Newbie 1779 | Spring | Endgame

[PenguinPower]

Vote Count 2.07

mastina

(3): ChrisOrmie, Icy, Dogwatch

Alisae

(3): mastina, Darklyn, ThinkBig

ThinkBig

(2): Alisae, oldwino

Not Voting

:
With 8 alive, it's 5 to lynch.

Deadline

: (expired on 2017-03-31 13:00:00)

[Alisae]

VOTE: mastina
If I can't get the Grey slot, I'll go get mastina.

[ThinkBig]

Mastina is at L-1

[DogWatch]

let's see a mastina claim before anyone hammers

[Alisae]

We have a BP, and a tracker claim.
What is she going to claim again?

[Alisae]

oh yeah VT riiiiiiight.

[Icy]

I see Alisae is at L-2. What is the case on Alisae?

I'll give you my case on her. She replaced RC. If you read nightfall you will see she is doing what RC said he would do today. I don't think the scum team is Mastina/Grey. On day one however I did believe one or the other was. It also seems the town has the most to learn from a Alisae lynch.

@ Icy - So you think we should lynch Alisae, but haven't voted her yet. Why not? I think I know, but would like to hear it from you.

I intentionally did not answer this question. While you were waiting to hear from the two replacement players I was waiting on Mastinas interaction with them.
She said when I asked her about her change of heart on RC (RC was town), (Alisae Scum) that she needed to reevaluate her game while all the time seemingly unwilling to reevaluate Greys position. (Grey is town)

I'd like to give TB a few days (real time) to speak up, establish himself, and maybe redeem the slot from maybe just poor play, rather than scummy play, from Grey.

For what it's worth, if ThinkBig

doesn't

deliver a metric fuckton of good content relatively soon,

I

will be lynching him.

The slot is what matters not the player in it!!!

A couple of other things bother me, over and above my day one suspicions.

1) She has been doing a pretty good job of explaining things, but let the Dark Tracker thing slide by without comment. Had he tracked anyone else you know she would have been all over that.

2) It fits that she would have taken a shot at me, and let Dark live.

[Icy]

let's see a mastina claim before anyone hammers

?????????????????????????????????

[DogWatch]

sorry, completely forgot what game i was in, I have too much going on

cant keep up anymore

thinking of replacing out

[DogWatch]

actually considering quitting mafia period, all it does is add stress to my life. It's not fun anymore.

and most of this community is completely toxic anyway... seriously some of the worst human beings ive ever interacted with

[Alisae]

[DogWatch]

make one mistake and you're treated like a retard
in a newbie game of all things

a newbie game FILLED WITH EXPERIENCED PLAYERS

[Alisae]

It's not really a mistake.
But okay, maybe I could have phrased that better.

[DogWatch]

i managed to forget we're in a game in which the roles are known, i'd say that's a mistake

[Alisae]

Not a big one.
Honestly I remember making the same mistake once, so you don't really have to worry about it.
I may have been a bit harsh, sorry.

[Alisae]

Like I remember searching for PRs once in the White Flag set up (which is all VTs)

[oldwino]

Hey Dog, please stick around. You're one of the more pleasant players to read and reply to (even though I don't reply much).

[ThinkBig]

Hey Dog, please stick around. You're one of the more pleasant players to read and reply to (even though I don't reply much).

I agree.

[oldwino]

And I do wonder why all of these experienced players want to play newbie games. Often, it sounds like they are here to show off and play against each other, not help us learn the game. YES, a helpful IC and couple of SE's can and should be helpful, but a few of them really overdo it - dominate the game vs. help it move along. Others, I find helpful but I'm not naming names. Enough, back to trying to figure out what's going on here re: scum and town.

[Alisae]

Matrix6 is fun to play. Also scouting for new talent is nice

[oldwino]

VOTE: mastina
If I can't get the Grey slot, I'll go get mastina.

You didn't note 'L1." TB had to do it for you. Makes you look more suspicious and him less suspicious, unless Mastina is his scum buddy and he wanted to make sure no one hammered without realizing it. Now I am alone voting TB/Grey. With Mastina and Alisae as my next two scum suspicions. Around and around we go!

