Open 566: Murder on the Oriental Express (Game Over)

[ChannelDelibird]

if he

really

felt like I or GC was scum, then he would not believe this.

I don't really know why this follows, unless your argument is that he should be confident of being nightkilled if that is the case.

[Ironwood]

I read upto Belisarius lynch.

Farside is in the null/scum range for the horrible suspicion of Mr. Blonde due to the replacement. Right for all the wrong reasons and pushed it for far more than it was worth. The associative theory in 557 looked like town paranoia, however.

Chaoslord/CDB could be scum. 568 may point to Chaos/Bel. CDB instantly voting Bel when Bel is about to be lynched could be bussing. He then proceeds to make a huge case with moderately good reasoning but extremely high certainty in Bel-scum. He does it at a point where a Bel lynch was likely even without such an elaborate, extensive case.

CKD and Riddleton are townreads.

Why is there no consideration of lynching ChannelDelibird?

[Ironwood]

So let's talk about Belisarius.

In my experience, scum like to find something righteous to do; it helps them feel like they can point out that they were doing something "important" even if they weren't doing anything

useful

. The way that Belisarius makes a pronouncement of his vote here - without actually explaining why farside's behaviour is more likely to come from scum than town - suggests scum.

As early as page 8, his activity levels are a huge problem - and it undermines hugely the righteous belief that he portrayed as being part of his farside vote. This essentially never improves from that early point.

If Beli is scum, then that lack of activity will be something of which he's very much aware whenever he hangs around the thread. You can see that kind of nervous energy in this string of hurried double-posts, where it feels like he's just doubling down on his zaniness under pressure.

This Skelda vote is pretty bad, too. It lets Beli show that he's reading the thread but he doesn't talk at all about why he's swayed and utterly depersonalises his contribution to the mislynch.

His first post of Day 2 reads like someone who planned out his angle of attack in a QT overnight. While nightkill analysis is more useful than people realise, scum often expect people to draw stronger conclusions from kills than they normally do (this is the guilt talking). This reads very much like someone who thought that his scumteam's kill of Dry was clever and assumes that it would immediately lead suspicion to a 'good' player.

Everything else is just Belisarius making noise. There's no pro-town interest in stopping his lynch, only a hope that his projected disinterest will give some wagoners second thoughts. His only efforts to find scum come from blankly applying buzzword scumtells - I say 'tells', it's actually just one: 'white knighting' - to a couple of people who are not serious lynch candidates. So even if he gets a couple of people paranoid enough to back down from lynching him, they won't follow his non-cases onto CKD or farside and will instead contribute to a more hotly debated lynch - thereby once again reducing Belisarius's involvement in the town's decisions, allowing him to take the moral high ground if we mislynch again.

This is textbook scum. I've been this player, a long time ago. I've seen a lot of players display the exact same attitude. It's easier to play this game than to risk engaging and have to manufacture scumreads. It's massively more pro-scum than pro-town. He needs to be murdered.

None of these reasons are so strong and brilliant considering the degree of certainty shown ("this is textbook scum."

[Ironwood]

GC case against scrambles doesn't look like a bus. It came when there was no need for a bus.

Deadline is approaching so I will vote Farside but CDB is who I suspect most.

[Ironwood]

Vote Counts at Lynch (blue is who I think the thread should consider as solid town, but unconfirmed):

Vote Count 1.14

Belisarius

: (4) Amy Farrah Fowler,

NakedJogger

,

scrambles

,

Skelda

Skelda

: (8) Curiouskarmadog ,

RoyalApe

,

Belisarius

,

Dry-fit

, Chaoslord54, acryon,

TobyLoby

, Farside22
Chaoslord54: (1)

Snugglyduckling

acryon: (1)

Ranon

Not Voting:

Vote Count 2.Final

Belisarius

: (7) Amy Farrah Fowler, acryon,

scrambles

,

Riddleton

,

TobyLoby

, ChannelDelibird,

Titus

Curiouskarmadog : (1)

Belisarius

ChannelDelibird: (3) Farside22, Curiouskarmadog ,

NakedJogger

Not Voting:

RoyalApe

Vote Count 3.12

Titus

: (2) acryon,

scrambles

ChannelDelibird: (2) Curiouskarmadog , Amy Farrah Fowler

scrambles

: (6)

Titus

,

Riddleton

, ChannelDelibird,

Green Crayons

, Farside22,

Kalimar

Not Voting:

