Mini 611 - Troy, Meet Helen (Game Over)

[Macavenger]

I is has role PM nao

[Macavenger]

Right then, picking up where we left off last time.

Vote: Netlava

die scum die.

[Macavenger]

Random voted me. That was about it, really.

[Macavenger]

What does assuming that we have an SK gain us? It shouldn't matter much for Day 1, and should be pretty obvious based on the night kill(s) by Day 2.

[Macavenger]

Eh, LG's vote there is fairly weak, in my opinion. He has a bit of a point about how charter flipped his ideas around a bit, but he's also setup-guessing and I'm not sure what that triple posting thing is about.

Not really seeing your issue with farside here.

[Macavenger]

Three scum is so completely standard for a mini normal it hardly counts as guessing. LG is speculating on whether or not we have an SK, which is pretty unnecessary at this point in the game.

[Macavenger]

The person who first brings up a SK is more likely to be the SK supposedly.

It's a possible, though very weak, tell in this direction, yes. Also setup speculation is considered scummy in general because it's appearing to be helpful for the town, but actually not, because you're not really helping find scum based on it.

It's all fairly weak tells - I'm not ready to join farside in voting LG over it at this point - but I don't think going after farside for attacking a could weak tells this early in the game is a great idea, either.

[Macavenger]

Hey, finally someone has actually done something noticable.

Unvote; Vote: hadhfang

So, first charter's three scum speculation was fine, now it's not? I disapprove of self inconsistency.

On this note, can we please abandon the stupid setup guessing and get back to scumhunting? I haven't had much to say in this game for a while because "is there an SK? Maybe? Maybe not?" has been about all that's happening. This is the reason day 1 setup guessing is usually considered scummy, because it distracts from scumhunting. Unfortunately I couldn't use it as any kind of tell here when what, 6? 8? people were doing it.

Note on CF Riot's first post: While poorly formatted, the way I read it was "Random voting charter is tempting. Period. New statement in response to Tinsley: hadhfang's chances of being scum in both games is pretty low." I read them as disconnected thoughts that for some reason were put on the same line *shrug*.

[Macavenger]

Eh, technically the first part was correct, the second part wasn't. I read it as more of a joke/fun comment; I don't really see what he would be trying to accomplish with it... I mean, trying to get you to unvote hadhfang at the beginning of the random stage (worst case) is not really a master stroke, by any means.

[Macavenger]

Why do you people have to go on massive posting frenzies when I'm at school and can't respond to them ><

Unvote

. Not interested in lynching a claimed cop.

Also, concerning had's claim, does no one think it's odd that he claimed so easily? I would have thought that a cop would have tried to avoid claiming. Also, can anyone tell me if it was 5 or 4 votes on him at the time? If it is 4 that just makes him seem to jumpy for my taste, and scumdar.

Disagree that the quick claim there is scummy. L-2 isn't a terribly unreasonable time to claim in a game this size, and he had made it up that high before the unvote. Also, last time I lynched someone in part for claiming at a weird time, it didn't go so well (see Mini 578, Day 1).

Don't lynch him today and if he lives through the night lynch him tomorrow. Of course the mafia could always not NK him, but I see that as much more unlikely than him actually being mafia (if he lives).

Sucks that I'm here so late I have to be the third to say it, but yeah this is really bad. You can't promise to lynch someone the next day unless they're NK'd, because scum will just never NK that person, and you're setting up a lynch.

Like anyone's going to get convinced by that Rolling Eyes It is a link, but since baddies benefit from pinning down townies to themselves, I would think that if CF Riot flipped scum, it would reflect better on had.

Better on Had? No. Scum have reasons to defend both townies and other scum, depending on the situation. "Defended by dead scum" is pretty much a null tell by itself.

@ CF Riot: Well, I don't see anything wrong with trying to get batt to talk, but the way you talk to him makes it seem as if you already know whether batt is scum. You are at the top of my list of suspicion atm, but for quite delicate reasons.

Explain, please.

Vote: charter

for now. I didn't think the early contradiction was worth voting on, but that combined with setting up the lynch and the weird vote on blackberry is worth looking at.

[Macavenger]

My only problem with this is if Had claims a result tomorrow what do we compare it against? If it's all going to be WIFOM city, how do we deal with it?

We'll have to evaluate the result claim on its merits, as well as the rest of had's play, tomorrow. No other sensible way to do it really, and no reason to worry about that today.

B: I don't buy Had's claim at all. It's exactly what scum would claim. I don't know about my read of Tinsley + Had, I could be completely wrong, as I haven't actually read this game yet, lol.

C: I'm surprised I haven't gotten more votes on me. I was expecting me to claim that I have a kickass role to give me votes and only one person (charter) has voted me. The question is: is charter's behavior PRO-TOWN or ANTI-TOWN for voting someone that claims to have a kickass role. I don't know yet.

So, if you haven't read, what makes you think it's Tinsley and had? If your soft claim was trying to get votes, why don't you evaluate charter's a bit, rather than just telling us you aren't sure about it?

I think had is scum, judging by the way he claimed. Maybe we should lynch him today anyway. Besides, the worst case scenario is losing an unknown sanity cop, which isn't that bad, is it?

How about we lynch you instead? Unknown sanity doesn't mean much. In a mini normal, there's still a really good chance he's sane. Cop sanities are rarely mod confirmed.

What makes you so sure he's scum? Why didn't you answer my question about why you suspected CF Riot? I'd still like that answered.

Everything he says here is provocative, and I can't see how any of it is positive for the town, although some people seem to like the hint about the role. As my number 1 suspect is off today's menu, I would be ok with voting Blackberry if he doesn't get replaced first.

Number one suspect being hadhfang, I presume? Why are two claimed (semi-claimed, in one case) power roles your top two suspects? You haven't really said much of anything about either of them, or anyone else, just a dose of WIFOM about the claims. Contribute some useful analysis, please.

[Macavenger]

You seem to be quite eager to believe his role claim.

No strong reason to doubt it, currently. I see no compelling reason to risk lynching a cop day 1; even if he were scum he still has buddies we can go after.

Could you answer my question yet? Why is/was CF Riot at the top of your suspicions list?

[Macavenger]

You are right in that he has not voted. Neither, in fact, have I. I don't see any problem with proposing 2 suspects at once in his post either. For the rest, I would refer you back to post #143. The pressure was building on Hadhfang, and suddenly BB posted with a post that he openly says was intended to draw votes. Does this timing not strike you as suspicious?

Not particularly. One scum trying to get the heat off his buddy but grabbing it himself isn't really accomplishing much. The only way that does any good at all is if hadhfang is a hypothetical scum power role, and berry is not. Scum sacrificing one to protect their powered member is difficult at best and not a very good play most of the time, because usually you're probably just outing one of your members to buy one of them one more night action. Very rarely a good tradeoff.

Netlava, your ability and desire to tunnel three levels below what is probably really there in every posts never ceases to amaze me. I highly doubt that was a breadcrumb. If it was, Battousai is right, having that make CF Riot your top suspect is dumb, and pointing it out is worse. Breadcrumbing is useful to town power roles to back up their claims later every bit as much as scum, and I seriously doubt anyone else would have read that as a crumb. What you're suggesting is effectively that we lynch someone because they claimed at a weird time, only it's worse than that because that's a possible crumb, not a certain claim. You don't even know if it was really a crumb, and if it was, you don't know that it means CF Riot is scum. Do you see how silly this is?

[Macavenger]

Hm BB brings up a good point - I think Macavenger may be scum. I don't have anything concrete against him, but his tone is more passive this time around and he doesn't seem to be quite as resolute with what he's saying.

Could be because you're being less amazingly scummy this game than you were last game.

I actually do think your suspicion of Riot over the "breadcrumb" is rather scummy, but it's so in character with your town play from last game that I don't know what to think of it now.

[Macavenger]

A few here have already mentioned our tendencies from our last game. That's the reason why I'm hesitant to lynch Netlava right now. Sure, he's been contradicting himself, but if I remember correctly he did that in the last game in addition to twisting other's words, and yet he still wasn't scum.

I'm not too sure about charter being scum either. He was much more defensive as scum in the last game when the wagon started to build on him. He may have learned his lesson, but I'm not getting scum vibes from him right now.

Evaluating people's play relative to last game isn't exactly a bad idea, and is probably inevitable up to a point, but shouldn't be carried too far. As you say, it's quite possible charter has learned a lesson from last game and is playing better as scum. It's also possible Netlava is scum taking advantage of the fact that he was playing in a scummy style as town last game.

This latest response from Netlava strikes me as basically just OMGUSing LG, which is obviously not good. Very tempted to shift my vote back to him right now.

farside, what exactly is the hypocritical bit you're referring to in those two quotes? I find them both independently scummy for different reasons, but I'm not seeing a link between them at the moment.

[Macavenger]

Welcome, Camn.

The "mysterious last game" would be here. This is a reset since that one got fubar'd, with originally 10/12 of the same players.

@Macavenger: charter is talking about lining up lynches, but the hypocritical part is he is talking about whether Had is still alive, then calls out another player who did exactly as he did.

