Newbie 1726 (Game Over)

[Zorblag]

Good day everyone,

I'll be replacing Caston in the game. I won't be able to get to the game during the day today, but I should be able to be on and make some posts this evening. I know that I've played with both Nachomamma8 and RachMarie before, but I believe that I'm meeting most of you for the first time. You're welcome to call be Zorblag, Zorb, Zor, Z or Troll (and I'd probably answer to other things as well.) Outside of a single game I played as a hydra I've been away from Mafia for a couple years, but if you want to see how I played back in the day there are links to a number of games on my Wiki.

If anyone has any questions about the game to ask me they're welcome to. I won't be able to tell you what Caston was thinking about anything but I'm happy to give my own opinions on anything that's happened. I've had a chance to skim over the game and one that I can give right away is that we need to pick up some momentum.

@Zaicon, I hate to enter with this, but can we confirm that delta9 wasn't actually quitting the game with Post 83?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, hopefully a bit longer, yeah. Is this activity level Nachomamma8's current MO?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Rachmarie, that's largely what I'd decided after reading him more closely here. You'll see it in some thoughts in just a bit. Thanks! Is there anything that I should be looking at in particular here? I haven't gotten to looking at you in isolation yet so I'm not really sure what you're doing in the game for the most part.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

OK, let's get some thoughts out there and see what we can't do to get town moving.

• We'll want fiddlercrabontheroof's thougnts on the game soon so that we've got anything to work with for that player slot as alexs left us with nothing helpful.
  
  
• delta9 left us with a bit more, and I see what people didn't like about it. There's the initial vote (fine if dull,) posts that don't help the game state and then we've got the a sort of unclear post in 65 which vaguely connects to half the game in at least one way, but which doesn't seem to be something I'd expect Gratuitous to do much with in the post he was asking about (despite the answer given later.) I can see how it comes across as disengaged with what appears to be an attempt to throw something out there to be a part of the conversation rather than scum hunting.
  
  Having said that, the "I quit" as the followup under a bit of, not even pressure, but scrutiny perhaps, largely leads me to believe that our brand of mafia just wasn't the game for him. I'm inclined to call it a null tell.
  
  
• Given that last thought, here's what we get as reactions to this: almost nothing. Foxbird at least acknowledges that the "I quit" happened in his next post (2 days later,) but then applies a vote for pressure (as an aside, calling something a pressure vote is a good way for it not to have as much pressure in general,) after saying this could be scummy behavior or apathy thus putting a player who there's some reason to believe won't be there to defend them self at L-2. It's pretty easy to see potential scum motivation there. It would have been nice to see the others who were talking about delta9 say something about the abrupt termination of at least the train of thought if not his participation in the game as well.
  
  
• Nachomamma8's play has mostly been fine if lackluster. There are clear acknowledgments that his resources are being used outside this game and that he hasn't had the energy for it so I'll live with that for now, but I'm hoping we can get more engagement in the future.
  
  
• I sort of agree with ecane in Post 99. It's a bit of a simplification, but too much of Gratuitous's play feels like responding to questions without expanding much and not obviously looking into what others have done. It's not as clear cut as my initial reaction was when I went back and looked in isolation, but there's less clear concern about finding scum than in answering questions than I'd like. This isn't to say that you shouldn't answer questions as town, but town should always be looking at motives for the game going on around them.

I'm going to stop here for now before this gets too long, but I'll post more in just a bit. I haven't finished going over everyone in isolation yet, in paricular I need to look at Jaack and Rachmarie.

@Rachmarie, sorry, I was a bit unclear there, I meant for the game in particular is there anything I should be looking at. I'll sort Nachomamma8 if I need to later on. He's not being obviously scummy so he's not an interesting lynch candidate for today. If we're both still alive late in the game I'll certainly take a look at his POV and motives.

@Gratuitious, would you say you're being more cautious with your votes here than normal for you?

UNVOTE: delta9

VOTE: Foxbird

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Rachmarie, er, the game in general, not the game in particular. I definitely see the need to have things happen, but beyond that what have I missed so far that you're seeing?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Jaack, do you not take experience into account when trying to catch scum? Post 22 seems an odd question. Is it an attempt to be confrontational for reactions?

Having asked that, I'm actually fine with Jaack's play for today. If he's town he's poking about like he should for the most part so we can default there for now. If he's scum then he'll be alive in the later game and we can bother with that later on (much like I said about Nachomamma8.) As long as he keeps doing things that make connections for the future he's not a good day 1 lynch.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, hmm, who is scum here? I don't seem to see any of you figuring that out when I look through your posts. What is the scummiest thing that's happened so far this game? And why are you voting for Nachomamma8 still?

You've been busy, that's fine, but let's get this game going.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, delta9 is a pretty easy target right now, but even if he's scum there has to be a partner. Where's the next best place to put a vote? I do know you're busy, but do think about it as you've got a chance.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, yeah, unless Foxbird thought that the delta9 lynch was inevitable (and at this game pace why would anyone thing that,) they're unlikely to be scum together. So far your two biggest suspects seem to be the least active players (at least based on that vote.) Has anyone else done anything that you do think is scummy? The fiddlercrabontheroof vote strike me as really easy, but I assume it's not based on scummy behavior so much as lack of town behavior.

@Jaack, for me the answer is useful not on it's own, but in the context of the game. For example, ecane is probably town based on his posts and experience taken together. If I didn't have the experience to work with I'd have him closer to null, but for someone this new to the sort of game that we play here to open like that as scum is unlikely. I don't know what Caston had in mind when he asked the question, but it's one that I'm happy got asked as it does help me determine likely alignments. In any case, have a good sleep and I'm sure we'll interact more tomorrow (though I likely won't be around until the evening.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, I could see how that could be the case for delta9. The timing bothers me a bit (your post was 2 days after his, but with the activity state in the game in general being what it was at the time that's less useful than it might otherwise be.) I'm not saying I'm sure you're scum; I'm saying that I can see good scum motive for that action. I also tend to think that you're dancing around calling people scummy a bit (Nachomamma8 and delta9,) which I don't love, but will admit that I do as well. It could be playstyle but I don't have enough information to determine that yet.

I also think that scum could easily be lurking this game (in fact they almost certainly are in that I'd say that pretty much the entire player base can count as lurking.) I don't think that I'd call lurking to the point of being replaced (alexs and possible delta9, though that I'm reading as a more intentional quit at this point,) scummy lurking so much as disengaged lurking and not so alignment indicative. The longer fiddlercrabontheroof goes without posts now the worse he looks though, so there might be something more there.

I try to follow the pronoun preference that people have listed, but if I was one of the people who called you he I apologize. The internet is a place where assumptions get made, sometimes despite our best attempts to avoid them.

@Everyone, at this point I'd put my reads as follows:

Scummy enough to be a lynch candidate today: Foxbird, Gratuitious, RachMarie
Lurkers we could lynch and I won't be too sad based on play till now: delta9, fiddlercrabontheroof
Not worth lynching today for at least one reason: Jaack*, Nachomamma8
Probably Town: ecane

*Jaack might be closer to probably town, I need to think about it a bit. It's not as strong a town read as ecane certainly, and as I'm saying it's not a lynch I'd be at all interested in pursuing at this point.

I don't have a hugely strong scum read on anyone at this point and the biggest thing I want to see in the next 3ish days in content from everyone.

If you're having trouble generating content, tell me what I'm wrong about on that list (or anything else I've said.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, Her scum hunting. Or rather the lack of it. She's got plenty of presence and I know that she's busy, but the biggest reads she's coming up with are based on lack of activity rather than what people have done. That doesn't offend any active players (which scum usually want to avoid doing,) and doesn't feel to me like town seriously trying to figure out the game state. She's given answers to the questions I've asked, but little else to push the game forward. There's also the same vague lack of commitment to calling things scummy that I'm mentioned a bit concerning you.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

And I'm off till probably late this evening. I'd love to come back to a thread full of activity!

Everyone have a lovely day!

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, it's not the strength of the reads, its how you're going about expressing them that I don't like so much. Looking at the delta9 vote for example, you say you're not sure if it's scum lurking or apathy and say you're casting your vote for pressure. I'm fine with not knowing which it is, you're right that it could be either, but I'd rather have you put someone at L-2 (especially someone who I read as likely quitting the game, though you're saying you read it otherwise) because you think they're the scummiest player about.

I also don't particularly think that you're scum with RachMarie. You're both in my top three, but I'm not looking for connections yet. I'm not the sort of superstar scum hunter who can call a scum team day one and I don't try to. I put individuals in categories and then adjust them as the game state progresses. If I'd seen RachMarie's flip then sure I'd look to see how you interacted with her with more scrutiny, but for now, especially day one, I'm just looking for scum motivated behavior from players on their own.

I do have good news though. It's pretty easy to get my vote off you if you want to. Just convince me that you're trying to catch scum. Like I said, my reads aren't exceptionally strong at this point so rather than spending effort defending yourself I'd recommend spending the equivalent effort showing me who else is scum instead. That helps the town more anyhow.

@RachMarie, if you're using process of elimination, what are the town things that all the active players are doing that make you think they're more likely to be town than the non-play by the alexs/fiddlercrabontheroof play. Have you said what you like about the others here? I know you're not high on delta9 and are waiting to see if they get replaced so I don't need a town case for them, right?

I also don't think that you need to be abrasive to call people scummy. I don't think that I'm being particularly abrasive this game, but I've called over half of the active players scummy enough to vote for (who knows, maybe everyone hates me for it and I just haven't noticed.) I'd love to see proactive, positive play as the norm for games and I think that you could be giving it here but aren't. You're positive (certainly friendly and I like that in a newbie game especially as you're an ambassador of sorts,) but I don't feel the proactive scum hunting at all.

@Gratuitous, you've complained about the pace a little and are now saying that you play a quiet game and then push when you see something. I guess I'll recommend a modification of that if I might. When you're in a game state where nothing is happening you've got to push on others a bit to get that traction to get started. If nothings happening the it benefits scum (you clearly know that.) It's in towns best interest to get something happening. When no one posts for 20 hours straight that can be hard, but toss out some questions to players you're not sure of. That's what I did for RachMarie; it gave me something more to work with. I might not be right, but we've got things going now. Never assume that someone else in the town is going to take care of that for you, and probably assume that scum won't in most cases.

@Nachomamma8, I know you're busy, but we need you here in this game. It's the weekend so you might not be able to get to it and I'm not going to ask for prods until Monday, but please be here to play.

@fiddlercrabontheroof, see that last bit and count it double or your player slot. You're casting a vote and I have no idea if it's where you'd like it to be (or if you're even aware of the game state.)

@ecane, congratulations, you're very town read this game. I don't know what your schedule is like, but I highly encourage you to get here and bust apart the theories we're throwing around which aren't right (or back up the ones which are.) Once you've got that read going the biggest thing you can do for the town is to be present and point out what's scum and town in the play that you're seeing.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, how often do you expect scum to vote for their partners in a game offhand?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, you're much more concerned about Jaack voting with players he thinks are scummy than I'm used to. I've played in a lot of newbie game (I find them fun to replace into and it's usually helpful to the flow of a game,) and although it's been years, I don't recall seeing that particular concern very often if at all. If you didn't expect scum to vote for each other it would make more sense to me (and I'd probably point out that scum bussing isn't uncommon at all,) but that doesn't seem to be the case here. What is it about Jaack sharing a voting target with suspects that bothers you about his votes?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, OK, I can see where that's coming from to some degree. I don't know that I find it that inconsistent personally, there aren't multiple scum reads of his on the wagon he's moved to and I guess I'm leading it in a way, but he's moving to the other person he's been finding scummy for a while. It's good to see the line of thinking though.

You say that you find RachMarie's game to be similar to your own (and suspect that she's having some of the same issues.) I actually find there to be a fairly significant difference between the two. It's not really a fair question given that I'm asking you to compare your own play to someone else's, but can you guess what that might be?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Two reasons:
1) Rach was V/LA at the time, so a full case at that time was silly because I could get no further reaction, the vote was sufficient to express my read.
2) Ties into the reasons I didn't want to disclose previously. I was hoping to pick up some information from the reactions of the early two wagons in order to get a better read on them. Unfortunately as both ended up flaking not long after that, it turned out poorly.

I don't really like either of those reasons. The vote on RachMarie was from the Random Voting Stage and I don't see anything that you're saying in thread that indicated that it turned serious before the time you're saying you'd looked at it previously and not brought it up. I don't think that we had any reason to believe that you had a scum read on RachMarie.

I also don't buy that not making a case when someone isn't there to respond to it is silly; unless there's a reason not to you're making cases to show what's scummy. If responses from the party happen later then so be it, but it's better for town to see those cases sooner so that they can both take them into consideration and have less of a chance to be rushed at deadline as well as use their reaction to it to judge your play. Posting cases when you have them is usually the pro-town thing to do.

Also, unless you think that the case you had was strong enough to pull voters off the wagons I'm not sure why you think that making it would prevent you from seeing the reactions of either of the players on the wagons.

What aren't I understanding there?

Also, you've got Foxbird at null. What's the most pro-town thing she's done this game? What's the scummiest?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Welcome to the game Innocentvillager! Good to see you and we're all looking forward to that slot giving a take on the game. I personally look forward to seeing what 4 years has done to your mafia play. It's surprising that both you and RachMarie remember Newbie 1222 that well, but I suppose it might have been your first or second game here and that helps things stick.

I'm also looking forward to seeing what fiddlercrabontheroof and Nachomamma8 (and even RachMarie) have to say, hopefully later today. That will be the full game playing again and that makes me happy. Scum can't hide among the inactive if town is active and that helps town catch them by a lot.

@Foxbird, like I said, the question wasn't really fair as I phrased it and to a large extent getting the answer I had in mind didn't matter at all. Yours are fine guesses. The fluff bit is true (and actually matters some,) the SE/newbie/IC bit doesn't actually matter at all in the game, we're all players and that should be enough. The thing that I noticed that stands out to me is that you're calling people and things scummy much more than she is. You're also using more reasoning to evaluate in game events which. I don't always agree with the reasoning, but you're doing it and that's more important.

UNVOTE: Foxbird

VOTE: RachMarie

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, thanks for the posts.

After the talking with Foxbird some I've come around on her; I am more inclined to believe that the reference you're talking about for the delta9 vote is the more likely (which surprises me some as the "I quit" struck me as almost certainly a game statement when I read it and before I knew if he'd posted anywhere.) I also think that I've got more insight into how she's reasoning than I did and, although it's not how I would reason, knowing that the reasoning is there is important.

Regarding ecane, I don't see a strong reason to push someone's towniness when no one is particularly questioning it. If I'm right it no one needs to hear why as they already agree and it just paints a bigger target on her head. To elaborate on my point, I do think that what she's doing shows clear evidence of hunting for scum and I don't expect a scum player who's new to forum mafia to go with that play; she's not pushing her reads at all but she's cutting to the issue. She's not tunneling or lurking. It's a very pro-town game and I think that new scum would have trouble faking town that well (as opposed to experienced scum.) I could be giving too much credit there and of course if she's about later on in the game everything warrants closer looks, but I like that play a lot and the perspective feels strongly like it's town to me.

Regarding RachMarie, part of my problem is that she was so ready to jump in and be helpful for out of game things, like how to deal with reading you in abstract when she misunderstood what I was asking about at one point. She's there and she's got the energy to be helpful at times, but she's not using it to catch scum this game. It could just be how things play out with her games normally, but even this latest Foxbird vote doesn't feel good to me (looking to keep pressure on a target of some of the more vocal and potentially town read players when I moved my vote away.) I need to go back and see what she had to say about Foxbird earlier, but I don't like how it's played out.

Regarding Gratuitous, I think I would have put my vote there as of last night, but one of the last things I did before going to bed was take a look at the game he was scum in. From the reading I did, he played a much more competent scum game there than he's playing here if he's scum. His isolation seemed more proactive (I didn't read the entire game so I don't fully know what the posts looked like in the context of the rest of the game,) and post game there was pretty universal praise from new players and the IC (Thor665 who I respect as a player and who at least used to play in a lot of newbies and has a good read for players he's playing with for the first time.) This just seems like a worse game with unforced errors and it's giving me pause as I'm trying to understand why. I might have a theory (one I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and thought of,) and at this point I'd like to give him a little more rope.

Out of curiosity, is there anything that RachMarie would be doing as scum that she's not doing now in your experience?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I like your line of thought here a lot; it shows a healthy dose of paranoia that I'm not sure scum would adopt at this point since Zorblag is very likely not getting lynched this game.

I'm not going to dwell on it unless there's reason to later, but this is a stronger statement than you intend to make. I'll just throw it out there to see if anyone else sees why.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Rachmarie, could you talk to me a bit more about what it is that you're changing for your read for Foxbird now that you think she's more experienced/crafty/competent/adjective? I certainly acknowledge that that can make all the difference, but what were you giving her a pass on before that you aren't anymore?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@everyone, we're now down to about 2 and a half days until deadline. We don't want to no lynch, so it's time to get everyone in here and on wagons so we can see where we are. If you want to make a case against a wagon that's formed now's the time to do it.

@fiddlercrabontheroof, I know you've had things come up, but you need to be here in the next 24 hours and caught up with the game. We have nothing from your slot and we need it both for the sake of getting another eyes on the game as well as a way to judge your intentions.

@Innocentvillager, see above of course. We've got more to work with from your slot, but those contributions would be very nice.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Jaack, for what it's worth, there's no reason for anyone to understand my "shift" on Gratuitous at this point. I didn't bring it up before Nachomamma8 mentioned it because I'm still working through some thoughts. RachMarie is the one I'm most comfortable with as scum at this point, and while I'm thinking Foxbird is more likely town, that's not necessarily true of Gratuitous. Sorry that that's a bit confusing, but it's all I'd like to say about it for now. I have no doubt that it'll come up later though.

Could you say what makes you think Gratuitous is town at this point though?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Jaack, also I think you have your timings a bit off, but out of curiosity, what do you think the scum motivation for moving from a scum read to a town read on multiple players when the pushes started to get traction? I could see one if you thought I was protecting a partner, but two confuses me a bit.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, I know you're busy, but please be aware that the deadline for the day is Thursday afternoon (in US timezones.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

It's pretty readable is the plus side. It's picked up recently, but I'll let you take a look.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, how has she been scummy in a non-timid way then? The case might be there in fragments in your posts (though I didn't see it when i looked,) so lay it out for us please.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Gratuitious, if, as you claim, you're not the lynch for today then you should really be doing more to help us see who is because I'm not particularly sure I believe you at this time.

@RachMarie, I don't think you addressed it with the last post, but, again, what is it that Foxbird is doing that's scummy if she's a more tricky player than you were taking into account before?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, I think you can try without a massive PbPA wall. Don't undo what you've already done, but really, what we want are your thoughts on what's happened and the vote for your top scum read. At this point and with a deadline looming getting that done efficiently is more important than just about anything else.