-----

OBSERVATIONS:
- Amy looks good for her first-on-the-wagon D1 and D2 votes for Beli, under the theory that scum wouldn't lead a wagon against a fellow scum.
- CDB looks good for being on both the Beli-scum (D2) and scrambles-scum (D3) wagons, under the theory that scum wouldn't bus both of their scumbuddies. (Same goes for likely town Riddle and Titus.)
- acryon looks good by way of scrambles' actions, under the theory that scrambles-scum would not closely associate himself with a scumbuddy as he did with acryon by following acryon's vote both on the Beli-wagon (D2) and the Titus-wagon (D3).
- CKD looks bad for never lynching any scum.
- farside looks bad for not lynching scum D1 or D2, and lynching scrambles only as a "ugh, if I have to."
- If scum bussed scrambles, it was either CDB or farside.

The last point is the one that I agree with.

[Green Crayons]

The most well articulated suspicions against CDB was by acryon, but even he wavered on CDB suspicions.


CDB's play has some suspicious vibes to it sprinkled throughout the days, but there's not really a solid hook that I've seen to say "yes, this, scum."

[ChannelDelibird]

Will you have finished your read before you vote?

[Ironwood]

I will. There are some parts I'm skimming though so I might miss a few things.

[Riddleton]

In LyLo, I honestly see a Me vs GC vs CKD LyLo if we accidentally mislynch someone else, as I suspect them both.

I don't see how my logic is inconsistent. Obv, Ironwood isn't going to make it to LyLo, as he's universally townread. CDB is in a similar position. Not impossible that I'd get night killed, no, but unlikely.

[Riddleton]

Ironwood, do you not have a scumread on GC? I

really

want him to have the rope today!

[Ironwood]

Spoiler: What's GC's motivation for posting this at the time that he posted it if he was scum?

TLDR:

VOTE: scrambles, because:

(1) I didn't like Blonde's hyper-defensive play.

(2) I don't like the slot's interaction with Beli. Blonde looked like he was distancing from Beli-scum. scrambles looked like he was bussing Beli-scum.

-----

Mr. Blonde

(1)

Blonde gets really defensive, really quick to any criticism of his play. In Post 43, Blonde gets really snippy with Snuggly's vote on Blonde – calling Snuggly's reason for a vote (a nebulous "something" and Blonde's "shall we dance" comment to Amy) as "mightily subjective," and then goes out of his way to remind the thread that Snuggly "apparently has never played before." Attacking his attacker, on Page 2? Wow.

(2)

I think Blonde's disproportionate defensiveness is also more clear with respect to farside's vote. His whole handling of farside's (not very good, not good enough to base a lynch off of, but perfectly adequate for a Page 1 vote) vote on his slot is weird. At first he ignores it until Post 33, then he calls it a joke in Post 43, and from there it just grows and becomes this Big Thing.

(a)

I really dislike the hyper-logical tone Blonde uses to defend himself. (For example, "You are using intangible evidence and supposed experience as a way to push me for a generic tell that essentially I can't defend against." in Post 45.) It reads like someone who is purposefully trying to remove their emotional response to being voted, which is artificial and calculated.

(b)

So Blonde and farside have a long back and forth about the merits of her Page 1 vote. It would be incorrect to say that Blonde

only

posts about farside, but it would be quite correct to say that Blonde posts

only

about those people who have voted him. (farside in Post 45, Post 49, Post 58, Snuggly in Post 50 and Post 53.)

(c)

Alright, so Point (b) wouldn't be that big of a deal except Blonde suddenly is off his farside vote/suspicions in Post 83 and Post 84 after a brief step away from the thread. Here's what bothers me about Blonde's move away from his farside argument/vote:

