Mini Normal 2191 | Endgame

[TheFuzzylogic99]

Maduisha-
I could only confirm if Cabd was a VT or not. If scum attacked Cabd then two things would happen
a) she would survive proving that she had self-protection and her claim was true ( I did not think about a doc being in play bc I dont see many games with a doc in the setup or atleast not the ones I played in)
b) she would die and her flip would confirm she was lying and her role
I was hoping for a because it was the best outcome for town as there would be a NK and the role would be confirmed.

2) Honestly i did not consider it. Maybe I was being a bit short-sided here

3) I actually considered Nepethe as well. I thought it was implied but maybe I was just unclear. It was a coin flip (metaphorically) . I could of just as easily chosen Nepethe. They bing inactive made them harder to read so I thought maybe I could help sort. There was no deep thought beyond this as far as the choice.

[maxwell]

So, to start let me try to explain why I think fuzzy's town. I hate to give vague reasoning like this, but the way he gives reads in posts like 252 271 303 all looks like legitimate attempts to gamesolve, the conclusions I frequently disagree with but it looks like he believes them, he's assessing people's posts and putting out his own thoughts on them. That sort of thing can be faked but from his recent scumgame he seems to struggle significantly at faking his reasoning as scum and I don't get a sense of that here.

Then, the way he claimed:

I am a 2x Neapolitan. I am okay with being mislim today but I rather not.I dont see my role as being that useful as there prob more than 4 power roles and prob one mafia goon. This is just a guess based on my role.

This isn't scum claiming a PR for self-preservation reasons. It seems as though even he wasn't really aware at the time of how useful the neapolitan role is. I just do not see scum claiming in this fashion, making the "you can mislim me if you want" type of statement.

There's also the fact that he still won't push back on Cabd even with most people saying it's very unlikely both of them are town. This is not how someone who's afraid of getting boxed in by cop investigations talks:

Off Topic discussion
- Thats sound good. Is there a lot of good Chinese food in Chicago? Let me know how the food was. Also now know who to ask if I want some great Chicago Style pizza. Not a lot of good pizza places where I live.
sorry for the tangent. Anyways enjoy the food.

ok back to the game
Not knowing what the scum have it might not be a good idea for a mass claim. Don't think that Max claiming doctor was a great move. At least we know that we will get a result tonight as Max can protect Cabd tonight

Max is there any reason not to believe Cabd. I can't see any reason to see her faking this atp.

I think there's a very legitimate naivete here with regard to the roles, where he doesn't seem concerned at all whether anyone is fakeclaiming. I don't get a sense he's acting with an agenda here at all, where scum needs to push someone as elimination, and he just keeps assuming people are town.

There's also the fact that, although I don't necessarily agree with it, his reasoning for investigating lenora's slot at least makes sense and is entirely consistent with his play on day 1.

[maxwell]

By contrast, I felt koba's early play was scummy, they came in strong throwing out reads early but their reasoning was thin and they quickly sort of faded into the background, as the game slowed down they visibly lost any interest in solving before the ban took them out of the game. In particular, when lenora questioned them on their early townread of chumbo and voted them for it, they gave this response:

i saw it as a bit OTT/performative - i'd maybe feel differently if they re-evaluated from it or if I saw the test on nepenthe as useful, but i'm getting the sense that koba is struggling to explain their reads/reasons

VOTE: dkkoba

Well I'm fairly certain that Koba is usually this aggressive and I don't think this relates to "struggling to explain their reads/reasons" in the slightest, it's just how Koba plays the game.

it's not the aggression itself that i find scummy though, it's the explanations.. like townreading Chumbo because he doesn't look like he has information

im a smart player and can see a player who is bumbling around without info on any other slot from a mile away.

do you think chumbo is scum?

This, to me, is the sort of evasion scum do - lenora says koba's reasoning for townreading chumbo was scummy, and koba makes it about chumbo and not about he reasoning for their read - making the argument into "oh, so what, do you think he's scum?". They get a little too righteous in their defense because they know they're (presumably) defending a correct read, but the issue being raised was never whether or not chumbo was town but whether koba had good reason to believe chumbo was town, and in my opinion, at that point in the game, they did not.