I'm not seeing what Battousai did as necessarily setting up lynches, but I can see where you're coming from here. I wouldn't consider it a strong point against charter as a contradiction.

It's a new strategy that I've seen done that relies on the fact that scum try to shift blame everywhere (typically picking an inactive townie) and making them seem scummy, and townies usually pick up on inactives nearer deadline when they realize that they don't have much to go on when rereading. Now, as I said this is a new strategy, and it didn't really work that well in this game.

Lurking isn't a town strategy. The way you're presenting this also makes it look like a variant of the "I'll do something scummy and see who jumps at me for it" gambit, which is flawed because when a townie does something scummy, jumping at is the correct strategy for both town and scum. It does make a convenient excuse for scum, though. I also like how you later admit you picked up on this "strategy" from a scum player - that should tell you something.

FoS: Battousai

Tinsley: This is more gut than anything. He defends CF Riot, saying he is most likely town because he wrote a big post. Scum writes big posts too.

This is a really poor reason for suspecting Tinsley. Going with your gut is good if you have anything concrete to back it up, in my opinion, and it doesn't look like you do. Tinsley's statement about CF Riot is quite neutral, possibly unless you think Riot is also scum, which you don't indicate.

How is pushing [CF Riot's] lynch scummy?

Because you're doing it for a really bogus reason. You don't really seem to have anything other than this supposed breadcrumb, which you don't even know if it was a breadcrumb or not. You're also jumping to the conclusion that breadcrumbing doc = scum, which while possible, is a very poor conclusion to draw in the abcense of other evidence.

Macavenger claims the 3 spot over Batt for the use of the word "tempt" as well as my gut feeling. I don't think that's how a townie would think. A townie would be "unsure," but tempted suggests that there is something holding you back, such as prior knowledge of my alignment. Plus, CF Riot seems to be amused at the Riot-batt pairing.

The semantics you come up with are just amazing, really. Do you seriously believe the stuff you say? Using the word "tempt" makes me scum?

Unvote; Vote: Netlava

Your scumlist is basically just composed of people who happen to be attacking you, and you're making up ridiculously silly reasons to suspect us.

[Macavenger]

Mac, who are you talking about here- Battousai or charter? The funny thing about this post is that I was recently trying to get my head around tthis combination of posts (nine minutes apart)

That bit was a reply to farside... it should be pretty self explanatory.

[Macavenger]

Somehow I'm the one that's OMGUSing

Actually you are. LG and I both magically appeared on your scumlist after we had made accusatory statements in your direction.

Hmm, I really want Netlava to defend himself first. He might be continuing on a suspicion from the last game. (I have suspicions about a number of players doing this) Did he hound you last game?

I think just for that, you get the honor of being on the second spot on my scum list.

This latest response from Netlava strikes me as basically just OMGUSing LG, which is obviously not good. Very tempted to shift my vote back to him right now.

Macavenger claims the 3 spot over Batt for the use of the word "tempt" as well as my gut feeling.

Attacking my entire list? Seems like you're just disagreeing with me on principle. Does this also mean that you think the attacks on LG are baseless (other than riot's or your own)?

I've seen no valid reason for you to suspect LG or myself other than the fact that we expressed suspicion of you. Your case on CF Riot isn't OMGUS, but is pretty bad for other reasons. So yeah, I'm attacking your whole list.

[Macavenger]

camn's idea here rubs me the wrong way. I don't think I like the idea of trying to force the town to all tunnel vision on a single player. While tunneling can sometimes be useful for an individual town player, I'd prefer to have a wider range of data to work with. People saying what naturally occurs to them is likely to be more useful than everyone focusing on a single target and trying to find things to say about that person. We all see things differently, and are going to see different things in different players. I see no reason to artificially restrict that.

[Macavenger]

I thought Netlava was talking mostly about that post where you said you would wait till he responded to the attack. Then when he responds mostly to you saying that you vote him. I thought your action was odd too. Why say oh that is a good point then say the person needs to respond or will get your vote. I'm seen many a scum do that tactic so I don't think Netlava pointing the finger at you for doing that is OMGUS.

I'm not seeing how Gurgi's action there is odd. I went back and reread that exchange carefully. Gurgi wants to see a defense for the case CF Riot just put together. Instead of responding to that, Netlava interprets Gurgi's post as an attack and jumps down his throat. This is also where I'm getting the OMGUS from. Gurgi indicates suspicion and Netlava attacks.

As a clarification, particularly for camn who brought this up, I don't see Netlava's case on CF Riot to be OMGUS at all. I find it bad for other reasons which I've outlined. I do find his thoughts on Lord Gurgi and myself to be mainly OMGUS.

But on D1, thin is all we get, right? Better a thin case than no case at all!

This isn't an excuse for just attacking randomly for weak reasons though, which is what I'm seeing from Netlava. His cases are well beyond normal D1 thin.

The whole "hounding riot" theory isn't a legitimate concern, as it was invented by LG to throw out my accusations

Just because you think he's scum doesn't make everything he says illegitimate. You are being very aggressive towards Riot for reasons that several people think are quite poor.

[Macavenger]

I think a couple of you are missing Netlava's point in 232 (not that his actual point is worthwhile, either). He's claiming that, because I'm talking to him as if he's a townie (as only townies have opinions on who scum are, scum know), this means I know he's a townie. Which is total bullshit, because it's very common to talk to players under the assumption that they're town, because it's implied that they are claiming to be town, and thus honest. I do it frequently, and see others do it frequently. This is very similar to his claim about the word "tempted" - I've seen that used in tons of places. He's basically just making up tells at this point that aren't valid.

[Macavenger]

Why is walnut moving up?

[Macavenger]

Hadh 208: The part of this post where you are arguing about your cop claim is scummy. If you are town, there is no need for sentences like "for all you know I could be scum who has just made that hypothesis to make it seem like I am town." Everyone else will decide whether they suspect you or not. A townie doesn't have any reason to say why he could be suspected himself.

Disagree. Scum has no reason to do it either. It's a null tell.

[Macavenger]

Walnut's place on the list is a bit preliminary. He is the third most scummy person in the game after CF Riot leaves the list for attempts at distancing and trying to buddy up to me.

So, CF Riot is buddying and distancing (both scummy actions) and this makes him

less

scummy? You also haven't in any way justified why Walnut is scummy.

[Macavenger]

And really, this is a pretty foolish reason to be voting, because a townie would be just as likely to have "stupid" reasons for accusing people.

So yeah, this is completely wrong. I don't think I need to say anything else about that, it's really obvious.

Plus, why would I, if I were scum, go through all the trouble of pushing a lynch that hasn't received any support?

Because you're the only lynch that has very much support right now?

Macavenger:
- Major shift in playstyle

If you're going to use meta, use it correctly. This game is far more typical of my playstyle than the original. I do not typically go around yelling my nuts off at people and screaming for everyone to bandwagon them. I was not at all exaggerating when I said you were the best Day 1 lynch I'd ever seen last time, and I played rather differently than normal out of frustration with people not lynching you.

- Passive tone, does not believe what he's saying (though he later explains that I've been "amazingly less scummy").

Specifics?

- Overuse of the "your case sux, therefore you are scum" and "you OMGUS scum" themes. He classifies everything under these categories methodically.

Actually I've onlybeen classifying things that you've done that way, to my recollection. And those are legitimate scumtells.

- Does not push my wagon, but rather disagrees with everything I say next and continues this methodical classification process

How the hell is voting for you and making arguments about why what you're doing is scummy not pushing your wagon?

- Inconsistency #1
Realizes an important fundamental concept in my case against LG, yet shrugs off the entire case. Does not even comment on it other than "OMGUS."

Mac later explains that he saw that I saw LG's post as an attack, but LG's post itself is not an attack. I don't buy it! In my initial descriptions of LG's post, I don't actually describe it as an attack, but mostly point out why the redudancy makes it superficial. Mac must be psychic or something.

LG's post looks like an attack on you at a quick glance. It wasn't until I went back and reread the exchange more carefully that I realized he was taking a wait and see more than an aggressive attitude. The point that you jumped all over him for a post where he asked for a defense from you remains no matter how you want to word it, and is still scummy.

- Inconsistency #2
Post 226 -

Just because you think he's scum doesn't make everything he says illegitimate.

This reveals that he knows I think LG is scum, which may seem obvious to other people. However, this contradicts one major reason for voting me - OMGUS of LG. If the bulk of why he thinks I'm scum is because of false cases and OMGUS, then why would I actually think LG is scum? Consider this scenario, which is Mac's supposed POV: I'm scum throwing out cases for OMGUS and other fake reasons. I don't actually believe my targets are scum.

Mac later explains that this is because it's common to assume the person is town. I assume people are town in general, yes, but not when it directly conflicts with my accusations.

So basically, the alternative to what I said would have been basically "You're scum, so your argument doesn't count." Which would have been pretty funny because that's the exact argument I was criticizing. It's implied that you're going to claim to be town, and I maintain that there was nothing unusual about my wording.

---

Your new case against LG is a lot better than previously. Why didn't it show up until now?

