Newbie 1561: Puppies! (Game Over)

[Drixx]

Not a super substantive post atm. I just wanted to say hi and thanks for having me. I've read the first page and I suddenly feel as if I'm in for quite the education.

Off topic a bit, but perhaps useful going forward. I learned mafia something like 25 years ago as a live group game using playing cards to assign roles randomly. First played on a forum four of five years ago. I'm not entirely sure whether mentioning a specific forum is kosher or not (lots of theory posts read since I registered ... brain's a bit mush), so I won't for now. I do know a few folks I play with elsewhere have referenced here forever and are likely here. At least one of them encouraged me to get over here and get playing.

That's all for now. I'll be back with substantive comments once I've waded through the day so far. TTFN.

[Drixx]

VOTE: Epic Warrior

Seems to me like his just trying to contribute without actually contributing anything, he hasn't actually scum hunted and has rather just sat on the side lines prodding people, in ways that actually make him look like his active, without actually doing anything.

I got a really strong neg vibe on this. I went back and re-read Epic Warrior's posts pre-102, and I see a legitimate approach. Perhaps I'm biased because I play about 50/50 live and forum, so I can frequently see body language and facial expression when I poke someone for a reaction, but what I see out of EW pre-102 is a few posts putting other players in a position to either engage (and all non-fluff posts communicate useful info, although not always in the moment) or ignore the poke. Either response is useful to help form reads, so it seems to me that his approach was useful not only for his own purposes (whatever they may have been) but also for the rest of us.

Your post here and follow-up later on trying to reboot the wagon against EW based upon him "trying to contribute without actually contributing anything" seem rather opportunistic. It reads like a scum trying to start a train on someone who has picked up some neg vibe from the rest of the game by pushing a "good reason" and hoping it will catch. Def gave me a slight scum read on you, and I can't see much in the rest of your posts after 102 that push it back towards town; although, to your benefit, you didn't dig yourself any deeper either.

Gonna be voting plusle soon.

What, exactly, is the merit of telling the game you're going to vote for someone before you actually do so?

I agree plusle, so it looks to me like plusle is thinker and Paul is a spontaneous player, reads on them should be developped according to these baselines.

It would appear you are a thinker also, maybe even an over thinker (not that that is a bad thing maybe I should replace the word over with meticulous?) I wouldn't say I'm spontaneous more I just say it as I see it but I suppose that would be for other people to decide!!!

Are you then a thinker for thinking that he is a thinker?

I don't really think this will lead us anywhere.

I really don't think you need to worry so much about that in the RVS...

I can't remember if I posted the below before or not but still...

*have voted

I know that it's probably too early to do so, but I think now I'll say that, currently, I have a slight townread on copper for his generally helpful comments and questions, and, at the same time, not trying to lead.

Could he not be intentionally trying not to lead? Whereas a townie would act more naturally? Think it's still too early for town/scum reads. But then again, this is my first game

I also think it's quite early for reads

, but I also think that a weak, initial read might help scumhunting. (However, this is also the first game (at least on this website) for me, so feel free to correct me if I'm totally wrong.)

Followed shortly by

UNVOTE: Cabd VOTE: choof

And I also have my first scumread, namely, choof, for being generally unhelpful in the discussions with their randomish messages, which are not anywhere near a certain scumtell, but definitely worth taking into account. As he had no votes on as of this point, I changed my vote to him.

And then we have this...

Don't hold back observations. That being said, the whole "baiting" thing by withholding information really pisses me off because it's like "oh I was purposefully acting scummy or being coy DUH" which is just a lame excuse for "oh shit you caught me."

Why would withholding information in order to get better reads be acting scummy?

Gonna be voting plusle soon.

So you don't vote me but you... announce that you'll vote me soon. That probably is the most pointless thing that could ever happen.

And I don't like posting votes without reasoning. Now that I have sufficiently done so

Vote Plusle

You seem to be trying to push a contradiction from ++-- in 34 and then 54. Pretty much the entire rest of the game (and me, coming in as a replacement) was at least confused, if not scum reading on choof. Also, according to the IC, the RVS is generally over by the end of a page (25 posts) or two (50 posts), so a serious vote in 54 doesn't seem to contradict some expressed caution in 34. In fact, your entire contribution seems to be pulling this little string and attaching it to a wagon.

Do you have any actual reason you believe ++-- is scum, beyond the fact that he voted for choof with a commentary on why he had a slight scum read? I quoted your explanation above, and I don't really see an explanation there. I see a lot of you clip quoting ++-- and trying to show some kind of contradiction, but no real commentary from you. What I can't be sure of, atm, is whether you actually saw something you think is a legitimate scum slip and you're just hyper focused on it, or whether it's some kind of bat or more advanced play that I'm not catching ... or if you're just trying to paint ++-- as scummy for what you suggest is a slip.

Mostly, since I've never played with you, I'm in a bit of WIFOM trying to decide how to read you. If this were the normal 48-hour days I am used to playing in ... I would probably argue you for a policy lynch just based upon the odd warning of an incoming vote post followed by the clipped WoQ where you didn't really say much (almost seemed to be trying to avoid putting too much of your own words on the record), followed by the defense of said post as an actual case. As it is, a hesitant null-read atm.

It would be helpful, to me at least, to see you interact with some other folks. I think you've almost exclusively interacted with and focused on ++--. Filing away the possibility of scum distancing for a re-read.

If you say so

At the risk of repetition; what's the merit of this? If you don't want to engage and answer, isn't silence better than sarcasm?


That was everything but one thing that jumped out at me.


The biggest thing in my catching up that jumped out at me were the odd posts early on by singersigner. SS seemed to go out of the way to argue that something was townie, with lengthy explanations, and then point out that it shouldn't be used to read SS as townie. It felt a lot like "Hey, look at how townie this stuff I said was" followed by "Because of some context, you shouldn't actually give me any townie read for this". It was enough to catch my attention, and SS seemed to be irritated when someone later pointed it out, going so far as to outright deny having done it. For me, pointing out that some action or commentary would normally earn someone townie points but because of X, the new players in the game shouldn't use it to read you townie ... that's a lot of WIFOM for a newbie game.

Are you really a townie going out of your way to be helpful with those posts, realizing that something you said in them that might not normally be said in a game gives you a strong town read, and genuinely trying to help us, or are you scum trying to get town points by pretending to be that? I think it's the very definition of WIFOM. I could argue it in circles and never get anywhere.

So, for strongest scum read so far (for putting WIFOM into a newbie game, seemingly on purpose):

Vote: Singersigner

[Drixx]

I would just like to apologize to the game, right up front. I am called "Wall of Text Drixx" on another forum. My posts tend to be ... substantial.

[Drixx]

@Drix
Welcome to the game!

Your catch-up doesn't look too bad at first glance, unfortunately I have some problems with it:

- Why no attention to Cabd, the only player to openly scumread your slot?

- Why do you find Jason scummy for his read on EW but my interaction with EW doesn't register? Is there a difference between EW pre and post 102?

The scumreads you get to, Singer and Mallow, are two of the recently emerging names that people find scummy so I find those reads potentially opportunistic, you did motivate them well though so it's hard to tell.

I'll need to re-read to properly get my bearings on Cabd. Frankly, I mixed you two up a lot in my read and had some multi-quotes that I removed from my draft once I realized I had you two mixed up in my head. As for Cabd scumreading my slot, I'm afraid there's nothing for me to answer. There was another player who generated that read who is no longer here. I can't substantively answer a read on him, and trying to do so isn't likely to be of any utility to the town, and thus no matter what alignment my slot drew, it would be a poor play. Both Cabd and you have contributed heavily though, so I will try and respond to the bits that seem most relevant on my next reading.

I found Jason (slightly) scummy because while his initial post may have been a bit of a poke to see how EW would justify his contribution, the later re-boot of the attack seemed very opportunistic. Jason registers because the latter resumption of the attack doesn't read as if it is motivated by a read or any surety that EW is scum, and EW has certainly posted quite a lot since the early pre-102 posts, so I would have expected Jason's later attack to account for them ... but it's more of a defense of his (Jason's) assertion that EW's play wasn't contributive. Jason got my attention because the latter posts don't seem to follow the earlier. For lack of a more succinct way to express it: It seems as if Jason simply chose EW to attack and grabbed at something convenient to do so. Later, when there seemed to be much more substantive things to cite, Jason instead stuck with the already answered observation and defended it instead of updating his read and either furthering his case or moving on. It could be a lack of time to fully update all the priors, but it felt off, so it drew my attention.

You, on the other hand, seem to be evaluating everyone equally. I would say that I read it as very townie, except I know a couple people who are ridiculously good at doing what you're doing in this game when they're scum. I don't know you well yet, but I'm inclined to look at your approach as a very townie one. Your posts seem to me to indicate someone that is actually honestly reading people assuming both ways, and trying to see which read makes more sense. That's a solid approach, and I didn't see a whole lot of reason to draw attention to it so far.

As for my scum reads; I never make excuses for my reads. Correlation isn't causation. I hope that makes sense. Thanks for the welcome to the game. Generally I try not to get 200 posts behind in games as it's an absolute nightmare to sort through and respond appropriately; especially on day 1 when things get dropped and need no comment but that doesn't become apparent for a few pages and then you've got to go back and un-multi-quote posts. Add in the new terminology and an entire game full of people I've got no priors on and ... I'm glad you only had "some" problems with my first swing.

[Drixx]

@Singersigner - Your wish; etc... (BTW, is there a pronoun I may use for you?)

I'm pretty town.

Generally I read this sort of thing as LAMIST. It's what first grabbed my attention in the back and forth talk about whether choof was baiting or not.

Just wanted to clarify that the scum and dead threads will be in QuickTopics, not private topics. While I like PTs, there was a bit of a mix-up at the beginning of the game as to which one to use and

we're going with QTs

.

Though it should be known that this point is mute because if he didn't officially confirm because he was talking in

his PT

, as a mod I'd consider that a form of confirming nowadays, as a way to sidestep that kind of "confirmation" issue. Just saying.

Also it's "moot" not "mute" but that's neither here nor there.

Ah, wouldn't I just love that to clear me?? But I just defaulted to PT specifically because Mina and I had just talked about how it still says QT in the mod PMs that are sent out to start a game (or role PMs, I can't remember which). And since the site rolled over to PTs as a standard, she wanted to make sure it was just an oversight, and then that it didn't matter because it was up to the mod's discression. Little did I know she was talking about this game! But yeah...you probably shouldn't read too much into it unless you want to?

That's weird...how do you tell someone not to confirm you as town because of a weak reason to confirm you...as town...

Here's where you basically explain that your reference to PT (I'm not familiar with it, but assume it's something similar to QT?) should normally be viewed as a reason to read you slightly townie, but then after explaining the mix up at length, you go on to talk about how it's awkward trying to tell someone not to confirm you as town because of what would normally be a reason to confirm you as town? You end that with the "shifty" smiley, which just sort of adds to the irony.

This seemed like a whole lot of "Look how much this mix up basically breaks the game by confirming I'm town" with a "but don't assume I'm town because of it" added at the end. As I said in my earlier post, that came off as very WIFOM to me.

So, basically you got my first vote and scummiest (so far) read for LAMIST and WIFOM plays. There's not a lot to go on during day 1, so that's sort of where my head's at just this moment.

[Drixx]

My job isn't to convince the town to lynch my reads, I can lead them that way by showing how i think someone is scum, that doesn't mean it's a thing i have to do.

I'd rather all the townies do their own reading, because that means we have more people actually trying to find scum, and if we all line up that means we are more likely to be right.

I'm sorry but this is bollocks. Of course all town players should do their own reads (and since scum are obligated to blend in, they have to attempt to fake reads), so you should see some legitimate attempt to generate reads and commentary on things that don't make sense, coming from all players.

But you're dead wrong about the first part mate. You need to adjust how you view your role, especially when you land in the most frequent slot (non powered townie). Make it a habit to not only scum hunt well, but also to learn how to make a case that convinces fellow town. As someone's quote says ... 50% of the game is finding the scum, and the other 50% is convincing the rest of the town you've found them. Not only that, but when you pull a powered role, especially cop, if you have an established meta of building cases and convincing people to vote, then you can escape the scum team's notice when you draw cop because you aren't suddenly completely changing your tactics.

I hope that last point, at least, makes enough sense to help you going forward.

Paul's replacement did a thing that I will comment upon one it posts more but nothing in the wall makes paul any less scum, and the slot changing owners doesn't change the role PM either.

Interesting use of the word "yet"

Hi, I'm Drixx. I'm a "he" not an "it". Also, I'm posting more, so I shall look forward to your comment on whatever thing I did. I should like to point out that I already addressed the prior player in my slot. I cannot possibly speak to anything he said or did. It would be a pointless and useless exercise, no matter what my slot drew. For any possible role/alignment, there is absolutely no up-side to me trying to figure out what someone else was thinking when they said something, let alone defend or explain it to the game. He's gone and I'm here, and correlation isn't causation; in other words, newbie player says something that gives you a scum read and thus correlates said player in your mind with scum. This is not necessarily caused by said player actually being scum.

[Drixx]

I'm sorry SS, but what you did was WIFOM. You explained why you said PT instead of QT. Saying PT when the game uses QT basically indicates that you weren't given a QT, which should give everyone a light town confirm on you, but then you pointed that out and commented on how awkward it was to make a post explaining all that and why we shouldn't read you as town for that when otherwise it would be a fairly good reason to peg you as town, assuming we believe it was a legitimate slip.

So here's the WIFOM:

1.) Was it a legitimate slip because of an a priori conversation you were having elsewhere, and did you feel obligated to ask people not to read anything into it since it wasn't a slip relating to this game?

OR

2.) Did you go through all of that show and tell and call all that attention to yourself because it would seem very unlikely for scum to do that?


It could be either case, and there's no way to objectively figure out which situation is reality. It's an endless evaluation of whether you're an experienced town player trying to keep from damaging a newbie game or whether you're scum taking advantage of a "slip" to give yourself some cover so you can hide in plain sight. I've thought about it at considerable length and I can't really objectively prefer one case over the other, which I believe is the exact definition of what WIFOM is. (I believe WIFOM comes from the famous poisoned wine scene from The Princess Bride? If that's not its origin, it's certainly a good scene to point people to so they understand I think).

[Drixx]

@copper223 - You're right that the original comment is already some degree of WIFOM, but for me the lengthy explanation with SS saying both that it should clear her and also that we shouldn't view it as clearing her just heaped a whole bunch more on top. The original comment was either a slip or put there intentionally. That's neither here nor there, because it could be a legitimate slip or an intentional scum play. It would simply warrant keeping a mental note when evaluating SS. I had and have a null read from that original 'slip'.

The reason I view the explanation post as WIFOM is because I have read it assuming 100% scum and assuming 100% town and under both assumptions I still can't decide if the whole thing was an accident followed up by an experienced player trying to make sure the accident didn't unduly influence new players or whether it's a calculated scum move.

Many people assume that scum won't make a play like that because it draws so much attention, but I've seen some pretty bold play by scum "slipping" and drawing a huge amount of discussion. I refer to it as HiPS (Hiding in Plain Sight), and I've seen some of the best players I've ever played with do it. Obviously one wouldn't want their scum meta to show that too frequently as then it would become a solid tell on its own, but again it can't be discounted offhand.

Because I was unable to resolve my read on SS, I made the post and vote. I was hoping for a response and I got some good ones. I would have to say that SS's most recent post reads very scummy. As you point out, the WIFOM is there from the moment the wrong method of private chat is referenced, and I would argue the long post trying to explain it away introduces quite a bit more; and yet, SS is now saying that she doesn't even see any WIFOM at all. The responses aren't overtly scummy on the face, but I find it difficult to believe someone so experienced is genuinely confused about why the posts in question are WIFOMy, so when I evaluate the posts assuming townie and ask myself if they make sense, the answer is no. Why would an experienced town player sew confusion into a newbie game and respond by feigning being unable to understand? I can think of a lot of reasons for scum to do it, but wracking my brain I come up with no reason for a townie to do it.

[Drixx]

Maybe, just maybe, she

doesn't

see it. That could be a thing. I didn't see it at first.

Also, join date =/= level of expertise/experience, so unless you have meta of SS absolutely killing it in several games I'd suggest you find a different avenue of attack because, right now, I think you're full of shit.

Someone earlier in the thread (Was it the IC?) pointed out you click on someone's name and view their threads. SS has posted in an awful lot of games. Number of games played doesn't necessarily imply skill, but the bottom of the forum says that names in green are list mods, and I made an assumption that a lot of games played plus a trusted position to help keep games flowing on the site probably equates to at least an above average player. I freely admit that is only an assumption. I've certainly not gone through SS's nearly 5,000 posts to try and shed light on the current situation. I suspect that even if I had time to do so, I would find several phases of playstyle. I know if one were to read through all the games I've played elsewhere, it would be difficult to pin me down. I approach each game as a separate event and do my very best to avoid falling into any rut which might serve as an easy tell for anyone who has played with me a lot. It sort of ruins the fun of it if you can just tell that someone is VT or Town PR or scum of some sort simply by the approach he takes.

For the IC; is there a guide somewhere to where the line is on language and such? I'm not at all offended by HI's summary judgment at the end of the quoted post, but it does fall outside of my range of experience, so knowing what is kosher, what isn't and what to expect would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

.

[Drixx]

@Drixx

The reason I view the explanation post as WIFOM is because I have read it assuming 100% scum and assuming 100% town and under both assumptions I still can't decide if the whole thing was an accident followed up by an experienced player trying to make sure the accident didn't unduly influence new players or whether it's a calculated scum move.

That's because it's all based on the initial assumption, did she town slip or did she fake it, nothing she says afterwards can be 100% attributed to town or scum, if she said: definitely, read me as town for it because it was a slip, I'd have the same problem because hey, mafia could easily fake that slip and tell us to read her as town as well, as I explained without giving examples there is no answer here which is meaningful per se, only possible guesses you can make based on how genuine she is and how self serving those statements are.

Her answer:"no don't confirm me as town because this is why the term was fresh in my mind, but as your read would be accurate, um great" is not WIFOM per se, other than the usual WIFOM of every sentence ever written in a game of mafia (is this true or is she BS'ing), it becomes WIFOM just because it relates to the first slip/fake tell she made, so once again I don't find her reply scummy.

@Singer
why do you think Jason is town?

Well reasoned. You're right that the WIFOM traces to the original 'slip' post. I think it was the follow-up explanation that caught my notice though, so I ascribed my confusion there instead of the original slip.

I wonder if you might evaluate the last bit I said? I've read the most recent post where SS claims not to see any WIFOM anywhere in the series of posts both assuming that SS is 100% for sure town, and assuming SS is 100% for sure scum, and it makes almost no sense to me as a town post. I am basing that on the assumptions I stated in 259 though.

[Drixx]

I don't think there's any point in picking at it any more. It's there and it's not likely to resolve one way or the other independent of anything else.

It seems strangely luxurious to be able to follow a line of questioning so far. Other forum games I play generally have 48 hour days, and live games obviously are very rapid paced.

[Drixx]

Could you be any more cryptic with that answer Cabd?

What is an "amished tell"?

