Fall of the Matrix: Game Over!

[Zindaras]

(shrug) I don't really care all that much about meta in cases of extreme anti-town behavior. Lynching people who claim VT just improves the town's odds of wining.

But he only claims VT as town. How much does lynching people who are town increase the towns chance of winning?

Do we have any data on his scum game? I'm personally unimpressed by this kind of meta unless it's made explicit by the player. For example, I know someone who has a No-Lie Policy and he's kept it throughout years and years of Mafia play up to the point where everybody believes it. But he is invested in his meta. I do not see any investment from Vez. That means that he has more than enough incentive to betray the meta at a later point.

VOTE: DeathNote

Thanks for helping us skip RVS.

You need to die now.

Vezok is town, and it's all but assured. Vezok is not intelligent enough to manipulate his own self meta. There's no reason, as town, to lynch a town player to "narrow down the PR list." It's just helping scum if anything, narrowing down their choices, thus increasing their likelihood of hitting a power role.

seriously, when's the last time we quicklynched anyone on day 1 of a large game on mafiascum?

Vezok was policy lynched D1 in 27 hours, 34 minutes in Mafia of the Chosen Ones (Thread open to hammer). It took a whopping 45 posts from thread open to hammer.

So roughly 3.5-4 months ago.

This post just feels horribly wrong to me. I am extremely suspicious of anyone confirming other people as being a certain alignment based on metas and assumptions.

Not with you. Why do we assume that because he has claimed VT, he is either VT or scum. How do we know he is not a cop, serial killer, vig etc etc etc
How do you know there arent any other options?

If he's a Cop, then he's not a Townie. Therefore he's lying. But Town doesn't lie. Therefore, he's not a Cop.
If he's a Serial Killer, then he's not Town. Therefore, he's not Town.
If he's a Vig, then he's not a Townie. Therefore, he's lying. But Town doesn't lie. Therefore, he's not a Vig.
By induction, my thesis holds that he's either a Townie or he's not Town.

I just meant he could be town but a PR. (A cop is a townie etc) Though I grant you, I can't see why he would lie about it.
My point really was that I just think we should be entirely neutral about his claim. I do see what you mean. I just think we should ignore it really.
ps induction is inference from experience -you meant a priori reasoning

I'm just going to put it this way: if he goes back on his claim, I'll be doing everything to get him to die. Liars are scum.

Okay, reading the pregame and day so far, I like the Vez bandwagon. Since a lynch would, especially D1 with as little information based on PR due to no n0, be either best case senario, or second to best (scum, or no PR). I'm fine with taking as much time as we want on the actual lynch, however scum and town alike will be likely to lynch him, in either case. Bussing someone who claims VT, especially one that has meta from others as a bad player/policy lynch regardless of the claim, leads little information on the bandwagon itself.

I think unfortunately with his claim, we've lost a chance at a lot of information we could have acquired on D1, and we're going to end it with much less for the PRs to go on in the night.

So,

Vote: Vez

Vote: Surye

Lain's #104 basically describes my entire position on this whole Vez issue. I think Yossy did a slight turn on Vez and seemed to become a lot less vituperative after the backlash. I am wary of Vez because his vanilla claim essentially just gives him a free pass to not get killed until endgame if he's scum.

What did the VT claim do for your read on him?

I don't like what it has done for the town, but I don't believe it makes him scum. I don't think scum would willingly draw that much attention to themselves so early. His action has still made the town's chances worse, because we are now focused on him instead of catching scum. If he actually is VT, it also increases the scum's chances of hitting a power role on their nightly kill.

I've seen scum do the wackiest stuff. This would hardly be an exception.

For all people there.

I am just a random dude in the matrix. No rolename or specific character.

I still like my vote on DN. I have a town read on poro.

Surye seems scummy, because of the part where he talked to sensfan.

Oh wow, you gave us all kinds of insane information that we couldn't possibly know!

Except that it's in the first post.

[Zindaras]

General reads:

-Agar: way too eager to confirm vezok. His posts on the issue give me a bad gut feeling.
-Vezok: I'm honestly leaning slightly to town, despite what I just said. I do dislike the entire claim thing and would honestly hope that he'd not do it again. Also, as a champion of the vanilla role I feel forced to sigh sadly and despair about the whole issue.
-Primate: feels town to me, but seems to disagree with me on basically all reads.
-LlamaFluff & Medicated Lain: These two are the ones that read the best to me. What they post makes sense. I'll have to keep an eye on them because, of course, there's been little scumhunting so far, but they're solidly in the town camp to me.
-Yosarian: I think the Vez lynch is a bad lynch. I dislike the way he went from really wanting to lynch Vez to seemingly state that it wasn't going to happen.
-DeathNote: Is like Yosarian but without the switch. Like I said before, I think the lynch is a really bad lynch, but he looks slightly better to me than Yossy does.

[Zindaras]

@Zindaras: I am a survivalist. I'm more satisfied if I lived till the end then if I won.
If everyone knows I am town when claiming VT they won't lynch so I can get to endgame. If I claim VT as scum day 1 like this they won't believe me anymore and I won't have the same chances of winning.

*sighs*

-Surviving to endgame =/= Winning.
-If everyone knows you are town when you claim Vanilla and they won't lynch you so you can get to endgame, you have an extremely strong incentive to claim Vanilla when you're Mafia as well. If everyone knows you are town when you claim Vanilla and you actually manage to keep that particular metagame running, the scum (either SK or Mafia) suddenly have a huge incentive to kill you. And if you don't claim Vanilla, suddenly both Town and Mafia will have an incentive to kill you, because that implies you're either scum or a power role. Hence, your strategy is untenable in the long run.
-Surviving =/= Winning.
-

Surviving =/= Winning

-I cannot stress this strongly enough: survival is not a goal. Look at your win condition. Look at the rules. I don't care whether you live or die. I don't care whether

I

live or die. I care whether we win or not. If you die, sign up for another game. There may be an "i" in "Mafia", but there isn't one in "Town".

[Zindaras]

-Agar: way too eager to confirm vezok. His posts on the issue give me a bad gut feeling.

I'm not "eager to confirm" him. I'm more wanting to run up the jackasses going "Lol VT claim, LYNCH LYNCH LYNCH."

Tell me the scum motivation for claiming Vanilla Townie, self-aware of meta or not, and locking yourself into that kind of claim? He basically just forced his scumteam in between a rock and a hard place if he's scum because they now essentially can't risk sending him out for a night kill. A track or watch that turns him up is going to result in his auto-lynch. Now his entire scumteam is forced to play that much better in order to hope that they aren't suspected enough to get nailed by any investigative results.

If you can show me any logical scum motivation outside of "self-aware of this meta", I'll be glad to relent and potentially move my vote. But right now I see no reason.

Vezok is town, and it's all but assured

. Vezok is not intelligent enough to manipulate his own self meta. There's no reason, as town, to lynch a town player to "narrow down the PR list." It's just helping scum if anything, narrowing down their choices, thus increasing their likelihood of hitting a power role.

Jesus christ, let's all stop being retarded for a second. Vezok claimed VT. If he was scum or anti-town of any flavor, he would have had some ridiculous unbelievably retarded claim. It's how he rolls. He is not smart enough to manipulate this. Move your votes onto someone who deserves to be wagonned into oblivion, like DN or Surye or Lain.

Fixed quote tags

That looks pretty eager to confirm the guy.

Now, as for your arguments:
-Vez may be the target of a tracker...once. No Tracker is going to constantly track one guy for claiming VT and if he did, I'm pretty sure the Mafia would find it quite an acceptable trade.
-Vanilla Town is really quite an excellent claim for scum. It turns away potential SKs, it makes a townie more likely to survive hence allows the scumbag to not raise eyebrows when surviving, you can't be counterclaimed, you don't have to think up a claim.
-I'm not sure if I'm drawing on the wrong experience here (it's been a while since I played a game on MS), but it's a vanilla claim. It's quite possible that such a ruckus was not anticipated.

My win condition says I win if all the threats to the town are dead.

In order to survive I have to kill all the scums so they can't kill me.
If I survive till the end the odds of town winning are bigger.

Call my surviving a second goal but nearly any role I would have I have to survive.

Nope, mate. If you can kill yourself to take out a scumbag you do it, hands down. As a townie, you play not to get lynched, sure, I'll go with you on that one. But if you have an inconsequential role, you paint a bullseye on your behind and hope someone hits it. Because the Mafia isn't going to accidentally kill itself off at night. The numbers don't change if you play to evade the bullet. Townies still die. Basically, your little move reduced the pool of potential power roles for the scum. Hence, the chance of the Cop dying has become larger (by 4-5%, depending on the size of the scumteam). And, quite frankly, there are few players that are worth more than a Cop.

Do we have any data on his scum game? I'm personally unimpressed by this kind of meta unless it's made explicit by the player. For example, I know someone who has a No-Lie Policy and he's kept it throughout years and years of Mafia play up to the point where everybody believes it. But he is invested in his meta. I do not see any investment from Vez. That means that he has more than enough incentive to betray the meta at a later point.

Agar posted a couple of examples earlier. I don't know if he's ever made it explicit outside of this game just now.

Well, Agar's posts did somewhat help, though I am a bit hesitant to simply accept it on the basis of two games. If he's that new to Mafia, then he'd probably learn from his previous experiences as well, so I still don't trust it. Also, I'm not currently buying the policy, even if it's made explicit. Too little history to go on.

Yossy's right: purely playing the odds, Vez would make for a good lynch. However, I feel we can and should attempt to do better than just playing the odds.

Also, to be honest, the victory condition? Meh, I think it's a pretty weak argument. It's certainly something noticeable but I heavily dislike using the victory condition wording or even any part of PM wording. No Pressure Mafia already showed the weaknesses of that particular strategy.

[Zindaras]

EBWOP: Mod, could you please fix those tags?

[Zindaras]

-Yosarian: I think the Vez lynch is a bad lynch. I dislike the way he went from really wanting to lynch Vez to seemingly state that it wasn't going to happen.

I said a Vez quicklynch is very unlikely to happen. I mean, come on; we need 13 votes to lynch someone in this game, and this is mafiascum; you couldn't get 13 people here to agree the sky is blue without a month of debate first.

I never said that Vez isn't likely to get lynched. He certainly is likely to get lynched.

Yosarian: Have you ever enforced this "lynch vanilla day one" strategy before? Could you show me where, if so.

(uses mafiascum search function)

Well, I mentioned it here, in this large game:

https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... 5#p2133515

...did you seriously just claim VT when you were nowhere near a lynch?

Did you really miss my long diatribe this game on why it's anti-town for any vanilla townie to ever claim vanilla, under almost any circumstances? And it's especially bad since you weren't in any imminent danger of being lynched?

Generally, once someone claims vanilla, the town pretty much has to either lynch them or vig them.

I then went on to explain the theory a lot more after that point in the game.

It also came up in Battle Mafia:

https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... 7#p1846447

Yeah, I wasn't planning on quicklynching DT today either. But then he claimed vanilla for absolulty no reason. Lol.

Vote:DT Master

You could find a bunch more examples, if you look; sadly the old boards are down right now, but it's an opinion I've had for a long time. You can find stuff on the MD board about it as well.

What troubles me about your entire argument is that it assumes that we can't do better than random today. The risk of running up a power role is always there, but Mafia isn't purely a game of numbers. If we'd just use the random number generator to decide everything, odds are we'd lose.

Lets say statistically scum has a 50% chance of claiming VT, 50% other.

In standard 9:3 game, with 4 town powers... there is about a 70% chance any VT claim is truthful, 70% in this game? Thats awesome. Lynching VTs may slightly help protect PRs, but the significantly cut down chances of lynching scum, and that is the true goal of the game.

News flash: town only lynches correctly on day 1 about 30% of the time anyway. Some studies have actually shown town day 1 lynches to be less accurate then random, probably due to scum manipulation.

30% is certainly not worse than random. Also, the last time I did any research into this, Town did significantly better than random (30-40 game dataset). That was a long time ago, but it still stands (also, amusingly, I used that particular data as an argument to get scum lynched...on D1). I honestly find it difficult to believe that you'd basically play the mathematical game (and, to be honest, the math isn't really that much better).

"Let's move to another wagon for information, get them to claim, and then come back to the guy we already know we want to lynch and already claimed Vanilla" is worse.

Why?

Please tell me you do actually see the problem with that statement. Please.

I don't deny there is an issue with that situation, my problem is that I see a problem in both situations, and I'm trying to figure out what the best answer is.

• I believe VezTown really messed up, and hurt town with his action and that's unfortunate. However every town
  is
  an important number.
  
• I believe VezScum is using basic wifom to cause confusion and arguing in a way that is not helpful to scum hunting.
  
• I think lynching Vez D1 is pretty much a no-tell, and in further thought, this wagon is not helpful either, which as I've been saying means no information.
  
• The odds of VezTown vs VezScum is what I think dictates whether it is in towns best interest for an early lynch. I have not fully assessed that, partially because of the inherent problem with analyzing what is essentially a wifom.
  
• Sensfan is right, if we leave the Vez wagon for someone else, we can't have an intention of going back, as a spineless wagon is just as useless. I did not think that through.

So given my thoughts above, what does someone think of this plan (thought of it while driving home, may need some help):

• Forget Vez wagon as ultimately useless for D1.
  
• Cop investigates Vez night 1. The nice thing about this is if we only have an alignment cop, that is all we need.
  
• If Vez is clean, we can backburner him, and not worry about addressing issues of action tampering, since we have no real claims yet.
  
• If Vez comes up dirty, we have D2 lynch, save risking a power role, and give slight incentive to kill Vez N1 as it would prevent a mislynch D2. In this case we'd need to then begin protecting the cop.

Thoughts?

WIFOM does not exist.

Also, this post contradicts both with your earlier post and your still-present vote on Vez. You apparently find the wagon to be useless regarding information, yet you're still on it. Leading the Cop is also a no-no.

Feeling pretty good about my Surye vote right now.

My win condition says I win if all the threats to the town are dead.

That's not what mine says.

Vote: Vezok

Really? Maybe it's just me, but I don't have my role PM word-for-word memorized. There's scum slips, and then there's paraphrasing.

To the people voting for Vezok for *this* reason: do you legitimately think this is a scum slip?

I definitely do. If he is townie, I want his clan lynched right after him. This means Internet Stranger, and who else is defending vezok for easy town points?

I know but one thing, and that's that vezok isn't a town power role, and that's enough for me to rip his flailing body apart today. This doesn't stop me from scumhunting different faction scum like Internet Stranger.

Only an idiot of a cop would ever investigate vezok

These are very bad posts. Chainlynching

and

leading the Cop? The first post reeks of scum wanting to set up tomorrow's lynch, while the second post reeks of scum remembering that he's not supposed to know Vez is town, wants Vez run up first and adding a reason as an afterthought.

FoS: Albert B. Rampage

[Zindaras]

-Yosarian: I think the Vez lynch is a bad lynch. I dislike the way he went from really wanting to lynch Vez to seemingly state that it wasn't going to happen.

I said a Vez quicklynch is very unlikely to happen. I mean, come on; we need 13 votes to lynch someone in this game, and this is mafiascum; you couldn't get 13 people here to agree the sky is blue without a month of debate first.

I never said that Vez isn't likely to get lynched. He certainly is likely to get lynched.

Blech, forgot to respond to this. I see what you mean.

[Zindaras]

Also,

confirmed

. >.>

[Zindaras]

OH God. Directing the cop, setting up lynches, doesn't care about the wagon at all. Just wants my wagon to finish in a lynch.

unvote
vote Surye

@Yos: Scum now have better chances of killing a PR. So what? Mafia is first based on behavioral analysis, then night actions.

What do you think is better: In 3 man LyLo :

1

We have on doctor alive, one townie and one scum. YAY. One unconfirmed PR that does nothing.

2

We have one townie who is pretty much confirmed because of the way he played( lead the lynching wagons on scum, or something like that), one townie and one scum.

There is one confirmed and tow unconfirmed. Way better than case 1.

I'd rather have the doc survive until endgame because he's far more likely to to do something useful in between. If LyLo comes a day later because the doc protected a kill, that's a free lynch.

And, for the rest, you're free to lead wagons on scum. But you're not doing that. Most of your play so far has been based on OMGUS.

[Zindaras]

I voted Surye in post 120, Mossy.

[Zindaras]

I wasn't voting anyone. How can I possibly unvote nobody?

This is silly.

Unvote, Vote: Surye

[Zindaras]

Yos: could you please tell me what you think of Surye, AGar, Albert and Brian?

[Zindaras]

Some people go into games with players they won't lynch D1

without a massive event happening, for one reason or another. For some it's Glork, for others it's Fate. For me this game, it's Vezok. One of you would have to provide something that can't happen at this point (a la, a night action)

for me to consider his lynch today

, not with so many people going "Ooh, easy wagon!" There are a million and one better candidates than Vezok right now. Like Surye or ABR.

So, you came into this game knowing you wouldn't lynch Vezok? And there's no way we can convince you otherwise? You're admitting personal bias, and you're saying the only thing to convince you otherwise is with a night action. Which is funny, considering that most people seem to be saying that actually using investigations on Vezok would be a terrible idea.

Your actions are not helping the town.

You're either braindead or scum. Take your pick.

Vezok claimed VT pre-game. Once the game opened, that put him on the no D1 lynch list for me. There are more fruitful choices than someone who claimed VT pre-game like he almost always does.

And if you'd learn to read, I said that the only things that would convince me otherwise

couldn't happen (a la, a night action)

MEANING WE HAD NO NIGHT ZERO.

Seriously. Which is it?

If he always does it, it's a null tell. I hugely dislike the way you're acting about this issue. He is no blind machine doing the same thing over and over again.

@Albert You also should stop with the personal attacks. It has no place here, for many reasons.

Excuse me?

I am being nice, sir. If you think that I should censor myself from saying that someone

annoys

me, please kindly take a step back, clear your thoughts, and come back to me with a smarter reply.

I suppose I overreacted, and I was in a bad mood considering I had just been called braindead and illiterate.

Maybe they killed you because they find you as annoying as I do.

Nevertheless, this kind of post really doesn't contribute to the game.

No. I agree with you on this. I have no interest in insults and whatever. I accede that MS is a dramafest but go do it somewhere else, please. We're stuck with what we have and we'll have to do the best we can with it. Policy lynching Vezok is just random. We can do better than random.

My ideas to come up with a solution to the problems I listed seem to have struck a cord with some as scummy and anti-town. I'm okay with them not being good ideas, and to be honest, with this day already a mess, they are desperate to find something to find scummy and wagon. But the speed in which some people jumped on against me is very interesting. Especially Agar and Vez.

WIFOM does not exist.

Also, this post contradicts both with your earlier post and your still-present vote on Vez. You apparently find the wagon to be useless regarding information, yet you're still on it. Leading the Cop is also a no-no.

Feeling pretty good about my Surye vote right now.

You clearly missed my point. I believe his wagon will be useless regarding information, and I believe him surviving on is dangerous to town. Did I not make that clear, or do you find them mutually exclusive?

If his survival is inherently dangerous to the town, there was no reason to lead the Cop to investigate him: he would have to die regardless of his alignment. Beyond that, I've seen zero proof of his danger to the town. I will concede that he's no PJ or Glork but if he's a townie then he's most certainly not a

danger

.

Also:

Okay, reading the pregame and day so far, I like the Vez bandwagon. Since a lynch would, especially D1 with as little information based on PR due to no n0, be either best case senario, or second to best (scum, or no PR). I'm fine with taking as much time as we want on the actual lynch, however scum and town alike will be likely to lynch him, in either case. Bussing someone who claims VT, especially one that has meta from others as a bad player/policy lynch regardless of the claim, leads little information on the bandwagon itself.

I think unfortunately with his claim, we've lost a chance at a lot of information we could have acquired on D1, and we're going to end it with much less for the PRs to go on in the night.

So,

Vote: Vez

There's no "Vez is a danger to the town regardless of his alignment" there.

Those suspecting AGar and me as scum: Because we all know that scums protect each other so hard that is the best way to go. Seriously if oyu are town and thikning that please go back and say it louder a few times.

As close as this comes to WIFOM, it's an utterly irrelevant statement. Also, it only makes me think that you are scum together more, rather than less.

You clearly missed my point. I believe his wagon will be useless regarding information, and I believe him surviving on is dangerous to town. Did I not make that clear, or do you find them mutually exclusive?

Do you think his wagon will suddenly gain information if it happens 3 days from now?

Nope, which is why it sucks we're in this position. But I do think he hurts town's chance of winning the longer he is alive, because regardless of what Zin says, claiming VT pregame IS wifom. And the misinformation and confusion will be clear to one side only, scum. That is dangerous. Add to it the PR list narrowing (and vez saying PR roles don't matter, pfft), and I still think he needs to be eliminated asap to prevent these issues. My idea was an attempt at allowing us another bandwagon and lynch today that could be more fruitful, and still take care of the vez problem, but apparently there's some game theory issues I was not taking into account in that plan, so it may be a bad plan. Which would explain why my vote hasn't moved, because my premise never moved.

Hi. WIFOM most certainly does not exist*. And it even more certainly is not WIFOM to claim vanilla pre-game. I'm not even sure what the WIFOM there would actually be. That he is a vanilla or not or that he's scum or not? Beyond that, misinformation and confusion do not just benefit the scum. Otherwise, we'd mass claim D1 every game. Don't be silly. PR list narrowing...is a marginal issue. Sure, it's an issue, but it makes no sense to play the numbers for that 2% and just give up on D1.

Other notes:
What is up with people voting for Surye? I don't follow that, could I get an explanation?

Okay, reading the pregame and day so far, I like the Vez bandwagon. Since a lynch would, especially D1 with as little information based on PR due to no n0, be either best case senario, or second to best (scum, or no PR). I'm fine with taking as much time as we want on the actual lynch, however scum and town alike will be likely to lynch him, in either case. Bussing someone who claims VT, especially one that has meta from others as a bad player/policy lynch regardless of the claim, leads little information on the bandwagon itself.

I think unfortunately with his claim, we've lost a chance at a lot of information we could have acquired on D1, and we're going to end it with much less for the PRs to go on in the night.

So,

Vote: Vez

This is the main starting point that makes the alarm bells ring for me.

1: I don't actually understand the second sentence, but that may be my sleepy state.
2: "There can be no information gained from this lynch." This is of course a patently false statement but regardless, it's just a nice way of saying "Don't analyse this vote." This basically tells me that he's shoring up his defenses for after the lynch, which I think is a definite scum-move.
3: The whole post reeks of "we should lynch vezok and not care about his alignment." This is a position which really troubles me, not just from Surye but also from Yossy and Deathnote.
4: The vote is quite wagony.

The key here is there is no night 0, without that dimension, day 1 sucks information wise, especially with a VT claim. I know, I've said this, but I wanted to emphasis the n0 point.

Additionally, we can attempt another wagon, and use that for analysis, however tomorrow we'll have the vez problem, or the next night, or the next, each time, the PR roles being more at risk, and providing less over all information to the town. If you don't believe me, look at Poro's analysis and extrapolate the numbers. He has the least negative effect to the town as a day 1 lynch in this current setup and situation. I strongly believe in that.

Again, I think the numbers excuse is ridiculous and Surye feels to me like he's actively trying to force the mathematical explanation on people. Note that Vezok's alignment is never in question.

"Let's move to another wagon for information, get them to claim, and then come back to the guy we already know we want to lynch and already claimed Vanilla" is worse.

Why?

Please tell me you do actually see the problem with that statement. Please.

I don't deny there is an issue with that situation, my problem is that I see a problem in both situations, and I'm trying to figure out what the best answer is.

• I believe VezTown really messed up, and hurt town with his action and that's unfortunate. However every town
  is
  an important number.
  
• I believe VezScum is using basic wifom to cause confusion and arguing in a way that is not helpful to scum hunting.
  
• I think lynching Vez D1 is pretty much a no-tell, and in further thought, this wagon is not helpful either, which as I've been saying means no information.
  
• The odds of VezTown vs VezScum is what I think dictates whether it is in towns best interest for an early lynch. I have not fully assessed that, partially because of the inherent problem with analyzing what is essentially a wifom.
  
• Sensfan is right, if we leave the Vez wagon for someone else, we can't have an intention of going back, as a spineless wagon is just as useless. I did not think that through.

So given my thoughts above, what does someone think of this plan (thought of it while driving home, may need some help):

• Forget Vez wagon as ultimately useless for D1.
  
• Cop investigates Vez night 1. The nice thing about this is if we only have an alignment cop, that is all we need.
  
• If Vez is clean, we can backburner him, and not worry about addressing issues of action tampering, since we have no real claims yet.
  
• If Vez comes up dirty, we have D2 lynch, save risking a power role, and give slight incentive to kill Vez N1 as it would prevent a mislynch D2. In this case we'd need to then begin protecting the cop.

Thoughts?

After forcing upon us the whole numbers reason, we now suddenly get a completely different plan. Besides the obvious problems with leading the Cop, we also have the issue I just explained to Surye that this plan just doesn't make any sense given the whole numbers argument. Surye wants to lynch Vezok to keep the potential pool of power roles as large as possible: this plan would actually reduce the pool quite strongly. Hence, this makes me think Surye is scum even more. It reeks of him trying to get Vezok lynched in whatever way is necessary, regardless of the arguments.


*Except for some small exceptions. This is most certainly not one.

[Zindaras]

Some studies have actually shown town day 1 lynches to be less accurate then random, probably due to scum manipulation.

More likely due to lazy fuckface scum hiding out and not posting while town eats their own.

ps. hi

*giggles*

I hope the irony is not lost upon you.

