Newbie 1691 - Game Over

[shannon]

It's going to be really embarrassing for you if you lead a lynch on me KAAG.

[KickAssAndGiggle]

It will be if I'm wrong! But for the moment it's just FOS.

Do you still think your statement:

Thor has never expressed a belief in Ircher as scum (in fact Thor's choices were all popular targets, Radja, Egg, YA), so I'm finding it difficult to believe that Ircher had motivation to NK Thor. Ircher I think is townish.

Is an accurate one?

[shannon]

It will be if I'm wrong! But for the moment it's just FOS.

Do you still think your statement:

Thor has never expressed a belief in Ircher as scum (in fact Thor's choices were all popular targets, Radja, Egg, YA), so I'm finding it difficult to believe that Ircher had motivation to NK Thor. Ircher I think is townish.

Is an accurate one?

Yeah, I honestly think he was taking the piss. (I am not sure whether that phrase translates to the US but I hope you get my meaning). I don't think he was serious. I think he was retaliating against being insulted and there's nothing more to it. But it's hard to know! The whole time Thor was getting stuck in to me, I thought he was about to lead a mob of villagers with pitchforks my way, but he listed me as 'slight town', which surprised me more than anyone. People were making all sorts of comments about my leaning based on my 'association' with Thor, and I was thinking to myself, hang on, are people reading this as us being

friendly

with each other? I was sure that whichever side he was on, he was trying to make me an easy target. I guess we can ask him about all this once the game is over.

[shannon]

Just realised you're in the UK not the US, sorry!

[KickAssAndGiggle]

I'm a Brit, so I understand "taking this piss" as a phrase! (PEDIT: Aha! )

However, it's utterly nonsense. I mean utterly. There is not a single post by Thor that comes across as a joke. Not one.

Thor has never expressed a belief in

Ircher

as scum (in fact Thor's choices were all popular targets, Radja,

Egg

, YA), so I'm finding it difficult to believe that Ircher had motivation to NK Thor. Ircher I think is townish.

What are your reads and why?

You scum, for reasons stated.

Ircher

, scum, for reasons stated.

Egg

town, for reasons stated.
Shannon, slight town, for reasons stated.

[KickAssAndGiggle]

EBWOP: I may understand "taking the piss"...not sure what I meant by "taking this piss" LOL

[YawningAngel]

I don't really have a side to take in this KAAG vs shannon thing, but I'm a bit unclear on Shannon's argument. I think trying to find only one scum on day one is fine - it's a good result to get and we can always comb over the day again if we want to look for hints at who their partner might be. I don't really view accepting a lynch on Radja and not demanding that we consider a second scum as suspicious. Similarly, you seem to be objecting to KAAG taking a measured view and offering opinions and then also objecting to him leading a lynch. By your analysis, isn't he damned if he does and damned if he doesn't?

With all that said, I don't like KAAG's FoS on shannon in retaliation. Town have very little to fear under pressure, especially if they've been contributing, and KAAG doesn't provide much substance to back this up

[shannon]

I'm a Brit, so I understand "taking this piss" as a phrase! (PEDIT: Aha! )

However, it's utterly nonsense. I mean utterly. There is not a single post by Thor that comes across as a joke. Not one.

Thor has never expressed a belief in

Ircher

as scum (in fact Thor's choices were all popular targets, Radja,

Egg

, YA), so I'm finding it difficult to believe that Ircher had motivation to NK Thor. Ircher I think is townish.

What are your reads and why?

You scum, for reasons stated.

Ircher

, scum, for reasons stated.

Egg

town, for reasons stated.
Shannon, slight town, for reasons stated.

I read him as being really dry, droll, and funny. Is this not what I should be getting from him? What does everyone else think? (Surely someone being so superficially aggressive is actually joking?)

It's late here (1:00). I'm going to let the others weigh in and catch up with all this after some shut eye. I'm interested to see others' perspectives.

For anyone who's thinking of going crazy with the hammer, please don't!

[YawningAngel]

I think Thor is slightly jokey around the fact that he's a very aggressive player, but as best I can tell the actual content of his posts was deadly serious.

