Open 576: The Enemy of my Enemy is my...Enemy? (Day 2)

[mastin2]

Yo!

My name's Mastin, and I'm going to be your IC for the--wait.
Wrong queue.

My mistake.

[mastin2]

On a more serious note, with the exception of a grand total of three players here, I don't recognize a single name among you. Now, for most scummers, that might seem insignificant. However, I'm Mastin. I'm a bit of a rock star among mafiascum.net. (Before the scum go eager to nightkill me, and/or the town gets to have unrealistically-high expectations of me, though, please note that rockstar simply means 'really well-known'. MS.net has a love-hate relationship with me and my quirks, about 50/50 split, even, and therefore I'm both famous and infamous, neither unjustifiably so. Overall, I'm only a mediocre player. But I digress.) What that means is that...well, between me and my alts, I have seen basically every big-name player around, so if I don't recognize your name *at all*, either you've been hanging around extensively in sections I haven't, or you're a relatively-new player. (To be fair, both are true, since I typically don't join opens except on request.)

What this is all leading up to is me asking about how much experience each player in the game has. Their past games, their general playstyle, what they expect, and whatnot. That way, we may be able to have some better understanding from the get-go. With that in mind, my internet was out all of yesterday, so that means I've got three pages to catch up on.

[mastin2]

(By the way, I've got to get my mind into multiball mode, too, so that's another reason I typically tell people who might have heard of me and set me on a pedestal to...please,

not

do that; I am fallible and quite frequently so as at least one or two OF the names which I recognize on the playerlist know. Granted, they know said failures from teaching, when I had my mental breakdown, butstill, I am prone to them. All that said......)

VOTE: Astinus
Because I want to.

Pretty sure this is town.

VOTE: clusk
cause anyone with a goatee like that has to be up to something

Actually dinosaurs punt teen girls.

VOTE: dragonspawn
Because uh excuse me teen girls are all about Cthulu these days jeez keep up with the times.

It's not much more than a gut feeling off of a hunch, but I feel these two may both be scum, on opposite factions.

[mastin2]

This claim makes no sense.

Which is why I'm pretty sure it comes from town.

By the way, on the wagon, Oilura is another name I'm highly-suspicious of.
In fact,

Vote: Oilura

.

[mastin2]

For the record: Fink is probably town, and Mathdino could go either way, but I lean more towards town than not-town.

So what I have is gut-feeling that dragonspawn is scum off, Oilura and Teen Girl Squad are scum on, Fink/Dino are town on, and the rest there's too little to be sure.

My guess at this point is that guile's town. I need to check Riabi's post a bit closer before I make a judgement there, and I go both ways on Nova but the decent analysis make me think more town than scum. I also need to give a think-over on 2birds. (NJAC I don't give a read on out of policy. We have

that

kind of history. Because for what it's worth, a snap-judgement right now would be more scum than town...AGAIN.)

[mastin2]

(And now you can see why there's the love-hate.

I promise there's explanations for basically all of these, but I'm choosing not to state them until everyone's posted some more.)

[mastin2]

I just finished a game where everyone I wagoned was bad as opposed to scum, and I'm a little worried because I'm getting those vibes again.

Believe it or not, I got those exact same vibes, and am attempting to work through them. This is one of the reasons there's as much doubt in my scumreads as there is, and why my reads are not as locked down as they should be.

I mean, I'm reasonably certain about a fair deal of my townreads: Astinus, Mathdino now, and now you are all fairly strong townreads. Fink's decently strong as well, but not quite as much. Yet all of my other reads aren't nearly as solidified--my guille townread is basically just gut off of where he (didn't) place(d) his vote, dragonspawn I massively waver on, Teen Girl I am not sure about, Riabi I simply can't tell thanks to STRONG ambivalence, Nova I flat-out said already that I go back and forth on (even if leaning town), and even Oilura I'm not sure on. And I can tell you, it's for exactly that reason, combined with a side of multiball; it's difficult to tell "stupidity" from stupidity, and scumhunting from half-scumhunting.

