Mini 1401 - Game over!

[Gorgon]

VOTE: theaceofspades

Going with the flow, it's all a game to me.

[Gorgon]

well Meph, that's kinda the point. What's scummy about scumhunting exactly?

Nothing scummy about it all, as long as you're actually doing it instead of just emphatically making a deal out of the fact that you are scumhunting. The latter can be a case of overcompensation for scumminess and is usually considered something of a scumtell.

Your reasonable explanation for your impatience aside, this scumtell still stands (since you could just as well simply have complained about the slow pace of the game without adding the

LookatmeIwannahuntscum

part), and it's the first proper scumtell I've seen in this game so far, so here's another vote.

VOTE: Kthxbye

[Gorgon]

@Grogon: Please tell me what exactly I'm supposed to hunt with without anyone posting?

Fair enough, but I wasn't exactly saying you should have been scumhunting, if that's your point here. I was pointing out that you asked what was so scummy about scumhunting while in fact you weren't actually scumhunting, just showing your eagerness to scumhunt - which is the tell that Mephistopheles voted you for. It was as if you didn't really get why exactly he was voting you, so I elaborated on it for you.

Also, please show me where I'm "emphatically making a deal out of the fact that I am scumhunting". If I recall correctly, my post was in reference to the lack of material for anyone to scumhunt at all.

That's nitpicking. There are many ways to skin a cat, and although you included the rest of the players in your complaint, you did implicitly go somewhat out of your way to draw attention to your eagerness for scumhunting, which is a textbook scumtell. My phrasing may have been off there (at least in your eyes) but I believe the tell is still there. Mind you, I don't think it's super-strong tell, but it's something to go on at this stage.

Grats, you are scum.

I'm not sure whether that's meant to rattle me or whether you're just that rattled yourself, but at any rate

I'm perfectly calm. Calmer than you are

.

[Gorgon]

VOTE: Absta

Quite like the kthx wagon but Absta didn't vote me; it feels wrong.

I don't quite get why that feels wrong. Is this perhaps a reference to earlier games you've played together?

[Gorgon]

Couldn't think of anything else, so that's why that was my guess. But I wanted to be sure.

[Gorgon]

So you're saying I should just have asked you to explain your vote without supplying a potential answer myself? Maybe.

However, it would be pretty bold and pointless for you to just go ahead and answer 'yeah' if it isn't actually true that absta101 have some sort of history, since this is something that other players can potentially check for themselves. So it's not like I was throwing you a meaty bone there.

[Gorgon]

Okay, from the posting history this is Conman's first game on this forum unless he's used another account before - and I am definitely getting a huge newbie vibe from him.

That said, his last vote reads like a pretty scummy OMGUS vote, so he gets my vote for that. Truth to tell though, I often find it harder to read newbies than more seasoned players as they can be pretty erratic and don't confirm with norms of Mafia behavior - but a scumtell is a scumtell.

Kthxbye's wagon is getting stale anyway as he's been pretty active and seems to perform well under the voting pressure he's been under. It seems likelier and likelier that his stated eagerness to scumhunt was pretty genuine indeed.

UNVOTE:

VOTE: TheConman17

[Gorgon]

Anyway, regarding SiN's supposed non-random vote, just saying that voting someone who hasn't written a word yet in the fourth player post in the game is non-random doesn't make it so. Unless you want to split hairs about what constitutes randomness. For instance, my own first vote was non-random in that I like the song

Ace of Spades

by Motörhead, and I quoted a line from it in my post. However, it certainly wasn't non-random in any meaningful game sense, and I don't see how SiN's could have been either.

But does it make him scummy to insist that it was and temporarily withhold the reason for it when asked about it? Not necessarily, although I question the value of this sort of gambit. They can easily create too much noise to be useful.

[Gorgon]

To everyone voting Conman:

What is the defining characteristic that makes Conman more likely to be scum than Town right now?

Being pretty anal about my statistics, I'm not sure I would be ready to say right now that he's more likely scum than town (a pretty bold assertion considering the factors at hand), but I would be willing to bet that the chances of him being scum are better than random, which is enough to warrant a vote at this stage.

Anyway, as I said in my vote post his kneejerk OMGUS vote was a red flag. I read it as such because Kthxbye devotes the post that Conman was responding to mainly to complaining about lurkers (something that I myself feel is a problem in this game btw) and then votes Conman for lurking and not paying attention, and Conman responds to this by saying that Kthxbye is 'rather quick to try and take votes of [himself] and try to blame other people', where other people seems to mean just him, Conman. If this was really referring to Kthxbye's behavior in general, I'd have thought that Conman would have said something about Kthxbye earlier, which he never did. And the blaming other people part seems pretty weird in a game that's all about finding some fault with the other players (although it could be a newbie thing, but I get a bad vibe from it). Adding fuel to the kneejerk-feel fire, Conman completely ignores NS's question about the reason behind his earlier vote - as Slandaar has already pointed out.

[Gorgon]

unvote

Vote: Conman

Kill it with fire.

I only saw this after I posted my above comment. Seems like Conman is now at L-1 which I'm not comfortable with this early in the game with too little activity from too many players. Premature hammering is always something of a possibility in this scenario and I wouldn't like that one bit.

UNVOTE:

[Gorgon]

And here we have scum desperately trying to lynch the VI before he replaces out.

I took this as referring to ace, but then you went ahead and voted NS. Does not compute. Also, this theory of a scum trying to get the VI lynched does not quite compute with this earlier line of thought:

Screw you guys I'm going home! followed by another OMGUS vote for no actual reason. Conman's clearly doesn't actually want to play. Please replace out.

I think he's flailing scum

, but this sort of complete flame out is hard to read.

Since if Conman is scum, a scumpartner of his would probably rather have him replaced than lynched. Probably.

I have no idea how to read Conman any more, btw. His bizarre antics, topped off with a self-vote, have seen to that. My gut says town right now though.

[Gorgon]

Those are some pretty thin reasons IMO, especially for the two scum flip ones. Do you have any further reasons to find this trio possibly scummy, apart from how they relate to Conman?

[Gorgon]

You end day 1 early (good for scum) and you prevent a stronger town player joining the game (good for scum).

Also, WIFOM. "If I were scum, there would have been no reason for me to do that", which is basically what ace said above.

The town flip read is also not thin imo.

Ach, maybe not; I may have overstated there. I think the above points make it stronger if anything.

My vote has been inactive for too long, and I think ace deserves it now.

VOTE: theaceofspades

[Gorgon]

See, this is exactly why we need a longer first day, lol. Just as much as SiN needs lots of water and something greasy to eat.

[Gorgon]

Well, if he's not quite himself it's understandable that he's not reading the game too well and so for all he knows a lynch could be happening soon. It's certainly a bit dramatic, but I myself would want to make it known that I don't want the day to end just yet if I was in a similar situation.

[Gorgon]

This reminded me of something Conman said earlier ...

Also personally I don't believe in a day one lynch because you should wait to see who gets killed because that always has a comparison to what has been said on the forum.

This leads me to suspect that people can vote no lynch on ikariam. Anyway, you can't do that in this game so a lynch is the only way to end the day.

[Gorgon]

Oh yes, I checked the rules on page 1 and it's true. I did read them, but obviously not carefully enough.

I am usually pretty careful about rules, but if this slipup makes me townish I'm not going to beat myself up over it. In my defense though, it's been quite a while since I've played on this forum, and I remembered that lynching wasn't ever done on the first day. This was so firmly established in my mind that I took it as a formal rule when I started this game, but now it occurs to me that it was (and probably still is?) just accepted wisdom rather than a strict rule.

[Gorgon]

...um, maybe this is a silly question, but why would you want to beat yourself up for looking townish?

Not for looking townish, but for being dead wrong about what the rules are and talking out of my a**. I don't like being wrong or looking foolish as I am a bit of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to matters of intellect.

.

Vote: HavingFitz

Did I miss something, or is there no stated reason for that vote?

Wait what? The only scenario for voting out conman now would be me being town and believing him scum. As scum I wouldn't want conman gone. No matter what his role was. Which is inconsistent with my vote because I do want conman gone. Next suspect for me is kthx. But I don't see him getting lynched today. So I don't want to waste my vote.

Something about this reaction and the overall stubbornness of it all reads a little townish to me, but looking back at ace's posting history I'm having a hard time reading him.

What else ...

