Minvitational 8 - OVER before 611

[Erg0]

who is BillyTwilight?

He's a friend of a friend.

have I ever played with Shanba before?

Unclear at this time.

Will Erg0 take me at face value if I promise to always be sincere in this game?

Are you promising to always be sincere? Or was that rhetorical question?

Also, in the finest of traditions:

Vote: Oman

[Erg0]

Haikus? Really?

[Erg0]

I believe I've played with everyone in this game before, though being in Clue 2 with BT only barely qualifies as "playing". I'm kind of disappointed that my nom for StallingChamp didn't make it past the judges.

Adel: I'll consider it. Let's see how we go.

[Erg0]

vollkan, if you watched more commercial TV then you'd know that "UnAustralian" is simply a synonym for "person/concept with which I irrationally disagree". Get with the modern usage, cobber.

[Erg0]

Erg0, are you still on your "never ever scum" streak?

That just ended after 13 straight Newbie games as town, I'm afraid. I've been scum in at least one mini and one large game during that time, though.

So how's the wacky wagon coming along, folks?

[Erg0]

Shush, you're breaking the fourth wall.

[Erg0]

Yeah, I owe this game a post. And here it is.

shaft.ed: why do you say that we were supposed to be wagonning Oman? Sure, he had a few votes - but at least two of them were based on nothing much at all, so I doubt he was panicking and looking to redirect the wagon to cicero (at least, not for that reason).

The only thing that came to mind when I saw the Grateful Dead was that Adel was breadcrumbing Jester. Seems pretty unlikely, though.

What this game really needs is for somebody to do something stupid. That usually gets things rolling.

[Erg0]

I'm not really getting that from reading it. Oman's response to your noting the bandwagon shift was serious, why did you answer with a joke?

[Erg0]

I don't mean that someone should intentionally do something stupid. It works better if it's not deliberate, but it's probably too much to expect random stupidity in this game.

[Erg0]

What this game really needs is for somebody to do something stupid. That usually gets things rolling.

Interesting. You apparently have a clear idea about what "needs" to be done, but you yourself aren't actually prepared to do it? Any reason why?

Was this a joke?

It was puffed-up inquisition-style.

I wasn't expecting that.

[Erg0]

It's because of a comment that I made somewhere that I never take anything she does at face value.

[Erg0]

Sorry all, I've fallen horribly behind. Catching up over the next day or so.

[Erg0]

Adel, you are not usually so narrowed minded.

This made me laugh. In my experience, it's not at all unusual for Adel to fixate on something that I would consider of questionable significance and use it as a bulletproof scumtell.

The only other game I can recall being in with ckd was House mafia where I rashly used a dayvig on another townie because I didn't stop to consider the larger set of possibilities.

Yeah, thanks again for that.

I probably need to do a player-by-player post at this point - I'm having trouble organising things in my head. From my first read of the posts I'm catching up on, ckd looks a little scummy (his defence to Adel was particularly troublesome), Adel and Sim look ok, and I'm not sure about cicero, vollkan, Fonz and shaft.ed yet. Jitsu seems slightly off from what I saw of him in vollkan's game, but that's a back-of-the-mind thing right now. Oman's "I'm not voting" post was definitely different for him, and I'm not sure if this is mitigated by the fact that he pointed this out himself.

Something more thorough will come, pending some note-taking on my part.

[Erg0]

I apologise, my playing time has been non-existent for the last week due to a job change and associated stresses. Things will clear up next week, so I should be good to continue. Will make a post/vote before deadline.

[Erg0]

Based on past suspicions and a fast read, ckd is my preferred lynch out of the available wagons at this point. I don't have much of anything on anybody else at this point, and I don't see claiming vanilla while intimating otherwise as a particularly pro-town move. Right now, I'm just going to get out of the way for a bit.

Unvote

I'll check back before deadline in case my vote is needed to avoid a no-lynch.

[Erg0]

Vote: curiouskarmadog

Not sure whether shaft.ed deliberately left him out of lynch range there.

