Mini 451 - Totally Awesome Mafia, Game Over

[CrashTextDummie]

Good moring everyone.

Vote: Nekka-Lucifer

[CrashTextDummie]

Mod:

Could we have a prod on Hjallti and CrashTextDummie?
They both random-voted Nekka-Lucifer (their only post), and it would be nice to see if they want their votes to stick.

I didn't vote randomly.

[CrashTextDummie]

This seems scummish so I think I'll vote: CrashTextDummie
Not only that, he seems to have been reading but not posting (lurker perhaps) I'm not THAT familiar with what scum notifications are but I feel this is quite a strong one... Either that or it was just a mispost

It's clearly not a mispost. Your post is an attempted mischaracterization of my actions though.

I'm currently not interested in Hjallti.

Mod

: I believe your votecount is inaccurate (pretty sure NL unvoted me).

[CrashTextDummie]

FoS: bobbyblump

[CrashTextDummie]

FoS: bobbyblump

Uh...Ok? Does that have a reason behind it?

I believe there's a good chance that you are N-L's scumbuddy.

Hey CDT, can you send me the feed from whatever crystal ball you're getting all your information from, or could you at least clue us into your thought process?

What a curious way to word this. And no, I am not clueing you in at this time.

[CrashTextDummie]

However, N9V and CTD, care to explain why you are voting Nekka? They seem like the bandwagoners here.

I was voting him before it was en vogue. You acknowledge that there are valid reasons for voting him. Calling me a bandwagoner doesn't follow.

[CrashTextDummie]

And CTD, I agree that you aren't technically bandwagoning on N-L because you were one of the first to vote for him, but as far as I can see, that vote was random. You have apparently decided that you just got lucky with your random vote and actually voted for someone you think is scum. All I want to know is why you chose not to remove your random vote (almost the same action as voting in my book)

I didn't random vote. It's not that hard of a concept to comprehend.

[CrashTextDummie]

Someone will have to re-hammer if the mod decides to be anal about Lowell's vote.

[CrashTextDummie]

Vote: A Papaya

FoS: bobbyplump

[CrashTextDummie]

What makes you think we have an SK, ~N9V~?

[CrashTextDummie]

I'm working on a post.

[CrashTextDummie]

*sigh*

I was gonna finish my post, but I almost fell asleep over it. However, seeing as this game apparently cannot go on without me posting, I'll at least get out my case against A Papaya (aka Pickemgenius):

The reason I voted him originally was this post:

Ahh Crap, 3 townies dead and no Mafia. This is, IMO, a good time to do something about OTM, who initially made a strong point for lynching NL. Can someone do an analysis of his posts? I would, but I'm pressed for time.

First of all, this kind of comment on a nightkill (or nightkills) always feels disingenuous to me. Newbie scum often do it in an attempt to sound sympathetic, while townies generally don't feel the need to do it because it's mutually agreed between them that losing pro-town players suck. Also, we didn't lose any power roles, so it wasn't actually a terrible night.

Secondly, he points at OTM as the main culprit behind the N-L lynch, which is both factually wrong and more than a little hypocritical in my opinion:
1. The player who made the original, tide-changing case against N-L was Stewie.
2. A Papaya himself was among the main advocates for a N-L lynch.

Ever since page 4, A Papaya was either FoSing or voting N-L. Even when he took his vote off briefly, he made sure to maintain suspicion of N-L. This part of the game contains some more hypocrisy:

Also, I really hate his vote hopping. It's like he hopes that he'll vote for someone who responds by acting scummy and then he'll be saved.

So for now, since he is acting the scummiest, reVote: N-L

He hates the vote hopping. Kinda ironic that his next two posts contained vote-hops. These switches from N-L to Hjallti and back feel to me like he was going with the momentum of the town, and not like a pro-town player changing his mind.

His D2 posts, finally, are little more than an exercise in backpedalling:
1. The suspicion he voices against OtM at the beginning of D2 is quickly backtracked from in his post 281.
2. Not only is he not suspicious of Hjallti anymore, he now full-out defends him.
3. His explanation for this is that he could only see Hjallti and N-L as a scum-pair, and the latter being innocent makes the former look innocent as well. This comes completely out of the blue, as he never mentioned this connection before.

NL has acted scummy far more than Hjallti, IMO. While I do think that Hjallti is most likely scum, NL, IMO, is most certainly scum, so it's a safer bet to lynch him now.

While this post (the last of real substance in this matter) does state that he is suspicious of both of them individually, it doesn't translate at all into suspecting them as a scum-pair.

It's a shame he got replaced, because I really would have liked hearing an explanation for why Hjallti couldn't be scum without N-L.