Also ... I left a question for you bolded up a few posts.

[Drixx]

Thank you very much.

[Drixx]

VOTE: Drixx

I don't like that he tested the waters for a SS lynch, then immediately backed off when copper and I showed the smallest amount of resistance to it.

Now you're the one who's full of shit. I've kept my vote on SS. Agreeing with Copper that the origin of the WIFOM SS put into the game was the original 'slip' isn't backing off. I even said that I viewed the "explanation" post as worse because it compounded it and drew so much attention. I also don't like that SS played dumb about the whole thing. And my vote is still there.

So if this, by you, is backing off ... then you are full of shit and just looking for a response or trying to protect a scum buddy.

[Drixx]

I must say I disagree with you on one point, Mr. Wazza. It is your job to convince the town that your vote is in the right place. Good town players find scum; great town players convince the town to lynch scum. There's more merit in your opinion than you're giving it. I'm not sure whether this is because its a weak read or whether you actually believe that all you have to do is vote scum and hope that people just fall in line.

Something's just not adding up for me.

UNVOTE: ++--

My job isn't to convince the town to lynch my reads, I can lead them that way by showing how i think someone is scum, that doesn't mean it's a thing i have to do.

I'd rather all the townies do their own reading, because that means we have more people actually trying to find scum, and if we all line up that means we are more likely to be right.

This post reads town to me, as it shows an apathy toward the scum agenda: obtaining mislynches at all costs. It also ensures that he's very conscious of other people agreeing with the same conclusion, not blindly sheeping with no responsibility. It keeps town accountable for their actions/reads.

I disagree with your read on his apathy post being a town read. I dislike the last part of that first statement. "That doesn't mean it's a thing i have to do." ... That sort of apathy towards the idea of building a case and convincing townies doesn't sit right with me.

When you've found scum, you need to convince others, especially because in a majority of cases, there will be a team of scum, and they can work to discredit your observations. (See: Hostile Intent calling me full of shit and making things up to discredit my argument against you.)

[Drixx]

Bleh. I'm used to submit being the right button and preview being the left.

I see a potential scum team in SS and HI, at the moment. SS played dumb about the WIFOM and then HI came in with a sarcastic post suggesting maybe SS really didn't realize there was WIFOM introduced, despite a rather thorough discussion of it, and then went borderline personal attack on me. Now, HI is pushing a case on me because I agreed with Copper that the origin of the WIFOM was the original slip, even if it was the convoluted explanation that caught my attention when I was reading the thread after being subbed in. HI claims I've backed off despite the fact that I've defended my original case that the big explanation post is the thing that makes it feel scummy, which is exactly the opposite of backing off.

Making things up and toeing the line between attack of play and attack of person to try and intimidate a new person, all to defend a third party. If HI had made a pro-town case for SS, I might understand the defense. What I see instead is an offense aimed at putting me on my heels, simultaneously defending someone that HI hasn't given a pro-town read on.

I'd vote for HI, but that would result in an OMGUS accusation, and the blind defense paired with the strong attack reinforce my gut instinct on my read. I'll stick with it.

[Drixx]

I can see how that sentence doesn't read very clearly. I'll clarify, but then I'll say no more because personal conflict is not useful nor fun.

Making things up - saying that I backed off when in fact I did just the opposite. I re-asserted my contention that the big post is what caught my attention and felt scummy, while acknowledging that Copper is right that the core WIFOM issue is the earlier "slip". I also evaluated SS's follow up posts and concluded that they didn't make a lot of sense when I read them assuming 100% that SS is town. I don't see what the scum play is, but I can't think of any possible town play that makes sense. It's day 1 and I'm reading someone I've not played with before, so of course I'm going to consider that it could simply be an innocent mistake and nothing more. If we weren't in the dark, we wouldn't have to carefully read and evaluate posts with different assumptions to see how post and reactions fit.

The next thing was "toeing the line between attack of play and attack of person" and all I mean by that is that calling someone "full of shit" is right on the line. That epitaph only has meaning in the context of someone's posts, but it seems to me that it's right at the line, since saying "that case/reasoning/etc... is full of shit" would clearly be talking about the content in question. Saying "You are full of shit" on the other hand is a commentary on the person, and while it makes zero sense unless its talking about said person's arguments, it's still at the line, which was what I said. In any case I read your aggressive posts as particularly effective ways to get a response, and I hope you got what you wanted from mine.

So I don't think I misrepresented you at all. You made something up out of whole cloth (the idea that I changed my tune or dropped my case against SS), you aggressively attacked my play in a statement that was aimed at me (toeing that line between play and person), and you did so to defend a 3rd party, whom I still haven't seen you make a case for. You seem quite sure that SS is town, but I don't see anything from you to indicate why. Thus what I said in 281 ... kind of looks like a scum move. Could be defending a partner or going hard on the offensive to defend someone you know for sure is town because you know who isn't.

In fact, now I have to wonder. If I read you as scum, the latter play seems much more likely than closely tying yourself to a scum partner. You remind me of someone I know ... your aggressive play pushing people to respond puts you in a position to throw OMGUS accusations if someone votes you, and leaves little to evaluate independent of the people you're interacting with. A read on you depends on other reads.

[Drixx]

I feel like I've wandered into the Twilight Zone. Is this how mafia is played on this site? People just make assertions that aren't true and everyone blithely accepts them? I said Copper's post was well reasoned and acknowledged that the introduction of confusion was with the original slip. Complimenting someone's reasoning isn't backing off from what I've said, nor is it an "admission of mistake", as HI put it. I went on, after complimenting Copper, to point out that the post that drew my attention was the lengthy explanation of the original slip post with the strange contradictory ending statement about whether it should or should not clear SS. At no point did I ever say that post stopped being the post that got my attention.

@SS RE: 286 - Another false assertion. Hostile Intent came after me aggressively while simultaneously declaring you townie. I gave more than one possibility for that. Scum partners is a possibility (but that would be a fairly bold day 1 play). It's also possible that HI is scum and knows you're town and can thus aggressively defend you and gain town cred should we see you flip town. So far as I can recall, HI hasn't given any reasoning for why you are town, so the defense doesn't seem to be sourced.

My original intent in pointing out what I saw in my original read through was to get responses. SS's responses reinforced the scum read. SS at this point is essentially only speaking when someone else has made a defense for her. If I understand "sheeping" as a concept, isn't that what it is?

@copper - HI has just made shit up and passed it off as if it were gospel. SS twisted the heck out of what I said in 286, since I pointed out several possible reasons why Hostile Intent would make things up and aggressively defend SS without any reasoning for doing so. In turn, I've called them on making things up and manipulating things, and stuck to my read, and this, by you, is scummy? I should think making things up out of nothing and manipulating things to paint me scummy would be scummy actions.

You basically just said "I agree with Hostile Intent's lies and SS's manipulation of his words, so I'm going to sheep and vote for him" and then threw some dirt on a third party. My earlier read on you was that you gave everything a pretty good evaluation ... and yet you seem fine with Hostile Intent making things up and SS twisting what I said in order to make me look as bad as possible. Where did that earlier analysis you were doing go?

[Drixx]

My experience would rate that as a fairly unlikely possibility, SS. Your initial responses didn't clarify the situation (although more recent ones do to an extent. I personally don't like the appeal to personal honesty in mafia, because every single role has at least occasional if not frequent incentive to lie; however, I understand why you made that appeal).

As for what I said concerning HI; I gave several possibilities, and have now prompted HI at least three times to explain why (he?) thinks you are town. That was an aggressive push against me that included outright fabrication, tied to a declaration that you are town ... but so far as I can tell, HI has never given any reasoning (or motivation ... I like that word for it) for why we should view you as town, despite being prompted several times.

At this point, I'm inclined to view HI as more scummy than you based upon two things: needing to make things up to make a case against me, and completely ignoring the repeated request to explain why you are town. Exaggeration and hyperbole and manipulation and bending the truth and outright lying are all part of the game, and I've employed it all and then some in the past to get reactions and reads, so I hesitate to read too much into that.

Also, the core point you are making is that I characterized HI as scum. That's partially true, but it's a side-effect of me trying to figure out what reasons HI would have to declare you town without giving any rationale at all. IF HI is scum, then it could be scum buddies (bold play, but not unheard of), it could be scum setting up some town points for later (scum, by default, know who town is). I try and read everything assuming a player is scum and also assuming he's town, and a surprising amount of the time that is super helpful. The default scum assumption on HI, at this point, is simply because of the defense of you without any reasoning. If HI has a solid pro-town read on you, it would be helpful to share it, but (he?) continues to decline to do so. We could have long since moved on to other discussion if HI saw something I missed and it convincingly moves the read on you. I should stress that I've kept my vote on you because your initial reactions to my poke about the WIFOM read scummy.

As a player who gave off a lot of false scum positive reads when I first started playing forum mafia, I tend to be open to seriously evaluation contrary points of view and argument.

[Drixx]

Not gonna lie. I laughed.

[Drixx]

That was the question I was asking myself ++--. In my post I was trying to give an answer. If I assume HI is scum, then the possibilities I listed earlier all seem reasonable, to one degree or another. I've talked about them enough though. In fact ... in talking them through with a post, as is sometimes my habit, I ended up being accused of super gluing myself to the scum team theory, when really I was just thinking through something that didn't make sense out loud. I think it would do me well to be more clear and not fall into familiar patterns. Nobody here has the first clue how my bizarre thought process works.

That said, the more HI interacts with the game, the more I think what I'm seeing there is playstyle. I still don't fully understand the defense of SS, which is what got me speculating on motive;however, there's obviously some merit to an aggressive playstyle that puts people on the defensive and makes them defend. You get reads from what people say, after all.

Obviously I would love to see the vote shift to Mal, but I have no grand reveal or claim to make to send everyone scrambling that way. I was hoping he would check in with a substantive post that would let everyone get an actual read beyond what we have now. Right now, he has claimed to be done with V/LA but is still running radio silent. Is this because I am used to 48 hour days and thus have posted quite a lot and gotten myself into trouble? I suppose if I were him I might sit and keep my mouth shut as much as possible, regardless of my assigned role. Even with the L-2 votes on me, people are still mentioning him, and if he's keeping up, that's gotta be intimidating I should think.

[Drixx]

Why would you love to see them shift to mallow when you've spent the majority of your time pressuring me?

Because the alternative seems to be subbing into a game (my 1st on site) and being lynched out a few days later. Why would you disregard everything else I said just to color that as something sinister when it's simply and obviously a nod to the fact that I'm L-2 and unless something changes headed for the noose?

[Drixx]

++-- : Please don't repeat HostileIntent's made up crap. I didn't say that I found an HI + SS scum team "most likely". I evaluated what possible motives a scum HI might have for blindly defending SS without any real reason, and I listed scum team as the least likely, noting that it would be bold for a day 1 play. In the same post I suggested the most likely case, if HI is scum, would be that HI knows who is town and is setting up some town cred by defending someone HI knows is town. Please evaluate

MY WORDS

, not the made up or manipulated crap other people claimed I said. If at all possible, I'd prefer you avoid cherry picking like SS just did.

I made my case against SS and did my duty in pressing that case. In response I had one player just outright make up something that I never said and ascribe it to me, and now it's as if we've slipped into an alternate reality where I actually said that thing. Another player intentionally manipulated several things I've said solely to try and paint me in as bad a light as possible. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one who saw something, made a case, evaluated the person's responses and found them to be unconvincing and pushed the case, and the result is me sitting at L-2.

Cabd suggested we push me to L-1 so that some late claim by me didn't send everyone scrambling to try and get a valid lynch in. After that, several people expressed unease with the lynch train on me (SS included). Mal was fingered (rightly) for lurking.

@SS - What's nefarious about what I said? First you say you're not comfy with the train on me in 312 but then in 320 you're back to twisting what I say away from the plain meaning and trying to make it sinister. That last paragraph begins with a sentence that expresses this sentiment: "As much as I'd like to see the vote swap to Mal (the seemingly consensus alternate wagon), I don't have any claim or reveal to make (a reference to Cabd's suggestion to put me in L-1 to force any claim I might have, in 302)." You could replace Mal with any other scummy player. I'd prefer to continue on and learn as much as I can in my first game. As a general rule, I think everyone prefers to continue playing over being lynched, yeah?

So, how am I self-contradictory when expressing that I'd obviously prefer not to be lynched and answering Cabd's "fear" that I'll claim late and cause a no-lynch? Did you say that I was self-contradictory because you bought HI's made up claim that I said a HI+SS scum team was likely? Was it self-contradictory because I referenced Mal instead of SS? Let's be real ... nobody seems to think my case amounts to anything. If I'm the only one who thinks SS reads scummy at this point, I can keep pushing, but that seems pointless. If the entire rest of the game disagrees with me, then it seems rather probable I misread the posts. I can keep them in mind going forward and if something new comes up, I can revisit that suspicion. I don't see why I have to be tied to thinking only one person is suspicious or else I'm self-contradicting though; especially since there are 2 scum in newbie games.


Now, I'm going to imply some shadiness on Mal's part, because frankly it looks kind of shady. I find it awfully convenient that Mal showed up again

precisely

minutes after SS went from disagreeing with the wagon on me to questioning me. What's worse is that Mal didn't really say much. His posts essentially sling mud @Jason randomly, and ... nothing.

Combine that with the last few pages, and I would put HI and SS in the "watch and see" column. Both have said some things that don't make sense if I read them assuming they are town, but I think the fact that literally nobody else read SS's response to my case as scummy is something I need to consider. It wouldn't be the first time I had a strong (and INCORRECT) read on someone. I don't know what more can be gained by talking it into the ground.

Unvote: Singersigner

I would like to see some substantive analysis from Mal. The timing of coming back to the game seems incredibly co-incidental. It stretches credulity, IMO. So far the problem with Mal is that lurking through the game is bad play to consent to, and that's what Mal is doing. If today goes by and he's still lurking through the game without any real contribution, and no stronger case than Mal as policy lynch arises, my vote will go there.

[Drixx]

The more I think about Cabd's post, the more uneasy I become. He's the IC, but activity and contribution has dropped off considerably. His contribution today was to suggest putting me at L-1, while we still have a few days left before the end of the day phase. His reasoning just doesn't stand up. We should put me in position to be hammered by scum for the lock because I might make a claim late in the day phase?

I've sat here for the last 30 minutes thinking through the scenario. If I were a town PR and I got to L-1, I would probably claim (injecting some wifom for the scum to sort through if I could). The scum could possibly drop the hammer and seal the lynch in that case. More disastrously, a townie who didn't catch the claim or didn't believe it could drop the hammer and once I flipped as town PR, the next day that townie would almost certainly be lynched for sealing the lynch on me. Without some intervention preventing a night kill, that would result in LYLO the next day. That's the absolute worst case scenario obviously, but it's certainly a possibility. I'm sure something like that has happened a number of times in the 1500 or so previous newbie games, heh.

A more probable scenario if I'm a town PR is that I claim and mafia has to kill me, but that still benefits the mafia significantly.

The actual situation is that I don't have any power to claim. The only "power" I have this game is the same power all VTs have. I can employ logic, rational thought, press people, make reads, and do my best to scumhunt.

But even that is information that helps the scum team narrow down candidates for town PR.

So what am I missing here? What's the town's upside to Cabd's suggestion to L-1 me based upon the premise that I might late claim?

[Drixx]

@toolenduso - I unvoted SS in 325.

Fixed!

[Drixx]

@Copper - I never said that I didn't raise the possibility of a scum partnership. What I didn't say was that I thought it was the

most likely

scenario. I was essentially talking (typing) through the thought process. HI was defending SS without any reasoning, and if I assumed HI was scum, what would be the motive to defend SS without reasoning? I've listed the most likely possibilities several times, and rehashing them serves no purpose. The idea that I believed HI and SS were a scum partnership or that I even thought that was likely was fabricated out of thin air by HI, and most of the active players have been acting as if it were true ever since.

As for your disliking my comment that I would like to remain in the game ... I don't know what to tell you. I made a pretty simple statement acknowledging the obvious that I'd rather not get lynched (who would?) and put Cabd's "Let's put him at L-1 to force any claims so a claim doesn't cost us a lynch" post to rest. I don't have any role to claim. I'll take my portion of blame for imprecision of thought and post; however, there's also quite a bit of cherry picking and twisting going on. Unless someone is hyper-vigilant to be absolutely precise when expressing sometimes complex ideas, the reality in forum mafia is that you can take anyone's posts and cherry pick or manipulate parts of them to make the player look scummy, so long as they are making substantive posts and not skating along without risking putting much in play.

I tend to try and get people to talk in more than single sentences, because without that ... what is there to read?

[Drixx]

A couple of things for Drixx:
1. You were definitely the one who brought up the possibility of us being a scum team first. In fact you made it seem like it was at least 75% of your theory of why HI was defending me. You bring it up more than anyone else in posts 279, 281, and 283, and seem to suggest in at least two of them that you can't see any other reason for HI defending me other than the ultimate conclusion that he is scum (in either scenario you suggest). I understand you did not mean to suggest that was a main reason for scumreading HI, but that cétainly does not mean we were in the wrong to assume that's where you were headed.
2. You've expressed a stream-of-consciousness/volunteering thoughts type of posting, and don't hold back when it comes to accusing people of twisting your intent because you haven't explicitly stated something, but it seems fairly unreasonable to assume that we should just "get" your intent with suggesting votes go toward mallow without stating it.
3. You seem to freely offer statements like 'twisting my words' and 'another false assertion' without recognizing that's exactly how it's felt this whole time with your accusations of me. I can't quite parse it through, but I don't think it's scummy? It seems more like confirmation bias than anything.

This post just gave me a very town read on you.

I'll work on being more precise RE: your 2nd point. Stringing too much together is probably a bad idea, even if there's absolutely no way to misunderstand it.

[Drixx]

EW didn't really say much after being prodded. I'm not sure there's much there to go on. It seems like he's being careful to say as little as possible that counts as contributive. Essentially he's continuing a rather extended back and forth with Jason, and I'm not sure the discussion budged very much with that last post, lol.

[Drixx]

L-2 actually, with the

IC

making a theory based case that I should be pushed to L-1 so that a late claim by me wouldn't leave us scrambling for an alternate lynch. I made a post that didn't explicitly claim, and got pushed further for it, and finally just claimed.

I'll give you this HI; you're certainly tenacious.

[Drixx]

I need to do a thorough re-read and look at EW closely; however, Mal is literally just skating through the game making enough posts to keep from being mod replaced, but that's it. No interaction with any of our questions directed his way. No interaction with anyone else really. He's isn't sharing any scumhunting he may me doing with us. He said he needed to re-read the thread, and then

SIX MINUTES

later he comes back saying he doesn't think EW is scum. Either Mal doesn't have time to play and is just going to lurk indefinitely, which makes him a policy lynch, imo ... or he has some reason that he's lurking.

Still needing to do a re-read before coming to any conclusion on EW's scumminess, I do feel I should point out that at least EW has given us posts and interactions to evaluate. If we're not 100% sure, I think the better candidate at this point is Mal. I personally seriously dislike lurking as a playstyle though, so this may be a personal bias.