[Erg0]

First off, I apologise for being crap yesterday - my planned last-week rush was killed by my life. I've just switched to a job that's less demanding on my time and energies, and that should give me plenty of room for mafia from here on out.

Picking up the crumbs of my prior suspicions, I think I'm most interested in shaft.ed and Jitsu at this point. I'll start there and work my way out.

[Erg0]

Especially considering that I'm pretty sure the CKD vote wasn't required to lynch him at that point.

[Erg0]

13. At deadline, if a player has a

majority

of the votes being cast (e.g. all votes not on Not Voting) that player will be lynched. Otherwise, no lynch will occur and night will commence.

"Majority" means "more than 50%"

Before Erg0 voted CKD: 5 votes on CKD. 11 votes cast.

NOT MAJORITY

After Erg0, but before shaft.ed: 6 votes on CKD. 12 votes cast.

NOT MAJORITY

After shaft.ed voted CKD: 7 votes on CKD. 12 votes cast.

MAJORITY

Basically, to attain a CKD lynch, shaft.ed could either have unvoted, or voted CKD. So, strictly speaking, his CKD vote was not

required

, but I think you see my point: he had to do something.

Oh, and just to be a bastard: IF shaft.ed's action had been unnecessary, what bearing, if any, would that have for shaft.ed's scumminess?

My answer: None. I think it is a null-tell. At that point in time, there was nothing that shaft.scum could hope to gain by voting CKD, other than to WIFOMishly put his fingers in the pie deliberately.

You're right about the voting, I was getting my wires crossed. What I find interesting is not so much the vote itself, but the fact that shaft.ed seemed like he engineered the situation at deadline with his token late vote on Fonz. I'm not sure what the Fonzvote was meant to achieve, other than possibly forcing me to make a vote.

[Erg0]

Not particularly, there was no real choice to make at that stage anyway. It was just strange that, after saying you'd prefer to see Adel lynched, you put your vote on somebody who was way out of lynch range and created a situation where I would inevitably vote for CKD, thus removing the possibility of your ideal scenario coming to fruition. After all, I'd said in my last substantial post that I thought Adel looked town and was suspicious of CKD.

[Erg0]

I prefered Adel over CKD. Again I prefered the Fonz over both of them. I also posted that I would be in before deadline, and to consider my vote on Adel if it were between the two. I really don't like how you are pinning your vote for CKD on my actions.

I'm not pinning my vote on you, I'm saying that you failed to act in a manner consistent with your stated preference. If you'd voted for Adel at that point then there may have been a chance of her being lynched instead of CKD, but you voted for The Fonz instead, thus effectively ensuring that CKD would be lynched. It's almost as though you didn't really care which of them was lynched.

[Erg0]

What are you going to do differently if Adel is at 3 instead of 2 with 2.5 hours left? cicero was the only player to post in thread between your vote and mine and he was already voting Adel.

The point is not what

I

might have done differently, it's what someone else might have done differently. You didn't know when you voted Fonz that nobody other than cicero and me would post from then until deadline. Which was more likely at that point - a last minute rush on Fonz or a last minute rush on Adel?

[Erg0]

Hmmm... I was kind of waiting on a response from shaft.ed that never came. He seems to have wandered off to attack Oman instead. I'm not particularly satisfied with his response to my previous questioning.

Vote: shaft.ed

[Erg0]

Kill WIFOM is an interesting beast, but my experience is that who

was

killed is far more telling than who

wasn't

killed. Although I've seen patterns over time in this area, it's really far too difficult to apply these reliably in any specific situation.

As such, kill speculation is one of my least favourite things.

[Erg0]

I don't really think that the preview/submit thing is relevant. What would be different if shaft.ed hadn't voted for ckd? Either we would have had a no lynch or someone else would have hammered him.

Or is it something specific about the hammer that bothers you?

[Erg0]

Actually, I think Shaft.ed asks a very good question, and I would like for Jitsu to answer it.