[KickAssAndGiggle]

With all that said, I don't like KAAG's FoS on shannon in retaliation. Town have very little to fear under pressure, especially if they've been contributing, and KAAG doesn't provide much substance to back this up

At face value, I'd agree here, but I have two votes on me, one from Ircher with no reason given other than "fear the town leader" WIFOM, and one from somebody who though Thor's 7 or 8 posts all suspecting Ircher were all dry, droll and funny. This being the same person who called him a work beginning with "j" that rhymes with "work" on D1.

At first I thought it was just a "I skimmed the thread and didn't see Thor's posts about Ircher" issue...but now I've quoted it all and she still doesn't see it.

So yes, probably wise to allow mhsmith0, Eggman and SIW to weigh in: if they think Thor was joking, at least I can imagine some non-suspicious reason to say "thor didn't scum read Ircher". However, I though Thor was both serious and feisty.

PEdit: indeed. I'm not saying he didn't have some character in his language, but the content was all business.

[KickAssAndGiggle]

EBWOP: This being the same person who called him a

word

beginning with "j" that rhymes with "work" on D1.

[SummerInWonderland]

YA - why did you post my gif?
ALSO HI guys!
i will make posts tonight- currently going to see Batman vs Superman so I cant right now

[YawningAngel]

Two votes doesn't mean shit. Unless we have

two

axe-crazy players left, you're perfectly alright up to three votes. I think it's perfectly reasonable to have defended yourself, but I don't really see the scum motive in voting you at this point. We're highly unlikely (I hope) to push a lynch through in the first 24 hours

@SIW shannon said something about not hammering. I was triggered.

[KickAssAndGiggle]

OK YA, just keep your hands off the hammer!

ALSO HI guys!

Every time someone says HI in caps, I pretty much have to say "HI DR NICK". It's a sickness!

[mhsmith0]

@shannon: can you remind me why you think ircher is town? It feels like your case is based on "well a vet may be scum, and I like ircher as town so kaag I guess". If that's a major simplification of your thought please clarify,but that's how it's reading to me.

@ircher: was your vote at 710 serious or just some kind of joke, reaction test, or conversation starter? I honestly can't tell based on what you wrote next to it.

Ps at this time I see no remotely good reason to put kaag at l-1 or hammer. If so done wants to sell me on what I've missed be my guest.

[Ircher]

@Mhsmith
Reaction test.

Definitely not serious, although do keep in mind my warning.

[Ircher]

UNVOTE: KAAG

[Ircher]

I'm a Brit, so I understand "taking this piss" as a phrase! (PEDIT: Aha! )

However, it's utterly nonsense. I mean utterly. There is not a single post by Thor that comes across as a joke. Not one.

Thor has never expressed a belief in

Ircher

as scum (in fact Thor's choices were all popular targets, Radja,

Egg

, YA), so I'm finding it difficult to believe that Ircher had motivation to NK Thor. Ircher I think is townish.

What are your reads and why?

You scum, for reasons stated.

Ircher

, scum, for reasons stated.

Egg

town, for reasons stated.
Shannon, slight town, for reasons stated.

I read him as being really dry, droll, and funny. Is this not what I should be getting from him? What does everyone else think? (Surely someone being so superficially aggressive is actually joking?)

It's late here (1:00). I'm going to let the others weigh in and catch up with all this after some shut eye. I'm interested to see others' perspectives.

For anyone who's thinking of going crazy with the hammer, please don't!

I think he was serious when he said I was scum. Now, in terms of evidence, I would find it rather thin, but nonetheless, he was serious as far as I could tell.

[mhsmith0]

@Mhsmith
Reaction test.

Definitely not serious, although do keep in mind my warning.

Cool. What have you learned from your reaction test?

[Ircher]

(I'm halfway through a wall post on the voting analysis, because my first attempt got sidetracked into discussing the hammer. But Ircher raises some points I'll respond to first.)

VOTE: KAAG

Let's start here:

What's your thoughts in terms of the kills?

Radja's lynch was highly unfortunate, but I am not going to pretend that I don't stand by the analysis I made on D1. I cannot get my head around UpTooLate's play in the last dozen posts she made as she was a towny. If you look at my read lists as they shift through D1, I had her at fence-town for quite a while, but then she imploded. Radja just didn't do enough to fix it for me.

