The main difference between Story’s and my suggested LyLo strategies being that story suggests we all withold our votes (voting in orange ink or whatever) until we’ve picked a target, which makes sense to me; this will at least make the tie-breaker work for us: if a Town player has a crisis and can’t get to the thread, at least they won’t leave a singleton vote out there that scum could jump on.
Edge case: if (following a mislynch toDay) peeker kills the scum roleblocker toNight, and then whichever of peeker/Alka successfully uses their power the following night (following another mislynch), Town would live to see another Day. But it sure isn’t the way to bet.
No, I’m not trying to dictate play - I certainly don’t want to discourage people from bringing up their own thoughts or discussing the the main business, which is who is most likely to be scum. I find asking questions crucial for getting a read on people, and appreciate it when they take the time to answer. It works both ways, I make a point of responding quickly when other players ask me things.
If you want to discuss my playstyle, that’s something that should be done in the game post-mortem, not now. I’m reluctant to take advice from a player of unknown alignment.
It should be fairly obvious what I’m trying to achieve. If either Drain or Red are scum (and especially if both are) the remaining scum are in a bit of a bind. I strongly disagree that that the different scenarios are equally likely, otherwise I wouldn’t be pushing people for their thoughts. I didn’t ask “what happened?”, which is unanswerable, but “what do you think is the most likely reason for…”. I’m withholding my thoughts on this right now because I don’t want to give the scum an easy out of agreeing with me.
Alka, you said I still have questions unanswered.?
It’s not about your playstyle in general, about which I have no opinion. It’s about the way your playstyle is actually functioning in this game, right now, which gives the discussion an immediacy that post-mortem discussion won’t resolve. But never mind that, I think you’re traveling down a pointless road. To wit:
Why? Well, I guess the answer lies in what follows, so let’s just get to that.
But… but… why wouldn’t they be equally likely? What information do we have to suggest that either is more likely? The percentage chance that you hit the Scum blocker last Night was, well… you knew it wasn’t Drain or MHaye or peeker or yourself or Tom or Guiri. So shooting blind you had about a 1 in 5 chance of hitting the role blocker - to account for the fact that you weren’t shooting blind but rather making an educated guess, I’ll give you a 25% chance of hitting the role-blocker, give or take.
What are the chances that the Scum decided not to block peeker? Well, that depends on a crapload of things - and principally, depends on who the Scum are and how they want to play the rest of the endgame; things (most of) us don’t know. We know they need to force two mislynches, that’s all, the rest of it is window dressing; there are many ways they could achieve that. Not blocking peeker, if it results in us killing a Town patsy, would definitely be worth it even if peeker killed Scum last Night. (Of course, in our figuring we also have to consider the possibility that skeezix is NOT the Scum Blocker, but IS a Scum Goon or Scum Godfather, which changes the analysis a bit).
How you can imagine that one of these is clearly more likely than the other… well, I hope you’re going to share soon, because the Day could end with us still waiting on an answer from, say, Meeko.
You told me what you thought of the night 3 actions, but didn’t say whether you thought I might have blocked the scum blocker on night 5.
Purely on the numbers I had a 1 in 5 chance of hitting the blocker and a 1 in 8 chance of hitting the scum killer, almost a 1 in 3 chance of getting a visible result.
You blocked Skeezix correct?
Your claim on role block came just today. Meaning that scum had no way of knowing that you were RB until then, right? By my math, that leaves Peeker and Guiri. I think that Peeker’s record, or lack thereof, speaks for itself. I would bet that Scum thought Guiri to be the better target.
Given Guiri claimed Cop, and that Peeker had been on MHaye’s case for what seems to me to be most of the game, I feel safe concluding that scum killed Guiri.
If there is a kill on Guiri, is a block then needed? Wouldn’t it be, heh, overkill?
WIFOM: Peeker’s play has been very vocal, and very bad for town. [Sorry peeks, just calling it as I see it.] Peeker offed MHaye, and given Peek’s voting record, I don’t think that surprises anyone. Scum probably counted on this.
Who else would scum Block, if they don’t need to block Guiri, and won’t block Peeker?
We’ve got a lot of scum still out there. Strictly on the odds, I don’t think Skeezix is the Scum Roleblocker.
Work has picked up for me this week, going from no jobs to two jobs. Sorry for my absence.