I'm not opposed to Jitsu answering the question. My question was directed at him as well.

[Erg0]

@Erg0: I agree with your point that Shaft.ed's vote on Fonz didn't help anything. If you thought Shaft.ed was engineering some plan try to force your vote on CKD, what do you think he was trying to accomplish with that?

Again, I don't think that he was specifically trying to force me to vote - I just think that his Fonz vote was completely ineffectual at that point. If I had to guess the reason, he may have been hoping to avoid being on a townie wagon at the end of the day - if two people had voted for CKD in the meantime then he wouldn't have had to do anything at the end of the day.

[Erg0]

Again, I don't think that he was specifically trying to force me to vote

- I just think that his Fonz vote was completely ineffectual at that point. If I had to guess the reason, he may have been hoping to avoid being on a townie wagon at the end of the day - if two people had voted for CKD in the meantime then he wouldn't have had to do anything at the end of the day.

[quote="shaft.ed]

I see Erg0 is back to his theory that I was trying to "make him" vote

, and that I was avoiding being on a townie lynch wagon. I don't see either of these points as valid.[/quote]

See if you can spot the difference.

shaft.ed: I'm interested in hearing more about the second point - what was the reason for your last minute Fonz vote? Did you realistically expect a Fonz wagon to form in the last 24 hours of the day?

[Erg0]

Ugh. Try again:

Again, I don't think that he was specifically trying to force me to vote

- I just think that his Fonz vote was completely ineffectual at that point. If I had to guess the reason, he may have been hoping to avoid being on a townie wagon at the end of the day - if two people had voted for CKD in the meantime then he wouldn't have had to do anything at the end of the day.

I see Erg0 is back to his theory that I was trying to "make him" vote

, and that I was avoiding being on a townie lynch wagon. I don't see either of these points as valid.

See if you can spot the difference.

shaft.ed: I'm interested in hearing more about the second point - what was the reason for your last minute Fonz vote? Did you realistically expect a Fonz wagon to form in the last 24 hours of the day?

[Erg0]

Top 3:
1. shaft.ed
2. Jitsu
3. everybody else (ok, not

everybody

else, but there are probably 3 people tied for third with semi-realised reasoning)

For once my top suspects seem to coincide with those of most other people. Fonz's view on Jitsu/shaft.ed corresponds with mine, and BT is looking good to me at this moment in time.

[Erg0]

cicero: it appears that activity level is a large factor in your suspicions. Why do you feel that the scum are lurking in this game?

Do you suspect BT, vollkan and me as a team, or is your suspicion of each of us independent of the others?

[Erg0]

That didn't really answer my question. Do you think that all of the scum are lurking, or are you restricting yourself to trying to figure out which of the lurkers is/are scum?

[Erg0]

Is there anything more to it than my disappearances? Looking back, that's all I can find.

[Erg0]

I can't speak to the "other people mentioning me" thing, but I was in and out site-wide for 2 or 3 weeks there due to work commitments and general fatigue. To quote a completed example, I nearly contributed to a no lynch at LyLo in Space Monkeys 2 because I completely missed the set deadline (Stoofer extended it). Look at my other ongoing games and you'll see the same pattern over that time period. I'm not making excuses, but that's not a valid reason to find me scummy.

[Erg0]

Top 3:
1. shaft.ed
2. Jitsu
3. everybody else (ok, not everybody else, but there are probably 3 people tied for third with semi-realised reasoning)

For once my top suspects seem to coincide with those of most other people. Fonz's view on Jitsu/shaft.ed corresponds with mine, and BT is looking good to me at this moment in time.

Very little independent analysis. You are just on board for the two lynches that seem most probably. So in addition to Candymaning you are playing a go with the flow game. Which you yourself acknowledge is against type for you. But what is also against type for you is being scum since you had quite a long run as town. You say you're an against the grain player and now here you are just at the service of who at least the Fonz has suggested are the two top wagon possibilities and who you say coincide with most other people.

My first post of day 2.

I was under the impression that everyone else was agreeing with me, not vice versa.