- Blonde's last post to farside in Post 58 is a bunch of questions directed at farside, all challenging the basis of her vote on him. Farside

does not answer them

between Post 58 and when Blonde returns in Post 83/84. Nonetheless, Blonde is happy to move away from his farside vote.
- Blonde invokes Acryon and Skelda to justify his move away from his farside vote in Post 83. I don't like this. Why point to other players and say "yeah, what they said!" if not attempting to preemptively justify your action under the basis of "you can't suspect me for this unless if you also suspect these other players!"
- Also, what Acryon (Post 66) and Skelda (Post 67) said was that they didn't agree with farside's Blonde-vote, but that alone didn't make farside scummy. Blonde appropriates that position, but then severely undermines it in the very same post: he can only "sort of see where a Townie would think something" like what farside is saying; he faults farside for failing to follow up on some questions with Toby; and farside is, at best, "maybe" "derpttown." (Post 83, Post 84.) Reads like a player hedging his bets, willing to step away from a target but laying enough groundwork that a return will not appear unnatural.
- SO THE END RESULT IS THIS: Blonde moves away from his farside vote, which he has been super defensive about/engaged with, even though farside never gave him answers to questions he was asking, preemptively justified by invoking the reasoning of other players, all while simultaneously laying seeds for why his continued suspicions of farside wouldn't be unwarranted.

(d)

Okay, so all that didn't sit well with me on my read through, but the kicker was the fact that Beli piled on with his farside vote (Post 61) in the time frame between Blonde being super into his farside vote (Post 58) and Blonde dropping his farside vote like it was a hot coal (Post 83/Post 84).

SPECULATION: Blonde didn't want to be on the same wagon so quickly with scum, thus the bad justifications for running away from the farside vote, but leaving himself room to return.

QUERY: Why would Beli be happy to throw a vote down on a player already being voted for by a scumbuddy? (shrug) Nobody would expect it? It wasn't necessarily a bad vote, as far as early D1 vote justifications go? Bel's play this game was weird. I don't know.

(e)

BONUS: Blonde (Post 83) first credits Skelda's note (Post 67) that he was "giving scumpoints to Beli and Chaos since farside would be such an easy wagon to join for scum."

Setting aside the ADDITIONAL conflicting opinions Blonde has thrown out there w/r/t farside, this lays the groundwork for Blonde to be critical of

both

Chaos and Beli. But Blonde only gets critical of Chaos, going so far to put him in Blonde's null/scum read in Post 137.

Well, what about Beli? Blonde's got nothing to say about him, except for asking Amy to talk about her non-Beli suspicions (Post 83) and despite Blonde's go-to advisor Skelda voting for Beli in Post 128 (close enough to Blonde's scum-list read in Post 137 to give Blonde plenty of time to reflect upon where his supposedly Beli suspicions to have gone). In hindsight, this looks like Blonde is purposefully turning a blind eye to Beli-scum.

scrambles

(1)

Day One: Doesn't do a lot (other than complimenting his slot in Post 233 :eyeroll:) until his vote on Beli in Post 339 and Post 340.

(a)

The basis for scrambles' Beli vote is solely: "I currently dont like belisarius at all for that "derp, I have no scumreads" comment." This is a surface read. It's not even a read. It's copying and pasting what other players said immediately prior to scrambles vote: acryon in Post 328 and farside in Post 337.

(b)

The timing of the Bel vote is particularly cringe-worthy.

- Naked Jogger voted Beli in Post 314. That brought Beli up to 2 votes (Amy and Naked), putting the Beli-wagon just one vote behind the Chaos-wagon (3 votes) and the Skelda-wagon (3 votes).
- From NakedJogger's Beli-vote to scrambles Beli-vote, nobody else actually voted Beli. But it's clear that that's where the wind was blowing:
- Skelda, Post 316: "Of the people with votes, I am most likely to go back to Beli. I really do not think that Chaos is scum. I guess I could see acryon, not really sure. But I am not in the mood to die Day 1 again."
- acryon, Post 328: "I don't like votes without explanation (314 from NakedJogger), but 313 from Belisaurus really sucks IMO. Bel's entire ISO at this point is tunneling Farside and trolling. Follow that up with a "darn I wish I had more to go off of!" and he really doesn't look good to me."
- acryon, Post 332: "I would say I am between Bel and Skelda at this point."
- farside, Post 337: "Bel is another player that concerns me. I don't see a lot coming from him for reads. Those are still my top two scum reads."
- Dry-fit, Post 338: "Belisaurius is a wildcard for me. I still don't know what to think of him."

SPECULATION: scrambles saw that there were votes already on Beli-scum, and saw that there were plenty of players who were also willing (and almost ready) to vote Beli. Rather than being late to the party, scrambles got ahead of the Beli-wagon and preemptively bussed his partner.

QUERY: why bus a partner over, putting Beli-wagon at 3 votes, to tie it with the other two leading wagons (Chaos and Skelda)? Because scum like to bus their partners for some stupid reason. Because scrambles wouldn't have to explain away a bad vote on confirmed town Skelda, or likely town Chaos. Makes it easier to play.

