Minvitational 8 - OVER before 611

[Kison]

So who do you think the scumgroup is?

I find a lying Cicero to be very unlikely as he was among the first to claim. When he claimed, there were five unclaimed players, four whose roles he did not know if he is scum. Because of this, Jitsu<->Cicero and The Fonz<->Cicero are less likely, which leaves you and Billy Twilight as my preferred option.

[BillyTwilight]

If we lynch Oman and he's a SK, then we still have a problem. Kison's plan requires that Oman is lynched, that cicero is nked, and that Fonz has to choose between Erg0/BT and Jitsu/Kison tomorrow. If either of Jitsu/Kison are a roleblocker, than he can guarantee this approach. I don't particularly want the game to rest on a choice like that for Fonz, so there has to be a better approach.

Question: if we lynch Jistu or Kison today, and Oman is in fact a SK, then are we really in a prisoner's dilemma? There would presumably be 4 players left. Oman can't kill scum in the night phase or he autoloses, so tomorrow would have to be 2-1-1, normally a prisoner's dilemma. The only difference is we will know all the roles already. Oman will be revealed as an SK from his townNK and Kison or Jitsu would be the other obvious scum. In that situation a no lynch nearly forces the scum to kill each other. They can't kill town for fear of being the NK of the other player, and if they both kill different townies it leaves both alive for the final day (never actually had this happen, so I don't know who the win defaults to; I would think it would be the SK...

Mod, can you answer this question please?

). If the SK wins by default in that situation then mafia obviously has to kill the SK, and the SK would basically get to decide if he'd rather town win (kill mafia) or mafia win (kill town). If the remaining mafia is a roleblocker, however, then mafia almost win by default.

Fonz, the reason I want you to claim so much is that it helps me decide about Oman. If you prevented the night kill then that probably means that Oman is a vig. His play seems viggish to me all around. However, if you didn't prevent the night kill then someone is lying now or has a NK immunity. The obvious answer then is that Oman has at least 1 NK immunity and since NK immunity doesn't fit a vig role, he's probably a SK. I don't see how claiming hurts here. If you are a doc/rb, etc., then you are either going to be rbed tonight and cicero will die, or you are going to be killed tonight and cicero will be roleblocked.

I pretty much have to assume there is a mafia roleblocker. Balance seems impossible without it. If there weren't then lynching Oman would win the game; scum would want to kill cicero but couldn't because they wouldn't be sure that Fonz couldn't prevent the kill. They'd have to kill Fonz, and cicero would have an investigation to clear myself/Erg0 or condemn Jitsu/Kison. We can't count on this happening though, too high a chance that there is a mafia rber.

No lynching would give us some options, perhaps. Oman would be forced to kill mafia; as SK he can't go into a 5 player 2-2-1 day and expect to survive. That would leave us with 3-1-1 and nearly guaranteed victory. If Oman made a mistake and it was 2-2-1, we still have a shot; Oman would be forced to vote for mafia, townies would vote mafia, we'd go into night with a 2-1-1 game, and we're back in prisoner's dilemma territory, again with everyone already knowing everyone's role in the game.

Bah, I keep talking myself in circles. I'll probably be voting for Oman before the deadline hits; the only thing Fonzy could reasonably be to be a third party faction is a cult leader or a surviver. Cult leader seems too outlandish for the rest of this game and surviver doesn't hurt us any.

[Erg0]

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

[Erg0]

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

[BillyTwilight]

Go ahead, I came on to hammer, myself.

[Erg0]

Good enough for me.

Vote: Oman

[Erg0]

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

[Guardian]

Vote Count 31

Oman[4] (Jitsu, The Fonz, cicero, Erg0)
Kison[1] (Oman)

Not Voting[2] (BillyTwilight, Kison)

---

Night 3

Oman, Serial Killer, was lynched day 3.

Send all night choices to me; they are due by Saturday night. All choices not sent in by then will be made by me, and you won't like it.

[Guardian]

Day 4

cicero, cop, was killed loudly and violently night 3. There is not much left of his body.

Day 4 begins now. Its deadline is 3 weeks -- Deadline for Day 4 is approximately September 11 8PM EST.

It will require 3 to lynch day 4. Good luck!

[Erg0]

Pretty sure this is solved, unless cicero was naive.

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

[Kison]

Jitsu needs to role claim.

