Mini Normal 1809: Game Over

[BBmolla]

it's fine to have doubts, but there way you're going about it is really shitty. I don't think I've ever seen someone actually fucking say "What if he was scum?" like no shit everyone can possibly be scum

I guess my questions here is what situation would I be scum in and how likely do you find that?

[Wingback]

The context in which I said "what if he's scum" is a response to Grendel.

Grendel is saying "Hoopla is scum for trying to make BBMolla seem scummy and not taking the neighborizing at face value."

I'm saying Hoopla was right to investigate every possibility because if Hoopla just accepted Molla as town without questioning it, and somehow Molla ended up being scum, we would have lost. So, her play was the right one and not scummy.

[Wingback]

Like, Elyse is saying the same thing in Post 1157. That Hoopla is scum for "casting doubt on BB." I find that ridiculous. You are probably town but not "confirmed town" and not looking at the possibility of you being scum is poor town play. Yet, Elyse and Grendel are scumreading her partially for having doubts about you.

[Wingback]

I could see a situation in which a scumteam comprising of Masq/BB/???? decide to kill Chaos N1 because Masq is afraid of him. But they are worried that it would make Masq look bad. Once D2 opens, BB self-consciously starts out with a vote on Masq anticipating that she would be under pressure that day. When the pressure does come and it looks like Masq is going to be lynched, BB keeps his vote on the wagon to see the bus through periodically popping in to re-iterate that she's scum.

Finally, after Masq is lynched, a BB/??? scumteam roleblock Grendel to stop him from shooting and kill cmitc1 to nullify his role. Cmitc1 recruits BB and dies (but it doesn't say anything since there was only one kill). BB says he got recruited and outs what cmitc1 said in their neighborhood PT while being excited at the possibility of being "confirmed town" because he thinks town won't check all their bases. But Hoopla is meticulous in making sure that everything is covered and confirms with the mod that BB would have been recruited anyways thus making you not confirmed town. So, yeah. That's a possible scenario in which you are scum.

Your lurkish play and coasting is a large part of why I wouldn't solidly dismiss you as town but on balance I have a townlean. If you want me to read you as solid town, be more active and be more town.

[Grendel]

@Grendel;

Re: Hoopla unvoting when it was L-2:

The danger of Masq being lynched before Hoopla could get her thoughts together was there even at L-2. I didn't get the order wrong. I just don't think that thought process of "

Unvote the major wagon while I think this through

" is a scumtell at all regardless of the flip. In fact, I think it's more likely to be town since if scum know that their bus is about to end up in a lynch, they are much more likely to stick it to the end for the towncred rather than unvote a partner at the last minute and thus lose the towncred from the bus. There was plenty of support for a Masq lynch with or without Hoopla, the only question being whether she was on the lynch or not.

Re: Hoopla speaking for Masq:

Scum have daytalk as the mod mentioned that "Any PT associated with this game will be open for use at all times (Day Phase and Night Phase)." If Hoopla was conspiring with Masq, she would have told her in the scum PT so that Masq could implement the plan directly rather than speak for Masq if that's what you are arguing. If not, you'll have to rephrase.

Re: Rolestopper speculation:

As town, we don't know what roles are in the game which means we'll speculate on the setup and some of that will be wrong. I don't see that as a scumtell, partly because I didn't find it unreasonable. At worst, it's null.

Re: Hoopla's read on BBMolla:

While I'm leaning towards BBMolla being probably town, I think erroneously confirming him as town would be a mistake. What if he was scum? If we don't do our due diligence, it would be perfectly possible for him to skate which could cost us the game. Hoopla checking her bases and covering all the possibilities is something I don't find scummy in the slightest. While it's possible for the scum might look to "unconfirm" confirmed townies, what Hoopla did is something we all have to do as town. You are ascribing just the possible scum motive to an action that town ought to do.

Wouldn't you need to know more about Hoopla to know weather she is reluctant, or quick, to bus her partners as scum? Judging solely from her play this game I would say that Hoopla doesn't seem like the kind of scum player to be quick to bus her partners. So I could definitely see her hoping to salvage Mask at least one more day. I do think that that unvote was indicative of wanting to see if she could save Mask (Which makes more sense as scum since as you pointed out- Mask did not have two town posts to rub together), and she led the reasoning that Mask could use his shot to clear himself tomorrow. The thing about that is with Cmitc1 confirming there being a role blocker it seems like she would recant the plan to clear Mask via shooting right then and there since he would be blocked if he were a vigilante. Instead of moving back to interrogate Mask however, she jumped on me in post 1052. At that point Mask would no longer be confirmable, so why was she interested in trying to lynch a new target? I am not seeing the town intent from that.