[Erg0]

Crud, I got this confused with another game and thought the deadline was the end of the week. Frantically re-reading as we speak.

I'm not fond of cicero sidestepping my rebuttal and going back to suspecting me on general terms. I think he ignored my defence because it weakened his case.

Billy, we need you to throw your hat in the ring.

[Erg0]

I kinda wonder what caused The Fonz to drop his second and third suspects from a few pages back and vote for vollkan instead.

Also, that shaft.ed unvote was weak - putting in legwork may be a town-tell, but does something so meta outweigh your supposedly solid case against him based on his play?

[Erg0]

Also, I note that shaft.ed is delaying his final vote until as close as possible to deadline again. He still seems very hesitant to put his fingerprints on a wagon.

[Erg0]

Since time is of the essence, I'll tread on Fonz's toes for a second and respond to the above.

What I took from Fonz's post is that he thinks it strange that you made a decently long post that didn't really mention Jitsu in a negative light, then voted him at the end.

(This is kind of devil's advocate, because I'm pretty sure I know what your answer will be).

[Erg0]

My hope for a shaft.ed lynch is dimming at this point.

Unvote, Vote: Jitsu

My preference is still for a shaft.ed lynch - I'll shift back to him if there's any chance of getting a majority. I'll be back about 2 hours before deadline.

[Erg0]

I'm here, not that there's anything for me to do at the moment. I'll check back in an hour or so.

[Erg0]

Sure there's something for you to do. Go over to Vollkan's house and wake him up.

It's 5:30am there, no? Why the heck are

you

up?

I was out for a run before work. And it was

cold

.

Deadline is 8am my (and vollkan's) time, so we might be cutting things very tight.

[Erg0]

The tension is killing me...

[Erg0]

I think you mean suspense.

I may have. Obviously the tension is affecting my grasp of english.

[Erg0]

To quote one of my favourite books: I told you, I bloody told you.

With that out of the way, it's now my favourite part of the game. Dead Scum Analysis is incoming.

[Erg0]

A skim of shaft.ed's posts hasn't turned up anything obvious - he spent a lot of time talking about and to dead players, unfortunately. I'll do the usual notes and work through it methodically over the next few days.

I'm not sure if it's significant that most of ckd's wagon has been killed off now. I guess the question is whether there was more than one scum on there - if we think it's a two scum wagon then there are only a couple of candidates left for the role of second scum.

I need to think about Fonz's unvote a little more, but despite my annoyance with his jump yesterday I don't think that the wagon had a lot of legs at the point when he left it. For some reason I keep thinking that he's our most likely candidate if the second killer is an SK - he seems vaguely scummy, but doesn't seem like shaft.ed's buddy, I guess.

[Erg0]

That was a pretty awesome night last night -- the Godfather is dead, and it appears that the mafia kill failed too.

Please tell me that I didn't just see the "reverse congratulating the doc" tell.

[Erg0]

@Erg0: You said in Vollkan's game played with Oman a lot and know his style. Can shed some light on this?

It's been a little while now, but I used to be able to pick his alignment fairly reliably based on how much he buddied up to me and whether I got NKed early. I hit a purple patch in BM's Mystery Mafia and a newbie game where I knew he was scum based purely on meta. Unfortunately, I got it wrong in vollkan's game and have probably not played with him enough lately to be able to read him as reliably as I could then.

I will say that he hasn't committed any of the tells that I used to use against him. I'm not relying on meta very much in this game, though.

[Erg0]

It does if I say it does.

Actually, I got that the wrong way round - it was more like the normal "congratulating the doc" tell. The reverse variation looks more like this (yes, he was scum).

[Erg0]

I suspect that shaft.ed's alignment has cast their quarrel in a different light. I'm still looking into things there.