@RachMarie, so you're voting for Foxbird because she was sneaky in that other game? I grant that it might be a great gambit, but unless you see things that she's doing here that are likely scum motivated that seems like a poor move. Her alignments in the two games are independent and unless she'd have more reason to do something as scum here than she would as town here, fear of good scum play isn't a good reason to cast a vote. You're saying process of elimination, but I'm not at all certain that you should be able to eliminate the rest of the players as potential scum. I think I'm just not understanding something that you're doing somehow.

@Jaack, it's mostly fine with me if you want to suspect me at this point, and in fact I'm pretty sure you're town now. I don't think that Scum would bother with the effort to post that given the current game state. I'll give a couple thoughts on what you have to say though.

• You seem to think that I care a lot about what you in particular think and how your going to be casting your vote. I don't really; I'm trying to figure out if you're town or scum, but I fully expect you and everyone else to be casting their votes for whoever they find scummiest. If you feel that I lured you into changing a vote I guess that's up to you, but it wouldn't be worth my time or effort as either town or scum.
  
• I didn't have a town read on Nachommama8 when I made my comments about him. I thought he wasn't worth lynching today. That's still true, though I'm a closer to thinking he's town at this point. The main point though is that if we're both still alive come day 3 or what not then it's time to start asking why that's true if he's town. I'll encourage everyone to try to think those sorts of things through as the game goes on.
  
• I am more concerned about fiddlercrabontheroof now for exactly the reason that I said I would be if he hadn't posted. He's been in the game as long as I have, over 4 days now with a deadline that's less than 2 days away, and we have nothing from him. Scum gain much more by not being part of the game if they're not under pressure than town do because scum need to live and town need to actually figure out who scum is.
  
• My reads are probably going to change as the game goes along. That's why I ask the questions I do of people. I don't typically think that I've got everything nailed down tight and I'm probably not going to act like I do. Town should in general always be working to improve the strength and nature of their reads and I find that interacting with the people I suspect more is what helps me do that.

Outside what you've written in that last post, I'd still really like to hear your thoughts on why Gratuitous is town at this point (assuming you still think he is.)

@everyone, At this point, my top three candidates for a lynch are Gratuitous (I've done more thinking and have mostly talked myself out of my concerns there, remind me to bring it up after the game if you're interested in knowing what the whole deal was,) RachMarie and fiddlercrabontheroof. Tomorrow I'll likely make sure my vote is on whichever of those three gets us closest to a lynch. I'd rather not put the lynch off until deadline if possible. That's a good way for something unexpected to come up that gives us a no lynch which we really don't want out of day one.

ecane, Jaack and Foxbird all strike me as likely town right now. I need to see what innocentvillager does, but I'm not overly worried about his slot just at the moment as I expect to gain information from him shortly. Nachomamma8 can be town enough unless and until he's still around in a day 3 or later situation barring something unexpected.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, I'll be interested in hearing what you think after taking another look. I'll be more interested in hearing why.

@Zaicon, could we get a prod on fiddlercrabontheroof please?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

It's really frustrating having a slot that does nothing the entire first day. More-so because although it's a better move for scum than town, it's still done by town too often. Replacements who do it are probably the most frustrating because the slot has had multiple players have a chance to do something that didn't for whatever reasons.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I mean, I might be complaining about lack of scum hunting from you or how you go about it or whatever, but at least you're here playing and I can get some interaction reads and try to sift through how much is play style and how much is motivated from that. I've got none of that to work with for fiddlercrabontheroof.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Do you not like to use direct tells very much? Process of Elimination tends to help me much more in the end game than the start as I have so much more to work with then (and hopefully the inactive/underactive players have shaped up, shipped out or been removed one way or another.) At this point I'm pretty happy with what I've got from direct tells on most of the players in the game. I might be wrong on some, but I've got something. I feel people have been fairly forthcoming with their thought processes.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I've read that scum game (or at least skimmed it and read the post game.) It's given me some pause, but there's a lot I don't like about what he's doing here so I'm mostly over that. For now I should let you get back to taking a look at Foxbird.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, please please please make getting this in by tonight your priority. The greatest analysis ever that we don't have time to use does us no good for this game day.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, thanks for that post. I do have a couple questions and am happy to talk about my page 7 posts that seem to be bothering you in a bit, though I'd like you to elaborate first.

What do you think of Gratuitous's posts the past couple pages. There's a change in tone and you don't seem to have mentioned that struck me as noteworthy. I'd also love to see if you can dig into what you don't like about ecane's resent posts as you seem to have a largely unique perspective there (in that no one else other than perhaps Gratuitous has mentioned it.)

For my page 7 posts, I wonder if you can tell me what you think my motivation as scum might have been to do what I did? I can understand not seeing what I was up to, but I'm wondering why you think it was scum play in particular.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, I skimmed to find the topics that I found interesting (and looked at where your reads were surprising to me to hone in on the bits that I'd get the most out of.) We're on a tighter and tighter deadline here so I need to cut to the chase.

And to avoid waiting until tomorrow to get back to you, here's what I was doing with my page 7 question. I said off the bat in my question that it wasn't going to be fair:

You say that you find RachMarie's game to be similar to your own (and suspect that she's having some of the same issues.) I actually find there to be a fairly significant difference between the two.

It's not really a fair question given that I'm asking you to compare your own play to someone else's, but can you guess what that might be?

I'd concluded by that point that Foxbird was keying in on different aspects of the game than I was and valuing different things in her analysis of the game state. There wasn't any danger of her being lynched in the near future, and I wanted to see a bit more evidence of the sort of details she would hone in on before that before shifting my vote to another candidate. There wasn't a right or wrong answer she could give offhand, but assuming she was willing to answer it gave me more insight to where her attention was in the game.

The bigger issue that I'd expect one could have with my vote switch that came after the post was why it didn't go to Gratuitous, but Nachomamma8 already brought that one up.

I'm not sure what you find scummy about the move even without knowing that though. I didn't use an unfair question against the person I was asking it of and I wasn't keeping her in danger of imminent lynch. It wasn't a transparent question, but there are aspects of town play that shouldn't be entirely transparent as this is a game of information control.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

And I didn't say it in response to the post, but I'm fine with that post from innocentvillager coming from town. I want more interactions going forward, but my lynch preferences for the day stay the same.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

This is my intent to hammer Gratuitous.

I can now talk about what was bothering me earlier. I look at this game compared to his scum game and I see inferior play here. It's not play that's helping the town, it's just play that makes him look worse than he did in the other game. I don't expect a sudden drop off in skill like that, so I was trying to figure out what the motive was. When I woke up from my dream at 4:30 in the morning the other day I realized that this could be intentionally bad play to avoid getting targeted for a night kill as a power role. After giving it a significant amount more thought I've decided that the way he's going about it at first might be consistent with that play (keeping a lower profile and not working to make things happen,) but what we've had recently really doesn't. He's clumsily spinning the cases against him to look worse rather than spending effort convincing us that his suspects are scum. Town power roles should have gone with different play after picking up initial suspicion; they don't want to be brought to claim, they just want to look less obviously town than average in most cases (the obvious exception in this game is one-shot bullet proof.)

I don't want to talk about power roles at this stage of the game beyond this post, but I'm saying now that I've considered the possibility that Gratuitous has one and I think it does not fit with his overall recent play. I plan to hammer regardless of what claim he might make. I'd recommend that others take that into account as well, but I'm not going to make decisions for the rest of you, so I'm not hammering now. I don't know what his claim might be should he make one, but at this point I believe that the lynch is the correct move regardless.

Actually, as an aside, I always believe that for day one lynches even when I don't have this level of reason to have thought about it. If someone's play was scummy enough for the majority of the players in the game to be ready to lynch them, then they should be lynched. Claims give scum a chance to have a last minute out and run the danger of outing actual town power roles. Day 1 claims aren't worth it. When I played last I was not in the majority with that opinion and I'm not going to actively push it here beyond this, but I feel it's worth mentioning.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

OK everyone, we've got a problem.

There are approximately 16 hours left in this game day. 12 hours ago I announced intent to hammer. We've had one post since then and that was to say that Nachomamma8 won't able to read things well in what is arguably the most important stretch of hours in day 1.

That's terrible for town on all of our parts. We need to be playing this game to have a chance to win it. If there's any sort of unvoting from here on out I'm worried about our ability to hammer anyone before deadline; the activity leading up to this post isn't promising at all. The only reason that I'm not hammering with this post is that I'm hoping that the mod will start looking for a replacement for fiddlercrabontheroof before the day ends so that we might get a player in that slot who will play the game as of the start of tomorrow. I hate that I have to be taking that into consideration.

I fully expect to hammer Gratuitous when I wake up tomorrow so that we don't have any deadline nonsense. If you've got something to say that's relevant do so before then.

Town needs to play this game tomorrow. I hope that I'll be taking out scum with my next post, but regardless of whether I do or not we need to get this game into a more active state. Scum have too much ability to hide right now. There's no reasonable way we should be taking a slot with 3 posts to deadline at day one and top priority tomorrow should be getting fiddlercrabontheroof's replacement to give reads in the game. innocentvillager needs to back up what he said in his one catchup post (and I'm disappointed that he's not here with a followup by now given what he had to say.) I should have had Jaack telling me why I'm wrong for wanting to hammer Gratuitous by now; I asked for it twice and I saw him logged on this evening and not posting when he should know that a lynch he opposes is about to go down.

We need activity. Don't give scum a chance to lurk to a win; be a force for town. From a purely numbers point of view most of you are town and you should want to win. I know that you've all got life outside this game, but if we can't be here during the end of the day and contributing at least a little why are we even playing?

Assuming I'm alive tomorrow I'll have plenty more to say. Normally I'd make this post in twilight, but I don't anticipate having a lot of time to post after I wake up so you're getting it early. Hopefully I'll wake up to lots of activity, but if not think about this over the night phase and come in day two swinging. Towns that are active give themselves a chance to win. Towns that aren't are giving away victory more times than not.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

This game.

UNVOTE: RachMarie

VOTE: Gratuitous

Remember that you need to be here playing the game tomorrow.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Here are some thoughts about the game state going into twilight.

Gratuitous as town or scum should have been on pushing a case on RachMarie, the other potential lynch of the day. The only way that might not make sense is if RachMarie is scum partners with him and he thinks the extra pressure leads to one of them going down today and the other tomorrow (or if she's a roleblocker and he'd rather that role stay given how compromised the two slots are suspicion-wise.) Even if he's partners with RachMarie I'd expect him to be here doing something, but instead we got nothing. The flip will tell us more, but going into a lynch that meekly is seldom good play (also, if you're close to getting lynched day one you're much better off attacking the players you think are scummiest (as town) or most vulnerable (as scum) is almost always better than trying to defend yourself.)

Jaack as either town or scum partnered with anyone other than RachMarie should have been here doing one of a couple of things. Given that he thinks Gratuitous is town and RachMarie is scummy the obvious move would be to get on the RachMarie wagon, taking it to L-1 and making a case for that being the better lynch. Were he scum and partnered with RachMarie that becomes a poorer play, though it might look good long term if he can get out of needing to stick with that tomorrow (which I think he could by going back to trying to get me lynched.) In that case I still expect him to get on and try to either do more to drum up support for my lynch or stop the support for Gratuitous. Not being here when the day was ending and he could have made a difference just isn't good.

RachMarie doesn't come out of this looking much better to me than she did going in. She's flipping a vote to the wagon which is the best chance of her salvation, and it feels like the switch is to the player she's set up to switch to when needed based on all the talk about the last game with Gratuitous. Having said that, I'm not sure if she has a better move to make as either alignment in the position she's in. If she's scum she'd rather Gratuitous be lynched than she is almost all the time (again, Gratuitous as a partner complicates that slightly,) and as town, unless she's really sure Gratuitous is town as well he's the better lynch from her perspective.

FoxBird's end of day seems fine to me. She could have gone to either the RachMarie or Gratuitous wagon from a game state point of view, and I'm happy enough with how she played it. I don't love the interactions with RachMarie, but, as I've already mentioned, I don't seem to agree with the reasoning that she's using somewhat often.

innocentvillager needs to be here tomorrow and do more. Same with Nachomamma8.

Actually, while I'm on Nachomamma8, the trouble that I mentioned back in Post 174 was that Nachomamma8 said that I wasn't going to get lynched this game. Scum Nachomamma8 would know that's probably true due both to my expected play and his ability to control night kills. Town Nachomamma8 should probably believe that I won't get lynched day 1 or 2 based on play expectations, but unless he knows I'm not scum he shouldn't assume that I don't ever get lynched. That's unlikely to be a scum slip, but it's at least noteworthy.

My hope is that fiddlercrabontheroof gets replaced during Night 1 (he failed to respond to a prod within 24 hours, but I'm not sure how Zaicon handles replacements during night phases.)

I didn't even think of ecane when I was typing the rest of this which is mostly a statement of how off my radar she is.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Welcome to the game Foedufafa! I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about it. It's a fairly quick read for a game going into day two and your slot's input is going to be a nice change I hope.

@innocentvillager, glad to see you're here now. I'm interested in seeing what you have to say about the questions that I asked after your catch up post. The ones on Gratuitous aren't so useful anymore, but the rest I'd like to have you address. Also, now that you've seen how the day ended and a flip and a lack of a kill, outside of RachMarie and me who's most likley to be scum? I also agree with RachMarie that we shouldn't be concerned with asking any power roles to out anything at this time; let them use their own judgment about when and how to pass on any information they might have.

@RachMarie, you shouldn't need someone else to help you catch scum. I really don't like that bit about Nachomamma8 being busy as a reason that you look scummy. Having said that, the questions you were asking at the start of the game were probably among your best play so far in that they had some chance of moving the game along, so I disagree with innocentvillager about them apparently. What's the state of your reads. You flipped your position on Gratuitous but that lead to town. Who's scum now?

@Jaack, you seemed to be on the last night of day 1, but didn't post anything despite the fact that given you stated positions it really made sense for you to do so. What's up? What am I getting wrong about that?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Jaack, before I get into anything else about your post I want to hear why you had a PR read on Gratuitous.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager,

@innocentvillager, thanks for that post. I do have a couple questions and am happy to talk about my page 7 posts that seem to be bothering you in a bit, though I'd like you to elaborate first.

What do you think of Gratuitous's posts the past couple pages. There's a change in tone and you don't seem to have mentioned that struck me as noteworthy. I'd also love to see if you can dig into what you don't like about ecane's resent posts as you seem to have a largely unique perspective there (in that no one else other than perhaps Gratuitous has mentioned it.)

For my page 7 posts, I wonder if you can tell me what you think my motivation as scum might have been to do what I did? I can understand not seeing what I was up to, but I'm wondering why you think it was scum play in particular.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

It looks like I asked less than I recall, but I was trying to get the question in during a window you were there for. I actually did talk about why I made the play I did in Post 228 but as you still list my behavior as mixed due to primarily that one part I'm still curious.

As far as your call for breadcrumbing, how am I misrepresenting you? If scum know that PRs are likely to be breadcrumbing anything they're more likely to pick up on it. We shouldn't be calling for that. You should let PRs use their own judgement about when to reveal information and we shouldn't be doing any speculation in thread as that just helps the scum potentially eliminate non-PRs. I want to explicitly claim that I'd make these statements regardless of role, that's just from a theory perspective. There might come a time in the game when a popcorn claim makes sense, but we're not there yet.

@Jaack, and now I'm not going to wait for you to reply as waiting does this game no good. I do still very much want to hear your answer though; I don't expect you to have suspected Gratuitous might be a Power Role for the reasons that I did so I really want to see what you had in mind.

I'll also say (again) that your end of day one play was really poor for town. More-so if you thought that Gratuitous was a PR. You were on during the last 24 hours of the day when you knew that I was intending to hammer your PR read. Given that the other viable wagon at the time (RachMarie) was among your stated scum suspects you had every reason to post something to try to move that wagon. RachMarie was at L-2, you were the only one voting for me coming to deadline which made your vote useless. The only sensible town move there would be to try to shift the wagon from Gratuitous to RachMarie by first throwing your vote and then making whatever case you could, no matter how brief. You knew that Foxbird at least would be willing to compromise on the lynch if it came down to it so you could have protected the one you thought was a power role in favor of lynching a top scum suspect. But you didn't. You chose not to post when the deadline was looming and effectively let your power role read get lynched.

That's awful.

But there's a caveat. Your play was far from the only awful play to end that day. The end of the day, when we're hammering out a lynch that will often be a compromise, is a time that town really has to be there to stop scum from determining who the lynch candidate is. This lynch happened the way it did because I was the only active player not on the Gratuitous wagon already during the final 24 hours. Up to and including Gratuitous. Apparently, had I not been there we wouldn't have had a lynch at all which is just what scum wants. Town can't end days like that.

Regarding your case on me, you're going in to your reading at this point with the assumption that I'm scum trying to manipulate the game and you in particular into positions that help me. Either your scum or you've got a huge case of confirmation bias going on at this point. As the active player who's posting thoughts it's easy to read into what I'm typing to find evidence to back up whatever you think is true. If you were looking to find me town you'd certainly find plenty of that as well. It happens when people post often.

The thing is that you've got the wrong idea for good scum play. I can play scum. I can play it well. Glancing at my Wiki and the games that I recorded there I've got an 11-3 record as scum. I didn't get that by playing the game that I'm playing now. As scum my best play is to blend into the rest of the field and let town make their own mistakes. Players, especially in Newbie games assume that scum try to manipulate town into bad positions, but in my experience that's not the way things go. It means that you need to step out and bend a game which gets you noticed by what normally end up as paranoid player who are going to think that standing out makes someone scum. I have no reason to play the aggressive game that I'm playing now if I'm scum. My twilight thoughts? Why bother; no one else is. Prodding players to get them involved? People don't like being prodded and scum shouldn't want to do things to make themselves uncomfortable. Calling 5 of the 8 players that were in the game viable lynches when I entered? That's a way to make people dislike me and not worth it.

As scum There's no way I'd have the highest post count in the game (not even taking into account entering a week after it started.) I'd be as background as I could be to blend in with the overall flow, and that would be a hell of a lot more background than this. Even if you think I needed activity up front to assuage suspicions there'd be no reason to keep at it like this. As town I can't do that. As town I need to spur activity because a passive town will typically lose. I need people getting involved both so that I can get better reads on them and so that they can get their own reads and help the town win. I need to deprive scum the cover of inactivity so that they come out and make posts that give them a chance to make mistakes. I'd have to be an idiot to play this game this way as scum, but as town who wants to win, this is my best option.

And the thing is, I'm still pretty sure your town and that none of this is going to sway you. It's irritating, but I've played enough newbie games and seen this happen enough times before to get over it. Hell, the game that RachMarie and innocentvillager both mentioned when they saw me here had that happen in one of the few occasions that I couldn't talk myself out of it (Newbie Game 1222.) I will say that what I really need you to do, and what it behooves you to do anyhow outside of my interests, is to spend at least as much effort looking at the other players. Even if I was scum I couldn't be scum alone, so if you need to frame it this way go find my partner.