[ChrisOrmie]

actually considering quitting mafia period, all it does is add stress to my life. It's not fun anymore.

and most of this community is completely toxic anyway... seriously some of the worst human beings ive ever interacted with

Please stick around! When I first found Mafia it was a quickfire, lighthearted thing that was fun. Then I moved to longer paced forum stuff and I hated it - the people, the attitude, etc. I found this place 3 years ago, played one game that I loved, but it was stressful and I walked away. I came back because there are some awesome people here and I've learned to let the game be the game, and not take the stress into rl.

Not saying it's easy, but it is worth it. Hopefully nobody takes too much offense from me in the game, and none outside it. If so send me a pm, hopefully we can work it out with no hard feelings!

And I do wonder why all of these experienced players want to play newbie games. Often, it sounds like they are here to show off and play against each other, not help us learn the game. YES, a helpful IC and couple of SE's can and should be helpful, but a few of them really overdo it - dominate the game vs. help it move along. Others, I find helpful but I'm not naming names. Enough, back to trying to figure out what's going on here re: scum and town.

I'm experienced but new to the site in terms of games played (this is my third), and it's a great way to find my feet after a long absence. However I do agree that there is a large number of experienced players in these newbie games, and it would seem offputting to quite a few new players.

Matrix6 is fun to play. Also scouting for new talent is nice

Need to be more Matrix6 games outside the newbie area imo. That would help the newbies stop getting overwhelmed by a "newbie" game with 5-6 players with 30+ game playe on this site. I'm actually hoping to mod a bunch of games (hence my playing games to qualify for it), so I'll add M6 to my list of games to throw out there.

[mastina]

Pre-flip associations are really bad it's total WIFOM, and not a great way to find scum - post flips are great. In nearly every game I've read on here (in the 200-300 range) it's a widely accepted fact. I find it odd that Mastina (especially as IC) would try and paint Ali as scummy for not doing it.

Well on that subject, I have published a few thoughts on the subject where I argue in favor of the concept, and for good reason thanks to the myriad of benefits from doing so.

(Incidentally, I am currently working on both publishing AND editing my past work so a fair share of this is actually fresh in my mind: A lot of my articles could use some formatting fixing, not to mention, trimming the fat from them. I'm actually thinking of spending time today publishing an article on the importance of gut, though I would also like to update a ton of others, in particular, all the Mastin Academy lectures which weren't actually put on the wiki by me and it shows because they have crappy formatting because the person who put them up wasn't as familiar with the wiki as I have become.)

Suffice to say: fuck yes I advocate for pre-flip interactions. Especially since I use the word, very deliberately, interactions. Associatives I do use, but I use them with caution; Interactions I use consistently and constantly as my strongest scumhunting tool. The two are not synonymous, though I admit I often use the terms interchangeably when engaged in dialogs with others since they will use one term and I'll engage them using the term they have laid out even if the term they use is for me the other of the two. (It's a bad habit I need to break, because I should be consistent if I want to preach them being different.)

Mastina was scummy before this, but seriously... why is nobody questioning this at all?! This is terrible logic, terrible play, and can easily hand scum the win.

Because it was neither terrible logic nor terrible play.

explain why I'm not right in thinking we need to assume 3 unknown slots need to be confTown without flipping for this to work.

Okay. Let me lay it out for you.
We have Icy as confirmed town.
We have Darklyn as confirmed town.
We are already making those assumptions, because those are safe assumptions to make. That leaves OBJECTIVELY six slots to sort, SUBJECTIVELY five slots to sort. We have one mislynch to spare. Meaning, we have one spare lynch, and a second emergency lynch. One lynch. For five slots. After the lynch, in mylo, we have four slots. Two would be scum. That's objectively 40% odds, subjectively 50% odds.

If we can eliminate one player from contention and make them very strongly likely to be town, that reduces the possible scum pool. As a result, we jump in odds from 40/50% (not in our favor) to 2/4 (objective) or 2/3 (subjective): 50/66% odds of lynching scum. While not an ensured victory, this is why I said it'd only take one lock-town read outside the conftown (two if you're a member of the conftown) in order to be near-guaranteed victory.