I was unaware that scum had day talk. In the thread proper Hoopla still claimed Mask had a shot if he did not say anything otherwise, and Mask went along with it. I am not sure how you could see anything else from that???

I generally do not use set up speculation as a reason to scum read somebody, but considering how, and when things fell into place I could see definite scum motivation behind Hoopla's speculation. Is it could be a reasonable thing to speculate since multiple role blockers are not common when she talked me out of my role blocker counters. I'd say that being wrong here still falls into null. Then though, she introduced the idea of the role stopper in post 1094 which looked like diverting attention away from the role blocker threat. Which means she tried undermining the possibility of a role blocker twice, and the second time looks pretty scummy to me.

Yes, I am taking nieghborized BBmolla at face value right now. I have acknowledged a possibility that cmitc1 was both the factional kill target, and targeted scum, before. But I decided to keep myself from second guessing I would keep to what I predicted scum's play would be today, and assume that who ever Cmitc visited from his town pool would be town if hoopla, or whoever, tried theorizing that Cmitc visted mafia. If nobody pointed out that our neighborized player could be scum, (or at least later into the day), then I think it most likely that Cmitc1 had visted Scum and not town. But Hoopla's quickness in discrediting BBmolla makes her look like scum to me this day start. It was literally the second thought of the day she began pressing, and the first just being a question to me.

[Grendel]

@Wingback What did you say your thoughts on Egg were?

You seem to be scum reading my strongest town reads lol.

If you're into forming prospective scum teams and comparing their likelihood why don't you share you top three scum teams? Plus an explanation for their chemistry if you do not mind.

[Grendel]

Yo BBmolla, Am I going to have to redirect you to my questions every time I ask them???

@BBmolla

If Hoopla/Blank is today's lynch and she/he flipped scum who you pursue tomorrow? And if she/he flips town who would you pursue?

[Wingback]

@Grendel,

on your Post 1304; I'll just address the last one for now. You "predicting" that scum would want to discredit an incorrect confirmation of a townie doesn't take away from the fact that good town play is to refute incorrect "confirmations" of other players. This is so that the wrongly confirmed player doesn't endgame as scum. It's entirely possible BBMolla is town but not "confirmed" and when people wrongly assumed him to be "confirmed," a town-Hoopla stepped in to correct that reasoning.

The one thing that's bothering me about Hoopla though is that since I've replaced in and started defending her, she barely made any posts at all or tried to work with me to refine her reads beyond just Blankface. Her posting has been very minimal lately, just one post every one or two days. So, I'd prefer she defend herself and post more reads at this point. It doesn't take away from her town posting throughout the game but I at least want an explanation for it.

I was planning to go through all my reads again to analyze who I think is the likeliest team over the next few days. When I get to it, I think it will answer your Post 1305 sufficiently. I'll tell you where I'm at from the top of my head though: Elyse and Egg are individually my strongest scumreads. I don't see anything that makes them a team but I also don't see anything that precludes them from being a team. I dislike their unexplained townreads on each other. Elyse/Blankface makes sense as I thought Elyse was pushing a Hoopla/Blankface team for poor reasoning. Egg/Blankface haven't really interacted much so there's not a lot to go there. Those are three players I think are potential scum. I have leaning townreads on BBMolla and KTS, strong townreads on you and Hoopla although I'd like Hoopla to be more active to re-affirm that read.

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla; I'm still interested in your thoughts about Egg's catchup even if only to see a different perspective. I'd also like to know your thoughts on what I said about Masq's vote on BlankFace D1. It's possible you are right on Blankface and Molla is right that it is indeed Blankface/Elyse especially since their interactions with each other do look like partners. But I also suspect Egg and have reason to second-guess my Blankface read.

Egg could be scum, but if I am lynched we have to nail the scumteam with our other two picks, so you kinda have to gamble the town on a few players being town. Factoring into this is also how difficult it would be to get the stars to align and getting all/most of the townies to agree on who the final scum is. I don't know how realistic an Egg lynch is based on this, as it doesn't seem like the sort of game where people's reads are changing that dramatically -- everyone looks pretty locked into their interpretation of the game. So, from my perspective, focusing on the most easy to achieve win possibility for town is key here.

Mmm, as for your point on Masq's vote on Blank D1. I think I kinda agree that actually makes it likelier that Blank is town. Right now, I think you're pretty much town captain and I'm happy to defer to what you think and help you achieve what you think is most likely, because it looks like you are reading the well (better than me) and are more invested than me at the moment.

