Mini 836: Commie Mafia (Game Over)

[Cyberbob]

I'm voting for Vaya? I could've sworn I was voting for CoCo...

*checks posts*

Hm, guess not. How strange.

Unvote, Vote: CoCo

[Cyberbob]

EBWOP:

Actually, let me re-open a discussion. Given that there were only 2 scum the first time around, why aren't we taking the default position that there are 2 scum this time? Certainly Kublai probably re-worked the game a little between the two runs, but changing the number of scum seems like it would be cause for a major re-balancing, and take a lot longer.

I personally would tend to agree with you, but attempting to outguess the mod rarely ends well no matter how "certain" one thinks one is. If we do proceed under the assumption that we started with 2 scum that might make us a bit too complacent with our lynches. It's safer, IMO, to act as though the larger scumgroup is the one we're playing with.

[le Chat]

1. charter
2. CoCo
3. Cyberbob
4. SerialClergyman
6. Hoopla
7. le Chat
8. mathcam
12. Vaya

I'm a cat, obviously I'm town aligned.

If I had to pick a person who I think is least scummy besides myself it would be Cyberbob. I haven't found myself disagreeing with him on anything, and also his attitude, and accusation, and vote towards Peabody on Day 1 have pretty much solidified that for me, since the end of Day 1.

CoCo pushes charter often, and I am currently fairly happy with my assessment that charter chose Col Cathart D1 over Peabody because he could lynch Cathart and then use it to hesitate D2 on Peabody. It fits.

Hmph @ Hoopla. I may not have been the most active player in this game but I have been hunting for what I find to be mistakes and inconsistencies. Note my point towards charter, regarding his opinions on Col Cathart and Peabody, in my post 895 as a most recent example that I guess you simply skipped over.

No way would I let Vaya do the kill if I was his scumpartner. He'd be WAY too likely to draw role investigation.

Possibly - it's more guesswork though.

What I am worried about is if Vaya and/or CoCo aren't scum, it lets scum almost coast to victory unchallenged.

Does it not bother anyone else that these convenient lynches are being followed by almost everyone? It just seems too obvious.

Wait, so you'd be comfortable having CoCo alive in lylo?

After claiming vanilla town for no reason, and generally being a nuisance, what incentive is there for scum to kill him? This isn't mentioning his scummy antics. He will either need to be lynched or left alive throughout the game. Although they probably both aren't scum, I would personally take my chances on Vaya being town, rather than CoCo.

Either way, I think we almost have to lynch one of these two today before it gets too late. It should be CoCo though.

Bolding is my own emphasis. These seem to directly contradict each other. All too well I understand worrying and second thoughts, but you call both lynches too convenient and then immediately after you say we have to lynch one of them. Usually the second thoughts come after the statement and develop into some sort of change of opinion (ex: my thoughts on Col. Cathart, his claim, second thoughts, will not vote for his lynch).

@Mathcam, I don't like a point you make in your post 912:

Sure it's possible. I'd say likely. I'm fine not speculating on the other roles, but I think it's significant that most of these scenarios lead to Sens targeting mafia. So the question is:

"Who does Sens think was not mafia and not likely to be targeted by the mafia?"

I think Vaya and CoCo are clearly out. Sens wouldn't have taken the chance of hiding with them. Not sure about charter, but I'd put everyone else as a plausible hiding target. If I had to pick the most likely, I'd go with Cyberbob. Sens' interactions with him yesterday made me think he found him townish.

You are hypothesizing that SensFan's death came from his mis-hide as a Coward, and therefore we should attempt to hunt and lynch those people that he thought were pro-town enough to hide behind? You are basically saying that we should entertain the idea of voting to lynch those people who Sens thought were pro-Town, those people that we most likely also think are pro-Town. Can you explain to me how that isn't directly anti-Town?

I do not think we can use Sens' role and his death to determine scum. I think that opens too many possible doors. Especially considering the fact that it is super odd to see that he, a Coward, was a lone night death, when his role makes it seem like there is either 0 or 2 deaths when it concerns him. It is super confusing and I don't want it to cloud my judgment.

Other than that, I need to think about where I place you!

I understand the logic that if there is only a 2-man mafia in this game, and Vaya is the last mafioso, and Col Cathart roleblocked him, there would have been no kill. I also suspect that it is a 2-man mafia and not a 3-man, because that is what it was pre-re-roll. So that is a fairly strong point for Vaya. I don't know if it is strong enough for me to unvote yet, so I'm hesitate to unvote. Especially considering Vaya's lack of input and his unexplained vote.

I hesitate, but I do

unvote

I need to think about SerialClergyman, to pin what I think. He leans more to the scum side than the town side for me. I need to read again I guess with a focus on SC. Pertaining to his vote-count analysis, it seems like a good way to figure things out, but I was purposefully not on the Col Cathart lynch Day 2. After his claim, I didn't want to vote for him. I guess you can fault me for that when you say I also wasn't on the Peabody lynch Day 1, but I was also gone for a while. Yeah, no johns. Need to grow a pair, etc. But it's true.

in order
townsies atm:
le chat
cyberbob
coco
questionables atm:
hoopla
mathcam
vaya
scumsies atm:
serialclergyman
charter

I will read more soon I'm sure, and I will clean up this list. The bottom will most likely change more freely than the top. I wont vote until I feel more confident in my reading.