@ecane, Foxbird and Nachomamma8, we're in day 2. You were all on the Gratuitous wagon. I want to know who you think is scum now that the flip has happened (and generally I want you here in the thread.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, I said that we shouldn't be asking PRs to out anything at this point, not that you shouldn't out them. I called for them to use their own judgment. I shouldn't have to elaborate on that.

As far as Jaack goes do you disagree with my assessments of the value of this play to town vs. scum? Are you looking at what my motives would be as town or scum (which goes back to my earlier question to you where you called something scummy, but I can't see what scum motivation you would be seeing)? Jack is convinced that my motive has to be to actively manipulate the town as scum rather than to try to motivate the town to play as town. I can give him credit for at least giving possible motives, but the one's he's coming up with assume that I have to be out to manipulate him in particular, the player who thinks that I'm trying to manipulate him. That would just be bad play on my part; I'd be so much better off just keeping quite as scum. There's probably nothing that I'm going to say that's going to convince him otherwise, but letting it ride didn't work, so I'm trying directly addressing it now.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, first off, that's L-3. If you think that I'm clearly good as a scum player why do you think that I'd be panicking from one (or two if you want to count yourself) players being suspicious of me? I think that Jaack is town and I want him to figure out who scum actually are. It's worth the effort as town to try to get that to happen. As scum this would be trivial to ride out.

And I'm not going to waste too much time on this, but you're voting for me because I might be scum doing pro-town things, but who called them pro-town himself. Do you think that I do something else as town? I'm putting the effort into this game to get people playing and sharing my thoughts as they evolve whether I'm claiming that or not. Should I be doing something else as town? Should I be sitting idly by and letting town drown itself in apathy?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Jaack so you think that we've got a PR because Gratuitous initiated a RQS instead of a RVS when someone asked and then didn't have an opinion? Ug, at least I can buy that I'm not the lynch for today bit. I certainly thought about that as well given that I had already been thinking PR, but I'd largely decided that none of the supplemental play was town trying; it came across as the sort of bluster you see from some players. I almost posted to say that he didn't have the clout to make that sort of claim yet, but held off.

Right, sleep well. I'm sure we'll talk more tomorrow.

@innocentvillager, you're still using argument that I could be doing this as scum because I'm sneaky, so I'm scummy despite the fact that I'd do this as town. It's not a good case. Further, have you been reading my play leading up to today? Are you trying to say that I've not been transparent this game with scum reads, because I set the trend in this game for sharing who people thought was scum. I've spent some time trying to get through to Jaack and you today, but seriously, I was the only one to start looking at what we had from day one in twilight at the end of the day yesterday.

I am curious though, if you've had the chance to meta me that's a bit surprising given how busy you've been. What were the scum games where you felt I played like this? Did you exclusively read scum or a mix of scum and town?

Right now RachMarie is still a top suspect. She's been opportunistic with her votes, her reads (scum in particular, though even town to some degree,) never feel like there's evidence behind them (see the Foxbird vote and read in particular,) and her play feels largely like a pile of excuses.

I went into night one with fiddlercrabontheroof leaning scummish, though getting replaced makes that bit null. It's a very frustrating slot given that it's been replaced twice and we still have nothing. I hope to have something from foedufafa to work with soon.

You're the other slot that was in a similar category, though there's more to dislike. I actually don't like how you ended day 1, and I don't love what you're doing here (though as you're targeting me I might be less objective than normal.) The end of day one you dithered away the time posting your PbPA and then never had a chance to do anything else (despite the fact that I got in to ask questions as quickly as I could.) You landed safely off the wagon and then never had to respond to anything past that which would be handy for scum, but which town shouldn't want. Today you're blaming me for engaging with the active players (though I don't see you doing anything else,) and are using a "Troll might be sneaky enough to do this a scum so he's probably scum" line of reasoning which I'm not sure yet if I think you're too sophisticated for. There's a disconnect between your attention in the game (not remembering the questions that I asked in this game, this garbage about my not sharing reads) and the attention you claim to have put into reading me (with the meta,) and you still haven't gotten around to answering my question about what you think was scummy about my question to Foxbird. Given the way the replacing out happened I had you at more likely scum than town, but the failure to contribute beyond one post that took far too much effort for what it delivered and the opening today have me much less certain. Today feels like a smear campaign riding on Jaack's coattails.

Nachomamma8 has mostly been fine, but he needs to get into this game and get his hands dirty. I get a sort of floating above it all feeling which I'm willing to blame somewhat on activity, but his game needs to change today or I'm going to be more worried about him.

Foxbird after the end of the day yesterday still feels on the town side, and ecane does as well, but, like with Nachomamma8 I need them to get in here and make some posts so that we've got more to work with.

List from scum to town looks like:

RachMarie, innocentvillager, foedufafa, Nachomamma8, Foxbird, Jaack, ecane.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, in fact, this game, and the way you're playing it feels to me like sort of like how Papa Zito replaced into Newbie 979 when Sawyer couldn't get over his confirmation bias over my play in a way similar to what Jaack is doing now. It felt off in that game (because Papa Zito was scum,) and it's feeling off coming from you here.

I'd love to be wrong about this, and I had more experience with Papa Zito at the time (you've had 4 years to develop that I haven't followed,) so please do be town and help me figure out who the actual scum is.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

VOTE: RachMarie

That'll do for now though.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, meta can make some difference depending on the player. An example of it here would be the willingness to hammer (and in fact stance that it should be the move to make,) regardless of claim. I'll be happy to talk more about my day one claim position after the game is over, but for now it's more theory than we need here. If anyone's worried about it I can give you links to town games where I've taken the same stance. I can buy that it's a legitimate concern for some, but it's the stance I've had for quite a while. Knowing that helps with reading me (or rather stops something from skewing a read.) How useful it is to you and on particularly players varies.

@foedufafa, regardless of the reasons that those voting you give, your best plan to shake them is to go out and find scum.

@innocentvillager, a list of question for you:

• When exactly did you do your meta dive on me and what games did you see where I was scum playing just like this?
  
• What were you worried about from ecane's play towards the end of your reads?
  
• What would the scum motivation for the question that I was asking Foxbird on page 7 be? You found it scummy, but I don't know see how you think that would help me as scum.
  
• Who other than RachMarie and myself do you think is most likely to be scum?

UNVOTE: RachMarie

VOTE: innocentvillager

Convince me you're not just pushing a case on me because your scum and think you see an opening. Jaack feels like he's town newish to the game and making mistakes about what should be scummy. You on the other hand feel like you're trying to find things that will stick.

@Nachomamma8, I'm somewhat reassured that you don't agree with me fully. I like that string of posts and it always worries me when someone else is in complete sync. Is the sheeping by RachMarie there still within your expectations of her play? I suppose she's been making it clear that it's what she was likely to do.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foedafufu, thanks for getting caught up. That's an interesting take on ecane. I take it that her play today hasn't made much of an impression given that you don't seem to be mentioning her. I also find it interesting that you're looking into scum teams already and that I'm simultaneously potentially in one and apparently your strongest town read. Does that seem like a fair take on what you're saying? Do you have anything you'd like to push at right now other than RachMarie and I?

As for my stance on hammering, I feel that the hammer should come regardless of the claim but, among other things, this is a team game and it's not my call to make on my own as I'm not the only one lynching with my hammer vote. This is colored a bit by the last game I played in Bloodbourne Mafia where I was playing as one of the heads of Mixed6. There were multiple days when hammers happened before people knew what was coming and it just doesn't help the game state. Having said that, it's been my established stance for quite a while. Here's what past Troll has had to say about the issue from the first three previous town newbie games I glanced at where I was around in day 1 (I used to replace in a lot):

Post 280 in Newbie 1018: "It's worth noting that Ragnarokio's vote there put Nazgûl at L-1 (one vote away from a lynch.) At this point if no one unvoted and there was someone else who was ready to hammer we'd want to get a claim from Nazgûl before finishing up the lynch. I'm of the opinion that a claim here isn't made to stop the lynch but rather to pass on information. Day one mostly I support the claim process just so that we get into the habit of doing it right. Other opinions differ."

Post 266 in Newbie 1029: "As far as the proper way to react to a claim like that from an IC perspective goes, I'm of the opinion that we should lynch day one based on who we think is scummy regardless of what they claim (if I had a scummy read on someone and they claimed cop at L-1 it wouldn't stop my from hammering. I can go into my reasons if people want but they boil down to the fact that scum have every reason to make whatever claim they think will stop them from getting lynched or try to out power roles and it's just a better idea to go with whatever is most scummy outside the claim when deciding who to lynch.) I take a much harder line on that than most players that I know so take the opinion with a grain of salt if you like."

Post 95 in Newbie 1077: "OK, so here's how we want to handle L-1 in general. This is the time for people to who are voting for Prosaurus to show whether or not they're serious about being willing to let him get lynched by either leaving their votes there or moving them. If anyone else decides that they're ready to lynch Prosaurus they'll call for a claim. Prosaurus shouldn't claim until this happens; prior to that he should assume that there's a chance that he can talk his way out of a lynch and try to do so (either via a defense of his own actions or by arguing that someone else is scummier.) If a call for a claim does come then Prosaurus should claim (and if he's town he should claim truthfully.) We can talk about what to do when a claim happens if and when we get to that, but I can tell you already that I'm of the opinion that if someone is being asked to claim because they're scummy looking I think the lynch should almost always happen no matter what the claim is (especially on day one.)"

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, I've taken a look at my scum games and I don't think that I've ever been partnered with a name anything like bitmap. And here's the problem with that. You're saying that you skimmed over my scum games and think that I played them just like I'm playing this one. That might be true occasionally, but it's not the way I typically play as scum as it's not usually good scum play. Good scum play isn't playing exactly how you would as town (the way I play as town draws the sort of attention that I've got now and I often have to talk myself out of it.) Good scum play blends in and simply makes sure that town's attention isn't focused correctly on the scum team. I'm having trouble believing that you actually did the looking you say you did and find it more likely that you're trying to find something that will make people suspect me.

I will say that I find your reasoning on ecane plausible though. It's not how I would have gone about it (I was largely not bringing her up much until asked because there was no need to draw attention to her,) but I did have similar thoughts.

Regarding whether I think you're misrepresenting what I've had to say about the Foxbird question, I do, but I don't know how much is intentional and how much is not reading carefully. You're saying that I switched my vote to RachMarie just because of that post which is an odd assumption. Here's what I said to Nachomamma8 about it a bit after making the switch:

After the talking with Foxbird some I've come around on her; I am more inclined to believe that the reference you're talking about for the delta9 vote is the more likely (which surprises me some as the "I quit" struck me as almost certainly a game statement when I read it and before I knew if he'd posted anywhere.) I also think that I've got more insight into how she's reasoning than I did and, although it's not how I would reason, knowing that the reasoning is there is important.

It also looks like you're still saying that I was asking the question for no reason, but here's what I had to say about that (to you no less):

I'd concluded by that point that Foxbird was keying in on different aspects of the game than I was and valuing different things in her analysis of the game state. There wasn't any danger of her being lynched in the near future, and I wanted to see a bit more evidence of the sort of details she would hone in on before that before shifting my vote to another candidate. There wasn't a right or wrong answer she could give offhand, but assuming she was willing to answer it gave me more insight to where her attention was in the game.

The bigger issue that I'd expect one could have with my vote switch that came after the post was why it didn't go to Gratuitous, but Nachomamma8 already brought that one up.

I'm not sure what you find scummy about the move even without knowing that though. I didn't use an unfair question against the person I was asking it of and I wasn't keeping her in danger of imminent lynch. It wasn't a transparent question, but there are aspects of town play that shouldn't be entirely transparent as this is a game of information control.

I was still sorting her motives and what to expect from her. Knowing what she was paying attention to is useful. Saying that I said the answer didn't matter doesn't match what I've told you.

Beyond that I see that you're still sticking with the "Zorblag is a terribly clever and dangerous, sophisticated scum who could be fooling us all, but who also panicked at having a vote cast on him at day 2 and gave it all away," line of thought. Does that not strike you as an unlikely combination?

As for knowing why my play helps town, town should all know exactly how what they're doing will help town in the long run. If you don't then you're probably playing the game suboptimally. I'm not a perfect player as town, I'm worse than I am as scum because town is harder to play. Glancing at my wiki it looks like my town record was only 21-10. I do however know the things that I think will help town though, and I do them. If you'd like me to point you to other town games where I've had to make the same sorts of cases because town get stuck on thinking that play they don't understand or that draws attention to me is scummy just let me know. Saying that I'm scum because I have this knowledge is ridiculous.

Finally, if you're convinced that you've caught the entire scum team through process of elimination after a single day night cycle I guess I'm impressed by your conviction? Are your reads normally that dead on this early in the game? I don't expect town to be looking as little into the other cases that you're so sure of at this point if there's no room for error at all in your current reads. You aren't looking like town trying to figure out who's scum. You're looking like scum trying to make a wagon you thought was going to go somewhere happen.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@foedufafa, OK, in that case what's your plan for sorting things from here on out. What do you need from Jaack and I to follow up those ideas. Who else do you need to hear from to sort out loose ends on other reads? Maybe ecane in particular as you seem to have her in a different spot than most, but really, pick a place to start and go poking.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Sorry for not being here for a bit, my internet was out yesterday and most of today. Unfortunately I see that I don't have much to catch up on. Before I say anything else I'll again plead with the town to be here for this game. We want a discussion to happen and we want it to happen sooner rather than later so that we're not making decisions at deadline (when they tend to get rushed and made more poorly.) I know that many of you are busy, but if those that are here can please be here to play that would be really helpful.

@RachMarie, are you calling foedufafa's vote OMGUS just because he's casting it on you after you've voted him? What did you think about the points he was making and was his case on you all without merit or can you see where he'd get that. Now that he's posted some and we have something from the slot do you find what he had to say scummy?

@foedufafa, there are a couple things that innocentvillager could be getting at with that comment. I'm leaving it alone for now as there are other things I like about his play less, but we'll get something from him about it later I'm sure. Again, I'd like to hear more from you on ecane, though now that she's V/LA till Tuesday I don't expect you to be able to get much out of interacting with her directly for the next while.

@Foxbird, I see that you're being consistent with your concerns about someone voting with a person they suspect which I like, but in this case that's not actually what happened. I'm currently the only one voting for innocentvillager because he seems to be making up components of his case against me and not actually trying to figure out who scum are (he's got all but two in the game down as probably town and isn't trying test those at all so far as I can tell; that's not what I expect town to do.) Hopefully you'll be feeling better soon!

@Jaack, I'll be interested in hearing what you think of foedufafa; I'm waiting to see what else he does (and hoping that we'll get more soon.) I tend to find that self-awareness is usually at least as much of a personality tell as it is an alignment tell though. Mind you, you clearly find different things scummy than I do.

@Ziacon, could we please get a prod on Nachomamma8?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@foedufafa, looking over your post again I realize that I didn't answer a pseudo-question about your slot and my suspicions. The fact that fiddlercrabontheroof was posting that they would be about providing content but never did it when raised my level of suspicion. Yours was a slot that had no content and wasn't under suspicion, so scum motive would be to continue that game state as long as possible before actively playing the game (as opposed to town who would have reason to contribute in order to help find scum.) The fact that there was a replacement means that the chances of trying to stall go down and that it was more likely an out of game issue. I also do like the analysis that you made now that I've looked at it again and I hope that you're going to be about to press some issues.

For my own reference and expectation purposes, how much experience with mafia outside of this site do you have?

@RachMarie, you think that innocentvillager is town, right? Convince me of it. I'm seeing severe issues with town-motivation here, but I'm also a target of his so that probably colors my interactions. What am I missing? Or what have you been missing?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@foedufafa, I'll look forward to tonight then. Thanks for the info on prior experience.

UNVOTE: innocentvillager

VOTE: RachMarie

RachMarie is at L-2

Newbie 1722 just ended with a town RachMarie and a scum innocentvillager. I don't think the play here looks like the play there for either. I do have a better grasp on innocentvillager's level of competence now (it's gone way up since we played last which shouldn't be surprising,) so there's some concern about the attention to detail he's showing here. He's also worried overly about me (as is obvious from his first post in the game,) but for now I really think that RachMarie as town in that other game was actually trying to help town and find scum whereas here I do not. I'd still lynch innocentvillager if it came down to it, but RachMarie goes back to target number 1.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Zaicon, can we please get prods on Foxbird and RachMarie?

We've got two on V/LA, two others who haven't posted in 2 days and one who hasn't posted in 4 days. That's five out of our eight players. This game needs to have people play it or why are we even bothering? If you're town get in here and don't give scum cover to lurk and not draw attention to themselves.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@ecane, I'll be looking forward to what you have to say.

@RachMarie, I'll invite any reactions you have to this.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I am unimpressed by the activity we just saw in the past 23 hours. I'd rather be impressed in the future.

Also, the scum PT for Newbie 1722 got revealed since I posted about it last. For anyone who cares going forward, innocentvillager is more willing than most players I've seen to consider a no kill as scum (though it's something I tend to at least strongly consider a lot as well when I'm scum so I do think that it's sometimes a good idea when the town doesn't have a good take on the game, but I won't go into any more detail as there's no reason to help scum know what situations the no kill would be useful if they don't already know.) I don't think that there's a good reason to do it night 1 in most cases so I don't think that would have been the cause of no deaths this particular night, but it's something to keep in mind. For the paranoid among you (you know who you are,) you can keep it in mind for me as well. If scum choose not to night kill in order to try to implicate me now that I've said this it's probably worth it.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@ecane, fake claiming a power role is almost always a bad idea for town as it tends to get you lynched, but that's not actually what he did there. I'm going to let innocentvillager say what he was doing and thinking when he gets back, but I'm not certain that you've eliminated all the possible outcomes. The less I say about this right now the better; I recommend that you do the same for the time being. I don't have any issues with your vote though, and there will be a time for that conversation soon enough.

@foedufafa, RachMarie already answered to some degree, but I'll chime in about the no kills as well. I consider myself among the most likely player to no kill as scum, even in newbie games, that I'm aware of. I always give it consideration to see if it seems to put me and the scum team in general in a better position. Whether it's a good idea tends to be very dependent on the game state and the players in ways that I don't want to go into. Having said that, there's almost never a reason to no kill on night one. Scum almost never have enough information about their fellow players (roles, attitudes, interaction sets, etc ...) to think that the no kill is a better option than a kill for some reason or other. I wasn't bringing up no kill here to suggest that I think scum might have done it; merely mentioning it for the future of the game in case I'm not around to mention it later (and to give scum a reason to potentially not kill when killing would actually be in their best interest.) I consider it much much more likely that scum submitted a kill last night that didn't happen for some reason.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

UNVOTE: RachMarie

VOTE: innocentvillager

That should be L - 2.