SiN has established himself in my eyes as a classical variation of a townish playing style that I feel is hard for scum to fake, although certainly not impossible. It's characterized by a gung ho yet slighty quirky attitude, a lack of verbosity and plenty of incisiveness.

As I pointed out in #130 and havingfitz pointed out in #166, qwints was pretty quick to go from "Conman is scum" to "Conman is town VI". This is potentially somewhat dubious, but the main redeeming factor here is that qwints completely ignored me when I raised this point (seeming concerned only with rectifying his vote) and gave a very brief (yet somewhat logical) answer to havingfitz, indicating that qwints is either completely relaxed about this or is faking it pretty well. I think scum would be likely to get more defensive here.

[Gorgon]

Context:
Conman is saying he wouldn't be scum because he would hurt his faction too much

and that if he is town is doesn't matter if he messes up

Kthx then says: being a bad town is just as bad as being bad scum ie; hes saying this argument is terrible (it is) he hurts town if hes town scum if hes scum etc.

Huntress: This kthx guy knows conman is town! he is scum making preemptive defence!

Fixed that for you.

Anyway, Huntress was certainly not reading the context fairly and overreached IMO, which in my book is a scumtell. In #221 she says that she read in the context of Kthxbye ending his post with confirming his vote on Conman, but the confirmation was based foremost on the possible scumslip that Kthxbye picked up on - and it seems she didn't get what exactly Kthxbye was commenting on. That's some pretty selective reading on her part.

Looking back though, those phases, 'I am really stressed', 'do you honestly think the mod would put me as scum' and 'if I was a townie' in Conman's #92 give me a very bad vibe ... but his writing style is so freestyle and he writes so little that it's difficult to read him.

he seems to almost be intentionally being obtuse. It could be because he types faster than he thinks but I doubt it.

I agree with this though. He's not exactly being helpful or insightful, and looking over his posts earlier I got the very same feeling, that after his slipup in #92 he might have decided to clam up. It could still be because he's frustrated town though. He doesn't have much to lose at this point though and has to realize that the only way to escape the noose for sure is to prove that he is useful to the town.

In fact, Huntress could be scum with Conman town.

I do at least agree that if Conman flips town Huntress should be looked at.

However, Conman and Huntress scum together? Does that add up with Huntress preemptively painting Kthxbye in a bad light for suggesting Conman is town (which would be wrong and Huntress would know that)? Hmm ...

[Gorgon]

Oh ya I will also be gone tomorrow because I have a lacrosse tourney

He won't be claiming just yet then. This push is pointless today.

[Gorgon]

Ah. I'm on GMT so he posted this about 4 AM Sunday my time, but it might well be earlier for him so for him it was Saturday, where 'tomorrow' is Sunday.

[Gorgon]

My condolences. Take your time.

[Gorgon]

"Later". It's useless now.
Town-you would note it down somewhere and bring it up should Kthx turn out to be scum (if you were

confident in the possible

connection).
Scum-you would bring it up (a terrible accusation) ASAP. Anything to make a townie look bad is good for you.

Yeah; scum would love town to keep quiet about their thoughts until it was too late. If I think something is worth saying then I'll say it.

Bolding by yours truly. How can you be confident in a possibility? What's the criteria for that?

Anyway, looking over Huntress' and absta's spat over this issue, which has gone on for a while now, I feel that it's absta who's overreaching.

Let's run through this and look at the bare bones of what went down. If I'm leaving something essential out you can let me know.

This all began with Huntress #52, where she says that absta might have been trying to slip his unvote by unnoticed. In #54, absta asks why scum-absta would have wanted to hide that unvote (a reasonable question), and in #55, Huntress gives possible answers to this question, and asks for the real reason for the unvote (a reasonable question for sure). So far so good, but absta's #56 is where it derails IMO. Instead of providing a straight answer, absta fires back a question implying that the reason should have been obvious. That's not townish in my eyes, and neither is the relentlessness with which absta has been pursuing this matter. It seems to me that Huntress simply did what one does in this game; proposed a hypothesis based on a hunch, a wild guess even, to check the reaction, keep things moving, etc. Mind you, this was on page 3 where some guesswork is to be expected. The accusation was certainly not terrible and absta could have handled it gracefully instead of getting argumentative.

tl;dr: I agree with Huntress here. There was no reason for town-Huntress to hold back on these particular thoughts at that particular point in the game, and no reason for absta to be this upset about it.

[Gorgon]

Absta is town btw

Explain plz.

1. Town should be more paranoid of votes honestly. Especially unexplained and not well reasoned votes. Scum don't really have to be worried about votes on them unless it's shown that more votes are going to put them in danger.

'Shoulds' don't necessarily have to apply to actual behaviour. There are a lot of things that people do that they shouldn't do, logically speaking. I get where you're going with your case though and I note that absta responds to it in very much the same way as he responds to Huntress' case (regarding the very same post #44 but for a different reason, funnily enough); fires back with a question instead of explaining what he was thinking back then.

2. Unless scum are using filler posts to make them look like they are hunting. Town shouldn't be making filler posts at all. Which is why filler posts are more likely to come from scum rather than town.

Agreed.

There's many reasons why players wouldn't want scum to support their own lynch. It makes it harder to actually find the other remaining scum. I'd be all for scum to support their own lynch when they are the last one alive, but not during Day 1 or even other Days without scum flips. It makes it so much easier to find connections with scum flips when they don't support their own lynch as opposed to days when they support it.

Agreed as well. While self-votes possibly give some information, scum being on their own lynch wagon gives no real information about any player except said scum, which doesn't matter since the scum is confirmed and dead at the end of the day anyway. Which incidentally make scum more likely than town to self-vote in my eyes, especially when they seem to be close to getting lynched anyway, as the self-vote works to deprive the town of information, especially if the scum hammers himself and just ends the day.

@Gorgon:

After reading my current posts do you still think I'm scummy? If you don't think I'm scummy why is your vote still on me?

Well, I find you townish since you ask. The reason I haven't changed my vote is that I haven't taken the time to evaluate the game closely enough. Until now that is - your question worked to prod me into it. I note that NS has posted very little of substance and his two non-random votes are very clear cases of following. There's absolutely no initiative in those posts (except possibly in the attempted bluff in #92, which I mainly find weird). This is scummy.

VOTE: Nobody Special

[Gorgon]

In the meantime let's have some more votes on

Kthxbye

. Once again he's using Conman as a smokescreen to hide the fact that he's doing next to nothing.

Much like SiN, I read him as town tunneling on a policy lynch - although tunneling can be a scumtell my gut tells me it's because Kthx is convinced that Conman is scum and so useless in the best case scenario of being town that he should go today. I don't agree fully with this; I think there is plenty of time to at least explore other options today and feel that we have made great strides since the Conman wagon collapsed. If he had been lynched early we would have missed out on all this juicy info. This doesn't make Kthx scum in my eyes, though.

Derr-kay. Nice blatant misrep, Slandaar. That's so sloppy you should be ashamed of yourself.

Let's all look at the context of those two quotes.

I have been voting conman for ages, what was my vote accomplishing?

Well, assuming you think he's Scum, it's pushing the Wagon. I find this questionable b/c you seem to be jumping off the Wagon for a seemingly late RVS vote w/o adding any substance.

This clearly shows that I don't believe you.

Why have you been riding that Conman vote for so long? Your vote post said... "yeah". Please note, I don't want you to say 'I agreed with fitz et al, I want you to state your reasons for thinking he's Scum.

This clearly states that because I don't believe you, I want you to explain your vote. As I said, you've been riding that Wagon virtually the whole game, yet you've not really added to the case.

Oh man, do I like my vote. Let's Lynch us a SlandaarScum, boyos {and ladies}.

I agree, it's blatant misrepresentation and overreaching, along with dodging the issue of why he finds Conman scummy.

VOTE: Slandaar

[Gorgon]

That's not for me to say, but avoiding questions is untownish at best and scummy at worst.

Vote: Slandar

His voting pattern is suspicious an he seems to be one of the scum.

What troubles you about his voting pattern?

Well kthxbye you seem rather quick to try and take votes of yourself and try to blame other people but I guess I haven't been reading much because I have been at a lacrosse tournament and am really just spamming but you do seem to have a past history with this forum and with the points mentioned above...

