SIR Disease Mafia - Game Over!

[maxwell]

Hello. I've been casually following the game but am nowhere close to a full read so I'm going to be doing some catchup, will likely take me some time though, hopefully that's not a problem. If someone could give me a rundown of the current claims and situation it'd be much appreciated. My perspective right now is pretty much blank.

UNVOTE:

My role name is Town Med Student. If I'm ever infected, I can choose to self-cure. My slot was infected night 4, and chose to self-cure Night 5. That's all there is to it.

[maxwell]

Take it up with the mod, not me. That's the role I got. I don't think willfully changing your own alignment counts as playing against your own win condition since once the action is taken I no longer have that win condition. The PM says I have the option to remain infected and study the infection, so it's not like it's a compulsory thing.

[maxwell]

do you understand why people distrust this role claim?
and why it is especially suspect when claimed by flavor?
and how flavor furthermore handled it in a relatively poor fashion overall?

Yes, I understand perfectly well that he claimed in an inconsistent fashion, in part because he was infected during day 4 so it benefitted him to lie about the details of his role. I also get that the little banner under his name makes people afraid of him. I'm no mind reader but that likely helped contribute to him being burned out on mafia. I can point to a recent game I happened to spectate as a reference for his play: micro 939. In that game, he claimed vt early in day 1, then softclaimed cop, then claimed 1-shot vig, then finally on LYLO re-claimed VT. He was a VT that game, and ended up being quicklynched on LYLO for scum to win the game. I can't see it as anything but terrible play, but it's likely he was growing bored with mafia and was fucking around/attempting unconventional strategies to liven things up, and it cost him the game. He likely saw this game headed down the same route and that caused him to grow frustrated. I can relate, I just came back from a hiatus of several years because of a string of bad games that burned me out. I can't really make any excuses for what seems like overall piss poor play because I'm not him, but I'd appreciate it if you'd give me a chance to evaluate the game honestly and play it my way so I can show that I'm town.

[maxwell]

Pardon my ignorance, but we have confirmation of 5 infections, and that lines up with claimed/suspected infected in (pisskop, davesaz, maxwell, gobbledygook, clidd), correct? Do we know if mafia can be infected or not?

[maxwell]

they can not, though they might claim to be.

All right, thank you. Still narrows down possibilities greatly, I'll be reading outside the pool of infected claims/suspects to try to get up to speed, as this is a long game and I need to prioritize where I'm looking.

[maxwell]

VOTE: Hactoc

he's infected.

Based on what?

his posts. He'd trolling and trying to get lynched today. I mean, you could interpret it as group scum thats pretending to be infected but then I don't really feel like he was scum so to me he makes sense as an infected.

He's been acting like this for literally the entire game, though. He can't have been infected on day 1. In fact it looks like someone using a troll persona as cover to avoid being voted. We've already got 5 claimed/suspected infected and I cant see him fitting in there anywhere.

I'm still reading, trying to catch up, but while I'm doing that, here's a working theory for everyone: This game looks like it's been an absolute slog. A ton of replacements, generally unmotivated players, and no scum lynched. It's clear that town is on the backfoot and mafia are in a very strong position. In this type of situation, the players most likely to stay committed and stay motivated are the ones with a scum win condition, because they're winning and we're losing. So the slots that haven't been replaced at all are the ones that need to be looked at the closest.

[maxwell]

The PM says I have the option to remain infected and study the infection, so it's not like it's a compulsory thing.

You guys missed something very important.

@maxwell: so you're saying you learn something about the infection every night you have it, or so? Did you learn anything for the period you were infected in?

It just says I can study it, it doesnt say if that actually does anything. I assume it just means I get to choose what side I'm playing on. If it were me, I would've just stayed on the infected side because they're clearly doing better but FL didn't want to for whatever reason.

[maxwell]

You're basically totally ignoring the emphasis so many people had about lynching Gobble? Or no?

I am still not up to speed. From what I gather he fakeclaimed a PR and quickhammered day 5, and that's why people are on him? Still, unless there's a plausible alternative for someone other than (pisskop, davesaz, maxwell, clidd, gobble) having been infected, it seems like incorrect play to go after him rather than hunting group scum. It would be really helpful if someone could give me a summary but no one seems to want to do so so far.

[maxwell]

Now Maxwell doesn't seem to think there is any Scum on Gobble. Such and obvious Scum slot should have been lynched on D5.