I don't have time to say much just now, but I'll get to it this evening. The thing I like least about the recent posts though is his reaction to ecane's post and vote. I'll talk about that in more detail in a bit.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@everyone other than innocentvillager, if you understand what I'm saying in the first part of this next bit then I approve. If not then sadly I'm not going to be going into more detail here and now as it's not useful for town to have the discussion any more clear than it is. I'll be happy to talk about it after the game is over though.

@innocentvillager, given that you're claiming that's you're most pro-town post today I should know why you think that your post was pro-town regardless of my alignment, that's just an experience thing. And the post is pro-town-ish in isolation in that it helps if it comes from town and does no damage coming from scum, though NAI as any player aware enough to make it could react that way regardless of alignment after ecane's post.

So here's the problem with it coming from you. You're the reason that that post got made. You clearly set up PR speculation with your post to Nachomamma8 about really not wanting to talk about your reason in a newbie game. You're experienced enough with newbie games in particular to know that players are going to latch onto that and jump to that conclusion first. With a more experience player base you could probably not worry about that danger, but here, given what I've seen of your recent play, that can't have been a surprise at all. Up until you made that post I was giving you some benefit of the doubt, maybe you had some payoff in mind that was going to see a big reveal in this sort of situation. Which is what I tried to tell ecane in reaction to it. But you didn't and now you're even trying to claim town credit for it. Had you had a play that was pro-town in mind when you made the original post this would have been the place to out it. Please tell me how I'm wrong with that because if you are town I need to see that plan.

You said earlier when complaining about me that town shouldn't be so aware of how every play they make is pro-town. I disagreed at the time, and here's a good place where it should have been clear to you, were you town. Scum have a reason to make that move. Town don't.

As far as your post replying to me, you're trying to say that my play here is like my scum games; you certain indicated that you thought that I had particular games that were like this one in Post 297 where you said

Have you meta'd Zorby? He has some pretty legit and detailed scumgames in there that feel pretty similar to his play in both here and 1222. I suggest you do a little more comprehensive meta before you townread him off of similar playstyle to one game we had together with him.

But then you aren't able to identify the games that you had in mind. I post like this in many scum games, but I don't play like this. I don't have a reason to drive activity as scum like I do when I'm town. I have no issue with you not instantly thinking I'm town based on posts, no one really should. What I have a problem with is you saying that I can post like this when I'm scum so I'm probably scum here. You're misrepresenting the suspicion on me that I was working with after entering the game (I was never under any serious pressure this game; I know pressure situations and this hasn't been one of them.)

Your main case on me is that I could be scum who's uber competent and pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. And you're literally saying that you think I panicked over a bit of pressure as scum.

It's very possible that you were hoping that you would get me and Jaack off your case by doing all of this. But when you realized we were still scumreading you, you panicked, and came out with this post.

You're walking that back some it seems:

Beyond that I see that you're still sticking with the "Zorblag is a terribly clever and dangerous, sophisticated scum who could be fooling us all, but who also panicked at having a vote cast on him at day 2 and gave it all away," line of thought. Does that not strike you as an unlikely combination?

I don't know what speculative oversimplified AtE you're trying to accomplish here, but I think you were hoping that the rant you made would sway town members to solidify you as town. I can think of scum-motivation for it, but I can't really see town motivation. It was just too little pressure for you to burst your bubble. Honestly, you pointing it out is WIFOM, you painting yourself-scum in an oversimplified narrative here is WIFOM, and to answer your question, no, the way I see it what you're doing is not an unlikely combination at all. I'm only staying off your lynch today because I want actual content Rach and she's way scummier than you right now.

But even that is silly as what I did actually fits exactly the pattern that you said you'd do as town.

See, if I'm town, this shit builds up. Someone's tunneling me. I refute those points, and they continue tunneling me. I go, hey, what the fuck? You're not listening to me! Eventually my bubble will probably burst if they continue to tunnel and misrep me. I don't see Zorblag's post as a town reaction here.

I had probable town tunneling on me in Jaack. I started by mostly ignoring his attacks, got around to attempting to refute the end of day one, and then tried this approach at the start of day two when he's still at it.

Of course my rant is an attempt to sway people into thinking that I'm town, why else would someone make that? And why on Earth would town being persistently tunnelled not do it? Further, this is a newbie game and one of the big things that people need to learn in these games when they start playing is that what they assume should be scummy often isn't. I get to try to make both of those points at the same time with that post. It's not too surprising that it didn't work for Jaack, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth trying. Could I do it as scum? Sure. Is there a reason not to do it as town? Not offhand despite your claim. It's, again, something that I need to do in these games from time to time.

And I shouldn't need to explain any of that to you as a more experienced player. You really seem like you're throwing mud to see what will stick in my direction. It's not working, so you're backing off now. You're even saying that you may need to scum hunt in some other places (though there's no reason not to have been doing that earlier and blaming my posts for not trying is a crappy argument.)

I don't like RachMarie's play at all. It's really easy to read as opportunistic scum. I see more scum motivation in your play at this point though.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@ecane, innocentvillager might have had either some reason to have that suspicion he hadn't shared (what it could be escapes me, but that doesn't mean it's not possible,) and it's also possible he had some reason to fake it, though if that was the case that should have come out with his post. Rather than getting into speculation of whether he's the cop, if you don't like that play then looking for other reasons to find him suspicious in that situation are probably worth it. I like to think of town as dancing around PRs the first couple days mostly unless there's a solid reason not to, though what counts as a solid reason will vary from person to person.

@Foxbird, I forgot to mention this earlier, but I seldom make cases in the first 2 or 3 days of games in order to convince people that I'm right. I'm more doing it so that everyone has access to my thought process. It helps them get a read on me and it invites everyone to point out flaws in my reasoning which helps me refine reads. Both of those are good for town, but I'd rather have everyone come to their own conclusions rather than sheeping me.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, I saw that innocentvillager had been considering a no kill as scum for another, completed game. I meant for it to be something to keep in mind for future game days if he was still alive and brought it up in that context. I did not intend anyone to assume that a no kill happened night one.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Fuck this shit. I'm not getting fucking scumread for this bullshit.

Before I get to anything else you've had to say, you saying this to me in this game at this point is the height of absurdity. What you've done with that quote there is to sum up how I feel about your play regarding me today in particular, but even stretching back to day one, in a nice little vulgar nugget. Kudos on the attempt to turn that on its head.

As what I'm scum reading you on, you're saying that as experienced town in a newbie game you should leave that you're sure someone who's contributed anything over the course of the game is town, but you reallyyyy don't want to talk about it unless he's going to get lynched for such a mundane reason that hurts nothing to talk about at the time? It's practically begging for inexperienced town to start talking about PRs and you should know that. There's no good reason for town to do that, but scum love it, especially when you get to turn around and try to say that you were pro-town for complaining when people talked about PRs.

I'm posting these walls largely to respond to the garbage cases and replies you keep put out there about me. If you don't want to have to deal with them stop giving me the nonsense to respond that you've been giving me and go find scum. Or sit here and complain about the mean old Troll who types things that compel you ignore everything else, because that's clearly what town would do.

As for the calling your own post pro-town, come back when you're arguing shape of game and not a post that your play which hurts the town has set you up for and we can talk about it. You're drawing false equivalencies there and you should know it.

Having said all of that, I actually agree that you're not saying that RachMarie and I are the scum team and that you're looking at the two of us independently. That's not something I find scummy about your play.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, you don't seem to be fully caught up yet, but when you get a chance, is foedufafa still the right place for your vote? Who's skating by and not getting the attention they should be right now (maybe that's foedufafa? Maybe it's you?)

@Jaack, your activity level here is getting a bit troubling. That last post did a fine job of staying the course, but I don't know that I expect you to be complacent as town which is how I might describe your recent behavior. What can we do to get you back involved in the game more (and the answer shouldn't actually be about the rest of us so much as yourself.)

@Foxbird, you're also not about so much today, though I grant that the dental work isn't fun or an encouragement to get here and be active. You asked ecane about her thoughts on my interactions with innocentvillager, but I wonder what you're thinking about innocentvillager at this point. He's certainly a central figure right now and I'd love to see you weigh in on his actions or the statements about his actions. Like with Jaack I've vaguely worried that you're holding back from the game at this point.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, compare innocentvillager's play this game to his play in the other? I don't think that it's a useful comparison anymore. He's grown a lot as a player since then. I could take a look, but I recall him trying to find his feet in the game which he's not trying to do here at all.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, that's not the one you asked about, but, like I said earlier, I don't find his play particularly similar. His play here has been largely focused on me and there's nothing comparable in the other game. I didn't see the things that I'm finding scummy here and he was much more reactive at the start. Here he's doing more to lead lynches than I think he was there.

I read him in isolation (as I read you in isolation.) You're saying that you think there are more similarities than I'm seeing. Care to elaborate on them?

@innocentvillager, I don't buy that you thought leaving an "I know he's town" tell hanging mysteriously wouldn't lead to PR speculation in a newbie game. From what you're doing recently that's right in your wheelhouse for level of sophistication. And like I say, when you're starting to say that the way you're playing the game benefits town (activity level, proactive play, drawing people in,) I'm fine if you start calling your plays pro-town. That's not what you did. You said that a single post which you have every reason to make as scum is your most pro-town post of the day. Again, you're using a false equivalency here. Your play has directly hurt town, not helped it, and you're trying to call town credit for that. My play has helped town and I'm pointing that out.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, I don't think that accusations or rolefishing are particularly more likely to come from either alignment. I think it's more player dependent.

I do think that innocentvillager shouldn't be at all surprised that someone in a newbie game thought that he was implying cop though. There's no reason to leave that one mysterious as town.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, as a complete aside, how is it that both you and RachMarie keep adding that extra i into ecane's name?

As a direct issue, do you still think foedufafa is the most likely scum?

For innocentvillager's post, it doesn't have to be likely to catch. It just has to be hanging out there as bait in case someone bites. Again, why do that as town?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Sorry for being gone again. That's the second prolonged internet outage in a couple weeks which is irritating (moreso because I'm teaching a pair of online courses this summer and it's hard to teach online courses without access to being online.)

The plus side is that I've had a couple days to ponder some things. Looking now I see that I do in fact like innocentvillager's posts since I've been gone and the one Nachomamma8 cites is indeed a good one. I'm going to for now put my troubles with innocentvillager's other play on a backburner (something I wouldn't have done had I posted yesterday,) and see where he goes from here.

@innocentvillager, I've realized that you might be missing the forest for the trees when it comes to my games. You keep saying that you see my scum games as the same as this one and if you mean that the posts are the same content-wise and tone-wise then you're right. That's just how I play. My town and scum games, post by post, read like that. The difference is what I try and do in the game. I'll actually be talking a bit about that regarding Nachomamma8 in just a bit.

Beyond that, is there a reason that you seem so hung up on me this game? From your very first posts you've been well nigh obsessed with my (going as far to do a PbPA apparently for the first game and because I was in it despite the fact that I'd done nothing to ask for it.) Our game four years ago shouldn't have left that big an impression but you seem overly concerned about me in most of what you've done here.

@everyone, I'd like to have everyone note that what is being called almost across the board as town play from Nachomamma8 is actually the shape of game that I try to play as scum. I'm not saying that he's scum here, but the longer the game goes the more concerned it makes me. His last couple posts are somewhat reassuring, but here's what I'm seeing and what I'd like everyone to keep in mind for future days.

His individual posts almost all look fine to me. There's the one where he says that I won't be lynched this game, which goes farther than it should as I said earlier, but which isn't actually that concerning to me. He's asking some questions, he's talking about what's happening in the game. He's cast votes and did change his the first day when the situation evolved. Those are all great things, but they should be coming from an experienced player no matter what their alignment is.

The shape of the game though is that he started day one play with a couple pointed questions (which will tend to give a good impression,) and then I don't feel anything like consistent pressure form him. He's doing a lot of poking holes in some cases that others are making and has been throughout the game (which is fine on it's own,) but there's not a huge drive to dig at scum. He's working with a town read from most of the game and he's not rocking the boat much. It's low impact play that stays out of the spotlight, let's the game proceed mostly on it's own without steering it and is present enough to maintain good read from the other players (though he's not been particularly present and that's masked some in this game,) but isn't overwhelming in a way that would cause most players to question why he isn't getting night killed.

That's the way you play to win as scum, not through manipulation, not through pushing mislynches through, not through anything that draws attention.

Does that mean that I think Nachomamma8 is scum at this point? No, not really. The thing about that is that it could easily be coming from town as well (which is why it's good scum play.) I'd like it if he'd pick things up a bit, and he's doing that with the last couple posts (were I scum in his position and given the stances he's taken I'd probably be looking at town in all of RachMarie, innocentvillager, myself and foedufafa and I'd less of a push for any of them to get lynched as it's better to let town make it's own mistakes.) Those last couple posts feel like what I'd see from a style of game that apparently I associate with Drippping Goofball or Eliberith (which shouldn't mean anything to most of you and might not even be reasonable as I'm working on half-memories of games from over four years ago.) They don't fit the rest of the shape of the game that worries me. Having said that, they're a couple posts and they don't change the shape of the game he's played on their own.

tl;dr: If he's around towards the end of the game and I'm not, please don't just assume that Nachomamma8 is town. What he's shown isn't scummy play, but it would be really good play for scum and not as good as it seems on the surface for town who have a different set of concerns.

@Nachomamma8, any particular reasons you'd care to share that foedufafa is scum? I'm comparing RachMarie's play here with the town play I saw in 1722 and it doesn't hold up well. Is there another game you'd like to point me to for baseline? Right now I'm seeing RachMarie as a much better lynch than foedufafa as I'm completely unsold on Jaack's (which should surprise no one given what I think of Jaack's other cases.)

UNVOTE: innocentvillager

VOTE: RachMarie

This is L-1 again.

No one should call for claim unless they're ready to lynch.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Oh, also, if I'm not around to say it later, if we lynch RachMarie and she flips scum then her partner should probably be Jaack. He consistently has her in his top for scum reads but has never voted her, and he should have gotten on at the end of the day day one to try to move the lynch to her from his apparently power role read of Gratuitous in the last 24 hours of the game. He was even on, but never got around to it. It's poor play on it's own, but it become terrible if RachMarie is actually scum.

Also also, unless there's another night with no deaths, town from a numbers point of view should probably no lynch if we get to day four. What to do in terms of claims depends on how the game goes in day three, and there might be cases where it doesn't matter. There should be at least someone who's about to talk that over if it comes up, but, again, if I'm not around, that's something to keep in mind for later in the game.

@RachMarie, what if his partner isn't getting pressure, would he bus then? Hard bussing is the other thing I like to do (see Mini 1090 for a game where I bussed both of my scum buddies days 1 and 2 (to the point of leading the wagons on the first of them if memory serves.)) And really, if this doesn't fit Nachomamma8's play as scum that doesn't bother me too much. I mostly want to use it as an illustration of what really successful scum play would look like and why (though having everyone be aware of it for Nachomamma8 in particular is important this game.) As I said, this could easily be town play, but it shouldn't be written off as such.

I'm sorry to see a claim, but yeah. OK.

I'd rather have an irked Nachomamma8, so he shouldn't wait for a mislynch to get riled up and lay waste to a game.

As for the hydra offer, I'm finding that this game is actually too much of a drain on my resources just now so I'll probably be done playing them again for the indefinite future after this, so I'll have to pass.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, also, from a theoretical point of view here, if you're not scum then you're lynch bait and really handy for scum to have alive towards endgame. I don't see the advantage scum Nachomamma8 would have in going after you now as either you're getting lynched today without him or he's left enough of a door open to make sure you're a late game lynch if needed.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Just so that everyone's clear why we shouldn't be claiming unless we're about to get lynched or are power roles with information worth sharing, it helps the scum narrow down on who power roles are. If you're going to get lynched after day one then you should claim just before the lynch is going to happen just in case you had power role information that would be useful for the town to know (that generally isn't true day one which is why I don't think the claim is so worth it there, but I guess that stance might be something I need to look at with the bullet proof power role now in the game as I've realized since my posts day on that it's a change which might affect how I feel about it.) If anyone other than RachMarie gets lynched today and she's town then scum are working with more information than they would be otherwise. It helps them make the night kill which will benefit them the most as they have that much of a better picture of the true games state.

Given that the claim was VT, if RachMarie is town it would have been better to not make it and risk getting lynched before making the claim rather than make it early and risk not getting lynched and giving the scum that extra information. If RachMarie we think she has a good chance of being scum (and I think she's got a better chance than anyone else right now prior to the claim,) then we've got some WIFOM to work through if we choose to (would she claim VT there instead of PR which might be more likely to save her? Possibly, but then she's claimed early and might hope that it looks like town giving up?) Personally a VT claim will pretty much never be a reason for me to change a vote from a lynch wagon, but I don't think that claim was for me (especially as I asked for it not to happen when it did.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@everyone, I'd like to have everyone note that what is being called almost across the board as town play from Nachomamma8 is actually the shape of game that I try to play as scum. I'm not saying that he's scum here, but the longer the game goes the more concerned it makes me. His last couple posts are somewhat reassuring, but here's what I'm seeing and what I'd like everyone to keep in mind for future days.

And if I were scum in this scenario, as you very well know, you would be handing me the game. I wouldn't defend RachMarie as my one significant action in the game if she were my partner; I wouldn't. She's getting a lot of pressure, my cred goes down the drain pretty much completely, which would be the complete opposite result that I would want from playing a game in this way. On the other hand, if you lynch RachMarie for me, then I sit in LyLo with a partner and an entire wagon of townies to blame an immensely stupid lynch on. I win every time.

If you are paranoid of me, then mentioning your paranoia off-hand will do nothing to rip me down from my position. Absolutely nothing.

*shrugs* Mentioning it might not do anything, but not mentioning it certainly does nothing. I do agree that if you are scum there's no way to play this way as a partner for RachMarie, though like I say, if she's scum the obvious place to look is Jaack. If she's town and you're scum then we see how the future goes, but depending on who's about nothing is certain. In this case I'm pointing out that you're getting cleared to early by too many people for what would be excellent play if your scum and passable play if you're town. That's worth noting in a newbie game.

I'm not worried enough about it to make a push on you make any sense here, but I do find the actual game state worth pointing out.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

If Rach is scum in this position, the correct move is ALSO to draw a power role claim pretty much 100% of the time unless she's banking on me saving her (which she shouldn't be, because I have not been around in any significant capacity as of recently). This is another reason why she looks town. Zorblag noting that she should have held onto the claim is all good and well because it's how he would have played it but it's not how scum!Rach should be playing it and she knows much, much better than that.

The correct move by town RachMarie is to hold off on the claim until someone's ready to hammer, and then tell the truth as it's better for town if she does as a Vanilla Townie. The correct move for scum is to do something else. Depending on the game state and the players that will often be claiming a power role, but at least when I was playing last there were plenty of towns who would let a VT claim made too early go and move to another lynch. In the end, if the correct move for scum was always the same thing it would be easy to find scum; scum's best move is to read the situation and make the move that this town will buy.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

And Zorblag, your case with reference to 1722 is that Rach is a little less engaged than she was there which I think is comparable levels of activity (yes, she cased a bit more there but she also seems busier now); I don't think that's really so significant as compared to my play here versus my play in Near Vanilla (where I was much, much more active); why do you have suspicions on her for being underwhelming but not suspicions on me?