In my experience, the most anti-town play comes from town; scum are just too cautious to do certain things. Scum do not want to come into the game with a self-vote and keep that self-vote on even at L-1, and scum do not really want the attention of holding a self-vote. If I had to guess, I'd say this is some extremely misguided attempt at sparking discussion (and sure, it worked, but it's fucking WIFOM and liable to turn into a theory discussion).

The unvote struck me as a way of looking town without actually contributing to town. Outside of newbie games, it seems safe to say that nobody's going to derphammer a declared L-1; on top of that, the unvote only served to remove pressure from a player who really needed more of it.

So up to this point, this is almost what makes me pretty dang sure that Astinus is town. I've had over 150 games on-site (so many that I've entirely lost count of the number), not to mention, numerous ones off-site. (That's excluding EpicMafia in which the number would jump to thousands upon thousands.) In all of my games, across all sites, without the setup dictating it as a valid play...I've seen maybe one or two scum try this? Somewhere in that small range. In all of my games, across all sites, without the setup dictating it as valid play...I've seen, oh, probably a dozen or so town try it. (Myself included. Admittedly, mostly in my arrogant ignorant youth as a player, butstill, I did it as town plenty.) So it's not like scum never try it. It's that the sheer audacity to the point of stupidity means that only the stupidest or most insane of all scum will attempt it. It could come from scum, sure. It's 95% likely to come from town. Thus, why I'm pretty sure of Astinus being town.

I also agree with the point about blind unvotes being a way of looking town without actually being town. However, it is not Mathdino nor is it Fink that I'd apply that to; it's Teen Girl. Fink had good, solid posting indicating a town mindset. Mathdino clearly wanted to accomplish something. When I read Teen Girl's unvote, though, what I saw was someone that looked to be going through the motions: doing it because they thought they should do it as town, not because they actually wanted to do anything with it.

These are part, but not the entirety, of the way I got my reads. Every read has an explanation from basically each post they made, and I can clarify the bad I see and the good I see, and why I reached the conclusions I did. I'll be revealing them all eventually, probably gradually as I progress through the thread.

[mastin2]

I'm a little bit suspicious of mastin myself, if for no other reason than I distrust that she seems to be positioning herself as sort of an authority figure so early on and I don't know her so I can't really confirm if it's warranted.

I literally did exactly the opposite of this. As in, I explicitly said, "Don't put me on a pedestal. I'm only mediocre." (Almost my exact words.) I'm

well-known

; some people love me and some people hate me with a near-exact split in them. I play a lot, so I really get around. But I explicitly said that

doesn't

mean I'm skilled.

Also got to agree that I don't understand mastin's townread on guile. What's up with that, mastin? PoE, or what?

Like I said, it was a

guess

. I happened to think guille's RVS post was decent, even vaguely not-scum-looking. Now, I happen to really, really like his post 76, so he's becoming a townread for me off of more than just the educated guess, but that's what the read was at the time. (For the record, what I did was fairly light compared to the types of guesses I make in other games. In this game, it was an educated guess; in a lot of my other games, it's a pure, sheer, blind one. )

Also, to give a little bit more on the Fink (and Mathdino) versus Teen Girl thoughts (I'll go over the early posting before this became the case, and why I liked Fink's and Mathdino's but not Teen Girl's; this is just the general version) is that when Teen Girl posts things, they feel as if they are being said. When Fink posts things, they feel as if they are being thought, elaborated upon, explained, and then given. In short, it feels as if Teen Girl is again saying things and going through the motions, whereas Fink genuinely has put time and effort into giving a considerate thought to it. This is what differentiates their content to me. Fink can post the same conclusion as Teen Girl, and vice-versa. But when Fink does it, he is being reasonable and natural in doing so, yet Teen Girl feels like an artificial superficial version, if that explanation makes sense.