[Erg0]

Initially I just thought that Jitsu was a little "off" compared to what I'd seen from him previously - this was why I mentioned him at the start of day 2. What got me onto his wagon was his argument with shaft.ed - it looked to me like he was ignoring a perfectly good case (shaft.ed's Fonz vote near deadline) to pursue him over a spurious issue (the preview/submit thing). Between the two, I thought that there was a decent chance of him being scum whether I was right or wrong about shaft.ed.

Basically, Jitsu's 'maybe he didn't know he was hammering' thing, and shaft.ed's 'slip' thing, looked like genuine, bad-faith scummy attempts to get one another lynched based on crappy cases.

Interesting - what's your alternative explanation for Jitsu's case against shaft.ed?

[Erg0]

Basically, Jitsu's 'maybe he didn't know he was hammering' thing, and shaft.ed's 'slip' thing, looked like genuine, bad-faith scummy attempts to get one another lynched based on crappy cases.

Interesting - what's your alternative explanation for Jitsu's case against shaft.ed?

Eh? I don't need one? The theory above implies that one was scum, but not both. I tend to find, and this is another that's fairly constant, scum do not actually try to get one another lynched with shitty cases. They either make shitty cases that don't succeed in putting the buddy anywhere near the firing line, or make decent cases that put their buddies in danger.

Since shaft.ed's attacks were part of a pattern amongst several players that put Jitsu in real danger, i surmise that Jitsu is not his scumbuddy.

What I mean is, do you think Jitsu was just misguided town? Presumably the perceived crappiness of his case doesn't disappear just because shaft.ed turned out to be scum.

Re the commenting on night actions thing: I don't believe it's a foolproof scumtell, but it's correct a surprising amount of the time. Like Fonz said, it mainly applies to relative newbies, but you'll usually find that people who know the JEEP tells will avoid doing it in the first place.

I'm going to avoid reading Jitsu's shaft.ed PbP until I've finished mine. I'm about halfway through, and it's sapping my will to live.

[Erg0]

However, I wonder a bit why Billy is singling out Cicero for subscribing to the "one in three" theory. Sure, Cicero mentioned it initially,

Just a point of clarification. Where did people get the idea that the one in three point was mine originally? It was Fonz's. I agreed that it was a good point.

Do you do one in three when you're scum?

[Erg0]

Ok, shaft.ed re-read finally done. I can post my notes if you like, but it's a serious sleeping pill. Instead, here's a summary of shaft.ed's post regarding the living players (except me, obv). Post numbers are from viewing shaft.ed's posts in isolation.

BillyTwilight - Not too much, frequently mentions him as a lurker on day 1 but never really puts any suspicion on him. Little comment on day 2, just a brief mention of his vig theory. Could theoretically be the ignored buddy, but given the level of attention that shaft.ed was paying to this game I don't see that as ikely. Probable town.

cicero - shaft.ed spends a bit of time following him around in the latter part of day 1, semi-agreeing with him about lynching Shanba over ckd and reiterating his points a couple of times. Seems fairly even in terms of their interactions overall - no major conflicts, agree on some things and not on others. I don't see this as a single-minded bussing or buddying effort. Probably town based on this, certainly not worth lynching today.

Jitsu - I'm going to coin a new phrase: "The Jitsu Effect". The more I read Jitsu's posts, the townier I find him to be. My previous impression that he attacked shaft.ed solely on the preview/submit issue was incorrect, he also covered the Fonz vote (before me, in fact). With that removed from the frame, I don't find anything particularly scummy in Jitsu's play to this point. In 92, shaft.ed even made what looks like an attempt to get vollkan to build a case against in Jitsu based on his (vollkan's) day 1 suspicions. Looking town.

Oman - The potential "one in three" scenario that Fonz noted in shaft.ed's 69th post could actually be a "one in four" - shaft.ed also mentions Simenon as his fourth suspect. There are a number of parallels between Oman and Fonz - both in that scumlist, both wagonned weakly by shaft.ed on day 1. I'd be shocked if one of the two wasn't scum. shaft.ed's vote spent a lot of time sitting on Oman without any real pressure being applied, which is a pretty classic scumtell.

