Mafia 96 - Murder in Emerald City (Game Over!)

[SerialClergyman]

Hello everyone.

SC replacing in. Re-reading now.

I am also only on one other game on site that is painfully inactive at the moment, so I replaced in to this one rather than write a small novel of rage at the other participants in the aforementioned game.

EXPECT POSTS FILLED WITH UNTOLD AND OUT OF PLACE EMOTION SOON

[SerialClergyman]

Wow.. on one hand, Zaz's 12 consecutive 1-line posts make the pages fly by, but then Mastin comes back and suddenly I'm stuck again. I'm not a productive worker by any stretch of the imagination but I just cost my boss $150 and I haven't done any work nor gotten close to the pointy end of this thread.

I would nominate the title of Masin as 'zebra crossing' - the length doesn't bother me, but the insistence of quoting a line answering a line, quoting a line etc etc is giving me a contrast headache

Anyways, I am dilligently reading, expect content within some amount of time (roughly 24 hours, depending on how thick things are after page 10 or so).

[SerialClergyman]

Ah, don''t worry SC. For some reason, Mastin later becomes more inactive.

He'd better, or I'll get my pay docked for the whole week! I just bought an apartment ><

[SerialClergyman]

Priceless re-read moment:

For sanity's sake, I'll be trimming down my post length for all of ya.

LAL please.

[SerialClergyman]

Serial's epic re-read journey finds another gem

on page 11, had to stop at post 255..eyes are bleeding.

this has to be the most fustrating game to read (replace in) I have ever been in.

QFT

Page 22 and heading for the summit. No oxygen, no supplies, eyes fighting against me, brain shutting down, time running out, but dammit I will watch the sunrise from the top of page 28...

(bottom would be more accurate literally but it doesn't go with the mountain climbing metaphor. Poetic licence and all)

[SerialClergyman]

Serial's epic re-read journey continues, stumbling without shelter under the glare of an unforgiving sun. (yeah, it's a desert now. I'm going all Lord of the Rings epic changing scenery on you).

After passing many mirages, he finds an oasis in the harsh countryside.

Can you believe I got caught up reading in only a two day period. Although it could just be due in large part to slacking at work.

QFT.
I salute you, sir. Together we'll pull this global recession even further down

[SerialClergyman]

M'okay. No more jokes (well, some jokes, but more serious stuff.)

I'm relatively new to this forum, so I don't want to stroll into this thread and start wagging fingers without understanding the complexities of peoples' relationships with each other. But in my opinion from the previous 28 pages, it seems to me like there are a LOT of personal grudges and ego battles that are really tainting the game.

Zaz and KK is a great example, it seems clear to me like the two of them just DO NOT like each other. There's absolutely no reason to go around and around in a circle like the two of them have, baiting each other with pretty severe personal comments (

ZazieR is the queen of bullshit and bad arguments

comes to mind) and ridiculous research cases (You've seen mafia claim miller before? Really?) that made a minor issue spiral into one that's taken well over 100 posts of this game.

Mastin is another one - it's clear to me that rofl and VP and Lowell have a personal problem with Mastin and his style. Mastin also seems to have a personal problem of some kind, or is just generically offended, which leads to pointless discussion about his playstyle and it's effectiveness/scummyness.

For the record, my position on the KK/Zaz issue is similar to that outlined by VP above. I think nothing Zaz has brought up has really debunked the story of Got role, expanded on role, asked for confirmation and got original role back, confirming nothing special. You can choose to believe or disbelieve the role claim from this point on, but craplogic like finding examples from other miller claims or pushing about the differences between IRC mafia and forum mafia is just a personal ego battle. And since a D1 claimed miller is never going to get far enough into the game to worry us in the long run, I think it's time we cooled down and at least checked out a wealth of other scumtells and slips that the game has had to offer. (Again, no offense, and I don't know if you guys are bestest buddies around the site, just my impression from reading the game all in one go.)

My opinion on Mastin is that there's little point bitching about his playstyle in game. If you have personal tips for how he could refine his style, post them after or in a different place. This game should be about scumhunting and I think we can all agree that it's not specifically scummy this time given it's a modus operandi he's getting titled for.

Mastin, on the other hand, I'd say you have contradictions in your play, and I hate contradictions. I think you selectively accuse other people of tunnelling while doing so yourself and giving others a free pass. I think saying certain scumtells don't apply to you because you're different is a poor argument (everyone is different - tells remain constant.) I think you accuse others of role of flavour fishing while doing so yourself under the guise of scumhunting. And I also think you post more about how much you scumhunt than you do actually scumhunting. This is not taking away from the fact you are actually hunting, but meh. It's the chocolate chips in a gigantic bowl of vanilla icecream slush that I'm thankful for when I find them, but still wish I could have just fished them out when I feel sick after eating the whole bowl.


Ok - these are the posts that I think didn't get enough attention or really set off my scumdar.

175 Hayker

He's scummy because of saying the RVS was over, when it clearly wasn't to the majority of the players.

Why is that scummy?

Looking back, it's not exactly w super scummy thing. Though I don't remember claiming it being super scummy, just that I found it scummy. And I am merely human(I know, it's unbelievable), and can indeed be wrong. As I read more of this game though, I'm thinking he's scummier and scummier, but that is because of his tunnel vision. Going by meta game knowledge that others have, that's normal. But I dan't go basing my opinions oiff of other peoples thoughts.

Hayker just says He's scummy because of saying that, it's not greatly scummy, and I never said it was, I can be wrong, but I think he's more and more scummy. ><. Epic scummy backtrack.

So really I don't know much about that subject, and am currently looking at others opinions on that subject.

*twitch*

You think there's 2 scum teams? Don't break my heart here Zazie... what do you know???

I hate posts like this. It's clear to anyone speculating about the setup that if there's a 'something' mafia then there's quite probably a 'something else' mafia, especially with 3 night kills. At best it's overzealous clutching at straws, at worst it's a deliberate attempt to put mud on someone for saying what every townie is thinking.

Johnny Rotten's 219 has been mentioned many times, but I'll register my finding it epically scummy. His hypothetical question about a cop targetting KK N0 is odd and points to rolefishing later on.

Based upon these finished games, I think that there are two scumteams.

I didn't want to quote it all because this post will be long neough without further spam, but she posts 9 links to games to answer a question as to why she thought there were two scum factions. 9 links! This is way too eager to deflect criticism. An answer of 'Duh' would suffice.

would it make any difference if the cop were to have investigated KK night 0, and then come forward with his result? Would the guilty or not guilty verdict change anything?

Completely don't understand this and find it highly dicey.

@Johnny Rotten 219 & 221 - There are so very few compelling reasons to policy lynch. Mastin hasn't come close to any of those reasons.

Coaching. KK could well have known this is a poor argument likely to bring suspicion on JR and tried to get him to drop it like it's hot. Doesn't read as a legit answer to a question to me.

I am very glad that you are scum hunting and please continue to do so.

*twitch*

Mastin to be fair I was inactive for a long time maybe about 8 out of the 12 months ive been a member.

Mastin- Just because he has been on for about a year doesn't make him experienced. As he said, he was only playing for 4 out of the 12 months. Also, his scumhunting/attempt at it seemed more like stuff in the Road to Rome.

Im slightly insulted to be honest

Not trying to insult you at all. It's mostly just the same type of posting as ckool, IIoA, that makes it seem newbish to me.

Then it did not have the desired outcome
To be honest newbie behavior shouldnt be excused. Id rather lynch a newbie townie then be beaten by a newbie behaving scum. Im a little bit suspicious of you partly writing me off as newbie in some aspects.

And I'm a bit suspicious of your appeal to emotion. I'm not saying newbie behavior should be excused, all I am saying is you seem more like newb-town then newb-scum. Are you condoning your own lynch?

This continues but you get the point. What a lovely little pantomime. That was such a hamfisted little attempt to rid suspicion after a nice bit of buddying and appearing much closer than expected. It does not right true in the least for me. Scummy, yuk yuk.

policy lynches on players adding contribution (and fucking loads of it) to the game are amazingly stupid.

And a huge mistake, which always ends up only making people angry afterwards and normally go hard after the person who pushed for it

I hate don't vote me or you'll pay threats. Scummy.

Well the less you post the less likely you are to say anything beneficial to the town i have a similar problem but continue to post for 2 reasons.

1. If i dont post im not helping the town this is a bad tactic for any role because any role would at least want to appear to be helping the town,

2. Much of what someone says as town while may appear scummy at the time reveals a lot at your death (assuming you get lynched for "your scummy" behavior)

Hope this helps

*twitch*. Pro-town rhetoric without content, coaching...

And as for KK, I don't like his confusion over his role at all. I think it's much more damning than any slip, btw. Surely if you're a miller you know you're a miller and not a death miller. Like, and if it wasn't clear from the role pm you pm the mod, or well I would Idk I've never been a miller.

So yeh I feel less confident about it now. I've no problem with his non miller related play though, i.e. most of the stuff he's said about people, seems reasonable.

Way to say nothing at all. Scummy? Not scummy? Thinking of voting him? Who knows?

I only post a lot when I don't have much to say, then think of something then post it... Then think of something else and post that, and etc

*twitch*

I believe it was pointed out several times in slip ups he made in falsehoods in his posts i think he even admitted it.

Not a good reason to hold an opinion. Lazy often = scummy.

If kublai is town, then this is the best thing that he could have done. If he is mafia, well who knows. But he should be vig-killed and investigated. So when he is killed,

hopefully cop can claim

and we can figure out the sanity of the cop.

I think this was mentioned a bit, but to me the key thing is the bolded part. Sorry, WHAT? The whole thing to me is bizarre, I think wasting an investigation on the off chance of determining sanity (note: won't even help with paranoid) is bad play anyway, but for the cop to then CLAIM?? Terribad post.

A user asked for the people who hadn't posted much yet to post their opinion, so I figured the best way was to just comment on people who were already under suspicion. I can't think of other people beside the ones who currently have votes who stand out to me a suspicious, so I didn't comment on anyone else.

Wow, shocker. Talk aobut trying to fit in with the crowd.

I dont want a lynch on him now but you definitely deserve a vote for telling a lie.

a) no lie.
b) don't want a lynch on him now? Afraid we're going to get swept up in a tsunami of logical power and carry him to the gallows based on your 25 words or less competition entry post? Scummy.

Yes, I'd also like if someone could summarize the arguments against JR. I don't remember reading anything from him that seemed blatantly scummy, but I guess I might be forgetting something.

*twitch*

Hayker? Why are you warning/advising/coaching ckool?

Maybe hes being helpful?

I try not to assume that players that coach each other are helpful (with the exception of ICs in newbie games). Given all the coaching and reasons from post 378, Vote Ckool5000.

Your voting Ckool because hayker was advising him?

Post 390 pretty much confirms it for me.

Major FOS on Ckool
Not for all that other stuff but mainly for post 390.
If your town you shouldnt get so frustrated you should continue scumhunting.

Especially since you only have my one vote on you. If you are town, you shouldn't be phased and give up. If you are scum, by all means do so.

^^^^ Officially not coincidence. Second bizarre pantomime with utterly unbelieveable dialog and reactions for two innocent townies who have no special ties. Deadset scummy.

@ Kublai Khan (376) - At that point I did not have suspicions other then those who currently have votes.

Currently, I'm seeing ckool5000 more and more as scum. I felt 377 was just him trying to post something worthwhile, but 390 and subsequent posts seemed like scumtell.

*twitch*

Worthwhile noting at this point, Kise completely flips on the KK vs Zaz debate. At 288 he was for Kahn and anti-Zaz, at this point he's for Zaz and anti-Kahn. Could be legit, but to me there wasn't a lot to completely reverse your opinion on. Could be opportunistic.

no. watch your step or it could be you.

Ugh. Hate threatening posts.

Woahwoahwoah. Me prodded? D:
Day one ends in like, two weeks. No need for this prodding.
Work is a bummer, and summer work blows.
But I am here.

Reading through the posts I don't see ckool's scuminess.
I guess it might just be me. So unless someone wants to elborate some more, imma go back through, for the 8th time. :/

Zero interest in scumhunting. *twitch*

At 311 I was just interested in showing that I wasn't inactive, so I addressed the immediate concerns that I saw. I don't see that as tunneling because I was just posting my thoughts on accusations that others have made.

Unrelated, but if JR is getting replaced, how is the new guy supposed to deal with the suspicion that JR has received. In essence, my question is, are our previous reads on JR valid even though JR is getting replaced for a new guy?

Every time Achilles pops up I twitch like I'm Michael J Fox. Just being interested in showing you're not inactive is utterly unhelpful. Just because JR is getting replaced certainly does NOT waive him of all suspicion thus far attributed. Why on earth would anyone suggest that? Scummmmmmy

ZazieR is the queen of bullshit and bad arguments

The worst of the personal stuff. What I thought had just been a nulltell grudge might have a bit more in it if KK is resorting to that. (although it was yet another irritating 'FEAR MY ACCUSATIONS' post from Zaz.

Oh, and Mastin, where are you???

Looks like calling for reinforcement after a lukewarm reception to poorly-made case re: miller. Three question marks looks desperate, I *twitched*.

I just found something in a thread from another old game. Somebody (a mafia) was posting their mafia talk in the night and what was going through their heads during the day, and one of the things going through their head was:
"Don't pull a Kublai Khan and freak out about the fact that you're confirmed scum in the eyes of two players"

Erm... Don't some of you think for certain that he's scum?... And has he freaked out yet?.....

Relevence? Did you stumble over it by luck or were you doing a meta? Links? This doens't feel right to me.

I was trying to find out how what peoples opinions were on the miller thing and if it was worth pursuing. If everyone agreed it was not going to change anything then I wasnt going to wast peoples time with speculation on it.

*twitch*

Rolefishing. I will not answer this question.

You specifically fished for flavour first, and gave examples of flavour possibilities. When it didn't work and someone quesitons why you bring that up, you call them out as rolefishing. Scummy contradiction.

Tunneling.

Utter crap. You think that rofl was tunneling in the 22nd post of the game? There was legitimate content around that was being debated and dismissing it as tunnelling is scummy, especially when you let Zaz off the hook for an epic tunnel that's lasted most of the game. You and Zaz obviously have a friendship of some form but there's a few indicators that it's cloaking a role-relationship as well.

Testing a claimed miller to see if he slipped.
I refuse to say (hopefully I didn't already) whether he passed or failed on that flavor matter.

It's OK because it's me. Beginning to be a familiar tune, Mastin.


Ok, so ends the saga of Serial.

I don't have the time or the mental acuity to try to process all of the above information but a few things need to be said about the game overall.

1) FA and MafiaMann win the award for the most obvious relationship between roles. Once could well be a coincidence, but twice - no way.

2) Achilles wins scummiest and my vote.

unvote if necessary, vote: Achilles

I'd urge you all to read him in iso, it's not a pretty sight.

3) There are people coasting with a few, scummy posts. Empking's alt, (yes, I understand the meta but it's anti-town and needs to be discouraged) dvd, redith and Mufasa are all critical offenders and need to step up. More can be added to that list I'm sure, but I think all of those guys need to start posting and start posting content at that.

4) I think some of the more 'famous' players with the bigger egos and more to prove need to try to relax into the game a little and look for the scum, not for the intellectual fight. I honestly don't mean to offend, but I feel it's sidetracking the town away from really scummy targets so I feel like I have to bring it up.

[SerialClergyman]

@Faraday

Your post was confused and vague. You didn't say 'The role claim is scummy but his play seems OK', you had about 5 lines of fluff, and given a relatively low content from you so far, it looked scummy to me.

My point 4 continues to be relevent to a number of people in the game. I think that players like (but not exclusively) Mastin, VP, KK, Zaz, Lowell and roflcopter are all using preconcieved ideas to further convince themselves that the people they are attacking are scum. I think there's little explanation for Zaz's constant persuit of a mediocre scumtell in KK's play aside from a personal vendetta and parts of their posts that get pretty heated confirm that. Ditto with Mastin, VP et al. Why didn't people notice stuff like the fact Achilles posts scummy stuff EVERY POST, or FA and MafiaMann's little conversations? Because those names aren't big, and nobody feels all high and mighty for trying to take them down. Scum are scum, people have to get over personal battles and the allure of the name and look for good old fasioned scumminess, in my opinion.

@Mastin:

If I see people fail to state they're an "Emerald *role*" when they claim, they're scum. Look at the bodies we have--

Emerald Townie.
Emerald Jailkeeper.
Cerulean Doctor.

See the difference?

Untrue - it's listed as a Cerulean

Mafia

Doctor.


That is significant because your entire argument is that Emerald specifies town in a larger way than just flavour. As soon as you see the word mafia there, you realise you could remove the colours completely and still have a cogent town vs non-town role.

If the word 'mafia' wasn't there, someone could claim doctor and it we would not be able to say whether it was a pro-town doc or not - in that case I'd agree, the emerald is crucial. But since the word mafia is there, it is immediately obvious, colour or not, that the person is either town or anti-town, making the colour merely flavour, and thus KK leaving it out originally much less significant.