Afterwards, Cabd on sub in just doesn't put a whole lot of work toward solving, he calls a few people town without reasoning and drops a case on Umlaut that feels confirmation biasy, the sort of thing I might write as scum where I take everything a person says and call it scummy. But past that, when people don't really bite, he just goes along with whatever's happening in thread, doesn't push anything else, doesn't show a strong sense of sumhunting, is mostly conversing with people rather than analyzing.


I think in particular the timing of his claim is opportunistic and speaks to scum trying to push through a miselimination on a town investigative PR, I simply don't believe town in his situation ever caims there because doing so would risk simply getting NK'ed, where I don't think from his thread presence to that point it was likely. The way he talks about how he doesn't think their roles can coexist but how recent setup design is weird feels like he's trying to build in an excuse to survive after a fuzzy townflip. I also don't really buy his reasoning for investigating clidd whatsoever - in a 9p setup, there are typically 2 mafia, and investigating a townread when you believe you already have one mafia by claim is a complete waste - fact is I don't believe Cabd-town chooses not to investigate Umlaut here, ever, but doing so as scum would mean he'd have to either clear him or fake guilty him, and I don't believe for a moment he wants to do either of those. I absolutely don't believe both claimed investigatives are town, and of the two I find him a lot more inauthentic.

[clidd]

For now:

UNVOTE: Maxwell

[maxwell]

I don't have a lot of words to explain my clidd read, it's just one of those feelings I got as I went along, "hm, yes, this person is trying to solve the game" but I couldn't point you to a specific post. This is the sort of read where I'm most likely to go wrong because it's purely on feelings but I can't say I've seen anything that raises an alarm for me.

As for Umlaut, his reactions to pressure have felt very genuine, stuff like this:

Here's what gut-pinged me in the Umlaut ISO.... it's giving me feelings of "annoyed that the pool is shrinking" from him. (BORKTELL!!!!) Feels like there's pushback on anything that could at all softclear a player on day one. For example, a player having great posts then not posting for a bit doesn't change the contents of those initial posts?

Wow this read is terrible. I literally made a post proposing a townbloc of 3-5 which is "shrinking the pool" if ever there was such a thing, and the example you cite with Nepenthe and my continuing to say I townread them is literally the opposite of pushing back on softclearing a player. Why are you just making things up?

I rarely go all "how DARE you scumread me" the way some people do but this just fails the most cursory inspection

I'm honestly kicking myself in hindsight for not checking umlaut because it prolly would have been a guilty.

If you think scum!me ever kills Ben last night I need to know what drugs you're taking and where I can get some.

This feels like a townie upset at being accused for reasons they see as unbelievable, not fake scum anger. Subsequent approach to Cabd where he tried to figure out if he was legitimately suspecting him, and decided he may be town weho's wrong didn't feel like scum reflexively OMGUSing

[maxwell]

For Maduisha, this is not particularly a strong read but I'm somewhat building off the assumption of Cabd-scum and the early koba-nepenthe interactions make them less likely to be aligned. This isn't infallible, though, and I can't say nepenthe on play has been strongly town - I get a sense that their push on clidd might be something they sincerely believe, but overall he's been underwhelming is notably avoiding the thread. If I[m wrong on fuzzy I think he is the only person who really makes sense as a partner

Maduisha dose give me vibes of being a bit safe, lot of questioning people, but not strong pushes, this is just a feeling though, I don't have a full scumcase, mainly POE and associations. This post in particular did set me off a little, though:

As for Fuzzy, I feel like he has poured the effort to read through the thread and it shows in the way he complimented the commentaries with links to the posts he refers to when commenting them. I liked that, but it's becoming a little hard to read a slot that mostly posts on weekends.

Although I I felt the posts there from fuzzy were town, the way she explains it bothers me - he's

putting in the effort to read the thread

? And it's shown by

putting in links

? But he's hard to read because he posts at a particular time. The whole thing was very strange and awkward to me, it felt like a fake read, with little concern to actually interact with what he was saying.

But this isn't a full-blown scumcase, I wouldn't vote Maduisha today, think voting between investigative claims is the way to go.

