Mini Normal 2002: The Thaw OVERRRRRRRRR

[Hoopla]

oh, this is open? might want to send a daystart PM to everyone since it's been pregame for so long.

ANYWAY, onto business

VOTE: Floosh

[Hoopla]

hello anime lady.

how do you feel about random voting?

[Hoopla]

hey gamma, lets vote the anime lady. i'm curious to see the catalogue of pictures she has lined up to react to being wagoned.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Erika Furudo

[Hoopla]

Gamma, less chat. More Titus votes.

[Hoopla]

I think we have Titus on the ropes, Gamma

If we hacked her webcam right now, we'd see a quivering lady sweating profusely

[Hoopla]

Like I'd say Erika is RC but she the timelines don't add up
PEdit: wtf Hoopla why do you hate Erika so much
also wtf is with you just hounding me down and trying to get me to follow you

Gamma, my heart beats strong and radiates pure love. Don't be scared of love.

[Hoopla]

So, I'm browsing youtube videos of this animes to see the appropriate voice and cadence I should be reading Erika's posts in. I, uh... hmm yes, interesting. Very good.

[Hoopla]

Titus, can you please not write so many words. I know my page 1 votes are intimidating, (it's an understandable instinct to be fearful of ol' wily Hoopla) but lets take it down a notch, chill out and be cool. Here, eat some cake (idk if ur character likes snacking, let me know):

[Hoopla]

Because Titus posting in such a manner is a hilarious concept to me, and I'm keeping it alive until it stops being funny.

...which might be now since we're getting weird and analytical about it.

[Hoopla]

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell everyone.

I had a dream (like, a sleep dream -- this isn't the start of an inspirational speech) that we decided to no-lynch as performance art and in a show of solidarity scum decided to no-kill. I can't decide if it's pleasant or alarming that this game has already pierced my subconscious so effectively.

This isn't really related to anything, just

wanted to distract from the fact I haven't started scumhunting yet

wanted to share.

[Hoopla]

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Flavor Leaf

[Hoopla]

I unironically think we should have lynched Flavor Leaf then, because I know the alternative will end up being a gruelling 50 page Day 1 with a deadline flashwagon.

[Hoopla]

This only happens if I’m scum or am getting pushed by stubborn town relentlessly despite the contrary to reasons why I would be mechanically town.

I don’t care if people scum read me, just accept you can be wrong and be willing to at least try to work it out.

It's less about your alignment, and more about avoiding an avalanche of pages pre-flips. I am pretty shamelessly in favour of policy/utility lynching anyone not a town read. Anyway, the wind seems to be blowing in Saudade's direction, so...

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Saudade

[Hoopla]

I always want to lynch you. Like every time I want to day 1 lynch you.

You trigger me.

But you know I'll blossom into a beautiful tree* once we get some claims and flips in the game.

*not my best metaphor

[Hoopla]

Do people like, buy flavor's claim?
I really don't.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's scum bravado, but generally I find town are slightly more willing to unnecessarily leak their role or softclaim in general.

[Hoopla]

After sleeping on it, I'm back to preferring Flavor Leaf over Saudade. Too much

"wah wah woe is me"

and

"Ah, but I wouldn't actually play scum that way"

posts, not to mention the weird goading people into attacking him then claiming it was a Trap™. If he's scum, cool, if he's town, no big deal. He'll probably just radiate other flavours of bad plays tomorrow, and then before you know it, he'll be requesting votes and laying traps in LYLO. Alright, maybe that last bit is an exaggeration, but for real, lets just nip it in the bud now.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Flavor Leaf

[Hoopla]

yes but why did you think im scum over flavor to begin with

You mostly seemed expendable. I haven't really digested your most recent postings.

[Hoopla]

To be fair, I do find Saudade's avatar quite suspicious.

[Hoopla]

/in before this Day is still going 20 pages later.

