Colorless Mafia

The Game Room
1081

As has been amply documented by now, I was already pretty ambivalent about whether Freudian was scum or a testy Townie playing a bad game. In retrospect, the “intentionally scummy” thing should have set off alarm bells. But mainly I was thinking (a) don’t lynch the Doc and (b) if somehow she isn’t night-killed over the next couple nights, time to revisit (a).

(I argued with Diver that we shouldn’t automatically lynch her the next day because if she WAS the doc, I didn’t want to give the scum an automatic policy lynch. The way things played out, if she’d claimed self-protection the next day (and USC hadn’t counterclaimed) I would have been perfectly ready to lynch her, but then I’d say that wouldn’t I?)

1082

I actually think Story is quite unlikely to be scum simply because he’d know that I will flip Town, and wouldn’t have gone quite so all-in on getting me lynched. As I noted earlier, yes this is a “scum wouldn’t do that” argument, and Story is good enough to get away with something like this, but I don’t really see it. (If I were scum, it could potentially be an awesome bussing. But I’m not scum.)

I did make a terrible vote-switch on Freudian -> Diggit, and it’s reasonable that a Townie would pick up on that and go after me, sadly. Not sure what to do about it, though honestly the way my brain is (not) working these days I won’t be much of a loss for Town if I am lynched.

1083

This is a huge smudge. Scum will definitely leave story alive since he is “so good” that he needs to be killed off early. For proof see the Space Hijack game that recently ended on idle’s board. I believe it was peeker who was scum in that game, who made a similar argument against story. Although he was a little bit more blunt.

This sort of argument comes off as just being innocuous commentary, but I don’t trust it or the motivations that might be behind it. Why would scum bother to kill story off when paranoid town players will do it with a little gentle prodding.

This argument, combined with a distinct lack of scum hunting today, directed suspicion or vote yesterday, is why I’m switching my vote to you.

unvote Meeko
vote Drain Bead

1084

Vote Count with about 1 days, 20 hours, and 51 minutes to go

(peak vote in parentheses)

It takes 8 votes to start a 12-18 hour countdown.
2 Votes
*Tom Scud (2 #1054) storyteller0910 (1025), Mental Guy (1054)

1 Vote
storyteller0910 (3 #1031) GuiriEnEspaña (1024 1043), Tom Scud(1028 1039), Meeko (1031)
Meeko (2 #1036) ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies (1022), Red Skeezix (1036 1083)
Nanook of the North Shore (1 #1029) Alka Seltzer (1029)
MHaye (1 #1046) peekercpa (1046)
Drain Bead (1 #1083) Red Skeezix (1083)

0 Votes
peekercpa
Alka Seltzer
Red Skeezix
GuiriEnEspaña
Mental Guy
ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies

*Lynch Leader
Not voting: Nanook of the North Shore, Drain Bead, MHaye, Tom Scud, GuiriEnEspaña

1085

Can we all just take a break for a moment and recognize the incontrovertible fact that someone needs to add the phrase “pulling a Freudian” to the Mafia Wiki?

Anyway…

The above is exactly my point, and exactly why we shouldn’t be giving people a pass on bad votes for Freudian just because the outcome was beneficial. Many of the votes were presented with minimal or specious reasoning, and I strongly suspect (in light of Freudian’s revealed alignment) that at least one and possibly more of these underdeveloped votes reflects Scum that didn’t put much thought into the case because they already knew they were right.

That is not a “solid reason.” That was me, spitballing. It falls so far short of what I’d consider a reasonable burden of evidence for a Day Three votes it’s not even in shouting distance.

Well, you cut out the context, but including the context I’m not sure what there is to explain. Guiri asked me why I was assuming that the Scum blocked peeker Night One even though peeker hadn’t outright stated it yet, and I said that I was assuming it because it would have been stupid for them to do otherwise, and it’s a bad idea to think the Scum are going to turn out to be stupid.

1086

The annoying thing about Nanook is that he’s been active on this board on multiple occasions (including yesterday and today) but hasn’t bothered posting here. Even a quick “Sorry guys, no time to play and too late to get subbed out, I’m VT” would be useful to us. It’s funny that his last post included this:

Now, I’m not sure that a mass claim is a good idea if the sole intention is to possibly determine whether Nanook has a role or not. Scum will benefit from the claim by identifying the 2 remaining Town power roles but what other pro-town aspects am I missing? Possible false claims or counter-claims?

And I’m sorry to be picking at single posts but MHaye I really don’t understand your response to Cookies’s question: To those of you who are not willing to lynch him now, can you justify (or re-justify) why?

Are you confirming that Nanook is the third scum but we should focus our efforts on identifying the other 2 scum (who are actively participating in the thread) first? Or is this intended as a conditional - even if Nanook were scum, there are 2 others to be caught first?