I brought up a couple of times that while the UTL case had the most objective evidence to support it, the way the evidence could also have been interpreted made me felt the case wasn't strong enough for a D1 lynch. Did you ever consider the TvT possibility between UTL and SIW? As far as Radja goes, I can understand why he didn't really change your mind. As far as fence town goes --> Scum, that is true.

Now the Thor NK is interesting. There are generic possibilities:

- Thor has 28,000 posts (ish) on this forum. In Mafia, experience is no

guarantee

of skill but there is obvious correlation. Any scum team might have considered him a threat. I don't necessarily buy your "he was very likely going to be today's lynch" argument myself: a dead towny's reads should be respected but I'd have needed to see a lot more scumminess to join the wagon. Let's say I was NK'd instead, or mhsmith0, and you guys HAD lynched Thor (mislynched), you'd be taking Eggman into LYLO, which is worrisome as he barely makes any reads. So I'd have been super cautious myself.

That's only a problem if Egg was town. If Egg was scum, then we'd go to 3p LyLo. While your point about experience is valid, I don't see scum generally nightkilling players for it. They generally get rid of PRs first, then highly townread players, then finally skilled players. (Active players are tied with skilled players)

- Thor was scum-hunting without complacency, and openly admitted to not having read the early days. Any town-cred built up was irrelevant to him, meaning mhsmith0, SIW and KAAG (me!) could all have a motive as we were, I suggest, widely town-read. A good scum-hunter gets better as the game goes on as the % of players who are scum left in the game goes up.

What was the point here?

- Thor shook up a quiet, lurky game. Inaction benefits scum more than town, and he was making action.

This is valid.

And there are non-generic possibilities. Thor leant scum on you (Ircher) and YA. But you were his preferred lynch:

I've read the Utl case and it primarily consists of SJW/Utl, but there is evid. of Conf. Bias in the case, which weakens it s value. I prefer an Egg lynch, or even possubly a Thor lynch.

You're currently voting Shannon.

Are you scum forgetting your fake pushes, or are you trying to compromise off Shannon for some reason?

Unvote: Yawning Angel
Vote: Radja

Also still good with an Ircher lynch.

hey thor!
I am just wondering why are you voting Radja now?
I put my case out there for you a while ago and KAGG did a bit after that too.
You were questioning others throughout that.
so yea basically why now?

I am voting Radja because I don't scumread Yawning Angels as much and, for some weird reason, there is zero support for the idea of lynching Ircher.

Valid point. Nonetheless, if I were scum, I would've been more inclined to night kill you (assuming your town) as like I said earlier, I would've pushed the Thor lynch today.

Hopefully it will become clearer which reason is more likely as the day continues.

...

what is your opinion of Radja's final readlist?

Well...it's wrong at the very bottom, we know that now. I was surprised to see you above SIW, more because of how towny I perceived her to be than anything on you. I'm also somewhat surprised at the position of Eggman, because as you'll see when I finish my Vote Count Wall (tm) , he was Radja's top scum pick for a good old while.

If we were looking to start investigating based on the deceased town reads, I'd say we look at:

{YA, Ircher, Shannon, Eggman, SIW}

I am almost definite there is at least 1 scum in that group, probably two

(In no particular order)

I suspect you will protest, but one issue we have is that Thor did not really provide town reads (which is why mhsmith0 that I feel they are at least as important as scum reads). I think he leant briefly town on shannon in one post and that was it. So the only town reads we have are Radja's.

...

(A warning to town: While Too Townie to be Town is a fallacious argument, one must also know that it is quite possible for scum to become the "town leaders". KAAG seems like a skilled player, and while there's no evidence to back up that's the case here, it's something to be cautious of.)

No argument with the fact at face-value: I've seen people do exactly this. But it is pure WIFOM: if I AM town and I AM skilled (I offer no opinion on that!) then it is in town's best interest. If I AM scum, it wouldn't be, of course. But the act of me doing so tells you nothing.

Obviously, I'm not pushing a case on you for just that. I just thought that would be useful to remember. As you said, it's pure WIFOM as I believe I implied by mentioning the Too Townie to be Town fallancy

...