UNVOTE

VOTE: kthxbye

Lets all guess why he didn't answer NS.

~~~

Your vote post said... "yeah". Please note, I don't want you to say 'I agreed with fitz et al, I want you to state your reasons for thinking he's Scum.

Why have you been riding that Conman vote for so long?

Well, assuming you think he's Scum, it's pushing the Wagon.

Scum found.

I asked him what the point of leaving my vote on Conman was he says; to push wagon

He then later is asking me why I was voting Conman so long.

Hes scum; it is clear cognitive dissonance, I am scummy for voting Conman so long AND I should be voting Conman to push the wagon.

Can't be both ergo d3x is scum.

I voted him for the obvious reasons of meph getting caught then flaking instantly, not randomly, although it is how I made it appear to see how d3x would react and obviously not well at all.

"Lets all guess why he didn't answer d3x."

~~~

Not fully comparable of course since d3x's request was not in the form of a question and was buried among other content, but the principle's the same. IMO it was neither an unreasonable nor pointless request.

And just to clarify ...

Hes scum; it is clear cognitive dissonance, I am scummy for voting Conman so long AND I should be voting Conman to push the wagon.

Can't be both ergo d3x is scum.

He didn't say you

should

have been riding the Conman vote to push the wagon, he said

assuming

you think he's scum it was reasonable to push the wagon. He did however find the assumption that you thought he was scum questionable and your stated grounds for thinking so unclear, and wanted a clarification. That's the issue that you dodged.

[Gorgon]

218 sums up my reasoning pretty well.

That was the point of quoting it; it is not comparable because I have already answered the question before the question was asked; Ergo; pointless question.

Which follows on to; What is scummy then about 'dodging' a pointless question?

You do indeed have your reasons for suspecting Conman summed up somewhat in ISO, but the question/request that you clarify your reasons was nevertheless reasonable IMO. Reacting to it gives new information while simply referring back to what you've said earlier (which you btw didn't do until your next post, as far as I can tell) gives less information. I find d3x's stated MO of hunting through ongoing interaction valid. So I don't think the question was pointless and therefore your question is meaningless to me.

[Gorgon]

Slandaar actually feels somewhat convincing to me in his latest replies, while Conman continues to be unhelpful, following others with his votes, etc. For the record, I will support a Conman policy lynch if it comes down to it. I don't feel the need to change my vote just yet though.

[Gorgon]

vote: qwints

I don't really get the reason for that vote.

@SiN not explaining why he thinks certain people are bad lynches

Well, he has. They may not be extensive explanations, but they're there.

Reason why I'm not preventing a Con lynch is because I'm not yet sure he's town.

What would make you sure?

[Gorgon]

Conman could have claimed a long time ago. Maybe someone should have asked him to do it explicitly, but what done is done I guess.

[Gorgon]

I don't think Conman was smart enough act opposite of who he knew was on his team.

I think it's quite possible that he might have been smart enough to do just that, and even to do it sometimes and sometimes not. As d3x points out we have him agreeing with confirmed townie Huntress at one point. Of course, rereading him post confirmation as scum is definitely not useless, but I don't think it's straightforward either.

I also think Slandaar is pretty town by default due to the odds being so low that the only 2 lynch options for day 1 are/were both scum.

This is really poor logic based on Gambler's Fallacy. Conman being Scum does not mean that Slandaar cannot be.

True. I kinda get where Kthx is going here but it is still statistically false. The fact that the day finished with a wagon on a scum and another on Slandaar has, on its own, no bearing on the likelihood of Slandaar being scum. It does give plenty of information though, especially the activity surrounding the wagons.

Honestly, I could really care less about how this reads at this point. I know that I'm going to swing today due to my interactions with the Conman Lynch D1. When I flip Town, you will be able to go back and read these thoughts again and know that they come from a place of truth. [poetic]I'm not playing for Today, I'm playing for Tomorrow[/poetic].

I don't get why you're so sure you're going to swing today, but meh, both town and scum can get paranoid about that. But still this reads to me like you would be behaving differently if you weren't so sure that you weren't about to be lynched, which seems strange to me. It's normal to me to hold little or nothing back as town no matter if you think you're about to bite the bullet or not.

Conman, don't post in this game, for any reason, after you've been declared dead. That's against site rules, and you can be banned for doing stuff like this.

Not quite true:

5. One "bah" post is permitted if you die

[Gorgon]

I do admit that Dun's vote made me raise an eyebrow.

Dun's truncated posting style makes me feel suspicious, but I also seriously doubt that scum would just suddenly drop the L-1 on a partner when they had a chance to get someone else lynched.

The first quote is post-hammer btw. SK seems suspicious of Dun's vote, but then switches over to the vote being not suspicious when Conman flips scum since he feels that scum voting scum at that point would have been an unlikely move. This strengthens SK's claimed read of Conman as town VI in my eyes and makes SK more likely town in my eyes than I had pegged him as (I have had a gut feeling about something being off about his posts, which I've have a hard time nailing down though). I read a townish sincerity into the flow of these thoughts, to wax poetic.

And oh, merry Christmas!

[Gorgon]

Regarding SiN, was supposed scum-SiN bold enough to both defend confirmed scum Conman to the death and go after confirmed town fitz with a vengeance? It might make for perfect distancing and WIFOM, but I'm still far from sure that this is what he did. Town do make mistakes, and sometimes huge ones. #220 and #222 are particularly pertinent. SiN does entertain the notion that Conman is scum, then does some reading that disconfirms that notion. So, he seems to be fishing, but just catching the wrong fish. If SiN is scum, he was doing some Oscar-level acting yesterday and I will have egg on my face for believing it, but he is definitely a town read at the moment.

[Gorgon]

First wagon on Conman:

TheConman17 (L - 2):

Kthxbye, Gorgon, havingfitz, Slandaar, qwints

Then NS voted him, putting him at L-1, and I unvoted. I think that the chances of all scum having stayed off that wagon are pretty slim, as it was early in the game and so this was a ripe opportunity for distancing.

[Gorgon]

It's not totally worthless, as it points the finger toward all the people on that particular wagon and is liable to get some kind of reaction from someone. Calling it worthless and voting me was pretty much the last reaction I expected from this, but hey, at least it's a reaction.

Anyway, just because I don't start the day by jumping right out and start pointing fingers at particular people it doesn't mean I'm not hunting, or at least trying to. I'm just pretty busy and well-fed ('tis the season for eating, at least for me) these days so my brain isn't exactly on overdrive, plus I honesty don't really have any solid leads right now, but I feel it's better to at least post something than nothing at all. I was kinda hoping I would get more geared up eventually, and seeing that my laid-back attitude has earned me a vote I probably will have to sooner than later. Pah.

[Gorgon]

.I also don't like qwints, SiN, or NS. SiN is the only one of those 3 not being completely worthless but I just feel something is off about his posts...

Btw, would you consider Dun's posts today to be worthwhile?

[Gorgon]

This post destroys what looks like a reaction test from NS.

That's not right; it was fitz who called out NS on that one. It's fairly obvious actually and I would like to know why you didn't spot that. I would also like to know why a move like that would be scummy.

[Gorgon]

Btw, I realize that calling NS scum would me no scum on conman's wagon. I'm ok with that.

What do you mean? NS was on Conman's wagon ...

If slandaar is scum, why would conman, who knew he had lots of heat that prob would never go away, go for bussing his partner who was playing at the very least less scummy.

I would call a vote on Slaandar at that point distancing rather than bussing, seeing that Conman's vote was the fourth one and therefore wasn't exactly putting Slaandar into immediate danger. Still doesn't explain why Conman didn't move off the wagon when the heat really went down though ... so yeah.

This is a bit interesting in this context though:

Vote: Slandar

His voting pattern is suspicious an he seems to be one of the scum.

This vote came out of nowhere with an obviously made-up reason and went away very quickly. Could be distancing but then again it could be nothing. Yeah, I'm still wishy-washy like that.

I have been rereading the game and even focusing on particular people and seeing reasons that they might be scum, but then I see good reasons that they are not scum too. For instance, while NS has some scummy qualities to him, his #261 where he mixes up town/scum in a line of thought about Conman doesn't make a whole lot of sense if he's scum, unless he's faking it of course, but I think elaborate ruses like these are rare with scum. If someone gets a train of thought like that wrong it's most likely that it's because that someone doesn't have his train of thought neatly railed down, as scum do. Their derailments have to be faked, and they are seldom as obvious as that in my experience.

I have a few people that I'm pretty convinced are

town

, but the rest are pretty much in the same unfruitful 50/50 category as of yet. No major scum bells going off.