Which he "left out".

More like didn't get.

(As in, he's Mafia, faking miller.)

Bolded for emphasis. Presumably mafia would also get a colour with their role, and even if they didn't they could easily tell from the bodies and the vanilla townie PM that a colour was involved.

I think this argument is not only a foolish endeavour, it may be scummy in and of itself because it contains a desire to put deep significance on the 'flavour faction' of mafia - something I don't really care about. I would imagine that the people who care what colour faction a player flips are FAR more likely to be mafia than town, because it's significant to them whether it is one type of faction or another. I think that's a possible scumtell.

I have not tunneled.

Meh, kinda have. You went through the 30 quotes I posted and found the ones pertaining to you and Rotten/KK only. I think I made some more decent points than that.

This was not the case. Me simply stating facts.
NOBODY has ever gotten away from an accusation on me without later regretting it.
-They'll face walls of text
-IF they get me lynched, they'll often be lynched the next day
-And other such various regrets.

Yep, that's still a threat. In fact it's just a poor one, because lets face it, we'll cop walls of text anyway and if someone aims to get you lynched knowing they'll get lynched the next day, a good townie should still push through it and criticize you, whereas scum would be more fearful of their own life.

We were still in the RVS, SC.
Rofl was tunneling.

Still untrue. Something of content happened (ie not RVS - KK claims). You react to that and rofl finds you scummy. It was just about the only thing he could genuinely focus on, and noone else had done much at all, so it's impossible to tell whether he had tunnel vision on you or not.

@ VP, roflcopter and all.

I'm not buying the wagon on Mastin. I take issue with some of what he says and some of his conclusions, but at the end of the day I count about 30,000 words from Mastin and I have trouble with about 5 sentences within them. It's just a poor reason for a lynch, I would suggest to you that if you are town, your motivation for voting him is an annoying style mixed with feelings of OMGUS.

Here is why you should be voting for Mastin:
-He was fishing for flavor
-He is spamming the thread so you do not take time to read his posts
-He repeatedly asserts how pro-town he is and rather than defending he claims that most scumtells are null against him
-He has refused more than once to summarize any points against JR
-He has misrepped many many people in this thread
-He's OMGUSing anyone who disagrees with him

- I agree about fishing for flavour.
- Not a scum tell.
- That's a reason to believe the scumtells, not a scumtell in itself. I don't think ther'es much of a case that he's denying, even if the denying itself is poor.
- Not a scum tell.
- More evidence please. I think there's been very little misrepresentation.
- No he's not, I have disagreed with him and he's responded completely reasonably. I would suggest given a couple of posts ago you were dead sure of MafiaMann being scum, the person with OMGUS issues is yourself.

[SerialClergyman]

@ all -

I understand my first content post was a massive post in a game of massive posts, but it was 28 long pages of scumtells summarised, so I'd ask everyone to go through that one at least, it's very condensed.

Even if you're voting someone else, or feel someone else to be scum, can you please have a look at players other than the big names. Specifically, at Achilles in iso or the relationship between FA and MafiaMann.

Of Achilles' iso posts, I find 0, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 all scummy. Some points I noticed:

- Easy targets
- Preoccupation with town approval
- Zero personal scumhunting, lots of piggybacking
- Attempting to completely dismiss case against JR due to him being replaced.

Unrelated, but if JR is getting replaced, how is the new guy supposed to deal with the suspicion that JR has received. In essence, my question is, are our previous reads on JR valid even though JR is getting replaced for a new guy?

[SerialClergyman]

I am reading the responses and will come up with some content in a sec, but VP points out another Re-read Gem(tm)

Most of the other points after that are too minor/repetitive for me to list.

Points that are too minor or repetitive for Mastin to list.. holy crap!

[SerialClergyman]

@ VP - OK. Thanks for the effort, I'll put in some effort of my own and do an analysis of those points. I'll give you some idea on where I feel you make some good points and where I'm not convinced.

Points I think are strong scumtells:
4 - See my post 723 about who WOULD care about the faction.
23 - Good point. This is more what I'm looking for - a genuine misrepresentation of your position and attacking you for it.
37 - Yes, this was poor.

Points I think could possibly be weak scumtells:
5, 9, 11, 12, 18, 21, 22, 24, 34, 40

Points I think are not scumtells of any kind:
1, 2, 3, 6, 16, 20, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 38, 41, 42, 45

Points I think are irrelevent due to Mastin's meta:
7, 10, 14, 15, 17, 19, 35, 36, 39, 43, 44

Points I think are active misreps/scummy themselves:
8 - Even if no-one else had accused you of being scum, it still doesn't make his argument invalid, and in fact plenty of people have done so via their votes.
13 - You accuse Mastin of going with the flow and not drawing unnecessary attention? Sorry, what? His tunneling is a minor mistake that could be indicative of scummyness, your accusation reeks of a misrep.
26 - I agree with Mastin. Your post made it look very much like you thought KK was scum but had some doubts. It looked like fence sitting, certianly not like you believe the miller claim and are against a KK lynch.
__________________________________________________
Please note just counting up how many are in each column like some kind of score card doesn't work because you can group them into similar ideas, which pads some areas and not others. The above is given as a rough idea of my mental state in reading the argument. Also, just because I think something is not a scum tell doesn't mean I agree with Mastin's point, I just don't think it was made deliberately falsely.
__________________________________________________

So, here are the reasons why I'm (still) not on a Mastin lynch.

a) I still feel a good deal of the points against him are still born of a personal battle. I have used the word ego because I feel behind many of the main themes in this game are personal battles born elsewhere. I might be off-base on that, but that's how it seems to me.

Mastin's complete disregard for everyone's preferred method of reading the game is irritating, and his posts spam the forum, make it hard to catch up and hard to play. I agree with this. However, although it might be annoying, or even if it creates favourable conditions for scum, that DOES NOT make him scum THIS game. He posts these long posts every game and has an arm's length of games to prove it. This includes things like failure to summarise, being pedantic, having illogical scumtells and various other issues.

b) The sheer amount of his postings mean that there are always going to be things that come off poorly. He may occasionally make a bad argument or attack, but these weak slips are much less significant than with players who post less because of the possibility of noise over signal. If I post 100 words in my game and have 3 weak scumtells, that's significant. If I post 100,000 and have 3 weak scumtells, that's insignificant.

c) Mastin is scumhunting. Whether you feel he's concentrating on the right people or not, he's actively combing through the thread looking for scummy behaviour. He has made points about a number of different people and is clear about where his opinions lie. He is certainly not going with the easy wagons and trying to fly under the radar, like you say at one point, he's put himself and his theories at the forefront of discussion. These are people you do not lynch on D1, imo.

d) There are REALLY REALLY scummy alternatives. This is also what fuels my opinion that egos and reputations are dictating some of the attacks today. I've made clear who my suspects are and why, but even the fact that many of the things I've noticed haven't even been brought up suggests to me that some of the more active players around are tunnelled on someone else.

Whether or not I like Mastin's style, the key question for today is whether this person will flip scum, and my suspicion at the moment is that he will not.
_____


How sure are you that Mastin is scum? Did you have a look at Achilles or any of the others that I pointed out? (I do acknowledge your case on MafiaMann and found it quite convincing. Part of why I suspect OMGUS/personal reasons for your recent case against Mastin is that you dropped that case like it was hot.)

[SerialClergyman]

Welcome. Please answer the questions that I asked VP earlier on page 30.

Wicked, in future, please catch up in the whole thread before asking questions like this. Your questions on page 30 were directed to someone else and were AFTER a long post in which I detailed my thoughts on the argument.

I lean towards believing Kublai, but predominantely, I don't think it'll be a problem. I simply can't imagine a claimed miller reaching lylo. He painted a big target on his back and I'm happy to let it be sorted out at night. Wasting a lynch on someone who is a dead man walking is a bad idea when we have scum to catch. If he'd claimed at L-1 it might be different, or claimed in D2 it might be different. As it is, it's the correct play to make for a mason, so I don't see a need to further push it.

Additionally, I think the people focusing on this issue seem to be doing it based on some kind of personal battle and I've found their arguments (and his responses) to be more often petty and vindictive than convincing. I'd like to see some more genuine, town-wide scumhunting, I think it's been sadly lacking this game.

[SerialClergyman]

Namttam - I felt your agreement with me about Achilles came rather out of the blue. You did have some discussion with him but never voted him and didn't exaclty declare him as scum (or scummy), or even analyse his posts much. I'm happy to have people agree with my case, but you made it sound as if you'd been making a case for ages and someone finally agreed with you, which can be a sneaky way of piggybacking.

I read you in iso looking for your thoughts on Achilles and noticed that throught the game you have been on both sides of the dominant issues. You've voted JR, then dropped the entire case completely when he was replaced and are now voting KK.

The JR wagon is useless when there is no JR. I was voting him to get him to talk more but with him gone there is no reason for this. I'm going to Unvote. Vote: Kublai Khan.

If you don't mind, could you answer:
1) Can you explain why scummy things about VPs predecessor don't now carry on to VP?
2) Were you only voting him to get him to talk more or did you genuinely think he was scummy?
3) At what point in the game did you find the mason claim scummy/proven scum?

[SerialClergyman]

I feel certain enough to lynch him, and that is all that really matters.

Not quite - I asked the question because there are usually a couple of people in that 'prepared to lynch' category, and I was wondering why you are focusing on him more than others (goes to personal/ego). But OK, you mentioned the other people you find scummy and why you prefer his wagon. I'll give you that he is having more of an influence on the game than the others, but I don't think their liklihood of being scum is equal at all, so my vote is remaining on Achilles.

@SC, just to correct you a bit, I noticed above you keep saying "mason" when you mean to be saying "miller".

Thanks, I fail. In return, I offer you a correction of 'jist' and 'jibberish', which should be 'gist' and 'gibberish' - I was just too polite to point them out!

[SerialClergyman]

It's 4:30am and the only reason I'm still up is because I worked Saturday and have tomorrow off, so am stubbornly hanging about and not going to bed to make my only sleep in of the week awesome.

@VP - However, I just read your last post and wanted to clear up the posts -
#8 I didn't realise you were making a distinction between yourself and JR, fair enough.
#13 - the bit that I'm specifically referring to is:

Sure sign of scum trying to go with the flow and not draw unnecessary attention.

I can't see how you can draw that conclusion from Mastin's play, despite the specific snippet you quote. It just doesn't fit.
#26 There's a timeline issue here, I think. SINCE making the 'not obv scum' post, you've been very clear about your position. Before that, not so much. It's possible you were still feeling out a side.

I'd ask people to remember I was filing those in loose categories. I think your posts have been pro-town overall, and you did make some points against Mastin that hit home for me.

@Nam:

Nam wrote:
1)They absolutely do carry over and I don't believe I ever implied that. While VP and Johnny are different people they have the same role.

Actually you did. It's in the post you directed me to:
Nam wrote:

The JR wagon is useless when there is no JR. I was voting him to get him to talk more but with him gone there is no reason for this.

You say the wagon is "useless" because JR is gone, but in your post above you say that all of the points against him still apply to me. If you really thought they still applied than you should have left your vote there.

^^ This. That's why I quoted that section in my original question to you. The two quotes above look like a total contradiction.

@Kublai -

Second, how do you figure that Mastin's repeated insistence of how pro-town (or null) he is not to be a scum-tell?

Meta. Same as Empking's utter non-participation. It might be irritating or anti-town, but it doesn't make them more or less likely to be scum.

@ Wicked:

Are you saying that since he posts so much, then he is likely to say something scummy once in a while?

Not quite - I'm saying that for any player you should balance the amount of dicey stuff they've written with the amount they've written overall. Something like half of Achilles' posts are seriously scummy. I think only a small percentage of what Mastin has written is scummy.

If there really is more than one scum group and Mastin is a part of one of them, then who cares if he is scumhunting or not, because he could be trying to get rid of the other scum group.

This is a terribad question. Scumhunting is important and pro-town, possibly more than any other action. We need people who are actively and genuinely persuing scum in the town. Scumhunting makes you take sides and have a record of your actions, makes you likely to suffer votes against you, suspicion from people, be in the spotlight and be more likely to be night killed - a number of things that the scum are trying to avoid. And in addition, if it's genuine, it helps us win the game by catching and lynching scum. It's the single most important thing to be doing right now.
If you don't care about scum hunting, what should we be doing?

[SerialClergyman]

Also, thank you to everyone who welcomed me to the game. I think I've rudely ignored you all but your welcomes have all been noticed.

[SerialClergyman]

Serial's Re-read Gems continue:

(Well, you would, except that half of the time, I'm too lazy to check back on my own posts and go by memory.)

[SerialClergyman]

A lot of your crumbing defies the point of a breadcrumb. A breadcrumb should be early and specific, in my opinion. The later it is, the more likely it could be scum preparing for an imminent claim. The less specific it is, the more likely it's scum keeping their options open for later. A good breadcrumb very specifically near the start of the game locks you into that role, so when you claim later it's immediately obvious that that is the only reasonable claim you could have made, not just the one that convineintly fits the situation at the time you're claiming it.

The ones in the RVS were a) in the RVS, which you tell us to dismiss as you joking around, and b) far too vague. You could claim anything you like and point to something there.

The later ones could well have been made in preparation of a claim given pressure on you was mounting. (ie you see you have to claim something, start mentioning roleblockers then a couple of posts later, you claim. )

There is the one about speculating quite specifically about KK and his night choices, and that's probably the most convincing.

Either way - no need to lynch a claimed rolebblocker. (EMERALD roleblocker zzz)

I'm going to join the MafiaMann wagon. I liked Achilles last response to me, and despite some disagreements thought it at least started to get him on the right track. MafiaMann on the other hand has looked scummy as anything over the recent Mastin wagon, to go with his earlier behaviour. Specifically, posts 715, 742-3, 819 and especially 800 recently, and earlier his false dialog with FA @ 256-265 and 390ish set off alarm bells for me. Finally, I found the following posts scummy, 273, 321, 357, 645.

You can find more elaboration on what I found scummy about these posts in my post @ 702, along with a fairly strong case presented by VP @ 643.

unvote Achilles, vote MafiaMann

[SerialClergyman]

That's the second time you've voted MafiaMann for about 3 seconds before switching VP Baltar...

[SerialClergyman]

Your response doesn't really address the concern. You felt MM was scummy enough for a vote, made a large case on him, then dropped it totally to vote Mastin. The wagon on Mastin falls over after a claim, so you go back to your main case. Then just as some people join your wagon (presumably a good thing if you genuinely think MM is scum) you switch your vote right off again.

Do you think Mufasa is scummier than MM? It looks to me like you are happy to have the appearance of doubting him but fail to want any pressure on him at all.

Look at the pressure you managed to exert on Mastin, contrast it with the pressure you've exerted on MM - 2 votes with unvotes soon after. You weren't afraid of people joining the Mastin bandwagon, nor were you afraid of their lack of reasons for joining it, nor were you concerned about the status of the deadline. What's changed with MM?

If I felt the need to comment on other parts of the game, I probably would have. Is there something you feel I'm missing or quiet on?

[SerialClergyman]

Baltar - it's not that your reasons are poor in isolation, it's that your behaviour has radically changed since the last wagon. You are a lot weaker on MM than you were on Mastin. And if that weren't odd enough, this is the SAME PERSON you started making a good case against and then abandoned despite some promising leads earlier in the thread.

a) You regarded the MM case as 'just as strong' as the Mastin case when questioned about how likely you think Mastin is to be scum.

And I do think the case on MafiaMann is quite convincing, but I think the one against Mastin is just as convincing.

So it's not due to an imbalance in the cases that you're treating them differently.

b) You say that your most recent reason for moving off of MM is that people are joining without reason and there is a deadline approaching and we have time. But on Mastin's wagon, you seemed to care about neither of these issues.

KK I hope you don't replace out because I think Mastin is lynchable today and then everyone will be better off. I'm sure his scum partners are even considering lynching him at this point.

We're at 7 votes now, we only need four more. SC and anyone not voting Mastin, I ask you to use reason here. You can't honestly believe that Mastin is being effective at scumhunting or helping the town in any way. This matter is only going to resolve in either him or I being dead. Vote for whoever you think is acting more scummy and let's be done with these giant walls of back and forth that are making this game a drag.

Inconsistency, ahoy! LAL! More Mastin votes, plz!

Also, voting Mastin is pro-town.

If you agree with these points please Unvote, Vote Mastin

Could the following people please explain whether or not you think Mastin is town based on the above points (not necessary if you simply vote):

It seems clear to me you had no eye on the deadline and were prepared to lynch straight away, and you actively encouraged people to jump on the bandwagon without applying reasoning.

c) It goes against your stated intentions about how you want to procede with the day, words that applied to Mastin but are forgotten when talking about MM (twice)

There comes a point in a mafia game where you just have to pick a target and get that target lynched. Sure, some people hopped on the Mastin wagon without stating reasons, but in fairness what else were they going to say really? I gave a wealth of good reasons for him needing to be dead. I don't think there was a lot more to add. I'm sure there were some scum jumping on that wagon, but that doesn't mean I should stop a lynch from going forward on a person I think is likely scum. The fact that we likely have multiple mafia factions in this game means that almost every wagon until closer to endgame is going to have have scum hopping on it. All I can do is try to get my targets lynched and pay attention to voting patterns for analysis later.