For real, this is why I find mafia so hard to play these days. We have a clear lynch choice. Don't tell me we're not going to lynch Flavor Leaf at some point in the game, it might as well be now. What point is there bloating the thread any more? Erika seems sensible enough to not be faffing around with a pointless vanity wagon -- Prism is new to the game, but his vote seems pointless too. And to CultofAthena, Cheetory, lets be honest, we all know that in order for Magna to be lynched D1 he would literally have to slip and land on his keyboard, accidentally screenshot his scum role PM, get up from slipping, try to recover, slip again and accidentally upload that screenshot to imgur, get up again, dazed, slip once more and land on his keyboard in the precise manner that posts the screenshot in this thread... and even then he might be able to talk his way out of it. Your votes are pointless and a waste of time.

I guess implosion or me are viable counterwagons, either way, it's time for people to start voting people who are actually viable lynches.

[Hoopla]

Ftr I feel like if I was really confident and enough of a dick about it [and this was a year ago when I still had the energy for tryharding in mafia], I could probably get MOI lynched on D1?
Doesn't mean it would necessarily be a good idea, but I don't really think he's unlynchable?

I like the cut of your jib. It's good to be optimistic

I guess it depends on how much you care about winning?
I hope you're going to put more effort into trying to parse people tomorrow. >.>

I care a lot about winning, that's why on D1 I tend to designate myself as the Head of Content Curation and the Voice of Reason in the face of purposeless threadbloating, valiantly trying to ensure a nice balance of voices are heard and that people are forwarding the game with their votes. Some might call me brave or heroic, but I don't like to think of myself that way -- I'm just a regular scummer like you guys, trying to make a difference.

Haven't done the stats for a while, but more than 30% of Mini Normals used to end up with a lynch on an unclaimed player on D1, usually through town laziness and complacency. They often have a clear lynch, don't do anything with it until 24 hours from deadline and then suddenly if they get cold feet either from a claim, or they simply want to change to someone else, it ends in chaos.

I was actually having a quick look today if things had changed in recent times -- nope. 6 of the last 10 mini normals ended D1 by lynching an unclaimed player, and even one case of lynching nobody (lol).

Imo, a succinct D1 makes future lynches more accurate, as nobody ends up analysing D1 properly when it's 1000 posts long, so even if a quicker lynch might be less accurate (and I don't think it is), I think we gain a lot more on future days, to the point that I feel like focusing on this D1 is the best way I can play to my wincondition as opposed to eking out a (maybe) 5% more accurate lynch today at the expense of making D1 unreadable not only for us, but for future potential replacements too.

[Hoopla]

It's impossible to understand flavor's play without some knowledge of his meta. He does things in a very intentionally arbitrary way and makes a point to be inconsistent in certain regards.

His scum motivation here, if he's scum, is simply to try to emulate his meta. He's screwing around with the claim-backtrack-differentclaim shenanigans to try to get people to think in the back of their heads that this isn't something he'd do as scum, even though his sig is very explicit that he'll do pretty much anything as scum.

In a sense, his existence in a game is -EV for town in the same way that creature's is +EV for town.

I missed this post until Prism quoted it, but I found this to be a very eloquent exposition of Flavor Leaf and to me, it helps show why he'd be a fine utility lynch.

[Hoopla]

It's just that if we go this route, I kind of want a guarantee that if you're town here, you're going to start dropping some hardcore Hoopla scumhunting tomorrow. [Because it does honestly make you and Flavor a lot harder to read when you're not really participating in the scumhunt, if that makes sense?]

In a way, I'm thankful that most players earnestly believe they're much more accurate than random on D1, because their stances today will make for clearer associations in the future, so I get this makes it harder to read me. I honestly just can't say with much conviction that I genuinely believe someone is scum D1 (except for rare times) and am usually OK lynching half the playerlist, and tend to tiebreak it by deciding who has the most/lease value for future days including factors like; scumhunting ability if town, NK candidate if town (meaning I sometimes don't have to figure out their alignment as mafia take care of it for me), how easy they are to read on later days etc. They seem like more meaningful factors to base a D1 lynch on to me.

I tend to open up the more confirmed information comes into the game, and I'm pretty good at townhunting and PoE when the game gets small enough. Having said that, I usually have more reads by now, even if they're just a couple of solid townreads, but I am pretty out of the loop meta-wise atm. Sooo.... lets just kill Flavor Leaf and see what happens.

[Hoopla]

@MOD replace me the lack of motivation for me to even try this is and everytime I look at the game it reminds me on why I hate the normal queue

I thought you were doing good. You're just about to miss us drag Flavor Leaf into the town square and hang him in all his glory. Just think what a fine bonding opportunity this will be for the town.