(c)

I think scrambles' "unsafe lynches are the best lynches" gobbledygook nonsense in Post 353 is scum posturing: scrambles is saying ALL AT ONCE that (1) chaos is reasonably suspicious, and is therefore a "safe" lynch, and thus voting him denies all culpability to a chaos-voter, which would be where scum would place their vote, (2) Beli is not reasonably suspicious (because a Beli-vote is "unsafe") and therefore if Beli were to flip town, scrambles would rightly get suspicion on him, (3) because Beli is an unsafe lynch, and not a safe lynch, scum wouldn't be keen on voting Beli, and therefore scrambles must be town.

(d)

scrambles is willing to back of Beli (Post 359), but never actually does so (much less follow through this willingness to reevaluate his Beli-vote) because that would look REALLY BAD if he jumped off the Beli-wagon and a Beli lynch actually went through.

(2)

Day Two: first reading through D2, I started to doubt my suspicions on the Blonde/scrambles slot, but then I got to Toby's insight and rethought my position:

I've had a scum buddy, having obviously going to be lynched the next day

, have their plan be that day to call me town and argue it to their death.

The bolded is what I think very much happened. Scum saw that Beli was a probable D2 lynch, and so acted accordingly. In this light, scrambles' D2 Beli-focus is weird:

(a)

scrambles first D2 posts asks

chaos

, and only chaos, what chaos thinks about Beli. (Post 570, Post 574, Post 634.) Why the zeroing in on chaos? Why not try to get more of the thread on board? It looks like scrambles is making a half-hearted attempt to get people back on the Beli-wagon.

(b)

scrambles reasoning for a Beli-vote have downgraded: no longer is it that Beli isn't actually giving good reasons, it's only that "there's something there," a "feeling," and some type of "vibe." (Post 574.) Holy smokes that's a horrible effort to justify a suspicion: "Hey guys, I totally am on board with this suspicion, but I'll let others fill out my nebulous accusations." Looks like scum recognizing that Beli-lynch might be inevitable for D2, but doesn't want to actually contribute to it at the beginning of the day just in case if suspicions go elsewhere.

(c)

Then we get scrambles Beli-vote in Post 634. Now he's fourth on the Beli-wagon. Why the Beli-vote from scrambles? Because of Beli's wifom (Post 636.) Once again, not original Beli-suspicions:

- Toby, in Post 440: "everyone huddle together and let's wifom what this means." (in a Beli/Toby back-and-forth)
- CKD, in Post 450: "too flippant (yeah yeah WIFOM)..also his is a counter wagon to someone I think is scum." (discussing why he thinks Beli is town)

(d)

scrambles then ignores Beli for the remainder of the day, up until Beli is L-1. Only then does scrambles jab at Beli in Post 861. scrambles literally did not talk to Beli at all, did not try to pursue or explore his suspicions, until the Beli lynch was sealed.

[Green Crayons]

1) The scrambles vote in #1060 is strange. I think that he made the case & post in the right time where scrambles wasn't under much suspicion, so that the wagon won't take off much. And he's right -- it didn't. The main thing that fuelled the wagon was scramble's defensc and lies about his experience & his meta of 'not talking to scumreads', and finally his comment about how he groups scum with doctor. I'm also speculating that GC, despite his wall post being 100% correct, specifically made the post incredibly long and drawn out as if to discourage people from reading the whole thing. That's my paranoia speaking, though.

This is Riddle's GC-is-scum theory w/r/t my awesome scrambles case.

[Riddleton]

I explained a possible theory in a post of mine D4

[Riddleton]

Green Crayons

Sorry if this becomes wall-y. Two main issues with GC:

1) The scrambles vote in #1060 is strange. I think that he made the case & post in the right time where scrambles wasn't under much suspicion, so that the wagon won't take off much. And he's right -- it didn't. The main thing that fuelled the wagon was scramble's defensc and lies about his experience & his meta of 'not talking to scumreads', and finally his comment about how he groups scum with doctor. I'm also speculating that GC, despite his wall post being 100% correct, specifically made the post incredibly long and drawn out as if to discourage people from reading the whole thing. That's my paranoia speaking, though.