1087

The latter.

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that Nanook is scum, he’s not doing us harm right now. The active scum are. Also, the active scum are making posts that might give us a chance to track them down. And if Nanook is not scum, then we’ll be giving the scum a tempo by killing one of our own.

I don’t know if Nanook is scum or not - I’ve already claimed my role back at the end of Day 3 when it looked likely I’d be lynched. (To save people searching, I’m Vanilla Town, and have no special knowledge.)

1088

i’d respectfully disagree. to the extent that an active nook might be sowing further confusion sure that helps. but the absolute lack of participation and voting gives no data either way. now i am not suggesting that we should ltl at this point (surprise surprise) but i do believe that his lack of participation is a net harm to the town effort regardless of alignment.

and this is not a smudge in any way because i’ve already made it clear via posts and now a vote. vt is exactly what the gf will claim because that’s what they show up if investigated.

1089

I’ve been busy, sorry. I’m reading but don’t really have as much time to post as I’d like. And speaking of smudges, yesterDay I voted for Freudian, just as I’ve been doing for almost the whole game. It’s only the Day that she made the late claim and I unvoted her and didn’t revote anyone else that I ended the Day with no vote.

As for story, another thing I neglected to mention in my drive-by post is that, unless I’ve missed something, he said that Tom’s response is not what he’d have expected from Scum, but yet he’s still voting for him. I’m somewhat curious about that, actually. Can you expand on why you’re still voting for him after that exchange?

I’m still trying to make a decision on who to vote for, but I’ll do it in the next 24 hours.

1090

:smack: Sorry my bad. Still don’t like your smudging post. Vote stays.

1091

Nitpick:
Not that I disagree that a gf will likely claim vt, but according to the rules, the investigator won’t get role info other than align on a gf.

1092

So I started thinking I needed to skim through the thread again, because I wanted to evaluate votes from Day One especially. I thought maybe examining those who were on Freudian early in Day One might be less likely to be Scum, because the Scum didn’t know what roles the other Scum had, and they could be bussing the Blocker or Alpha. Here’s the vote count directly prior to peeker’s counterclaim, when Freudian was in the lead:

We already know the alignment of two of these. I know I’m Town. I’d imagine Red Skeezix is too, especially since his vote on Day Two put Freudian in the (admittedly early) lead again. Right after that, story put a 2nd vote on the absent Rin Twisted, adding onto Tom’s. At that point it was a tied vote, with Freudian owning the tiebreaker. I put the third vote on Freudian. Tom unvotes Rin and votes Freudian, giving her 4 votes–the next nearest vote getter has 1, thanks to his unvote. Of course, later on he sort of defends Freudian. Guiri, USCDiver and MentalGuy pile on. At this point, Freudian is leading 7-2.

The first vote away from Freudian is Red Skeezix, who I earlier said I believe to be Town. He votes for Diggit, in a pretty long post. Diggit did not have any votes at that point. Freudian is still leading 6-1. Tom Scud adds a FOS, but is unwilling to unvote Freudian at that point. Meeko subs in for Rin. peeker adds the 2nd vote on diggit. mHaye votes for the first time, on Diggit, who now has 3 to Freudian’s 6. This is where I expect Scum who are voting for Freudian to start jumping off. The next Diggit vote is Tom’s one away from Freudian, making it 5-4. Freudian places her self-preservation vote, making it a tie. Cookies breaks the tie in Diggit’s favor. Mental Guy unvotes Freudian for Diggit as well. Diggit claims. Alka Seltzer adds a vote for Diggit. Day ends with Diggit’s death.

Day Three. I vote Freudian again. Tom gets a couple of votes, then MentalGuy votes Freudian. Cookies votes Freudian, giving her the lead again. Then she unvotes, and doesn’t revote anyone at the time. Alka votes Freudian. Red Skeezix and Freudian vote MHaye, the latter over a “slip.” Mahaloth jumps on, so does Meeko. Tom votes Freudian again. So does USCDiver. MHaye still has the lead, but they’re tied at 5 votes. Guiri breaks the tie by voting Freudian (a point in Town favor, there). At this point, Freudian makes her fake claim. Tom is the first to unvote. Unlike story, I consider this a null tell, even though it restored MHaye to the lead–the unvote is the good play for both Town and Scum, I think. Guiri is the next unvote. Everyone starts swinging to Mahaloth at that point, and the Day ends with his death.

Okay. So that’s where I’ve stopped. So, what do I learn from this? I learn that my top 3 suspects (Tom, Story, and Meeko) didn’t come out smelling like roses from the unvote shifts (well, story by being one of the few players to attack the various votes for Freudian). Red and Guiri look like Town. Cookies looks somewhat scummy as well, along with MentalGuy. In the end, though, I think I’ll…

vote Tom Scud

…because in almost all of the instances of voting for Freudian, he tacked on votes when it seemed that she was leading, and then removed them when the tide was shifting. I can’t really count the unvote after the claim, but it seems like Tom’s only votes for Freudian were “safe” votes, and the unvotes were critical. And that beats out story’s insistence on not voting Freudian, and Meeko’s piling on to convenient non-Freudian bandwagons.