[Macavenger]

Concerning the SK thing, I only brought it up because everyone was assuming that there were 3 mafia. I specifically said that in a 12 player game there is usually 3 mafia or 2 mafia and an SK. I wasn't trying to stir paranoia. I was just saying that there are other possibilities. I'm not sure why it's bad to bring up the SK first, and not bad to bring up the size of the mafia first. Could someone explain it to me?

Gurgi, it's partially jsut setup discussion being bad, and partially jeep's theory that everyone really wants to tell you their role on some level. Talking about the SK first as the SK also sets up a nice WIFOM defense later of "well I brought up the possibility first, I wouldn't do that if I were the SK!" As mentioned earlier, it's a fairly weak tell.

I went back and reread the earlier parts of the game.

I think Gurgi is probably town at this point. He really hasn't done anything scummy all game except the SK speculation. Netlava's case on, even the new, expanded one, really doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

charter is also much less likely to be scum after rereading. I don't like his early self contradiction in 21-22, or his setting up a lynch in 101, but that's really all he's done. His recent posts have been contributing nicely.

charter's 264 is also pretty much dead on. Walnut has posted next to no content this game. He has a few largish posts, but none of them really contribute anything. One of them he spends a whole paragraph talking about how prods work with respect to lurking and what some mods do about it, etc. Basically nothing related to this game. A

lot

of Walnut's posts are like that.

By post 92, where Walnut hops on the hadhfang wagon, putting him at L-2, Walnut has not really posted any content this game, and continues to make more content-free posts after that. In this context especially, that wagon jump was scummy as hell.

ShadowGirl is lurking too much for me to really get a read. She needs to start posting more, quickly, or get replaced.

I'm also seeing a possible CF Riot/Battousai connection here that I missed out on earlier. I don't like Battousai's play this game at all; it's been very lurkish, and he's admitted he's trying a strategy he got from a scum in another game. His vote on farside in post 37 still strikes me as a bit off, and post 150, what should happen if CF Riot is dead tomorrow is a bit strange. Note also how he's sort of indirectly defending Riot there.

Meanwhile, Riot in post 48 makes an odd assertion about Battousai being shifty in his reaction after the farside thing. Something feels a bit off about this to me, especially the way Riot continues leaning on Battousai over this in posts 99, 108, and 114. Post 157, where he sort of defends Battousai's odd question and agrees with it, makes me think they could be together also. The earlier leaning could be distancing with the way they seem to be defensive of each other later.

I'm still suspicious of Netlava and think pretty much all of his cases suck so far. That said, a couple of his early points about Riot (before the bogus breadcrumb thing) are reasonable, and he did point out the possible Riot/Batt connection a lot earlier, and his play is depressing similar to last game.

Overall, I would probably leave my vote on Netlava for now, were it not for the fact that CF Riot and Battousai are both currently on his wagon. Do not like.

Unvote; Vote: Walnut

FoS: Netlava, CF Riot, Battousai

Yes, I realize that's likely more people than there are scum in the game, but they all need watched at this point, in my opinion.

[Macavenger]

EBWOP:
[quote]Overall, I would probably leave my vote on Netlava for now, were it not for the fact that CF Riot and Battousai are both currently on his wagon

, and Walnut is waffling about joining it

. Do not like.

[Macavenger]

I fail at BBCode. Should still get the point across, though.

[Macavenger]

Both.

[Macavenger]

Walnut, you keep raising small points about individual posts in defense, but it's not an isolated problem. Your entire posting pattern this game has been basically worthless. Looking at your early posts:

• confirm
  
• random joke about last game
  
• pointless discussion about whether theory discussion is scummy, along with talk about last game's setup
  
• link may have been mildly useful for ShadowGirl's longterm mafia education, but didn't advance this game at all
  
• More random setup speculation that goes nowhere
  
• Echoes my opinion on hadhfang being suspicious, adds nothing
  
• Encourages blackberry to replace out
  
• Bandwagon jump ahoy! hadhfang to L-2. You've still basically said nothing about
  this
  game by now, and you vote to put someone on L-2.
  
• Sort of contributes opinions on Netlava and Battousai, but is mostly just WIFOM
  
• And now we suspect both claimed or semi-claimed roles, blackberry for no real reason I can see other than his claim (didn't you say you read mini 578? You should know that's pretty sketchy after reading that...) This is the first time you've taken your own, original stance on something all game, midway through page 6
  
• speculating on berry's role, and defending against questions raised by Riot and I
  
• waffly on berry's claim
  
• hey, contributes an idea about blackberry!
  
• useless theory discussion about prods, lurking and replacement
  
• excited that berry replaced, little talk about last game, nothing really about this one

Ok I'm going to quit here, because we're up to page 8 now, and I think I've made my point - you posted a lot in the early pages, but basically contributed nothing of any substance to this particular game, while hopping on a bandwagon and encouraging people to speculate on and/or lynch claimed power roles. This is worse than lurking, it's active lurking, with a bit of bandwagon jumping and possible fishing thrown in for good measure.

Past this point you start to sort of contribute a little bit more - though with 8 pages of material to draw on, it'd be hard not to. A lot of mini games have a lynch by the point you start giving any substance. Despite starting to trend towards being a little more useful, you've still never really taken a very firm stance on anything - you talk about theory, you waffle about claims, you waffle about joing netlava's wagon. You're not really doing any of your own scumhunting, just talking about other peoples', which is a huge red flag. Not all of your posts are necessarily bad, per se, but taken as a whole it's an extremely scummy pattern.

Look.. I'll just come out with it.

I will kill anyone who targets me in the night.

So, you're a PGO? Interesting, never actually played in a game with one. I think you really would have been better off not claiming, especially with Blackberry's little psuedo claim, you were a good night target for the scum, and the basic idea for a PGO is to try to draw a nightkill, so they can take a scum out with them. I actually had berry pegged as a vanilla just trying to screw with the scum's minds, but this seems quite reasonable.

Although...

I thought about breadcrumbing something to try and draw a mafia Roleblocker or something..

How do you know there's a Mafia Roleblocker?

Instead of putting just walnut on his list, Riot puts "walnut/bb." The inclusion of BB is strange because it goes against his "why on earth would we lynch BB" post. This move probably helps him retain extra flexibility to support his scumbuddy if BB were to come closer to getting lynched.

Not seeing how this is a Walnut/Riot link. It's possible you're correct that Riot is trying to keep his options flexible there, but I'd consider this (like most things you bring up) a pretty minor point at best.

You say "[Battousai's] vote on farside in post 37 still strikes me as a bit off." Then you say "Riot in post 48 makes an odd assertion about Battousai being shifty in his reaction after the farside thing." You have a problem with it too, so why was it odd for me to point it out back then?

You didn't call him out for being shifty for that question though, it was something he said after that. There's also the fact that something that "seems off" to me isnt' really worth building a case on by itself, only when it ties into other things does a random feeling like that become useful, in my opinion. You seemed to make a large deal of it and continue leaning on that one point excessively hard for a huge length of time.

My case against you is far from rock solid, I agree, but you're around the 3 or 4 slot on Day 1; that doesn't take a whole lot. I'm not in favor of lynching you currently, but I'm not comfortable with a wagon you and Battousai are both pushing right now based on the possible connections I see there.

He is attacking Battousai for lurking when, once again, our town lurker is ShadowGirl.

There are differences. Battousai admitted to lurking deliberately as a strategy, and further as a strategy he had seen used by scum elsewhere. This is all kinds of bad for a townie to be doing. In that specific post, I was attacking those aspects more than the lurking itself.

I've mentioned ShadowGirl's lurking since then. She looks more like a case of legitimately not having time to me, especially if she's replacing out of other games. While I still don't like it, it makes it far less indicative of alignment, under the circumstances.

Also his vote for Netlava is because Netlava thinks Macavenger is scum for Macavenger thinking that Netlava is scum. Seems like distancing to me.

Voting him for OMGUSing me when I've been suspicious of him for a while is distancing? I think you're either reaching or jumping at shadows, here.

I don’t like how he defends me here, which shuts down my defense to ‘I agree with Macavenger.’

All I did was point out that his case against you basically boiled down to OMGUS. What do you want me to do, ignore it when people make blatantly terrible cases? As far as I can tell there's no legitimate case against you that's been raised so far other than the talking about SKs thing, which is so minor at this point it's not even really worth talking about.

Yes, for those of you going *gasp* I don't trust his constant defense of me, also he had a relatively short lived time on Netlava's list. I'd also like your opinion of this Macavenger.

Not really aware of how I've been defending you "constantly," I guess Netlava jsut keeps making baseless cases on you if that's the case. I see no particular reason to suspect you at the moment.

As for Netlava's lists, unless he's scum hopping cases around trying to figure out who he can lynch, I have no clue what he's doing.

[Macavenger]

I don't get you Mac. You say you see a connection between me and Riot right? You also say you see Netlava as scummy (you at one time at least, had a vote on him). Now there is a possibility that ALL 3 of us is scum, but wouldn't it be stupid for me and Riot to try and get Netlava lynched, as to me it's not worth the risk to lose a scum partner day 1. So what I conclude from this is that the feeling of a pairing that you see between me and Riot is STRONGER than the feeling of scumminess coming from Netlava, no?