[The Fonz]

Jitsu needs to role claim.

This.

[Jitsu]

Well, the situation is very simple now. With Cicero dead and confirmed Cop, Fonz is virtually confirmed since there can be no more third-party players (set-up said there were 0-1 third-party players and Oman was it). The outcome now is forced: assuming Cicero was not naive, and there are two mafia remaining, the last scum have to be Me/Kison or Erg0/Billy, from Fonz's persepctive, and he has to cast the deciding vote. Kison/I and Erg0/Billy are forced to vote for each other for the duration of the game.

I am vanilla. I wrestled with the decision yesterday, as I felt if I had claimed, that setup balance would almost certainly have confirmed Oman as an SK. But first, I felt that we would be able to get the lynch on Oman even without my claim. Second, like Billy did later on, I had guessed that Fonz had some kind of protective/blocking role and with his reluctance to claim, and I decided I had to protect him by not claiming vanilla (which would have let the scum virtually confirm his role by process of elimination). I agreed with Fonz because the obvious play was to protect Fonz, in the hopes that he could stop another kill (and possibly keep Cicero alive to boot).

It really puzzles me why Erg0 and Billy demanded that Fonz claim just to confirm that Oman was the right lynch. Cicero's early cop claim was highly likely genuine, and if they did think Fonz had a protective/blocking role, why make him claim it? With a cop, daytalking mason pair (way more powerful than regular masons), protective/blocking role, and vig claim, it was pretty obvious that either Cicero or Oman was lying, and it was very likely to be Oman, since lynching Cicero would have implicated the Fonz. As Fonz said, it should have been obvious that Oman was right play.

Their claim was obviously perfectly timed, and fits perfectly with their behavior this game. As for why they took the chance to claim mason, I can only suspect that they discussed claims the night before. They had to suspect a protective/blocking role before (especially with Fonz's "it's safe enough for me to claim vanilla townie" comment in post 1027), and when the cop (Cicero) claimed early, I think Erg0 took the chance, as it was going to be difficult for them win with an active cop around until Day 5, especially since Cicero had been quite suspicious of both of them for a while. Billy's analysis at the end of the day was just so off, given that Masons should have had a pretty good idea what the setup was knowing the claims and their own roles. It sounds to me like Billy was setting up the stage for a turnaround in case they guessed wrong, especially since Erg0 didn't seem to comment on Billy's analysis much. For being able to daytalk, it sure seemed like they were out of sync. Fonz was definitely right -- iIf Oman were the SK, Oman needed to be lynched before we got to LYLO, and I can't believe that Billy was trying to talk himself out of voting for him after he stated that Fonz had to have one of a small number of protective/blocking roles.

Erg0 and Billy have played a good game. They haven't given the rest of the players much ammo to use against them, and like Erg0 told me in vollkan's game, "they've done enough to win". They took a gamble and it paid off. Hats off to them.

I can't make a great case for my own innocence, but I have to try, as I believe there is LYLO, and there is no tomorrow if we miss. In order for me to be scum in my first game, I would have to have bussed both my partners (including my Godfather) from the get go, stubbornly stuck to a crappy case on my own Godfather that could easily have gotten us both lynched, and then

admitted

to not knowing the Jeep tells after Fonz told me that he only believed they applied to players that didn't know them. I may be inexperienced, but I would not make a mistake like that.

To be honest, I've had a tough time with this game. The players have been very careful, and there were really no big blunders by anyone. With pretty conservative play all around (Fonz being a notable exception of the remaining players) a noticeable lack of voting and three straight deadline lynches, there just hasn't been a lot of really good information for me to analyze, compared to my two previous games. This game, up until the claims, was based a lot on subtle tells and intuitions, and my skill in that area is definitely lacking, I admit. I'm sorry, town. I tried.

I can only hope at this point that Fonz takes a few moments to think about things and not quicklynch Kison and me, like Erg0 seems to want.

[Jitsu]

Since I believe that Cicero was NOT naive, and that there are not two scum left, Kison and I just have to choose one of Erg0/Billy to vote for. It doesn't matter which one, as the results of this lynch will decide the game.

Vote: Erg0

[BillyTwilight]

I'm scum and I don't really have any way of defending myself. Ugh. Let's get this over with.

Ok.

Vote: Jitsu

[Erg0]

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

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

who is BillyTwilight?