All of that adds up to treating players in a markedly different way, in fact, in stark contrast, I'd argue.

My opinion on Mufasa is that he joins the arms-length long list of players in this game who turn up to post a sentence or two every now and then, often without decent reasons or much interaction with the game. I prefer the case on MafiaMann because I think there's more evidence against him and I think his reaction to the recent episode with Mastin was just as bad.

[SerialClergyman]

Ok, so you agree that his reasoning is bad. The fact is that you're really buzz killing any kind of pressure that was being put on him to make him explain his actions, SC. This is really the point of my vote and it's useless now because you're sidetracking it into my reasoning for voting MM and Mastin. The fact is (which I was forced to state thanks to your questioning) that I am still am going to vote MM for today's lynch. Pressure votes don't mean anything if you say they are there for pressure. So thanks for that.

Even if I accepted everything you write here as truth, and there's no reason to assume that, it still doesn't answer my question. The fundamental part of my point was why are you treating MM and Mastin so differently? You seemed to have no interest in voting other suspicious players or providing pressure votes a couple of days ago - I say again, what has changed?

[SerialClergyman]

Mastin's playstyle and people not reading his posts explains why your attacks were longer and involved more content. They don't explain why you didn't attack/vote other people and it doesn't explain why you didn't care about deadlines/people joining without reason. After the 4th or so attempt at answering the question

Having completely different ways of attacking different players can obviously be a scum tell. They indicate that you are treating two people who may be scum differently, which can indicate inside knowledge on one rather than the other or different intentions towards one rather than the other.

Add to that the cases were made literally right next to each other on D1 and that you've dropped your case against mafiamann twice now and you have textbook distancing.

[SerialClergyman]

Not really. Everyone approaches the game differently, and thus would require a different approach to catch scum. IMO, there aren't hard and fast rules for catching scum that would apply to every player on this site.

That's another non-answer because you aren't changing your style to effectively catch MM. Are you suggesting that your plan for catching MM out as scum is to accuse him and promptly unvote him twice today?

Also, your charge of me distancing from MM is ridiculous for two reasons: 1) We have had no flips and know no ones alignment. 2) I am the person who brought the only substantial case against MM and have never said I would not lynch him today. I very much would.

1) Hey - I'm voting him, not you. I still see him as scummier. I'm just noting things I find suspicious, especially when they take several replies to try to answer. But you were never concerned about people not having flipped when you questioned Mastin about buddying.
2) I go by action, not whether or not you've declared you would or wouldn't lynch him. For all the reasons I've given you, it looks like you don't want to lynch him.

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry VP - I don't understand the first two points you made.

Everyone approaches the game differently, and thus would require a different approach to catch scum. IMO, there aren't hard and fast rules for catching scum that would apply to every player on this site.

In response to your argument that each player needs to be attacked differently, I make the point that your change in style hasn't been to effectively target MafiaMann (then speculate on what might have been the reason for it.)
You then say that 1) it's only my opinion that you haven't changed your style to attack MafiaMann but also
2) that you aren't suggesting that your changing actions were part of a plan to catch MafiaMann.

My question is this - if your justification for changing attacking styles is that you should adapt when attacking each person and attack them differently, can you show how your change in styles when attacking MafiaMann is a more effective way to attack him than your attack on Mastin?

Your point about buddying is a fair one, that's a distinction between buddying and distancing that I hadn't considered. It's possible to buddy scum->town but not possible to distance any other way than scum->scum.

Your willingness to base your vote largely off my case and call me scummy at the same time continues to make me less and less comfortable with that lynch.

Getting less confortable with the lynch? How surprising, given just last post you 'very much would' like to lynch him. It's not like you've found quick and easy reasons to get off his case twice already in the thread.

And as for my reasons, you'll find them already stated. Some are based on what you've written, some are not and either way - my problem is that you are making a strong case and not going through with it, which as we've just seen with Mastin is not like you, and you're a repeat offender when it comes to MM. I'm trying to hold you accountable to your own case.

MafiaMann on the other hand has looked scummy as anything over the recent Mastin wagon, to go with his earlier behaviour. Specifically, posts 715, 742-3, 819 and especially 800 recently, and earlier his false dialog with FA @ 256-265 and 390ish set off alarm bells for me. Finally, I found the following posts scummy, 273, 321, 357, 645.

You can find more elaboration on what I found scummy about these posts in my post @ 702, along with a fairly strong case presented by VP @ 643.

unvote Achilles, vote MafiaMann

[SerialClergyman]

I take issue with the fact that you seem to be saying that your goal is to lynch MM rather than to find out more about his alignment. I infer this from the bolded sections. The first you are saying that achieving a lynch means you are effective in going after a suspect. In the second you seem to say that you have the support of others in lynching MM so you don't have to push as hard since you can do it at your leisure. I don't think MM's alignment has been proven so I would question your motive in voting MM.

Yeah, you're going to have to explain this one better, Namttam. No one's alignment is going to be proven, yet we're all going ot be wanting ot lynch someone. My point, (which I think we've done to death), was that he was overly soft on MM.

I'm not buying the wagon on rofl. He looks town to me.

[SerialClergyman]

Well, it's a pretty standard meta for rofl, he has been adamant about not lynching the claimed miller which I agree with, he's been consistent in his viewpoints and hasn't been wishy-washy. These are all things I value.

Why do you think MafiaMann is town?

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry KMD, I remembered you answered that question earlier, I just found it. Meh, gut. I can see plenty of things that would benefit scum - trying to suss out opinions, making dicey cases.. 357 is a good example but there's a history of it, imo.

And the ease of creating a wagon, well there were a number of lazy transfer votes but it's stalled a fair way from the pointy end. That and VP unvoted despite, according to him, being the main driver of the wagon. I'm suspicious because it's so hard to get even people who seem to suspect him to get the wagon to a decent level.

[SerialClergyman]

Yeah, simulposted you - my bad. See above.

[SerialClergyman]

A claim from MM is probably a good idea too, for all ye hammer-happy people.

I'm also inclined to policy vote anyone who says 'Oh cheese!'

[SerialClergyman]

Mod please note my sig. Thanks.

[SerialClergyman]

I'd hammer if I weren't already voting you.

re: MM--the problem is that he is claiming V/LA until the 7th and he hasn't posted anywhere else on the site since his last post here. I still think he has been reasonably scummy enough that we can lynch him without worry, but I'm starting to doubt he is going to claim. If anyone on the wagon (or off I suppose) is uncomfortable with this, you need to speak up now and not expect a free pass tomorrow because 'we had a deadline and no other choice'.

Nice re-reading and catch. Pro-town.

[SerialClergyman]

Yep well, no surprise to see two mafia groups.

I'm going to go and re-read Zazie to see if I can see any links between players. Clearly there was a link between Mastin and herself with a bit of buddying going on. and aside from that she just pushed for a lynch on the claimed miller, which makes sense as scum. Perhaps it's worth having a look at those who were a little too convinced by her.

KK - no reaction to Zazie's death? The single person who pushed for your death more than any other dies? Perhaps you aren't surprised? Just becuase you specifically were blocked (if you were) doesn't mean if you're scum you couldn't have your buddies kill her.

[SerialClergyman]

Yes Hayker, look at the bottom of the page, and there's a drop down menu where you can select who you want to view.

How on earth have you been at the site for that long and not known that.. I use iso viewing every second day..

Kise totally had Zazie at post 232 or so.. Zazie's over the top defence about how she knew there were two scumgroups was obvscum.

Throughout the thread, her major focus definitely seems to be pushing the KK wagon. She defends cKool, buddies with Mastin and Kise, defends Rotten. She asks for a prod on Mufasa, which I thought was al ittle unusual at the time (other players ahdn't posted for ages beforehand IIRC but she only chose to prod Mufasa). Perhaps that indicates Vermillion's kill flavour?

This cKool this is suspect.
Post 343 she defends cKool against Mastin and wicked again, one of the few times she goes against Mastin.
Post 419

I''m positive that ckool had said this a few times before already. I think even in the post which was possibly his largest post so far. So why did you only point it out now?

Post 420

But ckool strikes me as newbtown

Post 423

Quote:
HoS: ckool (it's evident why)


Even if this is so, an elaboration would be appreciated.

More on posts 464, 520, 521, 618 and probably more. There's a big pattern of this defence and I don't see it anywhere else in her play.

I'll do a re-read of cKool tomorrow and see what I can find. Would like ot hear your thoughts on things Mastin given you essentially claimed then disappeared ><

[SerialClergyman]

Also the neighbor thing - as far as I'm aware, they don't know each others alignments, so even if we got the neighbor Mufasa was talking to, we couldn't guarantee that they were town, so there's no point to them claiming. Is that right?

[SerialClergyman]

In my eyes, I am seeing evidence that further supports my theory of four killing factions with one of them being blocked.

And only your eyes, Mastin...

3 kills, 3 flavours. You're assuming that if there's a 4th kill faction, they (and only they) have been stopped both times, when the alternative is that there are just 3 kill factions? Looking at the situation above, excepting ofr a lucky doc protect or jailkeeper or similar, the only real way that could happen is if both of your roleblocking manuevers hit home. Maybe have a look at the same evidence through someone else's eyes

Mind you, I'm not even sure how this dialog helps that much. I suppose if there were 4 killing factions and you blocked KK and lowell then you possibly found 2 scum, but that doesn't work if there were lucky docs or the like. At the moment, I'm going with Occham.

[SerialClergyman]

Based on what I recall from going over a few of his scum games, he tends to explain what he's doing more when he's scum.

QED'd, bitches! Sorry, but that's not exactly hugely comforting evidence. How would you read him if he was scum?

Namttam - why the VP vote? Did Zazie's flip surprise you or influence your decision in any way?

Hayker - what questions has rofl not answered? Who are your suspects?

Mastin - Where did you go? You're officially under suspicion, which should mean you're getting your jollies off and writing pages upon pages of material.

[SerialClergyman]

How do you categorise his posts about KK, detailing why it's a bad idea to lynch the claimed miller. They are probably his most verbose contribution to the game, do you think that counts as explaining what he's doing? (not trying to get in your face, genuine question. I know rofl's meta hides his alignment but it's about time we looked at people like rofl, empking's alt, lowell etc who are coasting without much in the way of suspicion based on meta.)

[SerialClergyman]

I'm re-reading form last night and only just got up to 1023, but VP pastes cKool cold so I'm voting right now.

vote cKool

I'll post a content post if I get time after a read.

[SerialClergyman]

Hehe

I'm now epically embarrassed, seeing that there was only 2 posts to go. Nothing to see here people, move along...

[SerialClergyman]

OK content -

KMD - how did you not see a connection between cKool and Zazie when it was discussed right at the start of the day? Check out post 1041

What was impressive about VPs case to me was that it wasn't just drawing a link to Zazie, it used that coupled with his terrible posts about voting KK. He is always confused about KK, always confused about why he's voting KK. He looks absolutely like he's being led by Zazie, and puts the coaching and defending relationship he's had with her all game into context. It's perfectly clear to me that he was voting KK because Zazie was pushing so hard for it and he didn't really know what else.

In addition, did the Kise kill come out of the blue for anyone else? He didn't really do anything in the game, except he did manage to find both ckool and zazie scummy. Would be a perfect time to off him.

-----

rofl - I am finding the relationship between you and Xyl something ot keep an eye on. Xyl is more than ready to clear you on meta, gives us one idea of how we could not clear you (ie if you start explaining your actions more) and then, as far as I can tell, you start explaining your actions more and he says you're protown again. For example:

Based on what I recall from going over a few of his scum games, he tends to explain what he's doing more when he's scum.

i'm still paranoid about people attempting to save mastin. however, i'm virtually positive baltar is town so his attempt to get the alternative wagon going isn't as unsettling as kmd's.

^ this is town-roflcopter to my eye

Those two seem to contradict each other. rofl actually posts some of what he's thinking and why for once in the game, and you latch onto it as being rofltown, which seems to be against your original point.

Even this post:

If he was scum and not explaining what he's doing? I'd look for a few things. You need a high tolerance for suspicion to pull off that playstyle, so I'd look for evidence that he cares if people find his playstyle scummy. I'd also look for signs that he's holding back opinions or lurking more than normal. And I normally have some idea what he's thinking, so I'd get worried if I didn't have any.

Things like holding back opinions or lurking more than normal seem to be exact opposites of explaining what he's doing.

This could just be a lost in translation thing, but I dont' like the relationship between Xyl and rofl. It looks like Xyl could clear anything based on an ill-defined meta read.

-----

Some things of note from Mastin's game as scum in Polygamist mafia:

He gets prodded multiple times, his activity wanes. That's definiteily similar to this game.
He OMGUS votes a bit

On the other hand,
He talks down policy votes, where he semi policy votes Kahn in this game.
He seems less over-the-top frustrated and intense in his posts, he seems more genuine in his scumhunting this game.

Overall, I think analysing this then analysing our game definitely hurts Mastin's meta argument, well worth a read.

At the moment though, cKool is the play of the day for me by a long shot.

[SerialClergyman]

I'd prefer him to follow this advice, but a claim is probably warranted at this time too.

[SerialClergyman]

ckool - why did you decide to vig Konowa on N0?

[SerialClergyman]

Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't be vigging on d0. You're just offing a random person, you've got much more chance to do harm than good. Plus, an SK doesn't affect balance greatly in a large game cos of the chance of mafia kills.

Having said that, I think mufasa was more likely to be a vig kill than an SK kill, and the reason for killing Konowa seems more vig-ly than SK-ly.

Could you go through your thought processes for why you killed Mufasa? And why are you accepting ideas from people in general about tonight, aren't you worried that scum will guide you in the wrong direction?

unvote

[SerialClergyman]

I think the thought of auto-vigging two people who agree ot be auto-vigged is probably not in the best interest of the town, given the only people who agree ot that are likely to be town.

What if we had ckool target mastin, and mastin roleblock him? That'd go some way to working out if anyone was lying.

[SerialClergyman]

Actually, I'm just a bad player. It wouldn't tell us if Mastin was mafia or not, if ckool was SK or vig, if ckool even has a killing ability or if mastin even has roleblocking (given we likely have another mafia doctor out there somewhere).

So never mind me, lack of ability and all..

[SerialClergyman]

Actually - that raises an interesting point.

We've already had one mafia doctor die, and we know there's two mafia groups. So unless the mafia groups are somehow imbalanced, which seems unlikely to me, there's another mafia doctor out there. Which means it's entirely likely that rofl is putting forward this idea knowing he has protection at night.

SerialClergyman is town. Bad idea, but he's town.

I'm glad my lack of intelligence is a town tell

[SerialClergyman]

Wouldn't it be unfair to have two scumgroups with different makeups? I'm not saying it's impossible, and I havne't played many (coughanycough) large player games, but just on fairness I thought it was a decent assumption.

[SerialClergyman]

His lurking is getting ridiculous at this point. Of course, it's also reminiscent of the scum meta he provided.

^^ This.

If Mastin doesn't appear soon I'll join.

[SerialClergyman]

Irritating

[SerialClergyman]

ckool - it means something like enthusiastic and sincere and possibly naive mixed together.

[SerialClergyman]

*DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING*

Time's up.

Mastin's had stacks of time to start posting properly, he did lie about when he came back (he's been posting like mad in jungle mafia), once he claimed and Zazie died he's gone completely silent when he is under great suspicion, something that's supposed to fire him up and get him involved with the game. Too much time, too many chances.

vote: Mastin

[SerialClergyman]

I got an innocent result from Kmd last night too.

[SerialClergyman]

Firstly a disclaimer: I can't post as much content as I have been due to lack of time and access.

I'll give some thoughts over the last 4 or 5 pages.

I think rofl didn't bus. He's either vermillon or none. I continue ot think that if one scum faction has a doctor, there's a better-than-usual chance that the other one will have one as well, and rofl could well have made that gambit knowing he had a doc (or a roleblocker) in reserve to make sure he didn't die.

Kmd's U-turn on rofl has me utterly confused. I've never seen someone make that kind of extreme flip. Kmd - you very much glazed over your reason for your transformation - perhaps it's not significant to you but it's really significant to us. Could you please post the full paragraph you removed and point out the bad logic? At the moment, you've gone form being prepared to die yourself for a chance to get rofl killed to ignoring that he was on both wagons in your bandwagon analysis.

I think Hayker's Sucks To Be Us is a minor point, but it's unusual for someone with a low activity to suddenly be there at the ready at the start of D3.