[Hoopla]

That appears to me to be a 5:4 ratio. Now that's slightly more town than scum, to be sure, but I'm sure as fuck confident I can beat random chance.

Too small a sample size and not statistically significant, especially when you consider you weren't in the game on D1 for the 1105 scumlynch, so you don't get to count that. If you do, there are other games you replaced out of/into that resulted in a D1 town lynch. You also missed 1843 where you were lynched D1 as town, and your top two scumreads were town, so that should be included.

So, I have it as a 6:3 ratio. If you played 9 games and lynched randomly D1, you'd have a ~38% chance of hitting 3+ scum. Who knows, maybe you're just mildly lucky?

Ftr, I think you

are

better than random and one of the more accurate players on the site and worth sheeping sometimes -- but the amount you're better than random on D1 is negligible.

~~

Anyhow, if we're now not lynching Flavor (?) I'll check in later once the new wave of wagons have matured.

[Hoopla]

BTW the above vote count should be a pretty good signal that Flavor is likely Town not scum. If you want a policy lynch go for it but odds that is a scum lynch at the same time are slim.

Thinking about it, I guess I do kinda agree with the logic that Flavor's wagon is more likely to stall if he's town, with a handful of vanity wagons, no real competition, yet also no real motivation to get the lynch through despite my pleading. Looks like scum were getting complacent, assuming it would go through eventually and there was no reason to dirty their hands over this one.

I'm fine with implosion's contributions so far, his vote on Flavor was 5th on the wagon and actually gave the wagon a chance of being lynched. If Flavor is town, implosion is putting himself on a heavily scrutinised area of the wagon -- the area of the wagon where it has genuine moment and threat of lynch. Why put yourself in the limelight tomorrow on a mislynch wagon when there are no threatening counterwagons? The vanity vote-parkers are more likely where the scum are.

I'd probably vote Erika at this point, but I'll wait for the replacement.

VOTE: CultofAthena

Also fine with lynching Hiraki, Prism, Stefan, Erika, though probably not Cheetory since a lot of his reads are lining up with how I'm viewing the game, and he was very willing to help out ol' Hoopla with a Flavor vote when I put out the request. Makes me think he'll be easy to boss around later, which is good for me, both from a game PoV and a fun PoV.

[Hoopla]

I have a problem with how widespread this is being used and its effectiveness now-a-days. But that's a better discussion for Mafia discussion.

Why think that Implosion didn't know what he was doing? The guy who's making walls just forgot that he was voting where he was? Your point on Implosion really doesn't sit well with me. It gives him credit for bad scumplay when he's a good player. Too complicated to make me feel good.

I mean, it isn't slamdunk crystalline logick that flies him on a one-way ticket straight to LYLO, but it's good enough to give him a pass today when we're thinking about the probable composition of scum on Flavor's wagon (assuming he's now town). Sidenote: I think this tell is probably stronger as a general scum composition thing as opposed to specifically clearing individuals.

But on implosion; whenever I read through the debates he's been having with people, he seems to have a type of personality and way of expressing his thoughts that really resonates with me, and though this isn't alignment-indicative on it's own, it reminds me of what happens to me when I end up engaging in debates with certain players on D1 -- things I think and say that seem perfectly ordinary to say or do get easily misinterpreted, because they just don't view the world through the same lens I do. His convos with Magna being the key reference point here. He's just ~*

misunderstood

*~ maaaaan.

Actually, can someone give me a summary of the implosion case. Is there one I've missed?

[Hoopla]

Not even I guess, that's pretty clearly the intent.

Big issue for me is that your level of scumreading me for the CoA vote wasn't justified, and seemed to shift to a broader vanity vote concern rather than the more narrow, "Where's your case to lynch?" Urgency concern/thinking I wanted Flavor to go through without much comment kind of ties those together.

Probably not going to let up on me but oh well, light the flames and let's have a cookout.

My level is scumreading you is you're in a pool of half a dozen player's I'd be OK lynching. This seems like an overzealous defence to my meagre scumread on you, if we can even call it that. If anything, my call out of you (amongst other people) was a call to the action to get you to get the game moving.