This may make me useless/scummy, but I have to call them as I see them.

Highly doubtful dun is scum at this time. He could have easily explained a Slandaar hammer or waiting for NS to hammer Slandaar as NS had stated. Scum-Dun literally had no good reason to bus Conman when Slandaar was all but lynched.

I find this a convincing argument, but would like to hear from Dun himself what he was thinking back then. It's kind of weird to be discussing someone's motivations like this in their absence when we can just ask them. It's not like the guy is dead but he's being discussed as if he were. So basically, apart from the fact that it wasn't a real hammer, I agree with this question:

Which basically means we don't know whether or not he had a scum read or a town read on Con before hammering. We had two other replacements before Dun and they supplied content, but we are allowing Dun to slide by why?

[Gorgon]

Prod duly noted. I am back in my daily routine now and will most likely start following this game a lot better than I did over the holiday season.

What's your thoughts on SiN gorgon?

I already said my mind about him being likely town based on his day 1 behavior. But since you ask, I find his point about the absta vote on Conman and subsequent unvote on replacing out to be pretty convincing. It's also a consistent followup to his #571 where he gives reads based on Conman's ISO. Not seeing a strong case for him being scum yet.

Gorgon, if I read what you've said correctly, you do not think NS is scum, correct?

Yeah, based on the posts where he first says Conman has to be town due to how difficult it is to get him lynched and then flips it over to it meaning he's scum, a derailment of the thought process of a type that is a towntell to me and trumps the aspects of his play which could be considered scummy IMO. His content has been very minimal so far, especially today, and I would like to see more.

d3x, my point was you're advocating an internally inconsistent scenario.

If

you were town and right about the scum team (Dun, Slandaar, Conman) , you'd have to believe that, although you and several other townies were defending Conman, scum still thought they had to give up on conman.

Um, you do know that Slandaar wasn't on the Conman lynch, right? Also, you yourself were also amongst the ones pushing strongly for Conman's lynch while your claim that several townies were going so far as to defend Conman is something of an overstatement as far as I can tell. Especially on the pages leading up to Conman's lynch, the overall mood was much more 'Conman is obvscum or deserves a policy lynch' and SiN was really the only player to consistently defend him hard. You may correct me if I'm wrong but that's how I read it. Dun voting Conman right after NS states an intent to hammer Slandaar and asks him to claim also makes a lot of sense in this scenario, as Conman was very obviously a weaker player than Slandaar, so it was much better to just let Conman go than having Slandaar be forced to claim or even being lynched. To put it simply, with Dun/Slaandar/Conman being the scum team, Dun had to choose between scumpartners as one of them was obviously getting lynched at the end of the day - and that choice was pretty much a no-brainer.

So in short, your claimed inconsistency in d3x's case is simply not there.

[Gorgon]

I've had a death in the family, should be able to post in a few days.

And oh, my condolences.

[Gorgon]

The d3x/Slandaar debate is giving me something of a headache, but I still think I can follow most of it. I have a few comments about it for now, maybe more to come later.

Anyways, anyone can meta me to see I never unbus when I am bussing, I ride the wagon the whole way (if you bus you need to get towncred from it) so I am pretty obvtown at this point considering I was the counterwagon to scum and meta etc.

This is plain ol' WIFOM. It shows clearly that you know what your usual bussing behavior is and that you deviated from it and then point out this fact in your defense. What's there to prevent us from suspecting that scum-you is doing this on purpose?

Dex replaces in again defends Conman using the VI defence and tries to start a counterwagon to save his buddy, Conman of course switches his town read on me to scum and sheeps him,

Dex ignores this

because he has to as there is no way to defend it even the VI defence doesn't work here.

You mean like this?

Conman, please let know exactly what swayed you from the last few pages.

Also, Conman (#414) was parroting me if anything, as he didn't add his vote to your wagon until I joined in and took d3x's side against you. Also, before I added my vote SiN had joined your wagon (#402), albeit with no stated reasoning. Conman had plenty of time to add his vote right after d3x's but he didn't until the wagon was gained some momentum.

It's also of note that Conman talks about us guys making some 'good points', which he also said in #318 when joining a wagon on fitz, explicitly parroting SiN whom I believe to be town. He also said it about confirmed townie Huntress in #126, although he wasn't joining a wagon then. This does, at mininum, suggest that Conman is not that simple to read that one can automatically assume that him parroting others means said others are his scumbuddies.

It is clear when he started to call me town was because I wasn't voting him any longer ie buddying.

This is a bit of a weasley statement. In the post immediately before your UnVote, you called him out as part of the 3man Scum Team.

Explain how you believe he flipped your Vote b/c it was no longer OMGUS, plz {whch is what you are implying}.

I don't quite understand what you meant by the bolded part.

[Gorgon]

SK: Cuz it's a solid case worth talking about maybe? Maybe if more than qwints, slandaar, and myself added their imput on it, it may work itself out? Maybe cuz we have no pressure on anyone and that case is just as good a place to start as any?

I did add some input to it at the end of #665 where I was defending its consistency against qwint's attack on it. Anyway, it won't do to have my vote inactive all day and I do find this case the most compelling one at the moment, so I will join the pressure on Slandaar.

VOTE: Slandaar.

Also, Mala is giving me a weird vibe. A careful and fair reading of qwint's ISO would have revealed that he explicitly backed off from the Conman/Mala/absta line of thought fairly quickly, so Mala was at best sloppy when she accused him of not following up on it.

Then there is this:

I'm really not entirely set that Slandaar is scum due to how the counter wagon appeared. I mean yes he can be scum, but it's a risky move to have two scum buddies on the blocking block like we had during Day 1.

You do know that it's mostly town that controls the wagons due to there being a bunch more townies than scum, right? Or what do you mean by these sentences exactly?

[Gorgon]

his story is; votes conman unvotes because 'oh noes L-1'

I was online at the time that Conman got to L-1, early in the game mind you, so I felt it to be pretty much my duty to unvote. I think L-1 should only really be maintained when there is a very clear emerging consensus that the wagoned player should be lynched. Early hard pressure is all good, but L-1 is where that fun ends as far as I'm concerned. If you find this attitude not to be protown I would love to hear more about it. I can kind of get that this could be, in this particular case, attributed to wanting to protect a scumbuddy, but that's nothing but confirmation bias unless you can explain why a town me would not have been likely to unvote at that point.

then never rejoins

Well, neither did you, although to be fair you stated your intention to rejoin pretty clearly. I was leaning towards it in my second to last post before the lynch, but the actual lynch happened in my absence. I probably would have contributed to Conman's lynch if the day had been longer but I do realize that those words are just wind now as it's actions that count the most. But as I said I wasn't around for the final push no more than you were, so it's strange for you to paint it as sketchy, unless of course you can explain why it's sketchy in my case and not in your own case.

And my reason for voting other people than Conman? Partly the same as your stated reasons for the same behavior, exploring other options and reaction testing. Also, I was genuinely very confused by the guy (in #130 I was even leaning town on him) which was yet more reason to find it profitable to kind of leave him on the backburner for a while and concentrate on people I could get a better read on, and I think it was, all things considered.

and his dodging argument was beyond laughable I don't see town making it; 'he is dodging explaing why conman inventing reads is scummy!, he is dodging explaining why voting people with no reason is scummy! he is also dodging why avoiding questions is scummy!' nonsensical.

I thought I had finally managed to state this relatively clearly in #430, but obviously you disagree. Going back through that convo I see that I never addressed your question regarding what you were supposed to be trying to achieve by this dodging ... so let's see. As I said in #430, instead of addressing d3x's request in #372 that you explained your vote on Conman, you jumped on him claiming to have found scum. This was my main reason for voting you back then. I felt your case against d3x to be contrived and overly militant considering what you (as I see it) actually had to work with, i.e. not protown. So I guess if I had to answer your question it seems to me that scum-you might have been trying to aggressively push a contrived case at the expense of a more 'civilized', protown discourse. I can definitely see the need for aggression for reaction checking from time to time of course, but this push of yours just seemed off to me. Manufactured, just as you say you feel about my posts. It's also pretty convenient that you were already painting d3x as Conman's buddy on D1 and attacking his 'Conman is VI' line and now that Conman is confirmed scum that's an easy line to follow through on. Maybe a bit too convenient, as scum-you would of course know full well that Conman is in fact scum and would be able to manufacture just such an attack to make someone defending him look bad and gain town cred for yourself. I'm not going to be so cruel as to discount the possibility that you were simply spot-on about Conman, but again, I am leaning somewhat towards contrivance here.

