partner pile on. easy peasy. if smiley is town, same thing: he and iavh vote me, then scum can lurk until you guys vote, and either one can quick hammer.

@iavh you're not wrong that i'm desperate but you're wrong about why. seeing our only conf!town slot so willing to join smiley on a vote on

anyone

so early in the Day without taking a step back to look at everyone is terrifying.

this is why I don't understand the benefit of the "what's your solve" question. maybe the meta changed, but my experience has taught me that it's generally a bad idea to try and decide on a scum team before you know who one of the scum is. sure, focus on each of the scummiest players at the time but look at them independently. otherwise you draw conclusions based on wrong assumptions, which can lead to bad results. you have to re-evaluate after each player is elim'd or NK'd anyway, so imo it's better to focus your energy on finding one scum at a time than two at once. (maybe i'm wrong, idk. maybe after the game someone can explain to me why trying to solve an entire team at once while they're all still alive is a good and worthwhile strategy.)

so what's my solve? hell if i know. i don't think it's possible to confidently solve the game with the information we have.

who do i find scummy? right now both delta and smiley are pinging my radar. i don't buy conf-t!smiley until someone can convincingly explain to me why. but i will say that if smiley is our second conf-t player, this game is lost.

[ender]

Do you think that Delta v DK yesterday was Town v Town?

i'll say the thought has crossed my mind multiple times, both during the build up to the elim, and even now. i'm not saying i think that's for sure what happened, but i am saying it has been on my mind.

given the fast approaching deadline and the fact that there were two pretty much set-in-stone wagons with no time to try and build another, the question wasn't "who do i think is scum", it was "which of these two looks more scum motivated right now". (maybe koba's play style got to me, he really did seem to be trying to rile delta in bad faith and i agreed with delta that the case on him was flimsy at best).

the problem is that in a town vs town argument, when emotions and personal attacks enter the ring they both do things that make them look bad, and then it becomes this whole "it's either him or it's me" type of thing, where now there's the assumption that one of them

has

to be scum. that kind of thinking leads to a loss.

am i confident it was townie vs townie? no. but i haven't ruled it out. and as i've said, right now smiley and delta are my picks at the moment.

but the fact that you're unable to even consider the possibility of it having been townie vs townie worries me quite a bit. we need to be looking at this from all angles and open to all possibilities, or 100% the game is lost.

you sound like you've made up your mind on me/delta. and if we elim delta today and he flips scum, that will just conf-bias you into elimming me the next day. which goes back to the whole issue i have with early "solves".

[ender]

that means they had 13 hours to discuss night kill, and i doubt they were both on all 13 of those hours. given how strange it feels for scum to NK Alianna instead of iavh, i feel like the scum team probably would have needed more of a discussion about it, and probably wouldn't have reached their decision so quickly.

i realized i left out "assuming a scum!starfire" at the start of that first sentence

[ender]

scum points for smiley include:
1. the moment day started he was pushing for a quick elim. this isn't omgus, it isn't about the target being me. i'd say the same if it was starfire or delta on the chopping block. like i said above, it feels like scum seeing the end in sight and not wanting to wait. granted, he's pulled back a little and is willing to hear me out, which softens this one slightly, but it doesn't change how he started the day, and anyway he may just be waiting for starfire or delta to show up so he and iavh have the third vote they need.
2. he put a lot of effort into letting us know just how upset he was. don't you think the guy who dropped the hammer was a bit upset too? there are only two people who weren't upset. it's expected and doesn't need to be said. it's a type of appeal to emotion by expressing a lot of emotion to gain town points. can a townie be emotional? sure. but expressing it as much as he did just feels sus.
3. embracing his conf!town-ness. unless you're a claimed PR you're not conf!town, ever. iavh has that benefit, but no one else does. the whole "i'm conf'd because i said that delta was scum" is beyond me, especially since we don't even know if delta is scum right now. being confed is something you earn, not something you take.
and here's the thing, i would

want

him to be conf!town. that would make today so easy because it would PoE, delta/starfire, boom we win. but i have no reason to conf him as town.
4. this entire game smiley barely interacted with me. he replied when i called him out on his inactivity Day 1. he called me out on my inactivity Day 2. but overall i was leaning town on every single one of his read lists. he nearly town-core'd me until i was quiet most of yesterday. and today simply because i over-thought my vote in a high pressure situation, changed my mind and hammered koba, i'm conf!scum with delta.

[ender]

unless you're a claimed PR you're not conf!town, ever.

on second thought, this is a bit too rigid and strongly worded. there are other cases that clear people. e.g. mod errors, results from nk actions, etc. but nothing like that has happened this game that would clear you.

[ender]

let's play your "solve" game and say for a second it is Delta/Smiley

1. Delta gets into with Koba and manages to build a wagon in response to counter his own.
2. Smiley jumps onto the wagon to bus Delta, knowing that he either gets town cred Day 3 when his partner flips scum and he was on the wagon (since by that point iavh and koba would be singing his praises), or he has a scapegoat if i hammer Koba instead
3. After the latter happens, knowing iavh was feeling good about Smiley, Delta and Happy decide to keep him alive even though he's conf-ed, and come into Day 3 alleging that Smiley is also confed. They plan that either they manage to mis-elim me, or Delta is the sacrifice to further paint Smiley as town.

fun theory right? i could probably reason through a theory about each of the possible pairings at this point. so let's stop the "what's your solve" bs and hunt scummy players instead.