[Zindaras]

There are so many scum on that Vezo wagon that its bordering ridiculousness. If nothing materializes on Surye or someone else on that wagon soon though, ill vote Vezo myself just to keep things moving and hopefully go after the other bandwagoners tomorrow.

I dislike this post. Besides the fact that you haven't really done much to get another wagon going, it's still over two weeks until the deadline. This hardly seems like the moment to discuss when you're going to pile on.

[Zindaras]

Can someone please tell me what ISO means? I have apparently not played here for too long.

[Zindaras]

Now that's just silly. It's not even an acronym and yet it gets to be in all caps.

[Zindaras]

There are so many scum on that Vezo wagon that its bordering ridiculousness. If nothing materializes on Surye or someone else on that wagon soon though, ill vote Vezo myself just to keep things moving and hopefully go after the other bandwagoners tomorrow.

Who on the wagon are scum? Who aren't? Why?

[Zindaras]

The most obvious one is clearly Surye. His arguments are invalid and he is now stuck having to continue to press on Vezo when the initial easy lynch stalled. Its amazing how its being kickstarted again. He is calling for cops already on Day 1. But the opportunistic early bandwagoning is the easiest tell of all.

Since when do I need to answer to you anyways? Start listening to what im saying, look at the people on the Vezo wagon, put some big boy underwear on and start checking people out for yourself.Dont look to me to make a case for you Zindaras. Do you need me to hold your hand? If you do, then shut up and vote Surye.

Hate to break this one to you, but I was the first one who even voted Surye today. And I've been quite vocal about him too, so I don't really know where you're coming from here. Are you not reading the thread? I'm not asking you to make my case. I'm asking you to back up your statement that there's tons of scum on the wagon. If you say that, I expect you to name names. Plural. Not one. Who are the other scum on the wagon?

[Zindaras]

So youre asking me to suddenly make declaration on all the scum on day 1? Should I consult my crystal ball, tarot cards or fuzzywuzzy, my favorite stuffed bunny?

There are so many scum on that Vezo wagon that its bordering ridiculousness

. If nothing materializes on Surye or someone else on that wagon soon though, ill vote Vezo myself just to keep things moving and hopefully go after the other bandwagoners tomorrow.

You can hardly fault me for thinking you have multiple targets based on that. But, my apologies. I'll make sure to disregard any and all future statements from you since I should clearly not actually listen to them.

And, yes, that was sarcasm. You can be as aggressive as you like as far as I'm concerned, but if you make statements like that, you should at least back them up.

[Zindaras]

FoS: Furcolow

I honestly buy the inactivity thing but I think his Vezok vote is scummy. Fur's apparently been inactive throughout the site and I don't see why we shouldn't believe him. I will only consider his inactivity suspicious if this becomes a trend throughout the game.

So, now that I'm not lurking, you're all going to jump on my bandwagon
great

@BrianMcqeso, would you like for me to talk about how IS made you look like an idiot?
or about how everyone talked about vezokpiraka for ten pages?

I could show you how HezLucky can make a post containing lots of suspicions, then throw down a vote that makes no sense, but what's the point? An eighth to a quarter of the playerlist has done that so far.

The better players in the thread are voting Vezokpiraka. The only people voting me are generally the

anal-retentive mathematicians

, idiots like Toon, or scum like LlamaFluff

I'd rather

vote: Vezokpiraka

d1 vanilla townie claim
-

hurts % of power roles not being hit

- if he's town, he will not scumhunt or lynch correctly

I'm still catching up, but Porochaz has been hounding me even without me being here, so it is no wonder he is pushing for an easy mislynch the minute I start reading

Irony much?

HOWEVER, what appears to be a confirmed vezokpiraka is like a cancer you have to cut out before it begins. If he is actually scum, and unlynchable, just shitting up the thread with vehemence... i'm happy with my vote. If he was a GF and got wrote off as a VT it would end us as a town.

This is just silly speculation based on nothing. He's either scum or town. We do not base our decision to vote on what he could potentially have as a role. I'm pretty sure that, for example, if he's a Jester, we don't want to lynch him.

Unless there is a serious reason to think a player has a particular role, this random speculation is useless and anti-town.

I'm also going to

FoS: ToonFighter

. I'm buying a significant part of his case. (I will elaborate on this later but I need to leave. Magic Prerelease)

[Zindaras]

So, Zindaris, you are so content with your case on Surye, which is an explicit sheep of medicated lain and which is obviously a dying wagon, that you FoS TWO people in a new post without moving your vote OR addressing Surye again at all? You haven't questioned Surye either.

Zindaris new suspect.

Read my posts.

Okay, reading the pregame and day so far, I like the Vez bandwagon. Since a lynch would, especially D1 with as little information based on PR due to no n0, be either best case senario, or second to best (scum, or no PR). I'm fine with taking as much time as we want on the actual lynch, however scum and town alike will be likely to lynch him, in either case. Bussing someone who claims VT, especially one that has meta from others as a bad player/policy lynch regardless of the claim, leads little information on the bandwagon itself.

I think unfortunately with his claim, we've lost a chance at a lot of information we could have acquired on D1, and we're going to end it with much less for the PRs to go on in the night.

So,

Vote: Vez

Vote: Surye

Lain's #104 basically describes my entire position on this whole Vez issue. I think Yossy did a slight turn on Vez and seemed to become a lot less vituperative after the backlash. I am wary of Vez because his vanilla claim essentially just gives him a free pass to not get killed until endgame if he's scum.

Given the way it's put, I understand that this may lead to some confusion. However, had you actually

read

Lain's #104, you'll notice that she doesn't actually mention Surye at all. I simply agreed with her as a separate point (and didn't quote her because I thought my post was large enough as is). The vote on Surye was because the post I quoted was scummy for all the obvious reasons. Also, I'd like to refer you to the post I made after Lainy asked me for an explanation. You can hardly call it a sheep. Hell, I

started

the Surye wagon.

Also, I don't care if it's a dying wagon. It's on scum. My read on Surye is far stronger than the other reads I have. I FoS'd Furcolow for the clear contradiction in the two posts I quoted, which I found suspicious, plus the third post. As for the Toony case, I thought your point on the way he behaved around DeathNote was striking. I also disliked the way he singled out DeathNote while Surye and Yossy voted Vezzy for the same basic reason.

[Zindaras]

FoS: Furcolow

I honestly buy the inactivity thing but I think his Vezok vote is scummy. Fur's apparently been inactive throughout the site and I don't see why we shouldn't believe him. I will only consider his inactivity suspicious if this becomes a trend throughout the game.

The inactivity isn't the problem. It's the selective activity.

Look, I agree that his return was sudden and rather peculiarly timed, but I believe Toony isn't completely wrong in his appraisal of Furry's activity: there's no posting on May 3rd through May 5th and no posts on May 1st either. May 2nd was the start of the day, not long after the Vanilla claim. If Furry remains consistently active from now on, I honestly don't see it as much of an excuse to actually lynch him.

[Zindaras]

Are you bussing Surye, Zindykins?

Why don't you just vote him and find out, Cessybuns?

[Zindaras]

Are you bussing Surye, Zindykins?

Why don't you just vote him and find out, Cessybuns?

So you confess to being scum?

*shrugs*

It wasn't as if it mattered what I said. Might as well try to make you vote him while I'm at it.

Why aren't you voting him anyway?

[Zindaras]

I don't find the case against Surye particularly convincing and the Furcolowwagon has potential.

Why'd you vote Surye in your second post? It was kinda weird, to be honest.

[Zindaras]

Zinadaris: I did misread that post you highlighted, which led to some confusion. My more important point, though, was that you have not followed Surye as scum or questioned her once throughout the game. Iirc, you have two posts that address something scummy Surye did, both briefly, and one or two more posts talking about voting for her in a votecount confusion.

I'm sorry, I don't fully understand what you mean with following Surye. Anyway. After I voted him, I further addressed something scummy he did in this post. I asked Yossy for his opinion on Surye here. Then I continued my earlier point with Surye here and also made a sizeable case there.

In your big FoS post, you don't address Surye at all.

I don't see why I should address Surye in every single post I make. For example, you're now discussing with me, even though you're voting ToonFighter. Surye's V/LA anyway, so I've hardly had much opportunity to expand upon it.

You have not made a case on Surye, for someone who "started the wagon" on her. If you're so convinced Surye is scum, why are you not a) trying to further your read on her, b) trying to convince others to lynch scum?

I once again refer you to post #290. That's a significant enough case, especially when you compare it to what else is on the table (it is Day One, after all). The Vezok case is based on a Vanilla claim and the Furcolow case is based on supposed lurking and a bad Vez-vote. None of the other Surye-voters even responded to Lainy's request to iron out why they were voting Surye.

I've played one Mafia game over the past two to three years. I'm honestly a tad rusty on the whole debating and aggressive side, which is exacerbated by the fact that I'm quite busy. Perhaps I will become more aggressive later on. Though I do try to convince other people that Surye is scum. Again, I've made a number of different points against him.

And I started the wagon in that I was the first person to vote Surye. I have no idea if the others on the wagon are voting Surye because of my arguments. That's up to them to say. It was an important point because you asserted I was participating in herd behaviour.

[Zindaras]

Well, I maintain that you could have done more with Surye, but I retract the sheeping point due to my misread.

Why aren't you voting Surye anyway? Clearly he's a better lynch than ToonFighter.

[Zindaras]

I disagree. If you want ne to vote Surye, why don't you post a consolidated case to try and convince me?

Why do you disagree? Since you presumably read my posts, you should know my points. Hell, and even if you haven't, I want to know your read on him based on what you've got.

I'll see if I can get my case in one separate post for you tomorrow, if you would find that to be more pleasing than having to go through my posts.

[Zindaras]

I don't find the case against Surye particularly convincing and the Furcolowwagon has potential.

Why'd you vote Surye in your second post? It was kinda weird, to be honest.

Bandwagonning!

Can't really go wrong with getting on some sweet wagons. I'll be honest, though. It was much more fun when you were still on the Surye-wagon. Now I'm just stuck with the Joker, a guy who only listens to his headphones and doesn't actually talk and, well, Vezok. This wagon is lacking snuggliness.

[Zindaras]

Wow look at all the scum come buzzing around the easy lynch targets. Irony

Can you please be more specific?

Furcolow

What the hell is up with the rampant abuse of the plural?

Albert, what do you think of Yosarian, DeathNote, Surye and Lainy?

[Zindaras]

Albert, what do you think of Yosarian, DeathNote, Surye and Lainy?

Who the hell is Lainy?

There's only one Lain here, and she's Medicated.

[Zindaras]

Albert, what do you think of Yosarian, DeathNote, Surye and Lainy?

Who the hell is Lainy?

There's only one Lain here, and she's Medicated.

I like them all. I like everyone who is voting for vezok. Vezok needs out of this game.

Except Furcolow, apparently. And all the scum buzzing around the easy lynch targets turned out to be quite the anticlimax.

And, seriously, way to just avoid saying anything. For all the claimed "scumhunting" you're doing, you're being about as useless as you claim vezok is.

[Zindaras]

You got it wrong boy. Furcolow

is

the easy target scum are voting for.

Fine. Who on that wagon are scum?

[Zindaras]

And, seriously, way to just avoid saying anything. For all the claimed "scumhunting" you're doing, you're being about as useless as you claim vezok is.

Zindy, I made it clear that I am for a policy lynch of vezok.

Yes. There's more than that to today, even if you are inclined to lynch him. Hence my asking you about the people on the Furry-wagon.

[Zindaras]

Oh look. Furcolow is now outright playing against the interests of the Town regardless of his alignment.

If he's scum he isn't.

[Zindaras]

This self-vote can only be described as the sad climax of a horrible Day One.

[Zindaras]

Oh look. Furcolow is now outright playing against the interests of the Town regardless of his alignment.

If he's scum he isn't.

Yes he is.

If he's scum, his self-vote is in the best interests of the town.

Semantics, sure, but I like semantics.

[Zindaras]

Vez

: what is your opinion on the following players?

Internet Stranger, Amrun, HezLucky, GummyBear, Cogito Ergo Sum.

[Zindaras]

Yosarian

: what's your opinion of Vezok's play beyond the vanilla claim?

[Zindaras]

Vez

: what is your opinion on the following players?

Internet Stranger, Amrun, HezLucky, GummyBear, Cogito Ergo Sum.

IS: Town. I don't know how anyone can think he is scum if they played with him before.

Amrun and hezlucky: I don't remember them that much. Big null.

Gummybear: Null to scum. I know quadz as town pushes for policy lynches and neither singer nor quadz like me too much but even their last post shows they don't want me lynched just of policy. They are just moving along with the boat.

CES: Town read.

This post is more useful than any post made by half the players in the thread. Half the people on both the Vezzy- and the Furry-wagon are hiding behind a policy shield. This means that they're essentially throwing away Day One completely. The Vanilla-claim policy voters are slightly better than the VI policy voters in this, but the overall result is still pathetic.

Get a grip. Vezok is not completely useless. At worst, he is a sack of meat. At best, he might do something useful later in the game. The above response to my question proves to me that he is not simply completely ignoring everything people ask him and tell him.

So, people, please, get your head out of your behinds and start hunting for

actual

scum. I'm not saying Vezok is confirmed town in my eyes, but he deserves a fair chance at playing the game. Regardless of the way you feel about vanilla claims (and I totally agree that a Vanilla claim at this point was not a good move), regardless of the way you feel about the person, look through and look at the role you think he has.

Also, Yossy, are you seriously saying that a Vanilla on the chopping block shouldn't claim? I really hope I'm misinterpreting that.

[Zindaras]

I'm not saying Vezok is confirmed town in my eyes, but he deserves a fair chance at playing the game.

He had a fair chance at playing the game. Then he claimed vanilla. Once you jump out of a plane without a parachute, you probably aren't going to win the competitive skydiver's competition.

Actually, I'm pretty sure most of the actual moves are done before you open the parachute. So he'd have a okay chance at winning the competition. He'd crash to an untimely death afterwards, but he could still win. And I think Vezok is the same way. I don't think he'll get to endgame. But he is not useless.

Also, Yossy, are you seriously saying that a Vanilla on the chopping block shouldn't claim? I really hope I'm misinterpreting that.

Absolutly. A vanilla at lynch -1 should refuse to claim and just keep defending himself. The last time I claimed vanilla under any circumstances was about 4 years ago, and that was only because someone had claimed tracker and had claimed he saw me go somewhere when I couldn't have done so.

I'm sorry, but that just doesn't make any sense. If vanillas don't claim when they're on the block, then not claiming on the block becomes essentially the same as claiming vanilla. Considering the fact that your entire anti-vanilla claim theory is based on the fact that vanillas keep the PR-pool larger, them not claiming on the block doesn't actually help your theory one bit because PRs

will

claim when they're on the block.

This post is more useful than any post made by half the players in the thread. Half the people on both the Vezzy- and the Furry-wagon are hiding behind a policy shield.

This means that they're essentially throwing away Day One completely.

The Vanilla-claim policy voters are slightly better than the VI policy voters in this, but the overall result is still pathetic.

ORLY.

Last I checked, having any sort of flip and analysis of wagons related to that flip is VERY good for town. Get

your

head out of your ass, realize this is a large game, stop fooling yourself into thinking you're good enough to find scum on D1, and do something that's actually beneficial to town.

Unless we're at risk of lynching a PR, can you tell me why you have a problem with a policy lynch on D1 in a large game? Even now it's generated plenty of discussion as to who's on what side and supporting which lynch, etc.

1: Oh, yes, that would be good for town. But the problem is that if we'd all play like you, the first 13 posts of the game would have been

Vote: vezok

and he'd be dead by now. That would give us zero information. If Vezok turns up town, tomorrow you'll just hide behind your sad little policy and claim everything is null. So, no, you're not helping us one bit. In fact, and this is the problem I have with policy lynches, you're actively making sure that nobody can get a read on you by claiming policy lynch. And, that, my sticky little ursine, is quite anti-town. The discussion is not generated by people in favour of policy lynches, it's generated by those who are against them.
2: Your attempt at a put-down is quite amusing. I should do something beneficial to town? And discussion is pro-town? But I should shut up and vote vezok? At least attempt to attain some logical consistency.
3: Oh, and I am good enough to find scum Day One in a large game. Quite frankly, it's not that impressive a feat. Here, I'll go through the games for you:
Naruto Mafia: could be mistaken because the posts aren't exactly clear, but the Day 1 lynch does talk about a dead Goon, so that does seem to be one; Bloodbath in Camden: Town. WoW: Town; Gears of War Mafia: Mafia; Dating Show Mafia: Double dayphase, lynched Town first, then Mafia; New Designer Mafia: Mafia; Ocarina of Time Mafia: Town; In the Court of the Gods: Town; SitMOA II: doesn't make any sense but looks like town; Resurgence Mafia: Town; Simpsons Mafia: Town; Cyclic Experimentation Set: Town; Mafia of the Chosen Ones: Town, but has the stench of policy with vezok being on the block. Could be wrong; Square Enix IV: Town; Gorrad's Favorite Fictional Character Mafia: Town; The Return to Liten: Looks like Mafia; Bomb Mafia: Town; Multiple Personality Mafia: Mafia; Last Will Mafia: Town; Lord of the Rings Mafia: Mafia; Zachtown in the Mountains: Double day, first Mafia, then town; Succession Mafia: Town; Mostly Mountainous: Mafia; Spontaneous Bastard Mafia II: Town; Magician's Mafia: Town; Earth's Struggle: Town; Square Enix III: Town; Mafia on Holy Orders: Town; A Clash of Kings: Town; SWN III: Town; Ladies Night: Town; Geezer Mafia: Town; Mad World: Town; Scummers Mafia: Town; Star Wars Mafia: Not Mafia, but still scum; Scummies Invitational: Town, which is funny considering it should be the best players; It's Always Sunny: Town; Harry Potter Mafia: Town; Karma Mafia: Mafia; Rapture Mafia: Mafia; Square Enix I: Town; Go Play in Traffic: Mafia; Werewolf: Not Mafia, still scum;

13 successful lynches, 32 unsuccessful ones. That makes for about a 29% success rate in Day One lynches. I left out a bunch of unclear and weird games but this is still a pretty random dataset from Large Themes only (and, at 45 games, it's not perfect but okay enough for statistical analysis). Not bad for a useless day, eh?

[Zindaras]

I'm not going to vote Vezo simply to "teach him a lesson". That's elitist and jerky. I only vote for people that are scum. My vote isn't an instrument to be used for senseless ideology.

That being said. My vote stays on Surye, I forget who it was, but he pointed out that Surye has been joining every crapwagon we have had. That's a huge scum trait.

Hug: Internet Stranger

[Zindaras]

Actually, I'm pretty sure most of the actual moves are done before you open the parachute. So he'd have a okay chance at winning the competition. He'd crash to an untimely death afterwards, but he could still win.

Yeah, but odds are he'll be too distracted worrying about his own death.

Well, looking at the game and continuing our already slightly belaboured metaphor, I'd say Vezok would be the skydiver who'd jump out of a plane without a parachute and only notice his mistake when he tries to pull the cord.

@Zindaras: was that huge list really necessary?

When you get statements like this:

Some studies have actually shown town day 1 lynches to be less accurate then random, probably due to scum manipulation.

even the smartest towns usually fail to lynch correctly on day 1 in any case.

Get your head out of your ass, realize this is a large game, stop fooling yourself into thinking you're good enough to find scum on D1

The only thing that nips them in the bud is to actually show data. (also, I am aware that Yosarian also noted a 30% lynch success rate in his posts, but he contradicted that immediately with the first quote) Furthermore, the supposed "uselessness" of Day 1 is one of my pet peeves (the other being WIFOM). Finally, I'm an economist with a love for math and statistics.

So, yes, it was necessary and it is necessary. If only to draw the people huddling behind their policy lynch defenses out of their shells. Which I appear to have done quite nicely.

Zindaras seems to be trying hard to be useful without actually being useful - a common scum tactic.

Name five players that have been more useful than me.

Who will it be? Inactive/lurkers/V/LAs (Primate, CPE, fuzzylightning, Bamboomancer and MrBuddyLee)? Policy lynch enthousiasts (Yosarian, Surye, GummyBear, DeathNote, the one-line post man Albert B. Rampage)? Furcolow? Hyper-aggressive players (Cessy, IS)*? Perhaps you might even have enough sense of humour to name yourself. Or will you just, like Yosarian, ignore what I say and go Socratic on me?

*Note that I do not think lowly of this strategy. It is viable, acceptable and in some ways, useful. However, when most of the town is stuck in the quicksand of policy lynch, it is not very successful at getting them out.

3: Oh, and I am good enough to find scum Day One in a large game. Quite frankly, it's not that impressive a feat. Here, I'll go through the games for you:

Ok. So who's scum this game, then?

I think Surye is scummy. First his Vezok-vote which was horrible bandwagoning, then his Cop-leading plan, and now the random switch to Furcolow out of the blue. Personally, I have my doubts about you. I do not see you as the kind of player who would try to force policy lynches, and certainly not on an imperfect policy (see my previous post on this issue). You'd go a long way at healing that particular rift if you could point out a previous game in which you specifically mentioned and deliberated on the vanilla claim policy. I also find it weird that you switched to Lainy. After defending Vezok as the obvious perfect lynch for the entire day and the only one which is mathematically correct, you suddenly switch to a new wagon on a gut call? You get some brownie points for not switching to another popular wagon but it's still a move that flummoxes me. Furcolow's recent voting patterns showed up as more than a blip on my radar. First a self-vote, then two switches to whatever new wagon sprouted up? I found the original reason for his wagon to be weak at best, but his posts since then have been poor. AGar showed up on my scumradar early in the game for an overeager defense of Vezok which seemed to me like scum trying to earn brownie points.

So my preliminary guesses are Surye, Yosarian, AGar and Furcolow. These are obviously likely to change as we get more and more information, but I think there's more than enough to base a D1 lynch on.

Also, because I just remembered this and honestly can't resist posting it: hey, GummyBear, watch Zindie execute scum Day 1 of a large game! Consulmaker Mafia.

[Zindaras]

{to LlamaFluff}

The fact that you keep repeating over and over again that certain people are "obviously town" doesn't actually make it so.

Agree 100%. It's getting irritating.

---

Furcolow's last three posts were:
1) Voting for himself
2) Voting for Medicated Lain, whom had no votes* before Yos2's post.
3) Votes for Zindaras, whom also had no votes* before ABR's post.

This is blatant wagon-hopping, try to get behind anything that might possibly turn into a wagon.

Wait...if he votes for people who don't have any votes, that's not wagon hopping; if anything, that's wagon starting,

He's the second vote on both Lain and my wagon.

You'd go a long way at healing that particular rift if you could point out a previous game in which you specifically mentioned and deliberated on the vanilla claim policy.

Huh? I've already linked to two earlier games where I used the same policy about lynching people who claim vanilla, my ISO post #14.

My apologies, then. I have honestly missed that post. I will reread the games you posted.

I've said all along that while Vez is a decent lynch today just because he'd claimed vanilla, that I would be glad to lynch someone else if I thought they were likely to be scum. Vez is a better then random lynch, and it's still one I would still be happy with, but of course the main goal is still to lynch scum. I also said earlier that I would consider lynching TF over Vez. I've certainly never said that Vez is the only logical lynch for today, just that he's a good lynch unless we come up with a better suspect.

But where does the Lain-vote come from? Like I said, I think a gut call is not a lot to change a vote over, especially not with everything that's been going on. What about the rest of her posts?

Zindy, I think the problem some people have with your play is that for most of your posts, you spend a lot of time discussing why we should schumhunt, but you've spent a lot less time obviously scumhunting yourself. That was why I asked you who you thought the scum was, and I also think it's why some people are voting for you.

Most of the people I just named I have already discussed earlier. I'm open in my opinions and I have given them about pretty much everything significant that has happened during the game. If you have any requests, I'm more than willing to answer them.

[Zindaras]

Zindaras attacking me is attacking the town to me
I don't mind eliminating threats to the town

This post just makes me laugh. I actually agreed with the V/LA argument and called your wagon bad. I did FoS you, but that was on May 7th, which is

4 days

before you actually vote me. There are, what, 8 people who have voted you over the course of the game? And yet I'm the one who's attacking you? The only significant attack I made on you was

after

you voted me. Hence, it cannot be the reason you voted me. I must say, I applaud you for managing to make an illogical OMGUS.

[Zindaras]

you're not voting me

So I should vote you because then I'm not attacking you?

[Zindaras]

My apologies for my recent inactivity. It will persist for a day or two as I have an important deadline on Wednesday.

[Zindaras]

Re-read, focusing mostly on the main wagons. Pluses and minuses show what I think is scummy or good.