Speaking of his replacement:

So overall

OTM- You could very well be scum. I also get a town vibe in that you are actually looking for scum, you just post an asswad(which is good) so I get more from you then others.

~N9V~- Unless I see improvment you're in the middle.

NN- I feel really pretty good about ATM.

Stewie- I feel is alright ATM.

HJ- I feel is town. I honestly believe all mistakes were noob mistakes.

BP- I get an anti-town feel from you. SK or Mafia.


CTD- umm. who again?

Aimee- Need more in the middle.

How spectacularly non-committal. Four people are "in the middle/alright", 2 people he "feels are town/feels really pretty good about", one "could be scum but also gives town-vibes" and only one he actually suspects.

This is the prototype of a lazy scum-analysis, as it steps on as few toes as possible and leaves as little information to trace back as possible.

His reason for suspecting BP (which, I repeat for emphasis, is his

only

suspect) is also incredibly lackluster. And wrong:

You want to go after the SK first, which makes me think of you as scum a little bit.

It is good pro-town strategy to go after the SK first, because lynching him eliminates a nightkill. It's not always the most feasible strategy because SKs are traditionally harder to catch just by analysis, seeing as they have no partners you can link them to and generally benefit from playing just like a townie, but that doesn't make lynching him first a bad idea.

The only point in pickemgeniuses favor is that ~N9V~ is voting him, who I am also very suspicious of. But more on this, along with a detailed analysis of all the players still alive and some insight into my gameplay choices so far to follow tomorrow or the day after, depending on how much time I can make available.

[CrashTextDummie]

However, some of the case seems to be clutching at straws. I don't see it as particuarlly suspicous that Papaya made an "oh crap" post after two townies turned up dead. It seems like a perfectly reasonable way to start the day (it would be equally suspicous if he just posted like nothing had happened).

For starters, I think his argument that Papaya's "aw crap" comment is phoney sympathy is pretty weak.

It's not a damning scum-tell, but a scum-tell none-the-less. I've already explained why, there is no point for a townie to do it.

But since the two of you don't think it's such a big deal, maybe you could tell us why you

didn't

comment on the nightkills the way A Papaya did?

Just one more question, though - can you PLEASE explain your lack of content throughout D1?

Will do.

Not much to go on when everyone basically ONLY goes after N-L all of day 1, so very little is with me being lazy.

We don't have alot to reference back to in this game, very little information was attained on day 1, i'm sorry my summary wasn't up to your standards.

There were 13 pages by the time you replaced, which is plenty to reference back to. The fact that you think everyone going after N-L is indistinguishable makes me think that you may not have been really looking for scum.

in my opinion, you can't just come out, make one post, then disappear again.

It's good to know you have such great confidence in me. Maybe the fact that I mentioned more coming today or tomorrow could have clued you in that I was not planning to disappear again?

[CrashTextDummie]

I was planning on finishing the rest of my analysis and answers tonight, but an incident somewhere else on the site has pissed me off so much that I can't concentrate on this game.

You'll have to wait another day, sorry for the inconvenience.

[CrashTextDummie]

Then why would you say this?

Shit, looks like mafia and SK. Vote A Papaya You seem over sincere about the lose.

~N9V~ is undoubtedly the lynch for today, but I'd like to get my analysis/answers out before we end it. Should be done by the end of the night.

[CrashTextDummie]

Analysis time! I'll answer all pending questions directed at me when I'm done with this.

1. ~N9V~

Actually, I'm not gonna bother analyzing him in detail. I am 99% sure he is the SK.

Shit, looks like mafia and SK. Vote A Papaya You seem over sincere about the lose.

Quoted again for emphasis. If you were a vig who just shot a townie, you wouldn't say anything period. Anything else makes no sense at all. You wouldn't make yourself a target for a nightkill because

the scum do not know it was you who shot him

if you shut your mouth. And certainly if you anticipate having to claim at a later point (which you

would

as a vig), you wouldn't undermine it by openly speculating that the kill was the work of an SK. It's completely counter-intuitive.

What makes you think we have an SK, ~N9V~?

You know why I asked this question? Because a townie's first thought when seeing two dead bodies is usually not "oh shit, an SK", it's "huh, two killing parties". The correct answer, by the way, would have been "because I know there is one".

Stabbing is usually the result of an SK kill, CTD.

You take this whole misleading thing pretty far for a claimed vig.

He needs to die.

2. Stewie

Interest to hunt scum seems pretty low. Most of his posts are comments on token bits of analysis/theory, or questions for players to clarify certain statements. The only real commitment he made so far was to his vote on N-L.