PEDIT

Yes, shannon, you should definitely look at me. However there are some things that I think you do slightly misrepresent:

When I asked how we made such a big mistake he deflected blame by saying 'you joined willingly too', which I thought was weird. Yes, I joined willingly, but I think an appropriate answer would have been that factors A, B, and C convinced him, and a towny thing to do would be to push the rest of us for explanations too.

I presented an 8 point list in the thread, going into full reasoning on my decision. I did not re-post it when replying to you, but it's easy to find: post 565.

I took a look at KAAG's ISO and since 430 it's been a little light on scum hunting. There are lots of posts about game mechanics, and about how he would see other people if certain things happened, or rehashing old stuff (c.f. 448, 565). He has been committed to the Radja vote for ages but I can't see meaningful attempts to find the second scum. Then it's KAAG who in 682 decides to take control of the next scum hunt by saying he will look at Radja's votes in order. Radja's scummiest vote is for Thor, who gets NKed.

Trying to find associates without a flip is a hard and dangerous game. Regarding Radja...I had that sinking feeling he was going to flip town, and dead townies want their reads taken account of. I'm sure you will in this game and any futures games too. I am happy to follow the lead of someone who makes a good case on somebody, I don't have to lead. All you get is grief when you're wrong!!!

KAAG has asked Summer and MH for their reads (706), because he says they're the strongest towns. If this is correct, it means the townies according to KAAG are himself, Summer, MH, Radja (proven VT), Thor (proven VT), Egg (claimed VT) and the scum are some combination of myself, YA, Ircher.

Not Eggman, no. His claim is Null to me. As above, neither Radja nor Thor seemed as blown away by town!SIW as me, so I'm prepared to re-look. Only myself and mhsmith0 are in my personal "clear as glass" category. YMMV.

Responses are in bold. Only the top one do you need to answer.

[Ircher]

One thing I've got flagged to follow up is @Msmith's post 125 that "If there's a two-veteran (vet loosely defined as IC/SE) scum team, I feel like we're going to have a much harder time finding scum slips". The two we've got left are KAAG and Ircher, neither of whom have really been proposed as candidates for mafia.

Ircher

Spoiler:

Ircher at [689] has his bottom three as me, YA, and Thor, and ultimately voted YA. Thor got NKed, and at 559 Ircher was preferring to lynch me or Thor over UTL/Radja. If Ircher is scum, he may have NKed Thor since he couldn't get the lynch. Thor is obviously a dangerous player who asks lots of tough questions. But Ircher didn't really push the lynch, even though he might have got it in the immediate aftermath of the LOLHammer. Thor has never expressed a belief in Ircher as scum (in fact Thor's choices were all popular targets, Radja, Egg, YA), so I'm finding it difficult to believe that Ircher had motivation to NK Thor. Ircher I think is townish.

KAAG

Spoiler:

KAAG I'm having a harder time with. He had been on the Radja/UTL bandwagon for a while, and at 650 takes responsibility (along with Summer) for pushing it originally.

When I asked how we made such a big mistake he deflected blame by saying 'you joined willingly too', which I thought was weird. Yes, I joined willingly, but I think an appropriate answer would have been that factors A, B, and C convinced him, and a towny thing to do would be to push the rest of us for explanations too.

I took a look at KAAG's ISO and since 430 it's been a little light on scum hunting. There are lots of posts about game mechanics, and about how he would see other people if certain things happened, or rehashing old stuff (c.f. 448, 565). He has been committed to the Radja vote for ages but I can't see meaningful attempts to find the second scum. Then it's KAAG who in 682 decides to take control of the next scum hunt by saying he will look at Radja's votes in order. Radja's scummiest vote is for Thor, who gets NKed.

KAAG has asked Summer and MH for their reads (706), because he says they're the strongest towns. If this is correct, it means the townies according to KAAG are himself, Summer, MH, Radja (proven VT), Thor (proven VT), Egg (claimed VT) and the scum are some combination of myself, YA, Ircher.

TL;DR (but it wont make sense if you DR):

Obviously I know I'm town, and I think Ircher is, so I want you to consider whether there's a scenario in which it makes sense for any of us (me+ YA, me+ Ircher, YA + Ircher) to be a scum team. I would argue that there's no case to be found, I think we should look at whether KAAG is scum himself.