I chose that game because it was essentially concurrent with this game, so levels of activity would be less of an issue. I tend to glance at games that end in the queue to see who's playing them and that one struck my eye as we had two players to work with there.

If you'd like to point me to your Near Vanilla I'm happy to take a look, but not having glanced at it it certainly hasn't done much to influence my read as of yet.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

As for the hydra offer, I'm finding that this game is actually too much of a drain on my resources just now so I'll probably be done playing them again for the indefinite future after this, so I'll have to pass.

And, I am very sorry to hear this. I'm sorry for not being around in a more complete capacity before this, but I've very much enjoyed your play this game; if you consider playing a game in the future, playing a hydra game where the other player is the primary posting head (and would play anyways and isn't necessarily relying on you) would be a nice way to dip your feet back in, it's a lot easier when you don't have to constantly be around for months and months and months and can instead dip in when you have time and dip out when you don't (there are also some good sites off-site with quicker timeframes that means you only need to free up a week to play mafia every once in a while instead of a month).

Yeah, hydras tend not to let me pay less attention so much as they cause me to spend more time trying to convince my other heads of things. I'm also less enamored by needing to put up with cases that seem poorly reasoned at this case than perhaps I used to be. Helping point out what doesn't make sense used to be more fun, but now I've got a 3 year old at home who I get to do that for all the time anyhow. That'll be my arrogance speaking, but although this game is fine, it's clear enough to me that I'm not actually interested in playing the game of mafia well at this point. If I'm not going to play it to my standards then I'd prefer not to play it.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, so glancing at that game it was a different time period and you were in a hydra. It's not that useful a comparison. Were you as busy then?

For RachMarie in 1722 she feels like she was getting reads and figuring out the game (or at least trying) there despite not in essentially the same time period here. I don't think that's an issue for you here; there seem to be awareness and opinions despite a lighter follow up than I'd like for various things and an overall light touch in the game.

I would like to know why you think foedufafa is our best chance of hitting scum though. I know why everyone else is voting whether I like their reasons or not (hint, the worst reasons are currently for foedufafa.) I don't know that for you. It's not inconceivable that I'd switch, but even with what you're saying and knowing that you and RachMarie are a highly unlikely scum team I find more to dislike about her play.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

And foedufafa's not being on for about the past three days really does him no favors here as scum in a position where they've got pressure but town has more would probably lurk things out as is happening. Though I suppose town might do the same. The activity levels in the game make so many things harder than they should be.

Also we're down to about 40 hours so people need to get here and play, but I don't have the time or energy to shout at them individually.

Everyone not here, consider yourself shouted at! Huzzah!

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, see here's what I hate. Saying Nachomamma8 has made a very good case strikes me as odd given that I think that Nachomamma8 has made no case at all. I mean, really, as far as I can tell, nothing he's said has been about why foedufafa is scum. Did you see something that I missed?

He might have a case he hasn't put forth, but you citing the case that he hasn't laid out as part of the reason to vote that way is just awful unless there's a swath of posts that you're seeing and I'm not.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, for Amished's tell, I was in one of the games when he used it first, though it had already been refined by then (unless you're talking about something else.) Here's how he described it at the time:

For those of you that don't know what's going on; I've basically come up with a scumtell that if you *criticize* who you replaced in; you're scum. This is a refinement from what I had it (if you read your replacement at all you were scum); but this seems to cover all the instances where I've seen/remember it. If you're town, you really don't have to worry about your predecessor as you know they're town; but if you think that they're scummy; then you're scum. As town, you know that you're not scummy and don't deserve criticism at all.

I don't believe that applies in this case (when I asked him about specific cases in the game based on my earliest instances of replacing in for town he explicitly ruled out noting inactivity.) In any case, I find calling someone scummy for having read their predecessors game when replacing in to be unimpressive. It's something I'll do every game and, really shouldn't be that uncommon.

Amished was an excellent player and a pleasure to play with, but I think he was overconfident in that tell.

...

And that's how far I got before I had to take a 45 minute break to rock a particularly fussy baby. Let's cut to the chase.

I believe that Nachomamma8 is playing a prosecutor's role for the case against foedufafa in his post. It's overblown.

I believe that Nachomamma8 and RachMarie are highly unlikely to be scum together. I've never seen a game where scum interacted like this as a team.

Nachomamma8 cares enough about this to be putting in more effort that he needs to and should as scum. Keeping RachMarie alive might have payoffs (she votes with him the rest of the game, she's a late mislynch that he just has to add a vote to in LyLo to win, etc ...) but his position without this move was good enough that I don't think scum would bother.

What does that all mean? Even though I hate hate hate the play coming from RachMarie I'm going to let her be town at this point. This isn't to say that I dislike RachMarie; to the contrary I find her as a person quite pleasant, but this play this game. Ugg. Letting it go really hurts. But I'm going to do it because I'm not here to punish bad play, but rather to catch scum. We are going to talk about this after the game is over, but for my purposes right now, if she's fooled Nachomamma8 that's going to be enough to be fooling me as well.

foedufafa might be scum so he'll do for the lynch today. I still hate some of innocentvillager's play as well, but I'm not going to switch back to him for now as despite not showing up at the end of the day again, I like what he was doing at the end. Nachomamma8 is probably wrong about ecane as a partner for foedufafa, but I'm not going to get into that now. It doesn't matter for today and I'm not overly optimistic about being killed tonight right now, so I'm probably around tomorrow to talk about it.

UNVOTE: RachMarie

VOTE: foedufafa

The rest of the town had better not let this day end in a no lynch. If I need to I'll be back to switch back to RachMarie, but please, if you're town, get here and play. Don't make this day end like day 1 did.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So innocentvillager has made it harder to lynch RachMarie and not helped in lynching foedufafa. That mostly helps us no lynch today. That's unfortunate as this is not the time for fos votes (are those even a thing since I left? They seem some combination of redundant and self-contradictory.)

We do not want to no lynch on day 2. Town should get here and prevent that from happening.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, you should give intent now if that's the case. Much as I hate it, we potentially need time to react to any claim and time is now an issue.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Once, when I was scum, I beat Nachomamma8 because town failed to hammer me at deadline in LYLO. That's one of the things that I was reminded of when I went to look for innocentvillager's mythical bitmap.

In future days we should work hard to get things done earlier so that we don't have to deal with deadlines in this way. There's really no good reason to get to deadline in these games.

I'm also fine with a hammer at any point now.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

With that claim we're probably best served by a full claim and then most likely a no lynch depending on what gets claimed.

In theory a bubble claim would be best, but for this game I don't think that it's worth the wait for the return on investment.

VT here.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Sorry, should have been popcorn, not bubble. It's been a while. But mostly we should just get the claim done and then probably get to the no lynch.

And we're slightly better off not talking about suspicions as scum are now night killing just based on manipulation. Knowing what we think based on flips helps them. Unless we're lynching discussion should wait until tomorrow.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, before having discussion we should decide whether we're going to be playing today or going for the no lynch. If you're scum you're doing no harm other than possibly getting others to reply, but if you're town you're giving scum information to decide on what night kill makes the most sense. If we no lynch the next night kill makes the rest of town's job easier just by eliminating a potential suspect, but we want to get there with scum knowing as little about current thoughts as possible.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

We want to finish the mass claim first which means we need to hear from Foxbird.

Then I might have something to say, I'm thinking about it overnight.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

It would force us to take action today in a vaguely sub-optimal situation, but it's better not to talk about it.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So this is normally when I advocate voting no lynch and forcing scum to narrow down our choices for a possible mislynch. Having said that, with the night kills I suspect we'd get and the fact that I have come to conclusions about alignments (in part due to this game and in part due to another which finished recently,) that make me more confident than normal in some set of my reads, I'd be fine with lynching as normal today.

I'm going to follow Nachomamma8's lead on this one. If, taking his thoughts of the game into consideration, he thinks that the no lynch is a better option then I'll go with that. If he thinks that some set of his reads are strong enough to make using the current town, rather than waiting for one more night kill, to make decisions is a better option I'll go with that as well.

I'll explain all of that once we're having actual game discussion.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, trusting Nachomamma8 might or might not be the motivation for my last post. In any case, as I said, I'll explain it when we're talking about the game which will either be today or after one more scum kill.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Right, so given that I would rather not no lynch as well. Unless everyone else wants to no lynch we should proceed with the day as normal. If the rest of the game does prefer a no lynch then they should go ahead and vote for it (which would be the 4 needed votes,) but if anyone else prefers a normal day we'll start when they say it.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Right, so just in case that wasn't clear, this is the exciting bit where Foxbird, Jaack and RachMarie come and either vote no lynch like innocent villager has done or say they'd like to play today as normal. If you're about you should be able to do one of those two fairly quickly. If you have any questions about the theory I can answer them (or any of the more experienced players could.) Let's try to get this done.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Jaack, by the rules it takes a majority voting no lynch for the early no lynch. If you prefer the no lynch there's no reason not to vote for it now.

@RachMarie, I'd really like it if you'd come weigh in on this. You're on site a lot and should be able to pop in to this thread and either vote no lynch or say you'd like to play as normal this day.

I should not be having to push people to get done with this part of the game. Let's move people so we can get on to whatever the next part of the game will be.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

OK, I'm calling that good enough. We're playing this day as normal.

Here's a place to start the discussion.

innocentvillager is correct; I've decided that Nachomamma8 is town. What he did at the end of the day yesterday was totally unnecessary as scum and should have hurt his position a little. He actively got in and led us to a mislynch when he could easily have sat back and let the RachMarie lynch happen. Given my experience with the game I've got every reason to believe that he's not a partner with RachMarie; I've never seen a scum team play this way towards eachother, but even if I was willing to believe that they were being super buddy buddy as scum partners, Nachomamma8 let the RachMarie suspicion go long enough that a lynch should have happened before he stepped in (ecane should have voted to lynch RachMarie yesterday given that the claim had already happened.) Since I don't think it's at all likely that RachMarie and Nachomamma8 are scum together that either means that Nachomamma8 as scum decided to put part of his reputation on the line to shift a vote from one town player to another when he would have been just fine otherwise, or he's town and was trying to prevent what he thought was going to be a mislynch. The second is so much more likely that it's not even a contest in my mind.

Reinforcing that is Nachomamma8's scum play in Newbie Game 1723. That's what a scum game should look like. Although some early posts here look similar he rode a low impact game to victory and never stepped in to make a change like he did here. There are a couple other differences I could point out between the two, but the big thing here is that I have a reason to believe that Nachomamma8, as scum, should play like I expect good scum to play. As of the end of the day yesterday we no longer have that.

As far as not being so sure about innocentvillager at this point, I'll let Nachomamma8 answer questions for himself as he'd like, but obviously, after a couple flips and no scum every town player should reassess their reads. If you're not trying to look at things with the new information we have in mind then you're doing things wrong.

@innocentvillager, if you're town you've been playing a game that attempts to keep scum in the dark as much as possible as to the true state of your beliefs. That was true for ecane in your entrance day one, it's true for how you reacted to ecane's PR claim, even up to using your vote for it at the end of the day. I suspect that was true for why you made yourstatement about foedufafa, though that ended up being an awful move in the long run. I strongly believe that you need to stop that at this point in the game though. I can't tell whether your post about Nachomamma8 is serious or not as it would fit with that pattern, but there are no power roles to protect at this time and actually hitting scum based on what everyone actually thinks about the other players needs to be town's priority now.

If you were so convinced that the mod had slipped and cleared foedufafa why not push that more?

I'll have to get to more things later as I've got things outside of mafia I need to get to, but we need everyone here taking part in the game today. If you're town then please, be here and help us get this right.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, it should be clear by now, but we are going to lynch today. Don't hold anything back. Do reply to questions, but if you've thoughts you should get them out there.

@Nachomamma8, because scum already know about the night kill attempts it's safe for me to say that I'm not particularly sure that scum would have tried to target me. It depends on who scum are. I think that scum targeting you is at least as likely. We can talk about it more later. Ecane's target for the night seems as likely to be me as any, but I don't know enough about her play to think that she'd target someone to keep safe over someone to try to kill night one. Night two I think it's safe to guess that she likely targeted innocentvillager, though if he's scum they clearly had a work around there.

It was also clear from his reaction to my post after the PR slip that innocentvillager was clear on the PR-claim nature of ecane's post. The vote at the end of the day, as I say, is consistent with how he's played trying to feed scum misinformation if he's town.

@Jaack, my vote yesterday was largely as you describe. Your case on why foedufafa was town was unimpressive, RachMarie's claim that Nachomamma8 had a case was nonsense, and then when Nachomamma8 made his case against foedufafa it struck me as mostly overinflated. My personal read based on the answers that foedufafa gave was a slight town read. The reason that I changed my vote when I did was that I was more convinced at the time that RachMarie would flip town than I was that foedufafa would. Given the timing and activity those were the two viable lynches; I went with the least bad one as, despite what innocentvillager is saying here, that's the better move day two given the information gains.

What were your feelings about RachMarie at the end of the day. You've very consistently had her at the top of your scum pile (and are looking at potential partnerships with her now.) The one thing you seemed to have against foedufafa was Post 391. Could you go into more detail on why that was more damning than all the play that you'd seen from RachMarie which you'd disliked up to there?

I'll also point out that there's really no way that I should play the way I have were I RachMarie's partner. If you're thinking that I could be then I suppose it doesn't surprise me given everything else you've had to say, but it would be pretty awful play both in terms of letting her potentially get lynched and drawing connections between the two of us. If you want to look at what a good partner for scum-RachMarie would look like you need only look in the mirror. The constant suspicion with no votes, the chainsaw on me when I switched from Foxbird to her and failing to step in and move a lynch from someone you thought was a power role onto a top suspect at the end of day 1 are all things that a scum partner would be likely to do.

@innocentvillager, based on a number of posts you've made today, you seem to be fairly confident that Nachomamma8 would be the kill tonight and that he hasn't been targeted before. I don't think those are good assumptions. Could you talk about why that is or isn't something you're assuming? In particular calling for a no lynch after only Nachomamma8 shares what he has to say only benefits scum if they're potentially going to kill anyone else.

If you're claiming that Nachomamma8 would be in the same position today had the RachMarie lynch gone through rather than him essentially being directly responsible for diverting it to a lynch of foedufafa as town I think that you're misrepresenting the situation. If he's scum then he intentionally grabbed credit for mislynching town instead of being opposed to what I can only assume would be a town mislynch. For a player who was not under any suspicion that's poor scum play, especially when we've got evidence that Nachomamma8 plays a traditional scum game (which that absolutely isn't.) It's possible that I've read him wrong, I don't actually know anything until we see flips, but at this point I'm willing to say that Nachomamma8 scum is unlikely enough that I'll stake the game on it being false.

As an aside, I can explain what you're saying in a bit more detail about Nachomamma8's role claim (Jaack at least seems to think it's pro-town, though you noted correctly that it's not.) Scum knows whether there's a 1-shot BP in the game or not based on whether or not they have a Roleblocker. If Nachomamma8 were scum that would be a completely safe fake claim, and given the ability to no kill at night scum even have the ability to try to make it look like it's been used should they care to. I still strongly think that Nachomamma8 is town, but that's not one of the reasons and it shouldn't be for anyone else either.

As far as foedufafa goes, if you think you've got a strong reason to think that he was town (and you're standing by that mod-slip story to the point of asking now how it couldn't be the case,) saying that you're worried about the integrity of the game is absolute nonsense. If you see a reason someone should be town in that situation you push it to make sure everyone fully understands what's going on. If you're pretty sure that town is going to be lynched you stop that from happening. You saw the foedufafa steam building up and had plenty of time to get something else going and instead, at the end of the day, reduced the realistic lynches to only that player. Hell, you didn't even complain about the lynch yesterday, but instead waited until today to do it. And I'm supposed to believe that you're actually trying to help town win the game at this point? I'm having trouble with it.

And really, you went from "Nachomamma8 is basically town" to "He's just as unclear as the rest of us" because he said he wasn't as sure you're town anymore? That's a huge swing for really garbage reasons.

@RachMarie, you apparently now feel there's a strong case on innocentvillager. Care to share why you were so willing to cast a vote? I know that you've said that you were unaware of the game state (which is one more thing that I hate about how you've played this game,) but what are your current thoughts there?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Tell us why when you get a chance (hopefully sooner rather than later.) I'd love to see as little POE as possible.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Yeah, but he wasn't attacking Nachomamma8 when you cast your vote. Is it mostly that he sees both of us as scum when we shouldn't be a team (and if so what do you think of Jaack?)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, so your saying that you read Nachomamma8's claim, but not the two posts after that before making your first post today and that you take his answering RachMarie's question in an entirely understandable way to be evidence of a master plan he's trying to get you lynched down the road today. Ignoring for a second the fact that someone familiar with the setup shouldn't assume that a BP claim clears anyone at this stage in the game, that's a really self centered response.

As far as not pushing against a lynch you think is town for whatever reason, if you're town that's probably playing against your win condition which is explicitly against the rules. If you're sure someone is town you should prevent their lynch. If you're pretty sure someone is town you should still make some effort. In fact, you know who did that right this game? Nachomamma8 with RachMarie. If you're really town and felt strongly about it, not making a bigger deal of that was a huge mistake (which is only compounded by the fact that the way you played it from the start outted our jailkeeper.)

And to repeat some questions you didn't answer, based on a number of posts you've made today, you seem to be fairly confident that Nachomamma8 would be the kill tonight and that he hasn't been targeted before. I don't think those are good assumptions. Could you talk about why that is or isn't something you're assuming? In particular calling for a no lynch after only Nachomamma8 shares what he has to say only benefits scum if they're potentially going to kill anyone else.

As far as my scum game and the meta of it goes, my posts look similar individually to my town posts, but I do tend to post less as scum when I can do so without drawing too much attention (or when drawing lurking attention is less detrimental than posting and needing to take a position on something that it's better not to.) Those familiar with my scum meta can actually pick out my scum games reasonably well. In fact, I've had to target players early in the game to kill specifically because of that (Mini 1090 is a great example of that where I had to spend my first three nights killing VP Baltar and a 1-shot BP Vi just because there's no way they wouldn't know I was playing my scum game by endgame. I'm helped by the fact that those who would be dangerous to me because they can do that are also perfectly reasonable kills in the games for plenty of other reasons so I can get those kills in without raising any suspicion. I'm also helped immensely by the fact that most towns just aren't very good; they get caught up in stupid things that they think are scum tells, aren't inclined to look at motivations properly and certianly aren't going to take the time to look back at players scum and town games in enough detail to notice what the differences are. If I played with the same group of fairly competent players on a regular basis, my scum game would either have to step up to meet that challenge or I'd lose more. I'm good at scum, but good at scum is relative to the games as they're played (or at least as they were played 4 to 8 years ago.)