a) He aggressively pushes Scrambles for most of the way there -- saying that his defence of 'WiFOM' isn't accurate, among other things -- until he just decides to abruptly stop once Scrambles pushes out these weak defence posts that don't actually mean anything. The way I see it, GC's suspicion of Scrambles rises and rises, so I don't understand what's so special about scrambles' posts that makes GC just step down from all suspicion and unvote in this post. The transition is awkward and feels forced. Most of Scrambles' responses were talks of his own meta as scum, and lies about experience and playstyle of 'not responding to scumreads' that were all quickly unearthed. What part of these responses did you 'Like' in that post enough to unvote him?

b) His further interaction is more awkward, still. We see GC ask me why I don't like his responses, despite me saying so in the exact same post. I assume he then realises in #1445 his unvote starts to look bad w/r/t how bad Scrambles' defence was. From here, GC's push of Scrambles starts again. Just out of nowhere, at Scrambles questioning whether my comment on him is valid on this post. Long story short, these spasmodic pushes on Scrambles result in a revote on him, followed by an unvote, and finally we see GC finally stick to Scrambles here, with his last justification on the vote being that he trusts my judgement.

Conclusion is that I think GC's push and posts on Scrambles were awkward. We see unusual interaction with this slot, as GC quickly changes his mind time-after-time again depending on whether the gamestate is pushing for scrambles lynch, or a mislynch on someone like CDB. In a nutshell, the original justification of the unvote on Scrambles is what I don't like the most, as it seems very strange that an experienced player would believe that an emotional, ab hominem type-defence is town. I just don't buy that after all your pushing, you think Scrambles is just 'Frustrated town' in this post, seemingly to undermine all your effort in bussing your buddy until now.

Hey, you. You've chopped off half of my awesome GC-is-scum case.

[Green Crayons]

He only asked about you explaining away my vote on scrambles. I linked to your post, he's a big kid and can go read the whole thing if he wants.

~*~ Arm Cross ~*~

[Green Crayons]

my case on scrambles*

[ChannelDelibird]

Well, that's the first time I've read 1783, Riddleton. I guess you must have made it deliberately (and self-consciously) long to put me off reading it.

It's nonsense. Note that GC's post

did

convince me on scrambles rather than anything scrambles was posting at the time when I got off my arse and read, and every player expects their posts to be read so the idea that he intended for it not to be noticed doesn't tally up with how people actually think when playing this game.

[Ironwood]

Farside isn't an option today. It's either CKD or GC from my POV.

The last thing I want is Riddle-GC-CKD LyLo.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you are making lynch decisions based on not just who is most likely scum but what lynches will give you the best chance of survival in LYLO. I can see you as town thinking from that standpoint but it is harder to take your reads seriously when you approach it that way. How strong is your GC suspicion if you never have to worry about survival?

[Riddleton]

No, that's not my priority. It helps though, as I don't want to be in LyLo deciding between my two main suspects

[Riddleton]

GC is my #2 suspect, so I'd say I am reasonably confident in him being scum. If it isn't him, then it's CKD

[Riddleton]

Well, that's the first time I've read 1783, Riddleton. I guess you must have made it deliberately (and self-consciously) long to put me off reading it.

It's nonsense. Note that GC's post

did

convince me on scrambles rather than anything scrambles was posting at the time when I got off my arse and read, and every player expects their posts to be read so the idea that he intended for it not to be noticed doesn't tally up with how people actually think when playing this game.

That's only one tiny part of the case, if you disagree with that statement.

[ChannelDelibird]

I disagree with all of it, though point 1) is the worst.

[Ironwood]

What gives me pause is that Farside is a little scattered as to where she is voting (like the vote on Titus today). She doesn't seem to have an agenda in mind.

[Green Crayons]

@Iron:

I think that is probably the best argument in favor of farside not being scum.

However, I think your observation is ultimately one of playstyle, and potentially a style "played up" as this game has continued, as I don't think farside is in actuality nearly as scrambled as she has come across since scrambles' lynch.

[farside22]

Iron: that was a strong case by GC. I'm not going to say otherwise.
My issue with GC is after that.
He does go back and forth with scrambles.
After scrambles lynch he states 4 scum suspects in the game.
Each time he attacks me, the wagon goes nowhere he switches to CKD, switches to amy.
Today he goes after CKD after giving him a town read day 4 and then attacks me again,
If I was the person he felt strongest for, why not start voting me? Why follow riddle if nothing else to make it to lylo?