If you see Elyse working in more potential scumteams than Blank, I'm happy to support a push on her instead. I am definitely warming to the idea of Elyse/Egg actually.

[Hoopla]

The one thing that's bothering me about Hoopla though is that since I've replaced in and started defending her, she barely made any posts at all or tried to work with me to refine her reads beyond just Blankface. Her posting has been very minimal lately, just one post every one or two days. So, I'd prefer she defend herself and post more reads at this point. It doesn't take away from her town posting throughout the game but I at least want an explanation for it.

Sorry. My time for this game has recently been limited to quick check-ins instead of solid blocks of time where I can analyse the game indepth, which is my usual MO in late game, and not being able to do that/maybe being mislynched has made this game feel a bit blah.

Hence why I'm pretty much happy to defer to you right now.

[Grendel]

I was planning to go through all my reads again to analyze who I think is the likeliest team over the next few days. When I get to it, I think it will answer your Post 1305 sufficiently. I'll tell you where I'm at from the top of my head though: Elyse and Egg are individually my strongest scumreads. I don't see anything that makes them a team but I also don't see anything that precludes them from being a team. I dislike their unexplained townreads on each other. Elyse/Blankface makes sense as I thought Elyse was pushing a Hoopla/Blankface team for poor reasoning. Egg/Blankface haven't really interacted much so there's not a lot to go there. Those are three players I think are potential scum. I have leaning townreads on BBMolla and KTS, strong townreads on you and Hoopla although I'd like Hoopla to be more active to re-affirm that read.

Hmmm...

Really sure that Egg is town. Also got a town lean on Elyse. I don't think I could support either of them as lynches today.

I'm thinking:
Hoopla/Blank
Hoopla/Wingback
Blank/Killthestory

[Wingback]

Heading out for dinner so I'll be gone for an hour but Hoopla, you sheeping me onto whatever lynch I can achieve actually isn't helping. I want your input and perspective more than your vote and I'd find it much easier to both figure out the game as well as firm up my townread on you if you offer more input. Your lynch isn't a foregone conclusion so I don't know why you are just accepting that. The problem with deferring to me is that I don't think I have the game solved either.

A couple of things that would help are: 1) If you could go over your townread on House for me. I haven't seen any reason to townread him and his posts look a lot like scum fueling Robb to help him self-destruct. While I do think KTS's posts are somewhat town, it would help solidify that read if there was some strong reason you had for townreading House that I'm missing entirely. 2) It seems that you've played with BBMolla before so I could use a meta-explanation on why you seem decently confident this is his townplay. I'm not a fan of his coasting by occasionally and not staying on to engage me on my read (his earlier potshot at me and disappearance after I answered his question is just the latest example).

[Hoopla]

A couple of things that would help are: 1) If you could go over your townread on House for me. I haven't seen any reason to townread him and his posts look a lot like scum fueling Robb to help him self-destruct. While I do think KTS's posts are somewhat town, it would help solidify that read if there was some strong reason you had for townreading House that I'm missing entirely. 2) It seems that you've played with BBMolla before so I could use a meta-explanation on why you seem decently confident this is his townplay. I'm not a fan of his coasting by occasionally and not staying on to engage me on my read (his earlier potshot at me and disappearance after I answered his question is just the latest example).

I think he just seemed genuinely annoyed and wanted Rob to stop, which pretty much characterised my feelings about the situation. I guess he could be faking it as scum to help fuel that mess, but I never really looked back and challenged/reevaluated that read based on KTS's play.

I've played very little mafia in the last few years, so my feelings about Molla being town is based on general tendencies -- I just don't see scum get desperate to defend themself in an emotional way with self-meta under little pressure. I think this sort of thing occurs more from townies that are frustrated that the others can't see the truth that they are town.

[BBmolla]

Yo BBmolla, Am I going to have to redirect you to my questions every time I ask them???

@BBmolla

If Hoopla/Blank is today's lynch and she/he flipped scum who you pursue tomorrow? And if she/he flips town who would you pursue?

elyse

[BBmolla]

and blank if she's town

[Dierfire]

VOTE COUNT 3.09

Hoopla (3): Elyse, Grendel, Egg
BlankFace (2): Hoopla, BBmolla
Elyse (1): Killthestory

No Vote (2): BlankFace, Wingback

With 8 players living, a lynch requires 5/8 votes.