I did not say that? If anything its likely the pile-on here is scum-driven given voting out infected is basically free and protects the core mafia group.

[maxwell]

I've been trying to catch up but this game is massive and several of the players have posting styles that make it very hard to read so i've been forced to speed-skim isos which isn't really preferable but time is very limited so I'm trying to make the best of what I have. Really this game is frightfully hard to read, theres so many spammy/oneliner posters that are very difficult to read divorced from context.

Auro:

Spammy and very fillery, but I liked the analysis he produced in 3317, no reason for scum to attempt to defuse Tchill's mastina suspicion when no one was voting on the wagon, the way he questions people seems to have a general thrust of trying poke people to get a response from them that helps with solving the game. I wish there was more clarity on what his reads are though.

Hoctac:

Has been playing trollish since day 1 and it feels like a gimmick to guise alignment, especially don't like how the only times they seems to post seriously is when they're under pressure. A friend of mine told me long ago that when trolls start getting serious and contributing when pressured, it means they're scum because otherwise they'd just keep joyfully fucking around as then town lynches them and they gett to laugh when everyone rages at them for not trying. Justification for voting ETL in 982 is especially not good and the push/reversal on aristophanes in 2444 and 2449 is lame as fuck. Again the continued trolling just makes it seem like they're trying to ead them as infected but since they've been doing it since day 1 that read hardly seems valid.

Aristophanes:

ISO is massively fluffy and full of apologies for being absent from day 1. A majority of the posts have basically no content at all, a lot of pleasantries and setup speculation which of course is easy for scum to fake. Response to the ETL wagon looks solidly like white knighting, its something Ive done myself before as scum, defend the overemotional town voter because no one listens and it gets you town equity the next day. His response to pressure in 2461 is very apologetic/conciliatory which i tend to find comes from scum as there's a little bit of unconscious guilt there. His vote in 2559 for someone having "rubbed him the wrong way" is pretty poor justification and it seems notable that it's essentially a vanity vote when he was a major wagon, I think he wanted to avoid being seen as simply voting on a counterwagon to his own. Again responds to pressure in 2695 with WIFOM-y self meta. 2764 is total filler. 3078 is useless setup spec over game analysis. His attack on Jake in 3090 rings hypocritical for that reason, he attacks him for setup talk and theorizing when thats what he himself was engaging in and in fact initiated before Jake. In 3233 he says saudade is one of his preferred lynches, but this is literally the first time he's ever mentioned them so it feels very opportunistic given Saudade was one of the significaant wagons at the time (also notable that Quick, a player he mostly avoided having commentary on, was one of the others). Again in 3359 he does this weird dance with mastina where he's simultaneously conciliatory toward her while she's pushing him yet still claims to scumread her (3415) which doesn't make sense from a town perspective, I'd expect to push back more on her if he really did scumread her but it seemed like a strategy to avoid a direct confrontation which would make him look bad. The attempt to call for a NL in 3459 looks really bad/makes no sense from a town perspective without knowing what town power roles there are as this would presumably just give the infection a chance to spread?

A big thin for me is when he claims to be working on a "solve" in 3893 but then just never delivers and gives up in 3935 which is only a day later, it's really common for scum players to promise content as a means of stalling because people always want to give them a chance, then they have trouble faking it so they never deliver and make excuses instead. Vote on Quick in 4226 is really lame an claims to have had him as scum in his "solve" but his only justification in 4234 is a partner read with Tchill but without much independent reasoning for either being scum. Again he continues with a very weird approach to mastina in 4441 where he both simultaneously calls her scum while simultaneously trying to appeal to her. His whole approach toward jake was a sort of "nice guy" routine where again he tried to look supportive of the player that was the lynch target for the day, all looks like an attempt to gather towncred by once again appearing to be against a mislynch. I don't like how he just tosses out townreads with no context in 4515. Once again responds to pressure in 5137 with defensive posturing and apologetics. He takes a stance similar to the first 2 days with 5G in 5941, again with a very soft approach toward 5G who was that days mislynch wagon but then lets himself jump on just a few hours later ([urlhttps://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?p=11869954#p11869954]5965[/url] when it needed a hammer to get pushed through and I don't care for his justification in 6038 while also bragging about calling each days mislynch as town (this is what scum do when they want to be applauded for their voting record). 6555 is a really scummy looking vote. He again make a promise of more content in viewtopic.php?p=11882590#p11882590 saying "Once the game has thinned I'll be way more of a player" but still hasn't delivered in any way. 6762 is more self-defense which again he seems more concerned with than having actual reads. 7772 is a push on LQ which he has persistently been doing but its never really been justified, the only reasoning I saw from him is associations with Jake which were obviously wrong so its a complete mystery why the read continued to persist. 7785 is more excuses for not delivering content. Vote on cheeky in 7804 is really bad and never moves to gobble despite being adamant he slipped an calling him scum. By keeping his vote parked he enables the end of the day to get hammered. The emotional appeal in 8310. His posts today have seemed less unmotivated and more someone in cruise control, content they can drive the game home without saying much, him continuing to filler post looks like someone at ease with how things are going. Overall this ISO was by far the worst out of any slot and I had to restrain myself from just coming in and dropping a case right away becaue I wanted to at least survey the rest of the game