Post 28: Vezok's initial claim. Recapping original reactions:

Spoiler:

Primate (29): Pretty impassive, logical conclusion of Vezok's meta. (36) is a pretty solid defense based on said meta.
DeathNote (32): "Way to narrow it down for scum."
Yosarian (35): "Can we speedlynch him pre-game?"
LlamaFluff (41): Doesn't want a lynch.
Porochaz (43): That's an iffy reaction and seems to allow for him to go either way on the issue.
Amrun (48): No lynch.
Brian (49): Seems to go either way on the issue but attacks Primate for the meta-issue. This is a solid post but I do think it's a tad quick to single out Primate. LlamaFluff and Amrun don't actually mention any reason why they don't think Vezok should be lynched. Gets a + from me.
Mozamis/CES (55): Doesn't want a lynch on a pregame comment. - on gut call, definitely needs to be reviewed if Vezok is scum because it feels like a subtle way of trying to move attention away from Vezok.
AGar (58): Is even more vocal in his defense of Vezok than Primate. What's weird about this post is that he singles out DeathNote. With Yosarian also very vocal about his desire to lynch Vezok and Poro iffy on it, it gives me a bad feeling. -
Medicated Lain (59): Does not want to lynch Vezok. Would earlier lynch Yosarian.
ToonFighter (63): Inclined to believe the claim, attacks DeathNote.
Creampuffeater (66): This post confuses me a bit. He is not inclined to actually believe the claim or that he would only do it as town. Wants to go back to the random voting stage, but this seems a bit impossible at this juncture.
HezLucky (67): No speedlynch, no policy lynch.
Mozami/CES (72): More defense of Vezok, throws doubt on his Vanilla claim for some reason.
SensFan (75): Hops on the wagon.
Bamboomancer (89): Joke response, no actual input.
Surye (96): "Scum and town both want to lynch Vez." This is in my opinion still the scummiest vote. Tries to reduce the entire Vez-wagon to being completely irrelevant and not subject to scrutiny while still hopping on it. -
LlamaFluff (97): More strong defense.
Brian (98): Attacks Llama for his defense of Vez.
Zindaras (120): For the record.
Bamboomancer (164): Finally provides input on Vez. More noncommittal stuff, though.
Kison (194): Even later. Calls him town.
Furcolow (387): Hops on the wagon for the standard percentage reason.
Internet Stranger (400): Unless I'm missing something, his opinion of the Vez wagon can only really be derived from his opinion on the people on it. In 400, he is more explicit.
GummyBear (462): Policy lynch.

The following people do not comment on the original Vezok-claim:

3. fuzzylightning/ReaperCharlie
7. Albert B. Rampage: Hops on the wagon after the win-con thing and then retroactively supports the standard Yosarian arguments.
12. MrBuddyLee

In post 357, Cessy starts the Furcolow wagon. I just love the reply in 359. The angry outburst, followed by the "oh, woops, you're not voting me."

Spoiler:

Porochaz (365): Vote for timing.
SensFan (366): Calls out Furry for the same reasoning, but doesn't vote.
ToonFighter (368): Comes with the V/LA defense but then pressure votes him. Weird response.
Brian (373): Doesn't seem to care much for the actual reasons but acts like a pressure vote. This is a bit problematic for me because pressure votes still count when deadline comes.
Internet Stranger (400): Better than Vez but still scum-laden.
LlamaFluff (402): Votes him over the Vez-vote.
Amrun (404): Null tell because he hasn't seen it in either alignment.
Zindaras (417): For reference's sake.
AGar (423): Follows Llama in voting Furry for the same reason.
Vezok (426): Mixed feelings, dislikes speed of the wagon. Feels a tad noncommittal to me.
DeathNote (459): Dislikes both the wagon and Furry.
GummyBear (462): Scummy because of the timing of the posts, but otherwise not so much.
Albert (474): Vezok is an easy lynch target.
480 is Furry's self-vote
Albert (483): Apparently, self-voting is worse than being vezok.
HezLucky (526): Opposes a Furry lynch.
Medicated Lain (532): FoSes over the activity thing.
Surye (561): Vote for self-vote.
Creampuffeater (609): Dislikes the initial wagon but votes Furry for vote-jumping afterwards.
Primate (648): Doesn't think Furry is scum, self-vote is townish.

No-commenters on this particular thing:

3. fuzzylightning/ReaperCharlie
5. DeathNote
12. MrBuddyLee
14. Kison
20. Yosarian2
22. Bamboomancer/Kublai Khan

Now, I may be wrong on a couple of these names. If I missed anyone making specific comments on this, I'm open to that. I'm sure I missed something here and there.

-I don't really understand ToonFighter's 106. It honestly looks like DeathNote's argument checks out, so I don't get where he comes from.
-I like Primate's 108. There's a lot going on there, and he's looking as far as one can. +
-It's weird that Hezzy singles out Llama in 126 for spouting Mafia theory. He only refers to a single post but there is a lot of theory in this thread.
-Amrun's 131 is a bit weird. His opinion on the DeathNote wagon is highly noncommittal. Gets a - from me and makes me wish I had noticed this earlier.
-Albert starts the ridiculous win-con-wagon on Vezok in 137.
-Amrun does a 180 based on the win condition argument. I dislike this, honestly. Win cons are a really poor argument to begin with.
-I obviously like Internet Stranger's Surye vote in 147, but I have no idea where the Kison thing comes from.

Internet Stranger

, could you elaborate on that?
-Brian's 153 is good, as is Internet Stranger's 154. + for both. However, I think it's peculiar that IS didn't answer AGar's question in 149.
-After seeming quite certain of the Vez-lynch before, Amrun switches around again in 165. Gets a - from me, reeks like backpedaling after the expected wagon didn't materialise.
-Albert's 175 is bad. This is just the argument that scum would make if they know Vezok is town. Cast doubt on people defending the townie and try to set up a chainlynch. 176 is even worse. Different factions is just silly. Also, he suddenly uses the PR-math argument, which is not what he did before (he basically ignored Vezok until the wincon "slip", which caused Albert to immediately vote him).
-Kison's 194 is quite hypocritical. This is his longest post in the game and the first time he actually discusses Vezok. - for me.
-Lainy's 254 is a bit out of character. Seems too easy. -
-I still really dislike IS's 323. Blanket statements are bad unless you back them up. I'm thinking it might just be part of the IS playstyle but it's still not the way I like it.
-Amrun's 410 gives me a good feeling. +
-Amrun's 452 has been mentioned before, but the accusation towards MBL of a misrep seems particularly silly.
-I dislike Gummy's 462 because of the entire policy thing, but I don't understand why he prefers a Vezok lynch over a Furry lynch. Based on this game, Vezok seems more useful than Furry.
-Amrun gets townpoints for his little spat with TF around post 500. I like this. +

- Zindaras #212. How is ABR leading the cop? Quite the opposite, in fact.

Just noticed this. This:

Only an idiot of a cop would ever investigate vezok

It's a more subtle and indirect lead, but it's a lead nonetheless.

HezLucky - one of the reasons I suspect Zindaras is his multiple FoSes, which I see more often in scum. If I neglected to note that. It was simply a mistake.

More stuff I missed. I like FoSes. *shrugs* I use them a lot. I'm actually surprised there's not more FoSing going on.

-Lainy's 532 is a bit odd. Lack of self-defense makes her think Vezzy's more likely to be town? I get the vote-shift though.
-Brian's 538 gets a + from me.
-I skimmed over DeathNote's 546 before but I dislike leading of any power roles, even Vigs (I make possible exceptions for claimed vigs).
-LF's 549 gives me a good gut vibe.
-My exchange with Yossy around 570 makes me feel better about him. No OMGUS, calm and solid responses.
-Furry's 577 is

still

bad.
-DeathNote's 607 is weird. He has opinions but doesn't seem to want to voice them. Props to Amrun for pointing it out.

Ok Ive caught up with the game, I dont have detailed thoughts other than what has been said already. However I am happy with moz's case on TF. It alleviates some of my suspicion against him.

The 3 top lynch candidates.

1, Frank, beyond what happened before, the voting is horrible
2, DeathNote, her posts have gotten incredibly bad - I might go into this later, but as I prefer Frank just now
3, Valerie, Ive made my reasons clear on him already

The bandwagon analysis isn't a great indicator in my view as both whether you like it or not have done things to warrant votes.

If I was to put a 4th person on the list it would be Agar, mostly due to his fierce stance on the val wagon, its the aggressiveness not the stance which bothers me. However Im not willing to put a vote on him until I had ISO'd him and done some looking at his meta.

For God's sake, can we please not use names that are not traceable to their owners? I mean, at least I just cutefy people's names. Also weird that he doesn't want to go into his second lynch candidate. Seems like there's no real reason

not

to.

-I don't really like Hezzy's vote on CPE. CPE hasn't posted a lot but I actually like most of the arguments he uses for his votes.
-Random VT claim from Furry in 631. I dislike people with early claims when they're under pressure. I tend to think a lot more about when I want to claim as scum than as town, and this often leads to peculiar claim timing. 632 is just senseless posting.
-I dislike ToonFighter's 653. Suddenly, the percentage argument comes into play? More weird behaviour of his surrounding Furry wagon.
-IS recaps most of my feelings about Surye very concisely in 666.
-I don't really know what to do with DeathNote's 674. Seems like a weird time to try to revive the Vez-wagon.
-I think Lainy's case on IS is biased a tad by her lack of knowledge of his playstyle.
-AGar made me giggle with 708. That's always good.
-The timing of Amrun's suspicion of IS in 711 (three posts after IS mentions he's suspicious of Amrun) is almost too bad to be scummy. Almost.
-Furry's 724 is awfully out of character based on the rest we've seen from him.
-I never know what to make of moves like Cessy's 740. On the one hand, it's a move from major wagon #1 to major wagon #2, which always requires scrutiny. On the other hand, it's Cessy. Man, how I love and hate playing with him at the same time.
-Albert's 744 is one big what the hell post. A completely baseless and useless fourth vote based on an avatar? This is just

so

bad and I'm honestly kind of surprised by the lack of backlash beyond IS. Because of his vote, Lainy becomes a serious lynch candidate. DeathNote gets some props for echoing my sentiments in 769.
-MBL's 746 is a solid post. It echoes my feelings regarding GummyBear.
-Surye's response to Kison's demand (772-773) is bad. I know it's poorly worded but Surye has still failed to produce much content except on Vez and Fur.
-777: Zindiraz? Seriously? I know I have a difficult name to remember but that must be one of the silliest misspellings I've ever seen. You get props for trying, though.
-Albert switches to GummyBear in 783, suggesting that he didn't see MBL's post telling him to switch. I find that a tad peculiar given the way the forum works these days. No explanation for the GB vote, actually calls Lainy Town at this point.

Well, that's it.

Overall opinions:
-Surye has done nothing to save himself, in my opinion. No additional scumhunting, just same ol', same ol'.
-Furry's weird. I haven't played with him before, but he just seems all over the place. I really dislike his votes throughout the game (Vezok, himself, Lain, me, now nobody). The inactivity thing just doesn't work for me and I tend to see self-votes as a slight town tell (depending on the situation). However, I think his claim was poorly timed. Overall, I don't have a strong scum read on him, but I think he's more likely to be scum than chance would suggest.
-Albert is my main second suspect. I'm sorry, but there's just no excuse for him getting away with this crap. To be honest, if it weren't so close to deadline and Surye wasn't so close to getting lynched and Albert so far away, I'd probably switch. He's been all over the place. He interacts normally with Vezok until his wincon thing, after which Albert attacks him and then retroactively adopts the percentage argument after the wincon argument is found to be unconvincing by others. After that, he moves his reasoning into policy lynch territory. There's bad blanket statements. There's leading the cop. He moves Furcolow from an easy lynch target to a must-die within the course of a few posts. He moves back to Vezok. He then moves to a really bad vote on me. He moves to an even worse vote (without doubt the worst vote in the entire game so far) on Lain for a retarded reason at a point where it might actually put her in harm's way. And, finally, he moves to a nonsensical GummyBear vote. All the policy lynch arguments, all the self-voting, all the percentage-play, everything is forgotten the moment he gets to his next target. Perennial scummy play in my book.
-AGar and Fluffy get on the same kind of page for me. There's some weird posts and very overactive and overly sure defenses of Vezok there, but I'm leaning to town on both.
-Brian, IS and CPE are reading actively town to me.

Can elaborate or add more tomorrow but it's really late and I have an appointment.

[Zindaras]

Dude's a wily cat.

Do you think he's scum or town? Also, what do you think of Yossy?

As an aside, I forgot to mention Amrun. Her posts vary from very scummy to very towny. Some weird reaches that seem to be based on poor reading, some good posts, some really bad. For example, the MBL Scummy comment is just silly. Feeding the paranoia monster in our brains is always a bad thing.

Besides, I'm sure that a significant portion of our playerlist was nominated for scum-Scummies. But, then again, those probably aren't the people that Amrun wants to cast doubts upon.

[Zindaras]

Yos' inconsistency regarding how he handled the vezokclaim and the furcolowclaim suggests scum to me.

I'm not going to lynch someone who I think is likely town just because they claimed vanilla to pressure. Claiming vanilla to pressure is a dumb move, but most people on mafiascum do it, so it's not a tell. The entire point I was making is that you lynch claimed vanillas if you don't have a read on them, not that you want to lynch people who actually seem to be vanilla town.

And, yes, I'm saying that I think Furcolow is likely town, despite some pretty bad plays on his part. I guess if it absolutely came down to lynching Furcolow or not lynching anyone, I'd rather lynch Furcolow now that he's claimed vanilla, but I would not be happy about it.

What do you think of the timing of Furry's claim? He was not pressured that significantly when he claimed.

No, that was my exact point, Yosarian. It doesn't matter.

MBL likes to use my perfect scum record and scummy nomination as a point that I'm more likely to be scum; hence his various comments like, "Amrun always looks town" and "Amrun is very good scum."

That annoys me precisely because it has no validity and fosters paranoia.

I only mentioned his scummy to turn it back around on him so he would stop using it as a point against me.

As a matter of fact, his gummybears case is making me feel much better about him. I was concerned about his lack of effort, but maybe he was just lazy.

As much as I might agree with you in principle, I think you're misrepresenting MBL slightly here. If you read the entire posts those lines come from:

Prozac, take a good read of all of Amrun's posts, and tell me what you think. She looks pretty town to me, all in all, even though I disagree with the whole "porochez is pushing easy wagons" argument. I'm not really clear about why you're voting for her.

Amrun always looks town. Read carefully.

Amrun: Looks town to me. MrBuddyLee (who also looks town to me), can you go into more detail about Amrun?

She's good scum, at least in other games. In this particular game, she's a bit loose with the facts, and fairly image conscious, but she's not on my primary radar at the moment. I don't like little white lies like:

I haven't been on either wagon... I tried to get on vez wagon real quick, but forgot to unvote and changed my mind anyway. Thanks for the misrep, MBL.

Accusing me of misrepresentation when she actually did try to get on the vez wagon but made a clerical error? That's pretty political, and a bit yucky.

Especially the second post is just pretty okay. Also, some people just have that kind of meta.

[Zindaras]

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Surye

In the interest of insuring a lynch occurs, although a Furc wagon would still be tech. GummyBear going under noted.

FoS: AGar

There's a minimal difference between Surye and Furry as far as votes are concerned, plus there's no reason to change votes based on the rules in the OP.

http://mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.ph ... er_sort=Go

This reads like a diary of a madman.

Well, he

is

a madman, so that checks out just fine.

[Zindaras]

Yes... because I was obviously the only one operating under the assumption that a lack of a majority at deadline would result in a NL.

No, but you are the only one who changed from major wagon one to major wagon two.

812: Hez changes from CPE to Surye.
813: Fur changes from me to Surye.

I think that's basically it.

[Zindaras]

Why not post your page 5 reads so you're accountable for SOMETHING, RC?

What he said.

Put it out there now. You can easily get killed the coming night, and that would be the end of it as well. Also, your reads should not be influenced by what Surye flips.

[Zindaras]

No sarcasm, I found your case entertaning. Out of context it looks like furc and I are crazy.

If you look at it in context, town doesn't self-vote, therefore by that logic my vote is legit.

1) That's BS and you know it. Self-voting is completely useless for every role except Jester. Self-voting says more about the player than the role.
2) If that's true, you should still be voting him. But, then again, you've abandoned him for shinier wagons, haven't you? Like the "Zindie is useless", "Medicated Lain should change her avatar" and "GummyBear..." wagons. Clearly, those players have done much worse than your apparently confirmed scumbag.

[Zindaras]

All I have to say is, somebody better make something happen, or I will have to open up a can of shoop-da-woop and fire my lasers all over the place up in this biznitch.

*rolleyes*

Post. It. Now.

[Zindaras]

What the hell is Llama talking about?

Someone sent me something last night. Says that a specific player is the cult recruiter. The way its worded though sounds like someone faking a result more then a town amnesic, especially because the result is "cult recruiter" instead of just "cult"

If a town amnesic dies, then yeah I full claim it, and if I die, an amnesic knows what their result was. I just would say this is a scum role messing with me though.

Why not claim who it was now? I completely agree with your analysis that it's likely fake (it remembers me of MoS, and with MoS I mean Meadows of Sorrow rather than Mastermind of Sin), but if you die in between and it turns out to be true, it would be quite the waste.

Vote: Albert B. Rampage

Continuing from yesterday.

[Zindaras]

Only the cop would know who it was.

LF says the PM said a specific player is the cult recruiter. I might be reading it wrong but I interpret that sentence as meaning that the PM included said specific person. Otherwise, it would make no sense for the whole "specific player" thing to be there.

[Zindaras]

Only the cop would know who it was.

LF says the PM said a specific player is the cult recruiter. I might be reading it wrong but I interpret that sentence as meaning that the PM included said specific person. Otherwise, it would make no sense for the whole "specific player" thing to be there.

It does, but unless the person who sent this claims to be a player who has absolutely no barring over who they target, if they live, I am fine. Also its about 90% false, I mean, town amnesic role cop who only gets the role name, but NOT character name, in a game where there is no role (ie Cult Recruiter) attached to the character?

Its false. Im saying this as much for the offchance that its true as that no one gets suckered by it in the future.

I trust the result even less (about 1% odds, in my opinion), but I just don't see why we wouldn't want it out there. We'd want it out there to ignore, but there's no real downside as long as we don't act upon it until we get some hard evidence. Also, if it

is

fake, then we know that the targeted person probably isn't part of the scumgroup which is trying to deceive us.

I see no reason for the amensiac cop (if any) to claim. If we wanted to test Llama's information, we can just have him fullclaim it and lynch his target to test the information. Llama's information reveal has a number of possibilities:

a) Llama is telling the truth, there is amnesiac cop, and that cop nailed a cult leader.
b) Llama is telling the truth, but the information was from an anti-town role trying to trip him up.
c) Llama is lying.

Let's go into some setup balance, which is my favorite part of MafiaScum

In regards to (a), I'm skeptical of the presence of a cult because of the three nightkills. If you assume one vigilante, that makes two anti-town kills. Two anti-town groups

and

a cult? Nah, too imbalanced against the town. I could see a cult is if it was one anti-town kill and two vigilantes, which is unlikely, but possible.

In regards to (b), an anti-town role that allows them to send fake amnesiac cop results to players sounds very powerful. Such a power, if it existed, could allow that player to essentially dictate two lynches (in our example, one lynch on Llama's result, one lynch on Llama for "lying to the town") while remaining completely anonymous.

Unless there is a possibility I'm missing (admittedly possible), we either have a "two vigilantes, one scum group and a cult" setup; or Llama is lying.

a) Mafia, SK, Vig or two Mafia, Vig are both quite realistic possibilities. As long as the scum teams are small enough, the danger of crosskills will balance the game back out.
b) This is a point I disagree with. All you need is a scum message-sender. I had that role in both Packrats Mafia and Artifacts Mafia. Beyond that, we'd never chainlynch based on this because it's not Llama's role or Llama's result.

The final dichotomy is just faulty. Llama may not be lying, he may simply have been fed false information. Three options, not two.

[Zindaras]

a) Mafia, SK, Vig or two Mafia, Vig are both quite realistic possibilities.

Well, yeah, that was my point. Neither of those setups have room for a cult.

I would disagree with you on that. In both cases, there's a lot of scum, but crosskills help a lot.

b) This is a point I disagree with. All you need is a scum message-sender. I had that role in both Packrats Mafia and Artifacts Mafia. Beyond that, we'd never chainlynch based on this because it's not Llama's role or Llama's result.

Perhaps I overestimated the effect of the messenger's power. Still, if that messenger had gone with a more believable message (X is a town, where X isn't actually town) it would've been stronger.

Yes, believability is always important. But had any of us gotten a random message saying "X is scum", I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have lynched that person on the spot either. At least, that's what happened the last time I saw a role like this. Paranoia is rampant.

The final dichotomy is just faulty. Llama may not be lying, he may simply have been fed false information. Three options, not two.

I listed three options

. I even labeled them (a), (b) and (c). "Llama is telling the truth and was lied to" was option B.

Unless there is a possibility I'm missing (admittedly possible), we either have a "two vigilantes, one scum group and a cult" setup; or Llama is lying.

That's the dichotomy I was talking about.

[Zindaras]

You have reads. Post them. I don't even care if you explain them right now or do it later, but your constant delays are annoying and scummy.

[Zindaras]

What I don't understand, from both Yossy and Furry:

1) The vote count is crap and you should know this. I was the first one to vote Surye and I'm listed after IS. Kison voted Surye in 543, which is after Hez (526). Vezok should technically be a lot later in the line-up because he unvoted and revoted later on. Also note how the mods failed to see both Hez's 526 and Kison's 543. Primate actually voted Surye in 648, which is before CES and Fur, but because he only mentioned it later, he got plugged it elsewhere. So the correct order is, I believe:
Surye (13) - (Zindaras, Internet Stranger, vezokpiraka, HezLucky, Kison, Primate, Cogito Ergo Sum, Furcolow, AGar, DeathNote, Kublai Khan, LlamaFluff, ReaperCharlie) (I've kept Vezok where he was despite his later short unvote/revote)
With all the missed votes and problems we've had with counts, you decide to just go with an analysi
2) Since when did leading a wagon become scummier than hopping on one? I see no analysis of actual arguments. Yossy's original statement was nothing but "for the sake of argument, let's assume there's scum leading the wagon". Well, fine, I can accept that for the sake of argument, but that's nothing to base a vote on.
3) There's no actual reason to believe that people leading the Surye wagon were scum. The original Surye wagon (especially the first three votes) were in reaction to the Vezok (town) wagon. Now, I could see more of where you're going if Furry is scum, but even then the analysis would only work for the people who hopped on at a later stage because the leading votes were there way before there even was a Furcolow wagon.
4) There's no actual reason to single out the Surye wagon. We have a perfectly fine other wagon on a Townie (the Vezok wagon) and yet somehow this isn't interesting to you. Let's look:
vezokpiraka (7) - (SensFan, DeathNote,

Surye

, Albert B. Rampage, Medicated Lain, Porochaz, Yosarian2)
Since, statistically speaking, the odds of there being no scum on this wagon are extremely slim, there must be scum on this wagon. Let's just lynch them all until we find scum!
5) Statistically speaking, it's highly unlikely that all the players with Y's in their names are town. Hence, we should now lynch the rest of this list until we find scum:
3. ReaperCharlie (replacing fuzzylightning)
10. HezLucky
12. MrBuddyLee
20. Yosarian2
23. GummyBear (quadz/singer hydra)
6) The timing of votes is completely ignored. I'm pretty sure my vote was on Surye for two weeks before it became a significant wagon.

I find this just plain scummy from both Yosarian and Furcolow. For Yosarian, it's basing a vote completely on something that can hardly be called wagon analysis, forgoing the analysis of arguments of the people on the wagon and the timing of votes, preferring to attack leaders instead of mindless sheep and focusing completely on one town-wagon when there were two yesterday (and, not surprisingly, he ignores the wagon he led himself, which also defeats his own argument of there having to be scum leading the wagon). For Furcolow, it's simply the extreme irony that he's actually finding people scummy for founding the wagon he mindlessly sheeped on to save his own pathetic life. Yesterday he got all moany about me for "attacking" him (which I hadn't even done by the time he voted me and I only did so because he voted me, which makes him quite the psychically gifted, plus really good at fixing time paradox problems), and today he's attacking people for attacking someone else. There's zero consistency in his arguments and his play.

[Zindaras]

Yay for irony!

Zindaras attacking me is attacking the town to me
I don't mind eliminating threats to the town

Who I don't want to lynch:

Furcolow
Albert B. Rampage

MrBuddyLee
Yosarian2

SensFan

Internet Stranger

AGar
LlamaFluff

Primate

Porochaz

DeathNote
Kublai Khan

Medicated Lain
GummyBear (quadz/singer hydra)
Toon Fighter

ReaperCharlie
Kison

Cogito Ergo Scum

Zindaras

BrianMcQueso

HezLucky
:Who I do want to lynch

Orange voted Furcolow at some point, Red voted Furcolow at the end of the day.

Furcolow (8) - (SensFan, Toon Fighter, BrianMcQueso,

Surye

,

creampuffeater

, GummyBear, Medicated Lain, Furcolow)

I checked this vote count because it's obviously wrong and Poro is the last vote. Mod should probably fix that.

[Zindaras]

Also yay for triple posting!

As much fun as this little tangent is, we should be lynching Apathetic Albert right now. The guy has seriously been on every crappy wagon in the entire game.

[Zindaras]

What I don't understand, from both Yossy and Furry:

1) The vote count is crap and you should know this. I was the first one to vote Surye and I'm listed after IS. Kison voted Surye in 543, which is after Hez (526). Vezok should technically be a lot later in the line-up because he unvoted and revoted later on. Also note how the mods failed to see both Hez's 526 and Kison's 543. Primate actually voted Surye in 648, which is before CES and Fur, but because he only mentioned it later, he got plugged it elsewhere. So the correct order is, I believe:
Surye (13) - (Zindaras, Internet Stranger, vezokpiraka, HezLucky, Kison, Primate, Cogito Ergo Sum, Furcolow, AGar, DeathNote, Kublai Khan, LlamaFluff, ReaperCharlie) (I've kept Vezok where he was despite his later short unvote/revote)

Kison didn't vote Surye until later in the day, yes, but he was FOSing him from fairly early on. He was one of the people pushing the wagon, certainly.

He didn't really push it. I think IS and I were the only ones who did active pushing. Still, like I said, the vote count differentials change a lot. Hez and Primate certainly deserve your analysis now, considering that they were on earlier.