Kison (Shanba) - Something that I don't think has been noted is the effort that shaft.ed put into pushing the possibility that ckd and Shanba were scumbuddies on day 1. I'm suspicious of this because a link between them could have served the purpose of semi-clearing Shanba once ckd was dead (I know this doesn't make logical sense, but I've seen it happen before). Note that shaft.ed's stated suspicion of ckd is based almost entirely on Shanba also being scum, but he excludes Shanba from his scumlist in 69 and only mentions him as a possible lynch candidate when cicero pushes him on it (then drops it). Possible scum, but he's in the second tier of suspicion.

The Fonz - The Fonz case on day 1 was a little out of the blue - shaft.ed puts him on his scumlist in 69 and then says that he wants to lynch him over Oman (who he'd been voting for quite a while) in 75, but he'd previously only mentioned Fonz in passing (e.g. in 61, where shaft.ed indirectly attacks him for active lurking). Spends a lot of time on day 1 and 2 attacking him while leaving his vote on Oman. A thought regarding the meta stuff in post 130: isn't it possible that shaft.ed didn't actually read Fonz's games to find this out? It could easily have been a setup from night 1, especially given that the two of them came out swinging at each other at the start of day 2. Sitting about 50/50 with Oman at this point as my preference for today's lynch.

[Erg0]

Disagree with Erg0's point about Shafted trying to get Vollkan to build a case against Jitsu. What Shafted said in his post 92 looks more like him trying to plant dissent against Vollkan. Part of what leads me to believe this is the following :

So what do the 'vollkan attack Jitsu' folks think of the continued back and forth? That's not getting much comment.

It is very odd that Shafted would address the people who disliked Vollkan's Jistu attacks. They'd be more likely to scrutinize him. Why not simply ask for the opinions of everyone?

Hm yeah, I see your point. I've still got Oman and Fonz ahead of Jitsu, though.

Looking forward to Oman's next post.

Fonz, what do you think of Jitsu's comment now that you know he isn't aware of the JEEP tells?

[Erg0]

Gah, I'm spinning my wheels here.

Oman: did you read my points on Kison in 932? What did you think?

[Erg0]

Gah, I'm spinning my wheels here.

Oman: did you read my points on Kison in 932? What did you think?

Actually, same question to Kison too.

[Erg0]

I want anyone whose considering following my vote to know that I am in no way 100% (i.e. investigation) sure on Kison, its totally my passive insight kicking in (/D&D joke)

You are aware that you haven't actually voted for Kison?

I'm still torn between Fonz and Oman. I guess Oman is looking more likely today, since he seems to be in almost everyone's top 2 (albeit with different people in most cases). I'm getting more of a town vibe from cicero lately, BT is ok, Jitsu is ok, not as sure about Kison but that's probably an issue for tomorrow.

Fonz: how does the scum strategy you mentioned in 961 affect the way you feel about Kison?

[Erg0]

I think it's because his opinion of my play closely mirrors my own, which I suppose gives him an air of honesty in my eyes.

I think that a claim from Oman would be a good idea at this point.

[Erg0]

4 to lynch today, so you're at lynch -2 now, and have been for a while. By my read, at least two more people (cicero and me) are strongly considering voting you. That's claim territory.

[Erg0]

If all of the claims are true and accurate then it has to be Jitsu and Kison.

[Erg0]

Read between the lines, dude.

[Erg0]

I see that Billy has given me the ok, so I'll claim: we're mod-confirmed masons.

[Erg0]

My guess would be that Oman's an NK-immune SK. It seems to fit the setup.

cop-immune and nk-immune should never never apply to the same SK.

This doesn't match with my experience.

[Erg0]

oh and I should qualify: Innocent comes back as "Not Mafia". so it doesn't preclude that third party idea. But unless that's Oman I'm not sure we should bank on it existing. And Oman's vig kills feel like, well, vig kills, no?

It's not unusual for an SK to kill in a way that sets them up for a vig claim later. By night 2 an SK would have needed to kill mafia just as much as we did.