[mathcam]

I personally would tend to agree with you, but attempting to outguess the mod rarely ends well no matter how "certain" one thinks one is.

I really hate the phrase "outguessing the mod" -- it's only Bastard mods who think of themselves as being in a guessing competition with the players.

Every

time we make an inference about the game (there's probably not 6 scum, or 4 cops, or a cult, etc.) we're "outguessing" the mod in that sense. There's no sense in throwing our hands up in the air and bemoaning the fact that we can't know for certain anything about the setup -- we use facts and inference to create plausible scenarios (keeping fully aware that our scenario is only one possible scenario), and then make decisions based off of those deductions.

That the original setup had 2 scum is an incredibly important piece of information at our disposal, and you would have us completely ignore it.

If we do proceed under the assumption that we started with 2 scum that might make us a bit too complacent with our lynches. It's safer, IMO, to act as though the larger scumgroup is the one we're playing with.

Well, good, at least this is an actual reason. But really? You think our standards for lynch will be different? Regardless of how many scum there are, don't we always want to lynch the scummiest person? And it's

not

safer to assume something if it leads us to worse decisions. Say I was absolutely positive (which I'm not) that the scum group has size 2 -- then I would be sure that Vaya is not scum. But then I figure to be safe, I'll assume that there's 3 -- then I note that Vaya's done some scummy things, and end up lynching a (say) townie Vaya. Isn't that complacency just as bad? In fact, I think the only potential complacency going on is in regards to avoiding making hard decisions in the name of "not outguessing the mod."

Wow, that was supposed to be a 2-liner. Sorry about that.

Cam

[mathcam]

You are hypothesizing that SensFan's death came from his mis-hide as a Coward, and therefore we should attempt to hunt and lynch those people that he thought were pro-town enough to hide behind? You are basically saying that we should entertain the idea of voting to lynch those people who Sens thought were pro-Town, those people that we most likely also think are pro-Town. Can you explain to me how that isn't directly anti-Town?

I'm not saying that this should dictate today's lynch, but it's very relevant, yes. And I said something a little more specific -- we should find someone who Sens thought was town,

and

would be an unlikely kill target, the safest possible place for Sens to hide. And while I'm not looking at a list in front of me or anything, I'm not sure that the people that Sens found town are exactly the people that I think are town -- if there are people for whom there is near universal consensus on their townliness, that fact would definitely trump this idea. You'll note that despite the fact that this idea pointed me toward CyberBob, I haven't pushed an attack forward on him at all -- I think his apparent townliness is more important than the fact that I think he was a plausible Sens target.

I do not think we can use Sens' role and his death to determine scum. I think that opens too many possible doors. Especially considering the fact that it is super odd to see that he, a Coward, was a lone night death, when his role makes it seem like there is either 0 or 2 deaths when it concerns him. It is super confusing and I don't want it to cloud my judgment.

Ignoring important facts because they're confusing is silly. There are several plausible scenarios for what happened that night, Sens targeted mafia and mafia targeted Sens being my personal favorite, but others which involve any number of pro-town roles (blockers, docs, etc.)

Cam

[charter]

le Chat, the only real defense I have against your 'charter was trying to lynch Cathart so he could be less suspicious of Peabody' is that Peabody was voting for me most of the day and was part of an awful wagon which somehow had many votes. I think if you look at Peabody's posts, they point towards him trying to lynch me. As far as your point, I thought Cathart was scummier, so I wanted to lynch him first. Clearly I was wrong.

Also, as Hoopla pointed out, SC was only on the Peabody wagon because he was online when Peabody claimed scum. SC had previously refrained from giving any opinion on Peabody and had said he didn't think Peabody's actions were scummy and that he thought Peabody was town.

[Cyberbob]

I really hate the phrase "outguessing the mod" -- it's only Bastard mods who think of themselves as being in a guessing competition with the players.

Every

time we make an inference about the game (there's probably not 6 scum, or 4 cops, or a cult, etc.) we're "outguessing" the mod in that sense.

There's no sense in throwing our hands up in the air and bemoaning the fact that we can't know for certain anything about the setup

-- we use facts and inference to create plausible scenarios (keeping fully aware that our scenario is only one possible scenario), and then make decisions based off of those deductions.

I'm not suggesting that we do anything of the sort, actually. I'm saying that we should

consider

all possible situations, and that we should come up with a plan of action that minimises the risk of causing too much damage to the town in case we get it wrong.

That the original setup had 2 scum is an incredibly important piece of information at our disposal, and you would have us completely ignore it.

See above. I think we're in agreement, but either you're misreading what I'm saying or I wasn't being clear enough.