I think people who are deciding which class of scum to lynch are really pushing their own ability to find scum. Either that or they're just a hell of a lot better than me at it. If I was sure that the person I was targeting was scum I'd lynch them, regardless of which faction they belong to. And as much as they could cross-kill, so could they not - the longer we have 2 scum groups against us, the longer we lose an extra person each night. In fact, as I write this I'm more and more suspicious of those who are pushing this line - I'd prefer to have the time to make more lynches than hope that the mafia get it right and kill their opposing faction.

I think rofl mentioning it is a null tell, but I think all of the people that accepted it without actually thinking about it could well be vermillion trying to distance themselved from his theory.

I read molestargazer's post attacking those on the mastin wagon as pro-town but misguided.

KMD mentions empking being mufasa's neighbor in a weird way. It's not really relevent or insightful or does anything significant at all. It just didn't sit well with me.

I did a brief run through of VPs posts to try to find a breadcrumbed investigation but couldn't, I'll have another look when I get a chance though.

I think the little wagon on rofl yesterday has a good chance of finding scum. I'm not ruling out rofl from being scum, but I think that the last cerulean could well try to use his gambit as a reason to attack him (you're prepared to die via vig so we're going to kill you is a damn stupid argument). Of the two, mosestargazer made his point loudly and clearly and put his money where his mouth is, which I have always found pro-town. Namttam however was pretty weasly, and switched after a poor case on VP he had been riding since the day before, when he took up some reasoning of mine against VP.

That's enough to earn my vote.

vote Namttam

[SerialClergyman]

Wicked, asking for 5 scum suspects is over the top, given it's most likely that there's only 3 scum left in the game. At the moment I think we can afford to be a little more considered than another spray and pray list.

To give you an idea, I think Namtam is the scummiest based on his own posting (not looking at gamestate.) His posts ride on other people's work, which is something I've never liked, and his targets have been suspicious. From the latter stages of D1 - He voted KK for much of D1, then VP Baltar at the end of D1 and through D2 until he voted rofl in the same post he says he's convinced ckool is scum and never unvotes. Each time he voted he gives either little reason or uses the reasons other people have made. I'm going to re-read him further when I have some more mafia time.

I would be extremely surprised if at least 1 of KMD, rofl and Xyl were not scum. I think each of those players are interacting with each other in such a way that at least one of them is looking to manipulate to gain an advantage. I think if rofl is scum he would be vermillion, and that would make Xyl probably vermillion with him. I explained why I think there may be a link between those two on D2, but essentially it's due to Xyl taking suspicion off rofl via a meta argument that he then seemed to contradict. KMD has done a few things to tweak my radar, some of which I posted in the post above (U-turn on rofl + mentioning neighbor for zero reason).

I have a lot of nulls due to meta or lurking. I think that Achilles is being prodded as we speak and could well be replaced. Lowell's meta excuses his low post count/content but makes a read hard.

Why do you ask, Wicked?

[SerialClergyman]

Zzz..

Sleep overnight, pages of content in the morning, re-reading getting all excited then go to post and it's hold all discussion day ><

*shakes fist*

[SerialClergyman]

Ok, so at the moment we have the following roles claimed or discovered:

Jailkeeper
Cop
Vig
Neighbor 1a
Neighbor 1b
Neighbor 2a
Neighbor 2b
Mason A
Mason B

That's quite a few roles, let alone whatever other roles are out there. However, it isn't absolutely impossible, especially given that of the 3 scum we've caught, 2 of them had a power role. So we should expect the scum to be pretty powerful. Also, it's probable we don't have a doctor because ckool died, unless wicked drew protection with his 'innocent verdict' comment.

Is it worth asking for the other neighbor to claim? It won't tell us anything about alignment or roles at all, because the whole point about neighbors are that they are unconfirmed, but it will confirm mole's story that he was a neighbor, and eliminiate the possibility that mufasa and empking were neighbors and whether mole is trying to coast by on his claim.

But then, since neighbors are unconfirmed, it doesn't make sense for mole to make a fake claim that doesn't even save his bacon.

I'll give you my whole thinking - My suspicion is that if there are 3 mason-like roles, and 2 of them are called neighbors, unless that's a very arbitrary balancing issue, I suspect at least 1 of the 4 neighbors to be mafia. Hence the whole point of the setup - some are neighbors so that the alignments don't have to be confirmed, so that one of them can be mafia.

The problems with this theory - almost untestable, and doesn't explain how it would work with two mafia groups. IE it would give one group an advantage (maybe vermillion? Because cerulean already have two pretty strong power roles?). But that throws out the 'mafia groups have the same setup' theory.

In short, about the claims - I think it's possible we have 2x neighbors and 1x masons but I suspect one of the neighbors to have scum in the pair. If we get a claim from the remaining neighbor - that doesn't help scum, but it will confirm there being 2 sets and we can then have a look and see if one of the remaining neighbors look particularly scummy.

[SerialClergyman]

rofl - I had a look at the selective scumhunting and found it to be an exact description of your play...

players who focus on a specific scum faction or factions in a game with multiple known scum factions are likely to be scum themselves

or 2) a player all-but-ignores a specific scum faction or factions when scumhunting. Case 1) is a weak tell, Case 2) is fairly strong.

As poster boy for the 'lets focus on one scum group' philosophy, how does this not apply to yourself even more?

I agree to a degree about Xyl, but the points that get me more than the emoticon defence or selective scumhunting are the logical issues, especially the logic that went 'Namttam is scummy with Mastin therefore he's Vermillion scum' - 'Mastin wasn't Vermillion' - 'Yeah but if Wicked is Cerulean, Namttam must be Vermillon'. That whole logical progression was rubbish.

[SerialClergyman]

rofl - I agree totally with everything you posted but I don't feel it answers the question.

The scumtell you pointed us to says that people who focus on one group exclusively are likely to be scum.

You have made no secret that you are focusing on one group exclusively.

Why should I not think you scummy based on the tell you yourself are using?

[SerialClergyman]

Ah, fair enough. I take your point(s).

I'm not sure I agree with you about the strategic consequences, certianly that it's not cut and dried. If we assume there's only 1 blue scum to go, then that's 1 less night kill if we lynch him, and that's therefore more lynches we get to make. As I said earlier, I'd prefer to have more chances to lynch scum than hoping that the scum cross kill each other.

What do you think about the neighbor issue? Do you think there's a liklihood of scum within the 2 neighbor pairings (provided there are 2)?

[SerialClergyman]

WTF? I might believe his neighbor claim if a 4th neighbor came out of the woodworks, but to take it at face value? No way.

You have to admit that claiming a role that doesn't even prevent him from being scum completely out of the blue is pretty inexplicable. I tend to believe him just because I can't imagine why he would have fakeclaimed at that time.

I'd like to point out that none of these three are confirmed town by a long shot. I understand you've got your whole "scum will target town-confirmed people" strategy going, but what's stopping you from being Vermillion and pushing your scumbuddies as confirmed? Or being Cerulean and buddying up to people to try to sway their votes?

I don't understand this at all. Perhaps it's just me being thick, but why can't rofl just be posting his scummiest -> towniest list? Obviously if he's scum he's be lying..? And it's not like any of the people he calls scum are 'confirmed'...

Xyl - there's actually a lot more than you're giving credit for, I think. What about the logical inconsistency in your view of the namttam case?

[SerialClergyman]

In a previous game we all claimed 'not-mason' when a mason partner of a killed mason wasn't coming forward. We could do the same to flush out the silent neighbor (if there is one).

Faraday, you're correct, I didn't quite apply the tell properly. I went through this with rofl.

[SerialClergyman]

rofl - do you think xyl has a connection to zazie? Whenever you've talked about your theory that it's easy to guess which faction players are in you mention connections between players, but despite an extensive case you haven't gone back and had a look for this link.

I started on nam's wagon early in the day. There are a group of suspects who I'm now sussing out, xyl is one of them. I still hold that the interactions and posturing between rofl, xyl and kmd suggest to me that atl east one of them is scum, and it hasn't gone unnoticed that kmd backed off from the discussion greatly after I said that.

Xyl -

I was riding the bus on the way to work, and thinking about my (gut) case on Wickedestjr. Obviously since I was not giving much in the way of reasons he had no way of defending himself, and there was of course a possibility I was totally wrong. I was playing through the inevitable conversation - "How am I supposed to defend myself" "Just find someone who's willing to tell me I'm wrong about you being scummy" - and realized that I didn't need to wait for wickedestjr to bring it up, I could just ask for the reality check myself. I figured that if he's scum, his scumbuddies would be hesitant to go on record defending him, and if they did it would be something to link them later. And if I really was just crazy, some townie should come out and say so. I get a check on my read, and help build connections if he turns out to be scum. Win-win.

This seems totally over-elaborate to me. I wasn't particularly fussed about that point, it just looked like you were strongly advocating your position, which I respect and consider pro-town. But this is such a roundabout way of talking through a simple statement - it looks to me like you're particularly sensitive about the criticism of it.

Same sort of thing in posts 1652-4. You think Cerulean mafia is better to lynch, then 4 minutes later you change your mind, then 10 minutes after that you say you're happy with lynching either. The whole progression looks overly sensitive of anticipated criticism.

And what's with the post above asking wicked if on of his posts is a breadcrumb? Either it's a breadcrumb and he tells you about it, or it's not - it's not like there are accidental breadcrumbs in his posts that you find and then he comments on.

Wicked -

2: Somebody, I think VP, said that they read Kmd in iso and got an innocent read on him (an innocent result from reading Kmd in iso). I had also read Kmd in iso night one, so I said that I had gotten an innocent result too. I was not intending on directing the doc protection, but I don't think I did.

What makes you think that you didn't draw a protection from a doc?

Is reward greater than risk if we lynch one of the claimed masons today? If they flip scum, we've got another caught right away. If they flip mason, the most we do is confirm the other.

next post

No, testlynching would be dumb. We only lynch if we think they are scum. Right now, I'm nowhere near sure enough. Moar Nam votes plz, kthx.

Looks like an epic backtrack to me. The first post could well be feeling out a test lynch. You aren't saying that you think they are scummy enough to lynch anyway, you are discussing the advantages and disadvantages to lynching one of them despite the claim.

Because there's a difference between posting "here's *my* list" and "here's the town's list". roflcopter is doing the latter.

What rubbish. I hate arguments like that. Do you think anyone would seriously be swayed into accepting rofl's list as fact because he didn't put in an 'i think' or 'to me'?

Unlikely? molestargazer did agree to the "Let's testlynch the masons" idea shortly after his claim.

So your theory is that he is scum, invented a new neighbor position in order to try to get us to lynch one of the masons?

What do you think of the case on Xyl?

Lowell - please comment on the mufasa's alt comment. Are you his neighbor?

[SerialClergyman]

Lowell - at one point you claim to be mufasa's alt as a reason for voting Masitn. In your next post you say something like 'not really, I just didn't want ot think up a reason.'

Given mole has claimed neighbor with empking, that leaves Mufasa's neighbor still unknown. Some poeple including myself though that your comment could have been a breadcrumb of some kind that you were neighbor with mufasa.

Is that theory correct?

[SerialClergyman]

Wicked - that post explains why you think a doctor wouldn't protect you over ckool. But we know for a fact that if there is a doctor, he didn't protect ckool (though there is some possibility that there's another mechanic like a roleblocker blocking him).

So doesn't this point to the possibility that you drew the protection of a doc?

[SerialClergyman]

1125- ckd votes ckool
1186- wicked votes ckool after convincing himself [----, mastin the other suspect]
1206- SC votes ckool [-, protecting mastin]
1220- KK votes ckool
1223- hayker votes ckool
1228- xyl votes ckool
1237- rofl votes ckool

Yeah, Lowell, love your impartial analysis there.

[SerialClergyman]

I disagree with KK about Hayker starting a wagon on someone else. Lowell would be up on my scumlist and if Hayker isn't comfortable with one of the wagons, why shouldn't he try to vote who he thinks is most scummy?

I have had real trouble getting onto the site in recent days so I apologise for my lack of activity. I was, I think, the first to vote Namttam today, so I don't know why you're surprised.

Your attacks on JR and VP were always suspicious. You tried to piggyback on a point I was calling him up on day 1 and the attacks never made sense, see my post @ 976. (also, it was the second time I caught you piggybacking.) But at one point you dismissed the case on VP when he replaced but then brought it up again later, which was never answered well (see 752).

Your vote on VP at the start of D2 ignored all of the information from the flips, as did your case on KK. You've done very little to prod or scumhunt properly. Even at this moment, when you have a wagon against you and you could be lynched, if you were town, I'd expect you to be providing information and scumhunting that we could use the next day. The most you seem to be prepared to do is ask for people to provide a case on you.

So that's the part of my suspicions that haven't already been pointed out by everyone else.

[SerialClergyman]

The problem wasn't that he was reading the first post, the problem that he was typing his 'thoughts' while re-reading and happening to be 100% correct on every issue until he was called out on it. As someone who actually went through a re-read and then played the game out, things haven't been anywhere near as clear as Spyrex was saying.

[SerialClergyman]

You are correct about him saying his opinions after he knows whether they are true ort not on the re-read, but it was a post-as-he-read so presumably we are to take it as an asumption he build by reading and then posts to confirm truth. But in your list above, KMD pointed out his surprising accuracy rate the post before he wrote the 'Oh, I'll be damned' post.

So until that point, he says that Mastin was absolutely definitely scum (1), rofl lowell mufasa etc are crazy for switching to mafiamann (which means he successfully read that guy as town, (2) ), that Zazie was no surprise when she flipped (3) and that we guaranteed have a protown killing role (4). Then ckool shyouldn't be the lynch (5) and then ckool was obviously the vig (6).

So that's 6 assumptions that happened to be correct until he was called out on his surprising success rate then the very post after that he started showing some signs of weakness in his Nostradamus-like ability.

It's not hugely scummy in and of itself, it just means (imho) he had a cheat-sheet look at the first page and then talked up his own read of the game. That and I've gone a re-read from when I replaced in, and I'm sure others have done full rereads (ckd and kmd both come to mind?) and it took me probably 4 hours of solid reading and checking to do some of the first day and when I was done I had some idea of who was scummy, but nothing dramatically concrete.

Spyrex managed to come in, re-read it in about an hour or so and make six correct assumptions out of six before being called on it. A feature of my game is the gutwrenching uncertainty that I have whenever I play this game, I get frustrated and run myself into loops thinking about who could be who. Whenever I see evidence of someone who just doesn't have that at all I can't help but think it partially scummy.

[SerialClergyman]

Up to page 28 and I swear if you haven't killed Mastin the "OHH GOD I AM SO SCUM IT IS OOZING FROM MY PORES" I will kill a kitten.

How is that not intended to be seen as an opinion while he reads? He's up to a certain point, he doesn't know whether we've lynched Mastin or not, but he's essentially saying 'so far I think he's scummy'.

[SerialClergyman]

Well you're either over the top hot shit and a hell of a lot better than me, or you're just lying. No way many of the things you think were blindingly obvious were close to obvious for me. I couldn't see any difference between Mastin's normal play and his play for most of D1, it was only in D2 when his playstyle changed dramatically that I started to think he was worth voting. I never thought Zaz was scummy apart from one small moment, I completely thought ckool was scum, especially on the zaz flip.

All this could just be a record of my failings, but we've had 20 odd people in this game and noone has come close to that level of reading of the game, that I know of.

Lets say you WERE right and I read it and pretended I am superawesome man in a proven two scum group setup if I am scum.

Wouldn't I just be setting myself up for a NK?

Well, this question is odd for three reasons...
1) The WIFOM of it all,
2) I don't see any reason why doing what I assumed you'd be doing would make you more likely to be night killed. All it looked like you were doing was bignoting your reads, possibly to try to add some emphasis to your future reads.
3) If your logic is that claiming to be awesome puts a target on your back, why would you now go to a lot of trouble to bring that up and confirm it?

[SerialClergyman]

Xyl - if the first post obviously intends to be viewed as 'post as you go', then surely the next ones would as well? Unless your point is the first one was made at page 28 but the rest were made after looking at what has happened?

Either way that argument is a red herring - Spy posted above saying that he was indeed posting as he go and he did indeed just get it right.

[SerialClergyman]

I wasn't around when he claimed scum in the RVS. I replaced in towards the end of D1, and I thought most of Mastin's posts were scumhunting Mastin. I didn't like certain elements of his play (his breadcrumb was weak, his claim that tells don't apply to him was a weak way of deflecting criticism, his caring about which scum faction etc) but no, I didn't think he was obviously mafia at all. And most of the attacks against him at the time were things like his posting style is long and obsfucating, which was so obviously within meta it wasn't worth it. I got the impression most of the Mastin wagon in D1 were there because he was irritating. It was later in D2 when his meta changed and his main contribution was a poor theory about 4 night kills that I started seriously thinking he was scum.

However - all this is a barely relevant aside to the point - Spy claims to have just nailed every major issue for the first couple of days on a re-read that couldn't have been thorough. I thought it was just bignoting, but if on reflction he's standing by his claim that's something a little more dicey, to my mind.

