Scum mafia: On Cecil pond [Game Over]

Ok, my thoughts on sachertorte’s theory. So, what evidence do we really have in favour of it?

  1. TexCat asked story to Vig her. As getting oneself killed rarely helps one’s team, we must presume that she did not expect to die.

  2. DiggitCamara’s role specifically stated that he could survive the scum’s kill via outcompetition. From this we can conclude that he likely could not survive story’s lynch power.

  3. Our analysis of the set-up via JSexton’s point system seems to indicate that there’s a slight advantage for Town.
    Number 1, I think points to either TexCat either being a townie who really didn’t think that story had a killing power, or TexCat being scum who knew that there was some scum power role that could protect her.

While the symmetry between Diggit’s role and the role the sach has proposed is appealing, I’m not sure that I’d call that evidence.

As for number 3, JSexton’s system isn’t the end-all. be-all of game balance. And even if it were, that still wouldn’t guarantee that Chronos used it. If he did, perhaps he gave different point values to different roles than story did. Maybe he took a point off of the masons collectively to account for their inability to communicate. Maybe he scored story’s role lower because he was so handicapped. Red hadn’t claimed survivor when story did the analysis, so that’s another point off of the Town(given the rules wrt third parties, I’d count Red as 0 points to Town at best). Maybe he gave the scum points for the spawn. There’s too much uncertainty here to say that the game as we currently understand it must be balanced in favour of Town.

So, Would scum feel a need to respond to my comment or not?

Or, would they play Diggit’s power as a lie?

Screw it.

**Unvote all **

**Vote Spawn

Vote TexCat
**

Let me break down one or two arguments from Tex. Anything else would be more of the same.

**I must say that this seems like an unlikely power. **
---- Is this a passing statement, or are we setting up a needed smudge?

**I thought that a Scotsman was immune from only the first nightkill. **
---- That would be great, if he was a Scotsman. Which we know he isn’t. Or does this compliment the introductory smudge? Either way, if I get you guys thinking that Diggit is a Scotsman, I can sell the rest of my argument.

Lincoln reminds me that calling a horse’s tail a leg, doesn’t make it a leg. But, it would be easier to lynch a leg, instead of a tail.
**
Diggit’s role seems to be that he is immune from all night kills. **
----- And now that I have you guys thinking it is a leg, let me point out that it is a scummy leg. Just like the scummy leg that Kelly was*. [[Bonus points for me, as I get to post this to the scum board.]] *This was by implication, recalling a set-up earlier in 1803

**
It just seems way too unbalanced to be true. **
– Or perhaps, you realized it is true, and want to go out playing your last ditch effort here, getting him lynched because you know you won’t be able to night kill him. At this point you wrapped up the present “Diggit is scum” and are tying on the bow.


I find him overly fishy, and forcing bad facts into the game. The entire “Scotsman” line seems like a set up. Everyone else it would seem was cautious. One way or another. But, if you know the math on Pond V Scum, you are sitting in a better place to argue balance. I bet my points probably helped scum more than Pond who make it a point to skim me.

Tex’s angle on Diggit seems way out of place.
More in a second, I think I just had a paradigm shift.

I think my brain is going to melt. Peeker once commented that brain would go POP.

Special Ed used the term “Paranoia”.

I JUST NOW got what he meant, some 5 or so games ago.


I suck at Mafia. I know this. You guys know this. I would like to ask Drain the following, but I can’t.

There is a concept I fail at. I can not separate the fact that just because I know something, it means you don’t. Drain talked about Masons waaay more than I would have, in the beginning.

In Colorless, I did not feel comfortable talking about what scum would or would not do. Drain would. She did it pitch perfect in Colorless. I obviously slipped on something, and Drain totally went left right and center nailing me as Scum [We were both scum in the game.] She went so far in rope-a-doping me ((Sorry, can’t think of a better term here.)) that I thought there was no space for scum to do that. It never would have occurred to me, to play that situation as being THAT TOWN. For me, it would require an entirely new brain, or short term memory loss. My head would asplode if I had to hold those two realities consistent with each other, at the same time.