I think KAAG is a skilful enough player to buddy someone obv-town without us noticing, and it's possible he's done that with Summer. I think his decision to make an authoritative sounding post attributing YA's hammer to a mistake could be a way of getting us to direct the next lynch to a target he considers harder. *And* I think that his taking control of the scum hunt now is a good way for him to direct it, if he himself is scum.

VOTE: KAAG

This vote is based on experience WIFOM as I will call it, and therefore is rather weak and kinda opportunistic in nature.

We don't know the distribution of roles to experienced versus not experienced players. It is entirely possibly we have a team consisting solely of newbies. Yet, you seem to be basing your vote on this wifom and this wifom solely.

VOTE: Shannon

[Ircher]

I didn't get anything from the reaction test. He simply responded to my questions without even mentioning my vote on him.

[mhsmith0]

I didn't get anything from the reaction test. He simply responded to my questions without even mentioning my vote on him.

What do you think of that response? What do you think of Shannon's vote in the context of "maybe there might be momentum behind this wagon"? If you're going to reaction test, you should be keeping an eye on what the results are, and have an idea of what you think it might mean. It's especially useful if you have an idea in your own head of what various reactions from various people might mean, BEFORE you even try it. That way you know what you need to keep an eye out for.

[KickAssAndGiggle]

I brought up a couple of times that while the UTL case had the most objective evidence to support it, the way the evidence could also have been interpreted made me felt the case wasn't strong enough for a D1 lynch. Did you ever consider the TvT possibility between UTL and SIW? As far as Radja goes, I can understand why he didn't really change your mind. As far as fence town goes --> Scum, that is true.

(This is the one you meant me to reply to, right?)

When I first voted her, after the:

"Lynch YA with fire"

...three posts later

"Die SIW"

bit, I was not married to the vote. But then, posts:

311, 314, 322, 325, 330

happened. I will summarise:

"SIW is backpedalling!!!"
"SIW is backpedalling!!!"
"SIW is backpedalling!!!"
"SIW is backpedalling!!!"
"SIW IS F****** SCUMMY!!!"

At this point...I became married to it. It's one of those calls you feel great about when you're right and poop about when wrong, especially as it got a replacement who'd caught up mislynched.

[mhsmith0]

So I got curious and decided to dig into Thor's takes on Shannon:

496: In other news I mildly townread Shannon unless Egg flips scum, then I'll mildly scumread her.
... various back and forth...
552: Shannon, slight town, for reasons stated.
555: In response to Ircher voting Shannon for Thor's town read: "That makes no sense on multiple levels."
... more back and forth...


What's weird here is, I don't actually see the "reasons stated" for a slight town read. He doesn't go as hard at her as he does Ircher/YA (the scum reads there are obvious, reflected by the votes as well). I see the scum read on Ircher/YA, I sort of see the town read on Egg (not fully laid out, but he repeats the town read, so that does seem genuine)... but I'm not really seeing WHY he is town reading Shannon. Like, at all.


So would a Shannon/x scum team think it might make sense to kill off Thor (Radja's top scum read) to de-legitimize the entire list, and then use Thor as conf!town to suggest that Shannon was in better shape than people thought? Plausibly.

I'm not going to vote on that theory just yet, but I need to look at that slot's postings a LOT more carefully. And if anyone wants to counter me by arguing that Thor's "slight town read" of Shannon was GENUINE, please point me to what I missed. Because in most of his responses to her, he doesn't seem all that impressed or pleased with her responses. And the "scum team wanted to sponge off a seeming Thor town read of Shannon" theory, while somewhat WIFOM, does seem plausible.


PS I'm still curious if anyone thought there were legitimate PR slips by Aero/Thor. If so I don't know that I need to pay anywhere near this level of attention to what the kill of that slot might have really meant. But since it is the ONLY piece of information we have that we KNOW came from scum, I think it's useful info for us to consider.

PPS @KAAG: I was also thinking a fuller vote analysis, not just who was on the final wagon. It's unfortunate that this site apparently doesn't have that as some kind of automatic feature.