Reading the first post is scummy??

Wasn't your point, Xyl, that he obviously was talking with hindsight? Why no reaction when you read that he says he didn't?

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry, simulposted you.

Well - your post saying you made it 'more clear' was actually a change in stance - you originally said he had read the first post, now you're amending that to say he hasn't.

And while I can handle people being right about things more than I can, it's the amount that I find scummy. You didn't include Zazie because he said it after the flip, but it reads like it was a read he made before the flip. In fairness though he isn't claiming MafiaMann as town, so fair enough there.

[SerialClergyman]

I think that's a fair rule to apply to people like Empking or whatever who contribute zero to the game, but Mastin seemed to be pointing out tells and attacking people, (despite doing so in a clusterfuck of crap) and that seemed to be a poor choice of lynch target round 1.

[SerialClergyman]

There were only two major issues for the first couple of days? Really? You're stretching. He didn't take any position at all on MafiaMann, for example.

This is a fair point.

[SerialClergyman]

1) Note you didn't say 'as scum' at the end of that question. I'm not really sure is the answer. I imagine you could use it to give further weight to the rest of your claims.. I read the game brilliantly so far, so listen to me now. It's not hugely powerful, but I could turn that question on you and say assume truth - what good does it do then for you as town?
2) I think the issues you mentioned before being called on it were most of the major issues from the early part of the game and were all 100% right.
3) Sorry, what? What does the fact we have competing wagons have to do with anything? Are you suggesting that we have to ignore anything we might find suspicious that comes from anyone other than the two major wagons?

[SerialClergyman]

Zzz

Although I used to consider self-voting scummy, I have just played a game (Lumberjack Mafia) where we had two town self-hammer and one essentially give up on the game and it fucking shits me. If you're town, it's just not good enough to turn up and make other people show their reasoning for voting you. Stand up and tell us who you think is scum and why for god's sake. Or you know, actually defend yourself properly. If you're town, you still win if we win, but you're actively hurting us now if you're a townie who's self-voting so man up and actually do something to help your team.

If you're scum and just sulking, then /ignore.

[SerialClergyman]

I don't like

Hmmmm. Why would Vermillion kill roflcopter?

It reads as false to me. Plus - it's not even insightful or a genuine question. There's a damn good reason Vermillion would kill rofl - he's been constantly encouraging us to try to hunt for Vermillon rather than Cerulean. Either that, or he was the one pushing all of the momentum against you, but of course that path if fraught with wifom.

I agree that the last neighbor is almost certainly scum. Their failure to claim and the definite truth of molestar's flip means that almost certainly they are scum. I'm going to re-read.

I think it's entirely possible that Lowell and Xyl are different scum, Lowell as neighbor and Xyl for a multitude of reasons. Of the two, I think probably Lowell is more likely to be Vermillion, because the power role would be an obvious power role balancer with Cerulean's already flipped roles.

My vote can change pending a re-read but initially I'm voting Lowell.

Vote Lowell

[SerialClergyman]

Well, possibly because you rank spyrex and kmd in the 'certainly' town category. So that means you think they are more likely to be town than kk, which is odd in and of itself, but also that you can't even say maybe to the question of whether they are scum or not.

[SerialClergyman]

Your rankings we can disagree on, but youre playing a pretty silly game with semantics. You thnk kk is probaby town, not definitely. Sure. But then you say that Kmd and spy, while being in the definitely towncategory are people you are fairly confident of.

If the top group isn't definite, why not put kk up there if you think he's probably town?

[SerialClergyman]

Well, if people aren't keen to lynch Lowell until he speaks (overly cautious, especially because I don't know what he could say that he hasn't said already) perhaps we could genuinely discuss other possibilities and why. I think the case on Xyl remains relatively strong, and have been picking at things in his posts that irk me all day. I have trouble reading Spyrex because Achilles missed a lot of the big events in the game due to lurking and Spy hasn't been overly prolific in his cases. I feel the masons are almost certainly town, KK is almost certainly town, I think ckd is probably town. Faraday has been largely irrelevent to the game so far, I think the largest case he pushed was on Hayker which died after the mason claim. KMD has voted me because of his vote count analysis, which is fine but leaves me with nothing to say about it, really. He also seems uninterested in convincing anyone else about his apparant belief in my scumminess which seems to me to be either lazy or suspicious.

I possibly left someone out but I'm trying to give a general overview of my thoughts of the group at the moment. I agree with ckd in that it's odd that people seem almost resigned to a Lowell lynch but there's so few votes and so little fire. Perhaps that's the point of him not claiming and not answering the case, to dull the momentum of the wagon, but after looking at his breadcrumb again (alleged breadcrumb) it's still damning to me, especially since that neighbor had the chance to claim and didn't.

I think perhaps those who aren't voting Lowell, or at least aren't voting anyone, could start explaining why their votes are where they are and perhaps we can do something worthwhile for the next 5 or 6 days and try to investigate other leads, if the group doesn't have the guts to vote him?

[SerialClergyman]

I had a brief look to see who favoured lynching Xyl yesterday, given those same people have apparantly decided he's not scummy at all today (with the exception of Wickedestjr, who did vote him at the start of the day)

Xyl's wagon when 5 people were on it -

rofl, Lowell, CKD, Namttam and Wicked.

rofl town, namttam town, wicked town, that leaves CKD and Lowell.

After some time passes, Nam ends up at 6 votes and the wagon on Xyl shortens to rofl, Lowell and Wickedestjr.

Finally, Lowell hops off and hammers Namttam.

So unfortunately, my analysis hasn't really brought up much in the way of other suspects, the main person it points to is Lowell again.

One thing that the analysis does reveal though is that Faraday did indeed only push a case against Hayker. After the mason claim, he unvoted and never revoted on anyone else, which is at the least irrelevant as I said above and at the most a typical scummy fence-sit.

[SerialClergyman]

I am overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of the case against me.

Aside from the refusal to claim and the breadcrumb, Lowell's behaviour on the wagons yesterday was pretty damn scummy, as I pointed out in my post before. There's plenty of reasons for voting him.

Not to mention that the most amount of scummates he could have protecting him if it is a 3-man scum team is 1 at the moment, so why shouldn't his wagon move quickly?

[SerialClergyman]

Well - as I wrote above - Lowell has at least 3 good reasons to be scum, one of which I actually went and researched myself.

Your lack of vote seems to hinge on the idea that he couldn't possibly be being bussed AND that none of the people who haven't voted him could be scum, both of which I think are far-reaching assumptions.

[SerialClergyman]

Ok, let me rephrase. For your theory to be correct, both of those assumptions must be true. For that to be the most likely scenario, the probability of eiher of them being false has to be less than the probabilty of, among many other scenarios, the scummy guy with the breadcrumbs and the failure to claim and the suspicious wagon switch and hammer yesterday simply being scum.

[SerialClergyman]

I'm surprised the charge of IIoA helped convince anyone given you seem to just throw it out there for the hell of it without bothering to try to back it up with examples/quotes or even really try to convince anyone. It doesn't feel like you believe it to me, or that you really care about other people believing it. Not to mention IIoA is a lesser scumtell with more than one scum group.

But aside from that, in the last couple of days I've:

* My analysis of the bandwagon yesterday and the conclusion that Lowell acted the most scummy.
* My agreement with the case on Lowell aside from that and my suspicion at the fact the case against Xyl has been dropped completely.
* Attacked Faraday for his general non-stance in the game and suspicious non-committal yesterday after the Hayker wagon fell over.
* Pressured Spyrex on whether or not he lied when his predictions were surprisingly correct on his re-read.
* Attacked KK for trying to restrict Hayker's choice of vote towards the end of yesterday
* Attacked Lowell's biased summary
* Attacked KMD for his oscillating views on the masons
* Attacked Xyl for being overly sensitive to anticipated suspicion.

That's only going back to my iso post 62. I think I've done as much if not more work in trying to sniff out scum tells and scummy actions than most.

I'm almost certain you aren't scum, WIcked, whereas I'm much more suspicious of Xyl. So just double check your iso read with the above inyour mind, and read the game and the fg\low of it and ask yourself if I'm really just posting 'information' posts about the setup or if I'm genuinely trying to pressure people. I think it's pretty clear it's the latter, and Xyl is just trying to see what crap he can conjure.

[SerialClergyman]

Xyl, you throw out IIOA, I come back with actual examples showing why it's not, then you offer nothing in return bar 'your play speaks for itself' and a new theory about Faraday being my scumpartner. Your case loses traction by the minute.

Not to mention that I was the one who brought Faraday to consciousness recently and perhaps not having much interaction with a player I rate as irrelevent to the game should be unsurprising.

[SerialClergyman]

How does irrelevent mean safe to ignore? It means he's had no relevance, no strong impact on the game. My post, far from saying he should be ignored, was calling him out as scummy for not doing anything to advance the game! How could you possibly interpret my post pointing out that he never took a position after hayker claimed as me suggesting he should be ignored??

And if your argument is so damning, why do you only try it on AFTER your IIoA point crashes and burns?

Is this about me, or is this about derailng the Lowell wagon?

[SerialClergyman]

I am fed up with the argument that defending yourself makes you look scummy. It depends on how good the case against you is compared to how much evidence you have to back you up. You attacked me, I gave you many concrete examples of why the argument didn't stick and you had to retreat your issue to the backburner. You attack CKD on meta, saying he doesn't accuse people of backtracking etc unless he's scum. CKD defends himself and you switch angles, saying when he did use those tactics

as town

he was attacking someone who is town. In short - you've just seen two examples where you've attacked people and they've defended themselves and not looked scummy for it.

The reasons the results might be different with you is a) the case on you is more compelling and b) you can't summon up concrete examples to dispel the attack. You HAVE been switching your attacks, theories, ideas of who is scummy and why seemingly on a whim. You started a wagon and then derailed it. You rule out Lowell for being Cerulean because it'd unbalance the team but when the people you suspect start to outnumber the theory you suddenly decide there's uneven scum teams. Your cases are weak and your defences are weaker. Even your view on caring about whether Vermillon or Cerulean are targetted today has had a radical shift from yesterday, where you were repeatedly saying that you were looking for scummy behaviour, not relationships, and didn't care which faction we lynched.

Finally, you're very quick to put Lowell in the non-Vermillon category, but I've been searching the thread for why and the best answer I can see is that people you feel are scummy joined his wagon. I haven't seen one other bit of reasoning. That's just plain bad reasoning because it's entirely possible that Lowell's scummate(s) are prepared to bus when they saw the writing on the wall, at this stage of the game they can't afford to give away a relationship. Secondly, even if that was true, Lowell could only possibly have one or maybe two scummates out there - that's easily enough that their absense from the wagon was conspicuous. He hasn't been lynched yet - that means there's a good number of people uneasy with a Lowell lynch. And thirdly - the reason hinges on you being right about people who are scummy in the game, which is essentially just what you reckon. There's no rhyme nor reason to it more than that. Essentially, I disagree with all three of those points and think in fact it's very likely Lowell is Vermillon.

I've disliked your play today ever since you asked why roflcopter was killed in your first post day 4 (as if you couldn't work out why Vermillon wanted rofl dead - and as if it wouldn't be doubly plain to you given you were his top target all of day 3).

However, I think we'll be just as likely to hit scum and we'll have more information if we lynch Lowell. If we lynch Xyl and he flips scum, it's possible he was just buddying Lowell and trying to ditch the responsibility of leading the town astray. But if we lynch Lowell and hit scum (Vermillon) then I think we can definitely understand this derailing that Xyl is doing. Plus at least Xyl is having an active contribution to the game, whereas Lowell's distinct lack of caring about his or our fate reeks of resigned scum to me.

tl:dr - Xyl looks like scum, Lowell looks like scum, I still prefer a Lowell lynch.

[SerialClergyman]

For someone who is against giving certainties, you're sure prepared to ask for them. You're also prepared to assume an argument that will be made against you tomorrow if Lowell is town and are so concerned about it you're trying to refute it now. That just does not read as town to me at ALL.

However - to answer your question, I think it's most likely you are both scum together. However, I have limited information about the relationship between you. I know very little about Lowell's actions towards you but I know plenty about yours towards him (via your strong efforts to derail this wagon.)

Therefore, if I know that you are scum, I can conclude that your actions here were for one of many reasons - you're either defending your own faction, or someone who is not in your faction, or you wanted ot lynch someone else for your own reasons. If I know Lowell is scum, your defence of him is either you being a misguided townie or you being a scummate.

I think, therefore, that I'd prefer the second scenario, because I think I would be more sure about you being scum on a Lowell scumflip than Lowell being scum on a Xyl scumflip.

If the lynch comes up town it's back to the drawing board.

[SerialClergyman]

Yes, I do. Even if you feel the question is loaded, you can still answer it while pointing out it's loaded.

eg, Player X, are you rolefishing because you're scum or because you're a SK?
Response: Well, that's a loaded question because the answer is neither and I'm not rolefishing. You can see in posts blah blah and blah that I've been very careful to tread around the issue of role.

etc etc.

I see scum use your tactic all the time, Don johnson does it particularly well. You find a part of the argument that's a logical fallacy and then dismiss everything about it without tryign to get to the gist of the argument. Townies provide quotes, examples and reasoning to actually address the nub of the issue, even if the original attack was made in an unfair way. Scum can't use concrete examples because at their core they're hiding their true motivations so they resort to dismissing it any way they can and bypass the genuine issue brought up.

[SerialClergyman]

If you would be more sure about me being scum on a Lowell scumflip than vice versa, then you think it's more likely I am scum without Lowell than vice versa.

This statemtent isn't logically true. You are mixing up the stages.

Say A has 60% chance of being scum. (totally arbitrary percentage, I don't work in percentages)
Say B has 60% chance of being scum.

At the moment, there is no difference between A and B in terms of who to lynch.

Now say, if you knew A was scum, you think B moves to a 70% chance of being scum with A.
But if you knew B was scum, you think A has a 90% chance of being scum with B.

That means that now, if you lynch B, you will be able to confirm scum more powerfully, making B's lynch better now.

Really.

Do you think that fallacious arguments are still valid?

I can only assume you haven't read the rest of my post where I go on to describe exactly how I think a townie approaches an unfair question. Just because the question is made in a loaded way doesn't mean there's an obvious issue behind it that needs answering. I'll look at what I think the problem question was:

you are back tracking and contradicting to the extreme yourself to avoid this lynch, why?

Ok - it might be a loaded question as is, because you can't answer the question 'why' without accdepting all the stuff about backpeddalling. But if you were town, I would have expected an answer like, "That's a loaded question, I haven't been backpeddalling or contradicting myself at all. You can see why my reasoning shifted here, here and here, I've always believed this principle via post blah and I think my new approach has already netted scummy behaviour thanks to blah's post here." If you replaced all the blahs and heres with post numbers and quotes, you'd have had a real answer that I could get behind and believe.

So if you're telling me that you read his question and didn't get that surge of frustration at being wrongly accused and didn't want to go out and prove him wrong when he says you were backpeddalling and contradicting yourself and instead just thought well the question is phrased in an invalid way so I'll pretty much ignore the issue entirely, then yeah, that's dead scummy to me.

[SerialClergyman]

Xyl - if I followed your logic correctly, and God knows there was a lot of it, I think you're trying to separate the chance that either of you is scum from the chance of further scum finding tomorrow. My response to you is that a) if you factor in the chance of finding scum tomorrow with the chance of you being scum today then either choice has the same expected outcome and then it comes down to discretion, b) the numbers are far more arbitrary than your logic will help - I'm happy with my current vote despite thinking you're scum, c) your logic doesn't take into account multiple scumgroups, d) what on EARTH does that entire exchange prove? Why are you turning me voting one of the two people I think most likely to be scum into an issue? What would it prove if I then turned and voted you?

And what a farcical question above - why am I attacking you but voting Lowell? Because I've already attacked Lowell and he's offered no reason that the attack isn't perfectly valid. In the meantime, you're behaving like scum on fire so you're not getting away with it. Since I can only have one vote but many suspects, we are almost always in a situation where we're attacking one person while voting another.

And this leads onto your entire last few posts - I can't believe you'd spend that much time going into an arbitrary logical extreme to try to mathematically prove which of my two suspicions I should vote for yet when someone asks you an admittedly loaded question but with a real, legitimate accusation you could look at and answer, you utterly refuse to touch the issue until the question is reworded.

If you gave me a link of you doing it as town then I'd consider it less scummy, although the entire episode still doesn't sit right with me.

[SerialClergyman]

Actually, while I remember it, for someone who is a very logical person you've made some bad arguments based on other games or meta. Comments like:

rofl, remember when you thought I was scum in some other game? (therefore I'm a townie now as well)
ckd, I notice every time you asked a loaded question to someone, they've been town. (therefore I'm a townie now as well)
I've done that as town before (therefore I'm a townie now as well)

I don't like it because I would have thought someone logically inclined would be fully aware that all three are poor logical arguments.