Drain tried for the same tactic here, and slipped on the PIS in regards to her being a mason. It somehow didn’t work this time, and frankly has me thinking less of Drain and her overall Mafia play. (Perhaps the Rope-a-dope style should not be as praised as I think it should be. Perhaps my objections to it are actually more valid and I should listen to them even more.)

I believe this gets, on some small level to what Ed meant as “Paranoia”.

I hope you guys understand me here. I hope some of you guys will try to explain it me so I can understand Ed here.

That being said.

I think Tex was trying to pull a similar tactic here. A Similar Rope-a-dope on the Diggit lynch, and his Diggit as Lying Scotsman arguement.

Someone who has been here before, someone who knows what PIS, WIFOM, and Paranoia means more than I do…

Do you think Tex was Rope a Doping here? Is he being totally NON-paranoid ?


And what does it mean for me?

And if I can’t walk down this path, if I can’t even take a step on the path, would that clue you guys into my play style, and why I Felt I had to claim? Does it clue you in to my play on ALL of my games? Do I stand a chance in playing any Mafia game to my fullest potentinal?

Further, It dawned on me, that I am like a noob in Poker. literally playing the cards as dealt, and not playing the other players, or to their stacks. Poker is Skill, before luck. I would bet Mafia is closer to poker in this respect than not.

Not sure how far that analogy can go, when the cards are replaced by Town or Non Town, and that I am confirmed town, but, I think you guys understand what I mean here. — Hopefully.
And before you guys ask, I couldn’t get sleep last night. Need to look at caffeine after 8. Or rather, not having caffeine after 8.

I’m going to try to wrap up my review of sach now.

Day 5:

sach starts us off with a wily tactical suggestion, occasioned by the two-hour delay in Dawn (or Spring, I suppose). Call it what you will, sach suggests that the Detective has a loophole here - able to claim even if technically already dead. Naturally this doesn’t come to anything, as we apparently don’t have a Detective. But it’s enough, coupled with Day 4’s mason-spotting guide, to get sach a vote from Drain.

Sach defends himselfvigorously against this, and says he was actually trying to get NK’d (presumably to protect the hidden mason). He goes back and fortha little with Drain on this, admitting that he maybe didn’t play his part perfectly, but arguing that the masons’ over the top reaction kind of gave the game away. This is essentially a strategic disagreement about the merits of pointing out slips in public.

Next up, sach votes for Natlaw. His case is that, having voted for Kelly on Day 2, Natlaw voted Maha on Day 3, essentially saving Kelly. Natlaw doesn’t immediately respond to that, but picks up sach for demanding a Detective counter-claim to Kelly, and especially for assuming that Kelly was claiming a Detective role. sach arguesthis point, stating that he couldn’t/can’t see how Kelly’s role would be anything other than Detective, and that Watcher in particular doesn’t fit. This discussion gets picked up later on.

The case against Natlaw is a reasonable one, as far as it goes (in that it’s based on a easily-seen pattern of votes); it does however slightly contradict sach’s earlier post clearing Natlaw of being a clean noser. However, there’s more information now, so changing one’s mind is perfectly legit. (Indeed, how else could we play Mafia?). This is a null tell.

Next we have a long post that is essentially a defence of Alka-Seltzer. Skeezix has argued that Freudian was in a potential mason pool with Alka and Oredigger and that there is therefore a good chance that one of those two is scum. (I think the logic there is fallacious, but of course Skeezix was right). sach disagrees, saying that if they were all town, there’d still be no reason for scum not to fish in that pool. But he goes on to say that, assuming one of them were scum, he wouldn’t pick Alka. His reasoning is that Alka is highly involved in the game, and is being picked up for ‘scummy’ behaviour that is only what town should be doing. Nor does sach think that Alka’s suspicious Kelly saving vote is all that suspicious, because it only created a tie, rather than save him outright.