To Meeko: I characterized my first vote for you as somewhat OMGUS from back when you and Freudian had votes on me together, poorly justified. That suspicion grew once Freudian flipped as scum, underscoring what I saw as hopefully opportunistic play from the two of you trying to catalyze more votes my way. You don’t seem to like being labeled as a poorly justifying voter, and that is understandable, but that is how your non-compelling votes have been reading to me. There is also the matter of the player you subbed in for, and while I didn’t have much of a read on Rin while she was playing, there were a few of her posts that got her some attention in the early game and they haven’t started to smell any better in hindsight.
I don’t know why Ed is not answering the clarification question, but I would not assume that the scum knew the roles of the other scum until they’d had a chance to talk on the scum boards. I’ve played scum with that stipulation before and since it is not explicitly called out in the rules or any clarification, I think it needs to be kept as a possibility.
I don’t know what happened with the blocking last night but all of the possibilities I can think of have already been covered. Assigning probabilities or likelihoods is not my forte, unless a gut hunch comes upon me, which in this case it has not.
OK, thanks for the replies everyone. I’ll type up my thoughts and cast my vote this evening.
That’s interesting. I still think it’s more likely that the scum did know each other’s roles, as this is supposed to be a standard setup.
So, taking a closer look at Meeko:
(on preview, I see Cookies has weighed in again; sorry Meek don’t mean this to be a pile-on)
618: queries MHaye’s vote on Diggit, doesn’t see logic in going from strategy disagreement to a vote.
627: Votes Skeezix for his disagreement with peeker’s roleclaim
643: disagrees with Skeezix that his vote on Skeezix is similar to the MHaye-on-Diggit vote he criticized
712: Accuses Skeezix of baiting him, argues that he’s already responded to Skeezix’s requests for more information.
Thus far, it looks a lot like Meeko-the-somewhat-incomprehensible getting into a fight on the basis of his difficulties in making himself understood; I’m not seeing this behavior as scummy. I don’t know that I agree with his vote on Skeezix, but it was for a basically comprehensible reason.
736: strategy discussion with Skeezix.
759: More strategy talks with Skeezix.
790: Quotes fourteen posts from Cookies, in full, then accuses her of contributing more noise than signal, and votes her on that basis.
Right, this one is a crappy vote. The posts he highlighted included four NETAs, a couple fluff posts, and a response to a specific mod request for input. The other half had game-relevant content, and represented Cookies’ state of mind as she moved towards a vote on Freudian. For someone playing the game as it goes along, and not doing a story/MHaye-style “respond late and summarize” game, they were reasonably clear and to the point.
818: inquires about the MHaye/peeker dustup
856: votes MHaye for making a hypothetical statement about “As a Mafiate…”
Words cannot express how bad this vote is, even without considering that it came as a Me Too and put a (now known) Town player 2 votes ahead of a (now known) Scum player.
897: Notes that he won’t vote for Freudian as she has claimed Doc and not been counter-claimed. This is Meeko’s first comment on the Freudian situation.
972 - votes Freudian after USC counterclaim
1031: Votes Story for criticizing a lot of votes, trying to save Freudian
A bit me too-ish, but I (obviously) think it was a valid concern at the time.
1050, 1052: further conversation with Story about the vote.
1074: notes that Cookies “calls attention in general” without any specifics.
1143: votes Nanook to avoid lynching the investigated-town Tom Scud
1174: inquires of Cookies for her reasons for voting for him, accuses her of OMGUS reasoning. Votes Drain Bead on the basis of Alka’s Night 3 block report.
1176: Explains his reasoning. Sort of. Proves that, if one assumes that Drain is scum, one can arrive at the conclusion that Drain is Scum.
I actually don’t have a problem with someone voting Drain on the basis of Alka’s Night 3 block report, and the following post of “logic” is very Meeko-ish in character. I would not vote him solely on the basis of 1174 & 1176.
1188: Takes exception to my characterization of his votes as “weird”. Apparently does not see any other possible explanation for the Night 3 no-kill than the block of Drain.
Okay, Meeko. The other possible explanation for the no-kill on the night Drain was blocked is that the scum attempted to kill Peeker that night. I’ve explained that I think this is a lower-percentage move on their parts, but it isn’t inconceivable that they’d have given it a shot.
1228: Explains that he thinks scum killed Guiri, but probably didn’t block him; that scum deliberately left peeker free, in hopes that he would kill MHaye; that he doesn’t think Skeezix is scum “because there are a lot of scum and the odds are against it.”
Uh. Meeko’s logic is not my logic, is what I will say to that.