Dex ignored him asking the question which is suspect to say the least.

This I agree with, and I would very much like an answer to that question, but since you mention it I would also like you to address the points I raised re you in that same post.

[Gorgon]

This I agree with, and I would very much like an answer to that question, but since you mention it I would also like you to address the points I raised re you in that same post.

Gorgon post is next iirc.

Oh, if I read this correctly it means you were getting around to answering that post. Cool, then.

[Gorgon]

Wow, I missed this earlier ... it pays to reread thoroughly.

@Kthx, If you want to bring up my meta, how about bringing up my Scum meta? Have you ever known me to hardline defend a ScumBuddy like this? I pretty much always bus the hell out of them whether they are under fire or not. It sounds so much more convincing that way. If I'm not bussing them, I'm usually ignoring them. Why would I take such a hardline stance against someone who tied for the highest Wagon when I replace in and is the obv Lynch of the Day?

This is just as much WIFOM as Slandaar's defence. I really hate this sort of rhetoric as again, there's no discounting the possibility that the player simply purposely went against meta in order to be able to point out that they are going against meta.

[Gorgon]

SiN needs more votes due to his p696.

I'll admit that I don't like SiN's post 696.

What's wrong with it?

So are you saying this makes d3x more scummy because of this, or just that what d3x did here was dumb? I can't tell.

Good question, and one I was actually wondering about myself. I think that ultimately it's a null tell apart from other factors, such as context, phrasing and their reaction to me discussing the issue. Speaking of which ...

It is WIFOM by definition, yes, but the fact is if I always do it (and I do) it means I think the strategy is good, hence going against it needs to reap benefits which as you say would be using the meta argument.
(or it could be meta reads fake tells etc but that obviously isn't the case as noone here knows my meta)

Now, lets be honest, how often do people say x is my meta i'm town! and people actually believe them? it never happens because everyone says WIFOM! I obviously know this and so go back to what benefits do I think I get from using a strategy which I must consider bad (as I never use it whatever the 'strategy' was you think I used here); the answer is none I seriously can't think of any and it just seems bad to not just sit on the wagon if I were scum.

I mean compare the meta argument even if it swayed 2 people it won't just make them go 'locktown' against the towncred from a full bus and its not close, especially on someone like Conman who was lynched anyways.

This is a great answer and I find no fault in the logic.

So, you don't find it suspicious when Conman doesn't reply x2 Dex is still pushing my wagon and ignores the issue?

I see.

That wasn't the argument I was replying to. You said he ignored this issue entirely, which is what I was refuting with a simple example of him not ignoring it. You're moving the goalposts here, but fine, I'll play along as it's still an interesting issue. In #496 it seems d3x is frustrated with Conman's behavior and even asks him to replace out, so obviously he is attributing Conman's behavior to VI town rather than scum, as you have so diligently pointed out that he did. Your argument therefore seems to be that at this point town d3x 'should' have become suspicious of Conman for his behavior, which I don't agree with. One thing I would like to point out here is that there was a bunch of other people not exactly jumping on Conman for not answering questions and basically being what he was, so why is d3x scummy for this? At least he tried to make some sense of the guy.

Heck, let's make this simple by you simply explaining what you think town-d3x should have done differently.

Eh you were both basically sheeping Dex from what I could tell so he basically sheeped him also; nitpicking.

Him voting later when he had the chance earlier is probably because he wouldn't just hop on straight away with his buddy needs at least one town vote...

OK, I admit it might be nitpicking but it's good to discuss what exactly what was going on and get some reactions to it. In that light, your point about Conman waiting until town joined in voting you is a good one; that is a plausible scenario.

OK? that wasn't what I was saying, at all.

No, of course you weren't saying that Conman parroting someone automatically means that said someone is a scumbuddy of his, but you seem to be implying that the parroting is at least some indication that d3x is Conman's scumbuddy. My point is that the counterexample of Conman parroting town is a warning that this might be confirmation bias based on the already given assumption that d3x is scum.

It's slightly annoying you posted this as it messes things up a bit.

My super mega Gorgon-Dex team case would have included it but now I don't know, I just don't know. It was brought up at a strange time but, would you really know about it? Thinking.

Haha. In the spirit of full honesty, I was actually getting a little worried that I might have been getting a bit too certain about my town read on d3x and my scum read on you so I decided to reread you both thoroughly, and wouldn't you know it, I missed that little gem of his which was very similar to what I had picked on you for earlier - so I posted this not least in the interest of fairness and to prove that I wasn't tunneling on you while defending d3x hard, which definitely might have made me look bad later, especially if you turn out to be town and d3x scum.

It's certainly a funny cooincidence that I seem to have done this at pretty much exactly the right moment to give you some second thoughts about the d3x/Gorgon case you were building, which by the way is exactly what I thought you might be doing, town or scum - but something about that comment about you being annoyed at my timing seems quite townish to me (I guess it might be that you're expressing some real doubts for the first time, which is always townish when it seems genuine), and the same goes for a lot of your other reactions to my questions and comments.

So, I think the right thing to do now is ...

UNVOTE:

Back to the drawing board for me, I guess.

[Gorgon]

And oh, some responses from d3x to this and from Mala to this would be greeeat.

[Gorgon]

gorgon pretty clearly thought he was going to have to bus con

At what point was I 'pretty clearly' thinking this? Which post(s)?

but was the first to jump

off

that wagon when the immediate powerlynch didn't happen,

I already tried to explain my reasons for getting off the initial Conman. My motivation was to prevent a possible quicklynch on page 4 in a game with players, some of whom had said very little at that point, and none of whose play I knew anything about, so basically anything could potentially have happened as far as I was concerned. Given the info I had at hand it was the right move at the time. Regardless of Conman's alignment (which I had very few reasons to know much about for sure though statistics this early in the game say any given player is more likely to be town than scum unless he does something ridiculously scummy) such a short first day would have left us with very limited information on day 2. So if you're saying it was scummy to unvote at that point I would like you to explain why it was not town considering the circumstances.

then he rode the counterwagon for the rest of the day.

That's a very unfair characterization of my posting. My unvote was on page 4, and my Slandaar vote was on page 17. The Conman lynch then happened on page 21, so that's about 5 pages of me riding the Slandaar wagon and about 13 pages of me not doing it. Or putting it in post terms, 5 posts vs. 14. How about you address the actual content of my post in a wider context instead of just reading around Conman looking for partners? That's fine per se but pretty unreliable all on its own with no further backup.

[Gorgon]

I read this sequence of posts, and it seems that Gorgon rather abruptly shifts from holding Conman-scum to holding Conman-town, and the provided explanation of "he's confusing, but gut says town now" is rather unsettling to me. Do you have anything to say about this, Gorgon?

Honest answer? I really don't remember why exactly my gut was leaning town enough for me to write it out explicitly in that third post, even after reading these pages over. The only thing I do remember regarding this is that SiN's grand dramatic defense of Conman did make me think twice about him so that might have swayed me somewhat.

I know that probably looks bad but that's how it is.

Anyway, keep in mind that in the first post I was answering a direct call for explanations as to why Conman was scummy so of course I was writing from that standpoint back then. I do remember thinking "Hmm, what *do* I find scummy about him?" and doing my best to give a detailed answer to the question, and especially clarify what made me vote him at the time. It might look like I'm making a big case for Conman being scum but given the context and according to how I remember it it wasn't really like that.

So in short, it's a gut thing, going from gut-leaning-scum to gut-leaning-town for reasons I can't really remember too well. Really wish I did since with Conman being confirmed scum I can see that it is a valid reason for looking into me.

[Gorgon]

I think having all remaining Masons claiming at some point would be a good idea; I'm not sure whether doing it today is the right thing to do or not; it may be better to wait for tomorrow.

Good point. I don't really see the cons for at least one mason to claim as soon as today, as masons can't be blocked and can't really be killed unless scum successfully play WIFOM against a very possible doc. It's more of a headache than a benefit for scum, really, and a clear benefit for town; knowing about at least one live person that can be trusted. One possible con is of course that nobody would vote that player so no info from that could be gained, but I think it's a fair tradeoff at this point in the game.