[mastin2]

Oh. General note, if you see me skipping a post, let me know that you want me to talk about that post specifically. For instance, I skipped a fair amount of Fink's posts which contain theory I happen to think is wrong, but the explanations for why are a bit of a side-track to the game and partially redundant given that his posts mainly explain why Astinus would be scum and I gave some (I can make it longer if needed) reasons I think otherwise.

why are you suspicious of oilura. She hasn't really struck me either way yet

A fair enough request. Admittedly, my suspicion on Oilura was (and still is) not that strong, but at the time, it was stronger than my suspicion on Teen Girl Squad and yourself, so I decided to place my vote there. (I'm currently considering moving to Teen Girl Squad, though.)

It starts with post 22, in which he drops a random vote that ignores the beginnings of the serious discussions. This isn't necessarily meaningful; some players do that, some players are just slow to the uptake, and so on. But then, in post 23, he continues the serious posting, while keeping his random vote. This is something quite a bit less common from town, albeit still not unheard of. The 'scumhunting' done there feels forced as well, as if he's trying too hard to look town. And when he does switch, he switches to the easiest target: Astinus, who already had considerable amount of pressure on them.

As far as cases go, that's about as weak as they come. But it was the best I had available at the time.

VOTE: Teen Girl Squad.
Feel more comfortable with this, though.

[mastin2]

I am inclined to agree that we don't benefit from a quick lynch. Let's keep the discussion going and get catch some scum for a good lynch day two. Especially if astinus somehow turns out to be town. The more discussion we keep going the more likely we will be to find the scum.

Oh, and by the way, it's posts like this from dragonspawn which give me the same feeling about him as I get from Teen Girl Squad.

I realize I forgot to mention Clusk in my reads. Right now, if I were to guess at scumteams and assumed all of Oilura/dragonspawn/TGS were scum, he'd be my best guess for fourth, but note the wording: best

guess

; it's barely even an educated one. I realize he's posted a fair bit, but I'm

really

having a hard time locking him down. And I continue to waver on Riabi and Nova, even though I'm thinking both of them may be town. So, POE is basically that one.

In brief summary,
{Astinus, 2birds, Fink, Mathdino, guille} are townreads;
{Riabi, Nova} I waver on but lean town;
Clusk, I can't tell but POE places him as scum;
And {dragonspawn, Oilura, Teen Girl Squad} are scumreads. Who am I forgetting?

Ah. NJAC. Place NJAC in the Clusk category; one of them would probably be scum. Not sure about team composition, though. If I were to venture a guess, dragonspawn and TGS would not be on the same team, though.

[mastin2]

Mathdino, basically gave them already. They look vaguely scum, but not very strongly so.

Also,

Mod: do the scum have daytalk?

I didn't seem to catch that detail, but it can make a difference in reads depending on whether they do or not. (Scumteams talking with daychat tend to have a less-easily-spotted voting pattern because they have a buddy to warn them and bounce ideas off of, and also can change what said scum post in-thread.)

[mastin2]

It looks like your vote on me (and my suspicion of you) mostly comes down to a playstyle difference?

Yes, that's possible, and the reason why I made the intro I did; clarifying playstyle differences was the goal. Problem is, though...

I try to be as transparent as possible, and to do that I also try [-snip-] not to overthink them.

You

say

this, but I see literally the exact opposite; your posting feels opaque and well-thought-out, crafted rather than simply made. And for that matter, your posting isn't exactly succinct, either. (Not that I'm one to talk, admittedly.)

I cannot imagine there is a single place in the wiki that advises players to self-vote as Vanilla Town. And like everyone's said, in this setup, if you're not Vanilla Town, you're scum.

Actually, there's several. I've actually been keeping a bit of a tight lip on some of the strongest reasons Astinus is a townread (some on the wiki, some on personal game experience I have, some in MD--I avoided posting in Thor's thread but it goes without saying I disagree), because I want Astinus to come forward with content and say in her(?) own words her view, unfiltered by her holding back as she(?) currently is.

Basically, I don't want to strongly defend Astinus, especially not if I'm inventing reasons that simply aren't there in the first place. I want Astinus to do that. Which is why I'm holding back the stronger reasons for the read. (Basically, the idea is that

after

Astinus gives her reasons, that I would give my own, because if I gave mine first, Astinus could draw from them, whereas I have no need to draw from her. Experience gap and all that.) But Astinus is in fact my strongest townread.

[mastin2]

Astinus is pretty much confirmed scum, mastin. Not because of self-voting but because there's no reason for town to act that way. Think.

I am. Which is why Astinus is town. I have VERY good reasons, and I really want to explain them, but I also really don't want to reveal them before Astinus posts content besides "I had my reasons" and "I'm doing the best I can for my faction".

Frankly, if Astinus keeps doing that, then I'll let her die. She'll die town, yes, but I'm not going to do her work for her, even though I very obviously can and to some extent am. She's had her moment of obscurity. But I want something from her. It doesn't even have to be a full-reveal. Content via scumhunting. Or content by revealing her reasons for doing the move. Preferably both, but either would work. She does that, then I will give you why she is without a doubt town. Because if what I think is going on, is going on...then pretty much now is the time for her to say it's going on.

Also, dragonspawn is not scum with NJAC, but can be scum with Oilura or Clusk. (I'll need to look at stuff to see which is most likely; lean towards Oilura.)

[mastin2]

Astinus honestly does read town outside of the scumclaim, for the reasons Mastin outlined.

The scumclaim wasn't even a scumclaim believe it or not if I'm right, but again, I don't want to say why it wasn't without Astinus coming in here, first. You're right about one thing, though: if Astinus

doesn't

give us something, then there's no reason to keep her around. Someone refusing to give content has no place in the game. She's town, but that's not an excuse to allow her to get away with it, because she's currently a massive distraction. I won't be voting her, but again, if she doesn't give me reason to continue defending her, then I'm not going to offer resistance to her lynch, either; now's the time for her to step up.

Also, I realize there's a fair amount of theory debate going on, here. My first post was made in a joking tone, but it actually kinda

is

right; this is effectively a newbie game in the open queue, with a fair number of SEs and only one true player considering themself an IC. (Me.) So I can contribute somewhat, there, but again, I can't reveal everything because a fair amount of the theory debate revolves around Astinus.

Lurkers: Riabi, NJAC
Leaning towards scum: Teen Girl Squad (for the following quotes), mastin2
Leaning towards town: Fink, dragonspawn
Null: Everyone else

As I said, Oilura can be scum with dragonspawn (my guess), but could in theory be scum with NJAC, too. (My current guess, though, is that NJAC is town. Note again that I'm saying "guess"; I don't have much except gut feeling backing that up.)

[mastin2]

Sorry for hyperactive posting but I just realised I forgot about the mafia cops. Hmm.

Unsure if townslip or not, but I would like it to be.

I'd definitely call it such. Then again, I thought your whole conversation was town anyway, soyeah.

I agree that dragonspawn is looking scummy - it seems like he's trying to buddy me a bit?

Speaking of which re:Mathdino, yeah, I absolutely think we should lynch Astinus today, I have no intention of voting to lynch anyone else.

I hope you can appreciate the irony, here. I'm not quite sure I'd go as far as to say it's hypocritical of you, but...yeah. Feel like keeping my vote, here. (Also, NJAC not likely scum with Teen Girl Squad, either, at this point, but not as impossible as it was with dragonspawn.)

For those following along, basically my thoughts on teams at this point would be {Teen Girl, Clusk} and {dragonspawn, Oilura}.

[mastin2]

Actually...I change my mind.

Clusk voted TGS--in the RVS, looking a bit tryhard, but did it all the same.
Clusk has, however, not done much with dragonspawn.

I'm definitely thinking Clusk is scum, now, off of more than just POE.

[mastin2]

This weakens my Oilura scumread a bit, but right now, I can see Oilura as town (in which case, one of my townreads is wrong), as scum with TGS (distancing without a vote), or as scum with dragonspawn.

Best guess would be scum with TGS, because it'd be Oilura doing the very thing he mentioned: buddying the opposite scumteam, while distancing from his own. (TGS is the lesser suspicion compared to me, and Oilura has plenty of suspicion on Astinus as well.) So definitely don't have things locked down, but that's what I've got for ya. A guess of {Clusk, dragonspawn} and {Oilura, TGS}.

The strength of the scumreads would be {TGS, dragonspawn, Clusk, Oilura} with TGS and dragonspawn being VERY strong, Clusk being moderate (but on the weaker end of moderate), and Oilura as a very weak one.

[mastin2]

Saw the hammer, but am leaving in 15 minutes--not enough time.

Regarding Mastin's comment about this being more common from town.

I've been trying to figure out if there was a logical scum or town motivation for Astinus' claim, and the best I've come up with is some bullshit I don't think is very smart.

I can promise that if I survive the night, I can explain fully EXACTLY why.

Short version short: I've claimed scum as town before in my own game history; I did it all the time. Salamance also pulled an EXCELLENT scumclaim as town in The Wire, which would have netted a scumbag if players had listened to him. The basicv motivation as town is obvious, as it can help you differentiate between town and scum. Astinus never actually scumclaimed, because she chose her wording VERY carefully. As a master of selective wording (because I love 'crumbing), I instantly saw this in her. She never said self-voting was beneficial to a VT...but she also didn't say that it was the self-vote itself that was beneficial. The reactions TO the self-vote ARE beneficial to a VT. She also never claimed scum, and insisted that her actions were useful to her faction. Considering the scumhunting we've been able to do from her wagon (me in particular, recognizing the motion), that holds true for town.

It does NOT hold true for scum, because self-voting serves only to draw attention to yourself. Given this was the RVS, NOT the lategame where she could be distracting from a scumbuddy, her pulling the move could only hurt her as scum, since there would be no way of knowing she'd have any defenders whereas it most likely would earn her condemnation. Thus, the move has EXTREME town Motive, and if you've read my articles, you know that I scumhunt primarily using it. And she had no scum motive, plenty of town motive.

Yet this was potentially me writing onto her elements of my own play, thus why I wanted her to defend herself.

[mastin2]

I'm very curious about these reasons.

Like I said...the above explanation is the VERY, VERY SHORT, brief version; I can give a full version if I survive.

[mastin2]

I agree that dragonspawn is looking scummy - it seems like he's trying to buddy me a bit?
Speaking of which re:Mathdino, yeah, I absolutely think we should lynch Astinus today, I have no intention of voting to lynch anyone else.

I hope you can appreciate the irony, here. I'm not quite sure I'd go as far as to say it's hypocritical of you, but...yeah.

Not sure what's hypocritical here. Do those two thoughts somehow contradict each other? Are you saying I'm buddying somebody else, or what?

Yes; you've massively buddied both Fink and Mathdino.

[mastin2]

I hate asking theory questions in-game, but mastin2, how useful do you feel associative tells/hunting for scumteams is, especially in multiball?

To answer this, associative tells/hunting for scumteams is an EXTREMELY effective tool...

but

, *especially* in multiball, it needs to take a back seat to scumhunting in general, first. Scumhunt for individual scum (motive, etc.) first, scumhunt for teams second.

Which is why my team speculation--while decent--is not absolute. My scumteam callouts right now might not be perfect, since the interactions I'm not quite sure of. However, they are my top four scumspects individually.

...This is a really bad, really rushed explanation; wish I had more time to explain.

Butyeah. When Astinus flips town, look in TGS, dragonspawn, Oilura, and Clusk for your scum if I don't make it.

[mastin2]

So some idiot lurker who claimed scum is your strongest townread?

In fact she was. For precisely the reasons I mentioned: the "idiot" play is something I INSTANTLY recognized as that weird Slayer's-Gambit hybrid with that other-name-gambit, which I was one of the most prominent users of back in the day and I've seen used effectively by town to absolutely NAIL scum. It was an INSANELY town (albeit highly unconventional, and certainly not recommended) move to make. It was handled badly, thus was stupid and got her lynched, yes...but it was also brilliant and amazing in how much it helped to expose.

[mastin2]

Oh hell I was just ISOing mastin when I realised I came up with the exact same reads as her inadvertently. Dammit.

That happens a lot when we're the same alignment.

(Trust me, you get used to it after a while.)

/Ran out of time.
Sorry.