[ender]

knowing iavh was feeling good about Smiley, Delta and Happy

sorry, "Delta and Smiley". i'm getting my happies and my smilies mixed up.

[ender]

once again, splitting a bunch of text into 4 separate posts, hopefully to make it easier to read and respond to.

I've mentioned my uneasiness on the Delta slot as early as my 834 (my first post of Day 2). Heck you can even see my early read on their being scum in the DK/Jason/PC argument as early as Day 1 if you look through my ISO. The attempt to say I jumped on the wagon to bus is ridiculous. Trying to float a Delta/Smiley theory is a lazy desperate stretch and you know it.

i'm not trying to float a theory or push it as a legitimate case. i'm trying to show how unreasonable it is to try and "solve" the game before you even know who one scum is. you can draw connections between any two people in the game, but those connections don't mean anything until you know one of them is actually scum.

1. As mentioned earlier that was me letting out my anger about yesterday combined with late night posting. Was not in a good state and even acknowledged that I got ahead of myself there.
2. You have to understand that I wasn't online when your hammer yesterday occured, I had to sit there and absorb what happened yesterday for the entire night phase and what you saw at daystart was the culmination of that occurring

but you don't have to let your anger out in thread. you have to think about how it looks when you make comments like that. as i said, obviously everyone (except two people) is going to be frustrated that i hammered a town slot. it doesn't have to be said, and saying it makes it look like you're trying to prove how town you are.

anyway, i'm willing to look past it for now. it's not the strongest tell in any case, and when i mention that kind of thing in a list of scum reasonings it's usually a minor contributory point, not a smoking gun.

[ender]

3. Once again, Delta should be LockScum! based on what happened yesterday. I saw your response to the Delta Vs DK argument. It's one thing to let emotion creep in, it's another thing entirely to put up demonstrably false arguments like Delta's 1012, which I called out in my 1030 (apologies for the mess of a quote btw). It should be clear as day that Delta is scum here after seeing DK's flip (the fact you're not seeing it is concerning to say the least) from there it doesn't take rocket scientist to look at associations and rule people out
4. Once again if I actually thought you were ConfScum! I wouldn't even entertain you here given where we're at right now. You're taking an emotional outburst I made at daystart and trying to run way too far with it

so your problem with Delta's 1012 is essentially that he misrepresented your case against him as being a copy/paste of koba's case against him, and then by implying that koba's case against him had no legs, therefore neither did yours.

alright, so in your 1030 you quote your 1009 in which you lay out your three reasonings for your vote on Delta:
1. his slot benefited most from PC's kill.
here's the problem here. jason replaced out just before night started. delta replaced in with not nearly enough time to read the thread and come up with who would be the most beneficial kill. so if we consider scum!delta, the NK was likely picked by their partner, someone who clearly missed koba's doc softing but was scared about iavh being cop. they probably just made a guess who might be doc and happened to land on the other mason. i don't think the PC kill had anything to do with who was beneficial for Delta to kill.

2. you think that there was a scum involved in the Koba/(Jason/Delta)/PC debate, and with Koba as your primary town read and PC flipping town, that PoE leaves Delta. you state that this is based on your 654 in which you declare PC as your main scum read and your secondary scum read landing on Jason/Delta, between him and Koba.

okay, fair, PoE can be a valid tactic at times.

3. the alternative to push a failing case while watching your top town read get wagoned. so you essentially omgus'd delta for voting koba. so really you voted delta because he was the other option besides Koba, and you found Koba townier.

that's fine, that's essentially the same thing i did, except in reverse.

but these three points only came after Delta has already said your case on him was sheeping Koba's (in 996). so let's go back further.

you vote Delta in 953 and your reasoning is:

I've been paranoid about the Delta slot since I saw the flip today, and I don't think Delta has really done anything to assuage my concerns so

before that, in 939 you also said:

Delta's entrance feels weird. The push on Koba based on TMI seems like a reach to me, but i'm not sure it's necessarily scum motivated due to Alianna apparently noticing earlier, it'd be weird to do that as a pair as well since Alianna had a line of questioning that got undercut by Delta bringing that up as well.

before that, in 867 you give a read list that has Delta toward scum, but no reasonings listed. this is also solely based on Jason at this point because by then delta hadn't posted anything of substance and was still catching up.
and before that in 834 you say:

I also have grown more paranoid of the Jason slot upon seeing the night kill. Given the connection between Jason/PC during day 1, I fear that the slot might have killed them in order to make DK look worse.

again, i don't see that happening given the timing of the replacement. there's not much chance he would have had time to get up to speed in time to submit a nk action.

and that's that's everything i can find from you day 2 that speaks about your reasoning for voting Delta, prior to Delta saying you were sheeping a vote and then you giving those 3 reasonings. so going back from the first to the last your reasonings were:
1. you grew more paranoid of Jason due to the NK
2. Delta's entrance "feels weird", but "not necessarily scum motivated"
3. paranoia that hasn't been eased.

nowhere in there do i see any actual reasoning for your vote, so i don't think Delta's claim of you sheeping Koba is unreasonable. Perhaps he's wrong in 1009 after you give your 3 points and he still says your case is sheeping Koba, but honestly i can see why he would stick to that. your case against Delta was:
1. NK speculation (which is wishy washy at best and I've already explained how in my mind it's unlikely)
2. process of elimination (which can be helpful at times but is usually best paired with an actual action)
3. omgus at delta for going against your strongest townread, since you didn't have time or inertia to build a wagon on your actual scum read (Starfire)
4. paranoia

none of those is really a case on its own, and even when you put it all together there isn't really anything firm that you're going against. maybe it isn't an exact sheep of Koba, but i don't see scum motivation in Delta trying to brush it aside as having no legs to stand on.

don't get me wrong, i'm not defending delta here. i'm just trying to point out my own thought process for why i didn't view delta as scummy as you did yesterday. and to do so i have to address your case against him.