[Hoopla]

Like, I don't get how you could ever think that was directed at you unless you weren't reading me/Cheet at all.

Not gonna lie, certain back-and-forths... my eyes pretty much just glaze over.

[Hoopla]

Can someone explain this pocketing thing to me that I'm hearing about these days and why it's a thing?

[Hoopla]

Cool stuff, I'm glad we're all playing at such advanced levels. The spectator thread will be loving such a fine display of mafia'ing.

[Hoopla]

I take back everything I said in 568, but on principal and out of respect for my buddies I never bus Day 1, so lets hope town just thinks this was all a hilarious joke and it blows over.

[Hoopla]

So you can't read Hoopla? Okay. Then why are you eager to vote her and slow to vote Flavor Leaf? Because you yourself said you couldn't figure out what he was doing. And let me assure you, Hoopla on day 3 is useful. Flavor Leaf on day 3... look, no experience, but I just don't see it happening if you know what I mean.

One of the best methods I have of reading people stems from how they react to my play -- it's how I used to interpret your alignment. Questions I would ask myself: Is he displaying a reasonable level of paranoia? Can I sense he is curious and also uncertain about my role? Or is he taking the easy route and just lumping me in as town without question or simply choosing to scumread me without curiosity about my alignment? I often see scum unwilling or unable to fake a nuanced read on my alignment.

My take on Stefan is he always kinda comes across as an antsy goober who gets worked up over weird or seemingly trivial things. I like that when he became more informed about me from others speaking up, he was willing to back off and explore other options, and it seems like his push on me again now stems from genuine paranoia about not being able to read me -- to the point that paranoia has overridden everyone telling him to chill out about me. Some players end up doing silly things because of paranoia and to me it feels like Stefan doesn't know my alignment. If he was scum, I think he'd be more willing to accept the group wisdom and leave me alone for a while.

[Hoopla]

Gamma, why haven't you voted anyone for the last 5 pages?

[Hoopla]

Pick one. We're halfway through D1. It's criminal to not be voting now.

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla: You should sheep whatever we decide. Not lynching you is the only positive EV you have with the way you play day 1s. I think you're town because of voodoo, but even that's a weak read, and Stefan complaining why he's being wagoned while you get a pass is scumplaining, but also you look like an easy target because you are playing like an easy target.

I probably will once things get serious and the new realistic lynch choices become more clear. At the moment it feels like we're still waiting for the dust to settle from the Flavor wagon dissipating.

Hoopla, when did Flavor vanish from this list?

I agreed with the logic that the way Flavor's wagon stalled out with no counterwagons, it was likely he was town. Given I only ever had him at neutral-ish when I wanted to lynch him, this was enough to tip things in his favour.

[Hoopla]

Walk me through this one then. Flavor's wagon stalled out, and that makes him town. So why did the wagon stall? Was:

A) Three scum on the wagon and the town wasn't buying it?
B) Two scum already on the wagon, and a third didn't want to all dogpile?
C) Only one scum on the wagon, and the others were avoiding it?
D) No scum on the wagon, and they decided to hard defend flavor leaf?

With some inactive players, could you conclude that lack of a counterwagon would be lack of Flavor providing any worthwhile counterwagon? Is it possible scum-Flavor was bussed by his buddies? My observation is that scum tend to find other scum scummy, and mucking up a fakeclaim is as scummy as it gets besides.

I'd like you to expound on the logic here.

I suppose C seemed the most likely to me -- though, I guess I don't really care that much about that opinion to defend it, and am back on board with a policy lynch on Flavor Leaf since the alternatives seem to be Stefan, implosion or me. Flavor is the best pick of all those imo.

Good hustle from Grey in recent pages, and so I don't have to read and analyse it all, I'm just gonna sheep him for now -- I actually haven't got too many pangs of worry from Grey so far re: his alignment, which is unusual. I am chalking it up to me being rusty and not getting what the kids are up to these days. Regardless, this day has gone on far too long and I'm annoyed at how predictably this is all playing out. All we need now to complete the bingo card is for everyone to twiddle their thumbs til 48 hours to go, run someone else up, have them claim something obvtown, then flashwagon someone else in a blind panic (preferably without a claim).