If you can eliminate a

second

player from contention in the resulting mylo by making them very strongly likely to be town, the scum pool is reduced

even further

: objectively to 2/3, subjectively to 2/2. Giving players inside the conftown a 66% chance of lynching scum, and the players outside the conftown a 100% guaranteed scumteam which they KNOW is the case.

It's basic math, yes?

So then it follows that you need to be able to clear players who are still alive. This is a vital skill for a mafia player to master, and I guarantee you, I am not alone in my belief there. Look to any recently completed Large Theme, for instance. You will see player after player using Process of Elimination. PoE. They will have players who are unflipped as townreads, and refuse to lynch them. They will have various reasons for these townreads. Among those reasons will be interactions with players, both flipped and unflipped.

Fuck! What do you think you are REQUIRED to do in a game where you lack the luxury of a scum flip? You are absolutely, 100%, REQUIRED to make assumptions, to make speculations, as to viable scumteams in a lylo. If you've got seven alive and three are scum, one wrong vote will end the game in a scum victory. Five alive and two scum (not at all unrealistic in a Newbie), one wrong vote ends the game in a scum victory. So you MUST hunt scumteams. That number scales, too. Let's say you had a 19-player game with four scum. On Day Six, you have nine alive, no scum flipped. What do you do then? You've got plenty of interactions, but literally every single one is with either a player who flipped town or with a player who is unflipped.

So there's DAMN FUCKING GOOD REASON I say that you absolutely are REQUIRED to do interaction analysis with unflipped players. You literally are left with no choice. And advocating against doing so is something which is either a scumclaim or frankly SHOULD be a scumclaim for just how ridiculously anti-town it is to throw out probabilities.

You'll note, for instance, that mhsmith, the guy who we mislynched on D1, was doing interactions with unflipped players. The player CHRISORNIE IS INSISTING WAS SO TOWN AND SO MUCH OF AN IC THAT MHSMITH WAS APPARENTLY MY EQUAL/SUPERIOR. Was doing interactions with unflipped players. Yet ChrisOrnie is taking the stance here that they are bad.

What do you have to say to

that

?

I mention most of it here due to my case on you and how scary it seems you are leading town when your plan is either mistakenly flawed, or coming from scum.

By the way, this "or" statement is the hallmark of scum players who KNOW the player they are going after is a mislynch.

If you believe the player you are voting is actually scum, you don't leave yourself an out. You don't go leaving an escape route. Doing so is a scum tactic, which allows for justification for being wrong: "See here? See it, see it? Here is where I said I didn't think she was scum, so me mislynching her wasn't nearly as bad as you'd think it was!" It's another way of claiming the moral high ground: "It wasn't MY fault I was wrong, it was clearly HER fault for this".

My scumteams atm are actually Mastina and one of DogWatch or Grey/TBslot. I want way more feedback on TB from Ali/Icy/Dark before I decide how likely that partnership is.

And why are you ignoring the input of dead flipped town on how likely the partnership is? Specifically, you say how good mhsmith's play was. You say how obvtown his play was. You cite, you reference, how good he is at every step of the way:

so why are you ignoring his actual fucking CONTENT?

[mastina]

Okay, I need to summarize that because it got a bit long. (In my defense, I was responding to a very long post so naturally my response would also be long?)

ChrisOrmie is painting the picture that it is bad to do pre-flip interactions analysis, and that me advocating it is bad-teaching-at-best, scum-lying-at-worst.
He holds mhsmith to some golden standard, insisting that mhsmith's play was nigh-god-levels of perfect. (I can quote any number of areas where he indicates as much, but if you iso him and look at what he says I think I don't need to point this out to you because it is really fucking self-evident.)

Contradiction:

mhsmith, like me, was doing

and advocating

pre-flip interactions analysis.

ChrisOrmie is asking for feedback from living slots on a scumteam.

Contradiction the first:

He does so in spite of insisting it is bad to do pre-flip interactions analysis.