[ender]

Thing is I am considering everyone here, my 1228 still stands as my initial view point of where i'm at right now for reasons mentioned in my 1238. I'm not a fan of the way you've approached this day phase so far, but at the end of the day if I was full tunneled onto you I wouldn't bother asking you any questions nor would I consider worlds where you aren't scum like in the aforementioned 1238, and 1240. I think right now it's just You/Delta, but i'm willing to hear you out if there's anything I haven't considered.

i assume your case on delta is still the same 4 points i listed above?

and your case on me is that you don't like my thought progression that led me to voting against the wagon you were on. i do appreciate you taking a step back from your initial plan of quick elimming me and i am trying to address your points.

Also if both me AND Delta are pinging you then you need to take a stepback before you throw the game, like take another look at yesterday and I don't see how you reach that conclusion.

your interaction yesterday with delta was... very limited until post 1009. you voted him to E-1 because your strongest townread was the only other wagon, he said your vote was sheeping koba, and then in 1009 you make your 3 points about your case on him. he replies in 1012 further stating your case as essentially a sheep. then in 1030 you say he's misrepping you. he replies in 1042 that "most of your reasons were statements, not actual reasons". you reply in 1057 putting the burden on me and responding that you don't think koba was gunning for jason's/delta's slot, which is one of delta's assertions. delta replies in 1058 that what you pointed out is just a small fraction of his entire case on koba.

and then you don't say anything after delta's 1058, until Day 3.

so you had some back and forth on the validity of each other's cases - yours on him, and his on koba. but that's about it. i don't see how that precludes you from being a scum team. as scum, you would not want to be on a townie's wagon but you would gain town cred from bussing your partner, so when two wagons are forming, it makes sense to pick the one that looks best for you.

i'm not saying you're definitely scum, i'm just explaining my reasoning for suspecting you.

[ender]

also, just going back to the start of day two for a moment, i want to explain some more of my reasoning for swaying the wrong way on koba. let's look at the timings (all times EST):
6:13am - mod posts, day 2 begins, pc is dead.
6:25am - iavh expresses surprise at being alive, and asks mod if the role pm is "supposed to be like that". we don't know what "like that" means because iavh never expanded on it and i presume only he and koba were around to see the mistake.
6:29am - iavh has thought of what circumstances resulted in him being alive, which would be that scum RB'd him and tried to kill the suspected doc (PC), then expresses surprise that koba is alive (presumably because he thought scum would NK koba thinking he was doc).
6:30am - koba replies "wait what"
6:31am - koba says they would never make that kill
6:34am - mod submits an edit of the day start post, most likely to fix an error in the copy/pasted role PM. i wasn't there to see it, but my guess is either the mason partner's name or the private topic link were not removed/redacted from the role PM, hence it would have confirmed iavh as PC's mason partner.

the point is that Koba was there and clearly saw the flip and the role pm in the mod's post before the edit. and yet the entire Day 2 koba was trying to convince everyone the mod error was that PC was killed instead of them, when clearly that wasn't the case. so question: if they saw the role pm before the mod edit and then the edit was done to the post, it would logically follow that the edit was done to correct the mistake. and if they saw the role pm in the post before and after the edit, and the kill was the same, logically it follows that the target of the kill was not the mistake, but something else was, or else there would be no need for an edit to the post.

this is part of the reason i was suspicious of them. their comment about "i would never make that kill" (as if trying unnecessarily hard to distance themselves from being involved with the night action) combined with their insistence that PC's kill was the mod error rubbed me the wrong way, based on that timing, along with how they were treating delta, and how confident they were being. confidence is never a good thing in a mafia game. the only people that can be confident about anything are mafia and town PRs. everyone else is making guesses and shots in the dark based.

i avoided bringing speculation about the mod error previously, which is why i'm only bringing this up now, but maybe that will help you understand a bit more of my thought process on koba. i doubt it'll do much to sway you but again, i'm trying to be as transparent as i can.

[ender]

don't get me wrong, i'm not defending delta here. i'm just trying to point out my own thought process for why i didn't view delta as scummy as you did yesterday. and to do so i have to address your case against him.

to clarify, i'm saying that it's why i didn't find his dismissal of your case on him as particularly scummy. your main point against him aside from the 4 in my post above was that he was misrepping your case against him, but i didn't see it that way really after thinking through your case on him, as i explained above.

[ender]

the only people that can be confident about anything are mafia and town PRs. everyone else is making guesses and shots in the dark based.

forgot to finish my sentence.

"...and shots in the dark based..." on whatever straws they can grasp at in hopes of sussing out who is acting in bad faith or with scum motivation.

[ender]

I mean, pretty much. I know there are two scum between you, delta, and starfire. So if it's not you and delta, it's either you and starfire or delta and starfire.

As for which is viable, I don't know right now. I spent several hours day on those two long series of posts so I'm taking a step back for the evening but I plan to come back tomorrow and look at each of the possibilities.