@RachMarie, let me rephrase what I was asking earlier. Is there anything that changed between the end of the day yesterday and the start of the day today in terms of your thinking that made innocentvillager scummier? You seemed to indicate that with how you phrased your vote post.

@Foxbird, I've been tossing out the idea of Nachomamma8 having been the night one target some, though it's pretty easy to miss it given that it's buried in a couple comments to Nachomamma8 (implicitly) and innocentvillager (explicitly.) Does that possibility or awareness of it help you with your reads? As far ecane's push on innocentvillager day two goes, I read that mostly as a reaction to what she thought was a soft cop claim (when she knew there wasn't a cop in the game.) I suppose she does start the day worried about both RachMarie and innocentvillager so there might be something to that. The problem is that we'll never actually know what she did until the game is over, so using that as our starting point is a bit problematic.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Stop condescending and misrepping me on every little stupid thing to try and discredit me. This needs to stop; I am seriously getting tired of responding to crap like this. If you're not sure if you're misrepping me or not, ask; at the very least, don't condescend me.

This is exactly what you've been fucking doing to me all game and I'm sick of you saying that I'm the one doing it to you. You just can't imagine how done I am of your crap this game. You need to get over yourself and your obsession with me.

Nachomamma8's town read on you should be less strong today for the same reason that it should be less strong on everyone. His lynch choice for yesterday didn't end up being scum, so he should be re-evaluating everyone in the game, which is the reaction that he gives to start today.

If you think that there was a mod-slip then the game is already compromised. Holding back on the rest of your read because of it also compromises the game. If you strongly thought that foedufafa was town and didn't play to that you were fucking playing against your win condition. You don't fucking get to weasel out of that.

And the comparison to Nachomamma8 is entirely fitting here. You both thought that someone was town. He stopped his town suspect from getting lynched which was the correct move. You didn't. That's the wrong move, end of story. If you had tried then you'd have a reason to complain about they lynch today, but you said one thing and then let the lynch happen, going so far as to make it the only viable lynch at the end of the day.

Yeah, you "may" have oversimplified the position on Nachomamma8. In that you did. Or you're scum and you were just saying what was going to happen.

The value of one extra town voice in the game is that if you've got someone you can trust and work with you can actually trust their reasoning. It's hugely beneficial. I believe that Nachomamma8 is town strongly enough to make that the better move today. If you don't have that belief then wanting a no lynch as town makes sense. RachMarie should actually have wanted to go for the lynch today as well given the stated strength of her reads rather than just sheeping, but sheeping seems par for the course this game for her.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I've little patience with you right now (and my levels of patience for this game have clearly gone down since I played last for which I do apologize,) but as far as whether you're scum it's still unclear or be voting for you. Irritating to me and scum aren't the same thing no matter how much I might want them to be. Deescalation seems like a fine idea.

Having said that, I don't really mind you advocating the no lynch at all; if you're town it's the right position to have taken. It's not happening here, so pushing it at this point is a waste, but your arguments for it (outside of Nachomamma8 and the night kill assumptions) are sound from town who isn't sure of anyone else.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, I'm assuming that all the arguments about RachMarie being town still hold from yesterday, but as I'm too tired to look to see if you've actually answered this already, what do you think she'd be doing differently if she was scum? How would she play off the suspicion? Would she do something other than resign to being lynched? It's bad play regardless of alignment so there should be other options. Why does it have to be appeal to emotion rather than just scum accepting that they're going to be lynched (as opposed to town accepting that they're going to be lynched?)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, that early vote was a bit of a weird one, but I don't think that it reads Jaack and Foxbird as a scum team to me. I think that the sequence went something like foedufafa's slot had a RVS vote on them, I came in and placed a vote, Jaack followed my lead, I dropped my vote for RachMarie who then responded by adding hers directly afterwords and then Jaack switched his vote to me.

It feels early for a bus and the change in pressure when I moved my vote (which is a big part of Jaack's given reason,) doesn't feel like what scum would do when dealing with a scum partner he'd be worried was going to get lynched; I'd expect them to stay on a partner longer than that given that RachMarie had put some focus back. He has consistently listed Foxbird on the top of his suspect lists, but I like his interactions with RachMarie much less (which I've mentioned a couple times, and that particular case would be a chainsaw if they were the scum team.)

So on the whole, while it's possible, it's not what I'd expect from scum partners at that stage in the game. If that's what was going on then the whole vote wasn't a bus but I'd have to look at Foxbird more in depth and see what she's saying about Jaack. Mostly I don't recall minding it though.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Yeah, looking at Foxbird, I don't really think it's coming from a scum partner for Jaack from that side either. The first serious vote was a vote for Jaack that gets walked back really quickly. The way it goes down speaks insecure about reads and status in the game, or scum nervous that their reason isn't seen as real enough, but I don't think it's scum poking a vote for distancing and then backing off like that. She stays on Jaack as a suspect pretty consistently beyond that (so they both have that going for them,) but although I find some of the reasons hard to understand (overly concerned about voting with one's scum suspect,) she's applying those to others as well (at least to me.) Jaack hasn't ever been a serious target of much suspicion, so it's hard to say how she'd act if he was; if anyone was trying to drum up the Jaack suspicion it was her (though there's no driving of the game, so that isn't what we've got from her.)

Could they be the scum team, yeah, it's possible. It doesn't feel that likely to me right now though. It's certainly not where I'd start trying to build any cases. Should one of them flip scum I'm willing to come back and look again, but as of now it's not on my radar as a major concern/possibility.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, I don't have much time just now, but the only reason that the ecane vote from innocentvillager would be scummy would be that it made someone he thought was town (foedufafa) more likely to be lynched. If he was town then using that vote to cast doubt on ecane's obv. town to everyone on in case scum hadn't caught the PR claim is fine in a vaccum. I suspect that Nachomamma8 was doing the same thing with his suspicion towards the end of the game. There was no danger of a lynch, but there was a small chance it would move scum to another lynch.

Had you caught the PR claim when it was made?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, he's already talked about it so I'm not really answering anything for him so much as speeding things up (though, based on 367 and 377 alone it's clear that this is what he's either doing as town or faking as scum.) Here's where he talks about it with Nachomamma8 today:

I basically realized it after she said "There's no Cop in this setup". I don't usually gambit like how I did D1, so my first instinct was just to tell everyone to stfu, which I did. I realized later at some point that ecane was toast and that I should probably try to gambit to last ditch. Also, I saw your post against ecane and I was kind of inspired/reminded to do that. I thought your post against ecane actually was doing something similar in terms of gambiting suspicion, so I followed suit with you in a way.

As for what I personally take the vote at the end of the day to mean for his alignment, it's slightly scummy, but that's because he's moving his vote in a way that pretty much ensures a player he believes is town is going to be lynched (by taking away the other viable option.) The strength is mitigated by the fact that I'm pretty willing to believe that a town innocentvillager was convinced that RachMarie wasn't a good lynch either. Town should have done more earlier to move the wagon off foedufafa (innocentvillager says he disagrees because of why he thought foedufafa was town,) but that probably had to happen a bit earlier and doesn't factor in too heavily for this particular move's implications.

You should use your perception of the state of the game to decide whether the gambit was town or scum in your eyes, but like I say, he's made it clear that it was a gambit, so calling him scummy for pushing for a PR to get lynched should be a non-starter.

@innocentvillager, at this point I think it is likely that one of you and RachMarie are scum because you both come across as scummy independent of each other to me. I dislike much of the play from both of you and can easily see scum motives. That hasn't changed since yesterday. I don't particularly think that you're partners either though (I guess I should look into that a bit more, but it's not something that I've been feeling up till now.) I'm not sure who I'd pick right now if I were forced to choose between you in the next hour, but, to harp on it just a bit more, the interactions with Jaack might push me to RachMarie. If I decide that those interactions are the basis of a case I'd probably prefer a Jaack lynch first though. If RachMarie is scum, Jaack is almost certainly her partner. If Jaack is scum then RachMarie is a good candidate, but he could just be trying to leave her as mislynch bait in endgame, so it would be worth taking the time to look at everyone in isolation with him again.

I'm waiting to hear more from Jaack and Nachomamma8 on a couple fronts at this time. I've talked with you enough to know what I don't like specifically about your play, but I need context for the others to make a decision at this point in the game. I've largely given up on getting useful information from RachMarie in terms of game state.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, I haven't actually looked at Jaack's interactions with anyone else yet as I'm not particularly trying to find the scum team so much as at least one scum right now. The problem with Jaack and RachMarie is that it just stands out so strongly as Jaack distancing from RachMarie without bothering with a vote, and then going in with the chainsaw when I changed my vote to her day one. Oh, and not showing up at the end of day one to get her lynched instead of Gratuitous who he claims he was PR reading after the fact despite being on to do so. Town should have at a bare minimum cast that vote to lynch someone they think is scum over someone they think is a PR when either lynch could still happen towards the end of the day.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I'm just done grading my summer classes for a deadline early tomorrow and should be able to get a post in tomorrow afternoon addressing a couple things. I will say for now that I'm not at all sold on the Foxbird lynch for today. Jaack, for all that I might disagree about other things, is right that we shouldn't have all town in him, me and innocentvillager and I'd like to look at a couple things along those lines.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Jaack, if I had had the ability to cause any lynch I wanted at the end of the day yesterday I'm not actually sure who it would have been. The two options I'd been most interested in for much of the day weren't looking as good (RachMarie and innocentvillager,) you are and were mostly interesting as a potential partner for RachMarie, so if I though she'd flip town there's not a lot of reason to want to lynch you, Foxbird I'd looked at earlier and didn't really like for scum (I still don't,) and Nachomamma8's move put him in the probably town category for me. ecane was all but claimed power role and I'd been reading her as town all day long anyhow. Given how the day was ending there wasn't really a lynch I'd love that much more than foedufafa for being likely to hit scum. The cases on him weren't impressive and I had a mild town read, but there wasn't a lot to work with and he wasn't there at the end which doesn't help him.

I have trouble with your answer about RachMarie though. The calling most of the game town that you're saying that she was doing in day two was something she was doing stretching back into day 1 (Post 135 and Post 207 both talk about using POE as a reason for her current vote, and Post 234 gives at least town leads to 6 players day 1 (with one scum who she's voting for and a meh could be scummy for the player who had never shown up.) That's behavior that wasn't new day two at all and yet RachMarie was consistently in your scummiest players list, so it shouldn't be something that's holding you back from her on day 2. I also have a lot of trouble with Post 391 as the scummiest post of the game to the point where it's going to override an entire game's worth of suspicious behavior. What is it that you've found scummy about RachMarie throughout the game so far that's kept her so high on your scum lists?

@Nachomamma8, I guess I don't see that the call appeals to you as a reason not to get lynched (and they've been there consistently through the game,) need to be appeals to emotion so much as appeals to authority. A "look, here's the IC who's not going to find me scummy because I'm just playing my poor town game, but if you lynch me he's going to go ballistic and lay waste to this game." It strikes me as a way to hide behind you in the game more than to manipulate you. I don't know that she could mount a more traditional resistance in this game given that she's really not done any playing along those lines much so far. It's only a slight exaggeration to say her whole game has been Nachomamma8 is town, he's going to know I'm town and I'm just going to put my play firmly behind him. It's pretty safe and low key. If we had recent scum games to compare to it might be handy, but apparently we don't if what you said earlier is true.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, talk to me about innocentvillager and Jaack. Why is innocentvillager scum beyond not liking the people for town that you do? What are you thinking about Jaack? Do you understand why I'm worried about his interactions with you?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, you said at some point today that RachMarie is seeming more town to you. Did you mean that she's seeming more town today than she did at the end of the day yesterday or is this carryover from the Nachomamma8 defense?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Mod (and everyone else,) I will be V/LA from Thursday to Saturday for a family vacation.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, just to make sure you see this so that I can see a response when I get back from vacation:

@RachMarie, talk to me about innocentvillager and Jaack. Why is innocentvillager scum beyond not liking the people for town that you do? What are you thinking about Jaack? Do you understand why I'm worried about his interactions with you?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, I'm less sold on it now then I was the end of the day yesterday. Play (lack thereof) and apparently ignoring this game now that I've asked a question that would be harder for her if she and Jaack are scum after being almost summonable when mentioned by name aren't helping her case in my eyes. If this sort of play is something that she'd do as town (center her game around you to the point of saying that your case on someone was strong despite you not having made it yet, for example,) I'm not sure why I should think she wouldn't do it as scum. I think there's less emotional manipulation there than you're seeing and more trying to play how she'd play as town in a very low risk manner.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

*shrugs* I can see something of it, but I think that we're falling on different sides of the spectrum you're talking about. I'm not seeing nearly enough reason to think that she shouldn't be doing this as scum given the entire game which is either me not knowing her well enough or you thinking that you've got too strong a read on how she would shape her game as scum.

What do you think of Jaack at this point? As I've said, if RachMarie is scum then Jaack is almost certainly her partner. If he's town my case here gets somewhat weaker. Their interactions are what boost RachMarie to more likely scum for me at this point. Without a strong possible partner I'm more likely to go with your take (even if I hate her play as much as I do this game.)

And this is my last post till Saturday evening or Sunday.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, why do you think that innocentvillager is scum? You've said it's about his reads, but why is having different reads than you scummy? And why would wanting a No Lynch be scummy here if he's not sure of any reads? You clearly thought he was scummy enough to vote for before he brought that up, but you've mentioned it since.

Also, why do you think Jaack is town more than Foxbird?

@Jaack, you seem fairly sure that Nachomamma8 is town at this point, can you say why that is? It shouldn't be his claim as he's got nothing to lose as scum making that claim based on the knowledge scum have of the setup. It's actually a better claim for scum to make than VT because it gives more wiggle room for no kills if they want to make them. innocentvillager pointed this out earlier, but I don't recall whether that was before or after you made your post about Nachomamma8's likelihood of being scum. Is there something else or is that it?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Everyone, we're down to two and half days. We need people here if we're going to have any choice of figuring this out. If you care about the game, please show up. Don't just let scum win due to indifference.

@Mod, can we please prod Nachomamma8 as well?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

And the no lynch here makes a perfect day for scum. They get to see what everyone had to say before making the right choice for a night kill, right on down to the claimed power role (for which they probably know if it's still an issue.) That's exactly what we don't want for a no lynch. We also don't want to rush a decision. So I'm going to call for actual participation for the next two days and then, if needed a no lynch at deadline. Let's find scum and actually lynch them today rather than ceding initiative.

@innocentvillager, why is Foxbird scum? Have you looked at RachMarie's play today?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, why? Give some reasons here.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, The ecane vote is all gambit and consistent with town play (unless you're worried about things I've already talked about.) He's trying to make the ecane lynch less likely despite the fact that she's essentially claimed PR in case scum haven't seen it.

What do you think he should have done there?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, why do you think Jaack is more likely town than Foxbird?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, if innocentvillager is town then his stance towards ecane is entirely consistent and reasonable all game long (misdirecting scum.) What is the pattern regarding foedufafa? He was right that they were town and stuck with it. Explain please!

Why are you reading Jaack as town?

And what do you mean by feels scummy?

Is there a reason to think that Foxbird wouldn't have found innocentvillager's posts town? Do you think scum are likely to back off a replacement for a partner?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Why isn't innocnetvillager's return to the no lynch preference consistent with his play earlier where he was pushing it. Is he wrong in his reasoning for any reason?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, seriously though, talk to me about Jaack and why you have a town read.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, innocentvillager day one was inactive and managed one post and then didn't find time to reply to my almost instant questions. He wasn't an active replacement.

But let me flip this, would town have reason to change their read given the replacement? Sure scum could, but would town?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, please do. It really feels like you're avoiding this and I think that the reasons that I care about it should be clear at this point. If you're town then you need to work with me here.

For now have a good sleep and I'll talk to you tomorrow.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, would RachMarie as scum interact this way with Jaack as a scum partner? Ignoring how she's interacting with you and the rest of the game, is at least that much consistent? Tell me I'm wrong and should look somewhere else. Also, be here at in general.

@Foxbird, that be here bit goes double for you. Who is scum at this point?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Jaack, could you address this please:

I have trouble with your answer about RachMarie though. The calling most of the game town that you're saying that she was doing in day two was something she was doing stretching back into day 1 (Post 135 and Post 207 both talk about using POE as a reason for her current vote, and Post 234 gives at least town leads to 6 players day 1 (with one scum who she's voting for and a meh could be scummy for the player who had never shown up.) That's behavior that wasn't new day two at all and yet RachMarie was consistently in your scummiest players list, so it shouldn't be something that's holding you back from her on day 2. I also have a lot of trouble with Post 391 as the scummiest post of the game to the point where it's going to override an entire game's worth of suspicious behavior. What is it that you've found scummy about RachMarie throughout the game so far that's kept her so high on your scum lists?

@Nachomamma8, if you're going to look please do so quickly. We're closing in on deadline.

@RachMarie, I fully agree with Jaack here. If he thinks that innocentvillager is scum why on Earth shouldn't he be casting a vote? We're coming up on deadline. Also, regarding innocentvillager, having seen what you have to say about him I'm still troubled by the unshakable strength of your read at this time.

@Foxbird, I meant night kill instead of lynch in Post 681. The idea is that if Scum think that ecane is suspected by a couple of players (Nachomamma8 and innocentvillager in this case,) and didn't notice the PR claim, they'd be less likely to night kill her.

@innocentvillager, care to make a case on Foxbird? You were willing to vote there earlier in MyLo so I assume you think that there's something work lynching over even though you're back to No Lynch now (which, incidentally, people calling you scummy over is beyond silly; your reasoning there can clearly be town motivated.) Why Foxbird over Nachomamma8 (I can make an easy guess, but it's better if you field this one.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, when did Nachomamma8 switch back for you? That's a hard turn if it's based on his answers to your questions (which were more or less what I told you they were.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Yeah, the explanations for the foedufafa lynch over RachMarie (the other most viable option for a lynch for most of Day 2) and the state of his read feel like they're being made up after the fact rather than the motivation used at the time. I'd expect some of this to have been mentioned earlier by town Jaack. Put that with the mishandling of the Gratuitous lynch at the end of Day 1 in particular, though everything else I've said in general, and I'm happy enough with Jaack as the lynch for today.

For what it's worth, I don't like the pace we're ending at; it certainly doesn't inspire confidence, but there's not a lot to do about it at this time.

This is L-1. There are no claims to be made at this point so I'm fine with a hammer at any time.

VOTE: Jaack

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, no change in your claim status, right?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

That or she blocked the killer. Or scum are being ridiculous here and went with a no kill (which they shouldn't to the point that not even I would have considered it.) You being the target and being protected is the most likely though.

In any case we now have two lynches left in the game.

Nachomamma8 is essentially confirmed town now which is handy.

I suggest everyone takes a look at Jaack's interactions with everyone else and get back to the rest of the game with thoughts.