Not exactly. How I'm seeing things right now is that Walnut and Netlava are both scummy. Those cases, to me, are independent and relatively equal. I see no particular indicators of them being scum together or not, and both look like decent wagons.

Since I'm seeing possible scumlike connections between you and CF Riot, and both of you are pushing the Netlava wagon right now, that makes me a little uncomfortable about that wagon for the moment. Thus, in the presence of an alternative, equally good wagon (Walnut) I choose that one.

So your connection isn't stronger than Netlava's scumminess, but it's enough to tip the balance between two otherwise rougly equally good wagons.

It takes being pretty confident to vote, and I was (and am) pretty confident that Hadhfang is scum, so I voted for him.

Claiming a high level of confidence necessary for a vote (a playstyle I firmly disagree with generally, but accept as a simple difference) seems a bit counter to being certain enough for a vote on someone who hasn't posted a ton on page 4.

If I had not given specific examples people would say I had no evidence- when I do give specific examples, you ignore them and say that they are not representing the bigger picture! Mac, may I refer you back to read post #284, where I explain why the role setup conversation was valuable. I have been too polite I guess- take a look at post #304 where you are simply wrong and I am right. I was not going to bother pointing it out, as everyone could see it, but if you are going to keep accusing me I can see that I have to be more explicit.

You saying you're right doesn't make it so. Camn's claim doesn't validate what you did as useful. Had there been two kills after night 1, we could have started talking about whether or not an SK or something else caused the extra death(s) then. Day 1, it gains us nothing.

All of your setup speculation has been a distraction at best. Note that we still have no basis to judge whether there really is an SK in this game or not, despite wasting a bunch of effort talking about it. All it has done is make you look like you're contributing while you aren't actually helping find the scum. This is the big point; in all your early posts I cited, you don't do any scumhunting. You just agreed with a case on hadhfang and WIFOM'd about berry's claim; you made no effort to actually work out who the scum in this game are. Ultimately, that is the strong tell I'm working with here.

I consider you impetuous, overeager to persuade people to follow weak arguments, and over confident in your read of the game.

Why does this get me off your scumlist, but not Netlava? I find that an excellent description of his play.

Mac, I don't know what the "something after" you're referring to is, but the reason I questioned Batt was because he gave a reason for voting Farside, which to me didn't look like a joke at all, then after you said that reason was crap he claimed, "It was a random vote." That looked to me like he was going to build a false case, but once someone saw it as flawed he tried to cover that up to drop suspicion. I think I had 3 posts related to this incident, and it would've been less but I had to repeat my question because Batt didn't answer it right away. How does that constitute a "huge" length of time?

It's my first real post in the game so I made it into into a random with a bit of information.

Doesn't look random to me. There you go being shifty again Batt.

You quoted his statement after the random vote. I didn't really see what was shifty about the response.

The huge length of time comes from the fact that this mess started around post 40, and you were still bringing it up somewhere around 120 (I tossed my notes from creating that post, but I had a series of post numbers listed). That's over 3 pages later, you're still hassling him over a relatively minor comment.

I don't think I'm tunnel-visioned, but either way I don't think tunnel-vision is more indicative of scum. I suppose scum are more opportunistic than anything.

Basically correct. Tunnel vision can be both good and bad in some aspects, but tends to be a mild town tell, as scum prefer to keep their options open to lynching multiple players if the opportunity presents itself.

[Macavenger]

I know this is about netlava, but Walnut's post 92 contradicts his being hesitant to vote for someone that he's pulling now

I explained that, just a few posts earlier:

That post is actually what attracted charter and I's attention. We're saying it's a contradiction - there's really no way you could be as certain as you're now claiming you want to be that early in the game. The fact that you hadn't even posted anythign about him before jumping on him to L-2 is pretty much the opposite of someone being careful with their vote.

Other than in recent games I have a 100% success rate at being a mafia target on night one- my ghost will mouth it silently

Has nothing to do with this game.

You missed one of my questions:

I consider you impetuous, overeager to persuade people to follow weak arguments, and over confident in your read of the game.

Why does this get me off your scumlist, but not Netlava? I find that an excellent description of his play.

[Macavenger]

Hi Fark and Thesp!

First, I'd like to give a big "I hate you" to charter for stealing all of my ideas in posts 357 and 368. Stop doing that; I hate having to just post that I agree with someone, but you pretty much covered everything very well.

Thesp, I'm curious as to your reasoning on farside (now Farkshinsoup) and Tinsley in particular. I had a pretty neutral-town read on farside, and town read on Tinsley.

camn, you're saying you're also suspicious of Battousai - I assume you think he's bussing Netlava then?

[Macavenger]

Hammer threat to Netlava. Claim. Trying to avoid it is not helping your case.

I would like to see more of Thesp's reasoning ASAP, though I realize it's late at night now, and probably not a good time for him to be writing detailed posts. In particular, Thesp, is the fact that farside had to replace out a mitigating factor on her non-scumhunting at all? I realize you said that was not all of your case.

[Macavenger]

Right now I don't have a lot of space for scumhunting. Count how much I have posted in the last few days, and how much of it has been spent fending off accusations. Usually more or less the same accusations, which adds to the general feeling of wasted time. It is necessary to defend myself, and if I miss any questions, as I did recently, people point out that I have, so the expectation is certainly there.

Defending yourself is necessary. However, it's also necessary for townies to continue scumhunting while defending themselves. You can make time for it. This would be less of an issue had you been scumhunting earlier in the game, but since most of the wagon on you is based on not scumhunting, continuing to not do so is not helpful.

Based on reading a number of pages of play to date, which you seem not to count as I was not attacking people during it. Strangely, the other two people getting on the Hadhfang wagon at that time were Macavenger (who posted even less by way of reason than I did) and Charter, who are now suspecting me for doing the same thing as them.

Wrong. Your reason for jumping on hadhfang's wagon was basically agreeing with mine. There's also the difference that I put a third vote on him, whereas you put a fifth.

Yet you still feel my play was scummy? Is it that if a post doesn't include a vote or at least a FOS it is not beneficial to the town?

No. But you need to either be including stuff about why you think people or scummy, or questions for people so you can get more content to evaluate. You've done almost none of either. About all you've done is bandwagon hop hadhfang and suspect blackberry for basically frivolous reasons. You've made no real effort to figure out who scum are other than suspecting claimed power roles early on. OMGUSing charter and I doesn't count.

Don't repeat the mantra- look at what I am saying, and think about it. If you had something useful to the town to say, and were aware that due to lynching or NKs you might not get a chance to say it later, why would you wait a day?

First of all, keyword useful. Most of what you've said hasn't been.

Secondly, there's no reason to assume you're going to be killed Night 1. Fear of being nightkilled should geenrally not be affecting your play as town.

Call it playstyle, but to me pushing a bad argument is worse than not pushing an argument.

Except the arguments aren't bad. You seem to be thinking that just because you've responded to them makes them no longer valid, which is wrong. You're not really defending so much as just posting excuses taht don't make you look any less scummy.

[Macavenger]

I'll be in Houston/Galveston beginning Thursday afternoon, returning Sunday late evening.

We may not be hearing from Thesp for a bit. Barring massive objections, I'll give him 24 hours or so to make an appearance and then drop a hammer.

[Macavenger]

If we have a vig, F- for not shooting Walnut last night.

Vote: Walnut

I do not envision this vote moving today unless Thesp has a guilty on someone.


While Walnut is pretty clearly the lynch today, I'd also like to point out that ShadowGirl's behavior is striking me as suspicious at this point. She lurked through a lot of day 1, maybe because she was busy, or maybe not. Either way, her larger posts struck me as mostly summarizing events in the game, not so much as scumhunting. I also don't like how she avoided commenting extensively on either of the large wagons, and left her vote uselessly on Battousai, where it wouldn't tie her to anything later.

[Macavenger]

That's not evidence that fark is scum...

How is it not? fark replaced farside; they have the same role. It's a pretty similar case to the Walnut case overall... I'm heavily of the opinion that Walnut should go first, personally, but Thesp has a decent point here.

[Macavenger]

There are many posts on the past couple pages that are not in any way helping to lynch Walnut. This is very disappointing.

Walnut, saying you've been useful doesn't make it so. You contributed essentially nothing to helping find the scum on Day 1. You posted a lot of stuff about mafia in general, speculation, etc., in an attempt to look useful, but you didn't help find scum. Only scum have incentive to behave that way.

if we were to lynch Charter and he were to be revealed as scum, I would advocate a Macavenger lynch on Day3.

So now you're lining up lynches too? Seriously, you need to work on your scum play. You're making it way too obvious.

[Macavenger]

Just realized looking back through the thread that I missed a question from Tinsley earlier.

Now that Batt has turned up as townie, where do you stand on CF Riot?

Not totally sure what to think of Riot now. I don't think Battousai flipping town clears him in any way. The odd behavior I saw from him towards Battousai could have been scum trying to drum up a case on a townie as much as it could have been distancing. I'm still suspicious of him, but still less so than I am others.

Sorry I missed answering that a while back.

I'd also like to hear if anyone seriously wants to lynch me today.

Is your name Walnut?