Now the main thing to note here is that yet again, sach is in the position of defending a scum. This is troubling - so much of the way sach is playing strikes me as town-motivated, but this pattern raises an eyebrow to say the least. It could be a rotten bit of luck - as noted, sach has a habit of attacking other people’s cases, so some of the time he’s going to attack the wrong ones - but it could be a straight up attempt to keep Alka off the block. Note that much of this post is an impassioned plea for people to get involved in discussion, which certainly fits with sach’s own style.

Next sach unvotes Natlaw to vote Oredigger. His caseis that he thinks Oredigger’s case against Alka is “heads I win, tails you lose”. Again, voting someone who’s voting Alka could be an attempt at defense. However, notethat sach quickly unvotes Oredigger having come to the decision that his case is probably that of a biased townie - but explicitly states that he doesn’t like the Alka case and would rather lynch Digger than Alka (but would rather kill neither).

At this point Red Skeezix claims, and sach is first to point out that story should kill him.
The last thing sach does is vote for Diggit, on the grounds of low participation. He might have joined me voting for Diver, but I’d recently unvoted so he goes on to the next low-volume player.

Day 6:
sach picks up where he left off, challenging Diggit over his caseagainst Rysto (specifically his “other scum had already voted Maha” line). He announcesthat he’s going to vote Diggit or Rysto, after summing up their cases.

Then sach and I get into a discussionabout my posting levels, and whether or not scum can be identified by their actions. This segues somewhat into sach’s next post, which is a continutation of his argument with Diggit - sach defends his continuing discussion/engagement/interrogation on the grounds that it’s by seeing Diggit’s response that he’ll decide if he’s town or not.

We then get a stream of consciousness set of three posts, in which sach starts by saying Diggit should do what he can to prove alignment but ends by wondering if Diggit should avoid claiming after all. I chip in on this, mentioning that I too have a guess about Diggit’s power, which nudges sach into voting Rysto, for what he admits are not very good reasons.

sach makes more posts discussing Diggit’s claim, in response to meand to Diggit. He finishes wondering if we’re really going to lynch Diggit, and why Diggit hasn’t made a self-defence vote.

This is another Day when sach comes across as more townie than not. His attack on the bad case was on the money this time and again he’s engaging as much as possible with other players.

My heavens, that took me a while. Overall, I’m leaning town on sach. There are a few incidents involving possible defence of scum that have me a little suspicious, and I found the whole interaction with story to be frustating, but my general impression is of someone who’s trying hard to find scum.

vote: Natlaw

This is mostly a repeat of my first vote last summer. I don’t like Nat’s voting record: Scuba_Ben, Meeko, Mahaloth, Kelly, Oredigger, Diggit. In what I think are the critical summers 3 and 5, Natlaw voted Mahaloth, saving Kelly in a close vote, and he voted Oredigger in a not as close race with Alka. His vote on Diggit last summer didn’t do anything to improve his record.

And later:

While last Summer it was:

He seems to completely changed stance on the double player lynch. Also if there are likely three scum a single Spawn wouldn’t affect their kill vote unless two actual scum were lynched.

USCDiver, do you still have a strong suspicion on Rysto?

Yes, my vote record is bad :(. But I would like some better argument how it is worse than amrussell’s or your own (at the Mahaloth lynch you stayed clear and you voted Diggit as well).
Compared to Yesterday I’m leaving out sachertorte (for not voting Diggit - but he voted when Diggit had a three vote lead on Rysto). I could add Rysto since you voted him for supposed bussing of Kelly

Colored end votes:
Oredigger77: Red Skeezix, fluiddruid, Mahaloth, Alka Seltzer, Alka Seltzer, sachertorte
**USCDiver **: peeker, (no vote), Meeko, KellyCriterion, Alka Seltzer, DiggitCamara + Rysto
Natlaw: Red Skeezix, Meeko, Mahaloth, KellyCriterion, Oredigger, DiggitCamara
amrussell: USCDiver, Mahaloth, Mahaloth, KellyCriterion, Alka Seltzer, DiggitCamara
sachertorte: Freudian Slit, storyteller, Mahaloth, KellyCriterion, DiggitCamara, Rysto
TexCat: peeker, Mahaloth, Storyteller, KellyCriterion, Storyteller, DiggitCamara
Rysto: special ed, fluiddruid, KellyCriterion, KellyCriterion, DiggitCamara, DiggitCamara