Also, I'd like to extend a hearty congratulations to CultofAthena for lurking her way through the last 10-15 pages and dodging a wagon potentially manifesting on her had she spoken. A fine project for the town to undertake D2. It's good to have things to look forward to.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Flavor Leaf

[Hoopla]

Although if anyone wants to flash wagon CultofAthena at this point, well, you say the word and I will join that shit so fast you don't even understand what I mean. That vote and that ISO are a lot scarier than I was giving it credit for.

I would switch to that if it became a thing.

[Hoopla]

UNVOTE:
VOTE: CultofAthena

looks like we're doing this

[Hoopla]

Hoopla, can you point me to any scumhunting you have done this game?

I've done little to no meaningful scumhunting. In my eyes everyone's odds of being scum atm is falling within the range of ~22%-28%.

Hoopla you posted that towns suck and we should lynch semi-random on day 1. Why?

No matter how long D1 goes, the lynch will almost always be semi-random. I advocate for towns to get on with things on D1 instead of having 30+ page D1's because it kills half the playerlist's enthusiasm for the game, makes it harder for replacements, has about the same odds of hitting scum and is just generally boring. Going into D2 you get a couple of flips and roleclaims to work with and less players to analyse coupled with less players talking. It's way easier. And it's even easier when D1 is readable for everyone.

Can you give us any proof that town tends to lynch someone without a claim regulary because that sounds totally ridiculous.

My mini normal stats are on another computer not accessible right now, so you're just going to have to take my word on that one. All I have with me are the last 12 games I checked. Games with lynches on unclaimed players in blue:

Spoiler: recent D1 claims

1964

- VT claim, 2-shot BP claim, lynch on an unclaimed mafioso

1961

- No claims at all, lynch on an unclaimed VT

1954

- Neighbouriser claim, lynch on town neighbouriser

1952

- VT claim, lynch on VT

1951

- Non-Consecutive Night JK claims, lynch on an unclaimed VT

1948

- No claims at all, lynch on an unclaimed 2-shot Friendly Neighbour (lol)

1946

- Miller claim, VT claim, lynch on VT

1943

- Watcher claim, 1-shot Dayvig softclaim, lynch on Mafia Watcher

1940

- No claims at all, lynch on an unclaimed VT

1938

- Doctor fakeclaim (actually a VT lol), lynch on an unclaimed VT

1934

- Vig claim, Jailkeeper softclaim, Unspecified "Town PR" claim, town run out of time for a lynch (lol)

1931

- VT claim, lynch on VT

~ Like I said, you're just going to have to trust me that these aren't isolated incidences and is infact established site meta.

Hoopla, have you got any good reads this game, that are strong?
Any real scumread?

No, not really. As I've said in another post, I'd rather lynch people on D1 for different reasons. For example, one reason I'm not voting you over others, is that you seem very readable and will probably make your alignment obvious one way or another later in the game. I doubt the same will be true for Flavor Leaf.

[Hoopla]

Are we seriously going to have to wait until sunday for a claim?

[Hoopla]

*gloomily chalks another line in the no-claiming lynch tally etched on my wall prison-style*

For real tho, as far as D1 lynches on unclaimed players I guess this was one of the better ones. Good chance of lurker scum and CoA really should have claimed if she had a confirmable town role.

In general, lurkers are high up in my criteria for D1 policy lynches, so I'm not super mad.

[Hoopla]

I don't know, but probably extremely rare outside of 1:1:1 kingmaker situations.

[Hoopla]

Eh this game took 4 days to start, the mod just missed a lynch when he posted, it's important to set the bar at the right spot. Mine is at "I'm happy if there's no gamechanging mod errors"

VOTE: GreyICE

For attempting to jinx the game.

[Hoopla]

Oh wait, it's Day 2. I forget we don't do a RVS now.

UNVOTE:

[Hoopla]

My pet theory for the Cheetory nightkill is that GreyICE/MoI are both town, with scum attempting to play them off each and for Grey to attempt to push a MoI mislynch. Or they simply valued killing someone who was seemingly universally townread over players with better game-breaking skills. Either way, as long as we keep lynching scum, those slots get to stay alive imo.