Quick/LicketyQuickety:

Really hard to read because his posts are so terse and his reads are mostly unjustified so it's incredibly hard to follow where any of them are coming from. The way they talk about Aristophanes also pings me in a bad way - 2021 reads like a soft defense of a teammate, also notable he went after Alchemist who was pushing Aristophanes at the time. Reads list in

• 3043

is pretty shitty, none of it makes much sense. Response to pressure in 3786 doesn't look very good. Logic on voting okapoka in 3964 is also very poor. A big thing for me is that he claimed to strongly scumread Nahdia in 4051, maintained that read in 4149, but then came back in 4196 and called them town with the justification being "pressure on that slot (4202), but in between him scumreading them and townreading them they posted 0 times and no one else voted them. It just doesn't look like a believable read progression from a town player. The claim to read 3 players as scum teammates in 5427 due to a lack of "Non-associatives" is basically nonsense and I can't see where it's coming from, it looks like it was pulled out of his ass. He keeps doing this dance where he calls aristophanes scum like in 8159 but never pressures there and instead leaves his vote on Cheekytown so the lynch can happen. Then he calls out Aristophanes today in 8544 but then backs down, claiming he's started to town tell in 8558 seemingly based only on 8545 which doesn't seem to contain any sort of towntell at all? Just a wimpy self-defense of "I've been trying but no one gives me credit and I'm not influential, I'm not scum". His attack on me in 8642 was pretty much nonsensical, I think he just wanted to push my slot as scum and didn't bother reading what I'd actually wrote so he made a straight-up inaccurate claim about my stance on the gobbledygook wagon.

TrueSoulEnery/Radical Rat:

Clearly town from TSE iso, the way he reacted to pressure and claimed was town and Rat appears to at least be doing a decent job of trying to put the game together and figure things out.

Miss Lynch/Okapoka:

The way Miss Lynch pressured and attacked players looked like genuine scumhunting, even though their tunnel on ETL was pretty bad, over the years I've found it's town who tend to overreact and pressure emotional selfvoters while scum prefer to sit back and wash their hands. Also liked the fact that they bothered to call out Quick. The way okapoka started the game asking for infected to out/his claim now is highly plausible to me, he'd have to be setting up for the long con as scum but then why make the survivor claim? Provides much less town equity than simply claiming to be townsided. Overall approach looks like legitimate scumhunting.

Nero Cain:

Its hard for me to point to things here, however something just feels off and I'm having a hard time putting it into words. He's taking stances and appears to be trying to scumhunt but I'm not really seeing any towntells. The way he justified voting for cheeky while calling gobble out on a contradiction with "they're both scum" doesn't sit right with me. His theory about scum being inactive in 7902 cuts right against my own, town is losing this game and losing badly so I'd expect most town players who have been in this game to become demotivated. Defense of Hoctac as "infected" rubs me the wrong way since he's been here since the start and should have seen the way Hoctac was playing, but keeps trying to handwave him away despite stating in 8009 "I think we don't stress about scum flavor that much and just lynch".

Tchill13/Firebringer:

Was somewhat ambivalent on tchill's play because I didn't agree with a lot of his reads, but it did come across as someone legitimately trying to sort the game, can appreciate them looking at mastina for driving the ETL mislynch even if it ultimately ended up being an incorrect read. The way he talks in 5392 looks townish, I think as scum a less influential player avoids expressing suspicion of those they view as stronger players because they don't want to get pushed back on. The way Firebringer backed down from Nahdia in 6734 looks town when that was a post he easily could have kept pushing on. General apathy and lack of motivation from him now also fits with my theory about town being demoralized.