2) Since when did leading a wagon become scummier than hopping on one?

In this case, we have "people who pushed the wagon", "people who hopped on later", and "a few people who joined at the end to ensure we didn't get a no-lynch". I am suggesting that there are likely to be some scum in the first two groups.

This is nonsense. The Furcolow wagon was consistently at 7 votes throughout the game. Hence, you ignore several people who jumped on the wagon before it was even the largest wagon (and hence weren't in the "no no lynch group"). More importantly,

given the rules of the game we were never in danger of a no lynch

. A 7 player wagon would be enough, and no idiot would ever go for a late unvote if it caused a no lynch. And even if you feel that this danger was there, it's basically gone at vote 8. So votes 9 through 13 are completely useless wagon-hopping.

There are likely to be scum on both the Vezok and Furry wagons, but you choose to ignore them. When both Furry and Surye had 7 votes, some players made a choice to vote Surye over Furcolow. But, apparently, these players were only ensuring we wouldn't get a no lynch. They apparently didn't have a choice.

4) There's no actual reason to single out the Surye wagon. We have a perfectly fine other wagon on a Townie (the Vezok wagon) and yet somehow this isn't interesting to you. Let's look:
vezokpiraka (7) - (SensFan, DeathNote,

Surye

, Albert B. Rampage, Medicated Lain, Porochaz, Yosarian2)
Since, statistically speaking, the odds of there being no scum on this wagon are extremely slim, there must be scum on this wagon. Let's just lynch them all until we find scum!

The point is that when a townie wagon succeeds, it usually has some direct backing from the scum voting block. A day 1 wagon just isn't that likely to succeed without that; if the scum are 25% of the town, then a wagon supported by the scum is going to succeed much more often then one that isn't. So you can take a look at how a townie wagon unfolded and try to figure out who seems likely to have been a scum pushing the wagon.

A townie wagon that dosn't succeed may or may not have had scum backing.

While it's statistically more likely that a successful wagon has scum on it, it is not statistically more likely that a successful wagon has scum in its first 5-7 voters, compared to other 7-vote wagons. What you're suggesting is that scum already know which wagon is going to be successful. That's just silly. No, Yossy, what matters are

arguments

. I find the Vezok-wagon to be a

lot

scummier than the Surye-wagon, simply because it's filled with opportunistic players. This is also why I dislike the way day ended yesterday. Suddenly, with the votes at 7-6 or some such, five guys just randomly hop on the wagon, half of them for reasoning which doesn't even make sense (since we were never in danger of a no lynch).

Anyway, I just used that as a jumping off point to look at some players, Zindy. Take a look at Kison and CES yourself, and tell me what you think about their play so far this game.

With the right jumping off point and the right assumptions, you can get whatever results you want. I'm going to repeat my mantra here: arguments. You ignore the vezok wagon. Why? Because you feel your own arguments were good? That doesn't mean that everyone else is clear. What I hugely dislike about this is that you're limiting your scumhunting to one very small group for no good reason, with no actual argument. And then, in that group, you don't even really look at the arguments, you just say that a couple of them aren't scum and thus one of the other ones is. That's not scumhunting. What I dislike even more is that you're casually ignoring the other town wagon, the one you just happened to be on. That reeks of not wanting to attract any attraction, just like I dislike the people who weren't voting Surye or Furcolow at the end of yesterday (which also happily includes you). Non-votes and irrelevant votes killed Surye just as much as the people who hopped on the wagon at the end.

As far as Kison and Cessy go: CES is as CES does. To be honest, I hate reading him and generally just wait until he dies or claims. He is like IS, except without the posts that read as town to me. Generally, I like IS's play so far better than his, but it's going to take actual convincing for me to vote him. I'm not as happy with Kison. He's been scummy, overall. Little content, a bit of a sheep on Surye. Would have to do an actual reread of his posts, which I don't have time for right now, to pin it down better.

[Zindaras]

This is nonsense. The Furcolow wagon was consistently at 7 votes throughout the game. Hence, you ignore several people who jumped on the wagon before it was even the largest wagon (and hence weren't in the "no no lynch group").

I don't actually know Furcolow's alignment yet. When I do find that out, I'll be able to analyze what it means if people jumped on or jumped off his wagon at various points. Without knowing that, I'm not sure how much we info we can get out of that wagon.

My point here is not that you need to look at the people on the Furcolow wagon (though I personally think wagon analysis can easily be done before someone is lynched, but meh, that's not the point). My point is that, when we were on 7 votes for both players, guys like Hez and AGar jumped on the Surye wagon saying it was to ensure a no lynch. However, besides the fact that we were never in danger of an actual no lynch given the rules, they had two wagons available to them at the time. Yet they chose the Surye wagon over the Furc wagon. As far as the no lynch rule goes, Surye, Brian and I all mentioned it at the end of yesterday.

Example: Players A and B are both at L-1 one hour pre-deadline. Player C comes in and votes Player A "to ensure a no lynch doesn't happen". However, he could just as easily have voted Player B. Hence, he had a choice. The players who wanted to ensure a no lynch could also have jumped on the Furc-wagon. Hence, even beyond the whole rules of the game thing, their decision was not one of ensuring a lynch.

While it's statistically more likely that a successful wagon has scum on it, it is not statistically more likely that a successful wagon has scum in its first 5-7 voters, compared to other 7-vote wagons. What you're suggesting is that scum already know which wagon is going to be successful.That's just silly.

No, it is more likely. You seem to be assuming that which wagons fail or succeed happens at random, which is simply untrue. If the scum voting block backs a certain wagon at an early stage, that wagon is MUCH MORE likely to GAIN momentum and go to a lynch. If there's a 4 or 5 member scum voting block, and 2 or 3 of them join a wagon early on, then that suddenly doubles the size of what would have been a small wagon, and once momentum like that starts, other people are likely to join it.

Sure, but momentum is a matter of time as well. You can hardly argue that the Surye wagon had any serious momentum throughout most of the day. I'm pretty sure I actually remember someone telling me to get off it because the lynch wasn't going to happen. The Vezok and Furry wagons were far more typical in that respect. Also, I dislike the way you seem to put scum in the role of leaders and town in the role of sheep. If a couple of townies start a wagon, then scum is far more likely to give it their blessing if it's on town, so we get the same thing. It doesn't actually say anything.

Why does person A get lynched on day 1 instead of person B, when the evidence all around either for or against both of them are minimal? Quite often, person A gets lynched instead of person B BECAUSE THE SCUM DECIDE TO LYNCH HIM, and they are able to tilt the balance of the scale that way. You're looking at it all backwards; it's not that scum KNOW what wagon is going to be successful, it's that the wagon the scum supports is much more likely to BECOME successful, because the scum are supporting it.

Let's assume for a moment here that Surye's wagon is scum-led and that all the people hopping on at the last moment were townies. Then, by reasoning, Furcolow's wagon must be scum-led as well. After all, these last six townies could have either voted Furcolow or Surye, both legit wagons. The people who tilted the scales are in this case not the early voters, but the late voters. Actually, that's not completely right either. All the people on the Surye-wagon helped tilt the scales together.

Sure, wagons are more likely to be successful when scum gives it their blessing, especially on day one, but town can always push through if they need to. Hence the significant percentage of scum lynches on Day 1.

No, Yossy, what matters are

arguments

. I find the Vezok-wagon to be a

lot

scummier than the Surye-wagon, simply because it's filled with opportunistic players.

If you want to take apart the Vezok wagon and figure out who on that wagon looks scummy, please do. It's probably a good idea. I actually think that most of the people on the Vezok wagon look pretty town, with the exception of Medicated Lain for the reasons I discussed yesterday. But if you think that most of the scum were on the Vezok wagon, then please, make a case on someone.

It's not an either-or thing, either. If we're dealing with one mafia group and a SK, then there were probably 2 or 3 scum on the Surye wagon, and between 1 and 3 scum off the Surye wagon. If we're dealing with two mafia groups, then...i donno.

I made some notes about the Vezok wagon in my main recap post yesterday. I obviously felt Surye was scummy for his vote. Albert is my current top suspect, and he was also on the wagon. I'm iffy on most of the others on the wagon, except Lainy, whom I trust.

Anyway, I just used that as a jumping off point to look at some players, Zindy. Take a look at Kison and CES yourself, and tell me what you think about their play so far this game.

With the right jumping off point and the right assumptions, you can get whatever results you want. I'm going to repeat my mantra here: arguments. You ignore the vezok wagon. Why? Because you feel your own arguments were good? That doesn't mean that everyone else is clear. What I hugely dislike about this is that you're limiting your scumhunting to one very small group for no good reason, with no actual argument. And then, in that group, you don't even really look at the arguments, you just say that a couple of them aren't scum and thus one of the other ones is.

I don't know what makes you think I didn't look at the arguments. Why do you think I picked Kison and CES over people like HezLucky and Primate? The arguments they were using, and the way they approached the wagon, was obviously a big part of that.[/quote]

Well, if that's the case, that certainly changes something. I personally totally agree with Cessy on this:

Yosarian, I don't particularly agree that pushing Surye early is a scum tell, but I wouldn't've had a problem with you going "He pushed Surye early. Vote: Kison" (although I do question whether it is significant enough to merit a vote.) My problem lies with your appeal to a seductive form of fallacious reasoning.

Your post strongly suggests that you assumed that there had to be scum leading the wagon and then arrived at Kison through a process of elimination. Like Cessy, I would've been totally okay with "He pushed Surye early, Vote: Kison". However, what it looked like to me was that you limited your scumpool for no really good reason, then arrived at Kison through a process of elimination rather than simply finding him scummy to begin with.

That's not scumhunting. What I dislike even more is that you're casually ignoring the other town wagon, the one you just happened to be on.

(shrug) I think the Vez wagon was basiclaly town driven. Most of the people pushing the Vez wagon look town to me. I wouldn't be surprised if an oppurtinistc scum latched on to it at some point, just to be able to put his vote somewhere, but there's no reason for the scum to push it.

IMHO, the scum wouldn't have really WANTED to wagon Vez yesterday. The scum need to find town power roles, so the scum would have probably been pushing other wagons to try to get claims from more people instead. If you're a scum, lynching Vez yesterday wouldn't have been a bad outcome, and you might park your vote there so as to be seen doing something, but it's not what you really want to see happen. Better off just leaving him and letting him get vigged or, better yet, lynched later.

Cophunting is a dangerous business when there's still a Doc afoot. Obviously, now it's very much to the advantage of scum if they get the Cop to claim, but that's because she's already dead. If I were scum, I would be pretty happy with a Vez lynch D1, especially because that kind of player has the tendency to get confirmed with lots of people thinking he's town. There's a reason the Vez lynch completely died over the course of the day. Vez wasn't going to get lynched for a long time.

But, anyway, I always take arguments first. There were people voting Vezok for "good" reasons and people voting for bad reasons.

As far as Kison and Cessy go: CES is as CES does. To be honest, I hate reading him and generally just wait until he dies or claims. He is like IS, except without the posts that read as town to me. Generally, I like IS's play so far better than his, but it's going to take actual convincing for me to vote him. I'm not as happy with Kison. He's been scummy, overall. Little content, a bit of a sheep on Surye. Would have to do an actual reread of his posts, which I don't have time for right now, to pin it down better.

I'm probably a little more paranoid about CES right now then usual, considering he just completly fooled me in the Mafia with the Hydras game, but I'm not getting the happy townie-CES vibes from his play day 1 I normally get. I don't care if he makes short posts and all that meta stuff, but the way he voted, and the timing, is all around iffy. I guess I kind of like his "Furcolow self voting is a town tell" argument (I don't agree with it, but it feels like something town-CES might think), but it's weird the way he attacked me for not voting Furcolow at the same time he was getting off the Furcolow wagon. His "consistency" justification is really weak; what happened in the Furcolow wagon was completly different from what Vez did at the start of the day. Especally if he thought he got a town tell from Furcolow, I think it's bizzare he'd expect me to join the wagon just because of the vanilla claim.

You were very aggressive on the whole vanilla thing early on. I think making you comment on another vanilla claim is good Town behaviour. In that case, he didn't want you to vote Furry, he just wanted to see how you'd react to the second vanilla claim. I see it as a Town move.

As for Kison, it won't take you long to re-read his posts. Other then the Surye FOS followed by the Surye vote, he really didn't do anything other the pressure one lurker a bit, and his reasons for his Surye stuff were pretty weak. He just looks like scum to me.

Rather then spend all this time arguing with my scumhunting methods, Zindy, I think it'd be much more useful for you to decide if you agree with my suspects or not and why, and then we can go from there.

What I most disliked about your original post was that you so explicitly reduced the subset of players you were looking at. This troubles me. For example, while I agree with you that Kison is the scummiest person who jumped early on the Surye wagon, I do not think he is the scummiest player overall. That honour goes to Albert, for reasons I shall doublepost for.

[Zindaras]

From yesterday:

Albert is my main second suspect. I'm sorry, but there's just no excuse for him getting away with this crap. To be honest, if it weren't so close to deadline and Surye wasn't so close to getting lynched and Albert so far away, I'd probably switch. He's been all over the place. He interacts normally with Vezok until his wincon thing, after which Albert attacks him and then retroactively adopts the percentage argument after the wincon argument is found to be unconvincing by others. After that, he moves his reasoning into policy lynch territory. There's bad blanket statements. There's leading the cop. He moves Furcolow from an easy lynch target to a must-die within the course of a few posts. He moves back to Vezok. He then moves to a really bad vote on me. He moves to an even worse vote (without doubt the worst vote in the entire game so far) on Lain for a retarded reason at a point where it might actually put her in harm's way. And, finally, he moves to a nonsensical GummyBear vote. All the policy lynch arguments, all the self-voting, all the percentage-play, everything is forgotten the moment he gets to his next target. Perennial scummy play in my book.

Now with quotes to back it up. Read him in isolation. His first few posts are some banter, a question about a previous game to Vezok. Then, this:

My win condition says I win if all the threats to the town are dead.

That's not what mine says.

Vote: Vezok

A day later, after the whole win-con thing kind of died down and everybody saw how stupid it was, Albert suddenly changes his mind about why Vezok should be lynched. Note that the percentage debate was ongoing for a while now and Albert had stayed off the Vezok wagon before:

I know but one thing, and that's that vezok isn't a town power role, and that's enough for me to rip his flailing body apart today. This doesn't stop me from scumhunting different faction scum like Internet Stranger.

Also note the mention of "different faction scum". That's because his previous post contained a semi-Freudian slip:

My win condition says I win if all the threats to the town are dead.

That's not what mine says.

Vote: Vezok

Really? Maybe it's just me, but I don't have my role PM word-for-word memorized. There's scum slips, and then there's paraphrasing.

To the people voting for Vezok for *this* reason: do you legitimately think this is a scum slip?

I definitely do. If he is townie, I want his clan lynched right after him. This means Internet Stranger, and who else is defending vezok for easy town points?

Suggests knowing that Vezok is town.

LlamaFluff makes a point but I like to policy lynch players for bad decisions even if it costs me a day. See my history with zwet or Mastin, for example.

Albert starts by voting Vezok for the win-con "slip-up". He then switches to a statistics argument. Now he switches to pure policy lynch. Grasping at straws much?

Only an idiot of a cop would ever investigate vezok

Cop-lead.

You got it wrong boy. Furcolow

is

the easy target scum are voting for.

Unvote, vote Furcolow

I hate self-voters

These two posts are enough on their own.

Switches back to Vezok, then...

Zindaras seems to be trying hard to be useful without actually being useful - a common scum tactic.

I agree.

Unvote, vote Zindaras

I am ignoring vezok until there is enough support to lynch him and that's that.

Hate to be sounding OMGUSsy, but I think this is a really crappy vote.

Unvote, vote Medicated Lain

Pressure vote to change avatar

This is

a fourth vote on Medicated Lain, four days before deadline

. Furry was at 6 and Surye at 5, so Lainy was a very much viable lynch target.

Unvote, vote GummyBear

Reasonless vote.

That post is awesome KK LOL

I have experience with Surye being strung up as scum for bad plans like this, only for him to turn out town. And he tries harder than either vezok or furcolow. So yes, I like Surye better.

Defense of Surye (he does this multiple times). Yet he doesn't actually actively try to get another wagon going.

[Zindaras]

So, yeah, sorry for flooding the thread with quotes. It's just that people need to read Albert and see just how ridiculously scummy he is.

[Zindaras]

What I most disliked about your original post was that you so explicitly reduced the subset of players you were looking at. This troubles me.

I'm not sure why that troubles you. There's a lot of people in this game, it's really easy for scum to fly under the radar for days. The best way to prevent that is to try look at the game from a different point of view then the way everyone else is, to look at specific subsets of people and try to figure out where the scum are, to do different kinds of analysis and scumhunting then what everyone else happens to be doing. Focusing in on a certain subset that's almost certain to contain some scum and some town, and then doing process of elimination, is a good way to find a scum.

I don't have to find all the scum today; I'm perfectly happy just finding and lynching one scum today.

It troubles me because it makes me wonder if Kison is actually your main suspect. There could be six people you find scummier elsewhere and you'd be ignoring them.

And I think Agar is likely town; the hardcore meta defense of Vez based on previous play with him is something I'd expect to see from a townie. His vote for Surye was a part of that over the top defense of Vez, and I don't have a problem with it.

AGar voted Surye not as part of the defense of Vez. He was voting Furc at the time, so he just switched from wagon to wagon.

Let's assume for a moment here that Surye's wagon is scum-led and that all the people hopping on at the last moment were townies. Then, by reasoning, Furcolow's wagon must be scum-led as well. After all, these last six townies could have either voted Furcolow or Surye, both legit wagons. The people who tilted the scales are in this case not the early voters, but the late voters. Actually, that's not completely right either. All the people on the Surye-wagon helped tilt the scales together.

Honestly, my hunch is that all 3 wagons yesterday were on pro-town people, so that's not surprising. Especally if scum are hunting for power roles, it wouldn't surprise me at all if scum bandwagoned Furcolow to a claim and then went on to another wagon once he claimed vanilla. Who are you saying switched at a late date that you think looks scummy? Can you be a little more specific?

Like I said, I think AGar's jump was suspicious, and if Furc turns up scum somewhere later on (unlikely but possible), I'll be taking a really hard look at him. I would have to look closer at the last few votes and see if they were consistent with previously stated opinions.

Also, given your arguments here and in the cophunting argument, I would say the scummiest players are those that hopped on all the 'wagons. Town would latch onto one player they find scummy and go for that, while scum would be opportunistic and just hop onto any ol' wagon.

Vez wasn't going to get lynched for a long time.

Eh. He most likely got vigged, though, and fairly predictably so IMHO.

If he got vigged, then we have a bad vig. He was quite townish and he was hardly useless.

For example, while I agree with you that Kison is the scummiest person who jumped early on the Surye wagon, I do not think he is the scummiest player overall. That honour goes to Albert, for reasons I shall doublepost for.

I don't really agree with you about Albert. The very aggressive "lynch vanilla claimers, lynch self voters, lynch people who make horrible anti-town plays, I don't even care what alignment they are they just have to die" stuff he was doing seems like something more likely to come from a pissed off townie then from a scum who was worried about long term survival.

That's not even the main point of the case. The problem wasn't that he went "lynch vanilla claimers", it's that he was okay with Vezok after he claimed vanilla town until the crappy wincon thing came up, then retroactively changed his argument for lynching Vezok twice and then proceeded to hop on every crappy wagon we got, for even crappier reasons.

I like ML, I dislike the avatar.

He voted for me, putting me under the pressure of lynch, yet saying that he didn't find me scummy.

How is this not the scummiest thing ever? A few days before deadline, a serious threat, and trying to play it off on a senseless idea about avatars.

Meh. I can understand why you'd think that was scummy. I'd be inclined to put it up to Albert's twisted sense of humor and his willing to take all kinds of crazy risks when town to get reactions. He normally will jump on bandwagons just to see what happens as town. I'd suspect he'd tend to be a little more careful as scum, but I'm not sure I have a good idea of what his scum meta is.

Anyway, I'm not especially interested in doing a detailed defense of Albert here. He doesn't have much of a wagon on him, and he can take care of himself. I was just responding to Zindy's post with my own thoughts.

Fishing for reactions, the catch-all defense of the scummy and the idiotic. "You counterclaimed the Cop!" "But I was just fishing for reactions" "Okididoki".

Albert's vote on Lain was stupid, senseless, and anti-town. There's no fishing for reactions there. There's no point. All the reaction you're going to get is "Albert, you're scum". Because that's what that move telegraphs to everyone.

What I find especially amusing, or sad, or hypocritical, or whatever way you put it, is that it's apparently totally okay for Albert to do completely idiotic anti-town crap because of his meta, but you were very eager to run Vezok up for it, with half the town showing you that his meta was to do stupid crap.

Sure, that can be true. So who do you think is scum who was avoiding bandwagons? I assume you're not talking about Albert here, since he was pretty bandwagon happy, often for fairly weak to nonexistent reasons.

Let me just answer this question as well because I agree with Lainy: MBL gives me the creeps. Read him. He mostly just asks stuff and gives some small inputs, but he avoids giving any actual opinion on both the Vezok and the Furcy wagons. He also nicely avoids the Surye wagon and everything related to it.

[Zindaras]

"he was okay with Vezok after he claimed vanilla"

false

Vezok claimed on April 30th. You posted this a day later:

seriously, when's the last time we quicklynched anyone on day 1 of a large game on mafiascum?

Vezok was policy lynched D1 in 27 hours, 34 minutes in Mafia of the Chosen Ones (Thread open to hammer). It took a whopping 45 posts from thread open to hammer.

So roughly 3.5-4 months ago.

Vezok what do you think of that game? Do you blame yourself for an early mistake you made?

And this one day after that:

@vezok asked you a question, go back and answer it

Only after he posts his win-con:

My win condition says I win if all the threats to the town are dead.

That's not what mine says.

Vote: Vezok

Do you actually do anything.

So, yeah, while the Vezok-wagon was already catching steam and the vanilla claim was being discussed very extensively, you were posting about other stuff. You vote him over the win-con thing. You never mention the vanilla claim. Ergo, you did not think it was worthy of a vote.

[Zindaras]

it's apparently totally okay for Albert to do completely idiotic anti-town crap because of his meta, but you were very eager to run Vezok up for it

Claiming unprovoked every game to try to survive until endgame vs. putting a vote on medicated lain because she has a duplicate avatar.

Yeah man, you are totally right, those two things are comparable, they are almost the same thing.

Yeah, you're right, Vezok's move was at least somewhat logical.

I am so incredibly anti-town for putting my vote where I want.

You're right. We should never do any wagon analysis ever again because people can't be anti-town for voting.

Your vote was crappy and scummy. So, yes, you're anti-town for doing that.

Refusing to participate in a bad bandwagon? Yeah, terrible. Not going to vote Furcolow because I want vezok dead first? Unbelievable.

You did vote Furc. You abandoned the Vez-wagon for Furc. Then, with all your pathetic mewling about Vezok, you went on to vote me, Lainy and GummyBear, all for crappy or no reason.

The fact that you're insisting time and time again that you're town for not participating in the Surye-wagon only makes you scummier. Always a nice scum move, to avoid a legit lynch so you can claim you're town for doing so the day afterward. Every single vote you made yesterday was crap and I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a single scumbag between them.

Let me make something very clear to you: I'm a lot smarter than you. Don't think for a second that I'm not. If you don't see a purpose behind what I do, let it slide. I have a plan for you too. Now go and vote somebody else.

Take your bloated ego somewhere else.

[Zindaras]

My main suspects are Internet Stranger, Zindaras, Medicated Lain and Gummy.

Zindaras. Yaps about anti-town votes. Who has Zindaras voted? Surye, confirmed town. Who else? Nobody. Day 2. Votes for me. His FOS is Furcolow. Can you believe this guy??? And he harps about me making anti-town votes?

1) I've FoSed several other people, but you don't care about that, apparently.
2) It's not about results. It's about reasons. Your votes are anti-town because they're crappy bandwagons with no good reason. I made a case on Surye, I made a case on you. I explained my FoSes.

[Zindaras]

Internet Stranger. Scummy as all hell.

Why?

Medicated Lain. Votes Furcolow and invents a case about me with her wild imagination.

The first thing is something that can be said about a lot of people, the second is just wild OMGUS.

GummyBear. Read what other's have to say about Gummy.

Because you're too lazy to actually post something yourself? Quote it for all I care.

[Zindaras]

I have one fucking town read and they lynch him. Understand that I have little power here with the likes of Zindaras and AGar telling people what to think and who to vote.

For all the town read you had on him, you're a lot more vocal about it now than you were yesterday. Sure, you posted the meta-argument here and there, but you never actually actively tried to persuade anyone to wagon someone else, nor did you try to prevent his lynch when you could (by voting Furc, for example).

[Zindaras]

@Zindaras: Point out one question I asked about vez or Surye that wasn't an honest attempt to figure out their alignment or the alignment of the players on their wagon.

I pointed out that scum were as likely, if not more likely, to be OFF the vezwagon yesterday, based on my read of a previous game vez did this in. Do you really find the way I stayed off the vezwagon (or Furc or Surye-wagons) scummy? While I drew attention to the fact, based on research, that scum were as likely or moreso to be off that vezwagon?

I was focused on ToonFighter, MedicatedLain and GummyBear yesterday while you were pushing the Surye-wagon. I believe you agreed with two of those pushes of mine. Please clarify if you really think I'm scum.

