The more I think about AH’s case, the more it rubs me the wrong way. She’s pushing for perfect play at the expense of good (a doomed strategy that looks good at first), and voting for JSexton because he…what. Found PFK? Pushed a lynch passionately? I mean, unless Hal and JSexton are both scum, it makes no sense–I suppose it’s possible, but you would need much more supporting evidence. Meanwhile you are clamoring to let the vig solve our problems when we
a) Don’t know if we have a vig
b) Don’t know if the vig is alive
c) Don’t know if the vig is convinced like the town is
d) Know that giving an SK another day means one more death.
Furthermore, if BlaM wasn’t lynched right then, he would have sent his message, the heat would have died down, and there’s no assurance that he ever would have died.
Furthermore, this is the only evidence you have against JSexton–granted, he hasn’t participated too much otherwise, but still–you have managed to take a weak null tell and turn it into the only pillar for a vote-worthy case. This seems almost like a textbook smudge. Your vote doesn’t have to work today. But in 3 days, when we have almost won and are puzzling about who to get next, someone looks back and says, “Hey, look, JSexton was kinda suspicious here”, and then we’ve mislynched, with your presence in the sham gone unaccounted for.
No, I don’t like it at all. A strong pro-scum and scummy action is much more of a case than lurking and being cautious, so:
I tried to find someone to vote for today, but haven’t so far. I’ll have to vote tomorrow.
In my Hawk/Cookies analysis brewha stood out a bit, but it’s pretty much negated by his vote/arguments against macey and I saw nothing else scummy.
Of the other people voted for, Hal Briston is the most suspicious to me. His case against MHaye is basically a one-liner and special eds argument his other vote was weak to (of course Cookies told me that too). But with the low post count / missing the start of the game, I think its not worthy of a vote now.
Nanooks post: you’re doing in the first paragraph what you accuse Hal of in the last. Then again the first is a bit of meta game, so if true: either check Story’s Dusk/Dawn posts (see sig) to know when Days end and play or seriously ask for a mod kill. Mixing real life comment with game ones is confusing. You say game not interesting (real life), but you specifically mention you got a boring role and lynching you isn’t the best option (game comment).
Day Five, unofficial vote count till P5.81: Hockey Monkey (0): (Almost Human), (amrussell) Cookies (0): (Hal Briston) Mhaye (1): Hal Briston, (pedescribe) Hal Briston (4): Cookies, amrussell, special ed, Hockey Monkey brewha (0): (Total Lost) Nanook (2): Millit the Frail, dotchan JSexton (1): Almost Human Almost Human (1): pedescribe
In brackets: unvoted or invalid vote.
Italic: rollover vote.
amrussell when updating my vote count, I didn’t find your unvote for Hal (you (un)voted HM later), so that would technically mean your vote is still on him. I might have missed it though.
The vote on Nanook was not related to my rant. It was a sharp pointy stick so Nanook would show up and start posting. (And I was so pissed I missed a This Is Sparta joke. See what you guys made me do? :P)
And so far Nanook’s response hasn’t been all that convincing me to take my vote from him.
I can see where someone would make that connection, but I think that it is an incorrect assumption to make.
A vanilla town claim is a simple binary. It’s either true or it isn’t. Interesting however, is not something you can really quantify. Nor is it automatically equivalent to a vanilla claim. I might find playing a doctor uninteresting, or a mason, or plenty of other roles that are just bog standard Mafia ones. So the two are not equivalent, though again I can see where someone would assume so on first blush.
Saying lynching me is not the best option is for two reasons. One is the obvious one, that I know my role and that it is Town. The other is that lynching me gets the town, what exactly? Either I’m town or I’m scum. If I’m town, then town mislynches because they killed a town and gained next to no information. If I’m scum, yay dead scum, but again, town gains little information. Dead scum are good yes, but dead scum with no information leads Town to play with no sense of urgency, which is an issue in the mid-game.
There’s an argument to be made that I should be lynched on principal for not putting much information out there. I can understand this argument, though I disagree with it due to the stage of the game that we’re at. Punishing bad play is all well and good(and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve played shitty this game), but not at the expense of victory.
Well here I am. The stick didn’t really make a difference, but hey. What exactly would it take to convice you to move it? There’s really no defense for my play so far. I’ve been trying to provide information Today however, to try and make up as best I can for my lack so far.
Then who would you vote for? Do it! At this point, we’re both in the pool of unknowns. There are a handful of scum in this pool. You couldn’t swing a dead cat around without grazing a scum in here.
The way I see it, our job is to provide as much info as possible, mainly by participating in voting/lynches, so the scum will eventually float to the top and we can skim them all off. If you’re not providing info, you’re either scum laying low or you’re muddying the water.