PPE flash of thought: I might not be paranoid after all. The mod said re: cop results on dead people, "Plus, the results are on the next day's opening day flavor text", which may imply that the reason I wouldn't receive a result is because it would be redundant. I may be reading too much into that. Carry on with lynching.

Could equally mean the mod doesn't want to give you any extra help in figuring out your sanity, I would think.

[Macavenger]

ABWOP: Thesp, as far as I can tell, the cases we have on Walnut and farside/fark are fairly similar; both appearing to post but not really scumhunting and whatnot - could you explain why you think farside's case of it was worse than Walnut's? I get more of a "look at me, I'm useful! I'm useful! No, really!" vibe from Walnut (even before he started saying that literally), but more of a "I don't have enough time" feeling from farsie.

[Macavenger]

I don't understand the rush. Even if Walnut is scum, we still have his scumbuddies to find, and we can gain some insight into them before we make a lynch.

Best way to find the buddies is with a wagon. With a wagon on Walnut, we force them to take a position on the issue. Until then, they can just kind of let it slide, and not have to interact much.

There's also the issue that Day 1 ran 19 pages, which is well past the point of diminishing returns for town, getting into the area of just making rereads harder. A quick Day 2 isn't really detrimental after that, especially when we have a clear choice for it.

But I can't get over the fact that you had the opportunity to investigate your suspicions, and instead you chose someone you had little info on (by the way, wouldn't ShadowGirl have been a better choice in that regard?) You think you're doomed to be killed eventually, so why not investigate the people you find most suspicious to be helpful toward the town?

Investigating the scummiest players is not good cop play most of the time. Clearing innocents is in many cases just as helpful as finding scum (Read some of Yos2's thoughts on this in mafia discussion, if you want - he actually feels the main purpose of cops is to clear townies, not find scum). Battousai was definitely a good cop target, in my opinion. The only thing sketchy about Thesp having investigated Battousai is that Battousai turned up dead, which Thesp may or may not have had any control over.

Who are the others you are referring to?

Walnut naturally, and also Shadowgirl who I talked about earlier. Possibly Fark, depending on what I see from him and Thesp soon.

General scumminess.. short posts, wishy-washy accusations.. and these:

What is general scumminess? Why are short posts scummy? Were they low on content, or just short? Where was he wishy washy? I've seen him be pretty direct and committed on Walnut.

This is insane to me. Quoting a huge block of yourself... just to say "look, I posted already! I don't need to anymore!!" Weak Sauce.

Why? Was there something wrong with his arguments from yesterday? They were all still quite applicable, in my opinion... justify why this was lame.

@camn and LG - why is charter saying all aboard scummy?

[Macavenger]

The insane part is RE-quoting yourself. If I didn't get it the first time... One should rephrase. It would be like me posting the EXACT same thing in response to YOUR question!

Ok, so you don't think it's the best way to communicate the information. Why is it scummy?

Wishy washy... like this:

I don't like Netlava's reaction to Thesp's declaration he's scum.

BUT

I had my suspicions that Netlava was town.

Not totally scummy on its own.. but in contrast to his assertions like this:

It is so painfully obvious Walnut is scum.

..
It seems wishy washy to me.

How is that wishy washy in any way? He has different opinions on different players? I mean... this is like a total non sequitur.

And Short comments seem suspect IN LIGHT of him calling out others for the same

That's fine if you don't want to argue, but then shouldn't you be doing something other than nothing (by that I mean just commenting on stuff)?

It seems like a lot of Charter's posts are merely comments.
It is this inconsistency that earns my attention.

This is possibly valid. Considering that he has been posting sizable and useful content with some frequency, I would consider it minor, though.

The "All Aboard" seemed funny considering we thought he only had ONE vote. But I see now there was 2.. so that is less suspect.

Why would it be suspicious if there were only one vote on him?

[Macavenger]

Apparently the clear choice is Charter. Do you still favor the quick Day 2?

Actually the clear choice is still you. The charter wagon in general is absurdly scummy, and I'm forced to assume you've got at least one if not both of your buddies on it trying to deflect from you at this point.

It seemed scummy to me because it is a resigned way of saying, 'Screw this, there's nothing I can do, why do I even bother.' That is in no way pro-town. Neither is self-hammering.

I fail to see any connection between that kind of statement and self hammering. I didn't even see it as "giving up," more just noting the growing wagon. I'm finding the people trying to use that as evidence that charter is scum highly suspect.

Jeez, Mac is like my knight in shining armor haha.

I try not to ignore really scummy arguments, as a general rule. Most of the ones being made about you right now are.

The charter wagon is very blatantly scumpowered and seriously needs to be disbanded ASAP. Walnut started it, so there's one scum on the wagon immediately. Ironically, he's actually made the best case of anyone on the wagon - everyone else is pretty much just jumping on. fark's reasoning is quite poor, and is starting to make me agree with Thesp's assessment. LG hasn't even posted a case, just hopped on the wagon very blatantly. camn is for some reason still on the wagon even though I just shot her case apart, and she agreed with my counterpoints? Seriously, what's going on here?

FoS: entire charter wagon

[Macavenger]

Wow, apparently I have vast powers of dispersing bandwagons. Useful to know for the future.

Let's test if it works in reverse:

FoS: everyone not voting Walnut

Get voting guys!

On a more serious vote, I'm rapidly becoming convinced fark is probably a Walnut buddy. I still support a Walnut lynch first, but I don't have any major disagreement with the developing farkwagon. I don't see Tinsley's fark vote as being any bad kind of OMGUS, and still have a mostly town read on him.

[Macavenger]

While I expressed surprise at being continually pressed when I had already refuted the arguments

Answering and refuting them aren't the same thing. Your responses have done nothing to show how any of the points charter and I have brought up aren't scummy.

But your vote did go to waste. That's the whole point of my argument. Clearly you knew that it wasn't going to get Walnut lynched, so the only reason to put it there was to be able to point at it on Day 2.

Why are you only picking on Tinsley for this? What about charter and I "wasting" our votes on Walnut? What about Shadowgirl wasting her vote on Battousai?

I don't actually see how voting Walnut is in any way useless, anyway. It was the largest competing wagon to Netlava, and a sensible place to vote if one didn't want Netlava lynched that day.

Yes, but the first sentence of that post specifically called out everyone who voted for Netlava, who was the correct lynch for Day 1. He was acting very scummy. I'm not saying that scum weren't in on that lynch, it was a great place to put their vote, but there were also clearly townies who thought he was the guy on Day 1.

Correct is subjective. I feel Walnut was the correct lynch yesterday. Netlava was not a bad D1 lynch, but Walnut was a better choice.

[Macavenger]

So in answer to your question, no, in my opinion not voting would not have been the best course of action for a townie in that situation. Voting for Netlava would have been.

So you're suggesting it's good for townies to vote for people they don't find scummy?

[Macavenger]

So how is the explanation that Tinsley is a townie that found Netlava to be not scummy enough to lynch an impossible explanation for the situation? You don't seem to consider it at all.

[Macavenger]

I've read it. I found it to be very thin and rather WIFOMish.

That explanation about Walnut is impossible because Walnut is scum. Seriously though, the big thing with Walnut is the utter lack of scumhunting for most of the game. That's different than a lot of tells in that there is no motivation for a townie to not scumhunt, but there is motivation for scum to do that. The other stuff Walnut has done is really just icing on the cake to that central fact. Tinsley's behavior has a valid town explanation. You may reject it, but it exists. There is no valid town justification for the level of failure to scumhunt that Walnut has demonstrated this game.

[Macavenger]

I'm currently working on a large post about Walnut, which I may or may not finish tonight. In the meantime, as a quick note on recent events, I side with fark in the fark/LG thing here. LG's reasoning about fark is bad, his reaction to the vote is bad, and his vote isn't even veiled OMGUS. I don't mind the LG hate, though I still think Walnut is a superior lynch today.

[Macavenger]

Mac

, you say you think LG is probably town, do you still feel this way? Why or why not?

No. I indicated in 647 I don't mind the hate on him right now. I see a good chance he's a Walnut buddy based on the charter wagon and his reaction to the fark vote.

I think the main reason I thought he was town Day 1 was actually because Netlava was making most of the arguments for why he was scum, and Netlava is so bad at constructing reasonable arguments I just assumed the opposite or something.

[Macavenger]

I seem to have injured something in my wrist such that using a computer is a bit difficult at the moment. Limited access for a few days while I'm trying to get that to heal up. May read along, but don't expect too much content from me for a bit.

[Macavenger]

Wrist is mostly healed. I'll be typing up the rest of my thoughts about Walnut either later tonight, or tomorrow at the latest. Reaction to a couple questions I picked up recently in the meantime:

I don't see Tinsley's fark vote as being any bad kind of OMGUS, and still have a mostly town read on him.

How?

I haven't seen him do anything massively scummy, and I don't see him as tied to likely scum Walnut and LG. I don't agree with everything he's said, certainly - I think the construction that Fark has a master plan to roll a bandwagon over him etc. is a bit farfetched. I don't see him hopping around madly trying to push the easiest wagon constantly like others today, and I get an honest feeling from his attempts at scumhunting.

Mac - What do you think of Fark?

I'm still going back and forth on Fark. I see possible connections between him and Walnut and LG. Some of his wagon jumping today has looked scummy, and some of it hasn't. He's not a terrible lynch, but there are clearly better possibilities today, and I wouldn't support a Fark lynch except as a last resort in the event of a deadline.

[Macavenger]

Ok, the long awaited Walnut case. I apologize in advance for the size of this, and anything that may not be entirely clear. Proofreading was pretty limited due to how massive this is, and because I'm damned tired of looking at it at this point. I'll be happy to try to clarify things if anyone has any questions about stuff.

I'm going through Walnut's history post by post here, trying to show why much of the stuff he's done is extremely scummy, and why a lot of his defenses to points that have been raised previously are basically null. Any post numbers outside of quotes below refer to Walnut viewed in isolation. I'll skip a few posts that are trivial. The abbreviation NRC will appear frequently early on, and means No Real Content.


Post 2: Notes CF/charter argument, then launches into a discussion about whether setup speculation is scummy, combined with commentary on the setup of

last

game.

NRC

Post 3: Over a day later, after some serious commentary and arguing between a few players, has nothing to say other than to point out the wiki and role flash, encouraging more setup discussion.

NRC

Post 4: More setup speculation based on the roles from last game. Makes the nebulous claim that some people may be finding the setup discussion useful. Either way, it is not in anyway

helping to find scum

, the town's main job.

NRC

Post 5: Agrees with several people pointing out hadhfang's post as scummy. Contributes nothing new to that discussion.

Post 7: Hops on hadhfang's wagon, placing him at L-2.

And, based on post #83, I would almost expect Had to be mafia and CFRiot a townie he is setting up for a fall. Maybe he is trying to use it as an argument against Charter, but I am not convinced. I have to admit that nothing he says is entirely unreasonable, but the gut feeling is there at the moment.

vote Hadhfang

This is the first he's said about hadhfang beyond "I agree this post was scummy," and is somehow enough to justify putting hadhfang at L-2, which lead to him claiming. Notice there's a lot of waffling here - almost expect, maybe, not convinced, [not] entirely unreasonable - setting himself up to jump back off.

Post 8: Unvotes hadhfang for the claim, and disagrees with a conclusion Battousai made.

@Battousai, I see what you are saying about who called you out for lurking, but I don't agree with the conclusion. Yes, if Had looks likely to be lynched early on Day 1 his scum partners could try to distract attention to lurkers to get the heat off him. Equally well townies could say "Hey, let's not lynch this guy yet until we hear a bit more from some of those who have not said much". For me, they are both valid responses, so it is kind of WIFOM.

Actually relatively helpful by Walnut's standards, but still no real effort to find the scum here - he's not pointing to or trying to find anything scummy here, just disagreeing.

Post 9: Starts pushing on Balckberry's "claim." Suggesting we lynch someone just because they've said "I have a kickass role" is scummy, because that could mean literally anything, including vanilla (which was my guess), doesn't benefit scum, and could be useful to draw an NK as demonstrated by camn's eventual full claim (or in simpler ways).

Post 10: More pushing on blackberry for bad reasons

Post 11: Short bit of waffling on blackberry. Returning to form.

NRC

Post 13: Responds to an FoS from Riot and tries to deflect attention back to blackberry.

Post 14: A long discussion about prod and replacement mechanics, attempting to look useful by using examples with blackberry.

NRC

Post 15: Rambling about blackberry replacing out, along with a statement that his replacement won't be suspected. There's no logical town reason for that, so presumably this is because he's realized at this point the blackberry hate he tried to start is going nowhere. Also mentions the trainwreck game.

NRC

Post 16: Answers a question farside asks, then questions Battousai's motives for a question. We have here our first case of Walnut scumhunting this game, halfway through page 8.

Post 18: Asks Tinsley a question, me for a clarification, then talks a bit about something Battousai said without actually saying much.

Post 19: Spends a lot of words rehashing an argument hadhfang made, with the only contribution being that he's trying to buddy with CF Riot. The content of this post could have been made to fit in a tenth the space - again, posting a lot to look active, but saying little.

Post 20: Agrees with me, than waffles around about some game theory in response to things camn said trying to look like he's adding something, but is really mostly rehashing what I said.

NRC

Post 21: Some WIFOMish comments about things Netlava and LG posted.

NRC

Post 22: After 2 days and several arguments for and against Netlava being presented, all Walnut has to say is quote of himself and a line of text to reiterate a point in it.

NRC

Post 23: Answering a question from farside. Quotes a couple things and doesn't know whether Netlava is scummy or not. Carefully avoiding taking any position on Netlava.

Post 24: Defending himself against charter's first attack. charter sort of nibbles around the edges of the real issues here, and Walnut defends decently, while not having to address the large issue of no scumhunting. A couple points I'd like to bring up:

Walnut in 63, massive derailing of town

Um... in post 63 I answered Shdowgirl's question about roles. I think that this was in fact a useful contribution to the town in general, and specifically as people had talked about two NKs meaning that there was a serial killer.

That particular post wasn't terrible, but it wasn't all that necessary either. Trying to represent it as helpful to the whole town is definitely a stretch - at best it was useful to shadowgirl. charter could have picked much better posts to say you were massively derailing the town with. 14 would have been a much better example.

charter's next bit about role speculation in Walnut's next post Walnut passes off as answering questions from the previous post. This is accurate to a point, but Walnut still dives far harder into unnecessary speculation there than simply answering the questions requires.

Post 26: Defending against me now.

Overall, I would probably leave my vote on Netlava for now, were it not for the fact that CF Riot and Battousai are both currently on his wagon,Walnut is waffling about joining it

I said that right now I am not committed either way on Netlava. Are you saying that to be not voting at this stage of the game is scummy?

Trying to strawman here. Voting has nothing to do with it, it's the fact that Walnut talks a lot about Netlava, but never takes any kind of firm stance, posting in a way that could easily be used to defend him (he's always scummy!) or vote him (I'm finally convinced) depending on where the wagon goes.

Mac, you keep accusing me of the same thing, in that I tend to post things I think will be aids for other peoples' thinking, rather than just saying "I suspect person x for reason y". To use a recent example, when people were assuming 2 night kills meaning that there was a serial killer, that is simply wrong. If I hadn't pointed it out, I don't know who would have considered other possibilities. CFRiot had the grace to say "Thank you for the clarification", but you vote for me for content not related to this game. As with Charter, I don't think this makes you scum, although it ranks up with the dumb townie reasons for voting for people.

The point I've been trying to drive home for a long time now, is that Walnut's explanation here is basically a way for him to post lots of content that looks game related, but isn't helping find scum. You comment on what other people say, but it's really jsut commenting and speculation. The only time up to this point you've taken a stand on something is "I think (claimed/semiclaimed) player is scummy." You odn't ask questions; you don't take a stance on broader town suspects, you don't put any effort into pushing what few people you do claim to ever want lynched.

Post 27: Another attempt at a strawman:

I like Mac's suspicion of Batt, Walnut, and Riot, as both Batt and Walnut were already high on my list. All are currently suspicious of Netlava, two of which are currently voting him. I would think as scum Netlava would make a good first target because of his playstyle.

What? When I say it, it is cause for suspicion, but when you listen to what I say and paraphrase it, it is good reasoning?

This isn't what he was FoSing you for. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with why he thinks you're scummy, but you try to turn it around on him anyway.

Post 29: Admits to participating in setup speculation, but blames others for starting it. Participating and encouraging it is really no better. Also claims camn's claim confirms that talking about the possibility of an SK was useful - no, it still wasn't. It still serves absolutely no purpose Day 1. IF more than one person had died overnight, we could have talked about it then, although even then it wouldn't have mattered much.

Post 31:

My general tendency is to want long days to slowly build up a body of knowledge to make a decision from. Yes, on Day 1 in particular it will still be at best an educated guess, but better that than a quick lynch and not much learned from it. It is common scum play to shorten the day, and I am not going to rush in and contribute to a hurried lynch. It takes being pretty confident to vote, and I was (and am) pretty confident that Hadhfang is scum, so I voted for him.

Huge contradiction here, which has already been mentioned. There is no way Walnut could have been as confident about hadhfang early as he was claiming to require later in the game.

Also depends my first major PbP of Walnut, but only by referring back to the previous point about speculation being justified (which is false) and puts the rest down to "playstyle differences." Not really a defense. Gives a couple opinions on players, but says remarkably little in doing so. Very large post that adds amazingly little to the game.

Post 32: "Defends" the contradiction in the previous post... by pointing back to it again. Answers a question about Riot/Battousai with standard waffling, saying nothing. Also brings up the "I always die N1" schtick. Nothing here, really, except to finally jump on Netlava's wagon using the deadline as an excuse.

Post 33: Answers a bunch of questions about his play, again mostly just referring back to prior responses and such. One thing I'd like to point out:

I think here you are confusing posting with analysing the game. Scumhunting is not just about asking your own questions and having them answered, it is also reading all of the conversations going on. Whether I had posted about Hadhfang or not before voting for him is irrelevant. I felt, and do feel, pretty confident about Had. Only time will prove whether my confidence was well founded or not.

You didn't, and haven't, talked about these reasons that make you so sure in any detail. We have no way to see that you've done any such analysis.

Post 34: More defending. Claims not to have space to scumhunt because he's defending, which is fail - there's no space limit on posts. Townies make space.

Is it that if a post doesn't include a vote or at least a FOS it is not beneficial to the town?

More strawmaning, against the "you aren't scumhunting" argument.

Don't repeat the mantra- look at what I am saying, and think about it. If you had something useful to the town to say, and were aware that due to lynching or NKs you might not get a chance to say it later, why would you wait a day?

Pretty hypocritical, given you're just repeating the "I always get killed N1" mantra here. The point is that the things you were saying weren't benefiting the town. Townies have no need to worry about being killed at night. Say what's useful and don't worry about it.

Post 35: Goes after charter and Tinsley as Day 1 ends.

This was the end of Day 1. Walnut has, to this point, done almost no discernible scumhunting. He asks a couple questions of Tinsley and Battousai in the middle of the day, and indicates some reasonable looking suspicions at the end of the day. For most of the day, he does nothing to help find scum though. The vote on hadhfang has pure wagon jump written all over it, and the attempts to defend it later in the day are just contradictory and make it look worse. Through most of the second half of the day, he's just defending, and doesn't make any room for scumhunting during it at all - a fact he admitted.

On Day 2, Walnut changes his style a bit. charter, I think when you said recently that you weren't as sure about Walnut, you said it was after rereading Day 2. I suspect that's probably the reason. Day 2, Walnut abruptly starts doing some actual scumhunting. I can only assume he got coached by his buddies a bit during the night or something. There are still some telltales in his Day 2 play, however. I'm not going to analyze every post in detail for Day 2, because I'm not trying to show that none of them have substantial content here - I'm just going to draw attention to some points that stick out identifying him as scum. (Also, I don't think I have the mental stamina to keep analyzing all the tl;dr posts in extreme detail)

Post 37: Comes out swinging against charter. A few things to note here:

However, he kept on going, even when the case was well answered.

Also quotes Battousai agreeing with that sentiment. As you may be able to see from earlier in my post, I don't agree that it was well answered one bit. Answered, yes, but the answers really didn't resolve anything.

It should be noted that Charter's case on me, as much as I have been able to understand from his ravings, was based on 1) distracting the town with irrelevancies, and 2) non-committalness and lack of scumhunting. On 1) I say again what I have said all along, that everything posted can lead to something useful and on Day 2 he has already overstepped his mark on trying to direct and shutdown conversation; and on 2) I say guess what? All that conversation has been useful, as it has led to me being convinced that Charter is scum.

Your answer to 1) is blatantly wrong, as several people have pointed out, and 2) isn't really even an answer to non-scumhunting.

If Charter were lynched and came up scum, there is no way that Mac would not be the next day.

And here we're lining up a lynch after charter.

Post 45: Encourages Thesp to vote for charter even though Thesp doesn't find him suspicious.

Post 47: Putting words in camn's mouth here:

Angry and aggressive is just another form of manipulation. If he makes talking with him unpleasant, and you stop voting for him, he has manipulated you. It seems to be working, as right now people seem to be saying that Charter is playing too badly to be scum.

camn never said he was playing too badly to be scum, she said he's not manipulative in the way she would expect from scum. This is perfectly reasonable - I said something similar about acidmix last game. Obviously I was wrong in that case, but the argument is sound. That charter isn't elucidating his arguments in the best way does not make him scum, and I believe this is what camn is getting at here.

Post 48:

If by scumhunting you mean baselessly claiming that people are scum, I am indeed guilty of what you say. Compare me to Thesp- he comes out and says something along the lines of "A, B and C are the scum- thanks for coming everyone" and everyone nods approvingly, while I am a pariah because I don't. It clearly wouldn't be in favour of the town to take a considered approach. This argument by Mac is rivalling Charter at his worst.

This is a great batch of strawmaning and OMGUS wrapped up in a neat package. There's a lot more to scumhunting than making accusations, and we both know it. I challenge you to find one place where I've said I was entirely happy with Thesp's scumhunting this game. I wouldn't mind seeing him doing more of it. Whether or not Thesp has done a ton of scumhunting has no bearing on whether you have, though.

Also, in this post he tries to use his twisted interpretation of camn's words against charter. I haven't seen anyone say charter was too scummy to be scum other than Walnut.

Post 55:

Do bear in mind that no player has to come up with all of the ideas by themselves, you can say "I agree with that argument". It is not like we are rival detectives who each have to find their own evidence and are not allowed to share.

Probably covering for buddies who jumped off the charter wagon when they realized it sucked. Yes, you can say you agree in some cases. Basing your entire vote on someone else's reasoning and then abandoning it when challenged is very suspect, though, and that's what the people on charter's wagon did.

Also abandons charter's wagon himself here, jumping to Tinsley, the second-largest competitor to the Walnut wagon at the time. He doesn't really say much about Tinsley here, other than a "view tending more towards scum as the day goes on." In a prior post he sided with fark on one specific point of the Tinsley case, and that's about all he's said about Tinsley all day. Another blatant wagon jump a la hadhfang Day 1.

Post 57: Makes some arguments about Tinsley after the fact. While more than he did for hadhfang, this is still a long way from justifying the standards he claimed and used on Netlava Day 1.

So, overall summary: Little scumhunting day 1. The vote on hadhfang was a pure wagon hop, probably an attempt to draw out a claim, which unfortunately outed the cop. Makes a bunch of poor excuses when attacked, then continues referring back to them throughout most of the game. The deadline was a convenient excuse to hop on Netlava's wagon without too much suspicion, helping make it inevitable. Day 1 play overall was horrible and not in any way protown.

Day 2 play has been a more standard scum style, trying to actively manipulate the town instead of just confusing us with lots of text about nothing. charter was a great target to attack as scum - he was pushing Walnut, so getting rid of him takes off some pressure, and his posting is superficially poor, making it easier to drum up a case against him. I say superficially poor, because as has been commented by some others, he's not trying ot manipulate in any scummy way, and if you cut through some poor wording to what he's trying to say, he makes a lot of sense. Uses several manipulative tricks to try to push this wagon, succeeding reasonably well to a point, then gives up and wagon jumps on Tinsley when it's clear that isn't working.

Note also that the jump to Tinsley instead of fark somewhat implicates fark as a possible buddy here, especially combined with his play on the charter wagon. I'm not entirely certain if fark is really Walnut's buddy, or if he's just a townie who got misled by his argument on charter that Walnut is now trying to frame.

As I've stated, I don't mind the LG hate that has cropped up lately. I think there's a very good chance he and Walnut are buddies at this point, based on his play today. Also worth noting that Walnut has virtually ignored LG all game. Obviously, I still think Walnut is the surest case, and want to lynch him today.

[Macavenger]

I have read the whole Mac post against me, and feel that there is nothing worth answering, as it is mainly rehashing, arguments based on incorrect assumptions, oversimplifcations and "you did <insert any role neutral action> so you are scum".

Ha Ha Ha.

Can we please lynch the caught scum who knows he has no hope other than people not understanding the case against him now?

[Macavenger]

Mac, I appreciate your unwavering consistency in this game, but even if Walnut is scum, there are others out there. Do you have any second or third choices that you'd be willing to lynch today? (you may have already answered this question, if so, just quote it) I know some of you have made yourselves known on this issue already, but I'll throw it out there anyway.

I'm too lazy to go look for quotes, but I've mentioned a few times that I don't much care for LG, and that I see something of a case for you being aligned with Walnut.

I don't have time to put together any kind of real case at the moment, but recent posting has pretty much convinced me LG is Walnut's buddy. My scumlist right now pretty much matches charter's, but in the opposite order - I'm happiest with a Walnut lynch, and have doubts about lynching fark, but could possibly be persuaded.

In an effort to help move things forward, I've been kind of compiling my own list of everyone's stated lynch preferences. Here's what I've come up with. Y for yes, N for No, M for Maybe, or if we have to.

[mrow]Voters[col]Walnut[col]Fark[col]Tinsley[col]LG Mac[col]Y[col]M[col]N[col]Y Thesp[col]M[col]Y[col]Y[col]N charter[col]M[col]Y[col]N[col]Y fark[col]M[col]N[col]Y[col]Y Tinsley[col]Y[col]Y[col]N[col]M Walnut[col]N[col][col]Y LG[col][col]Y[col][col]N CF Riot[col]Y[col]Y Shadowgirl Camn[col][col]M[col]Y [mrow]Total[col]3+3[col]5+2[col]4[col]3+1
I think this should be pretty close; sorry if there are any large inaccuracies. I've been trying to compile this as I go and skimmed the last few pages trying to refresh it. Let me know if I've got anything wrong here.

Overall it seems like fark is the hottest suspect, at least from what I've been able to dig up. Provisionally, it doesn't look like there are enough votes to lynch Tinsley or LG.

In the interests of filling things out:
Walnut, what do you think of fark and LG?
LG, what do you think of Walnut and Tinsley?
Riot, what do you think of Tinsley and LG?
Shadowgirl or replacement, what do you think of everyone?
camn, what do you think of Walnut and LG?

[Macavenger]

I believe Fark's claim.

I find the narrowing down that Mac has done suspicious. If he is scum, then people agreeing to this could easily seal the game for the mafia, as it would be lynch one off the list, NK someone else, lynch one off the list etc. Yep, I know that we have to lynch someone today, but I don't like the assumption that this makes that the other players are inviolate.

Rich. You realize that, until about the last page, no one has talked seriously about lynching anyone not on that list in about 10 pages, except possibly you about lynching charter? I'm not narrowing anything down - the town is. I'm just supplying data.

Mac, would you be willing to lynch LG over Walnut today?

Pending answers from Tinsley, LG and Walnut are the only two I'm willing to lynch at this point. My preference is still Walnut, but I'd do either.

I actually think LG and charter are onto something, not the fact that LG and I are a scumpair, but that we could be getting bamboozled into thinking Walnut is scum. Charter look who has been pushing the Walnut bandwagon the hardest - Mac. If everyone is being "bamboozled" into believing Walnut is scum, isn't Mac the one that's doing it?

There are a good amount of if's here. Why are you suddenly so certain that both Walnut is town, and that I'm scum pushing a wagon on him, rather than town doing so? Pushing the wagon of the person you find scummiest is not a scumtell.

Netlava also pointed out that Mac's playing style changed from the trainwrecked game to this one in that he was less aggressive. Mac argued that he typically doesn't play aggressive, but he was just that confident he had found scum last game. After it was brought up however, Mac has been more aggressive.

How aggressive I play depends on a number of factors, including how confident I am in my reads, and how dead the game is. Throughout Day 2, I've been getting more confident in my read, and the game has been stalling, thus more aggressive. I think I'm also trending towards a more aggressive style over time, but can't really comment on that without talking about some ongoings.

Claimed to suspect Riot during Day 1 (even jumping off Netlava's bandwagon partially because of the fact Riot was on it.) Riot disappears from his list of suspicion on Day 2. He's replaced on Mac's LoS by ShadowGirl for her lurking even though in post 323 he defended her lurking as a case of not having time.

They didn't disappear, they just dropped to the 4/5 range because of Walnut/LG/Fark connections I was investigating. I haven't been talking about them much because others have been acting scummier, but I'm still watching them. I'd put Shadowgirl as 3, CF as 4 on my list right now, due to Fark's claim.

[Macavenger]

Did Macavenger just become the vote leader? I do not like how quickly this thing is moving.

Amazingly, I don't either.

Particularly don't like CF Riot's vote. Very "yeah, me too." You seriously think I've been bussing Walnut for a day and a half? I mean, I can kind of understand the "bamboozling" case even if I think it's horribly flawed, but to basically just discard that and vote for me anyway?

[Macavenger]

Everyone is voting either Tinsley or myself at this point except me.

I've pretty much accepted at this point that Walnut is not going to be the lynch for today. Unfortunately, since I disagree with both of the wagons currently, I don't see anything more productive to be doing with my vote at this point.

I'll try to do some rereading of Tinsley an analysis of the wagons soon, but it probably won't be until the weekend. I have some essays I need to be writing for school at the moment.

[Macavenger]

CF Riot: Please hold on to them until charter answers, I'd rather he finds them on his own rather than you give him a free out.

Agree with this. It's just good policy in general.

I should have time to do some reading and get some significant content up either tonight or tomorrow.

[Macavenger]

Sorry for not posting much lately; my RL is fairly crazy right now and may stay that way for a couple weeks. I'll still be able to keep up and post some, just not up to my usual level of content and especially detail.

I've reread Tinsley. He's still not scum. I've never seen any kind of solid case against him, an his reaction to being wagoned has been excellent. I will not vote for Tinsley today.

That said, I do think most of the wagon on him is also town (besides Walnut before he jumped off). I think its likely one of the other scum, if not both, were among those who hopped over to my wagon when it got started. I'm particularly looking at CF Riot here. His vote for me still strikes me as the most opportunistic, "yeah, me too" of them all. Combining this with my thoughts on him from Day 1, and looking back at a couple things Tinsley said about the way Riot seemed to be trying to turn the heat on the Netlava wagon all seem to point towards Riotscum. If I'm right about Tinsley, my wagon would be a nice place for scum to hide from being associated with his lynch while looking like they're doing something useful with their vote; in particular I can see Riot trying not to be linked to two mislynches here.

I still don't much care for LG or Shadowgirl, but I'm less certain about LG after looking some things over. I think there's a decent chance that one of he or Shadowgirl are scum, but I'm not set on that. I'd like to lynch Walnut or Riot today.

[Macavenger]

Tinsley what made you decide Charter was more likely scum than Mac? Since Tinsley started the Mac wagon, Mac's decided the likely scum in this game are

everyone voting him

and Walnut. The usefulness of wagons has proven itself.

Nice try. Let's look at the actual facts here, instead of trying to paint what I said to look as scummy as possible. Prior to Fark's claim and the wagon forming on me, I was suspicious of Walnut, LG, <gap>, Fark, Shadowgirl, CF Riot, approximately. I had made arguments against both you and Shadowgirl long before you climbed on my wagon; that you were not in the top three does not mean I no longer found you suspicious.

Fark's claim pretty much cleared him in my view, kicking him off my list, and you and Shadowgirl into something of a tie for third, rather distantly behind LG. After this, my wagon forms, with LG, Tinsley, Riot, Shadowgirl. Hey, 3 of my top four suspects jumped on my wagon. What a surprise that I called it out as scumpowered.

I'm actually less suspicious (at least relatively) of LG after jumping on my wagon. I don't see anything scummy about the way he jumped on my wagon, particularly given that he started it. I'm suspicious of him strictly for his prior play and possible Walnut links.

The really, really shoddy reasoning you used behind moving your vote is what caused me to zero in on you specifically. I can't recall you saying anything serious against me the entire game up to this point, and suddenly when Tinsley posts a small case, you agree with his conclusions and put me as number 1. Or at least, so you say - you don't actually agree with his conclusions. In the post right after you vote me, you say that "Tinsley has given me both a reason to doubt Walnut, and a reason to suspect you." But you're not doubting Walnut - he's still on your list right behind me. This is really fishy, because a big part of Tinsley's case (weak as it is) is based on the idea that I've supposedly been misleading the town into thinking Walnut is scum. You're clearly rejecting this idea, but voting me anyway. Basically, you're making yourself look ridiculous, and scummy.

Shadowgirl's situation is kind of similar, but to a lesser extent - Apparently because of Tinsely's arguments, she moves from not very interested in me as scum, to a top suspect. She does at least seem to be taking all of Tinsley's argument seriously, though.

Mac, look at all the posting between me and Netlava before I voted him. If it was my sinister plan to get him wagoned why would I have waited that long?

WIFOM? Because you thought he'd be lynched without you getting your hands dirty? How should I know?

Secondly, what's all this about hiding my vote on you while Tinsley got lynched? I wasn't one of the people bailing off the Fark wagon. My vote had been on Walnut. So if my goal was to just stay underground while Tinsley took the fall, why would I have switched my vote to you?

Because by this point, the Walnut wagon is clearly going nowhere. See for example what I said about Shadowgirl at the beginning of Day 2, in reference to her vote being uselessly on Battousai. Leaving a vote on Walnut today would look pretty similar. Hopping on my wagon would accomplish a few things. Beyond the obvious of not being tied to a townie lynch (if I'm right about Tinsley), hopping on my wagon would be a good way to avoid that kind of accusation, since it did appear to be traveling. Moreover, if scum were actually able to shift the wagon and get me lynched, that's probably a bonus, considering that getting rid of analytical townies is usually good for scum. Either way, it gives you something to be visible and fight for, rather than just looking like you're lurking out the day trying to avoid being tied to anything.

Mac, he's just... The whole perfect townie thing.

Too Townie
What information would you be expecting to pull from my lynch? Why do you see Tinsley as necessarily linked to LG? What does the "perfect townie" thing have to do with your reason for voting me, since that's been true since long before the case Tinsely presented that appears to have caused you to jump on my wagon?

SG, how prepared are you to go with your gut? Would you go to a no lynch at the deadline rather than switch your vote to Tinsley? I put the same question out to LG, CF, Mac, and Walnut. We need to know where we stand.

This is the part where Mac's face turns all red and stuff.

So it turns out that I normally kind of skim past vote counts, as I have a good memory and generally keep a pretty good handle on who's voting for whom without needing a reminder. As such, at the time of my last post, I was actually unaware that a deadline had been implemented.

Having now seen that there is one, I'm willing to vote for Tinsley at deadline. While I think he's more likely to be town, his wagon doesn't look scumpowered to me, and would be superior to a no lynch.

I still support Walnut or CF Riot, or possibly LG or Shadowgirl as superior alternatives. For the moment

unvote; vote: CF Riot

since I think he's the best chance at an alternative lynch to Tinsley. I won't vote Tinsley until either much closer to deadline, or he's finished saying what he wants to say. I will do so to prevent a no lynch.

[Macavenger]

So, since I have remarkably little interest in letting Walnutscum lynch me by hopping aboard my wagon at deadline, self-defense

Unvote; Vote: Tinsley

. More thoughts later today.