[Drixx]

Mal probably doesn't tell us anything. I don't see any particular post by him that would tell me who his scum partner is, should he flip scum. He's a policy lynch at this point though, and despite a large portion of us urging him to get involved ... he hasn't. If someone can get by with lurking as a strategy, it generally takes pressure to force them to stop it. I've seen it take several games of policy lynching someone for lurking to get that playstyle change ... so I don't know if the argument that we'll learn less from his lynch should be all that persuasive.

I'm potentially willing to vote EW, and I don't mind being the hammer vote if his posts and interactions convince me there's a good chance he's scum. I haven't done my re-read of the thread yet, as I had last minute notice that in-laws are coming Christmas Eve and had to go pick up supplies, and it was a total mad house. I will do my best to get through a re-read tonight and give my thoughts on EW. I'd like to have some consensus before we drop the hammer.

@Cabd

Theory question for the IC: You made a theory based argument that the game should put me at L-1 to force me to claim, and I tried to evade an outright claim, but got pushed into admitting I had no role to claim. You then put EW at L-1 and told him he needed to claim. I'd like to know the theorycrafting behind pushing for a claim, because I'm concerned that this approach you're using could be super useful to scum. If scum can get 1 or 2 town players to crack and admit they have no role, that significantly alters the balance as far as them trying to find the town PRs to kill. There's a lot of moving parts to this bit of play, so I'm asking you to give an answer as IC about the theory behind this. I don't recall seeing this approach before, and my guess is there are pros and cons to it that I haven't thought of yet. If you have the time, please be thorough.

[Drixx]

Thanks for the thorough answer. One flaw I can see in that site meta is that I imagine a great deal of VTs who get to L-1 and claim are probably lynched as a matter of course, and that means PRs are basically obligated to be honest in their claims under such circumstances. This would seem to be more likely since on day 1 town PRs generally try to walk a fine line to keep from drawing too much attention whilest also not making it obvious to the scum team that they are a PR. I'll have to consider the theory of this some. Given the amount of theorycrafting on this site, I'm guessing this particular matter is generally settled and the things bothering me about it are considered acceptable trade offs for the benefits the approach provides.

I hadn't encountered the approach before, which is why I simply responded to your prompt for someone to put me at L-1 before someone actually did. I think perhaps this may simply be a byproduct of playing with 48 hour days, as there's not generally time to carefully put someone on L-1, wait for them to claim or refuse, and then make a decision ... and L-1 is way more dangerous in that situation as well, because you can't really assume the hammer vote is scum motivated, especially as a lot of votes come in essentially simultaneously in the last hour in that environment. So far I'm really enjoying the amount of effort the folks here put into the newbie games, and I really appreciate the IC system. I hope sometime down the road I will be knowledgeable enough to pay it forward, if you will.

@Mallowgeno - You might make it through today lurking just because so many are reading EW really scummy, but I will be relentless until you stop lurking. This game is at its most fun when you're interacting with people. I would encourage you to come have fun with us. Lurking is bad for a whole host of reasons. I'm sure others in the game could make a more comprehensive list than me, but I could give a pretty significant list of reasons. I've watched lurking completely torpedo really nice themed games where hosts put in a ton of effort to design the game and too many of the players did what you're doing, and it is pretty much the #1 thing you can do in mafia to get me to consider you a policy lynch (very closely followed by neutrals with their own win condition, as they will sell out the town for their own win every time).

[Drixx]

@EW - That was a pretty weak list ... but you said earlier you didn't agree with read lists, so should we read your weak effort as intentionally protesting being forced to give one? Copper has a well reasoned argument that you've slipped and shown yourself to be considerably more savvy than you're pretending to be. The question in my mind is why you would be trying to make yourself appear less threatening. There's some things with your play throughout the day that have felt off, but I'm having a hard time reading your posts with the scum assumption and making sense of them. If I read you as town, your posts, especially under the gun here, mostly make sense. The only cogent point that I'm having a hard time reconciling is that you are clearly better at the game than you're letting on.

At this point, I feel like I need to see more of EW actually playing without being on the edge of being hammered. At this point if he's hammered, I wouldn't be surprised by anything he might flip. The entire range of possibilities are in play and I suspect that any of the active players in this game could all make a well reasoned case for any outcome. (Be honest, Copper, you could!).

Mallowgeno, on the other hand, is completely inexplicable in his complete refusal to engage.

Vote: Mallowgeno

[Drixx]

HI is correct. Mal is at 4 votes now.

[Drixx]

We still have 12 hours. I'd very much like to see Mallow actually post something substantive. There's still enough questions about EW's play that I'd be willing to hammer EW if it's appropriate. For example, if he goes back to lurking now that Mallow is on the hot seat, that won't sit well with me AT ALL. I expect some actual responses from EW to the questions raised; most especially concerning why he seems to be pretending to be far less capable than he is. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and prodded him to explain why his read list is so weak.

Let me be really clear ... at the moment I can't decide between the two of them. If EW fails to stay engaged and answer those questions OR if Mallow finally delurks and gives a substantial post and commits something convincing to the game, I'm prepared to hammer on EW. I would say my current feeling on EW is 60/40 scum/town, but I feel like another day phase would push that either all the way to almost certain scum or would clear up the stuff that's making him read scum today. Mallow, on the other hand, just needs to either get playing or get out of the game. That timing where he showed up at just the perfect moment to make non-substantive posts back to back and then go back to lurking was really really really scummy imo. The problem is, that's the only hard scummy thing I can say about him, aside from the fact that he's lurking (which isn't necessarily scummy, despite my absolute hatred of it as a playstyle ... I know a couple people who just lurk and post the bare minimum and it irks me to death when they make it into the end game. Imagine Mallow skating by all the way to LYLO without anything else that helps to read him... scary thought).

[Drixx]

Can someone please explain the voting to me? I am afraid I may misunderstand what "simple majority" means, and I'm unsure if anyone will be lynched if there is no lock, based upon the voting rules in the rules post.

If "Simple Majority" means a plurality of votes, then 5 votes lynches someone and it's locked, which means that me swapping from Mal to EW would have hammered EW; however, Copper indicated that this was not the case, so I adjusted my priors to reflect the voting rules I'm familiar with which require 1/2 the votes (rounded up) to lynch and +1 more vote to lock, which would mean 5 to lynch, 6 to lock. Re-reading the voting rules suggests that if nobody is locked, then nobody will be lynched.

So, if I could not hammer EW by swapping my vote and putting him at 5, how could Mal come in and hammer EW? What necessitated someone on EW's train unvoting, and how does that make them town?

Sorry for the procedural questions so late in the day. I thought I understood what was going on earlier with all the L-2 and L-1 comments, but I think I clearly didn't.

[Drixx]

@HI - Not so weird, given my experience elsewhere. It seems I read it correctly at first. I generally read "simple majority" as "plurality", but then some comments made me think I was mistaken. Other places where I play generally use the voting rules I described in 467, where someone will be lynched at 1/2 (rounded up) and locked with one more vote. I like the plurality rules a bit more because it leads to more caution and judicious use of votes, and we won't have a situation where someone has enough votes to be lynched (but not locked) and someone last second unvotes them for a no-lynch.

[Drixx]

At this point, I feel like I need to see more of EW actually playing without being on the edge of being hammered. At this point if he's hammered, I wouldn't be surprised by anything he might flip. The entire range of possibilities are in play and I suspect that any of the active players in this game could all make a well reasoned case for any outcome. (Be honest, Copper, you could!).

This sounds like something scum says about his buddy to vote the counterwagon.

If you think so. I gave my read on him as 60% certain he was scum and said I'd do the hammer vote.

Now, instead of deflecting from the point I was making, tell me if I'm right or wrong. I suspect you could make an argument, using EW's posts, that he's probably town. I suspect you could make the opposite argument, using the same posts. The main thing to EW's credit is that he's engaging with the game and he's not dodging, and another day phase should therefore result in quite a lot more to read about him, whereas another day phase seems unlikely to result in us being in any better of a position to accurately read Mal.

So what's the theory reason that I'm wrong to prefer a policy lynch over someone who certainly has some scum tells, but responded mostly townie to pressure? (Other than the fact that lynching Mal won't give us much info since he didn't contribute much ... because I'm not sure anyone can suggest that it will be different going forward with a straight face. If we'll

never

get anything useful from lynching him, other than his flip, why is later better than now?)

[Drixx]

So now we are discussing the color of the claim?

@Singer
A bit late to be having second thoughts on something I already mentioned before Mallw actually claimed, don't you think?

If Mal made the claim thinking that color was important, and didn't click on the spoiler button, it could be meaningful. Any potential utility from the question is gone since the following posts after the question gave Mal a road map for how he should address it, if he bothers to drop in again.

Why did he claim in blue?

Drixx, is your role title written in blue?

Also, he did that because he's full of shit.

No it's not, for what it's worth. I am inclined to agree with your last sentence. How on earth could he read the posts since his last fly by and conclude that all he should do is put out a claim and a weak attack on Copper, and then go back to lurking? Unless someone can make a really convincing argument that there's some reason we can't afford to let EW have another day, even for those more sure than me that he's scum, I'm pretty determined to just send Mal off to the holidays at this point. I cannot imagine there's ever going to be anything worthwhile entering the game from him. Maybe he's busy like he says, or whatever ... but I recall reading in the basic stuff the site asks all new people to read that I'm responsible to be active in the games I play. Once I'm beyond the first few games, I can play as many as I like, but I'm obligated to take them seriously. Mal is in an SE slot, and as I understand it, signing up to SE is comitting to be active and help new players, yeah? I don't think Mal is really helping me learn much at all about how mafia is played here. (Unless you want to argue that he's teaching me that lurking is bad, but I would say that's a matter of established theory and beyond argument).

[Drixx]

Ouch. That's about as bad as it could go. I'm not used to seeing scum kills flips. Knowing is a bit of a gut punch but at least the scum can't fake claim with impunity. Is this common on this site outside of the newbie games?

I should like to see what EW has to say. If he just goes dark after I suggested taking another day to see if we could have a more firm read... I'm gonna feel pretty foolish.

OT: I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday (whichever is appropriate).

[Drixx]

@SS - Cabd was putting pressure on people and asserting that they needed to claim. In hindsight it makes sense that he was the cop, although that's a pretty aggressive way to play the role.

You seem to be convinced that Cabd threatened someone so much that it dictated they kill him. What makes you think that? Cabd put pressure on me, EW and Mal to claim. Two of us did and one of us was lynched. So you seem to be essentially be putting a subtle FoS on EW and/or me with that last line. I'm getting a bit worried that I argued for EW to get another day and he's vanished. I'm hoping it's just the holiday and that he shows up and participates soon. I'm well cognizant that one of the last things Cabd said was that I appeared to be protecting a scum partner when I argued that we could and should let EW have another day phase whereas I felt that Mal's lurking would never change and so he was the better day 1 lynch.

The question in my mind atm, SS, is why you came down on the line of thinking that Cabd was killed by one of the people he was threatening to. He may also have been killed to make EW and/or me look guilty. It's also possible that the scum team read him as a very likely cop. Personally, if I was guessing after day 1, I would have suspected you or Copper as a cop/tracker before Cabd; however, I don't want to discount that he could have been targeted simply because the scum thought he had a high likelihood of being a PR.

------------------

I know the IC is dead, but I have a question that would be directed that way. With the public flip of a Town Cop, that means that the setup has to be either Row 2 or Column B, right?

[Drixx]

Case 1:

both wagons yesterday were town, then if as is most likely in these cases scum separated themselves, we have 1 scum between {Copper, Drixx, HI, SS} and 1 between {++--, Copper, Jason}

- I know my alignment and made it pretty obvious so forget about Copper.

- Both Jason and ++-- are unlikely partners for SS given they both FoSed/voted her and called her scummy, so in this world she is not likely scum.

- I had both a town read on Choof and now on HI, so this leaves Drixx and one of {++--, Jason} as a team, but if Drixx is scum why did he WK EW?

Because most likely case 2: EW is scum, is the real world, this also implicates Drixx as his partner.

The NK points to a newbie team because they are the most likely to kill the IC just given he is an IC, in this case there is the added benefit that Cabd would have been scumreading both of them, moreover killing Cabd is less of a frame than killing myself so the theory Cabd was killed to frame Drixx and EW should be discounted or is at least very unlikely.

There exists a world were my reads this game are garbage and most likely SS or Jason saw something in Cabd's play that triggered the role kill, but I'm not going there without proof when up to now this game has made sense for me.

On the surface, this seems like a great post, but there are quite a few problems with it. Also, I would definitely suggest against patting yourself on the back so hard. As someone with a bum shoulder, I can tell you that you really don't want to go risking hurting yourself in that way.

Firstly, you started out with "both wagons", even though there were three. Cabd made a call for someone to put a 4th vote on me and L-1 me to force a claim, to which I responded with posts which folks discussed and then the wagon moved on to other people. Furthermore, you have contradicted yourself when you suggest that "both wagons" are town, since you later suggest a scum team of me and EW, and EW was one of the the wagons you are referencing. Finally, your basic premise fails because you are doing a sort based upon info that you can't possibly have (unless you are one of the scum?), and even then, your premise would fail because you conveniently put yourself on both of those wagons (was this intentional to set up this post today?).

Secondly, you did a huge LAMIST and told the game to dismiss "copper" (speaking of yourself in the third person ... interesting) from their thoughts on scum. So far, anyone following along and accepting your premises seems right on track towards EW and me, just as you intend.

You pull out ++-- and Jason, without explaining why, and suggest they are unlikely to be partners with SS (again, without explaining why SS) because they FoS'd her and called her scum (Which I did, as well, btw). While the entire thought process of this point seems indecipherable, you end by clearing SS in the most indecipherable part of all. In what world do scum partners never FoS each other and take opportunity to distance when it appears town to do so?

Fourthly, you tell us you had a town read on Choof (although he was behaving quite oddly) and on HI (despite your fight near the end of day 1 ... that couldn't have been staged could it?) and therefore the scum must be among the people you haven't conveniently declared town, although you single me out for the "I'm sure!" honors by phrasing it "Drixx and one of..." (though you didn't make any case against me in the post), but we see why EW got left out (and the entire reason for this poorly reasoned mess of assumptions that have no real basis) in what comes next. "but if Drixx is scum, why did he WK EW?"

My gosh, now that we've swallowed all these poorly (or not at all) reasoned premises from you, we can't help but swallow the fish whole. EW just must be scum, and Drixx must have been his partner saving him. Convenient that you suggest that I "White Knighted" EW when I said I'd hammer him and had a leaning scum read on him, but I thought Mal was a better lynch because he didn't seem to be lurking for any reason other than avoiding putting much there for us to read (while a couple other people lurked strategically yesterday; I didn't point them out because I thought it was a bad idea to point out potential PR targets to scum). That's not White Knighting. What HI did for EW was a WK.

You finish off this post of assumptions and poorly reasoned premises by suggesting the NK was simply indicative of newbie scum killing the IC because he's the IC. This might be the worst assertion/assumption in your entire post. You suggest that killing Cabd is less of a frame than killing you; however, that implies knowledge that no doctor could have saved you. Only the scum know which game setup is in play right now, and I think you just slipped. On the (generous) assumption that you didn't just slip, I feel obligated to point out that any scum team would have had to consider a doctor as possibly in play, and given how much you think of yourself (See: fight between you and HI at the end of day phase 1 for your own words), you should probably admit that you were very central in yesterday's play. In fact, you drove quite a lot of it. While you might have made a good frame for me or EW, I suspect most scum teams would have rated you a high chance to be doc saved, if a doctor was in play, so your argument about Cabd being a worse frame job doesn't really amount to much. Add to it that he flipped as Cop and I'm not even sure the kill was motivated by any desire to frame (or not). It looks to me like the scum in this game sniffed out a PR, plain and simple.

Finally, in the end, you allow that you might have misread the game, a little, but you then declare that you are so great at mafia that you won't go against your post without proof.


Despite this horribly motivated and sometimes impossible to follow mess, I still have a town read on you Copper, but if this is how you have racked up the win rate you were bragging about last day phase, I suspect you have a

whole lot

of good players to go thank for that win rate. The amount of assumptions without any evidence or merit in that post are staggering. So many of the assumptions you made are completely vital to the conclusions you draw that any one or two being wrong would completely skew the scenario you are painting. There's no way every (or even most) of the assumptions you made in that post are spot on.


I'll allow that EW looks awful at this point, and I'm dirtied by having argued we let him live, but I already owned up to that before your post. I would have a vote on EW but I didn't want to put him at L-1 right away and leave the door open for a quick hammer, in case my gut and read are wrong. I could probably make an okay case against EW. He didn't help himself out by pointing out that he probably isn't as newbie as he's pretending, but doing so by telling you that you have said that. He still won't own up to his experience level, and that sits a bit off. At this point, he has slipped and shown he can think beyond the newbie 1st level of play, so there's no point in obfuscating it or being cute about it.

@Copper - I know I just spent most of this post beating you up, but there's a reason for that. You played a whole lot better yesterday. This post I quoted and ripped up was really poor by the standards you set for yourself in day phase 1. You can't possibly depend on so many poorly reasoned assumptions to all be correct. You are dismissing some people as potential scum for reasons that scum frequently use to hide in, and you seem to have written the post specifically to arrive at a Me or EW either/or choice to present to the game for today. You might get lucky if one (or both) of us is scum, but it won't be because you reasoned your way there. That post is a classic example of deciding something and trying to make up a path to get there. I think you can do better. I was a little suspicious of you yesterday considering how hard you drove the game, and while there were no real slips I could find yesterday, I cannot imagine a scum playing day 1 so fantastically then starting day 2 with this bad a post. That, more than anything, cements you as town in my mind. A little part of me; however, wonders if you aren't really clever and good enough to play right in plain sight like this as scum.

I'm afraid nothing I say is going to lead to any real analysis of anyone other than EW as a serious lynch wagon today (or me for my defense of EW ... although why HI isn't in the same boat for that huge defense of EW I can't fathom). If that's the case, then we ought to get on with it. I will hammer EW if that's what's necessary. I said I'd do so yesterday and what little EW has said today hasn't exactly made me feel better about him.

[Drixx]

Given that I was dismantling a ridiculous post, I thought it had a perfect symmetry. I did warn you that I have earned the nickname "Wall of Text" elsewhere.

I think you would get a lot out of my analysis, but I'll humor you - Your post is full of assumptions about things you couldn't possibly know (unless you are scum, which I don't think you are), and bad assumptions and assertions concerning basically everyone in the game. You clear some people as town for the same reasons you suggest others are scum. The entire post appears to have been made this way. Step 1: Copper wants to give the game a Drixx or EW choice for today's lynch. Step 2: Copper makes a post with a bunch of assumptions that are poorly (or not at all) supported, in order to arrive at said choice. Step 3: Along the way, Copper contradicts himself and generally puts up a terrible effort (compared to day phase 1) to try and get the game headed the way he wants.

[Drixx]

@Drixx
Let's go one segment at a time

Firstly, you started out with "both wagons", even though there were three. Cabd made a call for someone to put a 4th vote on me and L-1 me to force a claim, to which I responded with posts which folks discussed and then the wagon moved on to other people. Furthermore, you have contradicted yourself when you suggest that "both wagons" are town, since you later suggest a scum team of me and EW, and EW was one of the the wagons you are referencing. Finally, your basic premise fails because you are doing a sort based upon info that you can't possibly have (unless you are one of the scum?), and even then, your premise would fail because you conveniently put yourself on both of those wagons (was this intentional to set up this post today?).

You don't understand (or pretend not to) how to do a vote count analysis, you have to pick the most indicative game situation and analyse the votes at that point in time, here the most indicative moment we have is the flip on Mallow, so obviously you have to consider his wagon and the alternative on EW, this is by far the most revealing point of the game as far as votes are concerned, taking into account previous wagons without flips where people were voting for third parties, voting for you or not not voting at all is only going to result in a big mess. If you really don't understand what VCA is about, see Mastin's guides: Mastin's Gudie to VCA

I have not contradicted myself, I have built a scenario with two cases, case 1: both wagons are on town, case 2: mallow was a town wagon and EW is a scum wagon.

I put myself in both wagons because I was on both wagons.

My basic premise is based on probabilities of how scum behave, if a buddy is going to get lynched in this setup you are very likely to try to support him tooth and nail, so in this case both scum are likely going to be on the Mallow wagon, if you have the luxury of choosing between two townies you are likely to split as a scumteam so you will leave as little associative tells as possible, in this case scum are likely to be on opposite wagons; i.e. one on the Mallow wagon and one on the EW wagon.

I appreciate that link. What I missed was the Case 1 / Case 2 thing, so your entire first part of your post completely didn't make sense. Take away my criticism of you assuming both wagons were town, but you are still relying on info you don't actually have: namely, where the scum voted. You can use probability and statistics all you want, but they only work on a meta-scale. Law of large numbers and all. You can't actually draw a firm conclusion on a case by case basis, unfortunately.

[Drixx]

I appreciate the walk through the thought process, by the way. I try not to apply statistical analysis or meta-analysis on a case by case basis, but the missing parts of what you were thinking are being filled in and it doesn't seem quite as completely made up and without any reasoning.

I disagree with some of your conclusions, but the ones I disagree with or question you are consistently saying are not certain and up for debate. This firms up my town read on you. Thank you.

I obviously disagree with the conclusion that I'm scum, but I understand it since I basically diverted the wagon off of EW yesterday. HI did so much more strongly, but you are basically evaluating HI on a different standard, right?

I would ask you to ISO me and read what I said about EW yesterday and today before your post. I still maintain that Mal was the right lynch yesterday, because he was lurking without any apparent strategic value. Cabd also lurked strategically yesterday, as did Jason and EW. Singer did to a lesser extent. Strategic lurking can be indicative of a scum player, a PR or just someone who's busy, but in whichever case you will see someone drop in and address some of what went on while they were absent (ignoring the rest) and then disappear again until they pop up again. I generally do a sort between players somewhat like (Very Active | Mostly Active | S. Lurk | Lurk | Inactive) where those correspond roughly to:

1.) Very Active - Generally you'll find the best players and very motivated VTs or scum in this tier. They interact with everything in the game.
2.) Mostly Active - Scum are most often found here, allowing them to avoid certain things without appearing to do so. Many town players also appear here. Interact with 50-75% of people and topics in the game.
3.) Strategic Lurking - Some players adopt this as their default play style so they don't give a tell when they get a role. Many players land here when they get a role, without meaning to. Generally interact with 25-40% of the players/topics. Will interact with some things whilest totally ignoring others in a very noticeable way, especially when doing a re-read after a couple of day phases.
4.) Lurking - A play style I hate to no end. These players avoid committing to the game in any meaningful way. When town, they make convenient win vehicles for scum in MYLO/LYLO and when scum, they all too frequently last into the end game without much challenge.
5.) Inactive - Complete inactivity. Generally mod-killed or replaced. I note them so I can read anything they put in the game if their slot is replaced.


I actually have a little notebook for forum mafia play and do a sort and update it throughout, along with notes. This helps a lot, especially when I get the most common role (VT) and the only way I can contribute is by evaluating people's play to try and figure out who is who. It helps just as much to have a really good town read on someone sometimes as it does to have some weak scum reads on several.

I'm sorry for the long post again. I think it will help if we play together in the future, or help those coming here to see my meta in the future

.

So all of that said, I still defend my actions yesterday, even if EW flips scum. Mal was firmly into the 4th category, and I've seen scum win because players in that category are left alive until the endgame way too many times. For me, we benefited from a Mal kill either way. If he was scum, then we were halfway home. If he flipped town, then we didn't have a convenient wagon for scum to exploit at the end game. Either way, if you get sorted into the Lurker category by me and don't pull yourself up out of it despite repeated prompting, I will always view your lynch as necessary and beneficial.

I hope that gives you a full context of how I played the end of the first day. I will have to read the VCA theory post and do my own analysis, but I could see a number of possible pairings with EW, and I could see some folks you dismissed as scum potentially being scum. My strongest scum read atm is EW at 75/25. His evasion of talking about his skill level openly seems like it has no point except he is scared that admitting it will make him look bad. If you can think of another motive, I'd appreciate seeing it ... but I've gone round and round and I can't think of many reasons to so stubbornly stick to the "I'm a newbie, if I did something good it was a pure accident" stance when the insights you pointed out by him were not the sort of insights you arrive at by mistake.

[Drixx]

@Drixx

You finish off this post of assumptions and poorly reasoned premises by suggesting the NK was simply indicative of newbie scum killing the IC because he's the IC. This might be the worst assertion/assumption in your entire post. You suggest that killing Cabd is less of a frame than killing you; however, that implies knowledge that no doctor could have saved you. Only the scum know which game setup is in play right now, and I think you just slipped. On the (generous) assumption that you didn't just slip, I feel obligated to point out that any scum team would have had to consider a doctor as possibly in play, and given how much you think of yourself (See: fight between you and HI at the end of day phase 1 for your own words), you should probably admit that you were very central in yesterday's play. In fact, you drove quite a lot of it. While you might have made a good frame for me or EW, I suspect most scum teams would have rated you a high chance to be doc saved, if a doctor was in play, so your argument about Cabd being a worse frame job doesn't really amount to much. Add to it that he flipped as Cop and I'm not even sure the kill was motivated by any desire to frame (or not). It looks to me like the scum in this game sniffed out a PR, plain and simple.

Finally, in the end, you allow that you might have misread the game, a little, but you then declare that you are so great at mafia that you won't go against your post without proof.

So I don't really think there is much worth replying to here, other than noting how your read on me keeps oscillating drammatically, it looks like you want to desperately call me scum but then decide it's better not to do so.

That horrible premise you just mentioned turned out to be 100% accurate in both newbie games I played, 1551 with HI and 1543, in both cases the IC was killed N1 and in both cases 2 newbie players made that kill, so forgive me if I think that's the most likely case.

As for scum considering doc saves, was that the reason you decided not to kill me? If anything I see you slipping here, honestly with all the possible setups before the cop kill I did not even think about it, but if you know there might be a doc because you have a role blocker, then I can see why you'd think about this.

I was trying to firm up my read on you, and the way you responded firmed it up. Please see 533, near the beginning.

Just because newbie teams killed the IC because he was the IC in two other games has no bearing on this game. To give it any weight is a logical fallacy. What happened in those games has no bearing on this game, unless the same people are involved (apart from you). Even then, it's a very poor player who settles his meta into a rut and doesn't change it up (unless it's a very precise rut from which he never budges, no matter what role he draws ... in which case it can be an asset ... but how many people can play precisely the same way no matter what?).

Finally, I dismiss your last sentence. When evaluating scum night kills, you have to try and think about what info they would or would not have had. Last night they would have either had the game narrowed down to 2 possibilities (if they have a roleblocker) or four possibilities (if they don't). Either way, they would have had to account for a possible doc save. That would have to impact their kill choice. If you are town and you're not trying to figure out what info only the scum know, then you're going to miss a lot of scum slips mate.

Please note my earlier post in the day asking about how the game setup matrix works. I was trying to figure out what the scum team knew last night and what they would have had to worry about. That's how I sorted their possible knowledge into two categories and realized they had to worry about a doc no matter what. (in fact, if I read the way the matrix works correctly, they had to worry about all possible town PRs no matter what).

I find it hard to believe that you wouldn't consider the scum POV when thinking through things, so your last sentence seems like a lie on your part in order to suggest that I scum slipped. Normally I would invoke Lynch all Liars, but I have an almost rock solid town read on you now.

[Drixx]

You're right HI. I believe that a PR flip tells the scum exactly the setup no matter what. I was referring to what they would have known last night when choosing whom to kill. I generally try to figure out what scum know and have to worry about so I might be able to see something in their kills. Further, it's really useful to keep track of what they know that I don't, in case someone happens to demonstrate knowing something that only scum knows. That's why I find Copper's statement that he hadn't given it any real thought a bit dubious. He plays well and has made no secret that he considers himself Grade A Premium when it comes to mafia players ... so I rate the chances that he doesn't think about this stuff as essentially nil.

As I said in 534 ... I would invoke LAL, but he has totally firmed up as a town read to me.

[Drixx]

@SS - Copper could have easily just dismissed my post and gotten an EW wagon out of today. Instead, he went through and explained his thought process, and was unflinchingly honest about the places where it was his read or his gut feeling. That gives me a huge town read on him. I think he pointed to my comments on scum knowledge to see how I would react to it. I don't think he needed to lie and say that he doesn't consider what scum knows and how that knowledge might impact their play in order to test me, but perhaps he felt that would make what he was saying seem more necessary to respond to?

I would normally look at someone who plays as well as he does (He has basically driven this game in a very town way) saying something like that as a slip and invoke Lynch all Liars; however, in this particular case, there's immediate data at hand that makes him as solid a town read as possible. I also have reason to believe he is unsure about me and wanted to see how I would respond. Those things keep me from jumping on that obvious lie. I'm also not sure LAL should be blindly applied in all cases anyway, since every role has a reason to lie for the good of their win condition at some point or another.

[Drixx]

Let me ask it as questions instead of just giving you my conclusion.

Given the fact that Copper considers himself a top notch (99th percentile we might say) mafia player, do you believe that he's never once considered what the scum team had to think about on night one of a newbie game?

I came to the answer pretty quickly. Either he has been scum in a newbie game, in which case he's completely familiar with the considerations a scum team would have to make, or he hasn't. If he hasn't, I submit the following: In any newbie game where the first day does not involve a mislynch of a town PR or a truthful town PR claim, all newbie game scum teams have to consider the things I pointed out before.

That puts the question to a very specific focus though, so just step back a bit for the wider view. Would a very good player actually fail to think through what the scum would know to try and figure out the motivation for their actions and also to figure out what info the scum team would have that the town wouldn't? For me, that's pretty basic level stuff. If you don't consider what the scum team had to think through, aren't you depriving yourself of a bunch of pieces of the puzzle? If you don't think about what scum should know that town should not, how will you ever catch scum revealing knowledge that only they can have?

If we polled the experienced players in this thread, I'm pretty sure we would find that we all do this in one way or another.

[Drixx]

That reference went over my head SS.

[Drixx]

I'll give you complete insight into how I think Copper. I try and think of every possibility. I read people's posts assuming they are town and assuming they are scum. I try and figure out the game as fully as possible. I'll give you an example for the thought process I used concerning scum, when I saw the PR flip. I was rather surprised not to see your name there, given how strongly you have basically steered the game, and how very townie you look doing it. You probably have contributed the most to this game, and I suspect a great deal of conversation and scumhunting (or such an stellar job of acting like scumhunting that you would live up to how good you say you are) would simply vanish from this game.

I asked myself why the scum would choose not to target you, as my first thought. In order to have any reasonable guesses about that, I needed to figure out what scum could know that we couldn't. The first thing was setup. I realized that if the scum had a roleblocker, then they would know the setup was one of only two setups, and if not then they would still be able to eliminate those two, and be ahead of us in terms of knowing the pieces on the board, if you'll allow the analogy. I also realized that even in the best (scum) case, they couldn't actually rule out any role from being in the game. I asked in the thread a question concerning how the newbie game matrix thing worked to ensure I understood correctly.

My guess going into the night was that you would be killed, or if not you then someone to frame either me or EW, as the day 1 wagons that weren't taken to full lock. If I had to bet something meaningful on it, I would guess the scum team wanted to kill you, but was concerned about some role interfering. Given how boldly town you have played, you would probably be my choice to save if I were a doctor, for example. You could also have drawn the 1-shot bulletproof, or even been the doctor yourself and self saved. Any one of those things, which taken together are a fairly large collective possibility, and the scum team would have had a no kill. Now, it's also possible that the scum team just read Cabd's play as PR and all of this thinking about why you didn't die (from both of us) is completely wasted.

You've also seen my walls of text. I try to think things through very thoroughly. The vast majority of the time ... that's the only power I'll ever have in mafia: my ability to read people and think logically about things and figure out the game in order to figure out the scum. If you play more games with me, I think you'll find me quite consistent in this particular aspect, although I vary my aggressiveness and verboseness from game to game just to avoid being easily pegged when I draw an actual ability role.


@HI - When you get a chance, can you explain that vote? Despite some imprecise explanations and unexplained leaps of logic, the only serious scum tell I've gotten from Copper is the use of "Honestly" in 530. At the moment, I feel like Copper has played very townie. That said, he made sure to tell us how good he is, so I'm open to this being a clinic on how to play scum. I just haven't seen the kind of slips I would expect to see from a scum posting so prolifically as he is. A different perspective (yours) would be helpful if you're willing to give it.

[Drixx]

Nope I still think the retard is town, mainly beacuse of that post where he calls me town for unvoting yesterday, to bad because I'd enjoy burying the shit oit of him. I am policy lynching him in every game I find him D1 from now.

Come on mate ... keep it civil. That first bit is uncalled for.

[Drixx]

@Drixx
You are doing a fair job of looking town I'll admit, 553 is pretty good and your analysis of the NK is deeper than mine, I don't know if that's because you had to think of this as scum or if it's playstile related (it does fit), who do you think is scum now and why?

EW is my top scum read atm. For the reasons I first questioned him "yesterday", and also because his contribution today reads like he's afraid to own up to being experienced with the game. He went out of his way to ensure that the idea he was experienced was tied to you. More than 2 real time days in, and his contribution is almost nil. I argued to let him live on the premise he would continue to be active and we could firm up our reads. Well ... so far all he's done is reinforce the things that made me think he was scummy. The more time that passes, the less I can rationally make a town case for his play.

Beyond that I need to do a thread re-read. A lot has happened since I read the thread, and generally putting everything in fresh context with updated priors is a good idea.

[Drixx]

Let's recap shall we Copper?

I made a case against SS yesterday. Nobody agreed with me. I don't see anything today from SS that will change that.
HI makes succinct posts which don't really give a whole lot to analyze.
Jason has been strategically lurky bordering on outright lurky.
++-- seems moderately active to me. I can't recall anything off the top of my head.
You have a few minor things which can mostly be explained away, apart from the "honestly" bit, and what I'm going to talk about after this list.
EW I also made a case against yesterday, and has only the one real thing to analyze from today.


You are comparing apples and oranges by the way. Me thinking about the night kill and trying to figure out as much as I could from it was just that: thinking. All it required was a general read on people and general recall who had FoS'd whom or who drove a wagon against whom, and some thought about the game setup and what might have motivated the kill we saw. Ultimately I think that the scum team just read Cabd as a PR; however, there are any number of other explanations that could be correct, including your supposition that he croaked simply because he was the IC.

Doing a thorough read on someone, especially in light of the kill and who might fit probable motives for it ... that's not something I can just think about in the abstract. I don't have an eidetic memory (if, in fact, such a thing exists), so I've got to re-read and look at interactions, look at what people avoided responding to vs. what they did respond to, etc...

You seem absolutely intent on making everything I say or do fit your conception of EW and me as a scum team, but you aren't being logically or rationally honest about it. You can't possibly believe that thinking about possible motives for the NK we saw is analogous to giving a proper evaluation of the game so far and scumhunting. In fact, I suggest that if I were scum you would see just the opposite from me. Rather than taking the time to go back and look at everything with updated priors and and updated perspective, don't you think a scum me (or a scum most anybody) would spend that time using my "considerable analytical power" to give a well reasoned scum read on someone?

And with each post that you make where you leave behind logic and rational thought in order to try and bend whatever I say to fit your theory, it's starting to look a lot like you're the one using your "considerable analytical power" to drive the game the way you want it to go. You tell me that my posts read as town, but then when I tell you I want to take time (we have like 10 more days available, after all) and re-read before I suggest possible partners and reasons to go with EW (whom we both seem to agree is pretty scummy), you turn around and try to make that seem like a bad thing.

Why did you unvote EW yesterday? If you were so sure he was scum, why did you see a need to ensure nobody could prematurely hammer him? The obvious answer is because we had time and rushing is not desirable. Why, then, is it scummy for me to want to take my time? The only reason I can think of is that you have tunnel vision. You are so focused in on your stated theory that EW and I are scum partners that you will twist anything into looking sinister to try and support it. Now ... that seems an awful lot like what scum generally does. They make a seemingly reasonable argument and do everything they can to push it. The more they can get a target to respond, the more chance they can find something to "support" the argument. After the target flips town, to most players it looks super reasonable and the scum player can just explain away the "unfortunate misread".

I've been reading you town for a lot of reasons, but the "honestly" language is a strong scum tell, and your "do as I say not as I do" thing where you wanted to slow things down with the EW wagon (even though you claimed to be convinced he was scum, both then and now), but you turn around and say that me wanting to be thorough is even more scummy.

I'm pretty close to agreeing with HI at this point.

[Drixx]

I have found it very hard to talk myself into you being scum Copper, because it would take exceptionally bold scum to run the game the way you have, but I can't explain away your obsession with a theory you admit has several points of possible failure. I can't explain away how you can say I look townie in one post and then make a completely invalid analogy in another post to advance said theory. I know you are smart and can reason quite well, so simple mistakes like glaringly bad analogies shouldn't come from you. As much as I wouldn't have believed that this would happen today, perhaps the reason scum didn't kill you last night is because you are on the team.

Vote: Copper223

[Drixx]

What bizzaro universe do you live in Copper? I've been questioning your posts all day. In what world does me pointing out your over the top bragging, your poor reasoning, your slips, and calling you out for a rather nasty personal attack on another player (who, from what I can see, only committed the sin of disagreeing with you). Now that I'm being critical of your obsessive tunnel vision and horrible logic, shall I be the next one you toss a slur at?

I made a case against you, and your response was to ignore the case and OMGUS me (sans the vote), whilest also implying that I somehow spent any part of today trying to curry your favor. FYI: you did really well when I questioned your logic the first time. I even got a town read from your responses, and said so. Apparently in the world you live in, calling a townie looking post a townie looking post constitutes "trying really hard to buddy buddy" someone. Seriously? That's how you come back at me after I eviscerate your terrible analogy and point out your hypocrisy?

Heck, your insistence on EW and me even makes sense with you as scum. If you get the town to kill me today and I flip town, then you have your teammate left to bus. If you get the town to go after your scum pal EW (with you safely on the wagon early), you push your theory about me and him being partners tomorrow, fresh off having been "right" about EW and get yourself into LYLO where you can point out your "success".

[Drixx]

2nd sentence of 567 should end with "... constitute "trying really hard to buddy buddy you" following the parenthetical observation.

Also, it's late (or early, whichever). I'm off to bed.

[Drixx]

@Drixx
1. Your only scumread before your about face on me was EW, the player I have been wanting to lynch for most of the game.

2. You just finished telling HI how you now had a solid town read on me a few posts before the vote.

3. After what clearly is a buddying attempt that did not pay off you switched your read on me, saying my posts are now full of slips (once again in your previous posts I had made one possible slip in the use of the word honestly and the rest was pretty clear to you).

4. As I said before you decided to go ahead and vote, it looked like you were trying desperately to call me scum but decided it was better for you not to, HI voting for me must have given you the courage to go through with it. I think Singer picked up on this and that's what she was referring to with the 11.02 analogy.

Unfortuantely for you there are people here willing to slog through all the walls you write and find the obvious inconsistencies in your posts.

And still you don't address the case I made against you. I never called your opening "theory" post townie. I said the fact that you responded to it and the way you did so was townie. In those responses you admitted there were loads of places where the theory could go off the rails. But your continued pushing of that theory, to the point of using awful analogies and hypocritical statements and basically grasping at anything I said and trying to make it look scummy didn't line up with someone who realized his theory was vulnerable, at best.

BTW, read my 2nd post in the game. I pointed out my early scum reads on 3 different people; none of whom were EW. I wasn't super suspicious of EW (See: me staying off his wagon and giving no intent to hammer) until you pointed out some inconsistency in how he was playing and the skill level he was passing himself off as. I didn't grow really sure until he basically dropped off the face of the earth today.

One of the most important tells in mafia is consistency. You said one thing when I went after you hard early in the day phase, and I gave you town credit for doing so because of reasons that are pretty easy to find in my ISO if case you missed or forgot them. But then you didn't act as if you believed what you said in those posts. You behaved as if you were operating under an entirely different reality. Thus, your actions don't line up with the posts that made you look townie.

As for your 4th point: smoke, mirrors and a lie all in one. You saw me putting your reasoning and actions under a microscope and commented that it looked like I wanted to vote you, so that if you slipped and I made a case, you could say that. It's a move lots of players make. You've been acting like you wanted to vote me all day long (see what I did there? Now I can say I predicted your vote later on if I want to emulate your playstyle). As for SS, she merely asked HI if HI had the same feeling. HI is the one who made reference to what google shows is a children's song that people frequently ask a question about (if Yahoo answers are any indication). Given your ugly to watch contempt for HI, it seems unreasonable that you actually mixed them up. You have basically fawned over SS this game and been over the top nasty to HI. No way on earth you mix them up.

You did a stellar job of playing townie. You basically ran this game. You only tripped up when you let your planned win path get in the way of keeping your play consistent with your say. This seals it. Vote stays where it is.

[Drixx]

I'm going to wait for the rest of the tribe to speak before I re-enter discussion.

I'm looking at you Jason, Epic, and plusplus.

+1 from me. I've done all I can to point out how Copper's play is scummy and motivated by a pre-determined goal instead of the goal of finding scum. That's the biggest scum tell there is. At this point it's really down to what the less active folks make of all this mess. No sense adding more for them to read.

[Drixx]

@++-- - Mal fell into my 4th category: Lurking without any contribution or strategic value. As I noted in the post you quoted from, I push people in that category to get active and if they don't, I consider them policy lynches. I've seen way too many games where they made it into LYLO and were either an easy lynch for the scum win or they ended up being scum and were able to pull a win out (much more often the lurker is left alive by scum for the easy late wagon, but I have occasionally seen scum win by hard lurking).

Anything else I might say, I've already said, except this: The verb construction at the start of post 565 is in the Perfect tense (I teach Greek grammar and English) which speaks of an action that completed in the past but has consequences ongoing into the present (and possibly beyond). It is very correct to say that I have found it hard throughout this day phase to convince myself that Copper was scum, for the reasons I gave already. I won't muddy up the waters with any further long posts.

[Drixx]

@++-- - I've seen scum hardcore white knight a partner before. It's a super gutsy strategy, but it can work if it isn't used too frequently within a group of players. I'm not saying I think EW + HI is the scum team; however, I wouldn't completely dismiss it from evaluation based upon that super hardcore defense.

[Drixx]

@SS - ++-- asked the question. He says he reads EW and HI as scum, but the defense HI put up for EW makes him think his reads are bad. What exactly is wrong with me pointing out that scum do actually make really ballsy plays? I'm not familiar with the site meta, but I suspect newbie games probably contain more bold scum play by experienced players than the more advanced games, simply because there is a bunch of churn amongst the player pool.

To you and I it seems obvious, but look at ++--'s post there. He's expressing some serious doubt about his entire thought process and how he's reasoning because of a single event.

I think that the quickest way for town to lose is to make assumptions that shouldn't be made. Do you agree? If so, what was wrong with me answering ++--'s question? He solicited responses, and it seems like the primary thing bothering him is confusion over HI's play yesterday to halt the EW wagon. I'm asking you because as a mod I suspect you have a very good handle on the site's particular quirks. I could use some help learning it, so I can get up to speed better.

[Drixx]

Eh, fair enough. I didn't read his whole post, just your response, which reminded me of the whole "overlooking the potential doctor" mishap.

I believe you have a very cogent point. I probably overthink things in trying to figure out the possibilities, and I don't have any real basis to help me sort likely from unlikely on this site and with these players. It's both quite exciting and refreshing; however, also a bit intimidating and frustrating. I've played forum mafia with essentially a rather static playgroup over the last few years. I'm super glad one of them sent me this way, but I expect it will take some games to get a handle on things.

[Drixx]

If I had actually flipped reads on you "like crazy", it might ping someone, Copper.

Here's the problem, though. Something isn't so just because you wish it were. I made a case against you, which you have failed to even acknowledge.

• A town Copper wouldn't be afraid to look at the case and acknowledge that he'd fallen into a rut and his play wasn't lining up with his earlier say.
  
• A town Copper would not tunnel in on only one possibility after admitting the logic process to get to that possibility has multiple points where it could fail and completely unravel.
  
• A town Copper would go look at my 2nd post and admit that he was wrong about me only having a scum read on EW and it being somehow an indication that he and I are both scum.
  
• A town Copper would update his priors and admit that it's hogwash (and hypocritical) to call someone scum for asking for the proper time to do a thread re-read with updated priors to re-evaluate and give reads on everyone in the game, instead of doing so from memory; especially since the very same Copper unvoted the EW wagon yesterday with the argument that taking the proper time to analyze things and give EW a chance to respond was the way to go.

As you are no doubt aware, a vote is frequently used to see how someone responds. I laid out a case that you could easily dismiss by apologizing for calling me scum for wanting to take the time to do things right when you yourself did the very same thing (in principle) yesterday, along with an acknowledgement that you have been completely focused on your theory to the exclusion of any other possibilities at all. I'm sure you will suggest that we agree to disagree, but I submit that there's nothing crazy about voting for someone when you make a case against him which is clearly solid and which he refuses to address.


@Jason, @EW - We going to hear from you two today?

[Drixx]

@Epic Warrior - If you really are new and looking for experience, then this is probably the best place to be. That said, you might want to review the insights you made that Copper pointed out. Try and recall how you were approaching thinking about the game when you made them. Self evaluate your play and figure out what works for you. I've talked a little bit about my own process in the game thread, but I'm a very analytical type-A kind of person, so what I do may not work for you.

[Drixx]

@Epic Warrior - Your effort is underwhelming. You appear to have sheeped on my case, but you didn't really seem to get why I was scum reading Copper. Now, I went so far as to point it out point by point, and Copper is still being super arrogant and hasn't actually humbled himself enough to own up to what he was doing, but what he

has

done is start to re-evaluate the game in a way that doesn't tunnel in on just one theory. ++-- made a cogent point that it could just be creative bullshitting; however, Copper has put up a LOT of posts this game, and it's nearly impossible to do so without someone being able to put together a scum case against you.

And yet, I didn't have a strong scumread on him until what he was doing (hammering away at a theory he admitted was vulnerable at multiple assumption points) didn't match up to what he said. That has now changed. The question is whether it changed because I made a list of what a town player would do in the situation, or if he is the strong town player I read him as for most of the game and something someone said snapped him back awake and out of the rut.

The main question, I think, is whether his turning on HI is genuine or a desperation move. He kept rating HI as town over and over, despite the nastiness between them, and his read didn't change because of new info. So ... is copper a townie who got caught tunnel visioning, snapped out of it and went and did a re-read to update his reads, or is it just desperation? This is one of those questions that's really hard to answer without knowing someone's meta.

[Drixx]

@Out of game
I'm out, happy 2015 to all of you.

And to you mate. May it be better than the last.

[Drixx]

@Copper - I've pointed out scum tells on 5 people current alive in this game, and you're saying I haven't done any scumhunting? The only person I haven't made a case against is ++--, and that's because I haven't found anything that isn't reasoned well, that reads non townie or that is contradictory in his posts; nor have I seen him demonstrate knowledge he shouldn't have. He hasn't been super active, nor has he gotten deeply involved in the main discussion, so he's a 50/50 null read atm. Every other player in the game, I've evaluated and pointed out things that don't quite sit right. How much more scumhunting do you want? Shall I go scumhunt another newbie game or something?

For the record, I didn't sheep your read on EW, which is easy to see since I pointed out things he said and did today that added to the scum case you started. Sheeping is saying "I agree with X's case" and voting. Sheeping doesn't involve furthering the case, and generally I despise sheeping because it's an attempt by a player to place a vote but avoid any responsibility for the vote.

I do appreciate you laying out your thoughts on HI. I didn't view HI's post to be testing the waters, but it makes sense in the context of the vote on you without reason, and it definitely makes sense in light of jumping off the wagon; however, if HI is scum, why aren't you locked?

Finally, I reject your assertion that I spent Day 1 shielding EW. HI made a much more impressive display of re-directing the wagon. I merely gave my opinion that we could probably count on getting more posts from EW and those posts would either confirm the read or back up HI's assertion that EW was town. For me, I don't think anything EW has said today moves the meter towards town. That said, I firmly stick to the premise that Mal was never going to get active, and given that he flipped VT, he would have been a really easy lynch wagon for scum in LYLO if we had just let him lurk his way through the game.

The fact that you keep overselling my play yesterday as way more than it was is confusing. Can you realistically argue that Mal was ever going to be an asset to the game? Can you argue that he wasn't an easy lynch wagon if he made it to LYLO? He needed to be lynched out for the good of the town. Period. EW did indeed make some scummy posts and you may well be exactly spot on with your analysis of him. In fact, at the start of this day phase, you may recall me suggesting that we weren't likely to get a consensus on anyone but him today.

I'm on the fence atm really. ++-- had a very good observation that both you and I are very active and both aggressive. If you are town, his speculation that we're giving the scum team a smokescreen could be spot on.


@Singer - I'll quote you and answer your questions in a moment.

[Drixx]

HI, I really appreciate it, but odds are I'll get hammered anyway, and then no matter if I'm town or scum they'll think you're scum too. As evidenced by that exchange higher on this page.

This sounds like EW telling HI not to help him because he is going down, especially the: no matter what I flip makes no sense, why would you say that as town?

This is weird. It actually looks like more of a scum-EW confirming a town-HI by trying to "protect" him from making any negative associations with him and gaining his trust.

@Drixx...what do you think of this statement?

Epic Warrior

, not sure if you know this or not, but you shouldn't claim even at L-1 unless someone claims intent to hammer. And since all four players off your lynch have expressed no desire to hammer you, my advise is that you shouldn't claim at all.

What you SHOULD do, however, is scum hunt more so I don't feel stupid for reading you newb-town.

Thanks.

Scum coaching scum?

This is a standard theory comment and probably shouldn't be mistaken for coaching? It feels like your confbiasing HI here.

@Drixx...what do you make of this?

That first quote could go either way. A really newbie scum might tell his partner, in the thread, not to defend him ... but that would have to be one bold or clueness newbie. I don't think that's very likely. I think EW was legitimately telling HI not to tie herself to him. That post can't really tell us much. A town EW could say that and a scum EW could say that. The problem with viewing that as an attempt by EW to curry favor from HI is that EW didn't need any favor from HI. HI had just spent like two pages defending him. That motive for that post just doesn't make any sense.

As for the second thought, I think you're spot on. I think you claim when someone puts you in a position of claim or else. For example, Cabd pushed to put me at L-1 and force me to claim, which resulted in first a soft and then a hard claim from me. EW had not, to my memory, been asked to claim. HI's comment seems like a bit of advice that belongs in a newbie game. I've made a few posts as advice in the game myself, so it didn't really strike me as anything more than that. It

could

be coaching, but

this

isn't the post you have to convince yourself is a scum play if you want to posit an HI and EW scum team. You have to convince yourself that HI would go to the enormous lengths she did following 357 to stop the wagon on EW to buy an HI and EW scum team.

In short: If HI is scum with EW, then the first one looks like EW making a pretty newbie play, although it seems both you and I would lean towards thinking no scum would make that obvious of a post telling his partner to lay off defending him. Without being able to talk to each other until the night, it is possible though. I don't think we can fully rule it out.

I think your analysis is fairly good. I judge it unlikely for both HI and EW to be scum. It would take a gigantic amount of balls to play that brazenly as a team. It's possible, and if they are a team, they both made some very bold plays in the open. I think it's more likely that one or the other is scum. You suggest that Copper is suffering from confirmation bias, which suggests you view him as conftown. Apart from the possible confirmation bias, what do you think about his read on HI?

[Drixx]

@Drixx
I asked you today who scum is and you told me you needed a re-read, that is worrisome. Pointing out scummy or off posts doesn't mean much if you don't follow through by voting for those people.

Who knows what Mallow would have done, for sure I'd be happier with an EW lynch because that would have yielded a wealth more of information even if it turned out that this game I'm high on bath salts and my scumreads are crap, and despite a scummy player being at L-1 the rest of you (you are right HI was the driving force) refused to hammer, organised a counterwagon for EW (who joined stating he didn't find Mallow too scummy btw if you forgot) and forced that lynch through, this would not have worked without the cooperation of Singer and Drixx, and of the two of you Singer looked like the more open to a hammer on EW. Not only is this very unusual, all of you minus HI are flipping your read around on EW now which leaves me scratching my head about the resistance yesterday.

What you added about EW is that he continued lurking, that's self evident.

I'd like to add that his gameplan is surviving at all costs, just look at that L-1 on me and the bogus reasons he came up with for it, so if he turns out to be town after all that's the most mafia sided approach I've seen since a guy self hammered himself as cop.

@Singer
I understand you'd like those information from Drixx, but I want to know what you think, if you want to hear Drixx replying first fine by me.

You may have noticed that I'm slow to vote, Copper. I try to be careful and thorough and have sufficient cause to put vote pressure on somebody. Since I FoS'd Jason, he's mostly been semi-active. I don't have enough to put together a case against him, and when I pointed out what looked off yesterday, it was countered and I was fairly well convinced that EW was more scummy between the two. With Singer, her play reads very townie since I made the case during day 1, and absolutely nobody seemed to agree with me on that case. I already talked about ++--. I think I've weighed in on everyone in the game, so I'm not sure what you're talking about when you suggest I haven't and am not evaluating people.

We spent much of the roughly 5 days I was in the game during day 1 trying to get Mal to join in and he didn't. That seems like a decent predictor of probable future behavior. I can't speak for why other people preferred the Mal lynch, and I've already explained my distaste for hard core lurking and pointed out how harmful it is to town.

I actually pointed out that EW took great pains (including very awkward phrasing) to make sure he wasn't claiming to be experienced but instead he was saying that you said he was more experienced than he let on. It was really awkward and forced looking. I did point out that the longer he lurked, the worse I felt about arguing to let him live on the premise we would get more to read.

But then he started posting, and my premise turned out to be sound. I will agree with you that the posts he made were weak and don't make him look good. I'm not completely sure I understand how you arrived at the conclusion that his gameplan is "survive at all costs". I would expect him to actually put some effort into making a case on an alternate wagon if that was his gameplan. Instead, he appears to be mailing it in.

[Drixx]

@Drixx
How is her analysis fairly good if you believe Scum_EW currying favour from Town_HI is off the table?

I understand the second point you are making more, I'm focusing on the part where HI tells EW that he SHOULD scumhunt more so that he can feel happy about giving him a newb_town read.

Probably because I think Singer's observations were fairly good. It's quite common for scum to try and curry favor with town, and that post by EW is the sort of post they often use to do so. She might even be spot on in this case. I'm just not sure EW needed to get any further favor from HI at that point, given the preceding couple pages. That doesn't invalidate Singer's analysis. Just because it's obvious to me that EW had HI's favor, and then some ... doesn't mean EW wouldn't try to curry more favor.

The entire post 357 is good advice for a new player (apart from the part where HI suggests that EW is making her look bad by not scum hunting).

You have some good points on those interactions, but so does Singer. Which observations are correct depend on how you read the people involved. Singer seems to view you as conftown at the moment, and also seems to view HI as at least probtown. You view EW as confscum and HI as probscum. I think that explains the differences in views on the posts.

[Drixx]

I'd really like to answer that question, but I think you already know the answer and are testing ++--, so I'll keep my mouth shut for the moment.

[Drixx]

@EW - Survival at all costs is only the motivation of the scum (And certain neutral roles, which don't apply to newbie games). Town aligned players should not put their own survival ahead of their win condition. Townies who die still win when the town wins.

[Drixx]

Drixx -- what kind of motivation do you see in 656?

It seems to me that EW checked back into the game to see a different wagon in place, and he went and found something he could point out. It is true that Copper has been on every wagon, except his own. I'm not sure that observation means a whole lot. Motivation? I think EW gave his motivation in the post. He views survival at all costs as a good thing. That's common in new players so I can't ding him more for it than I already have.

[Drixx]

@Copper - I find it really interesting that there are a lot of people who are either getting a pass from me or from you who wouldn't hammer EW yesterday, and won't vote him today and wouldn't hammer you today. Way too many to all be scum, but it seems like something should be able to be discerned from it. I think probably more from the people unwilling to vote for EW either day. At this point, since a whole bloc of the game seems to think there aren't actually any scum in the game, the amount of info derived from an EW lynch seems worth the risk that he might flip town, if nothing else.

I'm not entirely convinced that you didn't slip hard earlier this day phase; however, you did a remarkable job of recovering back to the way you played before that. It's fairly uncanny the night and day difference in that small stretch of play that pinged hard on the scum meter. That said, Jason and Singer appear to be lurking and waiting for a wagon they can safely vote on, ++-- won't vote you, and HI reads me laying off the game a bit as scummy, apparently, so even if my read on that earlier play was correct, I don't expect anything will happen about it today.

Unvote

I do agree that EW is basically saying whatever he thinks is the appropriate response to things people are saying to him. In his most recent post he gave up actually investing the time to quote people and just threw a blob up.

Vote: Epic Warrior

@Copper - All my scumreads are in the thread already. I'll post a brief from memory update with today's changes.

Jason - Early interaction with EW looked scummy to me. Appeared to be lurking with a purpose during day 1. Appears to be more a cat. 4 player today. Trying not to judge his lurkiness too harshly because of holidays. Considering whether early interaction was possibly a scum team spat staged. Seems like a high level play to try for before the first night and scumchat availability, so it's probably just me trying to make sense of his play and not thinking of much that matches it.

Singer - Read the early WIFOM and follow up explanation post as extremely LAMIST and scummy. Made a case on it which nobody agreed with. A really cryptic post early in this day phase that was never elaborated upon. Seems super lurky today. Claims has been playing from phone without being prompted about it. Perhaps took advantage of Jason's inactivity to pre-explain hers?

HI - I wish HI would post more detail about her thoughts. The very short posts don't give a lot to read. Vote seems to be going opportunistically from place to place. Rising up to a 60/40 scum read with the flip/flopping between Copper and me.

Copper - Has controlled the game. Very arrogant and self assured. As Red would say in "The Shawshank Redemption", thinks his shit don't smell. Had a theory at start of day 2 relying on many unprovable variables. Stated that he wouldn't waver from said theory without "proof", which is impossible to obtain short of a lynch. Tunneled so hard that he was saying one thing but doing another. Took awhile to snap back to his default town oriented style. Never actually addressed case against him and only went back to what seems his norm after a bullet point list pointing out how he wasn't acting town was posted. 85% of his posts scream town. That small stretch screams scum. 50/50 at this point, depending heavily on seeing how his reads pan out.

EW - Read as scummy in day one. Survived only because nobody who didn't get on the wagon early seemed to want to take the responsibility to hammer him, and Mal lurked so hard he made himself a policy lynch. Has only reinforced the day 1 read on him today. Recently seems to be kind of giving up. 80/20 scum read on him. Highest potential Partners: Jason, HI (from the day 1 interactions), Copper (obvious reasons yes?).

++-- - Staying just barely in category 2. Making a lot of good observations, but none of them are exactly revelatory. Doesn't seem to be making any scum cases. Seems to be letting others take the lead. Reads as an experienced player feeling out the meta of the site. Could be a really clever scum, but has zero posts in his ISO that ping off at all. Null to town read.

[Drixx]

Think about why keeping you at L-1 makes sense. I'd rather not spell it out for team scum, and you strike me as smart enough to work out what I was doing.

I summarized the categories earlier; however, I'm still adjusting for the longer day phases here. I'm used to 95% 48 hour days with a 72-hour day game once in awhile. In general, my category system:

Category 1 - Very active. Posting several times daily and interacting with all players and events in the game.
Category 2 - Active. Posting around half as much as Cat. 1 on average. Interacts with most players and most events in the game, including all major discussions.
Category 3 - Strategic Lurky. Lurking and popping in to address certain topics, ignoring others. Usually seems obvious players in this cat. are up to speed on the game but being strategic about what to spend time on.
Category 4 - Lurking. Bare minimum effort. Refuses to increase activity when prompted. Simply trying to skate by on the bare minimum.
Category 5 - Inactive. Up for replacement/mod-kill. Note anything they say for a read on the slot if a replacement arrives.


And yes, TSR is the best movie ever made, imo. I am still sort of amazed by how poorly it did in the box office in '94, especially with Morgan Freeman coming off an Oscar win and another nomination. Forrest Gump simply doesn't hold up 20 years later. I'm pretty sure if the Academy had a do-over, TSR would have taken home a LOT of naked golden men.

[Drixx]

Three things about this quote. Number 1: I replied to that one from my phone, so I didn't quote everything. Second: Is that your reason for voting? Third: That puts me at L-1. Why didn't you mention that?

We're supposed to know you're phone posting how? You started that post "Ok, to reply to all your comments at once", which looks like a lack of motivation to go through and multi-quote. It also made it fairly unclear in part of the message what you were talking about.

Secondly, I'm generally pretty confident when I scumhunt someone and put up a case against them which they cannot refute. In the case of this game, I put up a case against Copper which he didn't address. I generally view refusing to directly refute a case against oneself as more scummy than townie. A townie can respond to the case without worrying that they will slip and reinforce the case. Scum have to be super careful when responding to a case made against them. Thus, Copper never actually responding to my case and only snapping out of his stretch of scummy posts following a bullet point list from me of what I'd expect a town copper to do makes me feel like I was onto something with the case. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to be the one to hammer him. Further information could perhaps find a scum partner in that group who didn't want to hammer his partner, or if my read is off and Copper simply doesn't respond to cases against him as a part of his meta (invalidating the reinforcement of my read that I see), there may be scum off that wagon who don't want to hammer a super active townie.

I say all that to explain why I voted you. At most there are 2 scum who were refusing to vote for Copper, which means that at least 2 and possibly 3 or 4 townies didn't feel the case was strong enough. There does seem to be a consensus on you; however, and your flip will shed a lot of light on the rest of the game. I'm fairly certain that flip is going to be scum, which will make Copper's assumptions look better. It will also make me and HI look fairly bad, along with the others who wouldn't hammer you on day one ... but mostly HI and me. I'm okay with that as it will buy us more time to find your partner. Voting for you is playing the odds to win. You flip scum and hopefully the night kill and a re-read will help spotlight your partner.

Finally, according to the vote count at 652, my vote puts you at 2 votes, which is not L-1. And you trying to subtly make me look super scummy with that comment pretty much seals it for me. That was not a newbie play. Almost any inexperienced player would be put on their heels by that question. Once again you show subtlety and a deeper understanding of the game than you claim.

[Drixx]

If you consider what you've been doing this day phase (which is A WEEK LONG ALREADY) playing, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate some things.

You are hard core lurking and prod dodging so much it looks like an intentional attempt to lurk your way to the end. If you are town, you have contributed a gigantic bucket of nothing to help your team, and if you are scum, your teammate probably want to figure out a way to bus you without anyone realizing he's Jerome or noticing when the wheels make a sound as they roll over you.

[Drixx]

Wow. Could we have gotten a more diametrically opposed replacement?

@Boonskiies - the only real problem I have with your "analysis" of me is the entire thing. According to you, I've posted tons of fluff, and otherwise only gone for low risk easy votes. Does anyone else feel that way? I've given actual analysis on every slot in the game, including building cases against two different people that everyone else was town reading. That's totally fluff and playing it safe?

I had an early scum read on Jason, and he went pretty quiet. The amount of pure bullshit that Boonskiies is throwing up sure seems like an attempt to totally obliterate whatever we were reading on his slot before he arrived. I know I had a lot to say when I got into the game, but at least I had the decency to actually give reasons and motivate my cases instead of just throwing out a shitload of bullshit FoS to try and appear to be actively scumhunting.

Re-evaluating Jason/EW interactions as a possible team.


@Singer - Asking Boonskiies what he's talking about seems roughly as useful as asking a cat not to chase a laser pointer light.

[Drixx]

And Singer's scum buddy to the rescue.

By all means keep posting things without any actual reasoning or logic. I directly contradicted the only actual things you said were scummy about me. One would think you might address them ... of course, in order to do that, you would actually have to be doing something more substantial than flinging handfulls of bullshit all over the place. I didn't think it was possible to get a downgrade from Jason's play in the slot. That will teach me to be optimistic.

I'm going to sleep now. Perhaps when I wake up, you'll actually have put together something coherent for me and/or SS to respond to. You might want to explain how both EW and Copper are alive right now when I'm fairly certain that SS and/or I could have hammered one or the other of them at various points today and, barring a doc save, put ourselves into LYLO without anyone having once viewed us as a potential team. Heck, we could have done so and kept an inactive and scummy looking Jason from swapping out and giving us the pleasure of your company, even. (And inactives make such easy targets for scum at LYLO. Please see my stance on Cat. 4 inactives and why they are horrible in mafia).

I don't actually expect you to put up anything worthwhile, but when I wake up and you still haven't, at least I can mock you openly for what might be the most transparent barrage of obfuscation and "Hey! Look over there!" acting ever.


@HI - You're telling me that you believe Boonskiies is so bad at mafia that his meta would dramatically and obviously shift if he drew a scum slot? Did he ever move beyond flinging bullshit all over everyone and actually make any properly reasoned and motivated reads and posts? Scary if the amount of sheer crap I just had to wade through is what we have to look forward to.

@all - NN. Pain pills knocked out the jaw pain (in the process of getting full dental implants as I have a condition secondary to an SCI that causes my body to take calcium from my bones, notably my teeth, and generate kidney stones with it ... and the process for getting dental implants is ridiculously painful throughout but should mean no more mouth pain ever again when it's finally done), so I need to catch my window of being able to fall asleep or else wait another 5 hours to try again.

[Drixx]

Stop acting like I'm mainly targeting you, Drixx. I could care less about you right now. I'm set on Singer, because my scum read on you is based off of her being scum. Although, your ignorance is rather scummy; at least I hope it is, and that you aren't actually

that

ignorant.

Last refresh before bed. I always re-read my posts to ensure nothing was left out (See my corrections here and there throughout since I replaced in).

If you "could care less" about me, all you're telling me is that you care about me to some extent. That's not a particularly useful metric. I suspect you meant "couldn't care less"?

As an FYI - I made a scum case against Singer yesterday. The things you are saying in general (manipulative, in particular) line up with the case I made. What you might want to work on if you are positing a team of Singer and me is what possible motivation I would have to put pressure on her yesterday when there were other wagons and other things to talk about. I could have gone through yesterday without making a case against SS, and saved myself the scrutiny it brought from the folks who read SS as conftown.

While you're thinking about things you need to explain if positing a team of SS and me, you should also explain why we didn't hammer Copper or EW. I'm pretty sure the opportunity was there for both, and before you showed up, I was the only one to have made a scum case against SS. I'm pretty sure just this much will cause you sufficient trouble in explaining.

I'm curious what I'm meant to be ignorant about, btw? You are talking about Singer as being super scummy and calling the only person to make a case against her in this game ignorant for not agreeing with you. Pro-tip: If you think someone is scum and only one other person in the entire game has put up a scum read on her ... that person probably isn't "ignorant" concerning whatever you are seeing. Pro-tip #2: If you want us to evaluate your "read", it might help if you made a case against her and used some logic, reasoning ... perhaps some deductive skill? Just a thought.

Just everything Drixx says...I skim through it, don't see anything really that relevant or alignment indicative.

I expect that a lot of people don't actually read your posts often, Drixx. That's unfortunate.

Perhaps you should do more than skim, then? I agree that it's unfortunate people don't read my posts all the time; however, if I posted less walls of text that might improve. Succinct is virtue.

Also funny how Drixx's scumspect of Singer just suddenly disappeared.

I made my case against Singer like 2 weeks ago, real time, and the entire game disagreed with me. Generally speaking, when you make an actual reasoned case that someone is scum, and the entire rest of the player group disagrees ... that's a good clue that you need to re-evaluate the case or look for more to add to the case. I haven't seen SS do anything else to add to the case. I'm not sure how nearly two weeks after I dropped my case qualifies as "suddenly". You should keep this up though. If you make enough shit up, I'm hopeful the playgroup will realize what I already did: that you're just making shit up in a crazy attempt to save yourself (and possible scumbuddy EW?).

What are your reads, Hostile? Am I crazy or something for thinking those two are scum?

Yes ... you do appear to be just a little bit crazy at the moment. Manic at the very least.

Night Night cupcake.

[Drixx]

you're hopeless to argue with for me. The fact you are attacking a slot you think town (except drixx thinks this slot is scum now, go figure) makes me feel so much more comfortable with my reads.

That must have been some skim job you did on the thread. It was only my first substantive post of the game where I read your slot as slightly scummy. Jason didn't give us much chance to do a lot of reading after that, and your approach leaves a great deal to be desired. Nice to see I read you spot on with my last couple posts before I got a little sleep.

[Drixx]

@Copper - Re-read what I said, since I was responding to the SS/me team theory. I'm fairly certain SS had a chance to hammer you and did not. The idea of a Drixx/SS team is basically demolished by the fact that you and EW are still alive and that Boonskiies is even in the game.

@++-- and Boonskiies - I'd rather be called defensive because I respond to what people say than be scummy for ignoring it. If you guys play more with me, you'll see that my meta is basically just active and evaluating. If Copper wasn't in this game basically driving it since long before I replaced in, I would likely be more trying to move things on rather than responding to (mostly) Copper.

@Boonskiies - Do you ever do anything other than just throw the proverbial pasta against the wall to see if it sticks?

[Drixx]

So let's see. We have scum reads being made on various people, with even some basic level cases ... and I'm being brought up as a possible partner to just about everyone in the game.

HI found a friend in boonskiies to do some more hardcore White Knighting for EW. Of course, it's always possible that one of these folks is so adamant about EW because they

know

his alignment already, and they're going hard for the looks good in hindsight angle for endgame. HI has seemed pretty opportunistic today. Basically anyone but EW and she's on board. Still waiting for Boonskiies to actually make a case more substantial than bullshit (and false) innuendo.

I've re-read EW's posts in the thread again, and I don't see how anyone could be frothing at the mouth convinced that he's town based upon his posting contribution. So logically:

1.) Said frothing at the mouth white knighter(s) is/are scum and therefore know and can declare that EW is town. HI flat out declared it in day 1, as if she knew it to be a fact. BOonskiies did basically the moment he replaced in.
2.) One of the WKers (HI seems more likely due to yesterday and today's opportunistic play) is scum partners with EW and is playing super bold right in front of us.

The hard core white knighting combined with the opportunism convince me to keep my vote where it is.

@Copper/++--/Singer - Can you think of any town reason why Boonskiies and HI would both posit a scum team of X + Drixx (me), but refuse to actually make a case against me, even when prodded to do so? Logic and reasoning I can accept and give a defense. Innuendo and bullshit flung all over the place without any support ... not so much. It's like trying to argue with a 2 year old here.

@Boonskiies - You were super hyper and tossing around hyperbole and accusations without any motivation last night. Have you settled in enough to make a case yet? Why are you so dead convinced that EW is town? Why are you so convinced Singer isn't? (I should be easy to persuade in Singer's case since I was the first one to make a case on her, like two weeks ago real time).

[Drixx]

Upon re-reading, it looks to me like Boon just flung as much dirt and dust up as he could to come in and White Knight EW. What was the motivation? Boon's last post of day 2 implies he reversed his read and thought EW had scum slipped when EW gave his final thoughts in twilight. EW's post seems a bit contradictory, in that he posits a team of HI and Boon, and suggests Boon flip flopped onto EW to be "proven right" before he was killed. I wish EW had been clear in that phrasing. The only way it holds up logically is if he means "lynched" instead of "killed", but he's not exactly around to ask. It doesn't; however, appear to be a scum slip, as Boon suggested in 842.

[Drixx]

it was an emotional vote, not me thinking it through.

You have to think about how to handle LYLO in terms of voting? That whole sequence is really scummy.

It has been more than 2 real time weeks since I made a case on Singer for what I viewed as an over the top LAMIST + WIFOM play. You seem pretty sure about singer ... can you make an actual case please? It's not enough to say "she's been manipulating you guys the entire game". That's not a case in LYLO.

[Drixx]

@SS - Nobody else in the game seemed to have a problem with the post you made. I concluded that I had most likely had a false alarm over some site meta, since nobody else really saw your elongated explanation as a scummy post. Where I have spent the last few years playing, that sort of post screams scum, which is why I reacted to it. When I re-evaluated the case, I took into account that you are in fact the Newbie Queue listmod and it's super likely that you would be involved in the discussion you referenced. I also considered the fact that you had zero to gain by making the post. You went out of your way to make sure new players wouldn't just conftown you. That

could

be a WIFOMy scum move, but the rest of your posts in the game haven't shown any pattern of you attempting to get town points for trivial reasons.

It also says a lot that Boonskiies came into the game hard core fingering you but can't seem to actually do anything other than throw an accusation your way without any quotes or case to back it up.

All of that said ... barring a possible doc save tonight, we're in LYLO and everyone needs to update their reads with updated priors.


Site meta question: Does the site meta generally properly differentiate between MYLO and LYLO and ensure that new players know the difference?

[Drixx]

I appreciate your re-read on me Boonskiies; however, I asked the site meta question because of your comment inf 850 where you voted and then said "Mylo."

Perhaps I am confused as regards the terms, but I believe today is LYLO; Lynch (correctly) or lose. Why did you suggest it was Mylo?

[Drixx]

Can we get some more effort here? Boonskiies ... I had a scum read on your slot before you replaced in (see my second post in the game), and the only reason that slight scum read wasn't stronger is because Jason was playing with fairly low activity. You've come in and done very little to push the slot read towards town. Despite repeated requests, you refuse to put your case against SS down in a post for the rest of us to evaluate and update our reads on Singer. If you won't put that effort in, I don't see why people are going to change their mind from when I made a case against SS during the first day phase.

It's LYLO and the less we post and try and extend the game by finding scum, the easier a time they're going to have just quietly waiting out the day and hoping the rushed end of day goes their way. I think we need to get some agreement and evaluation going ASAP.

ATM, my prime scum candidate is Boonskiies. I need to see some actual scumhunting, and soon. Right now I'm close to stating an intent to vote on him and seeing who agrees with my read on the slot, including both Jason and Boon.

[Drixx]

Copper's entire read on the game was EW and you as scum team HI, and he basically led us down that primrose path into LYLO. The only thing I think he was "better than us" at was taking it upon himself to keep the game actively running. If you want to beat yourself up because some random person thinks you're bad at mafia (the only complaint I have is you make such short posts and give so little to read, which is actually a valid and fairly good meta to adopt), you can do that; however, I don't see any reason for you to. Copper wasn't better than us ... he was just more persistent in pushing his views.

Heck, I read the EW and Jason interactions exactly opposite of him. Look at my second post in the game. But he was persuasive and he kept pushing his read on EW, and so now we're in LYLO and nobody wants to be super active. We could use your help. I think the most obvious change from Copper dying is that the game thread has just died. It would not surprise me to learn that this is exactly what team scum wanted. Aimless discussion without purpose will lead to a loss more surely than anything else.

So here's what I think. I think Boonskiies replaced into a scum slot that had pressure on it (but only really because of inactivity). He saw the pressure was just because of inactivity so he threw out a bunch of stuff and went hyperactive and the wagon went back to EW. That kept him alive in the short term, but now that it's time to play for real, he doesn't seem interested. He messed up in twilight of day 2, I think. He wanted to be sure to get in posts being

sure

that EW was scum before the flip, even though prior to that he was arguing a scum team of Singer and me (or possibly ++-- or HI, if you look at his VCA post). Why was he suddenly so sure? That post he quoted from EW looked like a very excellent post by a townie in the twilight before he's being lynched. EW gave his thoughts and did his job even though we were mislynching him. Why did Boonskiies feel the need to suddenly swap his opinion and get on the record as being sure of EW's guilt? At first read, that looks super townie, but I think it was intentionally put there to look townie.