TIMER

Deadline suspended pending replacement for BlankFace

NOTES

Seeking replacement for BlankFace
Egg V/LA until 7 August

[Elyse]

Like, Elyse is saying the same thing in Post 1157. That Hoopla is scum for "casting doubt on BB." I find that ridiculous. You are probably town but not "confirmed town" and not looking at the possibility of you being scum is poor town play. Yet, Elyse and Grendel are scumreading her partially for having doubts about you.

In a situation like this scum need to keep their options open because there are only a few people who can actually be lynched.

Like right now the scumteam is counting on me to be a mislynch. But they're gonna need one more so I look for anyone who's hesitant to townread someone and narrow down the pool. Because let's say the team is Hoopla/BlankFace. Ok they lynch me today and plan on lynching you tomorrow. But let's say you obvtown it up. Now what? They're basically screwed. But if Hoopla casts doubt on BB then she has an opening.

There's a difference between being reluctant to townread someone and keeping your options open and Hoopla is doing the latter imo.

[Wingback]

I disagree with that theory pretty strongly. For instance, in the Queen Micro, most of the town zoned in on me or BNL. When I started looking outside the pair of us at you and TTH, the general response was something like "he's keeping his options open, therefore scum." It turned out that the final scum wasn't in BNL/me so looking elsewhere was a necessity. I see a somewhat similar situation here with most players looking inside just Hoopla/Blankface and I'm not even close to convinced that that's the team.

Why are you townreading Egg? Sure, he voted Masquerade early but a lot of his posts seem like the casual, passive followups that scum typically while not staying engaged in the moment. On hindsight, I also thought his Masquerade reasoning was pretty weak.

Why BBMolla? We know now that him being in the neighborhood says nothing about his alignment. You had him as a scumread D1 along with Rob. What changed that you abandoned that read? Also, neither of them have been posting much at all lately and just coasting through the game.

[Wingback]

Checked Egg's scum-meta to see what he's like as scum. The first game I looked at re-affirmed my suspicions that he was bussing Masquerade. For instance, take a look at his ISO here and Ctrl+F "Newbie" who is one of his partners. Egg replaces into the game and makes a giant catchup post most of which are points against his buddy capping it off with a vote at the end. Egg's partner wasn't under much pressure at all and the wagon was started by Egg. The stark similarity between that and his push on Masquerade here in Post 208 should nullify the reasons anyone is townreading him. Granted, he's also townread his partners in other games (his partner Beck in this game) but my point is that his posts in this game are scummy and his interactions with Masquerade shouldn't be a reason for a townread him as they fit very, very well into the range of how Egg interacts with his buddies. In fact, his push on Masquerade was based on very nebulous reasoning and him winding up being right at the end fits much more with an informed perspective than town that genuinely found scum.

Solidly confident Egg is scum here and I'd like everyone to engage me on this read.

Egg tying Hoopla to Masquerade pre-flip also makes more sense from scum tying his partner to the townie he wants to lynch next to set her up. Not at all sure who Egg's buddy is at this point. Just don't think it's Hoopla.

[Egg]

Wing, in that game you dug up, do my posts towards Newbie read as "passive, casual follow ups"?

[Wingback]

I didn't say your posts towards your partners are passive, casual followups. Your posts in general are you passively floating around only offering content from the sidelines. You are rarely here in-the-moment spontaneously scumhunting or refining your reads.

[Egg]

Ah. Yeah, I really should stop playing mafia because of my job. I'm either at work with no access or I'm dead tired.

[Grendel]

Idk guys, when Egg said that he thought I was a cop with a guilty verdict on Cmitc1 in response to my outing seemed like an incredibly town thing to say.

[Wingback]

@Grendel;

It's not unlikely to be faked considering he was using your read on cmitc1 as an excuse to get off the Masquerade wagon and onto cmitc1. He needed that excuse since he was pushing Masquerade consistently. This way, he can say that he thought there was a cop guilty on cmitc1 if the lynch heads there instead of Masquerade.

I also thought his suggestion that he be lynched looked fake:

Hell, I don't mind being the lynch myself. I wouldn't mind having one less game to play. I want Grendel's input on Cmit's claim though.

Egg mentioned that he played over 300 games (I'm not sure if that was in this game or in a game I was reading but I'm sure he'll confirm this). He's smart enough to know that suggesting a lynch on oneself is abundantly stupid. I don't think he would do it as town and if he has done it, he's welcome to show me a link. Besides that, having "one less game to play" is a ridiculously weak reason to suggest a lynch on himself and doesn't sound genuine at all. Town are much more likely to want to be lynched when they are frustrated by being scumread and have a strong scumread they want dead with the hope that when people see their townflip, they'll lynch their scumread. "Lynch me, I'm overgamed" is not something a guy with 300 games under his belt would do.