[ender]

wtf.

you know why iavh is still alive? so that delta could pull this out of his ass. you know why alianna was the NK?

here's why:

Also, killing Alianna means that they can pump more pressure onto me as they look to say 'well Alianna suspected Delta and now they're dead so...'.

delta, if you're telling the truth, you massively misplayed Day 2. correct play as mason would have been to counter iavh when we had time to check you both, as soon as you saw iavh was not backing down from his claim. if it was Day 2 right now we could pick one of you to elim, and if that one didn't flip scum we'd have a sure scum elim Day 3. as it is, now we have a shot in the dark of whose claim is more believable (and we have to be right or that's game over).

and right now imo, it's not yours. you're correct that iavh's answer about what discussion had gone on in the mason chat was minimal, but it seems realistic enough to me. iavh's entire playstyle is pretty minimal.

If you were to look at the claim in isolation, can anyone here justify why Mason!Happy wouldn't drop a big post (especially since they were, as they claimed, inadvertently mod-confirmed).

have you seen any big posts by iavh? he pops in with a few lines here and there, but if he has any flaws, being "too wordy" isn't one of them. that's definitely mine.

for me the biggest reason i believe iavh over you right now is that iavh softed clout's name via typos in an early post (85), after seeing Mikhail's mason claim. he obviously wanted to be able to prove later on that he and clout were mason partners when going up against Mikhail if they stuck with their initial mason claim. and lo and behold, clout flipped mason.

i've been looking and i don't see any similar softing of anyone else's name as if he was trying to set up multiple possible partners. so i have to ask, would scum!iavh pre-emptively soft one random player's name on the off chance that that player happens to flip mason and he can use that to go into a claim battle with the other mason?

i see your claim as scum coming in and trying to mis-elim the only conf!town player we have by countering his claim, and by trying to garner sympathy by saying you misplayed, oh, but we should trust you this time, now that you have it all figured out! and you're trying to explain away your push on town!Koba by blaming it on PC.

you say PC wanted you to push Koba Day 2? i don't see it. yes, PC voted Koba Day 1, and there was a back and forth but never much of a push from PC that i can see. just some questions and answers, not a case. so i don't see koba being at the top of his list. why wouldn't i have been? he was pretty interested in limming me a couple of times Day 1, and only voted Maduisha due to deadline.

in summary, we know the following:
1. there is one mason alive
2. there are two scum alive
3. two players have claimed mason
4. only one of those players can be mason, and barring the possibility of us having a second troll!town player counter claiming in this game, the other claimant must be scum
5. we have to elim scum today or we lose

iavh softed his claim, gave an adequate explanation of his original cop fake claim and why he didn't mason claim right away. i won't say i've been utterly impressed by his play as a conf!town, but i do believe he is the mason. if not and i've been played, then gg iavh.

VOTE: Delta

if you are legit, please convince me i'm wrong before the scum team come quick hammer.

for example, did you soft at some point, knowing you'd have to counter iavh today? if so, where.
was there any point yesterday that you considered dropping your case on koba and countering iavh?

[ender]

he doesn't have any softs, i'd bet he cooked this gambit up overnight. he didn't do his research. i wonder if delta overlooked iavh's soft. he obviously didn't do his research into his own posts (and his predecessor's).

he was probably just hoping he could convince me to change my mind like he did yesterday. all he'd need is me (or you or starfire, whichever isn't scum) to vote and his partner could swoop in and hammer for the win.

i'm hard sussing starfire tomorrow fyi. i no longer see the likelihood of a delta/smiley team, and iavh is conf!town, so that leaves starfire.

[ender]

Why the fuck would I soft?

so that you would have something tangible to point at when you finally claim. like iavh has. and you don't.

Come On, Please!

Look, I just softed Cop, does it mean I am? No!

let's not pretend that "Come On Please" is a convincing claim compared to how iavh did it.

when iavh softed PC's name, PC had only posted once and it was just a vote on starfire, so there's no way PC had somehow made any indication in game that he was a PR or given a supposed scum!iavh any reason to think he was mason or any other PR.

i refuse to believe scum!iavh pulled PC's name out of thin air and decided he was the right person to soft for an eventual fake mason claim, and then lo and behold, he was correct.

the soft came at a very reasonable time, shortly following a mason claim that iavh suspected he was going to eventually have to counter, and it was very specific, not just something like capitals spelling 'mason' or something, but his actual partner's name, which was then proven by PC flipping mason N1.

let's contrast that with what you've done:
1. after choosing not to counter on Day 2 when we would be at an advantage when doing a cross-elim of you and iavh until we hit scum (because logically it's one or the other of you),
2. and after a very wifom-y NK that conveniently leaves the person your countering claiming alive, and who is generally accepted as conf!scum by basically everyone in town (including yourself yesterday)
3. you come into Day 3 and try to say that iavh is alive because he's scum and you're a mason,
4. and that oh btw the NK on alianna must have been to paint you in a bad light so it must have been wifom by scum!iavh.

here are the facts: you have nothing to back up your claim, you contradict earlier posts by yourself and your slot, and you push for a quick elim of the only conf!town slot in the game now that we're in a position where the wrong elim loses the game.

if you're actually mason, you threw the game by not countering yesterday. if you're scum, you tried a gambit to see if you could get one of us on board, and it failed miserably.

@Ender on the off chance that it's not you and that it's one of Star or Smiley - can you explain why you're punishing me for making the Argument on town that you sheeped? Like bruh - take some responsibility.

i hammered a town slot, after ultimately allowing myself to be convinced he was scummy. and let's be real i still think his play was scummy, i don't walk back any of the criticisms i had of him. nonetheless, i chose to type the letters that resulted in him dying. i am personally responsible for us mis-elimming Koba Day 2.

have i taken enough responsibility, i can take more if you'd like.

i'm not "punishing [you] for making the Argument on town that [ I ] sheeped". my vote right now has nothing to do with that.

i'm voting you because your mason claim doesn't make a lick of sense and reeks of scum motivation. plus you're trying to use this claim to lean on PC as the reason for your wagon on Koba and for your lack of a counter claim day 2.

also

Had I CC'd yesterday, Koba would have pushed my lim and we'd be completely without PC, Jason's and now my insight which is literally vital to the hame

Again, had I CC'd yesterday, I 100% would have been the lim, and in my mind Koba was conf!scum by midway through D2 for which I needed you to bus them.

you do realize that, in the case of a counter claim, it is the responsibility of the town aligned clamant to accept that they are likely going to be elimmed in a cross-elim, right? we either get lucky and hit the claimer that is mafia first, or we sacrifice the legit claimer and land on mafia the second day.

that way we get a scum essentially guaranteed. not like it ended up with you deciding to withhold your counter claim to day 3. of course you didn't want to be the elim yesterday, because you're scum and you need to stay alive.

my vote isn't moving at this point. if that's game, that's game.

[ender]

welcome @the worst

i'm withholding a vote until both of you have a chance to respond and give your thoughts.

Here's where my head is at for the start of today (I wrote most of this during the night):

I don't see scum!Smiley agreeing to let Delta make that counter claim. The much easier play would have been to push me, especially seeing iavh and Smiley immediately stating their comfort with elimming me yesterday. I'm pretty sure if it was Smiley/Delta, Smiley would have pushed back hard on the entire idea, and the NK would have been iavh.

Granted, I wouldn't see Starfire agreeing to the coutner claim or NK choice either, but seeing as she apparently flaked and has been replaced, we don't know how much she participated in any of the Night 2 or Day 3 strategy discussion.

So my guess is a Delta/Starfire team. Delta likely made the decision on his own to counter claim, which also would make sense with him picking Alianna as the NK on his own, as he made that part of his case. I'm guessing if Starfire had been around she would have disagreed with the counter claim and with Alianna as the NK.

So with that theory in mind, I've gone back to examine the iso's and interactions between starfire and the wayward/jason/delta slot.

Day 1
1. wayward is replaced after no activity beyond page 1, and his page 1 activity is nothing substantial.
2. jason replaces in and immediately conf!town's happy, and immediately puts some distance between himself and Starfire, saying she is scum and saying he feels like she and i are scum together.
3. his case against starfire (and me) is essentially that we each missed iavh's softing as a PR
4. despite his position on both of us he doesn't vote us, instead placing his first vote on Koba
5. he goes back and forth with Koba, and then goes back and forth with me a bit
6. Starfire comments in 455 that "Ender-JasonWazza does not look good at all for ender" and perhaps it didn't, but this is an easy place for scum!starfire to influence other players' minds away from Jason
7. Jason and Starfire have a very minimal interaction after which Jason says the scum team is most likely Koba/Ender
8. Jason continues on Koba for a long while
9. In 603 Jason puts his vote on me. "This is already an easy Ender lim, frankly I've been keeping this thought under my hat to see if Koba did anything worthwhile."
10. In 615 Starfire sheeps Jason. In post 620 it's pretty blatant: "Ender seems like scum for the reasons JasonWazza sets out"
11. In 674 Jason officially says he doesn't think Starfire is scum (i guess he was trying to let his previous suspicion hang in the air until he was specifically asked about it)
12. In 701 Starfire votes Smiley for lack of content.

Note

this comes after my 601 in which I essentially call Smiley out for the same thing. Not only that but, it comes after Smiley apologized in 613 for lack of activity due to being sick. My take on this if assuming scum!Starfire: she was looking for someone to go against but didn't want to only sheep Jason against me and Koba. So she fished around until she saw an easy target on someone who another person had already called out for lack of content.
13. When PC asks who people are comfortable with limming, in 717 she lists myself and Koba, who Jason has been going against, and of course adds Smiley because she's voting him. She had promised a post in response to Smiley's defense but it never came.
14. PC is the NK, and my take on it is that Jason had flaked, she believed iavh's cop claim, she is an RB so she believed there was a doc, she went fishing for doc and happened to hit mason instead.

Day 2.
1. She votes iavh immediately due to his claims and saying there's a doc after a mason flip. The vote seems opportunistic, like she was hoping to start a quick wagon on iavh
2. Post 789 is interesting. There's Night Action analysis to explain why the NK was advantageous for Koba (side note: since i wrote this up during Night, I couldn't use the quote button for properly linked and attributed quote tags):

--snip--

@ DkKoba, as scum, you'd both RB the cop and try to NK them? That sounds like a waste of resources, I'd assume if scum believes the cop-claim (probably is the case) they'd RB the cop and try and find the doctor or NK the townie they fear most going to the endgame. As an aside, do you prefer Koba/DK or no abbreviation?

Using the logic above I think DkKoba would want PC dead as scum. @ IAVH why is DkKoba the obvious NK for scum if they are town? Ur obvs cleared, this is me trying to understand your reasoning (and ideally learn to play)

Smiley-DkKoba is where I'm at right now.
--snip--

honestly it feels like scum!starfire finding a way to explain the scum team's actions. of course she would have thought through what night actions make sense for someone who believe's iavh's claim: to rb the cop and take a shot in the dark at who they suspect as doc.

Here's the kicker: Jason had site flaked by this point, and Delta was the replacement overnight. Starfire likely had to come up with the kill and the roleblock targets because even if Delta was around during the night, he wouldn't have had enough time to catch up on the thread and properly think through any other targets. And we know starfire had already missed iavh's softing in the past, so it makes sense she'd miss Koba's softing as doc (i.e. why Koba was so adamant that he should have been the NK target).

So she instead picked someone she thought could be doc and/or thought she could paint as a good NK choice for Koba so that she could use that in the case against him.

3. Starfire votes Smiley, reacts to iavh revealing his typo-softing, and then votes Koba. Once again, using PC's town flip to throw shade on Koba's interactions with him.
4. She keeps pushing Koba for a few more posts before Delta's first post.
5. Nothing really interesting jumps out at me from there until 831, talking to Koba, she says: "Nae bother, plenty of Day left. Talk me about town!Ender? I haven't managed to read that slot at all."
She hadn't managed to read my slot yet, but wasn't she finding me scummy most of Day 1? Sounds like she was more trying to get a read on me from Smiley without influencing it by providing a read, so that she could hop on if Smiley decided I was a good wagon.
6. Again nothing of note until Delta posts his "stream of consciousness" post 880. Starfire is his scummiest read in his read list "as of page 5". He continues to point at starfire throughout the post, right until the last bit where he hard shifts to Koba. My guess is he wanted to distance himself from Starfire but didn't want to bus his partner with no reason.
7. His big post culminates in a vote on Koba, which he follows up with some more supporting "evidence", i.e. the supposed scum slip of being too sure there's a doc
8. Pretty quickly we move into the heated interaction between Delta and Koba that lasts a while.
9. Starfire comes back in with post 931, with a null read on Delta and reasserts suspicion of Koba. She asks Delta who he prefers to elim that day (between Starfire and Koba).
10. Then she goes on V/LA and doesn't post again.
11. Delta manages to sweet talk me into changing my mind and hammering Koba.
12. Alianna is the NK

Day 3
1. Delta mason counter claim, gets elimmed, flips red.
2. Starfire was replaced, furthering my suspicion that she wasn't really around to give input on Delta's NK choice or his decision to counter claim. And since Smiley was around and I don't see him agreeing with those decisions, I don't think a Smiley/Delta team works.

So given Starfire's flake and the interactions I noted above, I think the most likely is a Delta/the worst team.

I'll withhold my vote to give everyone a chance to speak their mind.

[ender]

actually heck we're on a time budget I'll skip to question 2 -- ender I can see that you are quite satisfied starfire was scum, therefore I'm scum, and that a scum!Smiley world doesn't really work fypov. what is stopping you from voting me in that post?

do you anticipate Smiley will say anything or I'll say anything that will change your mind?

not attacking just like, trying to get to know the workings of your mind

essentially as I said:

i'm withholding a vote until both of you have a chance to respond and give your thoughts.

while i think the likelihood of scum!Smiley is pretty low in my mind right now, i'm also aware of the position we're in where one vote can set up a quick hammer for a scum win.

i'd also like to do a similar iso read on Smiley's interactions with Delta's slot and yours, and i think we still have time for me to do that before making a decision.

and in any case, even if i find your slot to be probable scum i think it's fair to give you a chance to share your thoughts. there's only 3 of us alive so we should avoid rushed decisions and should try to get as much information as possible.

[ender]

And here's my take on interactions and interesting points in the Smiley and Delta's slot ISO's.

Day 1
1. for the most part there isn't too much to comment on in Smiley's early Day1.
2. his first interaction with the delta slot is Jason leaning town on him
3. in his read lists Smiley doesn't mention Jason
4. Smiley is sick for a good portion of Day 1 so there isn't that much content, but it is notable that there is no direct interaction between the two at all.
5. Smiley does say (654) that between PC/Koba/Jason, he leans scum on PC and then Jason, which could be an attempt at distancing. ultimately votes Maduisha as second on the wagon (though it never gets counted due to mod error)

Day 2
1. Initially suspects the Starfire slot based on the NK, and places his vote on Starfire.
2. says he needs to iso Alianna's slot
3. says he's consistently felt town vibes from Koba
4. interacts with Starfire over the PC NK regarding whether it made sense for scum!Koba
5. comments on lack of activity
6. posts a read list, i'm near the top, delta and starfire and at the bottom
7. asks iavh for his thoughts
8. doesn't want to speculate on mod error
9. Delta posts his long stream of consciousness post, Smiley is second from top/town after (after delta himself, all of the flipped/confirmed town slots, and myself). He says Smiley is on his radar for how he initially reacted to Mikhail's claim, and later calls his posts fence-sitty. He also points out Smiley's overall light content up to that point. Aside from that mention, he doesn't bring up Smiley again.
10. After the Delta/Koba interaction from Day 2 goes for a bit, Smiley asks Koba about his thoughts about Starfire's actions being scum motivated
11. wants to pursue starfire but is willing to compromise on Delta
12. changes vote from starfire to Delta. This also feels protown. I don't see scum!Smiley being the E-1 vote on his partner with that much time left in the day. No, delta wasn't his first choice it feels protown to be willing to set aside your top suspicion when you don't think you have time to push for their elim. Given how townie Smiley was looking I don't think he would need to go for town cred from bussing. So I don't see scum motivation in his vote here.
13. Delta accuses Smiley of sheeping Koba's vote
14. Delta softly suspects Smiley in post 963 and says a few times in other following posts that Smiley's vote on him is just sheeping Koba.
15. Smiley responds to that in 1009 and gives his reasonings for his vote.
16. Smiley asks for a prod on me
17. Smiley thinks to ask iavh about what conversation was had in the mason PT
18. Delta tries to defend himself to Smiley while continuing to push Koba
19. Some more back and forth between Smiley and Delta, and Smiley appeals to me to 'make the right choice', which of course I don't. I still don't see scum!Smiley bussing his partner this hard in that game state.