I haven't bothered reading in the plausible claims pile yet because there's just not enough time and I felt this was a better use of my time. It seems somewhat likely that there may be a hidden infected outside that group

Reads (T -> S):

Radical Rat, Firebringer, Okapoka(I guess? not sure how to slot a survivor claim in here), Auro, Nero Cain, Hoctac, LicketyQuickety, Aristophanes

VOTE: Aristophanes

[maxwell]

@pisskop, davesaz, Auro, Firebringer

- Would really like it if you could give me a list of your reads right now. If you're having trouble, at least do a top 3 town/top 3 scum. I need to get a sense of where people's heads are at.

[maxwell]

Excuse to push Ari!Town which is only possibly due to Oka recently pushing there. Subsequently, Ari has suddenly started Town telling. This is Scum trying to finish things off for this game. There were a LOT of places I pushed for an Ari lynch which never actually took.

VOTE: Maxwell

It never took because you never had a meaningful argument, and it very much looks like you wanted it to be that way. What has he done that constitutes "town telling"? There's nothing there at all. Definitely looks like I struck a nerve.

[maxwell]

There was never any serious pressure, at most you went after him claiming Blair had softed a visit on him, but hardly anything that constitutes a real push, and your reasoning is mostly nonsensical. The only time there was serious pressure on him was in the early game, and you insisted he was town on day 2. Go ahead and try to show where you persistently pressured him - it isn't there. Don't dodge - where has he towntold?

p-edit: Are you serious? A list of colored names?

[maxwell]

No.

[maxwell]

Quit being evasive - where has Aristophanes towntold, Lickety? Where is it? Show it to me, it shouldn't be that hard.

[maxwell]

I referenced the post before you unvoted him. None of what he said in there constitutes a towntell. But of course you're not actually reading anything. It really shouldn't be this difficult to point out what constitutes a towntell.

[maxwell]

Yeah, you're just bullshitting

[maxwell]

What didn't I read? Your candy colored nonsense list? Go ahead and throw it at me if there's something I missed but I'm pretty sure you can't given your continued non-answers to my questioning.

[maxwell]

1. I did address the way he claimed. It once again goes to show you're not even bothering to read the game.
2. Why the fuck would I spend most of my time reading my predecessor rather than reading everyone else and trying to find scum?

[maxwell]

Okay, great. I am not Flavor Leaf and therefore cannot address his exact reason for doing anything and expecting me to be able to do so is ludicrous.

[maxwell]

Meanwhile in practical terms we're at 21.5 hours.
Running out of time to do anything new today.

VOTE: Aristophanes

Can you please tell me what your reads are right now? I need something more than this.

[maxwell]

Can you please tell me what your reads are right now? I need something more than this.

I'm beginning to think LQ is scum who blathered in thread making noise all game, and has been "attacking" Ari a lot (8544) - until OkaPoka swung momentum onto Ari, and then he started going on about how Ari towntold (8558), and panicked even more when you voted him. He expressed suspicion before on Hoctac and Pisskop and now he thinks Nero is scum, too; after Nero made that big solve post which was being received positively. Seems like a classic flail.

I'm not panicking as seen by my engagement of pressure on Maxwell.

Lol

[maxwell]

"I can choose to cure myself" is complicated?

[maxwell]

I was only in the game for a brief while so I'm not going to say much but it really sucks that town mislynched 5 times, lynched right once, and won the game. Having read through the scum PT, Auro deserves a lot of credit for trying to keep hope alive and motivate his teammates as they became demoralized in the face of what seemed insurmountable odds. We weren't able to win it but he still did his damnedest. Like I said, only a brief moment in time, but nice working with you.

[maxwell]

well scum didn't even know about natural recoveries lmao i don't blame them for not killing off their own infected

Yeah, their operating assumption for most of the game was that doing so would just decrease their majority so they wouldn't do it. I don't know what point of converting people to your own alignment is if you have to kill them right after.

[maxwell]

I’m temporarily going to be MIA from site. I just think I need to stop for a bit. I’m just salty and bitter all the time, and that’s not my MaFilosophy.

I've been there. Wound up taking 5 years off. Only really wandered back here because of boredom and nostalgia during the pandemic. Probably needed that much time for a lot of the bad feelings to fade. Best of luck to you.