On the other hand, Egg has self-voted as scum before and called for his lynch.

I think he threw out that little suggestion because he thought it would get him towncred. The fact that Egg is not above using fake towntells as scum is another reason I don't weigh his thinking you had a cop guilty on cmitc1 very strongly. He would know that cmitc1 is town and that if he believes there was a guilty, that would a "towntell" on his part because it would supposedly show that he was uninformed about cmitc1's alignment.

---

@Elyse;

Egg's push on Masq was actually pretty bad. Here's the essence of how it went:

• Grendel asked a bunch of RQS questions three of which are "what are your strengths," "what are your weaknesses," and "do your strengths and weaknesses change with alignment?"
  
• Masq responded to them in Post 138 with "I don't really know," "I get emotional and it shows," and "Sort of."
  
• Eggs asks " How do you know your strengths and weaknesses change without knowing what your strengths are?" Right away, I find this a stretch. Masquerade could easily have been referring to just her weaknesses given she didn't really answer the "strengths" part.
  
• Her response in Post 265 confirms this and she explains that she gets more emotional as town because she's apparently the one being betrayed. Clearly, this changes with alignment.

The entire Masq-case is Egg making a huge stretch out of Masq answering non-alignment indicative RQS questions about herself. Adding onto that, he uses a lot of dubious theory to back up his reasoning in Post 227 to refute Robb's point that Masq may simply have not wanted to give away her scum meta regardless of her alignment. It reads like he knew what he was doing with the Masq-push and that he'd look good for it more than actually trying to read her.

After all this, he fades out and returns to say that he "supported" the Vedith pressure in Post 421 and votes Vedith because "deadline" in Post 816. He never gives any reason for this at all. His only other mention of Vedith on D1 is all the way back in his first post where he calls Vedith town for his reaction to the Hoopla townblock. More notably, when he said "deadline" and voted Vedith, Blankface had five votes on him and Vedith had two, so if deadline was his reason, he would have voted Blankface. Instead, he gives off the indication that he had Blankface as an actual townread asking what the Blankface wagon was about. All this is on page 33. What reads as most disingenous here though is when he does another huge catchup at the beginning of D2, he starts agreeing with your continued case on Blankface and saying that he had too many townreads and Blankface wasn't one of them. So, if Blankface wasn't a townread, why would he vote Vedith who had only two votes over Blankface who had five with "deadline" as the reason?

His reasons for scumreading Hoopla over the Masq lynch makes no sense as he behaved similarly. In Post 994, he states that he'll unvote if Masq claims to still have the shot which is basically Hoopla's position as well. Yet, he agrees with your Post 1200 where you accuse Hoopla of doing pretty much the same thing Egg did like missing the obvious signs that Masq was lying, and voting other players (Egg had voted both Cmitc1 and Hoopla while the Masq claim shenanigans were happening). If he had similar doubts about Masq, why would he push on Hoopla for having them?

Finally, look at his latest play D3. After Hoopla claims, he waffles around the claim, and questions that it could be town yet keeps his vote on Hoopla while also being "tempted" to vote Blankface because of the replacement. Aside from it being dumb to vote someone for replacing out, he isn't actually doing anything to read and analyze either player. When I call him out, he gets beetlejuiced into the thread eight minutes after I post and when I don't respond, he disappears again. This is coasting scum who is very happy with the gamestate as is. He made a convincing bus D2 and is assured a mislynch today which will put the game at mylo and that's it.

---

This guy needs votes on him. Seriously, look at all his scumgames. This is the exact pattern he follows (uninvolved in the game with detailed catchups, bussing weaker partners), gets townread and coasts to lategame or victory. Here, I'll link you to his games if you want to take a look:

Town-Egg: This link is the advanced search I did containing only games not including the Discussion forums and other miscellaneous stuff. Everything not listed below is a towngame and there are many. A couple that I've looked through are Shaman Mafia, and Mini 1562. In both of those, he was a lot more engaged, more passionate about his pushes, and genuinely trying to read the players he pushed.

Scum-Egg: Micro 205, Open 578*, Mini 1620, Open 620, NY 185* (*Multiball so take it with a grain of salt.)

I'm thinking BBMolla could be the partner but far from convinced on that. I'll use the rest of this day to try and figure out who it could be.

VOTE: Egg

[Egg]

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=66557
Why not even look at my most recent town game? It shows how busy I've been. 30 pages behind for most of the game. Also, if you've meta'd me as much as you seemed to, you'd have seen me self vote as town I'm sure.