I did during the night, but I had an idea going in so I want to push my theory here as little as possible to see what everyone else sees.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, have you looked at the interactions between innocentvillager and Jaack to see if they make sense as a scum team?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, actually, scratch that. I think it's more likely scum was jailkept night 1. I'll talk about that in a bit. It's also possible that they submitted a kill on you last night knowing it was the first time so that they'd be able to night kill you later, but that's a horribly inefficient want to go about it, and as I said, we've been given a free extra lynch now.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Dead roleblocker.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, so here are some reasons just right off the top of my head that we might doubt that innocentvillager is scum with Jaack:

• The two of them at the start of day 2 were the only ones on my wagon and they were both pushing strongly. I seldom see scum coordinate an attack like that when there's no town to back them up.
  
• Jaack at the end of day 3 was pushing for the town to pick between innocentvillager and I. If they're scum together he's better off pushing for a choice between two town as that should win the game. This ties into point 1 in that both of them based on their positions could easily have gotten on Foxbird push; they're already tied together with pushes so there's no reason to back off it now.
  
• innocentvillager had to think that sticking by a no lynch which wasn't going to happen was a better move than trying to push a Foxbird lynch which there were clearly people sympathetic towards. He has to think so to the point where standing out with an opinion (the no lynch) was more valuable than working and blending in with the town to get a lynch that would win the game.

Let me know what you think of those.

Also, on an unrelated topic, how often are you a NK target Night 1? What do you think the chances of it happening this game might have been (assume that the jailkeep action protected you for whatever reason and just assess your chance of being a target.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, some people believe very strongly that killing confirmed town is always the right move as scum (they probably make an exception for a night kill that wins the game, but if there are going to be future days, they'll take out a known power role every time.) Personally I don't believe that's always the best move, but it wouldn't shock me at all if either (more likely) they thought that Nachomamma8 might be killable last night (not being sure if the jailkeeper preserved the one-shot bullet proof or not,) or they knew that it the kill wouldn't go through tonight, but submitted it anyhow and will do so again tonight. The first option there is more likely, especially given the talk about me being a likely target, but either could be the case.

With Jaack flipping scum, I was expecting to die and am slightly irritated that I'm playing again today, but at least we got a free extra lynch out of it.

Does your reasoning from yesterday still hold? Do you think Foxbird is the second scum? If so, have you looked at the connections with Jaack and do they seem to line up appropriately for that?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, you were meant to be included in the post I made about everyone looking at Jaack and his connections to the remaining players, but I want to be explicit about that here. Who do you see as Jaack's most likely partner. Having two choices is fine. I'm not even interested in how scummy they seem on their own, just who are the most likely partners. I know that you seem to see different things than I do so I'm interested in seeing who you think make the most sense.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, you can answer my questions to RachMarie as well. Actually, I'd like it if you do. If you think that innocentvillager is scum then all of those still have to be true of him and I don't expect to get that scum play in any of those cases. If you do then he makes sense as a Jaack partner for you, but if you think that they're compelling at all then they should be taken into account.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, what am I leaving off that list in terms of you being a poor choice for a partner for Jaack. I don't want anything about your play on it's own, I just want to look at your interactions for now. I know that I'm asking you to self meta to some degree, but clearly I have no issue with people doing that.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, I sort of got to that a bit in my second question to RachMarie. I can elaborate a bit though. There's certainly a fair amount of WIFOM in the whole post (especially as he starts listing himself in the scum options which he hadn't been doing in the vote count analysis earlier in the day.) I don't know that I'd expect him to put a partner in that pairing though; if he can get people to buy into his narrative then he's safer having both of the targets he's looking at as town which would leave scum in the other bracket. That's win win for him instead of losing a scum partner if town agrees but goes to the wrong scum candidate (i.e. actual scum.) You are correct that he'd been pushing you and RachMarie as scum with essentially equivalent strength. He'd had the two of you along with me in every one of his top three scum lists for most of the game. He was also heavily pushing me as scum since day one, right around when I switched my vote from you to RachMarie.

Having said all that, given that he was putting the scum pairings where he was an option in intentionally I'm inclined to completely ignore them rather than play the guessing game he was trying to get us to play if he was lynched. He put them in deliberately and we have the rest of the game to look at to figure things out; we don't need to try to outguess him where he knew we'd be trying to.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, am I going to have to yell at you some more? Because if you think there's any chance that I'd put myself in a position where I have to deal with an extra day in this game as scum then I probably am. Someone made an unforced error (or intentional decision) as scum that caused this game to go an extra day if we don't get the lynch right this time around, but I can guarantee that that someone wouldn't be me with this game state and the current expressed suspicion. And that doesn't even take into account how unlikely a partner I should be for Jaack.

On the other hand, you have two of the five players listing you as their top suspect and probably willing to vote you fairly soon. I'd rather not see you mislynched if you're town. I think that you should point out any interactions with Jaack that you think should drive home how unlikely a partner you are. I'll also ask again as you ignored it, now that Jaack is confirmed scum, have you taken a look at his interactions with Foxbird and found them to be consistent with scum team play?

@RachMarie, I know that you think that innocentvillager is scum. Can you at least comment on the list of reasons that I gave that perhaps you shouldn't be thinking that?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So here are some reasons that Jaack's partner should be RachMarie.

Jaack stopped her from getting lynched via action or inaction both of the first two days. Day 1 the viable alternative to Gratuitious was RachMarie. Jaack had her listed as a top suspect and Gratuitous as a town read but he did nothing at the end of the day to try to move that lynch. Unless he actually believed that Gratuitous was likely a power role (and his reason was utter nonsense prior to the bit where Gratuitious said he wasn't the lynch for the day,) he should have held off on making a town RachMarie lynch happen as it brought attention to him (and was in fact the first thing that I saw in his play which made me think he was scum.) Day 2 he actively supported the alternative wagon (foedufafa) from early in the day when, again, RachMarie was the alternative. The fact that he was consistently calling RachMarie scummy through both of those days makes it hard to believe that he'd prevent both of those lynches on her as town.

As I just said, Jaack consistently listed RachMarie as a top scum suspect, but also never voted for her. He's getting the advantage of calling her scummy which never actively casting that vote.

Those first two do have a counter argument. With both of them it's possible that he's planning on trying to leave her as a late game mislynch because she's so uniformally read as scum. I don't think I'd do that as scum as there were enough other players that are vulnerable in the game, but I guess I won't rule it out.

I've also said before that Jaack chainsawed me when I shifted my vote from Foxbird to RachMarie. To elaborate, when I made that shift he went on his paranoia kick saying that I was trying to manipulate him into looking bad by making the move. If RachMarie is a scum partner that's a fine technique to draw attention away from a partner without defending them; he's attacking her attacker. On the other hand, if RachMarie is town then either innocentvillager or Foxbird is scum. I was taking my vote off Foxbird (one Jaack had followed me onto,) which means if she was his scum partner he was OK going along with the bus until I voted for another of his top suspects which makes no sense for that attack on me. If innocentvillager is his scumpartner then rather than either sticking with Foxbird who he's happy enough attacking or switching to RachMarie who's also town and someone he should be fine attacking, he goes for me. Possibly he thought I'd be an easy lynch, but given the reads I'd been getting already that strikes me as unlikely. RachMarie scum seems like the best explanation for that move from my perspective.

We don't know who ecane jailkept the first night. I've been mentioned as an option based on what she said about me when asked by Foxbird and Nachomamma8 has been mentioned as a possibility both because of the lack of night kill last night and because he was overall town-read going into night one and the last read we have from ecane was that he was one of her town reads (Jaack also makes that town-read list so it's possible that he was jailkept as well for similar reasons.) On the other hand, here's her first post of day 2.

Alright, so I just skimmed back through D1 and the reasons behind Rach's votes on Gratuitous and Foxbird have mainly been about how they played last game with her and judged them pretty much based on that only. She jumped off the Fox wagon when other started backing off, and the vote on Grat wasn't any better. Looked like she just had to find something to not be totally without a reason. Her argument was the he was scum because he didn't play like that last game as scum so he must be faking it this time...(?) I don't see any sign of her being town in her recent posts as well.

I think she's the scummiest now, therefore
VOTE: RachMarie

Also she and especially Innocent both implied that they'd push or question me if the lynch flipped certain way, was a little bit surprised to not see that happen since they posted quite a lot since the day started. It would be pretty obvious of scum!Innoccent to make a case on me, he even said it himself that he would, when he for some reason scumread me at the end of D1 since he would obviously know that Gratuitous would flip town, so i don't know what's up with that. Don't know if he's avoiding 225 or not, but I'd like the answers to those questions as well.

That's entirely consistent with a Jailkeep of RachMarie during the night. No one else died so she was the player that was apparently most scummy to ecane based on her read (probably overnight,) and with the lack of a kill she'd have reason to believe that the jailkeep prevented it.

TL;DR:

Jaack's overall progression with RachMarie works for scum trying to distance without losing a partner, he protected her in non-obvious ways, and we should have some reason to think that RachMarie was ecane's jailkeep target night one.

This post is long enough, but I'll talk about some problems outside of what we should expect from her play with RachMarie as scum partner in my next post (spoiler: the biggest is that I'm still alive.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So I'm alive in this game. If RachMarie is scum then her best move last night would have been to kill me. She must have known that I'm the player that suspects her the most right now, especially after Jaack flipped not only mafia, but roleblocker in particular. That means that unless she was worried about Nachomamma8 turning on her, she's got no reason to kill him unless she thinks that she can and that confirmed town power roles should always be killed.

But even that is problematic. Nachomamma8 was calling her town since day 1 and the game that she's playing as scum needs to keep Nachomamma8 in there to protect her; she'd tied her fortunes to him reading her as town and keeping her alive no matter what her alignment is. Clearly she's very vulnerable once he's dead so he shouldn't be any reason for that scum team to have submitted a night kill on RachMarie unless Jaack absolutely insisted on it. He might have, but I do think that I would have been a better night target for them there. Jaack didn't get traction trying to get me lynched and RachMarie probably respects my play enough to think that if I'm suspicious of here I'm best not left alive. That means that I don't think that scum team should have targeted Nachomamma8 night 1 (whereas any other might well have.)

If scum didn't target Nachomamma8 night 1 then the chances that they know they're making a bad play last night go up. They know that he's bulletproof and they know that a kill attempt on him won't give them anything for that night. That means that they either went ahead with it anyhow in order to kill him the next night or they chose to no kill. I think that everyone here (including RachMarie,) should know that the no kill would give town a free mislynch, so unless someone thinks that they are safe enough with the current game state they shouldn't make that move. Do I think that RachMarie would gamble on that?

Basically I have to think that RachMarie is either slightly less competent or significantly more competent than the range I have her at in order for that no kill to happen last night. Of course, that's probably true for anyone left in the game.

It's frustrating. RachMarie's defense (and by extension, Nachomamma8's defense of her,) is that she's bad enough at looking town when town she's lynch bait, that she won't bus as scum (apparently to the point of not even casting votes for a partner given that she doesn't think that Foxbird would have hammered there despite Foxbird almost being forced to by the game state if she's scum,) and that she's not going to try to manipulate town at all if she's scum because she's not that kind of person.

I'm not sure why she's playing mafia if all of that's true, but different people play the game for different reasons, and it's possible that hers is simple foreign enough to my mindset that I'm missing it.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So where does all that leave me?

Nachomamma8 should be town. At this point, despite all that I hate about his play, I don't think that innocentvillager should be scum with Jaack. If they were a team then they tied themselves too tightly together with the attacks on me to make sense for day 3 to end like it did. That leaves Foxbird and RachMarie.

With Foxbird I don't really like the day 1 interactions for scum interactions. innocentvillager or RachMarie (or both?) asked about it day 3 and I took a look. I've taken another since Jaack's flip and I just think that they're too tied into debate with each other early game almost to the exclusion of the rest of the game. I don't expect scum to do that. Add the fact that Jaack was voting with me for Foxbird and then flipped his lid when I moved to RachMarie and I don't feel like there's a coherent scum strategy there. If he was bussing Foxbird that doesn't feel like the back off I'd expect.

So I'm wrong about someone somewhere. Big surprise.

At this point, we've got the luxury of a mistake to make. I'd rather go with the one that the external evidence screams most strongly for and eliminate the possibility than for one of the players I've got a weaker guilty case on. If I'm going to be wrong about it let's do it now so I can clear all that suspicion out and get things right tomorrow. Or, if my gut and the team-evidence that I see is right, then great, we get to end this today with a town win. Right now I don't really need to convince anyone I'm right in order to avoid losing the game. I want to hear reasons that I've got something wrong for any of the three because I'm fallible. I'd much rather get this lynch right than get my way here, but for now I think that both of those options are more likely to go through the RachMarie lynch.

VOTE: RachMarie

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So because a scum player showed he was trying to buddy me you think I am scum? Seriously for real

What about my interactions with HIM, I went from town reading him to scum reading him and helped get him lynched. Which both Nacho and I have told you is not at all typical of my town play.

I have struggled in this game I will admit, much of it has been low activity.

Who was off the wagon on Jaack?

Inno was.


Who completely fooled me as scum because I am so used to him being town"

Inno did

So this is what it takes to get a more reasonable level of interaction. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

First off, Jaack wasn't buddying you. He spent the game saying that you were scummy but not voting for you. It's distancing if you want to call it anything, but that's what scum does to a partner, not to town.

But, OK, let's look at your interactions with Jaack. That's fair. Let's look over the course of the entire game though. You spent pretty much up to the last page of day three giving him town reads. You cast votes on both our mislynches, Foxbird and innocentvillager throughout the game up till then. That's everyone except for Nachomamma8 and myself (both of whom you've given more or less free rides two which you didn't claim you were doing for Jaack,) and fits the scum game that you claim to play pretty much to a tee (you say town in your post, but that's clearly a typo and I'm not going to hold it against you.) Even day three Jaack was the lowest lynch choice n your list of players that you would consider for most of the day; I tried to get a reason for why, but that's tricky. When you finally moved to make the vote on Jaack it was pretty clear that both Nachomamma8 and I were heading that direction which means that his lynch was probably something that was certain to happen. It was also well after you'd gone out of your way to establish the claim that you never bus. That was technically a bus at the end, but as innocentvillager has pointed out, getting on the wagon for the inevitable lynch is just baseline competent scum play.

Overall your interactions with Jaack have virtually no pressure on the spot and only vote him when he's going to be the lynch anyhow. You drive home the idea that you don't bus with your comment that Foxbird must be bolder than you to have hammered if she's scum, but really, there's no reason for scum to be off that wagon at the end of the day.

As for innocentvillager being off the wagon, it's not like you thought that he was fooling you at the time as you went into the day voting him when it wasn't even clear that we should be voting. Pushing for a no lynch there rather than either being on the wagon hammering a partner or pushing an alternative wagon that might get someone lynched (and Foxbird should have been an option for him,) was a worse choice for him to make if he's scum.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

...

And the fact that ecaine was voting for me because of lack of activity? That is your case? Seriously. I was V/LA and I understimated the time of the V/LA by a couple of days we actually discussed that because I was scum reading another player in another newbie game that just ended.

...

Why do you think a Jaack/Inno team is not possible? Seriously.

No, ecane was voting you at the start of day two after saying that she found you the scummiest player in the game, had used a jailkeep action, and had seen a no kill. Why she thought you were scummy based on her reads doesn't even matter here. She had access to the information of why she jailkept which none of the rest of us did. She decided that you were the one worth voting with her first post of day 2. That's an indication that she could easily have jailkept you. If there was any reason to think that you might have been the target of a scum nightkill then it would be much less strong, but you say yourself that there isn't (I agree.)

Is a Jaack/innocentvillager scum team impossible? No, it's not. Nachomamma8 is as close to impossible scum as we can get, but Jaack/innocentvillager pairing is merely unlikely. I went over some reasons without looking too closely, but the connections they were forming weren't what we should expect from scum in my opinion. Taken as a whole it's not good play for a scum team and innocentvillager should be a better player than that.

Similarly, am I certain that you're scum? No. I spent a whole post on why there are reasons that you shouldn't be. But there are enough reasons that you should that I'd prefer to lynch you now while we have the option to move on to another day and not lose the game if I'm wrong.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I will say this If I were scum you would have been shot for sure. Seriously why would I even want to keep the player who brought life back to the game? You really think I am that bad at this game?

What I said, is that either alignment I tend to get lynched on D1 or D2 about 75% of the time. That is the part of the play I am working on by hydraing with players like Jiffy now and Nacho in the future.

I tend to be more of a logic and PoV person looking at everyone in the game big picture than a gut reader, so when people are not active, it makes it really difficult for me to peg everyone. Which is why I have struggled so much in this game. It is why I wanted Nacho's insight he is far better at pegging people quickly.

Everyone who might be scum this game should have shot me last night. I've already said that the fact you should have shot me is the biggest problem that I have with you as potential scum. Having said that who should Foxbird have shot? She's got her scum list down to you and innocentvillager and for all she knows Nachomamma8 was jailkept night 1 if she took a shot at him. Who would innocentvillager have shot? I wasn't defending him at the time and he's saying that he wants to lynch Foxbird but would consider you and also should have the same concerns about Nachomamma8 being jailkept night 1. We know that Nachomamma8 isn't scum (and the lack of kill here just prolongs the game which there'd be no reason for him to do.)

Even if we hypothetically look at me as a possibility

and

ignore the fact that I could have won yesterday by getting innocentvillager lynched and then killing anyone other than Nachomamma8, I'm so much better off killing any of the rest of you than I am either no killing or risking a Nachomamma8 kill that it would be ridiculous for me to attempt it.

No one as scum in this game should have made that night choice. Someone did.

You've gone on at length on how you get killed regularly (which is bad play.) Should I assume that someone else in the game is going to make the worse play when being bad at aspects of the game is a core element of your fronted game.

Or, I could go with the innocentvillager approach to this and say that you're claiming that you definitely would have done something as scum, so we shouldn't trust that due to self meta.

In any case, if there's a reason that you shouldn't be scum, that's it. But that's the same as the reason for every other player in the game so it doesn't help you in relation to anything. I will point out here that on the plus side if I get my way and you get lynched, town hasn't lost yet. We still have another chance at this without your relation to Jaack pointing so heavily towards a scum team lurking in the back of everything.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, so here are some reasons just right off the top of my head that we might doubt that innocentvillager is scum with Jaack:

• The two of them at the start of day 2 were the only ones on my wagon and they were both pushing strongly. I seldom see scum coordinate an attack like that when there's no town to back them up.
  
• Jaack at the end of day 3 was pushing for the town to pick between innocentvillager and I. If they're scum together he's better off pushing for a choice between two town as that should win the game. This ties into point 1 in that both of them based on their positions could easily have gotten on Foxbird push; they're already tied together with pushes so there's no reason to back off it now.
  
• innocentvillager had to think that sticking by a no lynch which wasn't going to happen was a better move than trying to push a Foxbird lynch which there were clearly people sympathetic towards. He has to think so to the point where standing out with an opinion (the no lynch) was more valuable than working and blending in with the town to get a lynch that would win the game.