Boonskiies then came into today completely opposite of how he ended yesterday. He's saying almost nothing, except to throw out a town read on me, and mis-identify the game state as MYLO. He said he used it wrongly, not that he made a mistake. He appeared to realize that this could be read as an admission that he purposefully used the wrong term and threw up that bizarre post 863 where he says he forgot there were 2 mafia (throwing out his assertion that Singer is scum because he refuses to do anything at all to persuade anyone that it is so) and that he forgot ++-- existed.

I think my initial read on Jason's slot was accurate. I think Boonskiies has had plenty of time to back up his early bluster, and he's banking on inactivity letting the day slip away so he can try to get someone he knows is town lynched and win the game for his team. I think where Boon slipped up was trying to wring too many townie points out of his spectacular entrance into the game yesterday. That series leading up to the hammer of EW and then that final post just read like someone who knew EW was gonna flip town and wanted to be able to appear shocked by it. If he had come into today and followed up on that by re-reading EW's final post and giving an update on things and kept up the activity, I might have bought his schtick. It just doesn't add up.

I am giving my

intent to vote

on Boonskiies. I would like some feedback on my thoughts concerning his slot (the early Jason and EW interactions, but mostly Boonskiies play and what I'm viewing as slips).

[Drixx]

Theory and meta analysis stuff

That vote count analysis is pretty convincing. The weakness to it, I think, is that a lot goes on in between vote swaps and a lot leads up to the final vote tally. Looking at the various vote counts, I see some contradictory indications. Assuming an informed scum team, that should be expected, I guess. The big assumptions that I can't bring myself to make are a.) Scum teams will reliably be on different wagons and b.) reading much of anything into single wagon days.

If you or I mark ourselves as conftown, Singer, then there are six possible pairings among the remaining people, leaving a 1/3 vs. 2/3 probability split with the pair being on the same wagon being the less likely; however, that's a limitation of probability and not something that can account for all of what goes on during the day. I would be happy to conclude a Boon/HI pairing and tip my cap to HI for having a very strong playstyle; however, doing so overlooks the more important part of the game, I think. Day 1 we ended up with two wagons specifically because there was some suggestion to form a 2nd possible wagon so as not to end up with a no-lynch, and Mallowgeno was super inactive and became the default "off-wagon". Without that suggestion, I think it's very probable that EW would have been lynched on day 1, and lots of votes that swapped around would have been in different places.

There is an intervening event that I think has to make any VCA more complicated. A couple of things have been nagging at me a bit since the first VCA of day 1 was done. What if both scum were already on EW early, before the call for an alternate wagon was ever in play? Jason went after EW early on and set the ball rolling on suspicion aimed at EW. Copper picked up on it, while I read that situation the other way around. Copper was far more convincing than me on that count though. When EW's early day 2 play played into a confirmation bias with Copper's case, it certainly swayed the heck out of me. Team scum obviously knew that Copper was town so what if scum were 2 of the first 3 on EW's wagon on day 1? When the suggestion to form a 2nd wagon went out, it was aimed at people not on EW's wagon, so they could sit there comfortably on the wagon early and be happy with either outcome.

It's also just as possible, I think, that the scum saw a wagon likely to end up with a mislynch and weren't in a hurry to be associated with it, and they were caught off wagon when the call to form a 2nd wagon went out.

And then there's the very large sample size that tells us the probability usually ends up being correct. I'm not sure maths is going to help us win this one, but VCA does seem to be a very good tool to analyze the most important data (votes), especially in cases when people aren't giving anything to suspect them by.

Application of theory and scumhunting. Case that needs to be evaluated by HI and ++-- please.

In this case I think Jason was scummy on day one, exploiting EW being new to the game to get the ball rolling against him. Jason later went fairly inactive (it was the holidays, to be fair), and then replaced out when his inability to be active was putting pressure on him. Boon came in and was a whirlwind of innuendo and accusation. A loud wind without substance, I think. He calls us all stupid for not realizing Singer was manipulating us, declares EW to be the most obvious new player townie ever and then ... in 809 he says there's a method to his madness and that he's a much better player than he lets on and then ... in 824 he totally flip flops and votes EW throwing out the LAMIST comment about being sure he'd be NKd, then in 825 he is pushing someone to hammer. There's the unvoting, then the re-voting and the complete 180 degree turnaround from his initial declaration that EW was the most obvious newbietown ever to a declaration of surety of scum.

I think that reading someone's play and looking for slips and inconsistencies is a more reliable method to analyze individual cases. In this case, the read on Boon (and his prior slot occupant) line up with the VCA probability that either he or ++-- is likely scum. I'd like to see what HI and ++-- think of the case.

[Drixx]

The problem I have with it is that you had declared intent to hammer. Boonskiies isn't a newbie to the site. Why did he need to make post 825?

[Drixx]

Regardless of whom that was aimed at, you are quite difficult to read HI. Your play and voting read town to me, but you haven't given a lot of text to evaluate, so I have no way to know whether you're a townie playing town or a scum using a clever playstyle to emulate town play nearly perfectly. The hard core white knighting of EW on day 1 probably would have gotten you killed if he flipped scum, but he didn't. That's really the only case against you ... you went to the wall to save a townie that you couldn't possibly have known was townie. The biggest reason I don't view that more scummy is because of the nastiness that went on between you and Copper. You were obviously majorly turned off by Copper's arrogance and as such, I suspect his scum read and case on EW were less likely to sway your read. If anyone in the game can claim to have legitimately read EW as town, it would be you.

My read list atm:

Boonskiies - Almost absolutely certain he's scum. Still dodging and throwing up wifom arguments instead of answering questions straightforward. Refuses to present any actual case against Singer, despite claiming to have been super eager to replace in because of how absurdly obvious Singer's manipulation was, according to him. Refuses to address his flip flop on EW.

++-- - Null. I re-read his ISO (again) and he is playing the most neutral game I think I've ever seen. He makes astute observations, gives reads, isn't just sheeping to blend in, asks pointed questions, but has stopped short of committing to building cases and pushing them.

Singer - My read is distorted on Singer because of the meta I'm accustomed to from playing elsewhere. If this game was there and she were a veteran there, I'd scum read her for what I pointed out day 1. That said, today's play has been spot on what I would expect of a wary townie in LYLO.

Hostile Intent - Leaning town, for the reasons I put in the opening paragraph of this post. The one questionable thing was the fairly hardcore WK on EW, even in day 2 when it seemed obvious that clarity where EW was concerned was vital. Reading through the ISO, my gut says town. One hell of a gutsy play if HI ends up scum.


@Hostile Intent - Are you still doing a re-read? I'm curious what you make of Boonskiies and whether you agree with my evaluation of the slot and Boonskiies' play. I know we have quite a few days left, and there's no need to rush into a decision; however, if you don't agree and you read Boonskiies town, knowing that now (and your reasons for it) will help us avoid wasting time, especially if you have a compelling case for why the Jason/Boonskiies slot is probably town. I get that you kind of checked out after the nastiness earlier, but you are my towniest read and I think we would benefit from a strong well reasoned post by you at this point.

Right now, I've re-read everyone who is alive's ISO and looked at the moderator ISO to see how the voting went each day. I don't see a case I would want to wager the game on except the one I made against Boonskiies. I believe Singer agrees, although I'm not sure tonight's kill will bring as much clarity as Singer suggested.

The math is pretty harsh for town at this point. It basically requires four people to agree that the 5th is scum for any townie to be reasonably certain it's the right move.

[Drixx]

@++-- - That first paragraph probably feels off because I wasn't really trying to address the game, but more address HI on a personal level. There was some downright nastiness earlier in the game, and HI took the brunt of it, and has commented that it dramatically impacted her desire to play in a negative way. I was trying to point out that an after the fact analysis of what they were fighting about seems to suggest that Copper was being arrogant and/or irrational, and that HI shouldn't feel bad about what Copper said. Perhaps I should have explicitly pointed out that I was saying something more personal than game focused there?

As for your reply to 870, I concur that replacing in should result in a spike of activity in pretty much all cases. His lower activity is really the least damaging point against him.

Does your reply to 870 imply that you think Singer is potentially right about a Boonskiies/HI pairing?

I appreciate the post, but you didn't really address the overall case on Boonskiies, or even read the slot.

[Drixx]

@++-- - The problem I had with reads beyond Boonskiies are pretty easy to see:

1.) Singer - I didn't even notice the PT vs. QT slip until Singer's rather elaborate explanation of it and why people should not read her as probtown/conftown because of it when normally that sort of slip would generally suggest someone is town. The whole opposing crosstalk in that post just screamed LAMIST to me, and it felt orchestrated. I presented this to the game at large and nobody else (including confirmed townies) felt that it was at all scummy. Further, I'm experienced with 48 hour days and super attuned to when it appears like someone is playing for townie points while trying to avoid being obvious about it. This makes a read on Singer really difficult for me.

2.) Hostile Intent - Short posts, frequently snarky, sometimes cryptic. Voting analysis makes HI look town, but I'm skeptical of that for the reasons I pointed out earlier. The one major scum indicator is the super WK of EW; however, there's a very rational explanation for that. I don't really know HI very well, but it's clear that HI (like myself) can be hurt by things said in these games. I empathize with that to a strong degree, and I also generally view the arguments of players who have come after me personally with much less openness than others. The one big scum tell in HI's game has a super obvious non scummy probable reason.

3.) ++-- (you) - You finally gave a big post and put yourself out there. The problem is that you are defending Boonskiies without actually logically deconstructing the case against him. Your first point about how scum partners would behave is completely subjective and WIFOM at best. Only the scum team know how they game planned for today. Trying to figure out what they are going to do today is a fool's errand. On your second point, you again are trying to predict what scum would or wouldn't do. Boonskiies himself says that he's a better player than most people read him as, and the best scum players I've ever seen toss in mistakes. Perfect play is suspect over the long term. We don't have a large sample size for him, but your argument that scum would be more careful is precisely the reason why intentional "mistakes" are in the scum toolbox frequently.

So, you ignored the largest knock against him (his refusal to explain to us the case against Singer). He came into the game balls to the wall defending EW, and spent considerable time painting Singer as super manipulative and opportunistic, kept promising a post with an actual thorough case ... and just never delivered.


So now the question: Why are you using subjective arguments and fallacious thinking to defend Boonskiies, whilest ignoring the biggest scummy thing about him? I couldn't figure who would be a proper partner to the slot until you made your first committed post of the game and did so to defend someone without any actual defense given. You also left a parting remark that you'll do a re-read in 3-4 days, with a neutral POV, while hedging that you'll likely have the same results. So you are defending Boonskiies with subjective and WIFOM arguments, ignoring the largest things that need explaining, attempting to stall the game, and predicting that your reads will be the same anyway.

I now posit a likely pairing of Boonskiies and ++--, although I am much more confident about Boonskiies. ++-- could simply have forgotten to address the Singer case that Boonskiies never made, despite saying he would multiple times, and his use of subjective reasoning isn't necessarily a full blown tell because this is the first time he's gone out of his way to put up such a lengthy post.

Overall a small FoS at ++-- for that.

[Drixx]

Your first paragraph is a straw man argument. I am skeptical of VCA as a primary means of deducing scum, because I think game flow has a really big impact and it's impossible to predict on an individual basis where scum will shake out. Over a large sample set, I'm sure it works, but on the individual scale, you need to account for how the game flowed. Analysis using probability and statistics is a much better tool for sorting and helping scum hunt: not a replacement for it. Putting a tool in its proper place is the proper thing to do.

Saying you will not significantly contribute for 3-4 days is effectively stalling the game. Nobody is going to put down a vote without consensus. I never said your counterarguments were a stall. I appreciate that you engaged because it gave me an opportunity to read you much better than your earlier posts.

The reason I think the votes make HI look townie are pretty obvious. The huge townie stretch in analyzing votes and posts from HI comes starting with post 360 and continuing through the end of day 1. Post 393 is a something I see that possibly links HI to Jason's slot (now Boonskiies). You'll notice that HI was making posts that make it very hard to read anything about her motives or logic, but which were furthering the game, up until Copper dropped a bucket of asshole all over her for no apparent reason. I will again admit that empathy might be blinding me here, especially in light of post 393 and the heavy duty sureness she had about EW being town. I tend to set a high bar between being suspicious of someone (FoS) and actually sliding them into probable/likely/almost certainly scum, and even I was pretty sure EW was scum. That's really the case against HI though: How on earth could she know that EW was town with that much surety? Unlike Boonskiies, she didn't flip at the end either: she just acknowledged the necessity of lynching him.

I will try and re-read HI's ISO (and the interacting posts) with a neutral POV and see if the suggested Boon/HI pairing makes sense.

I want to address one specific quote from your post, because it's fallacious: "If you're not trying to figure out scum by trying to look how scum might play, what the heck are you going to do, exactly? Look up in the sky and hope to see some signals or what?" -- The fallacy in that line of thinking is that we can posit an endless amount of reasons that scum might or might not do something. The goal is to apply a consistent logic to evaluating people's actions and their posts. You need to be able to evaluate both well because some players (Hello HI!) don't give you a lot of meat in their posts.

The thing I do personally (YMMV) is I read each post someone makes from two POVs. I 100% assume they are town and logically compare the post to that premise and check whether it is consistent with their play and other posts. This is why I ended up with a case against Copper in day 2. His posts stopped being consistent with each other and with his play (actions). I also 100% assume people are scum and look specifically for things that would support that premise. If I see something, I compare their other posts and actions. Only once you've caught something that doesn't logically fit should you start considering motive. If you start by speculating motive, you will end up either never sure of anything or frequently sure that townies are scum and that scum are townies.

There are three primary scum hunting tactics I'm familiar with:

Statistical (how do scum teams operate over the large sample set), which at this site seems most prominent with VCA, although I suspect if someone did a study of the entire data set of archived games, some pretty interesting things would pop out. The problem with statistics and probability is that they apply on the large scale, and a single game is never a representative enough data set for this to be any more useful than a basic sorting tool to help focus your available time to pay to the game into the most probable places where you might find scum. Relying solely on it is a really bad idea, but it is a valid tool and has its uses.

Behavioral, which simply evaluations someone based upon the actions they take in the game. When they vote, and how.

Logical, which attempts to evaluate whether a post/set of posts are logically consistent with town play and motivation or scum play and motivation.


I came into this game with the latter two as my primary vehicles for scum hunting. The link to the VCA theory crafting was useful, but there are problems with relying on it in any given game. Proper ethics suggest that we play each game as optimally as we can to win. I'm fairly certain that if you were to use probability as your primary tool that you would win more than you would lose, but that's ethically dubious at best. I think we have an obligation to the people we play with to put each game over the "metagame" that takes place over the span of many games.

Your post is actually really townie, although it includes a fallacy based argument to start out with and a really bad argument when you say that Boonskiies refusing to present the case, which he was so eager to convince us of when he replaced in, isn't a big deal because it's LYLO and we have lots else to go on (bad because he just replaced in, so we don't actually have that for him, and his predecessor was largely inactive after the first half of day one roughly). I was rather expecting a much different sort of response.

I still am almost certain that Boonskiies is scum and that he's the proper lynch today. I could make a decent case for anyone else being his partner, but that's generally true in most LYLO situations. At this point in the game, only a very bad mafia team will have left someone alive who nobody can argue looks scummy for something or other.

[Drixx]

Oh dear. Sorry for another wall of text. That's a bit stream of consciousness there.

[Drixx]

I'm sorry for the walls. There's some stream of consciousness in that last one as I was thinking through things and responding to ++-- giving some real analysis.

Boonskiies going radio silent in the face of my case pretty much has me at 99% sure I'm right. If you still agree Singer, then it's down to HI and ++--. The only rational approach to 5 player LYLO is that 4 have to agree on the 5th, ideally without letting anyone just sheep so that you can for sure have the partner's bus job to evaluate at 3 man LYLO (although at our level of activity that seems hopeless). Success today and hopefully the last scum's kill can be used to fill in the puzzle. This is doable but we need to be more proactive.

For my part, I'll try and be as succinct as possible, or split my posts topically or something.

[Drixx]

Actually that's how I just lost a 5 person lylo in my last game. It's a lot easier for scum to get only two town to agree to a mislynch than all three remaining town to agree on the correct scum team, so two town plus two scum would be four people agreeing on the same lynch. Scum will tell us anything they want us to hear including agreeing anyone but them are the scummiest. This is the worst kind of lylo because scum don't need to commit to a lynch, simply try to get to a no-lynch or mislynch. They just need to cross their fingers there's not a doc for the win.

I agree. I'm not sure how else to approach it though. I feel like there's no way to be sure. I don't see how having less people agreeing increases our odds though. If all four of us agree that Boonskiies is highly likely to be scum, then the only scenario where we lose today is if it's 2 town and 2 scum, and in that case we messed up. If you see some fault in what we're reading in Boonskiies, please point it out. I've gone over it a few times and reading his posts and looking at his voting behavior, it just doesn't read logically or behaviorally townie.

Oh, shit. Should we mass-claim?

I know I already did, but isn't it better chance-wise for the pr to come forward today?

Or does it make more sense to try to let them get to 3p (provided we lynch correctly today) lylo?

Since Cabd was a cop, then the only case where we have another PR is if the scum also have a roleblocker. Therefore a doctor who claims today ensures his death if we don't lynch said roleblocker. It would be much better for a doctor to keep his head down and try and save someone. After a successful save would then be the only useful time for a doctor to claim, as it would tell us who was targeted while leaving us with the extra saved townie to make it harder for scum to win in the resulting 1v3 MYLO situation.

[Drixx]

That's something I need to work on, by the way. Not doing it on purpose, haha. ^

Meta discussion aimed mostly at Boonskiies. Tangential to the game at hand

In my experience, any mafia player who makes it past the first few games (which are generally confusing, and frequently result in the new player feeling attacked when their mistakes are attacked) develops a meta. The faster you develop a consistent game, the better, because you then don't give it away when you get a PR or get assigned a scum role. The problem with pointing to your established meta of reading as scum is that it doesn't really speak to the case against you at all. You made a claim to being far better than you appear, which suggests you have intentionally cultivated this meta.

My sense of it is that if you are as good as you made claim to earlier, then your meta makes you a significant attribute to the town, where statistically you will play most of your games. The problem (for the rest of us) is that if you are very consistent in that meta, you can point to it when you are scum and use it as a way to basically invalidate any case against you.

There were a few things I was looking for in your responses that would have caused me to completely re-evaluate you. You have done none of them. I'm now 99% certain you are scum and if the other two townies are paying attention today, they saw what I saw and have figured out who your partner is. I understand why you are playing the way you are. Over the long run you are going to win a lot of games by being consistent. The best advice I can offer from years of playing with very good people is to develop a few different styles and do as much as you can to make it seem random which one you use. Heck ... use a randomizer and make it truly random.

The main point

There's still quite a lot of this day phase if you want to break your meta and give your reasons for the things that are making you look super bad. As a matter of ethics and simple courtesy, generally claims of RL busy times are not ever questioned, so your drop off in activity need not be explained further. What does need explaining is this:

1.) You came into the game hard core white knighting EW, then flipped against him. The most generous description of your flip would be that you sheeped. You have several posts near the end of the 2nd day phase that appear to be trying to score townie points, most especially right at the end.
2.) Your absolute refusal to put together an actual case against Singer. Go look at your earlier posts where you are basically calling the rest of us stupid for missing how she has manipulated the game. You had to be basing that on the game thread, so why do you refuse to do a multi-quote and show us what you were talking about?