[Gorgon]

Oh and also, SK, since you include my by now seemingly infamous unvote in your sequence, it seems like you might have been thinking that the unvote was something of a precursor to me getting a gut town read on Conman, but it was no such thing, at least not consciously. My feelings about Conman per se had no bearing on the unvote, which was a kneejerk strategic move to prevent a quicklynch as I've explained a bunch of times by now - and there were plenty of posts between that and my 'town says gut' post. I think the unvote did in practice have the side effect of switching my mental momentum away from Conman though, now that I've mulled issue this over.

[Gorgon]

I think that about does it. If anything is unclear, just let me know.

Nope, that's very clear. For my part it's hard to tell why Conman flipped to a town read on Slandaar but I think his flip back to voting him was riding a wagon that looked good. Could have been distancing as well but it's hard to tell.

@Gorgon p706 - Kthx was siting my play in this game as contrary to my Town meta, but that meta =/= consistent with my Scum meta either. There is only one way to debate meta arguments and that's with meta. Sure it's WIFOM, but any meta argument ultimately is.

Fair enough. It is true that from the context you were expanding on Kthx's meta argument.

he did something kinda scummy and newbish, and you jumped on him, i posit because you knew he was scum and thought he was in the process of getting himself caught so you had to do damage control.

I can't really argue that this an unfair viewpoint, but it could basically apply to anyone who voted him at that time. He did a scummy thing and a bunch of people voted him, and obviously only a limited number of them at most were scum. Most or even all of them were town. An explanation as to why my vote in particular is more likely than others to fit this 'damage control' scenario would therefore be appreciated.

then the wagon didn't catch fire as quickly as anticipated and you bailed right out.

Sorry what? I bailed out because the wagon caught

too much fire too quickly

as he got one vote away from being lynched. I'm getting pretty tired of and asking for an explanation as to why that unvote does not fit with me being town. You did however manage to take this to new heights by implying that the situation was exactly the reverse of what it was.

you spent the rest of the day firmly opposing a conman lynch by virtue of supporting any other lynch.

No, I did not support any other lynch. Is that concise enough?

i dare you to prove this statement. you're dressing an opinion up as a fact (that reading around dead scum for partners is unreliable) simply as a way to shirk my accusation leveled at you using this method.

It's obviously unreliable in this case as it initally led you to voting me and I am town. The opinion/fact angle here is therefore a funny one as this is a fact to me but merely an opinion to any other town player at this stage in the game. One way of proving it completely would be to make me dead and confirmed, but I'm obviously not too fond of that method personally. But generally speaking I would have thought it would be obvious that the more facets you throw at a reads the more reliable they get.

Anyway, your accusation that I am by virtue of this statement shirking from your case against me is a pretty cheap one considering that my answer to your case was pretty detailed and that the statement was basically an exhortation to read day one more thoroughly from more angles and give me and others something more to work with.

[Gorgon]

As far as masons go, I don't think it's a good time to have them claim with NS's softclaim floating around. If a protective role could keep him alive tomorrow and scum miss the remaining masons, we'll be looking beautiful when we go into tomorrow.

I actually remembered NS's claim after I had given my thoughts on the mason thing and realized that it affects it. It's probably better to wait until tomorrow and drop the subject for now.

[Gorgon]

Funny, Rofl, you are a funny, funny man. Funny how the two deaths that you want right now are actually pushing for your death atm. Not counting Gorgon, but Qwints/I are.

I agree that this is cheap. Rofl didn't even vote for her or qwints but me, who as Mala says herself was not pushing for rofl's lynch. Also, rofl's top two suspects were clearly Mala and me with qwints kind of a reluctant third (rofl even gave mitigiting circumstances for him) so putting the focus on Mala and qwints and painting rofl's cases as OMGUSy was disingeneous. It's not a protown reaction to them IMO.

Only person who I think is probably scum on that wagon is Rofl.

all town wagon on malakittens is all town

No, you're not confirmed town, Rofl, please don't try and act like you are. You are the only one on the wagon who I believe isn't town, but I do think SK and NS probably are.

It doesn't look to me like rofl was acting like conftown, merely saying "Nope, we're all town." I can easily see this coming from town so I don't really get what Mala intends to get out of 'calling him out on it' as she explains in a later post.

I think this is what has been giving me weird vibes about her for a while; she's prone to prodding people for this and that without really going so far as call them scummy for them. SK's #731 gives a nice example of this.

I also decided to look into her Conman vote. She is pretty noncommital in her #503, even though she is answering qwint's accusation about her being scummy for avoiding the major wagons. She takes the opportunity to comment on them but it still looks like she might very well support either of them or even neither. Then Kthx switches his vote over to Slandaar, and at that point it I think it would have been a fair assumption that Conman's wagon was collapsing, especially since Kthx had been by far the staunchest advocate for a Conman lynch.

Then

it would have been pretty safe to vote him for some distancing after giving him one more prod.

So yeah ...

VOTE: Malakittens

[Gorgon]

Why do we assume that we have a protection role exactly??

It's pretty rare to have a game with no protection roles, but this is exactly the reason why this mason claim discussion is potential thin ice. It leads to all sorts of tangents about roles in general which I'm not sure are entirely beneficial for town. The more we talk about it with nothing happening as a result the thinner the ice gets.

[Gorgon]

The strangest thing that I found about Slandaar's vote yesterday is that he didn't join the counterwagon that was forming on conman. As town or scum, it makes no sense not to jump on someone's counterwagon so close to deadline when it's essentially a choice between you or the counterwagon, unless you know that person's alignment for sure. I don't know why Slandaar keeps pushing his vanity wagon even though the entire game pretty much disagrees with him. It's not really a rational push anymore, and I have no idea whether he is doing it as a scum strategy or whether he believes that d3x absolutely is scum and believes he can get him lynched at the rate he's been going lately.

Well, it helps to keep in mind that Slandaar stated emphatically that he would rejoin the Conman wagon eventually and I tend to believe that. So the d3x push was a deliberate yet temporary tangent from that, which obviously is permanent now that Conman is dead. For a while I thought it was such a weak and unconvicing tangent that it reeked of a manufactured case to look like he was being proactive and making a case of his own, which is why I voted him (twice now), but as can be seen by my unvote I'm now leaning more town on him now.

[Gorgon]

Saint Kerrigan, roflcopter, Nobody Special, Gorgon, (me), (hammerer)

From my point of view by far the most likely scum out of the named ones there would be rofl although I think (my spat with him aside) his attitude has been more town than scum so far, and I have always believed the absta/Dun case based on their Conman votes and unvotes to be only plausible and far from concrete.

And now it's off to bed for me as it's pretty late and I should take a break before I fill up this page anyway.

[Gorgon]

Not really finding a counterclaim likely although it would be hilarious if Mala-scum were to do just what she said earlier that scum might do (false claim mason). Back to the drawing board yet again then ...

UNVOTE:

I think SK is just being honest about his thoughts. He had no reason to say that out loud if his intentions were dishonest. In that case I would have thought he'd just have kept this line of thought to himself.

[Gorgon]

Okay, qwints ...

Gut has said town on him for a while now, but looking back at him in ISO, his story is that he was he seemed pretty firmly convinced that Conman was scum but ace's Conman vote flipped that and qwints went over to the 'Conman is a VI and hard to read/town' camp. At the time I found this somewhat suspicious but felt that his nonchalance about this was a redeeming factor, and I still kind of do.

However, his later Conman vote is suspect for at least a couple of reasons as well.

I keep flipping between thinking conman is obviously scum and conman is an unreadable VI. I'm starting to sympathize with the argument that we have to lynch him Day 1 regardless, but I'd like to hear more from the people who have a town read on him - especially Singer

We seem unable to put pressure on anyone besides Conman today, and it doesn't look like he's going to make any posts that actually contribute to the game. I'm quite confident that he's a player who posts with little thought but who seems to do so in noob-scum ways. Since I agree that we pretty much have to lynch him today and then reevaluate what's happened so far, I'm going to

UNVOTE: theaceofspades
VOTE: TheConman17

Reason 1: Why didn't qwints wait for the people who had a town read on Conman like he said he wanted to do?
Reason 2: What exactly made him convinced enough that Conman just had to go to vote him between those two posts?

[Gorgon]

I'm too good. Totally called mala being town. Get on the ball, follow me, and vote qwints.