[Erg0]

We can daytalk.

[Erg0]

So BT gave you the go ahead via PM between 3:47 and 3:55 but still hasn't posted in the thread himself all day. Gotcha.

We have a forum for daytalking - he posted in there about 4 and a half hours ago.

[Erg0]

Ehh, my replies specifically say "Not Mafia" instead of innocent. So I think everyone could still be lynchable with evidence of an SK. I wouldn't be so quick to call Guardian a terrible mod in this case if it turns out true.

How does an SK in this game match up with the whole third faction likely not being normal thing, one wonders.

He could be one-shot kill immune or something, I suppose.

Also, "likely" != definitely. I'd guess that the setup for this game was randomised to some extent.

[Erg0]

Quick scenarios:

If we assume 4 town, 2 mafia and 1 SK then a mafia lynch today and two townie kills tonight leaves us at 2-1-1, which is prisoner's dilemma territory.

Lynching the SK would give us 3-2 tomorrow with a pretty good line on the last two mafia.

If we lynch Oman and he's telling the truth then it depends what other roles we have out there - if we assume that there are no other killing roles besides Oman and the mafia then we could be at 3-2 or 2-2-1 tomorrow. The first one's no worse than an SK lynch, the second is pretty bad for the town.

[Erg0]

Good point on the NK immunity, I didn't factor that in. In that case, I'm pretty sure that lynching Oman is the best move today.

Billy: cicero's N1 investigation was The Fonz.

[Erg0]

So who do you think the scumgroup is?

[Erg0]

Possible, but probably not something we should take a punt on.

I don't have much to add to my previous thoughts - will be back pre-deadline.

[Erg0]

20 minutes to deadline, does anyone have anything to add?

[Erg0]

Actually, I suppose it's 25 minutes - if nobody's posted in the next 10 minutes or so I'll hammer.

[Erg0]

Good enough for me.

Vote: Oman

[Erg0]

Just quickly: the problem with your scenario above is that it all falls over if Oman is NK immune.

[Erg0]

Pretty sure this is solved, unless cicero was naive.

Anyone got anything significant to claim? If not, we're lynching one of Jitsu and Kison today and the other tomorrow.

[Erg0]

Yeah, Billy and I were out of sync a bit at the end of yesterday. I didn't really see the need for Fonz to claim once we'd come to the conclusion that Oman was the lynch, but Billy and I have pretty much had separate suspicions all game so I didn't see the point in arguing with him about it. Contrary to Jitsu's post above, I don't believe that I ever expressed a desire for Fonz to claim or pressured him to do so. I think Billy, amongst others, was a little too fixated on the "above average" chance of the neutral role being non-normal, and was looking for a scenario that made this true. I was fairly sure that a kill-immune SK was the correct explanation, since it fit the evidence so well.

As for Billy and I discussing claims on night 2, I've been breadcrumbing mason since day 1, line 1, post 1:

who is BillyTwilight?

He's a friend of a friend.

I've been referring to him as probable town all the way through the game without ever giving a particularly good reason, I gave him a pass on his kill speculation at the start of day 2 (one of my pet scumtells, as Jitsu later discovered), and I questioned cicero on the "one in three" thing because he had me, Billy and vollkan as his top three on day 2 (I had a vague suspicion of a cicero/vollkan scumteam for a while there). This is not something that we just came up with on night 2.

Fonz: if there's anything that we need to know before we lynch then now would be the time to say it. In my opinion you shouldn't claim at this point unless you have information to suggest something other than the obvious scenario.

[Erg0]

Actually, there was one thing I forgot - as you noted, I changed back to my skull avatar at the start of this game. Some of you may be aware that this is a piece of art from a Tool album. Now go and Google the last line of Billy's sig. Both this and the "friend of a friend" bit are quasi-references to a Newbie game I modded with him in it.

In any case, you said yourself that the mason claim "fits perfectly with [our] behaviour this game", so I shouldn't need to prove it to you with breadcrumbs.