Meeko: Red Skeezix, Red Skeezix, KellyCriterion, sachertorte, Alka Seltzer + Oredigger, sachertorte

I wouldn’t say I’ve changed stance, I just considered the possibility of lynching two scum and leaving the Spawn to futz with the night voting a good strategy for town. I don’t think the I had given that aspect of the Spawn mechanic much thought until we got down to the possibility of 3 Scum and I had a strong suspicion on 2 players.

I’m not sure about my current suspicions for Rysto. I still think it’s highly unlikely that no Scum voted for **Kelly **on Day 3, but I realize that case is weak and my enthusiasm may have been influenced by the fact that **Drain **was a proponent and I we knew we could take his ideas at face value.

I’ve been working night shift the past few days and am just waking up. I plan to take a closer look at **Rysto **either tonight or tomorrow.

With only the winners colored:

Oredigger77: Red Skeezix, fluiddruid, Mahaloth, Alka Seltzer, Alka Seltzer, sachertorte
USCDiver : peeker, (no vote), Meeko, KellyCriterion, Alka Seltzer, DiggitCamara + Rysto
Natlaw: Red Skeezix, Meeko, Mahaloth, KellyCriterion, Oredigger, DiggitCamara
amrussell: USCDiver, Mahaloth, Mahaloth, KellyCriterion, Alka Seltzer, DiggitCamara
sachertorte: Freudian Slit, storyteller, Mahaloth, KellyCriterion, DiggitCamara, Rysto
TexCat: peeker, Mahaloth, Storyteller, KellyCriterion, Storyteller, DiggitCamara
Rysto: special ed, fluiddruid, KellyCriterion, KellyCriterion, DiggitCamara, DiggitCamara
Meeko: Red Skeezix, Red Skeezix, KellyCriterion, sachertorte, Alka Seltzer + Oredigger, sachertorte

Natlaw, I contend that your record is worse on what I view as the two critical summers, 3 & 5. You and sacher are the only Mahaloth voters who did not vote Alka.

Not much change since the last count, but since it’s a new page,

Vote Count:
Spawn 7
TexCat 3
sachertorte 1
Natlaw 1

[del]1: special_ed[/del]
[del]2: ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies[/del]
[del]3: Drain Bead[/del]
4: Oredigger77 – Sachertorte (1913), Spawn (1913)
[del]5: storyteller0910 [/del]
6: Meeko – Spawn (1887), [del]amrussell[/del] (1921-1942), TexCat (1942)
[del]7: Mahaloth [/del]
[del]8: Freudian Slit[/del]
9: USCDiver – Spawn (1890)
[del]10: Alka Seltzer[/del]
[del]11: peekercpa[/del]
12: Natlaw – Spawn (1893)
[del]13: Zeriel[/del]
[del]14: DiggitCamara[/del]
15: amrussell
[del]16: KellyCriterion[/del]
[del]17: Red Skeezix[/del]
18: sachertorte – TexCat (1918), Spawn (1918)
[del]19: fluiddruid[/del]
20: TexCat – Spawn (1905), Natlaw (1946)
21: Rysto – TexCat (1911), Spawn (1911)

I never said that you waffled on story. I did say that you kept the attention firmly focused on him, but weren’t willing to back that up with a vote. I’m not particularly interested in getting into a semantic debate of whether that constitutes “smudging”.

That’s my bad. I missed that bit from Kelly.

Well, I did specify that all cases made by scum against town will be bad, specifically to exclude bussing. Bussing is relatively rare and almost inevitably, the majority of cases built by scum will be against town. But while both town and scum can put together reasonable, well-evidenced cases against town, when scum do so they know that case is specious whereas town really believe in it. Which is why challenging them is good, because their response may reveal how convinced they are by their own case.