[maxwell]

VOTE: Cabd

[TheFuzzylogic99]

Maxwell's thoughts on Cabd worries me. I am concern it might be a push to miselim on a claim cop role which is bad. ATP I dont see any reason why we should think that Cabd is fake claiming here. With the game almost being solved a mislim on a claim cop is something that scum would desperate want. The big is issue is that Max is claimed doc which is a powerful role. So either Nax is just misreading the situation or could be scum fake claiming. I think it is likely the formal then the latter however I think we need to keep our mind open

I think today our best bet is between me and Nepenthe for elimination.

so

Nep

[TheFuzzylogic99]

Vote Nepenthe

[maxwell]

I want to slam my head into my desk.

[TheFuzzylogic99]

I am not understanding your frustration. It seems like mislim a claimed cop is just a terrible idea. Explain why I am wrong here. Nep and me seem like the wild cards in the situration so sorting us out seems like the optimal move for town.... Killing a claim cop seems like is not. Please explain how I am wrong?

[Umlaut]

Maxwell is making really good points here. I was coming into today leaning toward thinking Fuzzy was scum between the him and Cabd (and I think it's pretty clear there is scum between the two) but I'm leaning in the other direction now.

Also, naming clidd as an investigation choice has obvious scum motivation in that I think pretty much everyone agreed as of yesterday agreed clidd was town, so scum!Cabd wouldn't be telling us anything we don't already know. That's a bit backwards as reasoning (I should be looking for things town

wouldn't

do, not things scum

would

do) but I noticed it so I may as well point it out.

I still want to wait for Nep's claim here, so as to better be able to think about what kind of overall town power level makes sense.

[maxwell]

I am not understanding your frustration. It seems like mislim a claimed cop is just a terrible idea. Explain why I am wrong here. Nep and me seem like the wild cards in the situration so sorting us out seems like the optimal move for town.... Killing a claim cop seems like is not. Please explain how I am wrong?

Me: repeatedly makes a point about how I do not believe there can be multiple investigative roles in a 9 player setup, and how I think Cabd's play has scum motivation behind it and his actions don't really add up as coming from town
You: but I don't see why Cabd does this as scum

[Sirius9121]

immediate replacement finding for nepenthe

[Maduisha]

Alright so we got:

Cabd - Cop.
Maxwell - Doctor.
Umlaut - Friendly neighbour.
Fuzzy - Neopolitan cop.

Does 4 PR make sense in a 9 people game? I come from playing exclusively newbie queue where there are usually only 2.

Maduisha-
I could only confirm if Cabd was a VT or not. If scum attacked Cabd then two things would happen
a) she would survive proving that she had self-protection and her claim was true ( I did not think about a doc being in play bc I dont see many games with a doc in the setup or atleast not the ones I played in)
b) she would die and her flip would confirm she was lying and her role
I was hoping for a because it was the best outcome for town as there would be a NK and the role would be confirmed.

2) Honestly i did not consider it. Maybe I was being a bit short-sided here

3) I actually considered Nepethe as well. I thought it was implied but maybe I was just unclear. It was a coin flip (metaphorically) . I could of just as easily chosen Nepethe. They bing inactive made them harder to read so I thought maybe I could help sort. There was no deep thought beyond this as far as the choice.

So, what you're saying is that you were hoping for no-kill, in which case it meant scum decided to gamble with Cabd's supposed "self protection", or expecting that he'd wind up dead otherwise. So, you thought it was more likely than not that they would target Cabd, so you went for someone else to use your role...

I guess it makes some sense if you thought scum would not buy into the wifom and actually thought he was bluffing.

[Maduisha]

For Maduisha, this is not particularly a strong read but I'm somewhat building off the assumption of Cabd-scum and the early koba-nepenthe interactions make them less likely to be aligned. This isn't infallible, though, and I can't say nepenthe on play has been strongly town - I get a sense that their push on clidd might be something they sincerely believe, but overall he's been underwhelming is notably avoiding the thread. If I[m wrong on fuzzy I think he is the only person who really makes sense as a partner

Maduisha dose give me vibes of being a bit safe, lot of questioning people, but not strong pushes, this is just a feeling though, I don't have a full scumcase, mainly POE and associations. This post in particular did set me off a little, though:

As for Fuzzy, I feel like he has poured the effort to read through the thread and it shows in the way he complimented the commentaries with links to the posts he refers to when commenting them. I liked that, but it's becoming a little hard to read a slot that mostly posts on weekends.