What I find interesting is the fact that while he made (what I consider to be) the original case against N-L, and confirmed

once

that N-L is his preferred play, he never actively pushed for the lynch. I get a sense of apathy from his posts during this time, which indicates to me that he may have been laying low after having gotten the ball rolling, leaving the grunt work to others.

This changed somewhat once N-L came close to being lynched:

A claim as in saying what your role is. I know you are new, so I'll tell you this: it is in your best interest at the moment to tell us what your role is in your own words. Do not quote the mod PM.

How about you try to defend yourself?

You never really tried...

Curiously, the feeling I'm getting from these posts is that he's talking to a townie, and knows it. At the very least, they don't sound like words coming from a man who's ready to lynch the person he's talking to.

As for D2, I don't see any real scum-hunting efforts from him at all until he joined the ~N9V~ action.

Here's a couple of questions for you, Stewie:
Apart from ~N9V~, who do you think is scum? Who do you think is town? You've been a shadow so far (which is somewhat of a contrast to Mini 380, the last game we played together).

3. Off the Mark

Rereading, I see where some of the suspicion on him is coming from. Of note is that he originally took his vote off N-L, only to put it back on once Stewie made his case (and momentum shifted). What followed was a fairly long period of indecision; he kept making arguments for N-L to be town (borderline defenses) on the basis of WIFOM, while keeping his vote on the whole time.

On the other hand, I find most of his reasoning on day 1 to be easy to follow and reasonable from a pro-town perspective. This includes his swing towards hjallti (even though I disagree with most of it, more on that later). I wonder though:

OK now I am pretty dang sure I was right about the 2-scum scenario I posted earlier. N-L and hjallti are both guilty, folks.

Do you still think hjallti is guilty?

Here are some things I don't like:

OK here's the deal. Either I'm right or I'm wrong. Either way, the town benefits because we will find scum. If I'm right and Nekka is scum, then Hjallti and now possibly bobbyplump are probably scum too. If I'm wrong and Nekka is townie, then I know I am going to look very bad. So then you can lynch me or lynch the guys that agreed with me without saying much else, Lowell and Papaya.

What I'm trying to say is, even if I'm totally off-base, I think I've helped the town with this theory,

even if it is just because I helped expose those who are agreeing with what turns out to be a bad idea

.

This reads as a possible attempt to soften the blow of leading the town into a mislynch. I particularly dislike the the underlined part, since "exposing those who are agreeing with what turns out to be a bad idea" does not actually help the town. At least half the people participating in a D1 mislynch are usually townies. In addition, that statement could be designed to shift responsibility towards other people on the wagon.

As for D2, there was a significant shift in his modus operandi. The first post of the day set the tone:

Well that sucks, and I know I'm going to look bad today. I knew something was wrong at the end of day 1. When N-L made his "I give up" speech and I asked him for his motivations, I was thinking he wouldn't post that (about wanting everyone to lynch me today) unless he was just misguided town.

I don't want to lead the town astray again today, so I'm not going to make a huge argument here. I'll just say I'm suspicious of the following: N9V, Hjallti, and Stewie. I'll lay out my reasons eventually, but I want to see what others think first.

How about leading the town to lynch scum? For someone who was so confident the day before, I find this subdued approach noteworthy. It's hard to tell whether he lost confidence in his own scum-hunting abilities, or decided to step it down a notch in order not to get too much flak. Maybe he can answer that?

What follows is a bunch of set-up theory and fluff, until:

You know what? I agree 100% with Nabakov. We need to hear from CTD. I have read other games of his and I know he is a smart guy who usually does solid analysis. So what the heck is he doing here? Is this some sort of playstyle experiment? If so, it seems to me more likely to experiment with a scum or SK role. We need his input so we have something to evaluate.

vote: CrashTextDummie

Now I gotta say, I find this very interesting. If you've read other games with me and know I usually do solid analysis, and you think I'm more likely to experiment with a scum role, then why did you wait so long to bring this up? Why didn't you address it on D1, instead of explaining my votes for me? You seemed to be quite comfortable with my play back then.

Overall, I could see him as scum.

4. Hjallti

I like him the best out of the people on the N-L wagon. His early defensiveness/being emotional reads townie to me, as there's no reason for scum to be upset over being called a lurker when he announced it to the mod (i.e. did nothing wrong). I like his thought-process in regard to N-L, and it sounds genuinely pro-town. He compared N-L's behavior to his own a lot, and these things are hard to fake.

There's not a lot to analyze on D2, so I'll cut this short:
I currently don't believe Hjallti to be scum.

----------

That concludes the people who were on the mislynch yesterday. I'll do the rest in the next post.