He's a friend of a friend.

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

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

[Jitsu]

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

who is BillyTwilight?

He's a friend of a friend.

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

I may be missing something, but I'm having a hard time seeing how your quoted sentence is a distinct mason tell. Your other "crumbs" are a little more convincing, but who's to say you weren't subtly distancing from each other since the end of day 1 or so and just never got caught? Did you actually leave any explicit crumbs like an acrostic or other hidden message or something? I'm kind of doubting you did, because if you had, you would have pointed it out earlier, when you first claimed. Why did you wait? I'm kicking myself now that I didn't think to ask this yesterday, before you could talk with your buddy about it.

Fonz: if there's anything that we need to know before we lynch then now would be the time to say it.

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

you

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

Nobody's lynching anyone until the Fonz is satisfied.

[Jitsu]

Contrary to Jitsu's post above, I don't believe that I ever expressed a desire for Fonz to claim or pressured him to do so.

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

[Erg0]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

you

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

Nobody's lynching anyone until the Fonz is satisfied.

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

is

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

[Jitsu]

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

is

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

I'll get to the rest in a minute, but there's a good reason why I didn't finger Fonz/Kison:

My logic is as follows:

There cannot be four mafia, as the setup information precludes that (besides, the scum should have already won in that case).

If there are three mafia in the game, then there are only two possible pairs from my perspective. You and Billy claimed masons together, so you can only be scum with each other, with Shaft.ed-scum already revealed. The only other possibility is Fonz/Kison.

If Fonz and Kison are scum and there are three mafia in the game, then the setup has to be:
Naive Cop + Mason pair vs. Oman-SK (who would be investigation immune and have some kind of kill immunity) vs. GF + 2 mafia (which would be Fonz and Kison).

That means that the town had only a worthless cop role that could have deceived people and a Mason pair as the only power roles? I can't believe that. So I really can't buy that pair as scum here. At all. I'd bet the game on that (and I have).

The other possibility, if you two are the scum, is:
Sane Cop + Fonz vs. SK (with no kill immunity) vs. GF + 2 mafia

To me, that possibility is orders of magnitude better in terms of balance.

And if there is only one mafia left (which I don't believe), then we aren't in LYLO, and it doesn't matter if I voted early or not.

[Jitsu]

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

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

Any good claim fits the behavior, but I have to give you props here, because the claim fits particularly well in this case. There's obviously no way I can argue against this crumb or how well your claim fits your behavior, but you forgot what would seem to be your best crumb of all?

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

Distancing is probably the wrong word. I was referring to the lack of interaction between you two most of the game.

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

I could see that it might seem that way, but it's really not. I didn't say I played badly, I said I played as well as I could given my skill level. I apologized to the town that I couldn't do more. That's not quite the same. Of course, I am certainly capable of poor play (everyone is), but obviously I'm not going to point out how I think I might have played poorly at this point in this game.

I said it wasn't a great defense, but in the face of an eminent town loss, I have to try to convince the Fonz of my townieness using whatever evidence I can. I'll also point out that I've been active, scumhunted and probed on points of interest, not hid from any criticism, and other than the overzealousness in my case against Shaft.ed knowing whether he hammered or not, both you and Billy seem to have admitted before the massclaim that I was looking townie (though I admit that the value of that point is diluted because you and Billy were not high on my suspect list before the massclaim either).

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

is

a foregone conclusion for me, unless The Fonz has something revelatory to share.

Yes, but you are acting like you two are the confirmed ones and there's still a chance Fonz is scum, when the opposite has to be true. What could Fonz possibly claim that would change your mind to vote him over Me/Kison? If Fonz were indeed mafia, then he certainly would not have blocked the mafia kill, and then the game balance would be even worse for the town (as the ability that "blocked" the mafia kill has to be in the hands of scum). I can't imagine why you are clinging to the possibility that Fonz could still be scum.

[BillyTwilight]

I figure I'll go ahead and throw in my mason tells as well.

Post #490: Although I am in general against lynching lurkers, the main impetus for throwing my hat in against lynching a lurker was that I felt the most likely lurker to get lynched at the time was Erg0. Both cicero and Adel at the time were pushing for a lurker lynch, and Erg0 was at or near the top of their "best candidates" list. Knowing that Erg0 was town was a strong reason for me to push against a lurker lynch, even when it could have gotten me in trouble (I lurked much of day 1).