Although I I felt the posts there from fuzzy were town, the way she explains it bothers me - he's

putting in the effort to read the thread

? And it's shown by

putting in links

? But he's hard to read because he posts at a particular time. The whole thing was very strange and awkward to me, it felt like a fake read, with little concern to actually interact with what he was saying.

But this isn't a full-blown scumcase, I wouldn't vote Maduisha today, think voting between investigative claims is the way to go.

Well, I was gonna say at least now that Clidd has been confirmed to be town, Nepenthe has to grab a different narrative that would allow you to read him some more, but he's getting replaced, so the slot's mindshift is going to happen, anyway.

And about the Fuzzy thing, it's a bit the same as last time. Events look different when you're reading it all in bulk than when read in real time, I guess. I thought it was a possitive thing that he was bothering to actually read the thread and participate (he was being rather inactive and made just a couple of posts that set people to think he was lurkscum). At the time he said he was really busy but that he would try his best. The links he put down refer to the specific posts he was commenting on, which gave me good vibes, because it demonstrates that he is indeed reading and trying to be active in the capacity that he can. I find it's easier for scum to paraphrase things that have been said/piggyback on what other people are talking about to give their opinion instead of actually looking into stuff themselves, so that's why.

The weekend remark was in the vein of "it's harder to read a slot that barely stops by." He is showing up a lot more recently, which I'm grateful for regardless of his alignment, if he is truly busy then he's doing his best for the sake of game quality.

[Maduisha]

I don't think I'm gonna join that Cabd train simply because I don't think scum!Cabd would claim PR completely unprompted because he'd open himself to counter claim D1 when he was absolutely not endangered that day + he would throw away his JOAT cover. As scum, I don't think he has any reason to stop pretending to be JOAT. In fact, I think it'd give him a perfect reason to be alive for a couple of turns due to supposed wifom done to scum + supposed self protection powers.

[maxwell]

Does 4 PR make sense in a 9 people game? I come from playing exclusively newbie queue where there are usually only 2.

Neighborizer is basically a neutral role, if town it's a slight impediment to fuzzy's role in that it's another role he receives a non-VT result on. Closed normals are maybe slightly heavier on the power roles than semi-opens these days but 2 fairly town investigatives in a 9p is really entirely out of the question with no godfather role that's capable of producing false positives.

I don't think I'm gonna join that Cabd train simply because I don't think scum!Cabd would claim PR completely unprompted because he'd open himself to counter claim D1 when he was absolutely not endangered that day + he would throw away his JOAT cover. As scum, I don't think he has any reason to stop pretending to be JOAT. In fact, I think it'd give him a perfect reason to be alive for a couple of turns due to supposed wifom done to scum + supposed self protection powers.

Why would he expect a counter claim when fuzzy had already claimed as town investigative? There would be little reason to expect further counters, I don't buy this reasoning at all, entire motive here as scum is to provide justification for a miselimination on town, where otherwise fuzzy would be unvotable by virtue of his claim. The cover is a play that superficially looks fancy and therefore makes people assume it's town but feels largely like smoke and mirrors to me, the flash is mainly served to make him look good and have an explanation for why mafia didn't just NK him, don't buy the timing of his claim in the first place as townie

and this is of course eliding the main point that cop investigating a townread player like clidd makes no sense from a town perspective but makes plenty of sense from the perspective of scum who doesn't want to hand the town too much information by outing a report . However much you may disagree with fuzzy's "theory" behind his investigation, it

makes sense

with how he spoke about lenora on day 1.