There's this ugly moment when you're scum in one game and town in another that you have to make sure your town game nominally matches your scum game. This gets amplified in LyLo, where smart people are ripping everything to shreds to find ANYTHING to give them a hint. Hoopla was obviously scum in that other game, and I feel she's town here.

You have it backwards. I try to emulate my town game as scum, not my scum game as town. What you were seeing in C9++ was me doing an impression of town-me. I don't think about my image so much in town games.

[Hoopla]

VOTE: Piplup

Never really liked Erika's play. Placeholder vote until I get my thoughts together.

[Hoopla]

While I am now basking in the glow of obvtown status, I'd like to burn some of my newfound town credit on requesting some Piplup votes. Lets see what happens when there's five votes on him instead of two.

[Hoopla]

Just going to stream of conscious some thoughts on players in no particular order:

Grey

- derailed the Flavor Leaf lynch in order to lead a CoA wagon. The only reason to bother doing this as scum, is if you think this play will buy you enough towncred to last the whole game, offsetting the cost of unnecessarily bussing a teammate. Grey knows he's never getting a free pass to LYLO regardless of how influential he was for a D1 scum lynch, and people will be paranoid of him from D3 onward no matter what. I made a similar mistake in C9++ as scum recently, appearing too town too early: no matter how town you look early, that evaporates when you continually keep not getting NK'ed. Grey isn't stupid enough to bus from nowhere without getting the appropriate level of town cred in return.

This is the most confident I've been on Grey's alignment D2 as long as I remember, but a tinfoil

"what if??"

conspiro-theory for a properly balanced report: scum with Flavor, derailing a wagon of a buddy onto

another

buddy for style points.

~~

Gamma

- seems similar to how he played as town in our C9++ game, though I'm not familiar with his scumgame. I'm mostly trusting the group meta on him being fairly readable and not scum in this instance. I think his CoA vote was good. It was really his vote, along with mine and Grey's that seemed to make the wagon a realistic opportunity, and I don't think Gamma was bussing. Not a slamdunk read, but definitely not someone I'm considering a suspect atm.

~~

Saudade

- Came into today thinking he was a good candidate for scum. Lurked out most of the day once the pressure on him evaporated, but I think the thing most in his favour is CoA's reactions to his wagon:

Current thoughts on Saudade?

Saudade wagon seems kind of transparently scum-driven, at least going off my current reads.

That gives me pause, actually.

Both came when Saudade/Flavor were locked at 4 votes each. If Saudade is scum, seems weird to comment on him twice while ignoring the other wagon. For this reason I think it actually points to

Flavor Leaf

being a possible buddy -- especially when you factor in CoA's last minute vote on Flavor when she was all but lynched. I also think Flavor's vote is the most likely bus vote of all the CoA votes.

MoI

is the other vote that

could

possibly be a bussing vote, though I'm not too worried about him atm. The only reason I am worried about him is because of Grey's confidence, but again, I like my pet theory of scum keeping them both alive for the town vs. town death tunnel potential.

I'm still liking

StefanB

for town based off the way he was reacting to me yesterday and his posthammer play, and I'm not as sold on

implosion

town anymore, mostly from a PoE perspective. I legit think there's a good chance CoA's wagon was all town. I think the only vote that could be scum is Flavor Leaf, so I'd prefer to lynch off the wagon in: implosion, Hiraki, Prism, Piplup -- with Flavor/Saudade as wildcard choices.

But I need to reread more.

[Hoopla]

Sorry friends, I know everyone has been keenly awaiting some more Hoopla thoughts but I've ended up having an unexpectedly busy weekend. Hopefully it will end soon;)

[Hoopla]

curious how the topic died for the last couple of days

Mmm yeah, apologies for my role in this. It seems all the information and thoughts I had on this game has gone out the window and needs to be refreshed. So, I'll give things a readover and see what's up.

A vote count would be good?

[Hoopla]

Oh hey, looks like this finished! Totally peaced out once we got that slew of replacements on D3 and didn't really end up following the rest of the game. Regardless, well played scumbags

I enjoyed dipping my toes back in the water again, but faced motivation issues on D2 -- although it seemed like I wasn't the only one, which led to the game fizzling out for a while. Nice playing with you all, I had fun