[SerialClergyman]

I'm writing this on my phone, so I'm forced to be more brief than I'd like to. Your reconstruction of my attacks about your bad meta arguments are crap.

1) If you're telling me that mentioning a game where rofl thought you were scum and you turned out to be town was just an attempt to jog memory for some non-argument reason, then you're seriously grasping at straws. Go have a look at post 1768 and tell me if that's not trying to make a self-meta argument that you're town. Rofl saw that and summarily dismissed it in 1770.
This is terrible logic.
2) You absolutely and specifically make this point against CKD. It's hard to quote on my phone but it's post 2016. something like "You were attacking empking and so after two games of accusing someone of being scummy for backtracking you haven't learned anything?"
This is terrible logic.
3) If your argument is that your failure to deal with a loaded question doesn't prove your scum, then that's so trivial it's not even worth saying. It is scummy, it is less scummy if it's something you've done often as town, but I don't like it either way because it shows you are unwilling to engage with the argument, which is awfully convinient as scum who doesn't have a good reason to justify their actions.

I do think you're scum, and I do think you're making up bullshit, but it doesn't follow that I should vote you. I view people posting and providing a defence as less scummy than people trying to coast through and I'm not giving up on Lowell just because you are making more noise. (See yesterday, where I was the first on Nam's wagon and stayed there the entire day despite you looking scummier and scummier and being an easier lynch for much of the day with rofl's case. It might have been the wrong decision, given you're looking like scum and nam wasn't, but so it goes.) I don't think there's anything wrong with my reasons for being on one wagon or another and I'll be damned if I let one of my top suspects tell me who to lynch. You're playing semantics, statistics and bullshit because you can't argue the merits of the case.

Incidentally, this is also why Faraday is hugely more suspicious than CKD and me. Because we're actually facing the music and making arguments and attacking who we think are scummy, where he seems content to sit at the back and make non-threatening noises like he's done ALL GAME. So you got that bit wrong as well.

And your argument about me wanting to lynch Lowell because he's not part of my supposed scumteam - well that would apply to you as well! So it would be easier to just switch my vote to you.

And finally, more bullshit about you waiting for how your actions make sense even with (AGAIN with the self-meta) your no bus meta.

Well it actually makes even MORE sense, so I'll spell it out. You vote Lowell to start the day for a bit of distancing. You don't really have any intent to lynch but it's something you can point to later (like now.) Then suddenly the lynch takes off, people like me continue to find evidence against him and he completely fails to defend himself. Now you're in trouble. You didn't really want him lynched, so what do you do? You totally derail the wagon and vote someone that KMD voted (never mind you weren't sure at the time why). Then you continue to put presure on the Lowell wagon to get derailed by instantly calling out anyone on the wagon as scummy and adding them to your scumlist, even if that involves increasing Ver numbers from 3 to 4 to include everybody. It's totally transparent, and in fact, your actions ONLY make sense if you are unprepared to bus.

And for the record, this post has cost me About ten bucks of data allowance so everyone had better bloody read it!

[SerialClergyman]

I give up dealing with xyl. That was one of the worst summaries I've ever seen. I'm voting Lowell because he's one of the two people I think are scum. I reject your challenge to vote you because I see no reason to favour your lynch over lowells. And EVEN THEN, your argument doesn't make sense because if you were scum with Lowell you could have plenty of reasons to take the heat off of him. Maybe he's a power role scum and you aren't?

Not to mention, if I had changed your next post would have almost certainly been filled wih rhetoric of me switching to another target and calling me scummy for that.

So go on, keep attacking those who disagree with you and find you scummy while giving everyone else a pass now that they arent vocally disagreeing with you, and keep spending hours writing up statistical arguments to Try to set up catch 22s. Go on ignoring the bulk of the posts I write and legitimate issues about you and making terrible meta defence and arguments. I cannot believe you'd be convincing anybody.

[SerialClergyman]

Of those not posting much -

KK is still VLA for a while,
Hayker is a (unconfirmed but probable) mason
Faraday has posted occasionally but kept out of the limelight - scummy.
KMD has had about 5 posts on D4, threatened to hammer Lowell but wouldn't vote him, had a period of VLA but said he'd catch up on the 10th and hasn't posted anything up to now, the 13th. Jury's still out for me.
Lowell posted more when he was summarising his case yesterday by a mile. He continues to not give me an option but think he's definitely scum, despite Xyl's miraculous revelation of a 180.

Xyl - out of curiosity, you've argued numerous times that I'm setting up to try to attack you as being scum if Lowell were to flip town. Can I ask what gave you that impression, and why you feel it's important you should pre-empt an attack another player MIGHT make TOMORROW on you by voting them today?

[SerialClergyman]

Wicked, I've had Xyl gunning for me ever since his white-light moment backflip about Lowell and he's been practically daring me to vote him for days, but I keep coming back to Lowell, his really suspicious behaviour on the bandwagon yesterday and that neighbor crumb. Lowell has done absolutely nothing to try to quell any of that suspicion, and Xyl's defence of him only makes me more convinced that if they're scum together, Lowell is the more important one to lynch - we've already seen a roleblocker and a doctor, I'm sure there are other scum power roles out there and I imagine Lowell is one of them.

Given all of this, what makes you want to vote Xyl over Lowell?

[SerialClergyman]

This part answers it. Attempt to distance with a vote, it got too popular too fast, Xyl has a no-bus mentality and does a 180. It's more plausible than Xyl is town and now someone else is scummier despite Lowell having zero defence.

And finally, more bullshit about you waiting for how your actions make sense even with (AGAIN with the self-meta) your no bus meta.

Well it actually makes even MORE sense, so I'll spell it out. You vote Lowell to start the day for a bit of distancing. You don't really have any intent to lynch but it's something you can point to later (like now.) Then suddenly the lynch takes off, people like me continue to find evidence against him and he completely fails to defend himself. Now you're in trouble. You didn't really want him lynched, so what do you do? You totally derail the wagon and vote someone that KMD voted (never mind you weren't sure at the time why). Then you continue to put presure on the Lowell wagon to get derailed by instantly calling out anyone on the wagon as scummy and adding them to your scumlist, even if that involves increasing Ver numbers from 3 to 4 to include everybody. It's totally transparent, and in fact, your actions ONLY make sense if you are unprepared to bus.

And for the record, this post has cost me About ten bucks of data allowance so everyone had better bloody read it!

[SerialClergyman]

Xyl - out of curiosity, you've argued numerous times that I'm setting up to try to attack you as being scum if Lowell were to flip town. Can I ask what gave you that impression, and why you feel it's important you should pre-empt an attack another player MIGHT make TOMORROW on you by voting them today?

[SerialClergyman]

I'm sorry my activity has been down, I'm finalising the buying of an apartment so I've been incredibly busy. Normal posting to resume shortly.

[SerialClergyman]

After a quick re-read of recent events I think it'd be good if the masons and KK could take a more active role to try to lead the town. I think most if not all of the remaining group are happy to accept these players as town (maybe not KK, but definitely the masons) and it might help to get past this logjam.

I appreciate that Wicked posted his analysis and voted kmd, and I have some sympathy for that vote because I do tend to think the loudest players usually aren't scum at this stage of the game, but given that a fracture line has emerged between the most vocal players with a couple of distinct groups and clearly neither seems to be really getting their point across, we need to try to find a way to get enough information to make the right choice.

Personally though, I'll still be low on posts for the next few days, sorry.

[SerialClergyman]

^^ Scum.

1) You're a

scum neighbor.

2) You naturally breadcrumb your neighbor ability.
3) It seems obvious that with 2 town masons and 3 town neighbors the one last remaining neighbor has a high probability of being scum, or else the mod would just have had 3 sets of masons. You don't claim.

Your defence didn't even broach the subject because you start from a position where you fakeclaim, which obviously isn't the case. The fact that Xyl just praised this piece of garbage continues to implicate the two of them.

Much has been made of me and CKD thinking alike but as far as I know I haven't don't anything to defend him and vice versa - all we've done is oppose Xyl, and be vocal about it. Xyl and lowell on the other hand, as well as pushing a case on me based on very little (remember it started with IIoA that died completely under scrutiny - why exactly did it continue?) have also defended each other from pressure.

Plus Lowell is groping for any target that isn't him. From Spyrex to ckd to me - just whoever will do, won't it?

[SerialClergyman]

Just amazing right here. Allow me to paraphrase because ohh does this deserve it:

"Would the people currently NOT voting for me that the town feels are town be more vocal so that I don't end up lynched."

Just wanted that nice and clear.

Or maybe the better way to say it is exactly as it was written - the three most town people. I even acknowledged that KK isn't considered as confirmed as the masons, but I think Hayker and Wicked are at the top of everyone's town list, and Wicked has voted me today, so it's not a gimme, he could well come back to my wagon. But any attacks led by them are absolutely genuine and non-tainted and I'm much happier looking at them than something from Xyl.

Also it isn't lost on me that the people I consider most town-confirmed haven't been convinced by the (lack of) case on me.

1) I'm not saying the last mason/neighbor can't be scum, what I'm saying is that (a) were I the mason, (b) were I scum, and (c) had I made the choice to breadcrumb and claim mason, why would I then ABANDON THE STRATEGY after other masons died and turned up town. You think someone said "hey, maybe the last neighbor is scum" and I got scared and backed off the claim? That makes horribly horribly no sense.

Because there was heavy suspicion at the time. Look for Wicked's 1678, for example. Your post at 1689 shows you were around. I think it makes perfect sense that if you have one confirmed town mason then two pairs of neighbors that one of the unconfirmed will be scum, if not more.

And more importantly, has this been your reasoning all along? Why are we only hearing aobut this now?

2) I love this line as defense that SC and CKD aren't a team:

You could make the same argument about anyone who has agreed with anyone ever. We have similar views? The main thing we agree upon is that you are scum and it's worth fighting to lynch him, unlike others who take a back seat and watch.

Take a look at the far worse buddying going on under your noses. Spyrex switched his vote to me because Xyl asked him to. Xyl has essentially one man derailed your wagon.

No one should be fooled into thinking that just because we agree that Lowell is scum we're somehow together, otherwise you should throw in Hayker and Faraday into the mix.

[SerialClergyman]

Spyrex, I'm not even sure what your point is. If you're saying I just picked three ransoms who agree with me, name three players closer to confirmed town to arbitrate. If you're saying I'm scummy because I'm trying to find a way that my top suspect can get lynched and not myself then it's a stupid point because that's exactly how I should play. Have I misunderstood your argument?

[SerialClergyman]

rubbish. I called on the confirmed town to actively lead - they are free to vote whoever they like. I dealt with wicked voting me before, just made me put my head down and try to make my point better.

Not to mention xyl used who he thought were town or not as the major justification for derailing the lowell wagon without a peep from you. Why the double standard?

And even if i accepted eveyone word of what you just wrote, it still isn't scummy to self preserve. At best it's a null tell because it supports almost every win condition. I'm doing my best to keep those I think are town alive and those I think are mafia dead. If I die because I was over zealous in my scumhunting that's one thing, if I die because scummy people keep throwing out red herrings like you're trying to self preserve that's a real shocker.

But if your theory is that I am playing a game of self preservation, how do you explain how vocal I've been about my suspicions?

[SerialClergyman]

Well, the reaction wasn't on the same level for similar
issues, but you did call him out on it, so my bad there.

You voted me because I thought they were both scum but I picked Lowell to vote?

If I was backing away from hunting or arguing or mollifying people I'd agree with you. Look at faraday as a prime example. I think that sort of action, not ruffling feathers is definitely scummy. But I haven't given up my scumhunting, nor have I been browbeaten into voting for someone that isn't mytop suspect.

But appealing to townie players to get more involved while I'm copping the flak sent up by xyl and his cronies... I just think it's another bad little throwaway point.

I'd like people to look at lowells voting record. I'm on my phone so it's hard to quote, but look at the way he rode the wagons yesterday and look at his voting today. That is a much more concrete example of where self preservation can be scummy.

[SerialClergyman]

That wasn't my point at all. I thought xyl and Lowell were boh likely scum. I kept voting Lowell when xyl told me to switch to him. I wasn't saying he was scum because he asked me to vote for him, I was saying even though I thought he was scum I was happy voting Lowell. Reread the passage.

The line about xyls cronies was out of frustration. Not that I'm ruling you out, because it's possible xyl and Lowell have another member, but it wasn't reasonable to put you in that group yet. The points just feel so petty. There's such a strong case n Lowell from his interactions, poor hunting, poor vote hopping etc that when people vote me because I kept voting Lowell instead of swithing to xyl or because the wagon on ckd didn't get up I'm left throwing my hands up.

Hence when xyl accused me of IIoA, albeit without any examples to back it up, I was able to get stuck into it and provide real evidence of where it wasn't true.

And case in point - I bet you didn't go and check lowells voting record then. The case on Lowell is really, genuinely sound. He's acting like scum, defending like scum and voting like scum. Why is there even a debate, aside from the fact xyl thought the people on his wagon could be scum? Somebody explain why Lowell shouldn't be the lynch?

[SerialClergyman]

Ok, I haven't got the greatest amount of time due to my shiny new apartment but I'm going to stop with all the bickering and semantics and really try to outline why a case against Lowell works.

1) Lowell manipulates the situation as he sees fit. Take this from one of his early summaries of the game:

354- hayker explains absencse [-], votes johnny for having "bad" posts [-, terrible, reeks of "ANYONE BUT ME!!"]

Now pair that with some of his votes:

unvote, vote mastin. I am mufasa's alt.

Then 1 day later

unvote mastin, on the condition that he not ask me to read any of his posts ever.

I'll bandwagon. vote mafiamann

Rode that vote to the hammer.

vote spy

This is as good as any. I briefly looked over the posts since my last recap, and his running narration just looks forced, and poor.

Anyone will do, then promptly forgotten about again.

unvote, vote SC. For some reason this one is more popular than ckd. They're basically the same person so that's fine.

Self-voting is incredibly scummy. He claimed townie. Case closed.

unvote, vote namttam

This was the hammer from yesterday, a nice jump ship on the Xyl wagon he was riding for most of the day.

Not to mention this beauty:

xyl's behavior around my claim is strange. I angrily claimed townie and that was enough for him to unvote? Really? Were I another player in the game I'd have hammered the shit out of me. That said, he is on my side (for now) and his case on ckd is a decent one.

He's on my side therefore I'm not going to vote him. 10 points there for genuine scumhunting.

In short, Lowell's voting pattern has consistently shown that he's voting whoever was convinient at the time. He even recognises this approach as scummy because he chastised hayker for it earlier, but there it is. I don't think he really cares who gets lynched provided it isn't himself and his record hows it.

2) Lowell is inconsistent with his rereads. Lowell has had most of his apparant interaction with the game through the odd long post where he lists a group of events and gives plusses or minuses on whether he thinks they are scummy or not. These lists are not genuine scumhunting, they are made to conviniently fit with the current mood.

For example -

1125- ckd votes ckool
1186- wicked votes ckool after convincing himself [----, mastin the other suspect]
1206- SC votes ckool [-, protecting mastin]
1220- KK votes ckool
1223- hayker votes ckool
1228- xyl votes ckool
1237- rofl votes ckool

Yeah, Lowell, love your impartial analysis there.

But it's not just there.

3) People who look NOT good:
xyl- His indecisiveness in 1520 is bad. His speculating on mufasa's neighbor is bad. Also, I hate posts like 1729. When people say "I'd put money on..." what I read is "I'm scum lazily going through the motions pretending to be emotionally invested in this scumhunt!" It's a cheap rhetorical device, in addition to a obvious attempt to cozy up to a new player (spyrex)
spy- His running dialogue of catching up is horrible. In my case, I'm reading through while staring at a list of dead players and their roles. He's trying to look town by doing it "blind" and seeming like he doesn't have anything or anyone to protect.

But Xyl defended him so suspicion over! Never mind rofl dying, never mind the opposing wagon being town, never mind voting for Spy at the start of the day, or the fact he jumped ship to hammer Namttam.

1898- xyl votes lowell due to "breadcrumb"
1899- ckd votes lowell, agrees w/ xyl [-, opportunistic]
1900- SC votes lowell, says his vote can change [-, cruising for targets]
1902- spy votes lowell, "fine" with vote (lynch-2)

Nice. 4 votes for Lowell, 2 of them scummy, apparantly.

Lowell's posts reek of convinience. When Wicked was unclaimed, Lowell found everything he did scummy. Now, not so much. Lowell has long lists of similar actions but coming from certain people they are scummy and others they aren't. Lowell has ditched any attempt at scumhunting in favour of self-preservation, buddying with those he apparantly thinks were/are scummy and voting wherever he thinks it'll stick.

I've got to go, I'll try to add to this when I have the chance to do some more work looking back over the thread.

[SerialClergyman]

From phone

I stand by Xyl/Lowell. The wagon grew very quickly because Lowell is reeking of scum then Xyl tries to save him. The explanation that Xyl is town and starts a wagon on his top suspect then pulls out as it gains traction is significantly less likely to me.