Allow me to explain myself better. You asked a lot of questions to people on the Vez and Furc wagons. I like that. My beef with you is that you never actually say "I think Vez is town" or "I think Vez is scum". You'll notice that in my big recap post, I mentioned a couple of people whose opinions I couldn't find. I noticed that this was the case with you on both wagons. Like you said, scum was likely to be image-conscious on the two wagons. But both the players actively attacking and actively defending them would be found scummy. So the best move, as scum, is just to not touch it at all. And your play fits in that strategy: your questions meant that you touched the wagons, but without actually ever providing your own opinion on them (also, I just reread your posts and noticed that you never provided any input on Surye either). That's what gives me the creeps.

Interestingly, Zindy, you're attacking Albert, who defended Surye stridently, because he didn't come up with with a strong enough alternate wagon. You're attacking me, who came up with good alternate cases, because I didn't say enough explicitly about Surye. Why is your focus on two players who were on the right side of the law yesterday, and for good if not perfect reasons?

Yossy asked me a direct question about people off the Surye and Furc wagon. So, obviously, I reply with my read on you. But you're not my main suspect. You're not my second suspect either. I'm not sure who is my second suspect either, but putting it in groups of (strong suspect; suspect; iffy; neutral; okay; good; town) you're in the iffy group.

He then later moved back to the Suyve wagon close to deadline. My impression is that he would have been happy with either a furcolow lynch or a suyve lynch, both because he didn't like the way they voted Vez.

But his vote should simply be on the guy he suspects the most, especially at that point. That's what I disliked the most about it, it's just not necessary.

I actually don't think Albert's aggressive playstyle is anti-town; it was when he first started playing, but he's actually toned it down a great deal to a point where it's often more helpful then harmful. You wouldn't want to have many people in a game playing like that, but he can often shake some scum loose.

But, don't worry; if Albert had started out this game with a vanilla claim, I would have voted him as well.

Seriously; if, like you're suggesting, Albert had been scum who was actually trying to mislynch ML, why would he done it like that? All he would have had to say was "I'm voting ML because I agree with Yosarian2" and people would have been fine with that.

Because, apparently, it's better to vote someone for having a duplicate avatar than to use any arguments, because most of the town is just plain ignoring it.

[Zindaras]

Albert is scum with me.

Oh wait, never mind.

Sorry for limited activity, I'm quite busy right now. I did a quick read of what I missed but skimmed most of the cases. Will reread those early next week, LA at least until Monday.

Not liking Albert's ignoring/defending of RC. Don't think it necessarily implies scumbuddyship, just dislike it in general when players treat two similar players in different ways.

Not liking Yossy's defense of Albert in my earlier discussion with him. Reeked of making excuses for him. Undecided if it's a townie with a heavy town-read on someone or just defending a buddy or even a scummy townie for the brownie points.

Not really liking the RC-wagon. I don't think it'll generate enough info. Also, as annoying as RC has been, at least Battousai will give us extra info. However, if Battousai continues posting like this, I'd start liking the RC-wagon.

Really not liking the lack of any interest in Albert. The guy is scummy as hell but 80% of the game is completely ignoring him. The wagon is legit. As much as I like Lynch all Lurkers, a good wagon takes my preference.

Have to reread the Toon case.

[Zindaras]

Not really liking the RC-wagon. I don't think it'll generate enough info. Also, as annoying as RC has been, at least Battousai will give us extra info. However, if Battousai continues posting like this, I'd start liking the RC-wagon.

Does not compute

This paragraph makes literally no sense.

I dislike the wagon because there's barely any info on the player slot. I like that Battousai actually posts stuff on other people. I dislike what he posted, as I find it scummy.

Happy?

[Zindaras]

And I swear to God I will kill the first person that suggests that I'm a SK. You think I'm bluffing? I murdered vezokpiraka

without a scum read

on him last night. Don't test me.

Yay for useful vigilantes! I'm sure you'll kill IS in LyLo as well because your desire to be alpha male is stronger than your actual desire to win or even play the game.

But enough poking of the bear. You are, unfortunately, likely to be town. If you are not town, you won't win the game because Serial Killers don't make it to endgame. You are, even more unfortunately, unlikely to be useful. I would give a pompous speech about you working for the town, but it is unlikely to work, because, you know, huge egomaniac.

And, though it may likely kill me,

Unvote

.

I refuse to lynch someone I think is town, regardless of the benefits it may bring me. And, unlike some, I practice what I preach. I can only hope that in time you will direct your senseless animosity towards more fruitful ends.

Zindaras- What don't you agree with that I pointed out and why? Do you find it scummy because you don't agree with it or that what I posted is more likely to come from scum and why?

I never find things I disagree with scummy because I disagree with them. There's always a reason. What I dislike about your post is the simple happenstance that your main scum candidate is the other guy on the chopping block. The SensFan thing is based on nothing. I dislike the Furc thing somewhat because this kind of nonsense seems to be characteristic of him, just like the single-mindedness that characterises Internet Stranger. Then there's the IS thing you bring up yourself, which is admittedly because of your own paranoia. So we're left with a little stuff on TF. After that, you haven't really finished your reread and you spend time arguing with some people.

*shrugs*

I dislike it when people just happily slide into the number one lynch candidate. It gives me the creeps.

Unvote Vote: Internet Stranger

Why?

This vote is really really bad. IS is town, I can almost guarantee you that.

[Zindaras]

Number one lynch candidates tend to be number one lynch candidates for a reason, Zindy.

Yes, I know. And I still need to reread the TF case so I'm not saying it has no merit. My main point is that the rest of his reads seemed half-hearted at best and he looks like he just wants to get on TF and not do a lot more. Hence my statement that I expected him to do better on later posts.

[Zindaras]

big·ot·ed/ˈbigətid/Adjective
1. Obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of one's own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions.

Does that not accurately represent Zindaras?

Also, because I can't resist, this has to be the most ironic post in the entire friggin' thread. This accusation from Mr. OMGUS himself.

[Zindaras]

I am a pro-town program. I am not a miller.

I am also amused tremendously by this town. A guy claims vig in the middle of the day and promises to shoot someone else and 90% just goes on their way without commenting on either. Apathy central it is.

[Zindaras]

A guy claims vig in the

middle

end of the day

Day started on May 25th, ends on June 12th, makes for 19 days, you claim 7 days before deadline, that's not even on two thirds of the day.

[Zindaras]

Still beats the point, though. Albert, you apparently believe that everybody attacking you is scum. Have you considered hunting scum beyond rampant OMGUS?

[Zindaras]

Oh, and Reaper, post some opinions. That post won't convince anyone.

[Zindaras]

ABR

: Just because you claim vigilante does not mean you know who is scum. And if you go around killing people you disagree with instead of people who are likely to be scum (because there's a difference, you know), you're just going to be accelerating this game towards a loss.

Let's retrace our steps:

I attack Zindaras Day 1, he comes back at me Day 2
I attack Medicated Lain Day 1, she comes back at me Day 2
I attack Internet Stranger Day 2, he comes back at me later Day 2

Toon Figther was a desperation vote so I wouldn't have to claim.

These are not people I "disagree with". These are villainous OMGUSers and scumbags. Especially IS who I have attacked long before he miserably failed to connect me to RC. I think one of Zindaras and ML is scum, but I am less sure than my IS scum read.

Zindaras FoSes Albert: Posted May 3rd.
Albert votes Zindaras: Posted May 11th.

Get your facts right. As far as Lain goes, you didn't "attack" her. You put a complete and utter crap vote on her, then go berserk when she calls you on it. Now

that

is OMGUS.

Sigh. You're a Vig, ABR. Go along and help us lynch RC today, then tonight you can kill whoever the hell you want, and then brag tomorrow that you were right about RC if he flips Town. Deal?

This is such a horrible post I can't believe I'd find worse.

BMQ: Frankly, I don't really care how ABR decides on his shots, as long as he's shooting every Night.

But I did.

[Zindaras]

Right, because a real Neo should out himself right now, cant imagine him being important or anything.

Tell me SensFan, since youre the leader of the Albert Fan Club, how exactly does Albert plan on not being killed by the scum tonight? Why would a vig out himself in the middle of the day and under no direct threat when he would be more useful sniping whoever he wishes from the shadows? Wouldnt your favorite buddy Albert, who you yourself said "Has the mightiest scumdar of all" be more helpful to the town by eliminating scum with vig kills?

Why would Albert, if he is as awesome as you say he is, blow his wad just to get at me? Am I that big of a threat? Is trying to get me lynched worth so much more than just shooting me tonight, AND getting to shoot all sorts of other scum as the day progresses? (Nice kill on that evil scum Vezo, btw, great way to be town motivated and not just some wackjob taking out people Albert just doesnt like).

Doesnt sound very town motivated to me SensFan. How about YOU explain his behavior to me then?

At least youre voting for Charlie, Sens, otherwise I would find your gobble job on Albert rather peculiar.

I'm sorry, IS, but there's an even stronger argument for him not doing it as SK.

[Zindaras]

You don't claim Neo as SK when you don't have to claim.

Also, if you're a SK, you don't shoot the VI who claimed vanilla and then almost got lynched on day 1. You would rather shoot pretty much anyone else, town OR scum.

That's such BS. The Vezok wagon was long dead. It barely got to half the required lynch total. A significant part of the town thought he was town. Vezok wasn't going to get lynched any time soon.

Also, seriously, the general naivety here is just astounding. The role doesn't confirm him. It could easily be a fake claim provided by the mod (I'm not sure if that's standard here, but it's standard in my games, especially flavour-heavy ones like this) or it could be his actual role name. Do not fall into the Harry Potter Mafia trap (Harry, Ron and Hermione were Mafia and just rode their claims for a victory).

What makes him town is the fact that he just signed his own death warrant regardless of his alignment.

[Zindaras]

IS is always as aggressive as this, and RC's comment in 1430 makes me think he's not really reading the thread.

I love the irony in the air here. I'll read up on Yos in isolation tomorrow but it's a big read and I'm tired.

[Zindaras]

Zindaras, for all your 26,385 words you've posted in this thread, you are currently not voting for anyone five days before deadline. Despite the fact that you're:

Not really liking the RC-wagon.

Yet you are implicitly supporting the RC wagon with your lack of vote. If an alternate wagon doesn't happen soon, it's not happening ever. Yet you seem perfectly satisfied to let a wagon you don't like drive itself to fruition.

FOS

I am also amused tremendously by this town. A guy claims vig in the middle of the day and promises to shoot someone else and 90% just goes on their way without commenting on either.

Apathy central it is.

Pot. Kettle.

I'm deciding on a vote. I'm a busy person these days and I haven't had the chance to do a good reread in a while. I want to read up on TF to see if I like that case.

[Zindaras]

#120 (Zindaras): "This post

[AGAr's #58]

just feels horribly wrong to me. I am extremely suspicious of anyone confirming other people as being a certain alignment based on metas and assumptions." >> Did you honestly, HONESTLY think that if AGar was scum with vezok, that he'd defend him and obviously link himself to him like that? Also, how do you feel about the statement you made now that vezok has flipped town?

No, I don't think a player would do that with his scumbuddy. But latching onto a townie and strongly defending him is quite a good strategy for scum. Of course, town does it as well so it's always a challenge to see who's faking it for the brownie points and who's seriously unhappy about the lynch. AGar's posting seemed to sure to be real. Vezok's death doesn't really change any of this.

Also, "I'm just going to put it this way: if he goes back on his claim, I'll be doing everything to get him to die. Liars are scum." >> Unfortunately, not anymore. In the current site meta, people who are town lie all the time, fake claim PRs as VTs, etc. It's ridiculous, and anti-town, and I hate it, but you can't just Lynch All Liars and expect to hit scum every time any more.

-I don't deal with anti-town behaviour very well.
-I am not up to date with the current meta here, but if you're right, this saddens me greatly.
-If we do not accept lying as a reason for a lynch, there's not much left.

Overall feeling from RC's catchup post is okay, but I feel he overreaches a bit on Yosarian. I dislike that.

[Zindaras]

Zindaras

:
#568: I have seen someone execute scum on d1 before as well. Except that was a scumbuddy. ;-;

Had to get in between here, but I just noticed this while scrolling: was that a reference to the Kingmaker game I played on the WotC-forums?

[Zindaras]

I love the irony in the air here.

What, the part about how Albert was going to vig Zindy-scum but now he's going to vig obv-town people instead? You could call that ironic, I guess.

Nah, only Alanis Morissette could see that as ironic. No, the true irony is that after all the bad reasoning I called ABR out for, with you defending for him, now you're getting the same treatment and you're not liking it one bit. Quite frankly, if ABR started threatening SensFan as well, I would probably just laugh and replace out, because it couldn't get any funnier after that.

Yosarian analysis:

What I dislike about Yossy's play is his early game single-mindedness on Vezok. He blows up the VT thing to epic proportions, then drops it like a brick and doesn't really get back to it on any later occasion (despite the fact that we had, I think, four claimed vanillas already, between Vezok, Surye, Furc and Reaper). As I mentioned before, I felt his shift onto Medicated Lain was a peculiar one. After agreeing with SensFan on the TF case, which was fairly expansive, he winds up voting Lain over one post. Possible link to TF there, but that's for post-mortem analysis on either. He explained his move to some satisfaction after I asked him, but it still put me off. I think the Lain case is poor. I personally dislike his end-of-day posting. He mentions not liking the Furc-wagon, but he doesn't say a thing about Surye. He was V/LA in the weekend of the D1 Lynch, but Surye was a very significant wagon and he's not really saying anything about it. Going back in his ISO, I asked him what he felt about Surye before and he said null, and he later mentions he'd rather lynch Surye than Furc because Surye could be scum while he feels Furc is town.

Day 2 starts with this post, which both Cessy and I criticised him for:

Surye (13) - (Internet Stranger, Zindaras, vezokpiraka, Kison, Cogito Ergo Sum, HezLucky, Furcolow, AGar, DeathNote, Kublai Khan, Primate, LlamaFluff, ReaperCharlie)

Just for the sake of argument,

I'm going to assume there were at least some scum actively pushing this wagon

, from a reasonably early point.

It looks more malicious, though, if you go back and read his previous thoughts on Surye:

Yos: could you please tell me what you think of Surye, AGar, Albert and Brian?

[snip]

I'm kind of null on Surye at the moment.

The wagon against him feels town driven

, but I'm not really convinced by it. He could go either way.

Apparently, he's changed his mind from that earlier point.

I like his agreement with me on the LlamaFluff mystery PM issue, though I guess that's mostly theory. Then we get a mostly meaningless exchange about Kison with me, in which he does manage to explain his ideas a bit better. I don't really like retroactive explanation of moves, but it's okay. Post #67 is a good post, one of the few meaningful posts he made about Kison.

Post 71 is the first time Yossy even mentions RC or the RC-slot. At that point, the vote count looks like this:

Toon Fighter (6) - (LlamaFluff, Cogito Ergo Sum, Kublai Khan, Albert B. Rampage, Ranmaru, Kison)

ReaperCharlie (5) - (BrianMcQueso, SensFan, Porochaz, Internet Stranger, Furcolow)
Albert B. Rampage (3) - (Zindaras, Medicated Lain, Toon Fighter)
SensFan (2) - (ReaperCharlie, HezLucky)
Ranmaru (2) - (AGar, Primate)
Porochaz (1) - (MrBuddyLee)
Kison (1) - (Yosarian2)
HezLucky (1) - (Furcolow)

The RC-wagon was very serious throughout the day. He doesn't really discuss TF until later either, but he mentioned TF a couple of times on Day One and his read is consistent with that. What I do wonder, however, is why Yossy picks Reapy over Toony.

Not liking Yossy's defense of Albert in my earlier discussion with him. Reeked of making excuses for him. Undecided if it's a townie with a heavy town-read on someone or just defending a buddy or even a scummy townie for the brownie points.

:eyebrow:

If you don't agree with my logic, you could say so. It's really disturbing you apparently can't disagree with my logic, or else I'm sure you would have, but you want to attack for making the point anyway.

You were attacking him with weak arguments for an action that has fairly obvious pro-town motives. And when I point that out, all you can say is I'm "making excuses for him"?

Picking this out because I didn't respond to it. I disagree with your logic. You say he's fishing for reactions, but you also agree that it's not illogical to think his vote on Lainy was scummy. Making that vote and then finding the people that call you out on it suspicious does not make sense. If I made the same votes as he had to fish for reactions, I would find the people who joined me on the wagons far scummier than the people who'd call me out on it. As far as making excuses goes, I'm saying that because Albert never bothered to defend himself. The "fishing for reactions" thing is something you put on him as an outsider. I never put a label of "scummy" or "towny" on it.

Let me just answer this question as well because I agree with Lainy: MBL gives me the creeps. Read him. He mostly just asks stuff and gives some small inputs, but he avoids giving any actual opinion on both the Vezok and the Furcy wagons. He also nicely avoids the Surye wagon and everything related to it.

MMm. That's an interesting point; be interested to hear MBL's response to that.

I'd like to know what you think of the response and MBL in general.

Overall feeling: there's a bunch of stuff really off about Yossy. I especially dislike the interaction with TF. TF's a pretty major suspect for Yossy during Day 1 and 2, and then he pretty much votes RC out of nowhere (argument would be weakened if TF is Town, which obvobv we don't know right now). I dislike the switch from "Surye's wagon feels town-driven" to "Surye's wagon was driven by scum". I like some of the discussions I've had with him myself. Interaction yesterday was good, no OMGUS, inclined to give him plus points for the Albert interaction today. Dislike his recent posting, but that could be his emotions. "4 decent scumreads a couple of pages ago"? Between IS (Yossy's town read), me (felt like town at the start of the day, hasn't really commented otherwise) and Lain (sure, scum), I can see one. End conclusion: leaning to scummy, but not guaranteed per se.

Will have to go read some more people in isolation tomorrow (real time, not game time), but it's all difficult for me right now. I'm going to try to do both Toony and Reaper/Battousai tomorrow so that I can make up my mind on which wagon to vote. Right now, I expect to put my vote on TF tomorrow.

[Zindaras]

Blech, schedules never work out the way you think they will.

Skimmed the thread. Hate the Llama-gambit and wish I could slap some sanity in him. So horribly useless. Smells like stupid town.

[Zindaras]

Lots of bad posting in Ninja's 1658. The spoiler thing is a huge reach on SensFan. The Yos/Zin link is also a stretch. Based on a post Amrun went back on as well. I also note that he doesn't address the point where Amrun goes back on his sheeping accusation.

#429 (Zindaras): "I don't care if it's a dying wagon. It's on scum. My read on Surye is far stronger than the other reads I have." >> What do you have to say about this, now that Surye is dead and flipped town?

I felt it was a good case, our best shot at catching scum. I do not feel I got manipulated at any point, so I can only say that I was wrong. Sadly, this happens.

You appear to be notorious for tunneling one player at the expense of pretty much everyone and everything else, and then when they flip, not looking back, and continuing in the same path as before, picking a new target without adjusting your reads based on what is now known due to flips. Your new target in this case appears to be me, someone who's had very little interaction with anyone else and would provide nothing in the way of associative tells if in fact I were to flip. And even less if I were to flip town, which I assure you I will. So do you have anything to say about any of the other ACTUALLY viable wagons for today? Or are you going to continue with your inanity and basically just solely try to keep up your meta and (apparently) your self-image of "alpha male", at the (rather obvious) expense of doing anything useful?

Yeah, IS just really does this.

#447 (Zindaras): "Can't really go wrong with getting on some sweet wagons. I'll be honest, though. It was much more fun when you were still on the Surye-wagon. Now I'm just stuck with the Joker, a guy who only listens to his headphones and doesn't actually talk and, well, Vezok. This wagon is lacking snuggliness." >> I don't like

buddying

. A townie has to be suspicious of everyone, and can't go around making comments like this on Day 1, for the most part. (-.5 for Zindaras)

I like Cessy. I've played a lot with him over the years. I like to banter with him. I've also noticed that banter posts are a good way of eliciting response.

@Yos

, why did you ignore ToonFighter from May 9th to June 5th? He appeared to be your #2 suspect back then, and he's your #2 suspect now.

Amrun: Yeah, I read your case. I don't disagree with it, and

Toon Fighter

is currenlty on the very short list of people I might consider lynching over Vez.

Surye (13) - (Internet Stranger, Zindaras, vezokpiraka, Kison, Cogito Ergo Sum, HezLucky, Furcolow, AGar, DeathNote, Kublai Khan, Primate, LlamaFluff, ReaperCharlie)
Just for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume there were at least some scum actively pushing this wagon, from a reasonably early point.

...
...

Scumlist:
RC

Toonfighter

Kison (Still wish this guy would get a little more attention. I hate the way everyone is just letting him basically fly under the radar this game.)


unvote
Vote:Reaper Charlie

Dislike this post because it says pretty much the exact same thing I said in my Yosarian-post.

Zinderas- Of the 5 people on my scumlist, he's the one I'm least confident about. Dislike his Suyve vote, although at least he provided a little more reasoning then Kison or CES did. Dislike his attack on Albert today. I dislike more the way that when I pointed out the flaws in the logic of his attack on Albert, he didn't really respond to my point, only attacked me for defending Albert; when I see someone do that, my first thought is "he's trying to force through a mislynch by trying to scare off the defenders".

But again, I'm tried of arguing irrelevant theory points with you.

Our disagreement on Albert is based mostly on theoretical grounds. You say he's fishing for reactions. I say fishing for reactions is a poor man's excuse and the only reaction he'd get on that vote was a facepalm. You say he would be better off just saying "I agree with Yosarian" when voting Lain. I say he's better off profiting from his meta (in which, apparently, it's totally okay to do stupid anti-town crap) than explicitly sheeping someone else onto a bandwagon. You say he thought "let's see who flips out when I vote ML, and then look back at that reactions once we know ML's alignment" and not "whoever votes for me is scum", but ML is alive right now and his suspects for most of the day have been limited to the people who voted for him at some point. Hell, his attacks on ML and me were based completely on "they're doing OMGUS". Besides the obvious mistake of not reading my earlier posts where I already attacked him, it's simple bullcrap: you throw a boomerang, you can expect it back.

I responded to your arguments in two other posts.

And this is what I said:

Not liking Yossy's defense of Albert in my earlier discussion with him. Reeked of making excuses for him.

Undecided if it's a townie with a heavy town-read on someone or just defending a buddy or even a scummy townie for the brownie points.

The making excuses thing is nothing but a reference to the fact that Albert did not come up with these arguments. You did. You interpret someone else's play and motives when it's far more logical to let that person do it himself. Hence, making excuses. I tend to dislike that sort of play, but, like I said, town does do it as well, so I was undecided.

He also seemed to spend more time on day 1 talking about how we should be scumhunting then he did actually scumhunting.

This is just such utter nonsense. Between all the posts I made Day One, there's opinions and arguments about practically everyone in the game. My case on Surye was scumhunting when most of the people were happy to just policy lynch Vez or Furc. My talk about how we should scumhunt was mostly an expression of my extreme distaste for those two wagons.

All in all, I COULD see Zindy playing this way as town; he hasn't made any huge scumtells, and he does normally have kind of a cautious playstyle that's intolerant of "sloppy" play. That being said, I don't have a good feel about him overall.

This one made me laugh. It's one of the very few times I've seen a semi-accurate meta of me, and it's something I don't hear a lot. My compliments.

[Zindaras]

As far as RC-hydra goes, the main vibe I'm getting from him is that he's having trouble catching up. Once I'm behind, I tend to respond to newer posts but fail to do rereads...much like I'm doing now. It's easier to keep up with current posting than sitting down and doing a big reread. There's some stuff that feels off beyond that, but I think he should not be lynched, at least today.

[Zindaras]

Erhem, I'm pretty sure all my pronouns are okay. If you're referring to this: "but ML is alive right now and his suspects for most of the day have been limited to the people who voted for him at some point" then maybe my grammar isn't. His refers to Albert.

[Zindaras]

Toon Fighter analysis:

Initial reaction to Vezok's claim is to believe it, singles out DeathNote as scummy. The contradiction he points out just isn't there. This was a fairly serious point in the case that was made on TF before. There's a weird FoS on mozamis which doesn't really make any sense, because mozamis had been fairly active up to that point and certainly providing more input than most other players. There's another contradiction where he points out a flaw in the reasoning of the Furcwagon yet still hops on it, just for pressure reasons.

Important post. Amrun noted many of these things yesterday, and here's TF's defense. I don't see how mozamis is scummy. Quite the opposite, in fact, as his posts look pro-town to me.

Hey. I don't trust Furc's claim and I think we should lynch him anyway. Vezo also claimed 'nilla and that only motivated people to lynch him (and other people not to lynch him, but you know that, it was most of our D1 discussion).

We now have 2 D1 vanilla claims. We should lynch one of them, otherwise we risk outing a power role. Furc has been acting scummier than Vez the entire game. His pseudo vote on himself is garbage, he didn't even unvote, and our mod is very strict about it. I say we go forward with Furc lynch.

Doesn't feel right to me. He was defensive of Vezok before but not expresses that he thinks Vezok is the only alternative to Furc.

Opens Day 2 with a Kublai Khan vote over the Surye-wagon. No mention of previous suspicions.

First of all, UNVOTE: . My vote is useless where it is right now, and that was a dumb vote anyway. Kublai Khan is posting more, but I still believe he could be more active and/or try to bring new stuff to the game. So far, he has repeated other players and commented on some thing others said. He is getting better, and I am gonna give him the benefit for now.

But one player whose game I am not appreciating is ABR. Look how active, defensive and aggressive he turned yesterday after he had a couple of votes on him. That seems like some scum cracking under pressure. He didn't do much so far in this game, as well, and had useless votes throughout D1. He recently voted IS without any real justification, and it seems to me that HIS defence of Surye yesterday was for town points, not other players defence of Vez.