[Maduisha]

Why would he expect a counter claim when fuzzy had already claimed as town investigative? There would be little reason to expect further counters, I don't buy this reasoning at all, entire motive here as scum is to provide justification for a miselimination on town, where otherwise fuzzy would be unvotable by virtue of his claim. The cover is a play that superficially looks fancy and therefore makes people assume it's town but feels largely like smoke and mirrors to me, the flash is mainly served to make him look good and have an explanation for why mafia didn't just NK him, don't buy the timing of his claim in the first place as townie

and this is of course eliding the main point that cop investigating a townread player like clidd makes no sense from a town perspective but makes plenty of sense from the perspective of scum who doesn't want to hand the town too much information by outing a report . However much you may disagree with fuzzy's "theory" behind his investigation, it makes sense with how he spoke about lenora on day 1.

I agree it's weird that he checked Clidd instead of one of his scumreads (or Fuzzy, whom most people were weighing on D1), however I will insist as I said before that it makes no sense for scum!him to claim JOAT with undisclosed powers, and then "downgrade" himself to cop under no pressure to do so either, at the point that he did. As scum, the JOAT cover gives him so much more room to manipulate what happened during the night, get himself a reason to be alive due to self protection abilities, while at the same time having the ace up the sleeve of being able to fake a guilty/innocent result in the late stages of the game.

About the counters, I'm not an expert on role balance because I haven't played many games before (and modded none), but a cop that can only check if you're vanilla or not would give room for another kind of investigative for town. Cabd was not the spotlight D1, he had no reason to put a target on his forehead if Fuzzy is town, as there could possibly be another investigative.

[Maduisha]

Neighborizer is basically a neutral role, if town it's a slight impediment to fuzzy's role in that it's another role he receives a non-VT result on.

Actually, doesn't this play more into scum!Fuzzy scenario? A town player with a role (Umlaut) specifically designed to fuck with another town player's role (Fuzzy)...

But if Umlaut's role is made to make scum think they hit cop/doctor/other heavy PR, only to murder a 1-shot FN, wouldn't it make more sense for a balanced gameboard for Fuzzy's role to belong to scum?

[Umlaut]

abd - Cop.
Maxwell - Doctor.
Umlaut - Friendly neighbour.
Fuzzy - Neopolitan cop.

Friendly Neighbor is not the same thing as Neighborizer. I didn't reveal to clidd that I'm town, I just made him my Neighbor. 1-Shot Neighborizer is in my opinion barely a PR at all (I never really figured out what I'm supposed to do with a neighborhood).

[maxwell]

Neighborizer is basically a neutral role, if town it's a slight impediment to fuzzy's role in that it's another role he receives a non-VT result on.

Actually, doesn't this play more into scum!Fuzzy scenario? A town player with a role (Umlaut) specifically designed to fuck with another town player's role (Fuzzy)...

But if Umlaut's role is made to make scum think they hit cop/doctor/other heavy PR, only to murder a 1-shot FN, wouldn't it make more sense for a balanced gameboard for Fuzzy's role to belong to scum?

Not in my opinion. Utility of a scum neapolitan is pretty limited in my opinion, adding a role to obfuscate this makes it sort of useless.

But again, setup spec is hardly the most important thing to my evaluation of the claims. Think fuzzy is way more town on play, the fact he can't get it through his head both claims cannot be real is not scum agenda, it's extreme gullibility.

1-Shot Neighborizer is in my opinion barely a PR at all (I never really figured out what I'm supposed to do with a neighborhood).

Would strongly agree with this, neighborizer claim is basically non alignment indicative

[Umlaut]

Where I am now:

• Still pretty confident clidd is town
  
• Also pretty confident Maduisha and Maxwell are town
  
• Probably shouldn't be more than 50% confident I'm right about all three of those
  
• If I am, that leaves {Cabd, Fuzzy, Nep-slot}
  
• I don't see a universe where both Cabd and Fuzzy are scum
  
• So I guess (if we believe all of the above) Nep-slot has to be scum?

[clidd]

My thoughts are basically aligned with Umlaut's pov, I also think there are 2 scums within {Cabd, Fuzzy, Nep} ^

Everyone outside that pool reflected me as towny in one way or another recently.

[clidd]

But I'm still waiting for Cabd (which should have a more expressive entry after Nep's claim).

Depending on the impression I get, it is possible that my PoE will change completely. Let's see.