1093

that was a wee nitpicky skeezy but yeh.

also, it appears that we are heading towards a close finish. someone will get lynched by a neck. so it could swing either way by some of our non voters at this point.

i’d like to use this as further condemnation of mhaye but to be totally fair it’s how he always plays so nada there.

alka ltl one offer on nook looks odd but shoot it’s something i would contemplate.

one thing that was weird about last Night’s kill is that it feels funky. i mean usc was obviously going to be protecting me or himself. and i thought i was making it clear that i would be gunning for skeez or mhaye. why wouldn’t scum have blocked usc and killed me if they had a concern that i was going to target a scummer? wifom i know but still it makes me ponder.

1094

and cross posts rock.

i was thinking a little bit differently but yeh, what you said kind of db.
unvote

** vote tom**

i can’t see tom and story being on the same team unless they are both scum.

1095

Funny, because I said earlier that I don’t think they’re both Scum.

1096

I’m willing to switch from Meeko to Tom, but I do think Meeko needs a good long look.

Unvote Meeko
Vote Tom**

I know we don’t have any other data to really leverage against, but my “scummy” behavior with respect to Freudian is only circumstantial and misleading in hindsight (not that my behavior is purposefully misleading, but the conclusions that might be made from it), and while at this point I’m leaning towards story being town and in a similar situation as me, I also know that a good scum player can plead his/her case better than I have pleaded mine.

A mass claim should be coming soon, and/or the dick whipping it out, both of which should pump some much-needed information into this game.

1097

Oh well. I’m going to die.

vote MentalGuy

1098

Unvote Nanook

On Nanook, it seems that if he is scum he probably won’t have been performaing any night actions. We know that Peeker was blocked night 4, so Nanook probably isn’t the scum blocker (it’s unlikely the town blocker would block Peeker). I’m assuming Nanook wouldn’t stay active on the scum boards while not posting anything here.

If he is a town power role we have to assume he hasn’t been submitting any actions.

If we lynch scum toDay, we can hold off a bit longer on dealing with the Nanook problem. If we mis-lynch, I think we should mass claim toMorrow. A major advantage of this setup is that the 4 town roles are self confirming in the absence of a counter-claim. Nanook’s inactivity screws that up. We can’t wait until lylo for a mass claim, as if Nanook is a town power role that opens the door for a scum fake claim. If Nanook is the cop he won’t be able to lead a claim. If he is town the only way to avoid a Nanook mis-lynch is if we claim and find a town power role is missing, and we are running short on mis-lynches.

I don’t really like this argument, but I tend to think that if Tom was scum he could have avoided being so exposed by the Freudian flip without that much effort.

If MHaye turns out to be a scum power role the late switch of votes to Mahaloth is very suspicious. If he is town, the late votes (after MHaye’s claim) might have been fishing for another claim.

@Story - You’ve said a lot about the terrible votes for Freudian, but what do you think about the votes for Mahaloth?

Vote Guiri

I’ve already flagged up a possible slip on Guiri’s part where he seemed to know my alignment, but it’s his reaction to Freudian’s claim that I find the most suspicious. #878 in particular is really odd.

It seems to me that Guiri wants it both ways here. He wants cred for doubting the claim, but he doesn’t want to vote Freudian because that would defeat the purpose of it for scum, to out the real doctor. Somehow Freudian’s lie about never previously playing a power role becomes “you mischaracterized your experience” when Guiri challenges her on this. If Guiri doesn’t want the real doc to claim as he says here, the only way to prevent it is to follow up his convictions with a vote.

It’s also odd that Guiri is looking for doctor breadcrumbs when Freudian had already said she hadn’t dropped any.

Looking at the rest of Guiri’s play, his attack on Story stands out as being unusually aggressive. If Story is town, a scum Guiri might have thought it was a good opportunity to attack him.

Sorry about the late vote.

1099

Why? There was a point in time where I would have assumed that he would not be active on these boards without at least putting a post in the game, but that assumption has already been proven false.

Again, why? There is still a chance, albeit slim and growing slimmer with each passing moment, that he is a town role with intel and any minute now he’ll actually show up and share it.

“Scum would never do that”, and a not very compelling version, imho.

1100

Alka, what do you think of the fact that Guiri placed the vote that caused Freudian to have to fake-claim? Do you think it was a scum setup, and if so, for what reason? At the time, it looked like Freudian might live to see another Day without having to expose herself, were it not for that one vote.