Also, the RC wagon is horrid

. He may have been lacking in the posting department recently, but that sudden wagon reeks of opportunism and scumminess. Also, the players joining that new wagon are (except from me) the same who joined Furc's yesterday. I know this may sound hypocrite, but I believe that Sens and Poro (and Brian) could be in the same scum team, and trying to bandwaggon another (town) player that is lurking and not posting much (albeit Furc and RC were lurking for different reasons) and getting a policy/quicklynch to harm town. I still maintain that Furc may be scum, but since that trio is now together on a different player, I find that unlikely.

Since ABR just claimed vig, and I see no reason to keep voting him, I

unvote

I am looking at the case on RC again, and, despite being led by SensFan, whom I still don't like much, I don't like that he keeps lurking and just trying to slide by after he was caught doing it. Plus, his vote on IS is just terribad.

vote: RC

@ LF: I am a pro-town program, I am not a miller

That's basically the end of his posts. Not much beyond there.

The main issue I have with his posts is that his suspicions are all over the place. New players are suspicious out of the blue, while other players simply drop off the suspect list without a single word (DeathNote, Mozamis, Furc). The vote on RC really does it for me. It's a complete 180 since he called the wagon horrid just a week before.

I'm honestly okay with this lynch. It's better than our hydra for sure.

Unvote, Vote: Toon Fighter

(though I'd like to note that I unvoted ages ago but the mods apparently missed it)

[Zindaras]

This will be my last post for the day, as I must depart and I won't return before the deadline.

I hope that the Toony wagon does suddenly get some momentum behind it, but I doubt it. I actually agree with hydra-boy that a lot of the votes on him are poor or made by lurkers and that I feel his recent posting has overturned that. Then again, his posts play in on one of my bigger town-tells: lots of activity when about to die. If he's scum, he just left us a

lot

of reads that we'll be able to use. He could simply have not said a word after he got the hydra and we wouldn't have squat to go on tomorrow if he's scum. While he overreacts and reaches on some of his reads, my gut feeling is that his heart is in the right place. Toony, on the other hand, is mostly flying below the radar. He does not really post, he does not really defend himself. While he's not the perfect lynch, there's a case on him. RC has done some stupid things, especially when he was still RC, but I don't think he's scum.

If you're voting hydra-boy, I ask this of you: is their behaviour since the hydra, since the catching up seriously started, indicative of scum? If you think so, then by all means, keep your vote on. But you cannot, you should not, disregard all new information because something in the past convinced you someone was scum.

[Zindaras]

MBL should test his message.

I would be inclined to believe that the Kison thing was a breadcrumb, but if MBL's message is from the same source, that would mean it wouldn't be. Except if MBL is posting the message to keep Kison safe, which would be plausible if Kison actually is Cultscum. The DeathNote thing...it seemed just stupid town yesterday, but maybe I was wrong about that. DeathNote and Kison both deserve the attention they're getting anyway.

Also, we seem to have an extra kill. This is peculiar. And ABR is alive. Also peculiar.

[Zindaras]

Oh and, we should probably kill TF at some point. Yesterday's lynch is massive, info-wise, if TF turns out to be scum. Besides, I don't trust him. Also, yesterday's lynch was just really friggin' awful to begin with.

[Zindaras]

I would be inclined to believe that the Kison thing was a breadcrumb, but if MBL's message is from the same source, that would mean it wouldn't be. Except if MBL is posting the message to keep Kison safe, which would be plausible if Kison actually is Cultscum. The DeathNote thing...it seemed just stupid town yesterday, but maybe I was wrong about that. DeathNote and Kison both deserve the attention they're getting anyway.

^ Scum

I find it very difficult to believe that you genuinely think that your scenario makes any sense given that:

- LlamaFluff would have received a

role

as his result, not a mere 'Innocent' or 'Guilty'.
- LlamaFluff strongly suggested that the result he received was fake on numerous occasions.
- LlamaFluff was reluctant to share the name of his result, and only did so after numerous people requested it.
- LlamaFluff would have to have been stupid enough to refrain from full claiming and getting rid of a cult recruiter on day two,

despite what he says in this post

.
- I was one of the first people to suggest the result be made public.

-You are not aware of LlamaFluff's role. If he was an actual alignment cop, he could receive "Mafia" "Town" or "Cult" or whatever they're called in this game instead of simply "Innocent" and "Guilty". Also, if he did get a scum result on you, it doesn't matter what alignment he says you have. All he needs to do is crumb his result and the moment he dies and turns up Cop, we go back through his old posts and find it.
-A stronger breadcrumb would get him killed for sure.
-We were always going to do it. He was likely just waiting for people to provide input (most notably, you).
-*shrugs* Like I said,

if

he played it that way, he had to play the part.
-Poor reasoning. If I were a Cult Recruiter and LlamaFluff claimed like that, I would be asking him to come out as well. Once you think you're on death row, you need to gamble.

And, finally, if I were so certain of this theory, my vote would already be on you.

And, like I said, it depends partly on MBL's message. MBL, can you confirm for me that your message was not sent by the mod or something? Also, why do you vote Kison if your message strongly suggests that LlamaFluff was

not

a breadcrumb?

[Zindaras]

Toony is a good lead.

[Zindaras]

Also, my activity will be severely curtailed for the coming few days, as I will be visiting Hamburg. I have no idea if I'll even have Internet access.

[Zindaras]

That was one weird exchange between Ranny and DN.

Gotta love Kison's suspicion of me. Totally logical.

I think one of our key goals right now should be figuring out what Toony's alignment is. If he's scum, yesterday's lynch provides us with so much information, especially looking at the way people just kept on that wagon, despite of everything that happened. Lain, Poro, Sens and Brian: what do you think of your votes yesterday?

I'm inclined to just vote Toony and be done with it, but I'm trying to figure out who my main suspect is right now. MBL's death is actually a positive from my point of view: he was one of my top gut calls and his death gives us a crapton of information. Town doesn't lie means he was telling the truth about his message. The modkill almost proves this for 100%, though I'm unsure if Mossy would kill MBL if it had been fake. Some do, some wouldn't. But, whatever, Town doesn't lie is sufficient for me. This means that, as far as I'm concerned, LlamaFluff wasn't breadcrumbing a result with his D2 opener and Kison's off the hook for that. We should be wary to engage in guessing games with the scum on how they'd use the messenger ability, though.

[Zindaras]

Lain, Poro, Sens and Brian: what do you think of your votes yesterday?

Ranny too, actually.

[Zindaras]

Final Vote Count:

Surye

(13) - (

Internet Stranger

, Zindaras,

vezokpiraka

, Kison, Cogito Ergo Sum,

HezLucky

, Furcolow, AGar, DeathNote, Kublai Khan, Primate,

LlamaFluff, ReaperCharlie

)
Furcolow (8) - (SensFan, Toon Fighter, BrianMcQueso,

Surye, creampuffeater

, GummyBear, Medicated Lain, Furcolow)
Medicated Lain (2) - (

Yosarian2, MrBuddyLee

)
ToonFighter (1) - (

Amrun

)
GummyBear (1) - (Albert B. Rampage)

Final Votecount:

Death Ninja

(10) - (BrianMcQueso, SensFan,

Internet Stranger

, bristep123,

Yosarian2

, Ranmaru, Toon Fighter, Medicated Lain, Cogito Ergo Sum, Porochaz)
Toon Fighter (8) - (Kublai Khan, Kison,

HezLucky

, DeathNote,

Death Ninja, LlamaFluff

, Zindaras, Primate)
DeathNote (1) - (Albert B. Rampage)
SensFan (1) - (

MrBuddyLee

)
Ranmaru (1) - (dramonic)

I can't help but notice that the entire Furc-wagon from D1 proceeded to jump on the equally poor Ninja-wagon on D2, while most of the Surye-wagon jumped on Toon Fighter. This is certainly very interesting.

[Zindaras]

Didn't see the recent posts. I still stand by my vote for ReaperCharlie yesterday, his behavior was just ridiculously scummy. I know he's flipped town now, but I still felt like it was the right choice.

I can't help but notice that the entire Furc-wagon from D1 proceeded to jump on the equally poor Ninja-wagon on D2, while most of the Surye-wagon jumped on Toon Fighter. This is certainly very interesting.

Maybe it's just 2am locally and I'm intoxicated, but could you spell this out for me? What conclusions or speculation do you draw from that trend?

I find it weird that people would agree so very much. If Furc and/or Toony are scum, this also has a lot of meaning. I'll have to go back and look at my earlier notes on the Vezok wagon to see how they acted there, but voting blocks are always an eyebrow-raiser. I am inclined to think there's multiple scum in there, especially because the individuals on there have been scummy over the course of the game (Sens, Furc, Toony).

Explain how it was a weird interaction.

1869 through 1871 are hilariously flabbergasting.

I was fine with my vote on RC. He stalled for so long and only caught up NEAR DEADLINE OF HIS LYNCH. He wasted our time by being a main distraction for so long until around deadline. His fate was sealed.

-The people who deposited their vote on RC and then kept it there without adding anything else were wasting time just as well.
-There was no serious case on him besides the lurker thing. This was taken away by his catching up later. You can argue all you want, but providing meaningful input on a big game after replacing in can be quite a challenge. I remember using a full weekend to catch up to Kingmaker II.
-His catchup would've provided us with massive info if he were scum. Scum have massive incentives to just lurk through the deadline when they are on the block. Now who did that? *scratches thin thoughtfully* Why, Toony did.

Why are you inclined to vote Toony? What are your thoughts on Death note?

For Toony, see above. I felt there was a pretty good case on him yesterday, especially for him over RC. Time has not made him look any better, but now we can choose between everyone so I'm not sure if he's my absolute top suspect. I skimmed DeathNote and he's quite sane yesterday. Solidly against lynching RC, preferring Toony. I dislike his preference for Vez Day 1. Those two days kind of even themselves out, leaving me at neutral. Then there's LF's claim yesterday. This is why I'm solidly in the "Town shouldn't lie. Ever" camp, kids. The main problem I have with it is that the whole thing doesn't make sense, at least from my perspective. Llama barely mentions DeathNote throughout Day 2. If he had been gunning for him all day and then made and retracted the fake claim, I would've been okay with it. But he didn't. That evidence is circumstantial at best, though DN's case is not helped by LlamaFluff's death. His reaction is also a tad on the cool side.

If you want me to vote DeathNote, you'll have to come up with more.

Zindie, what information do we get if Toonfighter flips town and, if it's little, why are you advocating such a situational plan?

We know that yesterday's lynch did not hold special importance. I'm advocating the plan because I think Toony is scum.

@ Poro: What would you do if it turns out Llama was actually telling the truth and had a guilty result on DN? It's an opportunity we can't pass. If DN is really scum, our best plan is to lynch him.

Horrible posting. Only confirms me in my decision.

Vote: Toon Fighter

[Zindaras]

was the message MBL received similar to the message somebody else got earlier?
honestly i havent read over the game and id like to know, its relevant to my interests.

They're similar in that they were night messages incriminating another person. The odds of them coming from the same source are pretty good.

[Zindaras]

How is Porochaz still alive?

Who the hell are you even?

[Zindaras]

Btw, I think him asking "Are you a miller or a pro-town program?" may have been really asking for "Are you a miller?" and that win con stuff may have been also a gambit so he could ask deflect the real purpose of his question. Thoughts?

Of the possible investigations, I think TF is the most realistic. The bolded line you quote could very well be a breadcrumb (Just replace guessed with investigated and you have a perfect cop sentence. He might've backed down because Toony claimed program immediately, which is probably why he also asked all programs to get out into the open immediately, so that he would be more certain of later results (I'm operating under the assumption here that he was a program-cop, which stands to reason given his posting).

I was fine with my vote on RC. He stalled for so long and only caught up NEAR DEADLINE OF HIS LYNCH. He wasted our time by being a main distraction for so long until around deadline. His fate was sealed.

-The people who deposited their vote on RC and then kept it there without adding anything else were wasting time just as well.
-There was no serious case on him besides the lurker thing. This was taken away by his catching up later. You can argue all you want, but providing meaningful input on a big game after replacing in can be quite a challenge. I remember using a full weekend to catch up to Kingmaker II.
-His catchup would've provided us with massive info if he were scum. Scum have massive incentives to just lurk through the deadline when they are on the block. Now who did that? *scratches thin thoughtfully* Why, Toony did.

I have noticed that as well.
Again, he lurked from D1 to near D2 Deadline. I replaced in and caught up within two days. I had a quick pbpa and summary so that I could have jumped in to discussion. He took longer and even hammered Surye without even a read.
Yeah, that is true...

-Then why didn't you do or say anything about it yesterday?
-But not everybody plays as few games or reads as fast. He mentioned having to catch up to several other games as well and, looking at the way he did finally catch up, his methods are fairly time-intensive. I'm sorry, but it just happens. I've taken longer than him to read less posts when I just wasn't feeling like Mafia or when I was busy. Quite frankly, the only thing I found him suspicious for was the Surye-hammer, but, then again, I find the people who voted Surye "to ensure a lynch" when the rules clearly stated it wasn't necessary and Furc was also very close to death just as scummy.

I believe that Sens and Poro can still be scum together. I didn't like RC's play yesterday and I don't regret the wagon on him. I didn't ask DN further questions because I kinda forgot about it and wanted to find scum more than convince DN I wasn't scum. Furc/his replacement is likely not scum.

I should prob claim now. I am the Keymaker.

What does the role do?

[Zindaras]

This means that, as far as I'm concerned, LlamaFluff wasn't breadcrumbing a result with his D2 opener and Kison's off the hook for that.

If you are town and truly believed this was even remotely possible, I am going to be very disappointed in you.

There are possibilities. It wouldn't be the silliest breadcrumb I've ever seen. Also, like I said, I don't think it's anything to lynch anyone over, but if we start seeing dead Cultists, we need to take this very seriously.

Anyway, I'm really happy with my Toon Fighter vote. The claim has every single characteristic of a Mafia claim.

[Zindaras]

The Keymaker claim is not very believable to me. He is such a minor character in the series, and there are so many vanilla townies. Maybe it's just me, but there are so many other characters in the Matrix I would include before The Keymaker. And how does that character's flavor translate to a one-shot protection?

Like I said, all the hallmarks of a scumclaim. Incredibly minor character in a game with so many townies, a role that can't be checked (and is a role that scum gets a lot anyway, probably more often than town) and a role that doesn't really make sense given the flavour (the movie is quite clear on the Keymaker not being bulletproof.

His reads were terrible from top to bottom I figured he was scum or a thorn

I'm glad. At least

someone

is happy with the way you're playing.

It does make me wonder who killed Yosarian. Albert announced Yosarian as one of his likely targets, so it doesn't really seem a constructive kill for scum, as you have significant odds of double-killing.

[Zindaras]

Unvote

I want to wait until after everyone can be more active (especially bristep's replacement) before lynching Toony.

[Zindaras]

Does anyone have a reason that ToonFighter should be lynched? I think I'm the only one that's been against his lynch at any point and even I'm willing to string him up at this point. I'm holding off the lynch for more discussion, but it doesn't seem like there's any being had. TF doesn't even seem to be defending himself, which is peculiar. If I was at L-2, I'd spend more time defending myself than scumhunting other players, and I'm sure most of you would too.

I'd like to hear from our latest replacement.

I'd also like to throw down a big fat

IGMEOY

to everyone on the RC-lynch yesterday. I'd wait until tomorrow, but, honestly, TF's just scum.

[Zindaras]

I would kindly suggest we wait until we get a replacement for bristep.

[Zindaras]

I was going to reread, but it seems like I can yet again be lazy.

Final Vote Count:

Surye

(13) - (

Internet Stranger

, Zindaras,

vezokpiraka

, Kison,

Cogito Ergo Sum

,

HezLucky

,

Furcolow

, AGar, DeathNote, Kublai Khan,

Primate, LlamaFluff, ReaperCharlie

)

Furcolow

(8) - (SensFan,

Toon Fighter

, BrianMcQueso,

Surye, creampuffeater

, GummyBear, Medicated Lain,

Furcolow

)
Medicated Lain (2) - (

Yosarian2, MrBuddyLee

)
ToonFighter (1) - (

Amrun

)
GummyBear (1) - (Albert B. Rampage)

Final Votecount:

Death Ninja

(10) - (BrianMcQueso, SensFan,

Internet Stranger, bristep123, Yosarian2

, Ranmaru,

Toon Fighter

, Medicated Lain,

Cogito Ergo Sum

, Porochaz)

Toon Fighter

(8) - (Kublai Khan, Kison,

HezLucky

, DeathNote,

Death Ninja, LlamaFluff

, Zindaras,

Primate

)
DeathNote (1) - (Albert B. Rampage)
SensFan (1) - (

MrBuddyLee

)
Ranmaru (1) - (dramonic)

Vote Count #22:

Down here, sometimes I think about all those people still plugged into the Matrix and when I look at these machines I... I can't help thinking that in a way... we are plugged into them. - Councillor Harmann

DeathNote - 3 (BrianMcQueso, Ranmaru,

Toon Fighter)

Toon Fighter

- 2 (DeathNote, Kison)

bristep123

- 1 (SensFan)

With 16 alive, it takes 9 to lynch. The Day 3 deadline is Thursday, June 30th, 12:01 AM CST

I wouldn't be surprised if the Merovingian scum attempted to set up a different wagon yesterday. Hence, Brian, SensFan and Ranmaru are scummier to me. They were on the wrong side of both Toon Fighter wagons. SensFan would be my main candidate for blue scum.

Next are Hez's reads, first and last posts (not going to put them all there):

OVERALL:

Surye - 56/100
creampuffeater - 56/100

Kison - 55/100
Zindaras - 55/100
SensFan - 54/100

Toon Fighter - 54/100

LlamaFluff - 53/100

Porochaz - 53/100
Medicated Lain - 51/100

mozamis/CES - 51/100

MBL - 51/100

BrianMcQueso - 50/100

Internet Stranger - 50/100
Furcolow - 49/100
vezopiraka - 49/100
Amrun - 49/100
AlbertBRampage - 46/100
Primate - 46/100

Toon Fighter - 64/100

SensFan - 61/100
BrianMcQueso - 57/100
Porochaz - 57/100
Medicated Lain - 56/100
Zindaras - 56/100
Kison - 56/100
GummyBear - 54/100

AlbertBRampage - 54/100

mozamis/CES - 53/100

ReaperCharlie/Battousai - 53/100
Internet Stranger - 51/100

Nobody Special/Agar - 50/100
DeathNote - 49/100

MBL - 48/100
LlamaFluff - 48/100
Yosarian2 - 46/100
Primate - 46/100
Furcolow - 44/100

I would expect Hez to keep his teammates pretty high, but not on top. SensFan and Kison make sense based on that, possibly Lain. Still, there's not much to go on here. We can't use the TF-wagons to catch Matrix scum.

SensFan is my main scum read right now, but looking at what's been going on, I doubt that will be relevant.

Also, credit where credit's due: good shot, Albert.

[Zindaras]

Vote: Kublai Khan

Not buying it.

[Zindaras]

Nice knee-jerk, Zindaras.

The town thing is to wait to see if anyone claims to have received a message. Or if anyone count-claims Oracle.

You are town, right?

Oh, yes, because

that

will help us determining whether or not you're Mafia.

-You could be everything you say and still be Mafia. Hell, you could be everything you say and be a Serial Killer. The messenger could be your scumbuddy.
-The previous messages already show that you are not to be trusted. You've been trying to screw over the town for a long time. A Survivor would've likely played it differently. You are a liability, and you need to go.
-You did not claim program when LlamaFluff asked the programs to come out.

All in all, you're undoubtedly useless, by your own admission. We're not close to LyLo and scum still has to deal with crosskills and our Neo-vig. And, to be honest, there's a pretty fair chance you're actually Mafia. So, no, I don't buy it. And my voting decision

definitely

doesn't depend on a counter-claim.

[Zindaras]

Dramonic: full claim, please.

-You could be everything you say and still be Mafia. Hell, you could be everything you say and be a Serial Killer. The messenger could be your scumbuddy.
-The previous messages already show that you are not to be trusted. You've been trying to screw over the town for a long time. A Survivor would've likely played it differently. You are a liability, and you need to go.
-You did not claim program when LlamaFluff asked the programs to come out.

Okay, first.. Calm down, you're not making any sense and I can almost feel you spittling your accusations at me. I'm a serial killer who has a messenger buddy? What?

You could be a Serial Killer, and you could be Mafia with a messenger buddy. Dramonic's confirmation that you also sent the D2 message makes the latter scenario unlikely, but you could still just be Mafia.

I've not been trying to screw over town. The messages were so obviously bogus. I told MrBuddyLee that he was a double-voter, for fuck's sake. Why in the world would I send a message that would have been disproved after a single vote-count (if MrBuddyLee hadn't gotten mod-killed)?

You could've used them to help the town, or even help by pre-claiming. You could've stopped sending them at all. But you wanted to confuse the town.

I didn't claim program, because that would have attracted undo attention towards myself. Tell me, how should a Survivor play mafia?

*shrugs*

I play the Survivor role as town-oriented as possible. Then again, I am such a popular kill/investigation target that I'm forced to. It's the only way to survive having to claim Survivor. If you play the Mafia's side, it's natural that people think you're Mafia. Also, you backstab the town the moment you enter LyLo. That's just good business.

Anyway, in this particular case, your options were a bit clearer. Claiming pro-town program would not immediately kill you. We didn't run TF up immediately (sadly enough). Claiming program does help you, however, by making sure the Mafia would never hit you. Which is also a concern for you. Not claiming program opens the door for all kind of blowouts later on (if you get investigated by a program cop you're just dead). Your entire play has been 100% pro-Mafia. A Survivor has to play for both sides.

All in all, you're undoubtedly useless, by your own admission. We're not close to LyLo and scum still has to deal with crosskills and our Neo-vig. And, to be honest, there's a pretty fair chance you're actually Mafia. So, no, I don't buy it. And my voting decision

definitely

doesn't depend on a counter-claim.

I have a feeling that I'm dealing with a closed mind who is throwing anything at the wall to justify a decision already made. Is this correct?

I think you're scum. Well, I guess I

know

you're scum, since you were kind enough to tell us. But I don't think there's a survivor in the game.

We have 25 players. We know we have at least two Mafias. Albert is claimed Vig, but we still have one kill unaccounted for. I highly doubt we have a double vig situation, so the fourth kill is likely scum as well (one-shot killer is possible, but unlikely in my opinion, as it doesn't make sense given who died N2, and Smith would make perfect sense to fill the last scum role). That makes the likely setup, in my opinion, either three three-man Mafia groups or two four-man Mafia groups and a Serial Killer. In both cases, the number of anti-town roles is 9. That's already a lot, especially with a Town that's not stacked to the brim with power (Cop, Doc, Vig and Tracker are really good roles, but the amount of kills mean they're likely to die uselessly, as most of them have done). Town gets outnumbered really quickly (as early as Day 2) if you're an actual Survivor. So I don't see any room in this game for an actual survivor.

Furthermore, let's look at the numbers we have here. Right now, we have 11 players. We've killed two Merovingians and one Matrix scum. That means that there's likely two Merovingians, three Matrix and one Serial Killer left. Now what happens if we lynch you? We go down to 10, with at worst one Survivor less but at best down a scumbag. At this point, Merovingian and SK both have to start looking for Hez's scumbuddies rather than kill town power roles because if we get four kills and none of them are Matrix scum, the next day becomes a very weird affair (because of the rules, it's then all about who votes first. Matrix can still lose if two of Merovingians/SK/Neo are still alive). Now, what happens if we don't lynch you? Best case scenario, we lynch one of Hez's scumbuddies, we've got two Matrix and two Merovingians left. What happens? We still go down to six, scum is freer in its kill selection. At that point, if no Merovingians or no Matrix scum died, you stab town in the back (if you are, as you say, a Survivor), and we're in the exact same situation as when we killed you and everybody blanked on killing scum. If we blank on the lynch, we pretty much just lose at that point. The situation is even worse if there's three three-player scumteams (I don't think this is the most likely setup but I'm throwing it out there), because we've got no handle on the last team and we're just voting in the dark at that point. The only thing we know is that if they're there, Kublai Khan will side with them. If the fourth kill during N2 was the result of a one-shot effect rather than a Serial Killer or third team, the need to lynch you only becomes greater, because there's one kill less trying to get rid Hez's buddies. If we go down to 7 with 3 Matrix scum and a Survivor, they win.

Basically, if you're a Survivor (which, again, I doubt), you're essentially part of every single scum team. Hence, you are more dangerous right now to the town than anybody else because you just side against us with whomever is winning. Quite frankly, I would've been less inclined to lynch you had you claimed Merovingian or Serial Killer. The Matrix Mafia is the most dangerous to us right now.

Also, the lack of counterclaim says nothing. Scum often claim power roles when on the block just to see if they can elicit a counterclaim. Oracle may not be in the game, and if she is, then it's not necessary for her to put herself in the spotlight by counterclaiming you right now.

Bottom line is, if Kublai Khan is a Survivor, he'll side with whoever is winning without batting an eyelid, which essentially makes him a goon of every single scum alignment. If Kublai Khan is lying, odds are he's part of the scumteam we need to kill.

I hope I've managed to clarify my thought process to the rest of the town a bit. I often have trouble clearing everything up, but I think I've shown that Kublai Khan needs to go period.

[Zindaras]

I play the Survivor role as town-oriented as possible. Then again, I am such a popular kill/investigation target that I'm forced to. It's the only way to survive having to claim Survivor. If you play the Mafia's side, it's natural that people think you're Mafia. Also, you backstab the town the moment you enter LyLo. That's just good business.