I just might later but I want to see what he has to say if and when he shows up. I'm also considering Slandaar yet again. I'm particularily interested now in this aspect of the Slandaar/d3x debate:

OK

Most flakes do that... :/ If you had bothered to check, meph SiteFlaked. There are a thousand reasons why someone does that. He made 9 posts on MafiaScum in total.

Lets set the record straight shall we Dex?

Meph flaked from his only game ie this one, to call it a site flake is beyond manipulative. He obviously knows this so;

Now we will look at what Dex says here;

I believe that absta tried to defend against the Wagon, but didn't want to come across as hardlined as SiN or Meph/myself and threw in the towel when he realized that his play was inconsistent, scummy, and would be looked at very closely after the ScumFlip.

This is basically what I was saying; Meph threw in the towel and why? because he realised Conman was doomed and he would look bad for defending him and not even seeing the very obvious case against him.

So, why does Dex think this;

Please continue pointing to this as a ScumTell. It's very becoming of your ScumHunting prowess...

(hes scum)

As d3x points out later it's not really manipulative to call what Meph did a site flake as he did stop posting on the site altogether with no explanation. That he was only playing this one game is irrelevant. D3x's case about absta's reasons for flaking out of this game is pretty well reasoned and consistent with his thoughts on the matter back in #496, and I agree with him that a comparison with Slandaar's Meph flake case is unwarranted. While I can actually see some merit in the latter case it's not very fair to refuse to acknowledge that the fact that Meph flaked out completely and silently while absta did anything but that is a relevant factor.

[Gorgon]

I'm going to keep my vote where it is because I really don't like the fact that rofl pushes a mala wagon when he agreed with the that the mason shouldn't claim today.

Why is this an issue? It seems to me that the mason claim thing was never a factor in rofl's push against Mala at all.

It's also interesting in this context that your initial Dun vote (#672) was basically a somewhat reluctant 'the case is plausible' vote after having attacked that very same case earlier, and that case hinged pretty firmly on the assumption that Slandaar is scum as well, but now you seem to have dropped that assumption in favor of SiN being scum without seemingly seeing a need to review your Dun case.

Yeah, I like a qwints lynch today. The only thing that gives me pause is his apparent lack of caring about what he writes which is actually a town-tell...

Agreed, that is something of a towntell but I still want more substance from him before the end of the day, like comments on my #806 and this post. Otherwise I'll just assume he's being deliberately obtuse.

[Gorgon]

Also Gorgon; I do have to say there was a question asked which scum would be on my wagon and you said rofl yet right now you're going after Qwints instead. I can see one of Qwints/rofl being scum, but not entirely sold on both.

Qwints was not on your wagon so he obviously didn't enter that picture. And I think I made it clear that I mostly found rofl to be the most scummy among those on your wagon because all the others (including Kthx who included himself in his question, plus a (?) for a hammerer which I didn't see the need for assigning) seem very town, but if I didn't then I'll just affirm that right here and now.

Rofl is middling, leaning town in my read right now and I don't really have anything solid on him. I find both qwints and Slandaar to be more suspect than him at the moment. Anyone else I will most likely not vote but I think a lot will depend on activity and reactions in the following hours and days before the lynch.

The question of whether the wagon on you was all-town is an interesting one, though. I do realize that if I put rofl as town it means that this was the case but I guess it's plausible.

[Gorgon]

Also Mala, what makes you think rofl and qwints are unlikely to be scum together? If you think both are possible scum there's no real reason per se to think that they can't both be scum unless there's something about their interaction, the dynamics of the game, etc. that doesn't fit about it.

[Gorgon]

I hate to keep doing it this way, but I'm reasonably sure it's a SK. If I say much more, I'll be in fullclaim territory. I will if everyone's okay with that, but.

I see no reason for a fullclaim today. There's no way you're getting pressured today and if you survive long enough you will be drilled on this eventually anyway so why do it now?

For you second paragraph, I'm now voting you for this post. There you go, problem solved.

Did you forget to vote?

~~~

I see that qwints has posted in other games since his last posts here, where he didn't answer my posts about and addressed to him, so I am assuming he's dodging me and I guess the best way to try to get his attention is with a vote. We need to move quickly since the deadline's coming up anyway.

VOTE: qwints

[Gorgon]

I hate to keep doing it this way, but I'm reasonably sure it's a SK. If I say much more, I'll be in fullclaim territory. I will if everyone's okay with that, but.

I see no reason for a fullclaim today. There's no way you're getting pressured today and if you survive long enough you will be drilled on this eventually anyway so why do it now?

Sorry, I guess the issue here is not whether you do a fullclaim per se but whether you say something that gives info that comes close to fullclaiming. It's very hard for me to say whether it's a good idea since I don't really know beforehand how it could hurt or benefit town. I think you should just use your own discretion as to what you think town needs to know today in case you don't survive the night.

[Gorgon]

Does anyone have anything they'd like to discuss.

Yes, this:

qwints who is being allowed to lurk quietly to the deadline without saying much of anything

[Gorgon]

I am keeping my vote on qwints for now and would like to see him wagoned hard for avoiding answering vital questions about his play and basically lurking in plain sight.

Slandaar keeps developing his play in a direction opposite to that which I believe has made him look scummy in the past; he's loosening his grip on d3x, considering options and actually changing his reads. This is what I was expecting him to do after he said he was having doubts about the d3x/Gorgon case he was building. Gut says there's a natural townish flow here. He may be terse in his last few posts but his story of being busy is at least plausible since it looks like he is not active in any other games, and I see nothing overly incriminating in his recent posting. For example it was pretty clear to me that he meant that he liked the Mala wagon before she claimed; that's how I understood that remark of his.

On rofl I agree that SiN's reasoning about absta in #615 and also on Dun in #763 is sound, but it's still basically circumstantial without further backup, which I am not seeing much of so far.

[Gorgon]

What posts make you say gorgon and d3x aren't buddies?

This does stick out a little re Slandaar though , it seems he hasn't answered this question.

[Gorgon]

I have been going over the setups of old minis, and there are precedents for having a SK in a 13 player setup but it doesn't seem super-common. NS did say something about having reason to believe that we have an SK yesterday, and since he survived the night he may be ready to say something more about this and his role now.

~~~

Anyway, time for a bit of the ol' post-scumlynch analysis.

I've made my point. I buy that Dun's hammer may have been a forced move from scum rather than a free choice from town. The interaction between absta and conman is the smoking gun. Sucks that you replaced into a slot with that kind of history, but there it is.

This feels to me like rofl is not qwint's partner. A bit too apologetic for a bus. Especially considering how viciously qwints went after Conman.

I'm going to keep my vote where it is because I really don't like the fact that rofl pushes a mala wagon when he agreed with the that the mason shouldn't claim today.

SiN looks really bad for going from really clear posts yesterday to fence-sitting posts today. I think a SiN-rofl team is quite likely.