Post #493: Same as above, but a blatant defense of not lynching Erg0.

Post #724: The last couple of lines: "Oh, and I have an interesting proposition that I might ask the rest of you about tomorrow. More later." At the time was beginning to feel desperate; scum looked to be coasting towards an easy win. I had no confidence that we were going to make a good lynch, and I felt that scum were well within their comfort zone, which would make finding them very, very difficult. I had an idea of a way to possibly shake things up, to put scum off their comfort zone and force them to do something they wouldn't have planned for or thought about, something different than you see in a typical mafia game. I wasn't sure how sound my plan was, or if it was even any good, so I wanted to talk to Erg0 about it before posting. Thus I said something about a proposition and that I would have something more to say about it the next day (RL, not game day). I talked with Erg0 in our forum about it, and he agreed that it might be something good to try, but it was late in the day (near deadline) and we should probably wait until the following day before trying it. This is a breadcrumb that we have daytalking ability. I wont say what my plan was; I'll let Erg0 post it to confirm that it was something we discussed and should confirm our daytalking ability.

Post #886: I blatantly state that Erg0 is town. For no reasons. Also note, as an aside to Jitsu's recent attack against me, that this post is an exercise in theory and setup speculation, and happened well before the claims yesterday. More on this later.

Post #897: I list the players in order of scummiest to least scummy. Erg0 is at the bottom. Again, no reasons given whatsoever.

As for Jitsu recent calling into question my desire to see Fonzy claim yesterday, if you look back throughout the game you will see a lot of setup speculation throughout (my early talk about a vig/SK possibility, my post #886 discussing possible setups, etc.). This is typical for my town play. I'm a very mathematical player; I prefer using process of elimination, pinning down roles, and doing as much math work as I can before coming to a decision on who the scum in the game are. It's one of the reasons why I was so confused through day 2 (the only thing I could say was there were 2 killing entities in the game, one of them mafia, obv., and one of them vig/SK). With all vanilla townies dead up to that point, mathematical analysis was almost impossible, and I was out of my element as far as scumhunting goes. Day 3, with shaft.ed's death, opened up many new possibilities, and I started trying to break down the game. The biggest problem I had was Jitsu's attack on shaft.ed, and that I really felt Oman was a vig (he showed no real since of urgency or craftiness in his play, which I feel a SK usually has, considering they have to out-survive everyone in the game). I wanted Fonz to claim because that helps with my math; analysis becomes easier the more claims there are on the table. I felt that if Oman

was

a vig then his lynch would hand the game to Fonz or mafia, if Fonz was an anti-town third party. Fonz's refusal to claim made me that much more uncomfortable. In the end I was OK way Oman's lynch, in part because of his post #1034, which was really quite rediculous (no way mafia forgets to send in a NK in an invitational), but mostly because Occam's Razor ruled the day. Too difficult to see a cult leader or some other weird third party element in this game without a NK ability.

On top of all of this Fonz has played with me as scum before, and should recognize the differences between my play in this game and my scumplay. I have one of the worst meta's on the site right now; it's because I've been scum in something like 80% of the games I'm in. I'm quite good at playing scum; much worse at town. I'm much more manipulative and in control as scum; I break apart the play of the townies and capitalize on even the smallest mistakes. I am not good at that as town - I've done it so much as scum that I feel I can find and make a good case on just about any town player, and it paralyzes me when I'm town, because I'm forced to constantly second-guess myself as to whither or not I'm just honing in on a townie making a minor mistake that I would normally take advantage of as scum, or that what the player is doing is genuinely scummy. This is the reason I'm much more comfortable playing mathematically as town, and a big reason why my contributions in the first couple of days was so lackluster.

[The Fonz]

On top of all of this Fonz has played with me as scum before, and should recognize the differences between my play in this game and my scumplay.

One game is not a significant sample,and ive never seen you as town before.

Still guys, this isnt remotely hard.

The town will have 2-5 roles that are not townies.

I myself am vanilla. Therefore, there is zero chance the masons are lying (reluctance to claim ftw) as that would mean only one power role.

vote: Jitsu

[BillyTwilight]

Nice catch Fonz. Wish I had seen that and wouldn't have had to bother posting all those mason tells.

Yay.

[Jitsu]

Well, I tried.

Nicely played, Fonz.

Vote: Jitsu