Let me know what you think of those.

Also, on an unrelated topic, how often are you a NK target Night 1? What do you think the chances of it happening this game might have been (assume that the jailkeep action protected you for whatever reason and just assess your chance of being a target.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

OK I have seen scum do this not push their partner at all. Or just add them into the list along with someone else they hope town will lynch instead. Your whole case is based on what one newbie is doing same with your case on ME, yet Inno is a far more experienced player, and so am I , even though I do have some weak areas. Yet you do not look at the interactions WE have with Jaack, instead you are basing your entire case on inno being town and me being scum on what Jaack said and did. That is a seriously faulty premise.

BTW its that premise that often gets scum Nacho to float to victory after bussing his scum budz on D1. Everyone is so focused on how Nacho behaved and giving him kudos and town cred, they do not pay attention to how the scum bud acted toward Nacho.

You're seriously misrepresenting my case there. I'm not actually assuming that innocentvillager is town going into this at all. I'm looking for expected scum behavior from him and I'm just not seeing it here. It's not just that he's not pushing Jaack as a partner; he actually does have Jaack as the most likely partner with Foxbird. It's that he chooses to sit back and go with the no lynch when there's a win to be had. Letting a partner die in a way that doesn't strengthen his position when he knows that both you and Foxbird are likely to be looking at him is not a good move for an experienced player. Add that to the push that he made with Jaack against me when no one else was participating (and by then the rest of the game was calling me town for the activity levels,) and you've got even more improbably scum play.

I'll say again, could innocentvillager and Jaack be the scum team? Yes, it's possible. There's nothing role-wise which rules it out. But their interactions really didn't play out that way. I think you mentioned earlier that they had night one to plan how they were going to play day 2, but for the concerted attack on me to be planned they would have had to have innocnentvillager ready to generate a reason to suspect me (he jumped on play that I made which was absolutely non-sense to find scummy, but which I'm willing to believe he did,) and have had that as a contingency for lack of a kill going through.

And although it's neither here nor there for the rest of your post, I'm well aware of bussing partners giving you credit as scum in a game. I use that as well as anyone. I'm never going to go out of my way to protect a scum buddy unless there's an obvious reason to do so.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@innocentvillager, am I going to have to yell at you some more? Because if you think there's any chance that I'd put myself in a position where I have to deal with an extra day in this game as scum then I probably am. Someone made an unforced error (or intentional decision) as scum that caused this game to go an extra day if we don't get the lynch right this time around, but I can guarantee that that someone wouldn't be me with this game state and the current expressed suspicion. And that doesn't even take into account how unlikely a partner I should be for Jaack.

On the other hand, you have two of the five players listing you as their top suspect and probably willing to vote you fairly soon. I'd rather not see you mislynched if you're town. I think that you should point out any interactions with Jaack that you think should drive home how unlikely a partner you are. I'll also ask again as you ignored it, now that Jaack is confirmed scum, have you taken a look at his interactions with Foxbird and found them to be consistent with scum team play?

Dude, why are you defending yourself here? I never even attacked you! I've been saying you're town for the past like 2 RL weeks or so! There is literally no incentive for you to try this hard when you are so widely townread and going to win the game if you're scum here.

Just for funsies, how would you have handled the NK last night if you were scum? I could definitely see scum!Zorblag going for a Nacho kill. It doesn't make sense for you to kill me, Rach, or Fox, since we are all strong lynch candidates. If you had tried to kill Nacho the first night, I can see you thinking that Nacho was the optimal kill since he would be dead. I'm not saying you're scum here, in fact I clearly think the opposite, but I don't think your self-defense checks out anyway if we are to take it seriously.

I am honestly against self-defense in terms of partners, since there's not much I can say about me/Jaack being implausible. I've had Jaack at town for most of the early game, but for shitty/generic reasons like mild proactivity, and me agreeing with his thought processes. I never actually ended up voting him, so there's that. Points that you brought up in my defense are fairly valid, the strongest of them being that I pushed for an NL yesterday rather than a lynch on Foxbird (if I am THAT close to autowin, why the hell wouldn't I push for it??).

Foxbird is a strong candidate mostly by PoE, again; her ISO just looks super null, relatively neutral/active lurky like, and overall feels survivalistic. You're been very transparently town lately, Nacho is confirmed, and Rach has been townposting a lot today at least. I honestly don't think scum!Rach gets this passionate and manipulative when she's about to be lynched. It sound stupid, but I can almost really genuinely feel her suspicion and desire to get me lynched, and the frustration that she's being associated with Jaack. Neither of which are alignment-conclusive, of course, but definitely makes me think she is much more likely town than not.

Because I've put up with too much fucking bullshit from you prior to this and the obvious reason that you'd want to push the idea that I was the jailkeep option night one was that I would potentially have tried to kill Nachomamma8 last night. Which is stupid. Like I already told RachMarie, were I scum I would have won yesterday by getting you lynched. But even if I didn't I have easy paths to victory by nightkilling anyone other than risking trying to kill Nachomamma8 when I know I might have been jailkept. There's no reason for me to prolong this game. This painful painful game.

How do you think RachMarie is townposting today? Why would she not post like this as scum? Or rather, why would she start posting like this as town? If she's town then we don't lose the game with her lynch. If she's scum she needs to stay alive. She's made a more lively defense of herself than we've seen all game now that one scum is down which doesn't match the more fatalistic (though still appealing to Nachomamma8 as someone who would avenge the mislynch) approach that we saw earlier in the game.

I actually agree that Foxbird is the next best scum candidate given the relatively likelihood of the two of you as Jaack partners, but RachMarie still has more going for her.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Okay, with regards to the jailkeep, if scum!Rach was jailed, nothing makes sense. There is no scenario where Rach would carry out the kill and not Jaack, since Jaack was much more townread than Rach. And in either of the two roleblocker setups, it doesn't make sense for the less townread person to kill. In Cop/Doc, obviously it doesn't matter there. However, in JK/BP, Rach was much more likely to be jailed than Jaack, so the maximum chance of getting the kill through is to have Jaack carry out the kill.

So Rach gets jailed to no effect, then the only way no kill could have happened is if Rach killed (doesn't make sense, very unlikely), NK (even less likely), or Jaack hit Nacho. If Jaack hit Nacho successfully D1, why was there no death today? That's not possible, unless scum is seriously playing very suboptimally.

That is why I can't buy a Rach jailkeep N1, and Rach being scum. But actually, if town!Rach was jailed N1, then that means Nacho was hit N1, which, for the same reason, doesn't make sense here. So I don't think Rach getting jailed makes sense.

Ecane didn't jail Jaack either I doubt, because she never really expressed any suspicion on that slot iirc.

I think what almost certainly went down, is that ecane jailed either Nacho, or the scum who tried to kill Nacho. If ecane jailed scum who tried to kill someone else, they'd know they were jailed, and probably wouldn't go for a Nacho kill since town would have two MLs. I think if we can figure out who ecane jailed (if it's not Nacho), then we have our second scum, barring the unlikely scenario where she jailed Jaack.

I need to look at this and I think more insight on mechanics like this are useful.

If ecane jailkept Jaack it was probably protective; she had a town read at the end of the day from what I can tell. I do also agree that night actions are among the strongest reasons not to buy RachMarie as scum, but really, like I've already said, no scum should have gone with the night actions that we've seen.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I answer questions if they're asked and I pointed out conclusions from the interactions I found interesting. But you're right, I should've summarized everything at the end. The rest is just me being a bad scumhunter.

Zorblag, I still don't understand how two people pushing you at the same time makes them unlikely to be a scum team. If anything, couldn't they have coordinated it the night before? I can't find the exact posts where you said this, but I recall you saying something along those lines. I've seen scum pull off crazier gambits.

Ah, this is where the coordination question came up.

The answer to the overall question is that it's not just being the only two attacking me together that makes innocentvillager and Jaack a poor scum team. It's the overall play between the two. If they're scum they teamed up to try to get me lynched but didn't do the same later in the game for probably you in Day 3. Further, innocentvillager sitting on the sidelines while Jaack got lynched just draws attention to himself when he's already got plenty, so he shouldn't be doing that as scum, but rather should either be in on his lynch or doing something else. It's not coherent play and the point of the scum team is that they have the chance to play coherently.

There's also, as I said, the fact that there's reason not to expect scum to have planned out that attack given the lack of night kill. The nature of innocentvillager's attack (an attack of opportunity given my rejection of Jaack's attack on me,) feels much more like an individual spontaneously deciding to make that attack. Scum doing that to support a partner with no one else in the mix isn't a likely play there.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, where an I accusing you of lurking? That's not my case at all. Or tunneling on the wrong player? I'm saying that you looked for scum everywhere except Jaack until it was clear he was a likely lynch.

I've read all the recently completed newbie games including that one. None of the issues that I'm raising to day are addressed by that.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, no, I wouldn't float lack of attention as the reason for a no kill. If there was a no kill it should have been an intentional by someone. It's more likely someone thought they could kill Nachomamma8 despite the risks, but if not then I could be playing right into their plans. Of course, they'd have been better off submitting another kill on either Foxbird or innocentvillager then to avoid having to get two mislynches in a row.

And if you think that my posts are simply absurd then I'll apologize to some degree. It's not going to stop me from pushing my strongest reads, but I don't mean to offend you while I do it.

As to why you would try to make a town block including you and at least one player who is sure you're town? Do I really need to answer that? If you're scum and can coast a Nachomamma8 town read to victory then you've got a fine victory. A town block that includes scum loses for the town in the long run.

And if you mean the bit where I said that making a case on you would finally bring you into the game, that seems to be true, but isn't part of the case that I'm making against you. If you're referencing the intensity of the defense, well you were here enough to make comments on getting lynched before. Do you deny that you appear to care more now?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, you know what. If you're town then you're much better served by convincing me and the rest of the town that the correct choice between innocentvillager or Foxbird is scum here. I think that your current cases are unimpressive, but if one of them is scum then knowing the reason why is helpful. Especially if this day ends with your lynch and you want to make sure the actual scum is lynched (by me or whoever is left alive) tomorrow.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, since we mislynched day 1 we were in essentially the same state day 2. We get that wrong and we're down to one mistake (with a potential no lynch to eliminate one candidate.) You were a strong lynch candidate for most of that day and didn't object like you are now.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, and as of right now, I don't have anyone in the game who agrees with me. My skills at mafia don't particularly include pushing my preferred lynch as I don't usually bother trying. If you're right about scum you can get a lynch through without me. You can keep defending if you want (and I'll listen and am willing to be swayed,) but your still better served by making compelling arguments for who else is scum at this point. It helps your case and the town as a whole.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@RachMarie, there's no particular hurry. Make good cases. Find scum. Convince town to lynch them. It's mostly the same gameplan that it should always be.

Oh, and enjoy the Merlot! I think you're our most likely scum here, and I might be wrong, but that's nothing about you as a person (to whom I wish nothing but the best.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Foxbird, Jaack defending innocentvillager is actually one of the reasons that I don't think that they'd be a scum team together. It draws too much attention and scum will very seldom directly defend a partner. The attack on me when I voted for RachMarie is much more the sort of defense I expect scum to mount. What you're describing there is more akin to what I'd call buddying (which I expect scum to do with town.) Overall innocentvillager and Jaack have just seen too little conflict to be good scum partners, and when there was a chance to win the game yesterday, they didn't go for it at all, but instead just let Jaack get lynched and had innocent villager take himself out of the game with the no lynch preference when he knew from the start that RachMarie was gunning for him and that you would be out of other options as a primary candidate. He's irritated the hell out of me this game, but I don't think he's a bad player (or person despite my treatment of him which probably isn't entirely fair,) and I don't think he'd leave himself in that setup as scum. Especially as he didn't have any reason to think that I wouldn't be gunning for him as well. The no kill might make the least sense for innocentvillager of all the potential scum left alive. I'm sure that Nachomamma8 is town. I'd bet that innocentvillager is too.

@Nachomamma8, it's possible that Foxbird goes for you when you were protected. It's a poor move as you as a night target was at least brought up yesterday and she'd be better off killing me leaving a much clearer path to victory for her (the innocentvillager mislynch) than needing two mislynches if you still had protection. Do I think that's less likely than RachMarie submitting the kill on you? Probably not. But a no kill by RachMarie leaving you there to continue to protect her doesn't shock me. I also don't know that I'd call my behavior tunneling as I'm not blind to the rest of the game. The night game is a mess no matter who submitted the actions. The day game points more clearly towards RachMarie to me. I'd prefer the RachMarie lynch now just to get done now while we've got a cushion because I don't think it happens tomorrow during the day and I think it's the safer choice, but Foxbird is easily my second choice.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, I hope you're right. We'll see.

@Foxbird, go ahead and make the strongest case you have on innocentvillager then. If you're pretty sure he's scum then lay it out for us one more time while you can.

@RachMarie, if you still think that's true as well, go ahead and lay out your strongest case. No sense not having it.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

*shurgs*

It's pretty similar to how she reacted to pressure on day one.

Though I guess a lynch on me at least provides content via interactions since I've actually at least somewhat interacted with the majority of active players :/

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

OK, some thoughts. Let me start by thanking Ziacon for modding and letting me replace in! Also thank you everyone for playing! I was grumpier than normal this game, but despite how it might have come off I did enjoy playing it and was happy everyone was in the game.

Good work to the rest of the town. Had you listened to me there it would have taken us one extra day. Given that we had the spare mislynch I wanted to eliminate RachMarie as a dark horse just because it would have been so irritating to lose to the game she was playing. I'm glad that I was wrong and that it was Foxbird.

@RachMarie, I'm really glad to hear that you're cutting back on games. I said earlier that I'd talk about this after the game, but this was what I was thinking. I looked at your list of posts and saw so many games you were involved in that there was no way you could be doing much to help town win this one (having Nachomamma8 here to sheep probably exacerbated that.) I think that the biggest favor that you can do yourself here is to be able to concentrate more on the games that you're playing. You clearly weren't here for much of this one and not keeping up with what has happening at times and I've looked back at the games you played before your break; you are a better player than this. I still think that you're a lovely person, but if you're playing mafia games to help your team your attention to the game is the biggest thing you can do to help out (it has the added benefit of probably helping improve other areas of your play by default.) Sorry if I was on your case too hard at any point.

@innocentvillager, sorry for being so brusque with you. It was frustrating to have someone attacking every little thing that I did for reasons that I wasn't impressed by, but I used to be able to put up with that better. When you didn't like the points I was making against you and reacted in what I recognize is your style having read some of your other games I hit a tipping point far sooner than I probably should have. I will say that mostly you're playing so much better than you used to. This game despite what I think were mistakes, you were pretty easy to read as town for good play by the end of the game; four years ago I probably would have had the same read, but I wouldn't have called said it was for good play. You've grown a lot and I'm thrilled to see you're still around and helping with the newbie games! We can talk about the aspects we disagree about sometime if you wish, but we don't have to.

@Nachomamma8, thanks for playing. I sort of feel like you might be a bit over committed as well (not to the same extent as RachMarie, but this game clearly wasn't a huge priority for you at all.) Having said that, the end of day two you played just right to cement yourself as a town read for anyone who didn't already have you there (too many did too early, but that's a rant for another post,) and your read on RachMarie was better than mine throughout. It was fun playing with you again!

@ecane, I don't have much to say here other than just good job. You were great as town and used the power role just fine. You bit unfortunately hard on innocentvillager's coy play with foedufafa, but it probably didn't matter at all. Reading the scum thread it's clear that Jaack was planning on killing you even before he noticed that. If you're town in general that play is what players should strive for; it doesn't draw attention away from hunting for scum (as opposed to say mine,) and it drew a night kill (which is a bit unfortunate because you were the jailkeeper, but still means that you were looking like town which is something town doesn't always do well.)

@Gratuitous, I'm sorry that the pace of the game threw you off as it pretty clearly did. The games that I read for you prior to this one felt much smoother and more engaged. I guess I'll recommend trying to aggressively turn the game over if it comes up again, but I'll also acknowledge that it's a frustrating thing to need to do. In any case, keep at it; you've got good fundamentals which should take you far.

@foedufafa, you replaced into an awkward spot and I liked the initial effort. In this case fading towards the end of day two combined with the relationship between Nachomamma8 and RachMarie left you in an unfortunate spot that neither innocentvillager (who had a town read,) nor I (who also had a weaker town read,) chose to help you out of in large part because of the lack of another viable lynch option and the end of day timing. My biggest advice will be to get in there and post more; playing the game is the best way to both enjoy it and get better at it.

For the scum team, I'll have a bit of criticism, but let me start by saying that a lot of your play was pretty solid. Others disagreed a bit, but I thought you managed the distancing day 1 well. You had me convinced that you were unlikely partner due to the right concentration of attention and the in and out of the suspicion and votes. I don't think that you gave away the game due to being partners.

@Jaack, I don't think that it was your end game that was the biggest problem for you. The end of day one looked a lot worse than it needed to, especially after you said that you thought Gratuitous was probably a power role. You would have been much better served there by showing up towards the end of the day and pushing against the Gratuitous lynch even if it ended up being pushing a RachMarie lynch. As it was you let a lynch of someone you supported as town happen while a feasible lynch on someone you were calling scummy go through. Given that both were town in this case you probably look better if you stick your neck out and be wrong rather than hang back and let the mislynch go through. I also think that towards the end of the game you had trouble making it look like you actually cared about RachMarie's game. Even saying that you changed your mind on her because of what Jaack was saying might have helped, but you needed to sell some stronger reasoning on her a bit more it feels to me.

Mind you, I was fooled into thinking that RachMarie was your partner, so even though I found enough things that I didn't like about your play to be suspicious I'm clearly doing things wrong from my end as well.

@Foxbird, I think you played a fine game, if not an inspired one. You did a great job of talking me out of my initial suspicions and then coasting through much of the game after the day one heat died down which is what scum should be doing. At the very end I think that perhaps you needed a little more flexibility in finding someone to lynch, but it's a fine line between being to set on one particular lynch and being too eager to get just anyone lynched. In the end the game state left too many of the town out of the lynch pool for you and somehow you needed to nudge one or two things around day 2 or 3 to prevent that.

Also, you should have killed me night 3 as the safer kill, but I'm saying that mostly because I didn't really want to play that last day.

And I'll say again, thank you everyone for the game! Sorry if I was overly grumpy; it's largely a by-product of being the primary caretaker for two young children who tap the reserves patience that I used to be able to use in these games. I am happy that I played and I hope you all enjoyed it as well.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Nachomamma8, I didn't want it to get lost in that last post, but could you talk about why you claimed at the start of day 3? Were I scum I would have been so happy to have that claim so that if needed I could make a safe kill the following night. On the town side, unless it gets counter-claimed it's meaningless until a Jailkeeper gets lynched. I don't think you were using it to clear yourself, but what were you gaining for town in your opinion?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh