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

[Teen Girl Squad]

Some last thoughts before the thread is locked:

Astinus's flip is dependent on a lot of my reads (and i'm guessing all of our reads, since she was pretty much the dominating figure this day phase). If she turns up scum, Oilura's vote looks really bad. The whole "Astinus is dumb scum so all the other scum must be dumb, too" thing, plus the sudden hammer smacks of a frustrated scumpartner. Dragonspawn also could be a potential partner, like I said earlier his vote hopping looked like it could've been a tactic to take pressure off of her while still "voting" her.

If she's town, which I doubt but I suppose it's possible, then I'm more suspicious of the quieter players. A lot of players were able to fly under the radar a lot today, I'm still suspicious of NJAC, for one thing, guille and Riabi have both been quiet until recently too, so they're people to look more closely at. I agree Mastin looks worse if Astinus flips town, but the fact that there are multiple scum factions kind of messes with that.

Mathdino and Fink seem pretty town at this point. The rest are pretty much null.

[dragonspawn]

Wasn't expecting a hammer so quickly. I'd offer some thoughts before the flip but I don't have time to sift through and process all the posts since I last posted. Let's see how she flips.

[Clusk92]

If Astinus flips town I'm going to be looking into Mastin and Oilura tomorrow

[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.

[dragonspawn]

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.

that's the short version?

[Voidedmafia]

Votecount FINAL:

Mastin2 - NJAC
Astinus - Astinus, Riabi, Nova, Clusk92, 2birds, Mathdino, Oilura (LYNCH!)
Oilura - guille2015
Teen Girl - Mastin2
NJAC - dragonspawn

Not Voting - Teen Girl, Fink

With 13 alive it takes 7 to lynch and 6 to no-lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2014-11-05 02:12:28) or by 1:00 AM on November 5th, 2014.

Lynch scene incoming!

[Voidedmafia]

Almost immediately certain people in Columbia began searching for clues as to who the interlopers were. It seemed almost too easy when one of them acted as if they were self-advertising as an intruder.

They quickly surrounded and pummeled her to death, but she was adamant about her innocence until one final punt to the head cracked her skull and completely ruined her brain. She got one last, dreamy look at the blue sky before darkness took her, and the citizens were left without a single answer that day.

Astinus,

Vanilla Townie

, was beaten to death day 1.

Night 1 begins now. All actions must be submitted within (expired on 2014-11-02 16:43:44) or by 3:45 PM on November 2nd, 2014.

[Voidedmafia]

The day dawned blood-red, a sight that sent those who were superstitious into an unnatural shiver. Nonetheless, the town still had things to do and could not wait for an ominous morning.

The first body was found in an alley by the local bar. Two bullet wounds were clearly visible on her body, and authorities were quick to identify her thanks to her wallet in her pocket. Though it was still unproven, all suspected the invading mafia were the cause.

It wasn't until noon that the second body was found. In fact, it may not have been found at all had a park walker not accidentally tripped and, after recovering on the ground, seen the bony remains. He quickly alerted authorities to have the area surrounded in minutes. The body was severely cut along the torso and face, rendering recognition nearly impossible, but thankfully whatever beast took it did not know or did not care about the person's physical possessions as an ID card was left behind. The company that had hired the person issued a statement of mourning for the person's family and an offer to help them in their time of need.

Even so, there were intruders to root out, and none of them could wait for long.

Fink,

Vanilla Townie

, was mauled and lacerated to death Night 1.
Mastin2,

Vanilla Townie

, was shot twice Night 1.

Day 2 begins now.

[Voidedmafia]

Votecount 2.00:

Not Voting - NJAC, Riabi, Nova, Clusk92, 2birds, Mathdino, Oilura, guille2015, dragonspawn, Teen Girl

With 10 alive it takes 6 to lynch and 5 to no-lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2014-11-12 21:47:01) or by 7:45 PM on November 12th, 2014.

[Oilura]

Mastin2 is town? Interesting...

I thought he was scum. Well, there goes most of my reads.

As for why I hammered, it was because some of you implied that you wanted a hammer:

Astinus

, answer the below before someone waltzes into the thread and hammers you.

I'm also more than willing to

hammer Astinus in the near future

, once we've heard from her.

I am more than willing to hammer astinus if she fails to provide any information as promised. We are giving her plenty of time to pony up. But I will give plenty of time before.

[Oilura]

By the way, here are my current reads as of now:

Lurkers (Scum): NJAC, Riabi and Nova-Radiance.
VOTE: NJAC

[dragonspawn]

Mastin2 is town? Interesting...

I thought he was scum. Well, there goes most of my reads.

As for why I hammered, it was because some of you implied that you wanted a hammer:

Astinus

, answer the below before someone waltzes into the thread and hammers you.

I'm also more than willing to

hammer Astinus in the near future

, once we've heard from her.

I am more than willing to hammer astinus if she fails to provide any information as promised. We are giving her plenty of time to pony up. But I will give plenty of time before.

there is a reason I said we should let her have time. It's because I wanted her to have time to answer. If I wanted her dead I would have hammered and not given her time waiting for someone else to do it.

this excuse of yours seriously sucks

[Oilura]

Mastin2 is town? Interesting...

I thought he was scum. Well, there goes most of my reads.

As for why I hammered, it was because some of you implied that you wanted a hammer:

Astinus

, answer the below before someone waltzes into the thread and hammers you.

I'm also more than willing to

hammer Astinus in the near future

, once we've heard from her.

I am more than willing to hammer astinus if she fails to provide any information as promised. We are giving her plenty of time to pony up. But I will give plenty of time before.

there is a reason I said we should let her have time. It's because I wanted her to have time to answer. If I wanted her dead I would have hammered and not given her time waiting for someone else to do it.

this excuse of yours seriously sucks

She answered. Her excuse was horrible, unless you want to say otherwise?

[NJAC]

I'll read tomorrow and post. Sorry again for the absence.

[dragonspawn]

VOTE: Fink

I Fink this guy is scum

Oh My God You Suck (at puns) VOTE: Clusk

finks random vote. Doesn't mean much but it seems a good place to start.

Actually, I think my previous vote doesn't count. It was a stupid vote anyway. It had stupid hair.

VOTE: Teen Girl Squad

Early wagons are sooooo good!

finks second random vote. Not sure it says much more than the first. After this he was on astinus the rest of the day as his main suspect.

This game cannot be real, I... I have no idea what I'm reading.
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.
At the same time, I cannot ignore the blatant misrep and simply nonsensical argument with a hint of OMGUS.

Yeah, I was kind of blown away yesterday, and it's only got weirder since. This seems like it is going to be crazy

independent

of the interesting setup.

That said, while I think the vote on Mastin was super douchey, I'm not convinced it came from scum. Mastin came in and did something unexpected and someone voted for it. Esp. if he is town, Mastin picking on him might indicate Mastin's reasoning being bad and even more inspire thoughts of a bad motive. It doesn't look like he's doing much to discredit Mastin with this vote (maybe I'm just hung up on the

result

in that we're all thinking it's an unhelpful dick move rather than suddenly turning on Mastin, but it feels more like lashing out than manipulative discrediting to me.)

The "confirmed town" thing is dumb, but it was on page 2 (or 3, whatever, not checking this far into the post), it's trivially easy for us to point out it was bull, and again feels to me like an off-the-cuff angry reaction to Mastin. And not a particularly well-thought-out one.

Honestly the way Mathdino jumped on it as a misrep made me more nervous than the misrep itself.

casting suspicions at math.

might be something to look at.

I can't figure out Oilura's scumhunting-by-looking-for-scum-being-terrible-at-being scum technique.

@Oilura: I second Teen Girl Squad's question: What would good play for scum be right now, in your opinion?

And let me add to that: Assuming scum are competent players, what do you look for?

questioning oilura. Not really a scum suspicion though.

Sorry, wanted to let some things unfold first.

@Nova: What was it you were waiting for to unfold before making your first post of the game?

questioning nova.

possible suspects? Of them math is probably the only one he had strong suspicions on.

[dragonspawn]

Mastins posts are a bit longer I'll look through them later when I have more time.

[2birds1stone]

VOTE: dragonspawn

Previously-stated reasons plus block-quote IIOA post.

Dragonspawn's vaguely-stated suspicion against Mathdino is based on a misrepresentation of Fink's short ISO, and I don't like that. Whether or not it's actually scummy... I'm unsure, but Math has stated suspicion against dragonspawn, so there's motivation.

[Mathdino]

Was gonna say the same thing against 2birds except the last part; I only stated suspicion because I PoE'd him.

@dragonspawn: Your NKA sucks. Fink was one of the towniest people in the game. That's it. Scum wants to cut down on the people who they can't lynch.
Mastin? I'm guessing scum either killed her because they agreed with "If Astinus is town, mastin is scum", or because of exactly what she said: she just gets NK'd a lot because she's good like that.

Here's the thing with NKA. If there's not an obvious reason, sure, you can try to second-guess the scum, see who the NK benefits. But in this case, Occam's Razor works best.

I really don't like how you're trying to muddy it up by starting there. NKA is never a good starting point. Furthermore, by no means did Fink display 'strong suspicions' for me. He was a protown player who predictably flipped town.
I never actually got around to ISOing the suspects in my scumlist by PoE, so lemme do that real quick.

[Riabi]

Okay, first off, let me say sorry for being so inactive on the first day. I typically play a good bit from work, but work was crazy last week. I think it will be less so this week.

I'm really disappointed in the hammer. And I disagree with your reasoning for it Oilura. A hammer when we had (was it 4 or 5) days left for discussion only benefits scum. I agree that Astinus should have been hammered, her play was weird and anti-town. But I also think there was plenty of more discussion we could have had both with her and others. For example, I was looking forward to seeing what Astinus had to say about Mastin's guess as to why she was playing like that. But, we'll never know now because of the quick hammer. Also, I was planning to spend a couple hours on Saturday morning to do a good full write up on everything that had gone on, but instead I come back from Trick-or-Treating on Friday night to find the thread locked.

A few other quick notes..

- I agree with Dino about NKA, there's not a lot of point in it right now. Perhaps later when we have a fuller picture of what's going on we can do that.
- 2birds, I'm not saying I disagree with you on your dragonspawn read (I'm just not sure about him), but I think your case is weak as it is. I find that IIOA is lazy as often as it is scummy.

Probably town: Mathdino (I agree that 137 was probably a town-slip), TGS
Leaning town: Clusk, 2birds
Neutral/Can't Tell: NJAC, Nova, dragonspawn
Leaning scum: Guille (This is mostly a gut-read)
Probably scum: Oilura

VOTE: Oilura

[Oilura]

I'm really disappointed in the hammer. And I disagree with your reasoning for it Oilura. A hammer when we had (was it 4 or 5) days left for discussion only benefits scum. I agree that Astinus should have been hammered, her play was weird and anti-town. But I also think there was plenty of more discussion we could have had both with her and others. For example, I was looking forward to seeing what Astinus had to say about Mastin's guess as to why she was playing like that. But, we'll never know now because of the quick hammer. Also, I was planning to spend a couple hours on Saturday morning to do a good full write up on everything that had gone on, but instead I come back from Trick-or-Treating on Friday night to find the thread locked.

Odd. Where I come from, we lynch scum the moment we are sure they are definitely scum.

Apparently they do it differently here.