Day 3
1. Initially assumes it's Delta/me, tries to organize an elim of me with iavh
2. Steps back to hear me out
3. we go back and forth a little bit and at this point i see it as protown that he was willing to talk to me despite disliking my hammer
4. Then Delta did his thing
5. Smiley agreed with iavh and I that the counter claim was scummy and ultimately hammered.

In summary, most of the interaction was on Day 2, and as I stated in my stream of consciousness above, knowing Delta's alignment, Smiley's side of the interaction feels protown.

And here we are today. I already explained why I feel like Smiley is unlikely to be Delta's partner, based on the timing and replacements, the N2 kill, and the Day 3 claim.

And I think that covers my thoughts on both remaining slots. Let me know if either of you have any questions for me, and I'm happy to discuss any concerns you have. But just to be transparent, I'm pretty much set in my intent to vote the worst when we're ready to vote.

[ender]

--snip--

ender, quick question about your voting

posting to remove my rvs vote since while i read through what happened since my last post.

UNVOTE: SmileyDude1

what was your reason for unvoting here? i can see you go into placing your vote on iavh in your next post, so i'm specifically interested in why you removed your vote from smileydude1 (who was under no pressure of being eliminated prematurely)

(removed the spoiler for easier reference in the quote)

since it looked like RVS was over at that point, i was removing my RVS vote on Smiley. but at that point i hadn't read through what was said since my last post, so i didn't have a new vote to place. in my next post i placed a vote because i had had a chance to catch up.

[*]ender's reaction is in 32; he asserts that either mikhail is town trueclaiming, or scum rolefishing. ender leaves his vote on iavh from rvs, which indicates he isn't interested in pressuring anyone around their reactions to the claim. he doesn't show acknowledgement of the conversation about it being an rvs joke. this culminates in this quote which is, like, a very dramatic way of achieving the point that e.g. starfire/maduisha had already reached

and i'd encourage everyone to ignore this claim entirely for D1 and see how things go N1, and if anyone is a town power role that conflicts with him being mason please do not counter claim D1, because that will just ensure you're the kill N1 and we lose the benefit of your action.

it feels kind of stilted & over-dramatic. small red flags here: i'm wary that he explicitly doesn't scumread mikhail, but also doesn't evaluate whether other players have attempted rolefishing. in particular, i'm wary that he puts this much effort into breaking down the claim but (1) doesn't acknowledge that half the people reacting think it's a joke, or (2) that wayward literally took the bait on the claim.

side note - my rvs vote was Smiley, not iavh.

for context around my day 1 play: i've played somewhere between 20 and 30 games here on another account 6-7 years ago and this is my first game since then. i don't recall ever encountering a troll player, or at least not anyone who did something like Mikhail did. also, the meta and my experience from when i played before was that lying is almost never advantageous for a pro-town player. so, assuming all players are playing in good faith toward their win condition (which i now realize is naive), my thought process was that therefore if someone claims a PR, that means they're either the actual PR or scum, because fake claiming as town is decidedly anti-town (except in the case of how iavh did with his cop claim to try and wifom the mafia to keep him alive and search for a doc).

with that in mind, my entire play surrounding mikhail was:
* they're either scum, in which case we wait until day 2 because we can get information from the day 1 elim and night 1 actions, and then presumably day 2 we'd get a counter claim, which would (still going by the logic above) necessitate one or the other as being scum. and then we'd have a sure scum elim day 2 or 3 when we do a trade.
* or they're actually mason, and in that case we definitely shouldn't elim day 1 because... since when do scum keep a claimed town power role alive (unless they're pulling a Delta)? so rather than doing their job for them and elimming the claimed mason day 1 on the off chance that they're scum fake claiming, we should look at others, let scum NK the mason, and we can focus on another slot for the day 1 elim.

hindsight is always 20/20, and it's pretty obvious now that Mikhail was being a troll, but in the moment my hackles raised and the thought process i just explained fueled my decisions.

it looks like the meta here has changed significantly since my previous games here, and apparently fake claiming isn't as sure of a tell, so i'll keep that in mind for future games.

very interested to see where ender is going with this; i'm actually a little surprised that ender reinstated his vote on iavh while again stating that he didn't want the lim, and would unvote at e-1? this is a great way to vote someone without actually adding any pressure to them

you're missing a word: "yet". "he didnt' want the lim [yet]". you'll see from my play Days 1 and 2, and so far today, that I am not interested in ending days early except in cases like Day 3 where I feel essentially 100% convinced by a scum slip or something like that, or if discussion is stalled and there's not much else to say.

with what you're referring to, I felt good about chances of him being scum based on what i understood of his play at the moment, but of course I was not convinced enough to be ready for an elimination to happen yet. it was still fairly early in the day at that point, and an elim would end discussion prematurely. you'll see that on Day 2 I waited until just a few hours before deadline to hammer Koba. i'm not saying that waiting and keeping discussion open always results in good outcomes, seeing as how on Day 2 i was essentially on board with a Delta elim the irl night before, but decided to let discussion continue and that extra time is what Delta needed to flip me onto to Koba's wagon. But it is typically how I operate regardless. By and large, more discussion is better than less discussion, and more interactions is better than fewer interactions. My take on it is that eliminations should happen only when everyone is ready, discussion has stalled no one seems interested in starting back up, a scum has revealed themselves in a very obvious way, or a deadline is being reached.