Contradiction the second:

He is not taking into account mhsmith's content and mhsmith's reads/wishes/desires, particularly those near mhsmith's death. Now, it is one thing to say, "mhsmith was lynched town, not nightkilled town; there is no guarantee he was accurate". If you hold mhsmith to the standard of a normal player, this is at least a plausible defense, albeit still one I loathe. HOWEVER, ChrisOrmie is explicitly

not

holding mhsmith to the standard of a normal player. He is elevating mhsmith's standard to a player who "should never have under ANY circumstances been the D1 lynch because his play was JUST THAT GOOD". This is not at all an unfair paraphrase of his stance about mhsmith.

...Yet in spite of him taking that stance about mhsmith, ignoring mhsmith's actual contributions to the thread is quite literally spitting in the face of that respect. The first thing I did after mhsmith was lynched was pay my respects to him: I apologized, recognized he was towning it up, and lamented that it was too late to avert his lynch, with a promise that I would take his analysis into consideration. A promise

I made good on

. He felt one of RadiantCowbells(Alisae) and Grey(ThinkBig) was scum, and the other was town. I, at the time, townread both. But I took his reads into consideration and reevaluated my stance, used his input, and formed new conclusions.

This is another instance of a narrative which is ignoring the reality of the thread. ChrisOrmie is holding a double-standard which is inconsistent.
That, not even going into how he is leaving himself an out: he is painting me as being scum, yet leaving

just

enough wiggle room that WHEN I flip town, he can say "I totally saw that coming" and that "it was okay to do anyway". It is classical manipulation at its finest.

I left the interactions point unfinished, but I'll save it for a second half of this.

[mastina]

As for interactions: I believe it can be safely established that I firmly hold true my stance that they are a GOOD thing. The most potent, powerful thing, even. What I didn't follow that through with, though, is how they should be applied this game, and that is by looking at the plausible scumteams within the pool of players: mastina/ThinkBig/Alisae/DogWatch/oldwino/ChrisOrmie.

A mastina-oldwino scumteam is fairly self-evident as to why it is unlikely: we were at each others' throats all of D1, oldwino continues to hold me as scum D2, and it took me half-way into D2 to begin to doubt oldwino as scum and even then he's not eliminated from suspicion altogether.
A mastina-ThinkBig scumteam faces a point which mhsmith rose that was incredibly valid:

I don't really think it's mastina/grey. I do think that Grey's "I think smith is the IC" bit largely cleared mastina if he is in fact scum; I just feel like that's the kind of derp thing that's pretty unlikely if he's buddies with her

...Nobody has yet to offer a counter to this point aside from "but...pre-flip interactions are bad!".
A mastina-Alisae scumteam requires that Alisae and I are cross-bussing right now given that we are at each others' throats right now. It would also FURTHER require that the interactions between RadiantCowbells and I were scum theater on D1.
A mastina-DogWatch scumteam requires a newbie to have bussed their experienced scum partner, given DogWatch is heavily against me. Furthermore, it would require me to have distanced from DogWatch, given I was calling DogWatch scum for the first half of D1.

Additionally

required is that in this given scumteam, I am doing EXTENSIVE in-thread coaching to my scumbuddy, because to be honest, DogWatch once past the first half of D1 became the newbie player I held the greatest interest in teaching thanks to me seeing great potential in her as a player.
A mastina-ChrisOrmie scumteam seems plausible enough given D1 thanks to me defending lemonator...but then you get into D2 where I have increasingly stated my suspicion for the slot, increasingly given my reasons for the slot to be scum, and have increasingly pushed harder there. Furthermore, you get into ChrisOrmie's push on my slot. Again, this requires cross-bussing in order to be plausible.

A ThinkBig-Alisae scumteam requires extensive scum theater crossing the whole game. I simply don't see this as viable.
A ThinkBig-DogWatch scumteam is currently something I am reviewing:

This is one of the teams we need to eliminate

. I feel it incredibly unlikely given DogWatch's townslip and what I'd see from Grey if he were scum, but I haven't yet deemed it absolutely impossible.
A ThinkBig-oldwino scumteam is currently something I am reviewing:

This is one of the teams we need to eliminate

. I individually hold both players to be north of null by some undefined amount (and by undefined, I mean undefined, not unspecified, meaning no I can't put into words by how much), but it is a plausible team. oldwino's vote makes this team unlikely, but not impossible.
A ThinkBig-ChrisOrmie scumteam is possible and even among the probabilities:

This is one of the teams we need to eliminate

.