Going back over your older posts, I don’t see much of anything except one notable post where you argue that roleblockers are practically combination doctors/cops. It’s in reference to NAF. In that post, you’re basically assessing how powerful NAF is. Mildly scummy vibes. Other than that, I think I’ve read all your posts, and there’s not much to go on.
Your most recent few posts are much more telling. You claim a boring role and then try to backpedal by saying you could be bored as a Doc or a Mason. I think you were trying to cover up the fact that you were practically screaming vanilla there. The way I see it, boredom or ennui does not at all preclude your being a scum. It would be super easy for a scum to get bored, IMHO–because you don’t actually have to pay much attention to the game. And your sly insinuation that you’re vanilla supports my theory. Your very last post shows a little promise, so I’ll be checking back in.
Let’s face it, chicks and dudes; we have to take a crack at someone in the unknown pool. Unsubstantiated claims included. The large amount of info going around in this game has been our biggest asset, IMHO. So, this late in the game, I’m in favor of lynching those who aren’t giving us any.
I want us to vote for the person we believe most likely to be scum. Not based on one single actions - but of couse sometimes one or two actions will stand out and be the fundament of a case against anyone.
In the last game in here I had to take a lot of heat because I had a lot of single votes at the end of the Days. But it turned out some of them were in fact on scum while town mis-lynched. When the vote records came up - I looked like scum based on those votes.
I don’t like the way we sometime seem to think we only have 1-2 lynch candidates each Day and I don’t like the way a “me too”-vote seems more town (on vote records) then a solid case and a “I see scum”-vote (even if nobody else see your case or follow that vote - it might be in the right place).
I agree that Hal Briston should have just claimed town. Zeriel did claim vanilla as well, after which NAF made a clear post to tell others not to do it. That’s why it looked suspicious to me.
My point, however, was more about you mixing out-of-game comments with game comments. You didn’t react to that, so I’ll assume the entire post was just written as game play.
No, you’re not claiming vanilla like Hal, but you still marking yourself as unimportant and not worth to look at or to lynch.
Yes, lynching town by town gives us no information, I doubt scum will be making weak cases now that attract attention. But are you really saying in the second part that lynching scum now is bad, because town gains little information from it? So we should just lynch some town and look back later for scum tells? Well, since you claimed town and killing you isn’t game breaking, you make an excellent candidate, no?
I completely agree with Millit here, you are back pedaling. First lynching or even mod killing you isn’t game breaking, but now it is at the expense of victory?
I know that not game-breaking doesn’t mean it does help the town win-condition, but you would understand and suggest a mod kill even if you’re not vanilla?
You say you’re not the best choice and that there is really no defense for you play so far. So please make a case for a better lynch choice and vote. I’ll do the same, but in the meanwhile please hold my mine.
Having said that, I think if you’re still making excuses for lurking into the midgame, then you are not playing in a pro-town fashion.
That leaves MHaye and Nanook.
MHaye tends to play the same basic strategy when he’s town or when he’s scum, but I’ve got a gut feeling that in previous games when he was scum he would more often “miss the end of day” or whatever and never actually catch up to posting his famed analyses. Heck, he JUST did it–he asserted that he’d respond to some of the accusations against him yesterday. He has not done so. That in combo with the potential PI slip that Hal pointed out tips my balance to vote MHaye.
As far as I’m concerned, if I can move my vote to ice either MHaye or Nanook I’ll do so.
One line is all it takes – what he said could easily have been perfectly innocent, but how many times have we seen a “perfectly innocent” slip be made by someone not-so-innocent? For me, it’s a good a lead as any, and I’m happy to ride this one out.
We’ve got 13 unconfirmed players, 3 having claimed. Of the claimed, I lean towards trusting dotchan because I don’t see Blam’s motivation for lying. All the claimed vanilla are only testable through death, however. For the rest, assuming the claimed vanilla are kosher, then our ten unclaimed consist of 3-4 scum, one doc (qv Blam vs pedescibe), one “exorcist” (qv Cookies) and possibly one Vig, leaving 3-5 vanilla or as-yet-undetected power role. If we’ve got a scum lurking among our claimants, then there are 4-6 vanilla/unknown.
The vanilla count could be quite important. Cookies says that Hawkeye’s wretched soulless remnant counts against town. So we can expect Hal and dothcan to leave similar undead vestiges behind them (assuming they’re truthful). Hawkeyeop, Hal and dotchan make 3/5. If there are two more Alphas out there, it would mean there’s enough to generate an extra scum.