So, the question is, what do you do with a player like Meeko, whose posts as Town are often difficult to understand and can seem arbitrary? I count two flat awful votes (on Cookies, and on MHaye), one of which helped push a counter-bandwagon to Freudian. The others have some reason, but the explanations generally seem lacking. Any other player and I’d have no compunctions about hoisting them.
And so there it goes.
I’ll try and do longer looks at the other suspect players (that’s everyone except Alka, peeker, and myself - yall can do that if you like, though I’d advise against it until we catch the other two scum), but I’m comfortable with my vote where it is.
NETA: Advise against voting for me, anyway - if someone wants to look at my posts, that’s well and good.
Okay. I misread “vote with” as “vote for” which made absolutely no sense to me, for obvious reasons. 
I am LMAO at myself right now. You may feel free to do the same.
Almost forgot, I also think Peeker should keep his gun in his pants toNight.
Good summary on Meeko, I’ll add my thoughts.
On Meeko’s dust up with Red, I can see why he refused to get drawn into an argument. In a previous game, scum had a Meeko-baiting policy, which got them good results.
I got a slight town read off Rin, which I’ve talked about before.
I also tend to think that the amrussell scum kill on night 1 suggests that Meeko probably isn’t scum. The scum team would be aware that Rin made a bad case against amrussell, and a flip would leave her exposed. By itself, I wouldn’t read much into this, but with Freudian receiving a lot of heat that would be risky move to make.
Then again, no two snowflakes are the same.
If you are calling me just a flake, well that’s something else altogether.
Even so, I would like to think I am an overall plus to Mafia.
Overall, I have more confidence that I blocked scum on night 5 than on night 3.
Targeting Peeker night 3 probably wasn’t the percentage move, but I can think of a couple good reasons scum might take a punt on it. Two players didn’t buy Freudian’s claim and kept votes on her, myself and USCDiver. I expect the scum were thinking it was quite likely that one of us was the doc, and that there was a good chance we would be self-protecting. If they’d targetted one of us they’d have had to block and kill us to ensure it went through, they had a better chance of hitting a power role by targetting Peeker. The other thing they might consider is that a no-kill might give the town blocker a false positive. There would be some risk involved, as the town blocker might be targetting scum anyway (in the worst case, I might have targetted the Godfather), but with the numbers in the game it wouldn’t have been a big risk. Best case for them, they might have got the town blocker to claim with a false positive (I considered claiming Day 4).
The blocking of Peeker does not implicate anyone, but if Red Skeezix is the scum blocker, scum would have a stronger reason to take a punt on a Peeker kill. Peeker was threatening Red and MHaye at the time. Scum would have known Peeker would get a free chance at a kill after a doc or cop claim unless they killed him.
I do not see a good reason for the scum to block anyone other than Peeker last night. The scum team were in a strong position, with 3 players left, including a Godfather. Block and kill Guiri seems pointlessly cautious, as the odds of me stopping the kill were low. No block just to confuse me would be a waste, blocking into the pool would have the same effect with the added chance of stopping me of from interfering with the Guiri kill. In any case, attempting to game the town blocker last night would not have been a smart move. Assuming the remaining scum goon is doing the wetwork, I could only the detect the goon or blocker. By doing something funky, they were risking that I might get a false-positive on the Godfather, which would have given us 2 or 3 confirmed town (depending on whether Tom is the Godfather). Quite a big risk to take. Also, it would be risking that Peeker would hit scum (and again, possibly hitting the Godfather). After the Toejam kill, I certainly couldn’t predict what Peeker would do, and I don’t think scum could either. Finally, the MHaye viog didn’t really hurt us much, we have the same number of mis-lynches. Even numbers are an advantage to scum, town have a larger pool of players to pick each lynch from.
If Red is not the blocker it could mean Tom is the Godfather, that’s the only reason I can think of that they might try to game the town blocker at this stage (they wouldn’t have been concerned about me getting a false positive on Tom, as it would have made no sense for me to block him last night).
Does anyone disagree with my analysis?
Vote Red Skeezix
Get my colours right…
Vote Red Skeezix
I think this is a good plan. If we do this there is no need for Peeker to take a shot tonight if we mis-lynch.
well rl has intruded so i am just reading quickly to try and at least get something down. i have attempted to kill every Night.
what’s interesting and what i don’t get is that i was pretty durn clear that mhaye and skeez have fluctuated up and down my suspicion list all game. but shoot that was before i killed toe so i just can’t believe that they would take a chance and let me go shooting into the unconfirmed pool. especially since skeezy was part of that pool.
that’s why i am going to
]vote red skeezix