As far as I can tell, this idea that if Lowell flips town I'm going to be gunning for Xyl is a fabrication thought up by Xyl. I've asked him about it in 2099 and 2088 to no reply. They were my two top suspects going into today but I wasn't seeing any evidence of a connection between them. Now I do. If one of them is town then I'll need to rethink rapidly.

But if Lowell flips vermillon I'm on Xyl like a bad rash.

[SerialClergyman]

I think Xyl misjudged it, he wasn't expecting it to grow that quickly, hence the messiness of it all.

If you have a look - the 5 on the Lowell wagon had 3 from his maybe not town list and 2 from his town list. Hayker eventually gets his vote on Lowell which would make it 3/3. KMD said he would hammer, so if you count that then it would be 4 of Xyl's town list vs 3 of his scum list.

Neither KK or Wicked have voted Lowell today, I think, but even that's 1/1 on Xyl's scumlist.

So my point is it's hardly overwhelming. It doesn't ring true to me to say that he a)genuinely believed that Lowell was scum then b) had a complete reversal due to the scumminess of a wagon that was 2 from his town list, 3 from his not-town list with kmd from his town list waiting to hammer.

[SerialClergyman]

Xyl - I don't think I've ever really suspected Wicked greatly. I remember having a conflict about his possible taking a doc's protection off of ckool with his possible cop-slip, but that's about it, I think.

Why do you ask?

[SerialClergyman]

If we gave you the yellow, which is a bit dicey because I think some of the green could go to yellow as well given your suspicions, you could still put hayker and kmd in the 'for' list for their votes/promise to hammer.

And did you do any research to confirm your decisions? Like checking if the people you thought were scum clambered onto the same, popular wagon previously?

And finally, if the wagon was scummy because of the people, what was the case on the people before the wagon?

It seems to me your reasoning for your vote as you explain it is a little circular.

[SerialClergyman]

Ok, I'm makingsure I've got this right.

You don't have any scumtells on a group of people, but don't have any particular reason to think they are town either. Then you make a case against someone you presumably think is scum. Then you are convinced to leave this case completely when some (all except kk) of the people you feel are scum by default join the wagon.

Is that a fair summary?

[SerialClergyman]

Rofl, ok, you put it through the relanguager but you don't disagree with the
events?

When you say strong reason for thinking the others are town, any hints?

[SerialClergyman]

And this is where I can't help but think the whole thng is a house of cards. You say there's strong reasons for thinking kmd and spy are town, but it essentially comes down to nothing, just a vague gut/meta read. And that is the basis for thinking everyone else was scum, And when thy joined the Lowell wagon that was enough to declare Lowell less scummy and all of that allows you to come up with a scumteam - all with barely a scumtell or scummy action you can really explain.

It's possible that my preference for something more concrete is interfering wih my read of you, but it looks to me like you've assumed a controversial fact about kmd and spyrex being town for no real reason then framed the game however you felt like. It's allowed you to now be in a position where the two people you declared town on gut and the guy you save from being lynched to all end up on my wagon.

But, of course, they can't all be scum. Well, not all the same factions scum.

Am thinking about revising my theory but I'll need a reread.

What about the points I made against Lowell earlier? Almost everyone seems to have ignored them..

[SerialClergyman]

Attacking the language not the argument again.

Phrase it however you like - you can't point to anything more concrete than gut or meta, correct?

[SerialClergyman]

Quotes? As far as I'm aware, KMD has been voting based off the wagon analysis he did a long time ago. Where do you see him going by gut reads.

Also, why would you think having gut reads and playing by them makes you town? I tend to find people with actual evidence, scumtells and quotes more town than those who don't provide reasons.

[SerialClergyman]

Well - literally all of his votes since he did the VC analysis have all been in line with it. So it looks to me like 'gut' in this case could well mean 'he's next on my list and I have no reasons apart from the list'.

hence quotes like:

Nam, you are listed as one of my suspects on the VC analysis. My gut picks you over the other suspects.

Seems clear to me that VC gave him suspects and his 'gut read' was just a way to pick between who was left.

It's also something that allows him to vote with relative impunity, there's always a justifiable reason behind his vote.

But here's this house of cards stuff again - it's scummy because your experience tells you gut reads are hard to fake convincingly (and you're not just the arbiter of whether it's scummy but also whether it is faked.) When you edited my post to say you felt they were town due to a 'strong reason', I expected you'd have, you know, a strong reason. It's so arbitrary.

And if you're town, you're relying on this for every other step, who is scum with who, derailing a wagon on one of the people you thought was likely scum... You're just not

worried

enough about it. I can't find your behaviour townie because you aren't questioning or verifying your position. Maybe that's my shortcoming because I expect other people to suffer that same consternation, but I just don't see it in you and your position is so convinient for scum.

I actually thought about amending my theory because a couple of games ago I got into a long lylo battle with someone and we cross voted, I was lynched and we had both been townies. I thought we were in a quiet game with apathetic lurkers but it turned out the scum were just waiting in the wings, tossing in the odd comment and waiting to pounce.

So I played out a scenario where you were town, hence all these questions to try to put myself in your shoes. But two things are problematic - Lowell has to be scum, I'm sure of it. His defence has been terrible, his contribution to the game has been terrible, he has a terrible voting record. He's contradicted himself and taken advantage of every possible opportunity to look out for number one. There are reams of quotes of all these actions throughout the game. And if Lowell is scum, it's hard to see you as town after today.

What would you do tomorrow if Lowell flipped Vermillon? Who would be your likely scum team?

[SerialClergyman]

Well that was unexpected.

If we followed the theory that we're both town, then the wagon on Lowell doesn't look as bad as it first did, correct? And those who are lurking and hoping things work out don't look as good either?

My problem with accepting it as I said above is that I'm convinced about Lowell, and your derailing of Lowell makes it hard to believe you're town. And this could just be an attempt to address my concerns with you before, your lack of being 'worried' or questioning your position.

Spyrex, could I ask why you started to have that reaction to our conversation? It seemed when I was arguing with you yesterday or two days ago that you'd made up your mind that I was scum?

[SerialClergyman]

Serial, Xyl's argument is that with all of his suspects voting Lowell, if he is right about his suspicions

I get that, my worry is that someone who is town could make assumptions on who is town based on not very much, then let it follow that the other group are scum, then let it follow that if they wagon together that's further reason to think they're scum. If it was common for his scumgroup to all be on the same wagon, or to all pile on the one person then that's something more concrete, but as it is, he's made very light assumptions then has a very elaborate theories based on them.

However since an initial bout of overreaction (remember that CKD wasn't included in the scum lists until CKD started ot agree with him) he's been more reasonable, and when he replies to the argument instead of the language I feel like it's possible that he actually took those steps - he really did make those assumptions and he really did follow it all from there. It's different to how I play but that doesn't mean it's scummy.

You've been busy since Tuesday, except before Tuesday you were still very quiet after parking your vote - you've had very little interaction with the day at all. Is that also due to busyness?

Lowell -

Here is a 'real' case aside from the breadcrumb.

You have ignored it so far, a response would be good.

CKD -

Why did you unvote Lowell and then revote him?

Faraday -

Which scum team would you prefer to lynch today?

[SerialClergyman]

I'm really not comfortable with all these posts coming after days and days of talking. It looks like people have come out of the woodwork at deadline time to swoop on the ckd wagon without really getting into the discussion and the argument, and that's prototpyical scummy behaviour.

Plus I have had not a single comment on what I think was a quite convincing series of points against Lowell. Not one single comment.

I'm sensing lazy town and opportunistic scum, to be frank.

[SerialClergyman]

Yes, we need you to answer who you've hidden behind.

[SerialClergyman]

This is taking too long. Things aren't adding up. I do not like this claim at all.

[SerialClergyman]

Unfortunately me too.

I'm going to wait for a followup post from ckd, but it's not good.

a) NK immune claims are always suspect.
b) Who wouldn't give a history of hides when claiming? It shouldn't be hard to jot down the people you hid behind, but it WOULD be hard to fake.
c) if CKD's claim is correct, he MUST KNOW that someone is innocent. To not mention that in your claim makes it ultra scummy.

unvote Lowell

Still waiting on an answer from ckd, but will vote before deadline.

[SerialClergyman]

No need for threats. I'm changing my mind because your claim was unexpected and unconvincing.

Any reason why, if you're town, you chose to not to let everyone know that KK was innocent, on your claim if not before? Any reason why you've essentially wasted your ability by almost never using it?

I actually thought the case against you was weak, people were streaming onto it and I was very suspicious at the mounting wagon of deadline yesmen. But the claim absolutely 100% doesn't ring true, and that's enough to lynch you.

vote ckd

[SerialClergyman]

???

You guys, ckd isn't hammered..

You need 6 to hammer, and he never had 6.

unvote

Checking now.. nobody vote.

[SerialClergyman]

no need for ASAP, let me think.

[SerialClergyman]

Could it be a pantomime, is my question. And if so, did Spyrex just show himself to be a buddy? Spyrex didn't check the votes and told me to hurry up and get on the lowell wagon when there was no reason to. I've unvoted and there's 12 hours left.

I cannot believe that you wouldn't check to see how many votes you were on. And your answers were subpar too - you talked about KK being town all day perhaps, but you didn't think to mention it in your claim post - that's bizarre. And the 'come on spy, you knew I was hammered' looked a little hamfisted to me.

Call me paranoid but I'm going to take a little while to reread to try to work this out.

I also don't see you calling me a chump for switching. It's just.. I don't know. Doesn't ring true. Not the insult (I've been called much worse) but the frustration doesn't look genuine to me.

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry Spy, it's almost 5pm here in Oz so I don't have the same time deadlines as you. Post 15 mins befvore going to bed and I'll give you an answer.

[SerialClergyman]

And Hayker man, get with the program. ckd isn't hammered.

[SerialClergyman]

Yeah, the stuff you laid out for CKD might be what I go with. I admit that I started to feel that awful feeling when I saw bah go town, but then.. it wasn't a hammer, and I'm surprised he didn't think that. Your posts you have to admit look like they're playing right into that scenario. I just can't rule it out without thinking about it.

I'm just doing the maths now.

We have 10 people

Say ckd is hider with a mason. If cerulean hits one mason and vermillon hits the other, we lose 3 town roles. With lowell scum that leaves 2 vemillon and 1 cerulean. But then the scum might choose the same mason, which means either 1 or 2 deaths. And if we lynch ckd and he's town then we'll definitely be 3 down and won't have a chance to lynch Lowell..

Bah. Too many combinations, aren't there. Goddam it I hate this game sometimes.

[SerialClergyman]

I think if it weren't for your reaction I'd probably have just thought it was nothing.. but then seeing the two of you together being wrong about the hammer AND the time pressure quick quick vote Lowell gives me pause.. damn damn damn.

Gonna go do an unofficial votecount.

[SerialClergyman]

=Vote Count #65=-

curiouskarmadog (5) - Kublai Khan, Xylthixlm, Lowell, SpyreX, Kmd4390
Lowell (4) - SerialClergyman, Faraday, Hayker, curiouskarmadog
Kmd4390 (1) - Wickedestjr

Not Voting (0)

6 to lynch.

So KK unvotes
SC unvotes
SC votes ckd
Spy unvotes and votes Lowell

So CKD is currently on 3 votes, Xyl Lowell and KMD
Lowell is currently on 4 votes, Spy, Faraday, Hayker and CKD

[SerialClergyman]

Yes. And the Lowell lynch will give us a good idea of the possible scumteams around as well. I think you're probably right.

But I have to be careful thinking if you're vermillon with ckd and possibly someone else, and there's one more cerulean around, we'll end up going with your plan we could be in a difficult spot. If Lowell is Cerulean, which is unlikely, then you'll have 2 or even 3 vermillon out of 8. Even if we managed to get you and ckd, we'd have to get the last one perfect and that's not ideal. If Lowell is town, then we have your team plus another Cerulean nightkilling around and it's essentially the end of the game.

God I don't know.

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry, look you can go to bed, I think you're correct and I'm probably just being paranoid.. I think you probably can't get a town tell like a premature bah post, and if you guys were scum just pretending you guys are absolute dicks and on par with the 'fake' vote thing.

vote lowell

[SerialClergyman]

CKD, where'd you go?

Do you stand by what you said about Spy, that you didn't believe he didn't realise you were hammered (which turned out to be untrue).

[SerialClergyman]

Mokay.

My suggestion is that Faraday is the best lynch. He was the most suspicious yesterday, and I've been through the thread and think that I've found a few things that are suspect.

I'm not sure about CKD being town, but I think I've come to an uneasy peace with it for now. He still haven't answered some questions about deadline, like his thoughts on Spyrex remaining consistent before and after the bah gotown post, and I can't help but be very suspicious of someone who doesn't post until asked that they know someone is innocent. Could we get more info on your role and choices, CKD? Unless you think it would hurt the town?

Spyrex went down a lot at deadline yesterday for me. It was an over the top switch, and it was odd that he believed that ckd was hammered (means at the very least he didn't realise his own vote was L-2 not L-1), and giving me the quick, quick, ticking clock thing when it was a really tough decision that I actually had all of 12 hours to make.

Wicked is town.

KK is almost certainly town.

Xyl is looking very town-ly. His defence of Lowell was either a stupidly brilliant gambit of some kind to frame the game how he wanted, or Occham says he's town and his gut was right.

Kmd is suspicious. Voted me at the start of the day, essentially iddn't participate until being called out as slightly scummy near the very end of the day when he was posting all over the shop. Voted both the major wagons then hammered Lowell in the middle of a genuine discussion about what to do.

Xyl - I am frustrated by the Lowell flip. I think he just didn't do the work required to clear his name. I had a case on him that noone even mentioned that I was actually quite convinced by. He could have explained why he was making self-preservation posts, could have linked to meta, could have talked about why he was wagon hopping yesterday - there was so much he could have done apart from coming in and saying 'I'm not a neighbor' and then leaving again. Possibly it's bitterness at getting it wrong, but I just expect people to do more, especially at this point in the game.

In terms of the game, I think it opens the game right up. You can mostly see my reactions above. I think it means you're looking much more town. I'm not ruling scum out, but I think it's very unlikely you'd have done what you did if you were scum. I have a feeling we're looking for a Vermillon partnership, with the neighbor being one of their power roles (the other should be a PR as well.) The whole deadline day also made me suspect Spyrex - he was the one deflecting from CKD to Lowell, he was the one rushing the decision, agreeing with the bogus votecount and his plan isn't exactly fullproof. Having said that, it only makes sense if CKD is scum with him, so I think I'd prefer CKD first if we were going to lynch based on those events.

Ok - so my case on Faraday. Mostly - he's been useless. He's had no real scumhunting all game. Perhaps his biggest case ever was on Hayker, who he then promptyl unvoted at the mason claim and then left himself unvoted ALL THROUGH THE DAY while everyone else were focusing on Xyl or Namttam. Given I now think both of them are town, it looks to me like he was just calmly avoiding the wagon on what he knew was likely to be town. If someone could point to a gutsy, good bit of scumhunting from him I'd be greatly surprised. Yesterday he was on the Lowell wagon and did essentially what Xyl was suspecting me and CKD of doing. But at least I and to some extend CKD tried to demonstrate why I thought Lowell was scummy, look for additional evidence, construct scumteams and the like, Faraday just sat there and let the vote sit on Lowell (and everyone else's vote sit on me).

Then I started looking back through his history and found a few suspicious posts. Note - this essentially assumes KK is town, so adjust suspicion accordingly.

Have a look at his early analysis of the miller claim.

Post 83

Miller claiming early is of benefit, means a cop won't waste investgation on him.

I guess it's possible your scum claiming miller but it seems a sub-optimal strategy to me for scum, due to 1) the attention that's drawn to a miller claim and 2) millers being vigged is very common, so yeh.

That's a subtle way of encouraging a vig, isn't it?

Then post 167

Eh you're going to have to explain to me how that's a scumslip Zazie.

Looks like teeing up a scummate to me. Very easy way of getting her more air time for her theory.

post 309

Ugh zazie seems to be asking some of the questions I'm asking, that's good in one way, in that it makes me feel better about her, but bad in a I want to ask them first way Yeh don't worry I'll not pout.

post 312

And as for KK, I don't like his confusion over his role at all. I think it's much more damning than any slip, btw. Surely if you're a miller you know you're a miller and not a death miller. Like, and if it wasn't clear from the role pm you pm the mod, or well I would Idk I've never been a miller.

Ok, so one post lending support to Zazie and then one soon after agreeing with the case on KK. This is making KK vigbait I think.

post 448

This is awful.
First directing the vig, I'm sure if we have a vig they can use their own discretion.

Hypocrasy, not to mention encouraging the vig in his own way I think.

same post

Yeh, this newbie game is where Ckool was town and was an easy mis-lynch.

I was scum in that game too.