An Alisae-DogWatch scumteam is basically the only scumteam which I see as viable for DogWatch to be scum.

This is why this is a team I want to eliminate with top priority

.
An Alisae-oldwino scumteam is possible given that neither slot has shown strong hostility towards the other, and thus,

this is one of the teams we need to eliminate

. However, oldwino

has

indicated that Alisae is a scumread. Given his vote is on ThinkBig rather than Alisae in spite of him thinking both are scum and the Alisae wagon being larger, this scumteam is more likely than the ThinkBig-oldwino scumteam.
An Alisae-ChrisOrmie scumteam fits the gamestate almost perfectly. They are working rather heavily together and are using basically the same logic to push the same players.

This is the scumteam I think exists, and thus, I want to confirm/eliminate it

. Quite frankly, the one and only thing making me doubt this scumteam is just how fucking perfect it is. That's literally the only thing making me doubt this team: a variant on the "too scummy to be scum" fallacy, "too perfect to be true". That's it.

A DogWatch-ChrisOrmie scumteam is impossible, thanks to DogWatch's townslip.
A DogWatch-oldwino scumteam is impossible, thanks to DogWatch's townslip. (DogWatch's townslip not being genuine, as I previously laid out, requiring DogWatch to have a veteran scum partner who would advocate the idea.)

An oldwino-ChrisOrmie scumteam is possible, but requires both newbies that could feasibly be scum to actually be scum. Still,

this is one of the teams we need to eliminate

.

As a result, you have the following teams:
ThinkBig-DogWatch (unlikely, but my top priority in making impossible)
ThinkBig-oldwino (unlikely thanks to oldwino's vote)
ThinkBig-ChrisOrmie
Alisae-DogWatch (lynch Alisae first; if Alisae's town, DogWatch is also town, barring ThinkBig-DogWatch which I lay out above as unlikely)
Alisae-oldwino (viable, albeit less likely than others)
Alisae-ChrisOrmie (the team I believe, and am pushing hardest)
oldwino-ChrisOrmie.

There are three viable scumteams with ThinkBig, but two are unlikely.
There are two viable scumteams with DogWatch, but one is unlikely. The other can be eliminated if Alisae flips town, thereby effectively clearing DogWatch.
There are three viable scumteams with oldwino, but one of them is unlikely.
There are three viable scumteams with Alisae, and each of them is a strong possibility. Alisae flipping town eliminates them all, clearing DogWatch and making oldwino literally twice as likely to be town.
There are three viable scumteams with ChrisOrmie, and each of them is a strong possibility. ChrisOrmie flipping town eliminates them all, but does nothing to reduce the chances of a player being scum: oldwino, ThinkBig, and Alisae all lose one scumteam, and DogWatch continues to have one viable scumteam, meaning we still have four suspects come mylo.

Now admittedly. All of these make the assumption the lynched player flips town. This is quite the assumption to make. However, taking a precaution and assuming the worst-case scenario of a town flip is simply smart play when it comes to laying out possibilities and probabilities, as it allows you to lay out a plan which maximizes expected win value given the WORST possibilities. If instead the BEST possibilities turn out to be true (i.e., we get a scumflip), then a lot of this planning becomes superfluous.

Butyeah. This is the math explained. This is how you handle logistics in mafia games. This is probabilities, this is statistics, this is the logical aspect of the game: pure, simple number-crunching. By the numbers, an Alisae lynch gives us the best information. Alisae flips town, we literally eliminate almost all of the viable scumteams. Alisae flips scum, we lynched scum and have some flexibility in hunting viable teams. (Namely, that there are only three possible partners with a mislynch to spare, giving us two shots to hit scum in three slots, 66% odds in our favor just by random, and by doing interactions with flipped scum we can increase this even further.)

And this is why we do interactions.