This comment on SiN feels like distancing to me, however. Why keep going after rofl with old and weak arguments about absta and Dun which were mostly parroted from others, and add to it a very lazy misrep of rofl's case against Mala, but call SiN 'really bad' as pretty much just an aside to that without voting him or making an actual case of it? The latter looks more like insurance than anything else. And it makes sense to me that qwints would refrain from having a town/town pair there.

~~~

Obviously WIFOM is heavily involved here but still ... this is how my gut is calling these posts.

[Gorgon]

SiN, why am I scum?

Why do you only ask about yourself? I think the mention of me and Slandaar needs some explanation as well. Especially since SiN's rofl case seems to have disappeared today.

[Gorgon]

the votes point to Gorgon.

D2's vote counts points to SiN from what I can see.

The former is then based on overall D1 + D2 votes? How do you come to these conclusions anyway?

I have no objection to the claim order btw.

[Gorgon]

Nope, I'm not.

[Gorgon]

I think there's more likelihood of a SK than a Vig.

This adds pretty much nothing to what you said yesterday. Nothing new to report?

[Gorgon]

Why Slandaar? According to the order as laid out I'm next, so I will go next. I'm vanilla.

So claim order imo should look like this:
SiN, Gorgon, d3x, Slandaar, NS, SK, me.

[Gorgon]

I'm fine with the MC and fine with w/e proposed order, just tell me when it's my turn.

So your turn now, then.

[Gorgon]

I know, but with the N1 kill and no N2 kill....

Is that all you had to go on? I thought that given how sure you seemed to be that there was no SK and the way you completely overrode all the SK speculation you had something more solid. Your statement that there was no SK read to me like "Don't bother with these speculations, I

know

there is no SK."

[Gorgon]

OK it took me way to long to write that previous post so now it's pretty irrelevant since Kthx has claimed vig. It seems we're in a pretty solid position then. I don't think that Kthx would dare claim a vig who can still kill as scum since it puts him directly in the line of fire of mafia if he is an SK and a possible SK if he is mafia. Plus all the him looking very town anyway.

[Gorgon]

This is totally wild setup speculation on my part, but 1xBP goon seems overpowered to counter an odd-night vig. What if there's also an even-night serial killer?

It might be overpowered to counter

just

an odd-night vig, but with two masons and a cop (or whatever NS will claim) in the town mix it just might be pretty balanced overall.

I believe the last scum (assuming 3) MUST have a PR. The likely possibilities are God Father or Role Blocker imo. We'll know which soon as NS tells us if he got a result last night. No result = RB, result = GF. I honestly hope he got no result last night because I'd like to cross SK off the list of suspects.

This is pretty much what I was thinking as well.

Now, I've been away awhile, so I don't know if it's out of the question for scum to have a 4-man team or not. Town does seem heavy on the PR's tbh. Thoughts?

I've been away for quite awhile myself as I've no doubt mentioned before. Back in the day the standard size for a mini was 12 players and now it seems to be 13. Scum always seem still to be 3 though. Looking at old games I've yet to see a game with 4.

[Gorgon]

Either way he's town. Don't wish to waste time speculating HIS role.

Yup. He'll show up soon enough no doubt, and I think scum would never softclaim like this that early in a game.

[Gorgon]

i'm thinking something along the lines of lynch sin, if game is not over vig d3x / roleblock slandaar, if game is still not over (and a mafia kill went through) lynch gorgon... profit

I support using the roleblock over a vig tonight. The roleblock actually functions as an investigation now that there seems to be just one scum left. No mafia kill -> blocked player is probably scum.

I have been thinking that based on what Kthx has said today he would probably want to vig me tonight if SiN gets lynched (which seems most likely and makes the most sense today IMO, although I must say that from rereading D1 he still looks pretty town on that day, but his later play is not nearly as solid) and turns out to be town - so I have been preparing a defense explaining what makes me unlikely scum that I might post eventually, but then I thought that the best defense is always offense. So this is what I was thinking along those lines ...

I'm not quite sure who is scum if it's not SiN although it seems obvious now that it's highly likely that it's one of Slandaar, d3x, and rofl (in that order of likelihood the way I see it). But killing one of d3x or Slandaar makes a lot of tactical sense since three outcomes are possible:

1) The killed player is scum. Yay.
2) They are both town. The one who didn't get killed stops tunneling on the other and can make himself useful in other more fruitful ways.
3) The surviving player is scum. He then can no longer hide under the smokescreen of tunneling on the killed player.

I don't think it makes much of a difference in the long run who is vigged tonight though, since I think there is very little chance that town loses no matter how this plays out. But that's no reason not to play it as optimally as possible.

[Gorgon]

My having one Vig shot is why I was pretty sure there was a Serial killer rather than another Vig, but I see I'm wrong (maybe).

Actually, the gunsmith thing does fit with a SK, as gunsmiths don't get a guilty result on SKs. But it also fits with a vig since gunsmiths get a guilty result on

those

. So there's still no solid evidence to support an SK.

Also, no cop means that there's no need for a GF, so if the surviving scum has a PR it's probably a blocker IMO. This role would work best for balance against two active town PRs.

[Gorgon]

I think its close, if they have another PR it is probably something weak and I honestly can't think of what, odd night mafia doctor?

A mafia doc would actually work pretty well for balance, come to think of it. He could protect against the viggings and would also not be detected by a gunsmith investigation (Regarding that role I am of course going by what's in the wiki btw, for reference). This possibility does of course mean that SK could in theory still be scum but I don't think that's very likely. It depends on too many contingencies to really take that thought seriously.

[Gorgon]

Oh, I have an idea. I offer myself up to be blocked tonight. The scum then has the option to kill and pretty much confirm me as town, or not kill and pretty much royally bone himself as he would most likely (the way I've calculated it) end up, in his very best case scenario, in a 3-player LyLo against two of {Kthx, NS and SK} which would be a complete a nightmare for him; this is assuming that scum is not to be found among these three which is a highly likely assumption. The most likely (relatively speaking) among these to be scum is SK but if he is he will probably end up in a 3-player LyLo no matter what town does anyway.

I dare anyone to explain how this offer makes any sort of tactical sense for me if I am scum, since if it is accepted and acted upon it will make the most sense for town to lynch me tomorrow if there is no mafia kill to eliminate me as a suspect no matter what I say, and I would not object to it.

The only thing that could throw a spanner in these works is if the scum is a RB though ... that would complicate things somewhat but I still think it's a good plan to try.

[Gorgon]

Yeah ...

VOTE: Singer is Nachomamma

*Throws egg on own face*

[Gorgon]

As to why I'm unlikely scum, I think the main reason is to be found in my play against qwints near the end of yesterday. I realize I am invoking WIFOM here, which I have berated other players for doing, but Slandaar did make a very good point regarding it in #719.

Anyways, "All you have to do is divine from what you know of me. Am I the sort of man who would go after his partner like that near the end of the day and end up in the hopless position I am in now?"

There were unpredictable factors in play but I still think I would have been taking a huge and needless risk as scum. I think this post is particularily pertinent as I kept pushing hard on qwints while defending both Slandaar and rofl. It pushed Kthx away from Slandaar and I like to that believe that my push against qwints had a lot to do with him ending up getting lynched. He was getting away with lurking and not answering important questions and I spotted it and kept the case going. Of course, as scum I could not have predicted, for instance, that he would keep ignoring me - but there still would always have been leeway for me to play this more tactically, such as not pushing that hard, lurking a bit more or like, you know, not explicitly defending others from getting lynched.

I am a pretty risk averse guy and I am pretty sure that I would never have done what I did as scum. And risk aside, it would just have been stupid play IMO, and I like to think that I'm not stupid.

But it's up to the rest of you to make of this what you will of course.

[Gorgon]

SK ,rofl.

[Gorgon]

You have a point there. My second choice excluding SK is d3x.

[Gorgon]

It actually seems to be a bit more complicated than that. This is the spanner I was referring to ...

Suppose a Town Roleblocker and a Mafia Roleblocker target each other at Night. Who is Roleblocked?
Suppose that the Mafia Roleblocker in this example is also performing the Mafia kill. Does the kill succeed?

Most moderators opt for arbitrary tie-breakers in ambiguous situations like these.

Would it be appropriate to just ask the mod how he would resolve this situation?

[Gorgon]

*Wipes egg off face*

I was too early in egging my face; I should of course have done it only if SiN was confirmed to be scum. Sorry for turning on you but your lurking D2 didn't do you many favors, SiN.

But I'm very relieved both in that Kthx got the scum tonight and that the scum wasn't a RB - a RB would have screwed town pretty hard as he could have skipped the kill tonight, had me lynched, blocked NS's kill, and ended up in 4 player LyLo where he actually would have stood a chance. A free mislynch on me would have been quite okay if the scum hadn't been a RB though as scum would have ended up in 3 player LyLo in the 'best case scenario' I already outlined. I just forgot to factor in the possibility of the scum being a RB and only thought of it after the lynch so I was a little worried, it's probably the tensest night in a mafia game I've ever endured.

Was it obv to anyone else that Kthx was the Vig trying to draw a FakeClaim during the MCs?

I kinda sorta figured it out sometime before he claimed.

Yup. It was especially obvious when he asked me explicitly to confirm that I wasn't 'the vig'.

So we did have rival scum wagons on Day one; even though two of the scum didn't know it at the time!

Yeah, I always thought that the logic that Slandaar being a rival wagon to Conman made him unlikely scum was pretty bogus. His d3x push was scummy and that's why he got wagoned, end of story. He admits as much in the mafia quicktopic. He did a pretty good job defending himself D2 though, but it still doesn't surprise me at all that he flipped scum.

I will refer to this game if I see someone going for this particular line of statistical reasoning again.

~~~

Anyway, thanks you all for a very enjoyable game!

[Gorgon]

I meant to refer to SiN's lurking D3 - although he did seem to have lost some steam D2, D3 was just bad. He read exactly like caught scum throwing in the towel. He was right on the money re qwints at the start of D2 though. Pity that never panned out.