Anyway, in this particular case, your options were a bit clearer. Claiming pro-town program would not immediately kill you. We didn't run TF up immediately (sadly enough). Claiming program does help you, however, by making sure the Mafia would never hit you. Which is also a concern for you. Not claiming program opens the door for all kind of blowouts later on (if you get investigated by a program cop you're just dead). Your entire play has been 100% pro-Mafia. A Survivor has to play for both sides.

EBWOP: I've also seen some players advocate an immediate Day One claim (I've seen it a fair amount of times) but this usually backfires. My way of playing it corresponds closely to the way Glork plays it. Catch scum, then claim. You're useful to the town because you're catching scum for them, you're useful for the scum because you're still going to stab the town in the back if you can. Scum won't waste a kill on you.

[Zindaras]

Eh.. You can rule me out as a serial killer then. There's no way I would have left vig-Albert B. Rampage alive if I had the ability to kill.

*shrugs*

Neither would I, but then again, it's not really smart to trust self-discussed metas.

I thought about those options. Pre-claiming didn't seem to be a viable option. A messenger is inherently a scummy role. Go back and check how many people immediately called the note-sender scum. Check your own reaction. The only thing dramonic has done is confirm me as the note-sender and you're not backing down from voting, so pre-claiming was a horrible idea.

I've played messenger as town before (or, at the very least, I've seen it or variations of it as town), but when the first message sent is such a misleading and scummy message, it's guaranteed to be played by scum. Basically, by sending that message, you destroyed any and all possibility of ever just claiming town messenger. That's not a good survivor strategy in anyone's book.

And I could have sent nothing. But.. I think my strategy was okay. I generated reactions without really placing anyone in danger of being lynched and I find that slip-ups when reacting to unexpected information is a great way to catch scum.

Oh, yes, of course,

that

was the plan all along. So why don't town messengers play like that?

The reactions to the messages are public record and now that you know that the messages are gibberish. Since Cognito Ergo Sum flipped scum, I bet you could check the reactions from the beginning of Day 3 to find someone altogether too sure of my note's lack of authenticity.

I see you've already promised this, but go ahead. If you are a survivor, this is the part where you become the town's best friend.

100% pro-mafia? Wow, that's quite a statistic. I was voting scum for all of Day 2 and Day 3. I just wasn't standing up and making grandiose speeches to get my head shot off like Amrun, or Yosarian2, or Primate, or etc..

Brian already quoted the "I thought that if I was too accurate in hunting scum, they might want to eliminate me." line, but basically, that. Not hunting scum, sending messages trying to confuse the town, that's as anti-town as it gets. Your survival doesn't matter.

First, voting to lynch me is pretty much the same move as voting for a no-lynch.

No, it's not, that's the whole point of showing it.

Second, if either of the scum teams think I'm a member of the other scum team, then I'm proper fucked. If Albert B. Rampage is a vig and not a SK (or scum), then I'm probably proper fucked as well. So if you're thinking that I'm scum who thinks survivor is a grandiose strategy, then you're an idiot. The chance of me being NKed is very, very strong. Especially at this point which is when scum are trying to cross-kill.

So you wouldn't claim survivor because you'd be screwed if people didn't believe that claim? Let me put it this way: if people believe your claim (which is the point of claiming) then no scumteam will touch you. Vigbert might...but Vigbert is essentially our second lynch, so lynching you or vigging you doesn't really make any difference (except, of course, if you're NK-immune).

Third, stuff like "If we go down to 7 with 3 Matrix scum and a Survivor, they win." is offensively false. That's not an auto-loss, that scenario just makes me a king-maker unless one of the town votes wrongly. Stop lying.

So you're telling me that you wouldn't just pile the fourth vote on whichever wagon stops by?

I don't see the setup as having three 3-man Mafia groups. That's a bit stacked against the town (36% of the game is scum?), and I can't think of a third anti-town group flavor-wise. If it was two 4-man groups, who are the two extra members of the Twins group? Clearly, The Merovingian is on that team, but I can't think of any other characters that would be. Persephone was more pro-town, if anything. If it's a setup with 3 Agents, Merovingian + Twins, and a serial killer Agent Smith, that makes 7 anti-town (28%). That seems reasonable to me, also considering our low number of power roles.

I'm thinking the Trainman. Also, crosskills destroy scum in that setup. Scum is highly unlikely to make it to endgame with two group members intact. That's nasty stuff. 28% in itself is nice but only if you have one scumteam. With two scumteams, the game gets skewed towards the town really badly. Town shouldn't have more than a 33% chance to win a game with two scumteams.

Also, I would gander that Dramonic's Matrix unplug role would kill any programs it targeted (can't unplug a program). Weird stuff though.

[Zindaras]

Lain: why are you not voting Kublai? I think I've clearly shown that he needs to die.

[Zindaras]

I agree with Sens. I want to see what Kublai posts. I find it

highly

unlikely that I won't want to lynch him afterwards, but I want to see it nonetheless.

[Zindaras]

In a 2:2:1 lylo, a survivor has zero incentive to even try to lynch scum. He'll just pile on the first wagon he sees. Or not even that, he'll actively try to lynch town in order to end the game so that he wins. In 1:1:1 endgame, a survivor might take the time to hunt scum, but that's for sport only (I would and I have). If Survivor sides with town in 2:2:1 endgame, then one would expect him to side with town in 1:1:1 endgame as well, so scum no longer has an incentive to keep him alive, and will likely kill him out of spite.

Let's face it: we're pretty much screwed right now. Actually, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't even say "we" because I think more than half of us are scum. There's no way a survivor is ever going to have the chance to side with town.

And that is if he is a Survivor. I still simply don't believe his claim.

My vig target would be SensFan.

[Zindaras]

LyLo is lynch or lose.

[Zindaras]

But... Mafia would lose if they killed survivor... Mafia risks the chance of losing by outing themselves so that survivor can join with them. Whatever, I am not lynching the third party member over scum.

1: It won't be necessary for anyone to out themselves. Survivors hop on the first wagon or just go out of their way to jump on the wrong wagon. Sure, Mafia risks the loss through outing, but if it leads to an auto-win, they won't care. Again, Survivor has

zero

incentive to try to help the town in LyLo, and a lot of incentive to help the scum.

2: What scum are you proposing we lynch over Kublai?

3: Let me propose a scenario for you. Let's say you're a scum message sender. You sent a dumb message trying to mislead the town so noone will believe you if you claim your role as town. Somebody tracks you to a guy which was unfortunately killed by some other scumteam. What do you claim?

[Zindaras]

But... Mafia would lose if they killed survivor... Mafia risks the chance of losing by outing themselves so that survivor can join with them. Whatever, I am not lynching the third party member over scum.

Are you just dumb? Mafia will WIN THE GAME if they claim and the Survivor votes with them. If the Survivor doesn't vote with them, he will LOSE THE GAME.

Because Mafia would kill the survivor over town? After they claimed?

To spite him, yes. If the Survivor decides to help the town on D5, going against his win condition, they can bet he'll do the same on D6.

[Zindaras]

but his win condition isn't set for him to win with mafia. He wants to just stay alive.

Let me sketch another hypothetical situation for you. Let's say there are 11 players remaining, and 5 players are Mafia. You're a Survivor. Somehow you know there's 5 Mafia left. What are you going to do? If you lynch a Townie, the Mafia wins. You've survived, so you win. If you lynch Mafia, the game continues.

Like I've said before, in a 3-player 1:1:1 endgame, Survivor may choose Town's side. After all, at that point, the Survivor does not care which side he lynches. But, at any earlier point, the Survivor always works for the team that's ahead. And right now, you'd have to be pretty naive to think we are ahead.

I'll address the blue sentence in a moment. But in the rest of this paragraph, you say that I'm scum for not voting for ToonFighter, and then you say I'm scum for voting for ToonFighter. I don't think you can have it both ways. I wasn't happy with the wagon on TF because nobody was justifying their votes. I even said that, in the post you quoted. How does it make me scum to ask people to give their reasons for bandwagonning someone?

I'm sorry, but that's just a horribly weak defense and you know it. You don't get credit for voting Toon Fighter yesterday. Nobody gets credit for voting Toon Fighter yesterday. He was just that obvious a lynch. There were two moments that voting Toon Fighter got you brownie points: when he was up for a lynch with Hydra-Dude, and at the start of the next day when he hadn't claimed. And, like I've shown before, you were on the wrong side of both. And, seriously, the hydra's posts weren't enough? Death Ninja has about as many posts as Death Note, who's been playing the entire game. And the average length is just huge compared to most other people's posts. Furthermore, there's reads on practically everybody in the game. Scum have zero incentive to do that.

[Zindaras]

Also, SensFan, seriously, don't be so harsh on the guy.

[Zindaras]

Unvote

Want to stretch it out. Like the Kublai vs Brian debate. Maybe we should also be making cases on who Albert should vig?

[Zindaras]

Que?

Woo! good job town! And Albert too.. good shot fellow. I guess I was pretty wrong on TF... but good job everyone else.


Kublai Khan: Why would you throw out messages to screw with town? It makes much more sense to align with town than to screw with them if you really want to win. Based on that, your actions were anti town any way, and we have no way to prove that you're not messing with people because you actually are trying to kill them. I don't think the role clears you, and actually think that's super suspicious. But not as bad as Sens.

vote:Sensfan

If TF wasn't Hez's partner, I really am inclined to believe that Sens was.

I just got home from my first ride in an ambulance to the the emergency room, and am not feeling in the best of shape at the moment, so I can't promise anymore posts today.

[Zindaras]

Sometimes, Lainy confuses me.

[Zindaras]

*shrugs*

There's this. I don't think your defense was particularly strong there.

I'll address the blue sentence in a moment. But in the rest of this paragraph, you say that I'm scum for not voting for ToonFighter, and then you say I'm scum for voting for ToonFighter. I don't think you can have it both ways. I wasn't happy with the wagon on TF because nobody was justifying their votes. I even said that, in the post you quoted. How does it make me scum to ask people to give their reasons for bandwagonning someone?

I'm sorry, but that's just a horribly weak defense and you know it. You don't get credit for voting Toon Fighter yesterday. Nobody gets credit for voting Toon Fighter yesterday. He was just that obvious a lynch. There were two moments that voting Toon Fighter got you brownie points: when he was up for a lynch with Hydra-Dude, and at the start of the next day when he hadn't claimed. And, like I've shown before, you were on the wrong side of both. And, seriously, the hydra's posts weren't enough? Death Ninja has about as many posts as Death Note, who's been playing the entire game. And the average length is just huge compared to most other people's posts. Furthermore, there's reads on practically everybody in the game. Scum have zero incentive to do that.

[Zindaras]

Vote: Kublai Khan

I tend to agree.

[Zindaras]

There's this. I don't think your defense was particularly strong there.

~snip~

I wasn't on the ToonFighter lynch, that's true. I wanted to be, but did not vote TF because I did not want a quicklynch. TF then voted for himself, securing what I was trying to avoid.

There is my defense to the "you weren't on the TF lynch" attack. I know that I wasn't on the lynch, and I understand that saying I would have voted for him isn't worth much. But I was not interested in quicklynching TF, especially given my hesitation towards his wagon on previous days.

It's not his lynch that matters. I cannot stress this enough. As far as I care, he signed his death warrant the moment he came up with that awful claim. Hell, I remember you going against him at that point, so the absence of a vote there is hardly a concern.

No, what I think reflects poorly on you is your vote for Death Ninja when he was up against Toon Fighter, and your early vote for DeathNote at the start of the next day (first much more than last).

[Zindaras]

Well, good, because it does. If you're still alive and I'm still alive tomorrow, I'll have to go over your play and reasoning, but it's a simple fact for now.

[Zindaras]

Well, if you agreed with all he said (which I took it for) I assume that you also mirror his feelings that you'll live with the fact that it'll make you look scummier.

[Zindaras]

*shrugs*

I'm happy Kublai is dead. He was going to win the game for the Matrix.

Anyway, I don't really think there's much point in not saying this. I'm the Trainman. I'm a Commuter (can hide from everything one night, then can't do so the next night), and I'm with the Merovingian Mafia. My main tactic was to kind of keep everything divided, buddying up to one of my pals, ignoring the other and bussing the last. Given the fact that we were a four-man team, I highly doubt that there are only three Matrix Mafiates. Three Agents and the Architect makes sense anyway.

[Zindaras]

Zindaras pretty much has nothing to gain by claiming as Merovingian Mafia. He is probably lying and is Matrix, possibly with kill immunity and one remaining scum partner(making it teams of three).

If this is the case and there are two Matrix remaining, we mislynch and ABR misfires, it puts him in a much better position.

As Merovingian has has pretty much forfeit any chance he had of winning by claiming.

Oh, but I do. All I need to do is make sure town can't afford to lynch me, and I know that the Matrix scum can't afford to shoot me. Because our team was a four-man team, I know that town is in lylo right now.

Also, seriously, Poro, that's just silly. I agree that all the pro-town roles have been major characters, but how can you just blindly ignore the Twins? While they got the cool fighting scenes, the Trainman is not a smaller character than the Twins, and it's practically the only option for more Merovingian scum, especially if you want a power role.

I wanted to claim Oracle (which is why Lain and I rode Kublai so hard yesterday, hoping that he was lying, as I honestly thought he was), but Kublai's death basically stopped me from doing that claim.

I think the fourth nightkill was a one-shot from the Matrix scum. There's likely two Goons and a power role on their side as well.

Also, I love Brian's type. One-shit nightkills all around.

[Zindaras]

*typo.

[Zindaras]

Also, you've got to love typo'ing typo.

[Zindaras]

Once you start factoring in crosskills, 4:4 makes a lot of sense. Unless Albert is one, we don't really seem to have an SK either.

Here's a game from a long time ago. It's a mini, but a 2-man team and a 3-man team with no kill. And then there's Mafia vs Wolves Redux, which had a 4-man team and a 2-man team with conversion possibilities in a 21-player game.

In a normal 25-player game, you expect 6 Mafia and 1 SK. It's not really that much of a stretch to replace 6 Mafiates with 2*4 Mafiates.

[Zindaras]

Zindaras is telling the truth. If he wasn't he would be counterclaimed.

Actually, I personally expected to be counterclaimed regardless. It makes for a nice easy lynch for the Matrix Mafia. It

is

LyLo, after all.

[Zindaras]

@Zindaras Did the Merovingian mafia have any powers other than your self-protect?

We could, y'know, kill stuff. But, meh, we had two Goons, a PR and a GF with no abilities beyond sending in kills. Probably to make up for the fact that town didn't get much either.

Allow me to posit the following: if we lynch Matrix scum today, then we'll be at 6, of which 2 are Matrix. During that night, there will be two kills beyond my control, which would reduce our game to four players. This would mean that Albert would absolutely have to kill a Matrix Goon, or otherwise, I lose and Town loses.

I personally actually think town's (and mine) best shot lies in the following strategy: lynch today. If we lynch Matrix, neither Albert or I kill. We go down to 5 and have a 2-1-2 lylo. If we lynch non-Matrix, both Albert and I take a potshot at scum (probably would have to coordinate who shoots whom).

What I think you're ignoring here is likeliness. I mean, as Merovingian, I have more of an incentive to claim than as Agent. As Agent, I just need to get one good lynch and I win. As Merovingian, I actually need to survive to endgame. Is my historical behaviour indicative of Merovingian or Agent? I think you'll find it fits the Merovingian type.

As far as the fourth nightkill on night 2 goes: it does not necessarily imply anything. It could still be 4-4-1 (which wouldn't be completely unheard of). More importantly, it could simply be a one-shot kill. If you look at who the Matrix killed that night, it was Yosarian and LlamaFluff (we killed Hez and Albert killed IS): a vocal townie and the Cop. That's not a bad deal to use a one-shot on. One-shot nightkill is a very solid power role, and it fits in with my information: the fact that we had a power-role implies that the Agents had a power role as well. It's more logical to have either of those scenarios than to argue that we had double-kills in all three other nights.

Also, I've got my Commuting thing so it's a gambit for Matrix scum to kill me. I'd think they'd always prefer Albert anyway. I know I would. You didn't really take that into account in your analysis, Brian. It's actually the main reason that this scenario still has an okay chance of working out for me.

I'm really tired right now and having problems concentrating, so I'm not going to go into too much length. I can, however, make a promise.

As far as the kill thing goes: I am willing to discuss this at length and decide on the most anti-Matrix strategy we can come up with. If I agree with it, I will promise to follow this strategy. In return, I ask that if we follow this strategy and just happen to arrive in a situation where we've killed enough Agents and you are free to lynch or kill me, you don't. We go happily ever after. That's the offer I've got for you. I take my word very seriously, so you can trust me on that. I do, however, expect you to honour your word as well: If I'm the last scumbag, we go happily ever after.

[Zindaras]

I like how you're just repeating your opinion over and over again without any real substance.

[Zindaras]

I mean, as Merovingian, I have more of an incentive to claim than as Agent. As Agent, I just need to get one good lynch and I win. As Merovingian, I actually need to survive to endgame.

As an Agent, by claiming, lying about your faction, and trying to derail our lynch for today(and to an extent, ABR's kill), you increase your likelihood of getting a that one "good lynch" that you need.

I did not claim when on the block. I personally don't think I was in that much trouble. Albert's the only one who has really suspected me. You threw out the notion once. I can't remember Brian, Sens, DeathNote or Poro saying anything bad about me.

The claim draws an awful lot of attention to me that wasn't there before, and it makes people willing to lynch me where they were not before.

[Zindaras]

*shrugs*

A word is a word. Sometimes, I'm willing to transcend Mafia if it means that I'll have a better shot at winning. But, fine, you may choose not to trust me on that. That implies that I will do whatever I deem to be the best strategy for my own chances of winning. You'll note, though, that it's very likely to lie in line with the town's wishes, since the Matrix scum are so close to winning.

As far as the gambit goes...yes, it's possible. It'd be fairly poor play and (in my opinion) superfluous because of the fact that I wasn't

that

likely to be lynched today, but fine. I expect you to consider it.

That's bullshit Kison, as I've said many times already, Zindaras would have been counterclaimed if he was lying.

No. Zindy's claim isn't the kind of thing that can be counterclaimed against. There are no more members of the Merovingian scum to claim against her. Either she's either the last member, or there are no more members.

Wait, what?

[Zindaras]

I just don't understand the whole counterclaim logic from Brian. I mean, it's not

that

clear-cut. If it's 4-4 or 4-4-1, then there would be a Merovingian to counterclaim me.

Also, Zindie likes hir gender confusion. >.>

<.<

[Zindaras]

Oh, by the way: I'm going on vacation as of tomorrow, until July 28th. As far as I know, I will have Internet access in all but the last four days. It might be a tad more sporadic (it will likely be impossible to reread the game or anything spectacular like that) than it was so far, but I want to finish this game.

[Zindaras]

Also, Albert, I think BMQ is suggesting there are three-player scumgroups and I'm faking it. In that case, there wouldn't be a counterclaim because all the Merovingians would be dead.

I still don't see how you can see it as likely because I don't think that it's a very balanced setup (especially because the deaths so far suggest very strongly that scum did not have power roles), but okay, fine.

[Zindaras]

On a different note:

Given the fact that we were a four-man team, I highly doubt that there are only three Matrix Mafiates. Three Agents

and the Architect

makes sense anyway.

What makes you think The Architect is in this game, and part of the Agents team?

It would make sense. Four-man team with a GF (like we were), Architect seems like the quintessential Godfather for the Matrix. Besides the Agents, I think it's the only robot-controlled program that we even see in the movies.

[Zindaras]

On a different note:

Given the fact that we were a four-man team, I highly doubt that there are only three Matrix Mafiates. Three Agents

and the Architect

makes sense anyway.

What makes you think The Architect is in this game, and part of the Agents team?

It would make sense. Four-man team with a GF (like we were), Architect seems like the quintessential Godfather for the Matrix. Besides the Agents, I think it's the only robot-controlled program that we even see in the movies.

EBWOP: All other programs are either good (Oracle, Seraph (?), Keymaker, the little kid Neo meets at the train station at the start of the last movie) or just rogue (Merovingian, Twins, Trainman).

[Zindaras]

I'm just trying to acknowledge both possibilities. Heck, I think I was even the first one to suggest it might be a gambit. It's what I believe, mostly out of hope. If there are still 1 Merovigian and 3 Agents, then the scum outnumber the town, and I'm not happy with that. If it's 3-3, we still have a chance, and I'd like to make the play that has the best chances of a town victory.

Like I said before, if it's a 4-4 setup, we're pretty screwed and can only win if we lynch and vigilante perfectly. It's not something I have a lot of faith in.

I would be inclined to disagree. Not only do you disregard probability (you may

hope

that the setup is not like that, but is it

realistic

?), you also disregard behaviour and balance.

Also, if it's 4-4, like I said, we get one mislynch. If we mislynch, Albert and I then have to kill perfectly. And if it's 3-3-1, town is pretty much screwed as well and has to hope there's a crosskill between Mafia and SK at some point. Like I said, I think the optimal strategy is to lynch today. If we lynch correctly, Albert and I nokill and we get the same situation tomorrow and we are in the same situation. Using that strategy, we can afford a singular mislynch and make it to an endgame Prisoner's Dilemma.

If it's 3-3-1, you're really not much better off.

It would make sense. Four-man team with a GF (like we were), Architect seems like the quintessential Godfather for the Matrix. Besides the Agents, I think it's the only robot-controlled program that we even see in the movies.

I understand how The Architect would make sense as Godfather, but your naming him came out of nowhere. I went back and searched all player's posts. The only other times "Architect" was mentioned was by me (listing a number of characters that might be in the setup) and by Mastermind of Sin (in a vote count quote).

My opinion of the "Agents" team was that it was made up of Agents. Speculating that there is an Architect... feels like a slip.

I'm sorry, but the team does not say Agents, it says Matrix. And, given that I can be fairly sure there are four Matrix aligned players, the Architect is the most logical choice. Also, since all Agents in the movies operate in trios, it would make sense to have three agents and a GF.

Maybe it's just me, but something Zindy said makes me more likely to join the 'Hope he's lying and lynch him' camp. He said that part of his deal is a Happily Ever After if we get rid of all the Matrix; that doesn't work for Town. That makes the risk:reward of trusting you make no sense, since the

upside

is a draw.

Beyond the fact that I've always considered Happily Ever After a win for both (because people overcame their respective differences and huggled and snuggled for all of eternity), I'd also suggest that it would up your chances. Regardless of the setup, Town is practically guaranteed to lose.

My offer was an offer, and nothing more. If you wish to take your chances, that's fine by me. I am more than willing to simply play this out.

[Zindaras]

Maybe it's just me, but something Zindy said makes me more likely to join the 'Hope he's lying and lynch him' camp. He said that part of his deal is a Happily Ever After if we get rid of all the Matrix; that doesn't work for Town. That makes the risk:reward of trusting you make no sense, since the

upside

is a draw.

Beyond the fact that I've always considered Happily Ever After a win for both (because people overcame their respective differences and huggled and snuggled for all of eternity), I'd also suggest that it would up your chances. Regardless of the setup, Town is practically guaranteed to lose.

My offer was an offer, and nothing more. If you wish to take your chances, that's fine by me. I am more than willing to simply play this out.

I'm not sure how you get that "Town is practically guaranteed to lose" in a 3:3:1 endgame with a Vig.

If there's an SK around, it's quite possible that it's Albert. If he's kill immune his earlier claim may not actually have been that bad for him. Anyway, simply taking your assumptions and running with them:

If it's a 3:3:1 situation, then there are currently two Mafiates and an SK. You still need to lynch correctly two days in a row and pray for crosskills and that Albert manages to hit scum. And crosskills aren't likely since Albert has a huge target on his forehead, so it's likely that the town will have to find all the scum on their own.

Let's assume Albert is a Vig and it's a 3:3:1 setup, despite the fact that that would make no sense whatsoever from a balance standpoint. Then, there are three options:
-Lynch Town (3-2-1): Albert or SK has to kill Mafia in order to have a chance. Unless Albert and SK both kill Mafia, Town will end up in a Prisoner's Dilemma (as Mafia kills Albert and hence, no danger of crosskill there)
-Lynch SK (4-2): Albert needs to vig correctly or Town loses.
-Lynch Mafia (4-1-1): clearly the best situation, but with three kills, the best town can hope for is a standard endgame (or a double crosskill), while the odds for a Prisoner's Dilemma are fairly high.

And I'm still befuddled as to the total lack of behavioural analysis. Fact is, I have much more of an incentive to do this as Merovingian than as Matrix. I was not on the block.

[Zindaras]

And I'm still befuddled as to the total lack of behavioural analysis. Fact is, I have much more of an incentive to do this as Merovingian than as Matrix. I was not on the block.

But as Merovingian, you would know that you have a greater incentive to do this as Matrix, and so the wine is clearly in front of me.

There is no WIFOM

. If I have a greater incentive to do something as Town than as Scum, then doing that makes me more likely to be Town. That's how Mafia works. Either

everything

is WIFOM or

nothing

is WIFOM.

WIFOM presupposes two choices which are exactly the same: Vizzini cannot distinguish between the two glasses of wine. If one glass is much fuller than the other, or if one glass has an odd green bubbling substance in it, then the whole argument falls apart.

If Albert is the serial killer, then good on him for putting himself in the best position to win this game. There's no way we can lynch a claimed Neo.

Alright, Zindaras, say I believe your claim. Say we're even skilled or lucky enough as a town to lynch an Agent, and the setup becomes TTT M AA. The Agents kill you tonight, and you lose, unless you have your Commuter power up. I'm assuming you do, otherwise you just got yourself killed. If you don't, you get nightkilled the next night.

You can't win this game, Zindaras.

You know it, too, and are trying to negotiate a "happily ever after". The thing is, we have no reason to accept that deal, even if you keep your word. Town can win this game. We also can't trust you to help us find Agents, because of the

possibility

that you might be an Agent pulling a gambit. You offer us nothing.

I'm starting to think that we don't win by lynching you, though. Town's best option is to lynch an Agent and vig-kill Zindaras. If you can commute and dodge the kill, you're confirmed. If you're lying, we vig'd an Agent. If you don't have your commuter up this night, it's like we lynched you anyway.

If we lynch an Agent today,

it doesn't matter if Zindaras is telling the truth or not

, and the town still has a chance to win. It removes the guesswork as to what the setup is. I think that's where we should focus our efforts.

You're cute, Brian. Very cute. Trying to redirect the Matrix's kill towards me. I would almost agree with you, if it weren't for the fact that it would likely kill me.

But, no. Matrix has much more of an incentive to kill Albert the coming night. If things go awry, they'd rather be stuck with me (in a PD) than with Albert (in a 3-player endgame with a 50/50 lynch). No. What I needed (and why I claimed) is to make it to PD intact. Town has no incentive to kill me (most importantly, I need to make sure Albert doesn't kill me). Essentially, Matrix has to kill me the coming night or the night afterwards. All I need to do is time the Commute perfectly and make the right decision in the PD endgame and I can win.

[Zindaras]

Leaving now, should have Internet this evening. If not, give me a couple of days. If everything goes wrong, please don't replace but hydra me, so that I can continue playing when I get back.

[Zindaras]

You're cute, Brian. Very cute. Trying to redirect the Matrix's kill towards me.

Gee, ya got me. You managed to decipher that I would rather have the Agents kill a member of the other anti-town group than a member of the town.

*shrugs*

I don't reject your behaviour: I'm just pointing it out so that the Matrix Mafia doesn't follow you. It's not really in their best interest.

But, no. Matrix has much more of an incentive to kill Albert the coming night. If things go awry, they'd rather be stuck with me (in a PD) than with Albert (in a 3-player endgame with a 50/50 lynch). No. What I needed (and why I claimed) is to make it to PD intact. Town has no incentive to kill me (most importantly, I need to make sure Albert doesn't kill me). Essentially, Matrix has to kill me the coming night or the night afterwards. All I need to do is time the Commute perfectly and make the right decision in the PD endgame and I can win.

Do the Agents have a great motivation to kill Albert? Yes.

Would they rather be stuck with you than Albert in an endgame scenario? I don't know, that's a strategic choice they have to make, and I can't read their minds.

Town has no incentive to kill you? Absolutely not. Despite what you might think otherwise, Zindaras, you're an enemy to the town, and an obstacle to our victory. Sure, we share the goal of "Agents must die", but it ends there. I'm not interested in helping you win this game.

Don't be silly. Being stuck with me means we're in a PD. Being stuck with Albert means a standard endgame. It's obvious which one Matrix will prefer. And, my dear dear Brian, regardless of what happens, you cannot afford to lynch me today or have Albert vig me the coming night. That's what matters for me. I'm gambling on being in a PD tomorrow, at which point I can still win.

[Zindaras]

Don't be silly. Being stuck with me means we're in a PD. Being stuck with Albert means a standard endgame. It's obvious which one Matrix will prefer. And, my dear dear Brian, regardless of what happens, you cannot afford to lynch me today or have Albert vig me the coming night. That's what matters for me. I'm gambling on being in a PD tomorrow, at which point I can still win.

Note that a PD is very much outside of the best interests of the Town.

And note that Town can't really do better than a PD as long as I don't kill a Matrix Mafiate the coming night.

[Zindaras]

Hey. Thank you for not replacing me. Apparently, when Norwegians promise wireless internet, they mean "there's wireless internet somewhere, but you won't be able to find it and if you do manage to find it, you won't be able to log onto it."

I'm not sure if this can be checked, but the simple fact that I wasn't here for the night proves that I did not make the second kill and that I therefore must be Merovingian scum (or, well, I could be Matrix scum, but then we've already won).

I'm okay with happily ever after.

I will reread.

[Zindaras]

Vote: Albert B Rampage

Kison: I am Matrix scum. Hez was my buddy. We didn't know who you were and figured you didn't know who we were, so I played like that. If you unvote and vote Albert, we'll deadline lynch him and win.

[Zindaras]

Also, massive hilarity at managing to survive yesterday. You've got to admit it was a ballsy claim. Strange reversal from you, though, Albert. Nothing really changed after your happily ever after vote.

[Zindaras]

Also, have fun figuring out if I just lied or not.

[Zindaras]

At the very least, you have to admit this is hilarious.

Anyway, I personally actually think Albert is Serial Killer, so I'm good with killing him. I don't think Kison is town. There's a PD and everyone knows it. You have to figure out what kind of scum everyone is. If I'm the last Matrix scumbag and Albert is SK, town loses if you lynch me.

[Zindaras]

So, yeah, you should really be no lynching.

[Zindaras]

Let me help you.

Unvote, Vote: No Lynch

[Zindaras]

You really think I can commute

and

kill? Man, I bluff really well.

[Zindaras]

DeathNote's playing quite intelligently, Albert. He doesn't trust you. And why would he, really? He knows he's in a Prisoner's Dilemma. It's just a matter of figuring out how many scum there really are.

Ask yourself, town: why is Albert still alive? Scum would've won already had they killed Albert last night. But they didn't. Care to guess why?

[Zindaras]

1) There's no Agent Smith. SK with a good fakeclaim is always a great role to put in your game.
2) No mod would be stupid enough to make every single main character in the game a PR.
3) If you die instead of SensFan, the game is already won.
4) We've already tried killing you. We failed. Hence, we don't do it again.

[Zindaras]

4) We've already tried killing you. We failed. Hence, we don't do it again.

When?

We were split up into two groups. I reckon the other part of the group is the lone Architect. We can't communicate, but each night, after the Agents decide on the kill target(s), the Architect can choose to veto it, to prevent crosskills (target can't be changed after a veto). We are Vengeful Goons. Upon death, we can make an additional kill. This explains the extra kill on Night 2. On Night 3, I decided to kill Albert. I reckon the Vengefulness is symmetric, so that's why there were three kills on Night 3.

The commuting thing was a gigantic bluff. I needed to survive both lynch and night. The game is symmetrical. Two Goons and a GF.

If you are town, you've got us by the nuts. We can't prevent my lynch. But you still don't win. Lynch me, Albert wins. Lynch Albert, we win. Neither would be intelligent. That's why Albert's talking about it.

What I can offer you is one of two things:
-No lynch. Albert kills a Matrix guy, we can't win (we can't kill him and if we kill you, we still lose). Test my word. Whatever happens, you'll still be in a better situation than you were today.
-Happily ever after. This is basically the only thing town can do to salvage this game. You may distrust me, but I have always had a lot of respect for the way Fritzler played the endgame of Evolution Mafia, and you can trust me on this one.

[Zindaras]

I ask this of you, Kison: does it make sense for a scumteam to just let a game slip like we would've done if I were lying? Kill Albert and win. Kill SensFan and have to play more endgame.

[Zindaras]

I have no bloody clue. I know it's not Albert. If it's not you, it must be DeathNote. You already knew this.

[Zindaras]

Albert's desire to rush through the day is only indicative of how important it is

not

to rush.

[Zindaras]

There's three scum left. I can promise you this. If it's not you, DN, it must be Kison.

[Zindaras]

I'm willing to offer you the same deal I offered Kison. No lynch and take a gander or go happily ever after.

[Zindaras]

A rather sadly obstinate point of view to take given the fact that you can easily realise that Albert

has

to be SK. You may not trust me, but the actions speak for themselves. Win if Albert is killed. Albert is not killed. Hence, something must be up.

Don't negotiate with terrorists. Hahaha. Let me just laugh at that for a moment. Every single government in this world negotiates with terrorists. It's just that it's okay when they're terrorising

other

people. And that's the same situation you find yourself in now. Town (whichever one of you is town) is in a PD. You're not going to win it through action.

[Zindaras]

I am not so easily relinquishing this tiebreaker we were fortunate to get over you on the deadlocked votes. I like watching you twitch, waiting for me to unvote, Zindyscum. It brings me sick, twisted satisfaction. And why shouldn't it. It is only proper retribution for the vile duplicity you displayed in yesterday's gambit, and from the day before, when you tried implicating me with LlamaFluff's "breadcrumbing."

I honestly misread the game. I was trying to find Merovingian scumbags just as much as anybody else. That's also why I was so eager to get rid of Toon Fighter.

Oh yes, you will hang for that, noose tucked snugly around your slimy scumbag neck, and for all those poor, innocent citizens you so cruelly slaughtered in their sleep. Did you kill Internet Stranger, you bastard. I liked Internet Stranger!

Yeah, ABR killed IS. He claimed that kill. I rather liked him myself. He liked me. It was not really in my best interests to kill him.

You should have killed me when you had the chance, you filthy scumbag. You'd have had better luck talking SensFan into switching, since he was one of the people you so craftily seduced into lynching town over confirmed scum yesterday. But you just had to go and whack him, too.

ABR led that lynch.

Maybe you can talk me into switching, though. Just maybe. But you'll have to do better than "ABR is still alive."

Look at ABR's play. Seriously. Remember how he just claimed Neo completely out of the blue? Doesn't really make sense for a Vigilante who can be killed. It does, however, make a

lot

of sense for a Serial Killer who needs to dodge cop investigations. Since then, he's been leading the town around the bush. He's the only reason I survived yesterday. Look at the kills he's made. Yes, he killed Cessy and Lain, but he also killed a number of townies (some quite useful) just because he felt like it: vezok and Internet Stranger.

Last night's kill really is a decider: if I kill Albert, I win. Do you really think I would leave a Vig alive if all I need to do is kill him to win? I failed on him before. Hence, I avoided that. I also wanted to avoid a double kill with Albert, so I went for SensFan. Obvious mistake there.

[Zindaras]

Scumbag: Did your team get any protective, roleblocking, tracking, or any kind of targeting abilities besides killing.

We were just both Vengeful Goons. I do not know if the GF has anything (hell, I'm not even sure he exists).

[Zindaras]

Look at ABR's play. Seriously. Remember how he just claimed Neo completely out of the blue? Doesn't really make sense for a Vigilante who can be killed. It does, however, make a

lot

of sense for a Serial Killer who needs to dodge cop investigations. Since then, he's been leading the town around the bush. He's the only reason I survived yesterday. Look at the kills he's made. Yes, he killed Cessy and Lain, but he also killed a number of townies (some quite useful) just because he felt like it: vezok and Internet Stranger.

Last night's kill really is a decider: if I kill Albert, I win. Do you really think I would leave a Vig alive if all I need to do is kill him to win? I failed on him before. Hence, I avoided that. I also wanted to avoid a double kill with Albert, so I went for SensFan. Obvious mistake there.

Based on this, you need to realise that Albert is Serial Killer. And if he is a Serial Killer, lynching me loses you the game, whatever the setup is. If Albert truly is unkillable, he just wins regardless of what happens. Even if Albert is only one-shot unkillable, if DeathNote is the Don, he is turned into a Kingmaker (knowing that Albert will kill him). I highly doubt he'll help you win after you just lynched his only chance of winning. If you no lynch, however, you just outright win the game if MoS screwed me over even more than I thought before and DeathNote is town (in that case, Agent Smith would be SK able to veto the kill of the other two Agents, much like his role as lead Agent in the first movie, or the Don is just a figment of my imagination). I know these are not good odds, but they are the only scenario in which Town still wins. You also have the chance of drawing with the Matrix scum if DeathNote is scum and you no lynch: if Albert and I crosskill or Albert kills me and you lynch Albert tomorrow, and the Don proves unable to take over my kill, then you draw (because neither side can win).

Take the no lynch, Kison. It's the only chance you have of winning the game.

Also,

Mod

, please extend the deadline by two days. Due to vacation, I will likely be unable to access the Internet from my next stop and I will return on July 29th, probably a little bit after the deadline. I know it's annoying, but I would really like some of the time back that my vacation is screwing out of me.

[Zindaras]

Then there is always the issue of confirmed mafia trying to help town win... I dont see how this benefits you Zindaris and it kinda frustrates me.

No lynch is also my best shot at winning. Basically, only Albert wants to lynch today, because that means he wins.

[Zindaras]

To the town:

We have had our differences. We still have them. However, we have one thing in common: an enemy. Albert is a Serial Killer. He abused the first meaningless attack on him to claim Neo:

I have a rock solid claim.

I'm Neo.

I'm a

vig1lante

. I killed vezok with great satisfaction last night.

v

ezok

I

g

ot

1

l

ittle

a

dvice,

n

ot

t

o

e

nrage you, but dood, ffs, take a hint and learn to play mafia instead of joining every large theme and annoying everyone

Hey Zindy, start scumhunting NOW if you are worth half the salt you say you are.

You work for me now.

And I swear to God I will kill the first person that suggests that I'm a SK. You think I'm bluffing? I murdered vezokpiraka

without a scum read

on him last night. Don't test me.

Bolded for effect.

There was no reason for a Vigilante to claim. This is how he explained it:

Medicated Lain and Zindaras are actually decent at scumhunting, I claimed to give the one them an opportunity to find scum or rival faction scum before deadline hits in 8 days. It was clear to me that they were wasting their time parking a vote that would either make them entirely useless or lead to my eventually claim anyway. At least now they have time to gather their thoughts.

He never came back to this at all. It was just an excuse, after all. Vigilalbert doesn't really have a reason to claim. It's signing his death warrant. However, Serialbert has a lot of reason to claim. He needs to avoid being investigated by the Cop, while his NK-immunity prevents him from being killed at night. So he plants a dumbass vote on Medicated Lain Day 1 so that when people are (understandably) miffed at him, he can claim Neo.

This game is fucking depressing.

Town lynched my townreads.

I killed its townreads.

PRs are all dead. God damn this town.

More bold for effect: it shows exactly how poorly Albert's killing decisions have been. Albert played the whole game for himself. Vezok was a whimsical kill, one with no basis on anything game-related. In fact, Vezok was more likely to be town than anything, even at that point. IS was a horror-kill. The guy was obviously town, but Albert shot him over OMGUS-reasons. Makes no sense for Vigilalbert. Makes all kinds of sense for Serialbert. We continuously let him get away with this because, well, I don't really know why. I let him get away with it because I didn't want to die. Cessy and Lainy were equally whimsical. Cessy wasn't really based on anything. We were happy that he killed scum, sure, but I thought killing him wasn't really based on anything. Lainy was playing worse by the end and probably the only really understandable kill I've seen him make. I don't know why he killed Brian. And then there's the lynch on Poro he led yesterday. I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense. Quite frankly, I expected more of the town to react like Kison and just auto-lynch me, but he just decided to lead the lynch on someone else. But, then again, who really profits from that? He leaves claimed scum alive so that he can get an easy lynch in endgame and win, with nobody even thinking about

his

alignment.

Face it: Albert's play is not really Vig-play. And this is just his behaviour. The killer argument is the simple fact that Matrix scum wins if we kill him the past night. If he truly is what he says he is, he would've been dead. Do you think I am stupid? That I would leave a game that I have within my claws lying around for someone else to pick up? If you do, go ahead and vote me. But Yosarian really described my playstyle very well: I am many things, but I am not sloppy. Killing SensFan was an extremely sloppy kill if Albert truly is what he says he is. But he's not. I failed a kill on him before. So I had to kill someone else.

I cannot stress enough how important this is. I win the game if I kill Albert. There is not even the slightest shred of WIFOM here. As the Princess Bride showed, WIFOM is irrelevant when your opponent is dead and you've won.

You must accept this premise. And if you do, the only logical path becomes clear: you need to no lynch. Lynch me and you lose the game. Albert kills whomever he pleases and if there is a Matrix Don and he can kill, he either knows he will win outright (if it's Kison) or he knows he's going to die regardless and is a Kingmaker (if it's DeathNote), in which case, I guarantee you, he will make sure Albert wins just to spite the town that cost him the game.

On the other hand, if you no lynch, you have a chance. If both Kison and DeathNote are town, Town wins whatever happens (Albert kills me, I kill him, if he's one-shot we both die and town wins, if he's completely immune you lynch him tomorrow and win). Town draws whatever happens if the Matrix Don is unable to take over my kill (Albert and I still crosskill: if Albert is one-shot, we go down to two and Town and Matrix draw because Matrix can't kill; if Albert is completely immune, town lynches Albert tomorrow and then draws). These are not good odds. But they are better than none, and that's what you get if you lynch me.

So think about it, Town. No lynch is the only logical option you have. Lynch and lose, no lynch and take what you can get.

[Zindaras]

Victory! Finally a place in this country where I can get free wireless Internet. And unexpected, too (it's really crappy and not really close to where I'm staying, though, so don't expect anything big).

I was right about ML, Zindaras, Reapercharlie, Surye, the list goes on and on.

IS, Brian, me (yesterday), the list goes on and on.

Regardless, it's not about what you think DeathNote's alignment is, or even what Kison thinks. Lynching me is an auto-loss. No lynching gives the town some chance. As in quantum physics, you cannot know something without directly observing it. So until he's dead, DeathNote can be both town and scum.

Also, like I said, even if you do not think DeathNote is town, town has better odds by no lynching than by lynching.

[Zindaras]

*sighs*

Kison, you fool.

[Zindaras]

Well, Town didn't deserve to win this game anyway.

I'd preferred to have been SK in this game. He has a better shot of winning this than Mafia, for god's sake.

[Zindaras]

Not sure why Zindy claimed scum.

It was the only real option I had. I had stupidly claimed pro-town program when LlamaFluff posted the question to the town. I considered just outright going back on what I said before, but a simple isolation would've revealed that, and I felt that people just wouldn't be

that

stupid, and if they would've been, I wouldn't deserve the victory anyway. Given the fact that Kublai Khan died as the Oracle (that's also why I needed him dead: I needed him to not be the Oracle), the best I had was a Keymaker claim, but that would've been suicide. Merovingian scum was the best claim I possibly had. I'm honestly a tad surprised that people didn't figure that out, but meh.

I kept hiding because I kept expecting Albert to shoot me. I didn't really care about getting into his good graces after the Vig claim because of it. I also expected there to be a Don to my Agent, and I desperately wanted to avoid crosskilling with him, as it would outright lose us the game.

I honestly somewhat considered an SK during lylo, but figured that Albert would be logical (it also explained how the hell he survived so long). Kison was an option I did think about a little bit (I thought he was scum because of his reaction to my claim) but I didn't really have a lot to play with.

The more I look at this setup, the more I wonder how Hez and I were ever supposed to win this game. Hell, I would've preferred to have the Twins' roles over the Agents', and they got a Don extra. The only plus we get is that the hiding makes one of us potentially immune to the cop (but not even as in a GF). And the characters. My god, the characters. The Oracle is basically the only surprise alignment, and Link is the most minor character in the game (and I don't think there's a protagonist in the movies who gets more screen time than Link and wasn't in this game). If a Twin or an Agent (or even the SK) triggers his protection, what the hell is he supposed to claim? Hell, town could've basically run blind on its win condition and a working knowledge of the movies.

I'm quite pleased we managed to catch the Cop, but it's a shame that now I would've preferred him alive so he could take Kison out of the picture for us.

Kison played an excellent game. I suspected him at times, but he was never at the top or the bottom of the list, which made him just slide by perfectly (not too townish to attract attention, not too scummish to attract votes). I'm honestly glad that he won the game in this way. It also means that I don't have to whine about his stubbornness in not voting Albert with me. I seriously wanted to strangle you after the whole "no negotiating with terrorists" line.

The fact that it went down to endgame doesn't mean it was balanced. The fact that all the scumteams were tiny meant that the most likely outcome was an endgame. As Hez's death shows, a crosskill in this game is stupidly debilitating, especially for the Matrix.

It was nice to get a first, though. I don't get a lot of firsts anymore. I'd never claimed scum before.

[Zindaras]

Well... looks like I messed up my SK read... Even if we did lynch zindaris and you targeted Kison, we still would have lost. He had a night protection. It looks like Town really was screwed in that lylo position.

Technically, town could have won by lynching Kison, and then having both Zindaras and ABR kill him while he killed Zindaras. More likely, though, if you had lynched Kison, Zindaras would have "hid" again, and Kison and ABR would have tried killing each other. That would have left the town in a Prisoner's Dilemma with Kison, Zindaras, and DeathNote alive, where Zindie and Kison would have had to either kill each other and give the town a win or agree to lynch DeathNote and try to go for happily ever after between the two of them.

That's just a lot of sentences to say "town was screwed."

[Zindaras]

Oh, by the way, Helios is a good mechanic. It's one of those nice, simple mechanics which just gets the job done. The game ran like a charm (mostly).

[Zindaras]

Llama, why did you claim early again?

My role suggested sanity issues and multiple factions, one of which I would get a negative result on. I figured in a 25 player game where I would be able to get a guilty result on maybe three or four people, tops and possibly have a few miller roles out there, I would do better to just draw the NK when I couldn't trust my results or own reads too well. Everything pointed to the my role easily being able to screw over the town through the wording, and I was actually right in a majority of my assumptions.

You

tried

to draw the NK?

Man, that's just weird.

Oh, by the way, we killed you only over the pro-town program thing, not the weird claim-retraction thing. I almost decided otherwise because of that.

[Zindaras]

I've been doing some reading and thinking: there's almost certainly an SK or a cult in this game. If there's a cult, I'm guessing Zindy is a second vig due to the Yoskill. Zindy doesn't suspect either of us, so we can keep him alive.

My suggestion: we leave Zindaras alive to be killed by other scum as he's a fairly obvious kill. Instead we take a shot at a lurker and try to nab some hard to lynch opposing scum and/or likely cult. I'm thinking Primate.

*laughs*

Why was I an obvious kill though?

[Zindaras]

@Zindie: Fair enough, honestly I think I was too worried about the town being underpowered because I'd put 6 scum and a neutral in the game, with 4 kills a night. That's why I didn't give you guys safe claims, mostly. I was also counting on the fact that the site meta is for major roles to be given as safeclaims, so I expected that to be a self-balancing factor against mass claim. I didn't want to make mirroring scumgroups, so I structured them both a little differently, but like I said I think an actual commuter role would have made more sense for you guys.

I think Town could've used an unkillable itself, or maybe split up the Cops in two parts (one who finds Merovingians, one who finds Matrix&SK). Town had a hard time, with the Doc getting randomly killed and the Cop found out. Link was a good role. I would've liked more of those.

I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of this many scumteams, especially when it means the individual scumteams have to be so weak. I mean, all we got over a Newbie scumteam was the hiding thing. It's just that crosskills are such an unbelievable pain in these games.

I am aware of the site meta, but it never really came into play here. Morpheus and Trinity died without claiming, while Neo was confirmed town from his claim. I think the town figured out that the usual meta didn't really apply here.

Just off the top of my head though, there were some roles not in the game that people could have claimed (not that you would have known they were safe claims, but if you delved far enough down you could have found something reasonable):

Humans -

Lock
Niobe
Tank
Dozer
Mifune
Zee
The Kid
Mouse
Apoc
Switch
Councillor Harmann

Programs -

Seraph
Merovingian's Wife (Persephone?)
Rama-Kandra (the guy in the train station)
Keymaker

So yea, I wouldn't say it was easy, but there were options other than just claiming scum. If I thought I could hide from kills, I might have also just claimed townie, drawn ABR's kill, and hoped the SK would kill ABR.

Oh, I agree with this list, in principle. The problem is that we lynched Toon Fighter over claiming the Keymaker, as he was too minor. All the other roles were just so huge (except maybe Link, but that claim came very late and it was difficult to change course at that point). I considered a number of the humans, but discarded them because there's really nothing that sets the individuals apart: besides the councillor, none of those scream a particular role to me. I had a plan which involved claiming Oracle and Seraph with Hez, but I'm glad we didn't go through with that.

Either way, I loved watching you play, Zindie, and I <3 you for coming back to play in my game. Thanks! ^.^

Thank you. I enjoyed the game as well. The last two days were especially hilarious. How often do you get the opportunity to pull so many gambits in one game?

I'd also like to thank the rest of the players. I enjoyed the experience and the opportunity to play with a number of people I had never gotten to play with before.

[Zindaras]

As an aside, I found it amusing how the two 'slips' I got flak for were just that: slips. I honestly misread the whole Kison-Llama-messenger situation, and the Architect was just a random assumption as well.

[Zindaras]

For reference, this was going to be my last shot at convincing Kison until DN switched:

Kison: I understand that your heart is clamoring for my neck to crack under the hangman’s noose today. It would be a fitting punishment, from your perspective, for the things I’ve done. But you must realise that this will cost you the game. You must realise that, if vengeance is your goal, I will die regardless of what you do today, because Albert is sure to kill me. You must realise that Albert has been just as evil and manipulative as I have: he has led the town on a merry dance since the first moment he claimed, culminating in yesterday’s Porochaz lynch. Your brain knows these things, I am sure. Now, your heart must listen to what I say.
I offer you a chance. I will be honest: I will run a sword through your gut the moment I can. But know that you will find a dagger in your back if things do not change.

[Zindaras]

The sad thing is that if I had not been so confident in the Norwegian people who told me there'd be Internet, this game would've ended differently. I was seriously planning to hit Albert that last night, but I missed out by a matter of hours.

Sad days.