[CrashTextDummie]

Gah, I'm too tired to finish my analysis. I'll finish it later/tomorrow if the day isn't over. I'll answer some questions though:

Thank you for the analysis CTD. I find myself nodding along with the vast majority of it. Just one more question, though - can you PLEASE explain your lack of content throughout D1?

It was indeed a playstyle experiment. My usual playstyle is very time-intensive; it takes me a long time to verbalize my thoughts due to English being my second language, and I rarely post without doing extensive amounts of rereading.

Basically, what I did was I did the usual amount of reading and analyzing, but left out the verbalizing part. It worked quite well, too, except my scum-dar sucked.

My main question now - why did you vote for A Papaya and FoS Bobbyplumb (something that is still unexplained) but give no reasoning?

I've already explained why I voted A Papaya (and I explained just now why I gave no reasoning).

The FoS on bobbyplump was a left-over from D1, where I felt that he was the most likely among the N-L defenders to be either a scum-buddy or a scum buddying up to a townie. I'll expand on this once I do the analysis on him.

[CrashTextDummie]

First off, I am now 100% certain that ~N9V~ is not a vig. Town-aligned players just don't use reasoning like this:

O.K Stew, lets take your reason into perspection. Lets say i am an SK. wouldn't you want me around for this night?

~N9V~ is clearly trying everything to save his own skin at this point, which is befitting of a self-aligned player. There is no doubt.

Secondly, the correct play in this situation is to lynch the SK. The moment we rely on scum to take care of our problems,

and

on the SK to kill in our favor, we're giving control over the game out of our hands. Chances are we're gonna have to lynch the SK later anyway (if scum feel confident not to get killed, or have a roleblocker, for example), so there really is no point in letting him potentially kill even more townies..

[CrashTextDummie]

Unvote, vote: ~N9V~

[CrashTextDummie]

If he doesn't follow instruction and kills a townie, and the mafia does the same, the town is most likely already outnumbered. We can't lynch him anymore then. Our only hope in that situation would be for scum to crosskill, which isn't in our hands. Hence, giving away control of the game.

It's not in an SKs interest to work with the town, especially once he's been outed. It's in his interest to screw the town over to create a situation where he can't be lynched anymore. He might not always be successful, but trust me, he will try if the town lets him.

[CrashTextDummie]

Turns out you got NL lynched because of one silly phrase. Great job on that one. Now you're about to lynch me because of more of the same.

Nah, we're about to lynch you because Pickem has claimed a guilty on you. Unless you're suggesting that Pickem investigated you because of "more of the same", in which case you'd be admitting your guilt and confirming Pickem's legitimacy.

For the record, I have very little doubt that Pickem is telling the truth, for one simple reason:
If A Papaya were scum, it's possible that he planned along with his buddies in N1 to fake-claim cop. However, Pickem would not have known about these plans at the time he replaced, yet he also very clearly breadcrumbed an innocent on Hjallti.

Therefore, his claim today is enough for me to vote bobbyplump, even though I suspect we are in Lylo.

I have a strong feeling right now that OTM is also scum, in heavy bussing mode.

NabakovNabakov - Any particular reason why you're placing so much weight on my opinion?

Vote: bobbyplump

That's lynch -1. Care to claim, bobby?

[CrashTextDummie]

Hjallti - Yeah, you played well, considering enough people were convinced of your innocence for the mafia to nightkill you.

I have no idea how 3 mafia and an SK managed to screw things up so badly.

Quite simple, you were outplayed.

No seriously, I think the town as a whole was pretty awesome in this game (I'm pleased with my own performance as well), which made investigating a pretty thankful job for Pickem compared to other games. Not to take anything away from him, that was some sweet copping.

Scum mostly screwed up with their nightkills, I'd say. Of course, it's easy for me to say this in hindsight, but when I find A Papaya's complete U-turn on Hjallti suspicious from a town-perspective, it shouldn't be too hard to see for what it really is (a cop-tell) from a scum-perspective. Killing me on a night when you should be looking for the doc is similarly wonky.

As for the set-up:
3 goons + 1 SK is pretty standard for a mini, and leaving out a GF was the right choice considering the power-level of the town. However, I find the addition of a survivor/self-reviver rather questionable. When the town is in Lylo after only one mislynch, there's something wrong with the balance. Lynching the SK on D2 was the correct play based on the information we had, and we could have been punished for it.

In the end, I think the most important aspect in making this game a success is the comparatively very good level of participation, and the fact that we had zero slackers or dropouts (A Papaya, I assume, had his reasons for leaving). So thanks for a good game, everyone.

PS: I

knew

you weren't town, OTM.