Ok, I agree with your first paragraph. I didn't really have time to think stuff through so I basically wrote down whatever came to my mind, normally I don't do such fallacies. Your second paragraph, however, doesn't really make sense since obviously enough, not everyone has free time always, also, I never said I'll be completely inactive, I said I'll be *less* active (or at least that's what I intended to say). This "pretty obvious" still isn't really obvious to me, I'll reread it again and try to convince me that it is indeed pretty obvious. Also, trying to figure out how scum might play is basically the way you called "Logical", so it isn't logical (pun intended) for you to say that my approach was wrong. Again, it might have included fallacies (basically everything I posted D3 was written in a hurry), but you basically admitted that this approach is working, unless I really misunderstood your post. Also, I'm not really understanding how you reached to the conclusion of my post being really townie if basically you criticised everything about it, and my post before that, in fact, resulted in you somewhat FoSing me. And finally, just like singer, I'd like to disagree with the all 4 people need to agree approach. I'm not saying that if only 3 people agree, it's better, but it can make it lynchworthy, though.

The stalling that I referenced was that you said you would do a neutral POV re-read on Friday or Saturday, which pushes any case you might make against someone else or defense you might make of Boonskiies (or agreement you might come to) back a few days (from the time of that post). The days are much longer here than I am used to, so I suspect I'm the only one who viewed it as a stall. Nobody else seemed to complain that I saw anyway.

The difference between madness and logic when it comes to trying to identify scum motive is when and why you're speculating. Just speculating without any examination of a player's posts and behavior in the game is basically useless. You can come up with an endless stream of possible reasons scum might do something, and the actual motive may or may not ever occur to you. If you have found an inconsistency or a slip and you are evaluating someone, trying to motivate that inconsistency or slip has a purpose and should usually be bounded. Generally far fewer motivations make sense for a slip or inconsistency than do if you begin by speculating reasons and then trying to find someone to fit your speculation. It's like the difference between examining evidence and letting it lead you to a conclusion and starting with a conclusion and trying to make the evidence fit the conclusion you chose.

And that is why your post gave me a town read on you. You had logical fallacies and an obviously flawed process on display throughout the post. When I read that post assuming you are scum, it doesn't make sense. Scum has the advantage in a 2v3 LYLO and have no need to make posts like that.

As for 3 vs. 4 agreeing, the difference is this: With 3 people agreeing it's possible that what you see is 2 scum and just 1 townie (33.3%). If four agree, then you have either 66.7% of the town or 100% of the town in agreement, and while that isn't foolproof ... it's certainly considerably better when the whole game rests on getting it right.

[Drixx]

If for some reason, I was mod confirmed town, who would you think is scum, Drixx?

Really? You would like me to give you an alternate wagon to try and push based upon an impossible hypothetical? This just keeps getting weirder and weirder on your part.

Please note post #901, Paragraph 3, Sentence 3 before you suggest that I've not been looking for your partner.

[Drixx]

I was waiting to see everyone weigh in before I posted. I believe HI slipped earlier (I referenced it in#901) and I posit an HI/Boonskiies partnership. Given the inability to be completely sure, I wanted to see what would happen after HI voted. If he was town, I expect he would have been locked rather quickly. I am as convinced as it is possible to be.

Vote: Boonskiies

[Drixx]

If you're so confident where's the vote? Like, this is what I have a problem with. >_>

EBWoP - I meant to quote this with my previous post. Earlier this day phase, I saw HI make some assumptions that don't make sense from a town PoV. I noted them and marked Boon/HI in my notebook as the probable scum team. I then mentioned that I had seen something to see if anyone would jump on it to try and take advantage. The fact that nobody did reinforced my thinking. Then HI posted the first vote and I waited to see even a 2nd vote go down, and both of you reinforced the town reads. Thus, I believe the actions are all consistent with that pairing.

[Drixx]

That's actually pretty failed logic, Drixx.

Bring up an actual case to refute and we can discuss that in depth.

UNVOTE: Boonskiies

You don't discuss anything in depth.

[Drixx]

Oh, shit. Should we mass-claim?

I know I already did, but isn't it better chance-wise for the pr to come forward today?

Or does it make more sense to try to let them get to 3p (provided we lynch correctly today) lylo?

1.) How would a mass claim help at this point? It will either be 5 VT claims or a doctor claim with no evidence to support it. Scum could claim doc with impunity.

2.) Your slip here is that you automatically posited a 3 person LYLO tomorrow. The possibility remains that there is a mafia roleblocker and a town doctor in play. You talk about mass claiming as if there could be a doctor to claim; however, you then talk as if tomorrow is certain to be 3 man LYLO. So either you are scum and your team doesn't have a roleblocker so you know there is no doctor, or you are the roleblocker and hoped to draw out a doc claim so you could let Boonskiies die and block + kill the doctor.

Knowing something you shouldn't if you are town is generally a pretty solid scum tell. Add to it that you voted on Boonskiies and he didn't get hammered despite the rest of us having opportunity to do so. If the scum team isn't you and Boonskiies, then why isn't the game over?

I'm pretty sure that's Check and Mate.

[Drixx]

it totally is, though. UGHHHH!!!!!!! I don't see why HI would unvote me if he was scum.

Read HI's last few posts. She was setting herself up to be completely trusted by whichever of us she let live into tomorrow. My guess is she would have killed off ++--, who is basically a wallflower this game, and then used her style of making a vague or unclear statement to get me to go for Singer or vice versa. Unvoting is a last ditch effort to try and to convince someone that someone else is your partner.

[Drixx]

You didn't make an argument for me to misrepresent, ergo a straw man argument cannot possibly exist.

The truth remains that you first suggested a mass claim, and then concluded 3p lylo tomorrow without even seeming to consider the possibility of a doc save resulting in a 3v1 MYLO where the doctor could tell us whom scum attempted to kill, which would be a far superior position than 3p lylo.

As for your suggestion that you've done a piss-poor job busing Boon ... you need two of us to help you, and when you put that vote down it seemed pretty likely that Singer and I would do so.

The only other possibility I see for Boon's scum partner is Singer. The whole waiting for L-1 and then making a show of not voting and claiming it proves she is town is super duper LAMIST. I'll grant that gives pause for reasonable doubt as far as

you

are concerned. The only way Singer is scum and doesn't vote at L-1 is if Boon is scum, so there's that.

[Drixx]

FMPOV, Singer is pretty much confirmed town. Which leaves two scum out of HI/Drixx/++--. Drixx could have been doing the classic, "Bus a buddy, vote a townie" in the sense he gave suspicion on HI and myself, and chose to vote me.

You flip scum and Singer is most definitely not conftown. In fact, that was the most over the top LAMIST ever. I was hard tunneled in on HI after #893 followed by the vote on you followed by the rest of us holding off to be safe. HI has me doubting her. You? You won't even defend yourself, nor will you make the case you called us all stupid for missing. Short of that, I can't imagine a reason to re-evaluate you. Nice move with the OMGUS FoS on me. Can't answer my case and can't actually make a case on Singer, so attack the person who nailed you.

[Drixx]

Boonskiies - Is there any pairing you haven't suggested in your scramble to suggest pairings that don't include you? After HI voted you, Everyone else had an opportunity to vote you. If you were town, the odds that you would still be alive are so staggeringly against as to be unbelievable. You still haven't addressed the case against you, nor have you made any actual case against anyone, especially the one person you were dead sure was scum to such a degree that you insulted the rest of us for not seeing it. You are posting pretty much anything BUT a defense for yourself.

@HI - When there are no PR results in play, it's usually small things that catch scum. You don't need to attack me about it any further for nitpicking though because I realized I was hard tunneling on you and zoomed out a bit already. I think Singer has made at least a half dozen LAMIST posts this game, and ++-- basically kept from committing anything until today when he put up a fallacious defense of Boonskiies. I don't think there's any case coming anywhere close to Boonskiies.

@++-- My best guess is that HI is trying to set up reasonable doubt for tomorrow, but that seems to me to be a problem for the anticipated 3 player LYLO. If I'm left alive, I can try and figure it out then. Right now it seems like a desperate hail mary on the part of Boon. He

STILL

won't defend himself or make a case. Is there any conceivable town motive for that behavior?

[Drixx]

I never said that everyone had a chance to

hammer

Boonskiies. Everyone had a chance to vote. I intentionally waited to see what people would do after the first vote, and every single player came in and posted before I put the 2nd vote on. If Boonskiies was town, then scum logically should have finished him off and won the game already.

[Drixx]

So without ever defending the case against him nor ever following through on his multiple promises to make a case against Singer, and without actually doing anything other than throwing a whole ton of bullshit against the wall to see what might stick, Boonskiies is going to slip the noose today? Really? This is the guy who came into the game hardcore white knighting EW, flip flopped without any explanation, tried to rush a lock, made sure to try and throw in "I'm now SUPER sure that EW is scum and his partner is HI, because of this "slip" that totally isn't a slip" post for town points.

He has completely refused to explain himself or follow through with anything he said he would do. If he squirms out of this, we deserve what we get.

[Drixx]

I'm convinced because he can't explain any of the case against him. He hasn't even tried. His strategy today has been to literally posit every possible scum combo that doesn't include him, and hope we'll flip to another lynch.

[Drixx]

A lot of the time, things I say come across as fake/ungenuine, moreso as town for some reason. It's frantic, and I tend to get more passionate, also getting more reckless. When I try to defend myself, it usually comes across super scummy, and it is the cause of my lynch. Plus, I've been semi bordering getting in trouble for trust telling (not doing it, but I was told I was getting close), not on purpose, so I am also trying to stop from doing that. Especially in a newbie game.

This is pretty close to trust telling. Have you looked at the definition? The problem is you are referring to a self-consistent meta that you have maintained and making a probablistic argument that you should be viewed as town because you tend to come across as fake/disingenuous more frequently as town, resulting in your play becoming frantic and passionate and reckless.

The problem is that you are substituting this for actually defending yourself. The things you need to explain shouldn't be difficult to explain. Putting together a case that you earlier referred to as "totally obvious" and went so far as to insult the living players for missing should be trivially easy.

Instead you are giving lists of games and appealing to your established meta. I don't want to see you banned, but you aren't trust telling, you're walking an awfully fine line. As personal advice, and to echo what ++-- says, you may want to work on areas of your play that you feel are weak. Right now you have a case against you that is about as strong as one can be short of a power role claiming a result against you. It's as good a time as any to work on that part of your game,

especially

if you really somehow

are

town. If you really were town, you would basically be playing against your win condition by outright refusing to defend yourself and refusing to follow through with earlier promises.

[Drixx]

Exactly why I'm choosing not to defend myself. Now you know. Thanks, k. I can defend myself, I just usually don't see a need to. Usually my scum hunting and moon logic theories defend me. I don't see the need to over defend myself any other way.

This is my first game on site, and I've definitely been overloaded with lots of new concepts and ideas. It is within the realm of possibility that I (and others) have misread you completely. After all, I misread Copper and made a fairly compelling case on him that nearly ended up disastrously. Instead, the scum were forced to kill him (and we saw the immediate impact in how long it took for today to really start moving along). For all I know, the scum left me alive in hopes that I would screw up that royally again today. With that distinct possibility in mind, I'm going to give you the most simplified (but thorough) case I can against you. Even if you feel like your ability to logically and rationally defend yourself isn't that great, it has to be better than this flailing around you've done today. And there's no time like the present to get started on expanding your game.

• You replaced into a slot that was played by a player who has some pretty scummy day one posts followed by major lurking and finally outright inactivity. There's not much you can do about this unfortunately, but your slot is your slot.
  
• You came into the game gung ho about two specific points. In #705 and #707 you are over the top coming to the rescue of EW. You make a point of saying you were frantic to replace in to keep him from being killed.
  
• In your next few posts you establish a very strong scum read on Singer. I remembered you tossing an insult at the rest of the game for missing it; however, I must have misremembered that because I don't see it in your ISO. That may be 2am and medication at play though. You later said you would further detail this case, and have consistently refused to do so.
  
• In #736 you throw up a super LAMIST post. That kind of PR trolling is never helpful for town at all. The absolute least damage it can do is create WIFOM, and logical problems that have no answer because they are circular help the scum, not the town.
  
• In #737 you tell Singer that you find her scummier than me, and that if Singer is town then you would read me as null. Singer has proven that she's either town or that the scum team is You and her, with her actions earlier today.
  
• I think #755 is the insult I remember. I think the context of that was me not seeing the case against Singer?
  
• In #766 you talk about me reading your slot as scum "now" as if that wasn't my original read on the slot. Since you claimed to have read everyone's ISO prior to this, surely you had to see my 2nd ever post in the game where I pointed out your slot as scummy, so in this post you are intentionally trying to re-write history to suit your (at that time) posit of a Singer/Me team.
  
• In #809 you claim that you are a better player than you appear at first and that you have a method behind the apparent madness. Now might be a good time to explain that?
  
• In #824 you decide to vote EW, without any reasoning, and once again throw up a LAMIST by predicting your own NK.
  This is a big thing you need to explain. Flip Flopping from your entry post to this with absolutely no explanation whatsoever
  
  
• Post #842 where you make a point to get in a twilight post that shows you being utterly convinced EW is scum, despite never once giving any reason that you thought so, apart from a post where EW clearly used the incorrect synonym for the word he wanted and otherwise was doing exactly what a townie should: giving his thoughts to help his team before he went to the noose
  
• The start of this day "slips" you made starting with #850
  
• Your turn around and town read on my early play today. You only came back to positing me (and everyone else) as scum once the actions of everyone made it super clear that scum almost certainly could have killed you for the win if you were townie.
  
• And last, but not least:
  You refuse to address any of this, relying instead upon throwing up random pairings with poor motivations (at best) in hopes you can get anyone else lynched

It's not just a post or two that has me reading you scummy, mate. The contradictory posts and actions are well beyond minor or few at this point. It shouldn't be too difficult for you to explain your thought process where you contradict yourself both in what you said and what you did.

[Drixx]

Now, for a second, let's assume that Boon is scum and gets lynched. Even in this case, I would doubt singer being scum for the following reasons: 1. early on in the game, Jason, Boon's predecessor had a half-assed case against singer 2. I pretty much doubt that singer would basically lead a lynch against her partner just to later not hammer it when could have done so easily. I'd say that if Boon is indeed scum, it's either you or Drixx, however, based on the fact that you are actually actively lynching Boon, while Drixx isn't, my bet right now would be a Boon-Drixx partnership. But this part is pretty much the future. Anyway, the more I think about it, the scummier Boon is, but at the same time, I'm freaked out by the possibility of screwing up with a mislynch :/

Erm... how am I not actively lynching Boon? My vote has been on him for awhile.

As to your other points, I'll leave my thoughts before bed in case I miss twilight and get fitted for cement shoes tonight:

1.) Scum FoSing each other during the game seems like a fairly good play, for exactly the reason that it's making you doubt a potential pairing.
2.) The fact that Singer didn't hammer could be exactly what she said it was: her proving that she's conftown. Or it could be a really good way to get a townie to be leaning her way tomorrow.
3.) If there were a 100% foolproof way to be right in LYLO without PR info, then town would win every game. If you're sure, then make the play and if we got bamboozled, then we learn from it and get better.

[Drixx]

Toolenduso is just being mean now.

[Drixx]

That was tongue in cheek. I don't think anyone watching the game at a reasonable time last evening would have expected a lock, and today is a day which many people use to spend time with family and other stuff. The waiting is the hardest part.

[Drixx]

@Copper - Thanks for the compliments. I will now have to work on being far more succinct. Playing offense all game and putting so much into the thread without ever slipping is exhausting. You have no idea how much time I spent re-reading posts with several parts of the thread open to keep consistent. As for the etiquette point, I agree; however, I am so used to the necessity of 1/2 votes (rounded up) to lynch, +1 to lock, I was totally freaked out by the prospect of posting a "GG townies" post if there was some chance of the lynch unraveling. More new to the site than anything else.

That said:

@HI - Your playstyle is really smart. Your posts are almost always pointed and basically put the person you are aiming at in a position of answering a comment that is often cryptic or not completely clear or ignoring you and getting called on it. Very good town play style and I suspect useful as scum as well. It was like trying to get blood from a stone to get you to say more than a sentence or two.

@Singer - Your brilliant play at L-1 nearly unraveled it for us. If you look in the mafia QT, I expected to be the primary wagon today and even set up a code phrase for ++-- to hard bus me if I couldn't get a viable wagon up. After you failed to hammer and HI unvoted, I came close to using it and hoping that ++-- would kill you and let Boonskiies inclination to view HI as scum help win out the 2nd LYLO.

@Boonskiies - Your playstyle is interesting. I hope we play again, and I hope you develop some more tools for your play. Your avatar made me smile every time I loaded the thread up.

@Copper - You, sir, are quite an opponent. The consistency with which you play made it exceptionally hard to put a strong case on you.

@EW - No hard feelings, I hope? Your play late near your lynch and in the twilight after was really good as a townie. That post you made was the sort of post you SHOULD make, even if you weren't right. I hope to see you in future games.

@++-- - It was a pleasure sharing team scum with you in my first game. Fantastic partner to work with. You let me have the freedom to play more dangerously and aggressively. I'd love to hear your thought process about this last day, heh.

@Cabd - Sorry we killed you. As you can see in the Mafia QT, it was a combination of assuming Copper would get a doc save if there was one along with some suspicion you had a PR. Out of curiosity ... who were you investigating that night? I was amused when it was suggested we killed you because you were the IC. That would be the last reason to kill someone, imo. So much WIFOM if the IC lives all game. WIFOM is great for scum.

[Drixx]

@Toolenduso - I wanted to thank you for the great puppy pictures, which always made me bawww or laugh. Thanks for hosting and doing a great job!

[Drixx]

I disagree that walls are inherently anti-town. Assume I was town and Boon was really scum. Sometimes it takes evaluating quite a lot of posts.

I suppose I could just quote people and say "that's scummy", but that's not really making a case. If you don't share your reasoning for your reads, then nobody can respond to them. I believe it's considerably more important for town to be thorough than it is for scum. Scum need to appear to be legitimately playing to the town win condition, but scum are the informed minority, so they can do that knowing for sure what is true. Townies are generally in the dark, and when playing as town I find it much more useful if people share their reasoning for things rather than just making declaratives.

I could definitely do with being more succinct though.

[Drixx]

Yeah Singer. I came into the game as a replacement into a slot that even I read as scummy. I felt the best defense was a good offense.

[Drixx]

You really shouldn't beat yourself up Singer. You nearly completely unraveled us. I thought we were done for and almost threw out my bus code to my partner.

[Drixx]

Mafia as a townie without any PR guidance is like playing in the dark. It's really easy to self doubt. Best thing you can do is to frequently update your "priors" ... those things you think are true or assume while you're evaluating the game, however you choose to do so to try and find scum (many ways to skin that cat).