Your other "crumbs" are a little more convincing, but who's to say you weren't subtly distancing from each other since the end of day 1 or so and just never got caught?

I'm not sure what you mean by "distancing" in this context.

You are right, I stand corrected. But you say you still feel that Fonz should not claim, and you seem to be implying you don't think he should have claimed yesterday (both of which I agree with), why did you not speak up yesterday when Billy asked for a claim from the Fonz?

Fonz said pretty quickly that he wasn't going to claim, so it didn't seem like there was much point in arguing with my own buddy about it.

Incidentally, the last couple of paragraphs of 1062 seem to be contradictory. Your defence is that if you were scum then you would have to have played really badly, but you go on to say that you played badly as a townie. If you're capable of poor town play then surely you're equally capable of poor scum play?

I really don't like the implication that the game is already over and that that a Jitsu/Kison lynch is a foregone conclusion. You seem to be forgetting one very important fact: the Fonz is in the driver's seat now, and he is the one with all the power. The Fonz should be checking with

you

to see if you have more information to add before a lynch, and not the other way around. It's 3 to lynch and 5 players left.

Nobody's lynching anyone until the Fonz is satisfied.

Obviously I'm aware of that, but it pretty much

is

a foregone conclusion for me, unless The Fonz has something revelatory to share. A townie in your position would be wise to hold their vote a while longer - your only justification for a Billy/Erg0 scumpair being inevitable is your assumption that cicero wasn't naive, and you haven't provided any explanation of why you believe this to be the case. You didn't so much as glance at Kison in your first post today, you just went straight for Billy and me. If you only had the amount of information that a townie in your position should, I'd have expected at least a little uncertainty, especially considering that you apparently felt that we were acting like real masons. The whole thing pretty much reeks of desperation.

[Erg0]

Oh man, I missed the hammer.

[Erg0]

I don't know how the hell we pulled this off. At least I managed to stay alive past day 2 with a power role - I haven't done that in I don't know how long.

Will read the post-game and comment at some point in the not too distant future.

[Erg0]

@Erg0: Your comment about "The Jitsu Effect" made me laugh. Can I put that in my Wiki?

Be my guest.

This was an odd game for me, because in many ways I feel like my strategy was a success, even though my overall play really wasn't so great.

After day 1, Billy and I both managed to end up at what I felt was the right level of suspicion: high enough that we wouldn't be killed, but low enough that we wouldn't be lynched until close to endgame. I pretty much decided to focus on staying alive along with Billy so that we'd be able to confirm each other once the numbers got tight, and that obviously worked out ok.

On the other hand, my scumhunting was fairly average. I had two of the scum in my list on day 2 and was getting a stronger and stronger feeling about Kison by the end of day 3, but I lost my way with the Jitsu case and there's no telling how that would have ended up without the massclaim. As I said in the mason thread, whatever tell I used to come up with the Oman/shaft.ed and Fonz/shaft.ed pairings, I really need to stop using it. Picking Oman over Fonz at the end of day 3 was pretty much blind luck, though I had decided at that point that I wanted both to claim. Things could have been different if Fonz had claimed then, but I felt like Billy and I were on pretty solid ground with the mason claim regardless of what other roles were in the game.

I've always struggled a little with roles that involve private communication, because I tend to be an independent thinker. I think Billy's the same way, because he and I generated less than two pages of chatter for the whole game. The main value in being masons was the confirmation of alignment, I think.

This game was probably poorer for losing Adel, Sim and ckd on day 1. I'm not sure if it's a hallmark of our "era", but the cautious play pretty much took over once they were gone. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, but I'm not exactly known for my outrageous gambits so I doubt anyone's too surprised by that. I did feel through days 2 and 3 that Oman's lack of get-up-and-go was a definite tip-off that he was either a power role or some form of scum.

Oh, and finally: chalk up another success for the "congratulating the doc" tell.

[Erg0]

I think Oman or Erg0 might be the easiest D1 lynch but let's see what develops.

Wow, you need to meta me better