By my count, assuming that there are three scum remaining, that we don’t kill them, that we have only two kills per D/N, that we lose 3 Alphas, and that we don’t exorcise any undead, then we’re at LyLo (4 Town vs 4 Scum) at Day 10. If we assume there are four scum, then Day 9 brings 5 vs 5. But if we lose our two claimed Alphas plus another hypothetical two, then LyLo comes forward a Day.
Now, there are a couple of things arising from this. First off, I don’t think we need an Alpha claim at this point. It would just help scum hit power roles. But if you find that you’re the fifth Alpha, it may be worth letting the town know they risk triggering LyLo. Equally, we can win this even if our “exorcist” dies, but it’s definitely in our interest to keep them working away quietly. For this reason, I don’t think a mass-claim would be a pro-town move. I’d expect scum to claim vanilla, while our power roles either lie or expose themselves.
I’ll be honest here. My game plan is pretty much shot. I was so sure that NAF was not pro-town. The way he was going person to person and flat out asking them their role, I was sure he was most likely PFK. If not that, I thought he was a scum investigator - looking for power roles.
Since I’ve been proven so completely wrong, I’m stumped as to where to go from here.
I’ve been going back through the past days, just trying to pick up on anything, and this post (specifically where I’m involved) bugs me.
Natlaw is picking apart my votes on Cookies. Lemme splain. On day two, I had suspicions toward Cookies based on her defense of Macey. I dropped the vote because Naf wanted to investigate her. On day three, Hawkeye comes in and basically screams, “Vote for Cookies.” Now who do I trust? Hawkeye - dead and proven to be town. Or NAF alive and claiming to be a “Dog that knows things” - a claim that could not (at the time) be proven for several dAys?
Knowing what I know now, I should have trusted NAF. But, there was no way to know that at the time.
But there’s two lines that I really think need some explanation:
Not sure if that says anything? I’ve been in on voting for scum on every scum lynch, and you’re not sure if that says anything? I’m not one to pat myself on the back, but of all the mafia games I’ve played, this ranks #1 for me voting wise. To me, that line sounds like a smudge. Like you are saying that my voting record is suspicious.
Really, what kind of logic is that? This guy is voting to well! He’s done nothing but help kill scum! He’s up to something!
Is this enough to warrant a vote? Likely not. But, I would like some clarification as to what Natlaw meant by these statement.
Then why did you only start a couple hours before night? And why do you stop posting strategy once night comes?
There really shouldn’t be much time pressure in a game in which you can post strategy at any time. Posting at the very end of days doesn’t give the rest of town a chance to respond to and critique your posts. There were flaws in your analysis here as you have acknowledged, but because of when you posted no one had a chance to correct you before the day ended.
A good town player does two things. One is to find scum, which I believe you are pretty good at. The other thing, which is just as important, is to convince the rest of the town that you are pro-town. This is where your style doesn’t work for me. I have no idea if you are town or scum. I don’t think I’ve had a good read on you in any game we have played together. I don’t like lynching lurkers, because you are just as likely to be town as scum, but leaving unknowns until the end is a dangerous strategy.
Making mistakes is okay. Seeing what type of mistakes you make can be helpful in determining your alignment. I personally would rather you make more posts “rushed” than only post when you are sure of things.
I don’t think he needed to stay alive for long to win. Just a couple of days. He could have acted as a Vig and we could have picked his target.
No, but he could have said we can help each other out. Even if we didn’t quite fully believe him, the risk of him winning and town losing in the next couple of days was minimal.
Zeriel asserts that I’m more likely to skimp and not catch up when I’m scum than when I’m town, but doesn’t bring up any evidence for that. It’s just his gut feeling. Mine is that he’s wrong. Someone fancy reading three or four of my back history games and see if there is a pattern? Or whether it varies with other things, like the length of Day, and what I’m doing in RL.
Zeriel is correct in saying my reply to Pedescribe’s case was delayed. I left the computer last night before really getting far with the following due to a soreness in the eyes.
Pedescribe’s case against me is laid out in two posts : [post=10682065]D05.033[/post] and [post=10682086]D05.034[/post]. It’s basically full of things I do that he misinterprets or calls bad ideas, and a difference of opinion about Chucara.
What he calls my equivocation is me reviewing the evidence that I have considered and assessing whether it’s worth a vote. If I’m writing “I could go either way” on a piece of evidence, it means I don’t think it alone gives me the basis for a vote.
Then, when I isolate someone doing their best to confuse a Town power role (and succeeding – NAF chose to test a statement that gave us nothing) that’s somehow scummy. The only statement Chucara needed to make was “I am Town.” That’s all. Why did he make any of the others if he didn’t want to mislead NAF? At the time – that is, without the knowledge of Chucara’s alignment – it looks like an attempt to confuse NAF. Afterwards it just looks like poor play.