@ender, just curious about your reasoning here -- to what extent did you believe the cop claim? you mentioned that you saw a crumb for it, which is usually a pretty good indicator of authenticity. i get mikhail doubling down on the mason claim, and claiming with a partner which either is or isn't confirmable. if you believed the cop claim, i'm curious why you threatened intent to vote mikhail here rather than just like, voting. this is a pretty good opportunity to increase the pressure on mikhail.

scrolling down i do get why you voted mikhail.

regarding "you mentioned that you saw a crumb for it". if i remember correctly, what I saw was iavh saying he was going to do "something" day 2 and he was delighting in how frustrated it would make people to wonder what it was. that isn't me seeing a him crumbing a cop claim, but i did suspect he was gearing up for a counter claim of some sort. i didn't see his 'clout' mason soft until he pointed it out specifically.

tbh i'm not sure why i decided to wait on voting Mikhail for a few posts. i guess i was still trying to process the counter claim situation before making a vote.

why did you not feel compelled to move your vote after the fallout of mikhail admitting to the reaction test? do you recall having any feelings about star voting keria? i'd be keen for as much perspective as possible here because following iavh (claimed tpr) onto his death-tunnel of a slot which just replaced out is, like, a very safe position for scum to hide in. the other votes on the wagon were maduisha (who was comfortable still flipping mikhail to clear wifom; largely unvoted to avoid a lolhammer) + keria who hadn't posted since the convo heated up.

you remaining on the wagon & having very little to add to the conversation after mikhail's extensive posting stands out here.

saying that it was just a reaction test is a very convenient way for scum to hide behind a fake claim when it inevitably is challenged. regardless of them being replaced, i still felt the slot was scummy at that point and wanted to clear the wifom with an elim. the fact that they were being replaced doesn't change the circumstances of why i was voting them, and therefore an unvote was not warranted at the time.

the post in which i didn't unvote was on a Monday at 2:34pm EST on page 11 and my next post, when i did unvote, came on that Wednseday at 4:22am EST, on page 18. So in a little over a day there were 7 pages of content, while i was still trying to go back and figure out my thoughts. When I posted with the unvote I'd had more time to think it through and ultimately came around to agreeing that Mik was a trolling townie, and that prompted my unvote.

i think i addressed all of your questions to me, please let me know if i missed anything.

[ender]

If i am scum, I've done my darnedest to throw this game several times. Look at my play from a scum!ender perspective.

I tunneled iavh and put him at e-1 despite suspecting him of softing a counter claim, I was third on the maduisha wagon (second if you read the vote count) which is a safe place for scum to get on, I was absent for a good portion of day 2 and only showed back up conveniently in time to hammer, and chose to hammer the person I had previously had the strongest town read on, and saved my partner from elim.

And then after dropping a very scummy hammer that I doubt even delta expected, when I could have instead bussed my partner, I instead leave alive the only conf!town player (iavh) so that my partner can make a really bad counter claim and then I'm the first person on his wagon.

It just doesn't make sense logically.

A much more logical play for scum!ender would have been to bus his partner day 2 instead of day 3, and keep alive the only person (Koba) who was practically conf!towning him. Then go into day 3 having just hammered a scum, with all the town cred that comes with it.

@smiley all I ask is you please reread my post from earlier today where I lay out why starfire's slot is likely scum before you vote.

VOTE: the worst

[ender]

You're kidding...

[ender]

Well I really am the VI lol.

Good job. I was convinced it was starfire/worst.

Letting delta kill himself off like that won you the game.

[ender]

Sorry everyone else. I hope there's no hard feelings, I know I played very badly, and pretty much single handedly lost us the game. I understand any frustration sent my way.

I guess there's always next game.

Oh and... damn it, being "too angry" after a bad hammer/flip is a scum tell, I shouldn't have let you play it off. I'm not going to back off of that next time.

[ender]

Sorry everyone else. I hope there's no hard feelings, I know I played very badly, and pretty much single handedly lost us the game. I understand any frustration sent my way.

I guess there's always next game.

Oh and... damn it, being "too angry" after a bad hammer/flip is a scum tell, I shouldn't have let you play it off. I'm not going to back off of that next time.

don't sell yourself short you played absolutely fine. i think it's fairer to credit scum for playing well here than discredit town for playing poorly.

i think a lot of the missed connection you might've felt this game is meta related. circa 2017-2020 there was a real advent of hyper-posters on mafiascum / elsewhere (which i'm sure you've noticed), and the more detailed analytic style of play slowly became a rarity. pre-2017, players were encouraged to punish perceived poor play decisions. it was like, a community meta decision, to encourage certain styles of play which would increase the general quality of games. we're just in an era where those holistic meta decisions have gone out of fashion.

during the hyperposter site meta, it became really popular to look for scum based on who felt the most earnest / like they were having the most like, real, believable, personable thoughts (aka. kinda wonky because brains do be like that) as town, rather than the people who played the "best", if that makes sense.

idk which era we're in at the moment but i did notice some missed connections with your slot and wondered if this might be a helpful concept to talk about postgame

Yes I'd be interested in discussing that if you are. Heading to bed for tonight but I'll be on again tomorrow. Night all