Just read day 1 and it should give you an idea what he's talking about. But basically he seemed to put his fut in his mouth a few times, and was over eager and ended up looking pretty damn scummy.

Possible slip???

578 and 589 he starts to switch his view on the miller. It's all this sort of cautious dialog with Zazie and I'm not sure it's legit.

1044 says he will reread then nothing posted for a long expanse of time

1503

Quote:

What about Lowell? Anhy thoughts or comments on him?

I find it hard to read him as he doesn't seem to post a lot. I found his earlier posting after joining the game quite townie actually as his ideas were similar to a lot of mine.

Thinks Lowell is town - my how that changes...

1872 is a typical Lowell post, useless fluff.

2105

Hmm that's a fair list of assumptions.

5 and 6 in particular don't seem to be very strong.

What about Xyl and Sc's interactions with Zazie means they can't be vermillion, or even SC's Mastin interactions. I agree Xyl doesn't seem very likely cerulean, but yeh.

While 7 and 8 are in fact both true, the reasoning of me accusing him of something seems kinda weak. It is possible to state you're suspicious of your buddies. Unless you're saying the way it was done makes it unlikely but even still.

Far more work done to discredit a few minor constructions done than he ever did to scumhunt. It's just more work derailing working theories without providing any real alternatives or fire or belief.

So that's my case. I think Faraday is Vermillon scum. If I had to pick a scumpartner, I'd say KMD for the pattern of behaviour. The fact that they were both so quiet yesterday (and while V/LA for some of it, KMD certainly wasn't for all of it) and both were voting different people quietly yet both ended up on the same wagon to lynch a townie makes me suspicious of the pair, but Lowell should be the first lynch imo.

Vote Lowell

[SerialClergyman]

Whoops

Got confused ><

Can't lynch Lowell twice.

FARADAY should be first,

unvote dead lowell, Vote Faraday

[SerialClergyman]

What do you have to say about it now?

Xyl asked me something very similar and this was my response:

Xyl - I am frustrated by the Lowell flip. I think he just didn't do the work required to clear his name. I had a case on him that noone even mentioned that I was actually quite convinced by. He could have explained why he was making self-preservation posts, could have linked to meta, could have talked about why he was wagon hopping yesterday - there was so much he could have done apart from coming in and saying 'I'm not a neighbor' and then leaving again. Possibly it's bitterness at getting it wrong, but I just expect people to do more, especially at this point in the game.

In terms of the game, I think it opens the game right up. You can mostly see my reactions above. I think it means you're looking much more town. I'm not ruling scum out, but I think it's very unlikely you'd have done what you did if you were scum. I have a feeling we're looking for a Vermillon partnership, with the neighbor being one of their power roles (the other should be a PR as well.) The whole deadline day also made me suspect Spyrex - he was the one deflecting from CKD to Lowell, he was the one rushing the decision, agreeing with the bogus votecount and his plan isn't exactly fullproof. Having said that, it only makes sense if CKD is scum with him, so I think I'd prefer CKD first if we were going to lynch based on those events.

[SerialClergyman]

Simulposted.

I think it's unlikely that it's lylo, I'm still thinking that there are two Vermillon and one Cerulean left. But I'll

unvote

for safety.

I like your logic about CKD, but don't find him as suspicious as you. I'm still waiting for a more detailed rundown of his role, thoughts and play yesterday and future plans.

I hate it when I make a long and detailed case against someone and almost everybody posts and doesn't even mention it. Do people agree? Does anyone find anything in there they hadn't noticed? I'm getting quite convinced about Faraday.

I'm cool with a massclaim. I suggest Wicked picks the order, given he's confirmed, or we popcorn.

Wicked - I didn't answer your question about a scum meta, and the answer is no, I don't have any scum metas, I haven't played many games on MS.

[SerialClergyman]

Will comment more on events when the claiming is done.

I'm vanilla. Faraday please.

[SerialClergyman]

Actually, there's one event I will comment on - Wicked, why are you voting for KMD if you think he's Cerulean? If there are 3 Vermillon then we will actually lose if we lynch Cerulean today. I personally don't think it's likely, but to be safe I think we should definitely be aiming Vermillon today.

[SerialClergyman]

Still waiting for Faraday to claim, but in the meantime my answer to Wicked's question about scum metas has now changed with the completion of one of my games, you can find it here.

[SerialClergyman]

Wicked - you can add these to the list:

yeah, i thought you might say this. any reason you didnt say it yesterday? You had plenty of time to say this shit yesterday.....any reason you didnt? Did me saying you are scum (today) have anything to do with it? please explain how I could confirm someone if I was dead? I actually didnt really believe the KK claim at first (this all ties into my "crumb") and I have confirmed him. and you are saying this today and you dont know who (or if) I hid behind last night.

obv scum

you are an idiot..or scum.

I think trying to suggest that I am refusing to claim is scummy. i think trying to get me to claim before the mass claim is scummy. I think the fact that you are ignoring that both fucking scum groups went looking for me last night is scummy.

SC, was feeling good about until he suddenly flipped his opinion of me when he found out I was a power role.

It's certainly a common theme of CKD to accuse anyone who doubts his claim of being scummy, no matter who they are it seems.

Thanks for the congrats about the other game As for your question about meta, it's hard to say what I'd do all the time because that's my first game as scum, but if that's anything to go by I tend to be a not-bus person, and I think that would apply to me most of the time - I'm a big team player sort of guy and something about bussing doesn't sit right.

Having said that, if you look at the last day I was prepared to bus my partner (although having said THAT, I did steer the lynch to the non-partner).

Maybe go through the game and have a look so you can see what I mean rather than take my word for it?

As to why CKD HAD to have an innocent if the claim was true - I thought that back before I learned that CKD had only rarely been using his ability. If he was using it every night and was still alive at that point, the person who he hid behind the night before had to be innocent and alive (if they were scum or dead he'd be dead too) and so therefore there had to be someone alive and innocent.

More to post after CKD claims.

[SerialClergyman]

Spy claimed vanilla out of turn.

Ckd - was your obvious breadcrumb a specific instance, or was it this transition between thinking KK could be scum to saying he's town?

[SerialClergyman]

Wicked - I can't know if I would have bussed Zazie if I was Vermillon because there was no wagon on her, so there's way too many factors to consider. If I was Cerulean I probably would have bussed Mastin, he wasn't paying attention to the game or posting and there was a lot of pressure to vote him (including some just because of his playstyle, I think.

My scumlist is Faraday, CKD, KMD and possibly Spyrex. It's a little hard to say which faction is which though.

[SerialClergyman]

Oh - as for your theory Wicked, I think it's a good one except I think Faraday scum is significantly more likely than spyrex scum.

[SerialClergyman]

We're not going through this hammer or not thing again, he's L-2 by my count. Besides, I think it's worth taking the time to listen to what he had to say and I still want to have a look at Faraday at some point.

[SerialClergyman]

I like the people on this wagon.

vote curiouskarmadog

[SerialClergyman]

Well done guys, you played very, very well.

Bad luck town, you were very close to cracking it open at the start of yesterday but weren't quite able to get it done.

CKD claiming he hid behind KK gave us a golden opportunity to not kill him last night and push for his lynch earlier today. We set up me going after Faraday and Faraday/KK going after CKD and it all jsut came together very nicely, especially because we knew he was fakeclaiming, so the more pressure he had the more he was likely to look scummy. We just had to hammer quickly to avoid a cerulean claim.

I'm at work, so I'll do a full description of thoughts later on, but just wanted to say I had a fantastic time, and I think the mod, setup and people in the game made it the most fun I've ever had playing mafia. Thanks so much everyone.

This is now my second scum win in two days, so I'm going to take the night off lying and scheming and have a drink tonight I think

[SerialClergyman]

I have no problem with linking to our quicktopic but I'll wait till one of the others agrees so we have some sort of consensus.

Wow about the Baltar investigation. KK actually apologised for his miller claim at the end of D1 fearing he'd be knocked off - classic!

I think you have to give a lot of credit to Zazie for KK's obvtown reputation. Her work in distancing him day one was truly a spectacle. When I replaced in I didn't know how I was going to disagree with her really powerful and strong case. In the end I made up the arguemtn about egos gettign in the way (sorry VP and Mastin - it was purely about trying to not get involved with kk and zaz).

I think I ended up having to do the most heavy lifting, but i think that's because I was the least experienced.. yesterday was a real grind, I tried a number of different arguments and styles to try and ditch suspicion. Faraday has a habbit of cruising through the day without picking up votes - even did it today!

Much of yesterday I spent tryign to distance Faraday and buddy ckd, figuring I could at least take someone with me, and xyl nailed me and faraday perfectly from the outset.

I was surprised you hit masons ckd - you really did risk both masons being killed and then you're in real trouble.

[SerialClergyman]

PS Valhalla is an EXCELLENT idea. I wish all games had it.

[SerialClergyman]

kmd - when you get a chance to have a look at our quicktopic you'll see the night before yesterday I said to the guys that I'm the only one left in your wagon analysis and you would come at me hard from then on - we just made the decision that rofl was more likely to bend people to his will and I felt I might be able to just deal with your suspicion.

So you got me, but couldn't get much momentum. I guess that's the problem with wagon analysis - it might be really convincing to you, but you ahven't got the scumtells and suspicious behaviour that other people need to commit.

[SerialClergyman]

While we wait for KK or Faraday to OK posting the quicktopic in thread, I found the relevant bit from right after Nam's lynch.

Thoughts on dynamics -

KMD will gun for me today. See http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopi ... 70#1770770

It will also be pretty reasonable reasoning, although I might be able to argue against some of the assumptions he's made. On the MM wagon, he'll have himself, 2 masons, Faraday, me and Lowell. So the last 3 are the 3 he'll suspect from that wagon. Then I was on the Mastin wagon, the other two weren't.

Then I was on the Nam wagon.

So it's possible I can deflect him onto Xyl or Lowell or even you, Faraday, but with Nam gone I'm sure he'll turn to me. Whether he can actually get a wagon going is another question though. Still, given how we can deduce that he'll be narrowing down his suspect pool towards us, he might be one to take out.

I actually deliberately stayed on Namttam all day to try to coast through the day avoiding the lynch and for some reason everyone just decided he was a good guy to vote and suddenly I'm there. I was hoping the Xyl wagon would get up, rofl would start suspecting me of being Xyl's teammate and when he flipped non-Vermillon I'd be semi-cleared. Still, I can't see rofl going after me over Xyl tomorrow, although he did drop his case on KMD completely.

[SerialClergyman]

2/3 is a majority, I'm sure Faraday won't mind.

http://www.quicktopic.com/43/H/S3sgQUM8zkD

I think SC was just hovering and waiting for Faraday to vote.

Did you get that impression by the flood of fluffly little posts I made since I awoke every couple of minutes to let Faraday know I was here and itching to hammer?

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry - that was impolitic of me. Zazie is of course the 4th member of the team, she just hasn't said anything in thread for months, so it slipped my mind. I've already said that her contribution was crucial to our team and creating KK as obvtown, so it's not a reflection on her game, just that i'm old and tired and she had been missing from the thread for ages. Apologies again.

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry abotu that Spy, really came across as just dishonest.. My bad, you saw a lot more in those inital days than me, but I've never been one for the early parts of a game.

I'm not sure what you meant by this:

Or if I had listened and lynched SC for not taking the lynch-bait.

[SerialClergyman]

Oh, and I thought abotu how easy the ckd wagon was going, but before you voted the wagon was 'Wicked, KK, Xyl'.

Couldn't get more pro-town than that. Would have been very, very hard to pick. I'm actually quite surprised, given there was at least a fair chance of it being lylo, that Xyl and Wicked were so free about their votes.

[SerialClergyman]

I was actually confused about that part - I really didn't see that as scummy. Miscalculation by me obviously, but I was arguing honestly when I said if I see two people as scummy and one of them tells me to vote him, I see no reason to obey that request.

I really did change it up a few times. Went with aggressive counter-argument early and ran myself into the ground, then tried to switch it up with a big case on Lowell to look tunneled-town and proactive, and then when that didn't work just tried to play for gut, really try to appear crestfallen. I guess I just got lucky that eventually it stuck.

I think ironically if I was a townie I'd probably have been lynched, because the temptation to OMGUS and just the anger at being unfairly targeted would have gotten to me more and I wouldn't have been able to back down...

You managed to look damn protown very early. I knew causing suspicion on you would be hard because of Achilles non-involvement, but your posts on day 4 with Xyl were really, really formidable. Lowell's non-defence helped us out a lot at that point I think.

[SerialClergyman]

No, I don't claim to have dealt with that bit well at all, I admit totally you guys both had me, I just didn't see it going in and am still not quite sure how you picked it and what you would have expected Serialtown to do in that situation. Was my mistake not switching my vote when I declared that Xyl and Lowell were likely scumbuddies? Or was it not being prepared to switch the moment you asked me to, Xyl?

[SerialClergyman]

Saying you lynched 2/5 mafia when the last lynch was heavily Vermillon-pushed and worse for town than noylynch/townlynch is a bit of a stretch.

Bit disappointed at the fact that Vermillon made up 4/24 town members and despite being the obvious threat, especially after the Mastin lynch D2, were killed only 1/13 times and hit all our kills - that's not regarded as playing particularly well.

We managed to win despite when it was down to 10 players all three of us were in Xyl's 'maybe not town' category yet the lynch was between a townie and our rival mafia (who only managed to save his skin via a faked bah post).

I think it's not just about the reads.. Xyl's reads were excellent, and simply stunning in hindsight, especially looking at Valhalla. But even after identifying those reads Lowell, a mason and CKD were the ones who ended up on the chopping block, and that counts for something.

[SerialClergyman]

I tell you what, after this game I think I'll follow your advice.. you're probably twice as likely to be town than scum, and I'm happy with a 67% win rate

But I think it's a key issue that you raise. Look at Albert's play - the guy doesn't really post cases too often, just has gut reads that are better than chance and somehow manages to often compltely bend the town's will into lynching who he says. To be honest, I wish I had either the ability to read the game or the ability to convince, but they are definitely two seperate skills.

It does make it hard when you're a gut player to argue against your read - I pushed very hard the fact your IIoA point didn't really stand up because it was one of the few concrete things I could argue, and I felt I was on firm ground there. When you were saying that you thought I was probably scum because you had gut town reads on kmd and spyrex it was one of the most frustrating things you can imagine - how do I get out of that?

But the flip side, of course, is that if it's not easy to argue against, it's probably not too convincing to the rest of the town, who are worried and confused and frustrated and all the other things you have to deal with as a townie.

Do you think that the metagame should change to accepting other people's gut reads? Would you like to see more people wagoning/lynching because other players have a strong read on the game?

I just finished foggy londontown with iam, and in lylo iam had a sublime case, honestly the best I'd ever seen. Went through the entire game, linked every point to a post, must have taken him a week and a half. It just had one slightly wrong assumption, though, and he ended up with only half the scumteam. He was on the right track, but just couldn't quite get to the point he needed to be in time. And, because cases are much more convincing than gut reads, everyone went along with it.

[SerialClergyman]

Can't help it, just played 99 pages as scum in this game alone, going to take me a while to be reasonable again

But the point still stands - I think people are more likely to join a wagon in which you describe someone as being scum compared to one in which you say everyone else is likely town. And I also think it's easier to argue against being scum than it is to argue against everyone else being town.

It seems like a bit of a double-edged sword to me.

[SerialClergyman]

Do you think there's a case for using PoE to determine the scum then using a 'confirmartion bias-y' case to get them lynched?

[SerialClergyman]

Sorry, one last point I've been thinking about, curious to see if anyone has a comment.

Is it possible to defend yourself reasonably? I was thinking back to the posts at the start of D4, somewhere around the 2020 post mark where Wicked votes Xyl and Xyl in exasperation says defence by itself is scummy.

I think this effect is noticable but able to be overcome as well. I remember reading my first game of mafia and on the first day I was 100% sure that one of the two leading wagons were scum, and of course they both weren't. There's definitely something to be said that defence can be interpreted as scummy, simply because some of the mud always sticks.

Yet Xyl and to a lesser extent kmd defended themselves in D3 and were essentially regarded as semi-confirmed town for the rest of the game. Nobody was interested in taking up rofl's case on Xyl on D4, as much as I tried to push it subtly, and yet Xyl was at L-1 on that day numerous times and rofl flipped town. So in that moment you must have done something right. Had you not defended yourself at all I think rofl's ability at rallying townie votes might have seen you lynched.

I've been playing with the idea that sarcasm is more likely to come from scum than town, simply because I've felt the desire to use it far more as scum than town, it's so important to dismiss and ridicule attacks against you without doing those wallposts that inevitably look scummy, desperate, overdefensive (etc etc) and bring votes to them more than they push votes away.

But perhaps the sarcasm issue is because this game is only one of two in which I've been seriously attacked to the point where I thought I could be lynched. (the other I was a townie who pushed hard on two bad reads in a row and got lynched in lylo.)