Thinking this through, I realise that a scummy sach could have adopted a strategy of criticising as many cases as he could, to a) look townie and b) give himself cover for defending scum-buddies. But that’s very, very WIFOMy which is not where I want to be if we’re at LyLo.

It does seem to me that sachertorte has been a pot stirrer. He certainly went after storyteller with both barrels. And last summer, he started the stirring against Diggit, though he didn’t vote Diggit again.

Hi. I’m busy this week. I’ll try to check in at lunch tomorrow to see if I need to move my vote to make sure we aren’t in a split situation. Unfortunately, that’s the best I can do this week.

If you are a pondie, you need to move your vote, not because of a split situation, but because of a lose situation. :eek:

And again amrussell moved it late from 5-3 to 6-3. You voted (or commented on (on a quick check)) neither Kelly nor Alka on those critical Summers.

Looking at Summer Five, especially from my perspective, there didn’t seem to be a lynch to scum could push to save Alka (who had two mason votes), which tells me a bus was not unlikely there by USCDiver and/or amrussell. I think Oredigger less likely to have bussed since he had voted Alka the Summer before.

Although Meeko also voted for Oredigger so from your perspective my vote should look worse. Expect you push the ‘you didn’t vote Alka’-angle and not ‘you voted Oredigger to save Alka (like you did with Mahaloth and Kelly’.
You seem to me to be only glancing at the vote chart and not really trying to make the case.

Looking at Summer Six the Diggit voters are: USCDiver, NatLaw, amrussell, TexCat, Rysto. I gonna cross out myself and Rysto - he could have bussed Kelly but it’s not as likely I think.

I think a TexCat lynch might be the OK one (her Storyteller chase feels like avoiding making cases on others, plus the Diggit vote). The runner ups for me would be amrussell (Maha/Diggit vote), sachertorte (Maha vote) and USCDiver (dual vote last summer, although Alka vote is a plus).

Vote TexCat
I’m not entirely happy that it seems to lock in a TexCat lynch, but a spread out vote at lynch or lose won’t help either. I’ll review tomorrow.

My point was that both town and scum can make bad or good cases and shooting down bad cases is relatively easy for both as well (relative to making cases). I’m not sure all town ‘believe’ their cases so much that they they are more likely to defend a bad case better.

Too WiFoMy? I thought your mantra was ‘look at the scum motivation’ - the scum motivation to attack bad cases would be that it’s easier to react to a bad case than to make one. So that means there is motivation for both making it more a null tell while you conclude it makes sachertorte lean town. It would be cover to appear town/not lurking and that it allows to criticize cases against scum is more just a side effect of that.

The point of it being to WiFoMy is that we’re probably at LyLo and I don’t want to base a critical vote on “well he could be scum or he could be town”. I’m still trying to find something more concrete to hang a vote on. That might be a foolish hope, but I’m not ready to gamble just yet.

That aside, I don’t disagree that there’s scum motivation for this pattern of attacking cases. What makes me lean town on sach is a) his pursuit of storyteller which was so… intense that I can’t see scum doing it (esp. as it seems that Alka was taking the scum role of poking story) and b) the consistency of his play. It’s easy to say that a good scum technique would be to constantly attack cases, but I think it would be very difficult to pull off for 6 Days on the trot. The temptation to soft-peddle attacks on town v town or scum v town cases, and pull out all the stops on town v scum cases would be huge (I mean, why not let a reasonable town v town case stand?). But reading through sach’s posts, I didn’t detect that kind of gear change. Which I either means that he’s scum playing a great game (and yes, I do worry that I’m gulling myself) or that he is what he says he is.

The scum, of course, know for a fact whether we are at lyse/lose. If we are at lyse/lose, then we have 5 pondies and 3 scum, and the scum do not need to worry about their reputation, they can afford to bunch their votes on a single pondie.

The votes on me: Rysto(1911), sachertorte(1914), Meeko(1942), Natlaw(1957)

I suspect that 2, if not 3, of those votes are from scum. At this point in the game, it’s easy for scum to agree on a lyse candidate, much harder for pondies. Do you really think that 3 pondies have agreed with Meeko to lyse me? Where are the scum votes?