I think the problem I have is that my usual playstyle is exacerbated by the short Day/Night cycle; I can’t remember ever playing one with this short a cycle.
I’ll deal with Hal’s post while I’m here.
The thing is Hal, you’re remembering only the positives - those innocent slips that turn out to be made by Mafiates. What about those that are made by Townspeople? You don’t remember them because they didn’t lead to a Mafia lynch, so they’re failures, and you want to remember only successes.
For an example, read Day 4 of Skrull Planet. Or just read from D4.265 to the Day’s end. I’m sure Zeriel remembers the lynch mob that followed that slip of the tongue. And was he Mafia?
Agreed. But you don’t do that once. In every single post of yours except for one, you’ve either
-Apologized for not participating more/Promised to particpate more
-Equivocate on the subject of your thoughts
-Talk about something safe and not related to finding scum/accusing players
All of which are hallmarks of people trying to hide.
Because, as he himself said, he wanted to give NAF a variety of options in order to confirm various things. He trusted NAF to make a smart decision. You, perhaps, do not. Blaster Master attempted to keep NAF away. Chucara was very welcoming of his powers.
And Total Lost’s post notwithstanding, I’m not buying the Hal Briston case, so I’m going to move my vote back to the secondmost scummy in my book:
Yeah, about that. I submit that there’s a big difference between a “I’m forgetful about something that’s public knowledge” fumble (and I’ve defended people since then for it, thanks) and a “I say something that is true but not publicly known, which indicates I’m either a phenomenal guesser or in possession of Perfect Information.”
Also, as pointed out, I might have screwed up and kept my vote on Hal, so for now:
unvote Hal Briston.
As for a new vote:
OF the unclaimed pool, I tend to lean town on **special ed **(as detailed previously) and on Natlaw, who has consistently been posting solid analytical posts, questioning people and generating info.
I’m less clear on everyone else. **Nanook’s **play has been pretty anti-town so far, and his posts today aren’t brimming over with reasons to keep him alive. I haven’t liked **MHaye’s **play for a while - as generally recognised, there’s more apologies for not posting than there are decent posts. I’m not sure how much the “slip” on **Hal **means though. There are three possibilities:
**MHaye **genuinely and mistakenly thought that **Hal **had claimed Alpha, and hit the 50/50 chance of being right for the wrong reason.
**MHaye **is a scum investigator who revealed perfect knowledge of **Hal’s **status Hal, having (in this scenario) false-claimed vanilla while under pressure yesterDay, saw a chance to make **MHaye **look bad by taking his deception one step further.
While the last is the most outlandish scenario, I don’t see the first as being signficantly less likely than the second. I’ll still consider a vote for MHaye, but I want to give a new theory (yes, Cookies, *another *new theory!) an airing:
**Hawkeyeop **thought that his case against **Cookies **was supported by the fact that it was not gaining much traction. In other words, had she been town, scum would have chimed in alongside Hawkeyeop. As it turns out, lack of support for **Hawk **didn’t make **Cookies **scum. But **Natlaw’s **post 47today sheds some interesting new light on that.
Let’s remember the votes for **Cookies **on Days 2 and 3:
Cookies - hawkeyeop, (dotchan), (brewha), (Rapier42)
Cookies - (hawkeyeop), brewha
So in fact, **Hawk’s **case did get some backing. But why unvote on Day Two?As he points out, both **brewha **and **Rapier42 **moved their votes from **Cookies **to peeker. As discussed, there’s a big scum incentive to vote for the PFK/Vig; more so perhaps than to push Cookies. But what did they say? Here’s brewha:
Clearly, this comes after **Peeker’s **slip/confession. Later on, **brewha **follows up his giant WTF with a vote:
The key point here is that there isn’t an immediate switch of votes. **brewha **first unvotes **Cookies **while expressing suspicion of peeker, but only votes for peeker later on (after **Nanook **has made the first vote). I don’t like the unvote. When **brewha **voted Cookies, he put her joint leader with dotchan on 2 votes. When he unvoted, **dotchan **was on 4 and **Hawkeyeop **was on 3, and no-one else was following on Cookies. It smacks of someone abandoning an unpopular candidate. The hesitation in voting peeker also seems a bit odd. At first he was unsure if **peeker **was a Vig or SK - after **Nanook **voted, he jumped in. It looks like someone waiting for a bit of cover for a possible anti-town vote.
I was going to cover Rapier42, but on preview I’ve just seen this:
This is pure scum thinking. Not only is brewha acting like there are only two candidates, he’s also betraying a desire to align with town. Being dead hadn’t made Hawkeye right. This willingness to stop thinking and side with the known town player shows more concern with looking good than finding scum.