Well, good, at least this is an actual reason. But really? You think our standards for lynch will be different? Regardless of how many scum there are, don't we always want to lynch the scummiest person? And it's

not

safer to assume something if it leads us to worse decisions. Say I was absolutely positive (which I'm not) that the scum group has size 2 -- then I would be sure that Vaya is not scum. But then I figure to be safe, I'll assume that there's 3 -- then I note that Vaya's done some scummy things, and end up lynching a (say) townie Vaya. Isn't that complacency just as bad? In fact, I think the only potential complacency going on is in regards to avoiding making hard decisions in the name of "not outguessing the mod."

I think that we might be a little more willing to settle for "policy lynches" and the like if we proceeded under the assumption that there is only one scum left as opposed to two. That's just me, though, and I do see merit in some of your points here - particularly concerning Vaya.

The only thing, though, is that apart from the Vaya situation I can't think of anything else that would hurt the town more if we were to proceed as though we were dealing with a 3-scum team. If you or anyone else could, I would feel a lot more comfortable in leaning slightly more towards the other option.

Wow, that was supposed to be a 2-liner. Sorry about that.

Happens to me all the time.

[CoCo]

In most situations I've encountered, a two-player scum team is usually caused by the presence of an SK. I see no evidence to suggest one here. Therefore, I see know reason to suspect two scum.

[charter]

Where is my SerialClergyman?

[Hoopla]

In most situations I've encountered, a two-player scum team is usually caused by the presence of an SK. I see no evidence to suggest one here. Therefore, I see know reason to suspect two scum.

I've seen a few games with only two scum, but these are usually off-set by weak town powerroles.

Something against the idea of a two-man scumteam this game, is the power that has already flipped for the town so far. A hider can be quite a useful role to confirm town, and a doctor/RB is something that can be more than useful. The 2:10 games I've seen have either been all vanilla, or at max one town powerrole.

For this game to have 2 scum there would need to be some detrimental town-roles (think PGO, paranoid/naive cop etc.) or the two scum would both need to be powered. Both are unlikely, despite the original game starting with only two.

[Cyberbob]

I've seen a few games with only two scum, but these are usually off-set by weak town powerroles.

Something against the idea of a two-man scumteam this game, is the power that has already flipped for the town so far. A hider can be quite a useful role to confirm town, and a doctor/RB is something that can be more than useful. The 2:10 games I've seen have either been all vanilla, or at max one town powerrole.

For this game to have 2 scum there would need to be some detrimental town-roles (think PGO, paranoid/naive cop etc.) or the two scum would both need to be powered. Both are unlikely, despite the original game starting with only two.

This post is a good post.

Where is my SerialClergyman?

So is this one.

[SerialClergyman]

lol @ charter.

Coming, coming. Replaced into a couple of games and got hit with much reading, will be here soon.

[Hoopla]

To continue, ESPECIALLY with Peabody flipping Goon - what possible role could the other mafia have (if there were only 2) to balance against a doc/RB and a hider? You'd need at least 1/2 detrimental town roles to even come close to balancing it.

[SerialClergyman]

charter - you'll note you called out my first post for naming just about everybody town but see that it didn't name peabody as town. And part of why Talitha was attacking me was because she felt I left an 'in' to vote peabody without accepting responsibility for the lynch when I said I wouldn't mind a peabody lynch.

You'll also note near the start of day 2 I mentioned that I was surprised Sens wasn't attacking me for the late manner in which I was on the Peabody wagon and that led me to think him town.

I'm surprised I haven't copped more attacks. My vote on Peabody was after he self-imploded, so I can hardly be credited with being on the wagon and the person I pushed most agaisnt flipped town callign me scum. It's surprising to me that more people didn't jump on it. This especially includes Sens who seemed to have it in for me yesterday but didn't mention it today. I think if he was scum trying to set up something with his NK he'd be unlikely to just drop it.

Aside from that, I'm not quite sure what you want from me. I dropped voting you before you even posted due to a closer look at the wagons, so I can't call your attack OMGUS, but I don't think you really believe I'm scum. Maybe you do, and your case is just meagre. I don't know.

Cyberbob hasn't put a foot wrong recently, can't complain. Hoopla has moments of beautiful logical clarity, and I find myself agreeing with her a lot but I also haven't seen her make a particularly convincing case, which makes me a little uneasy.

Le Chat came in, wrote some decent material, unvoted and then left again. arg.

Cam is a star and reads continue as town.

Hoopla, got a scumlist?
Le Chat, got a vote?

[le Chat]

yeah im in atlanta right now and ive got court early in the morning, and then i get to drive back and take a genetics exam

i have some logics that i worked out on hider stuff after cam told me that ignoring things bc they are confusing is silly. but really im exhausted and i just want to post to say hello i am still keeping up and thinking about the game and i am not going to fall behind.

[Hoopla]

yeah im in atlanta right now and ive got court early in the morning

Uh oh, what did you do?

[SerialClergyman]

and take a genetics exam

AND you might be a father?

[mathcam]

Okay, finished re-reading day one. Still want to do the rest of the game, but I need a break and don't want to lose one particular train of thought:

First, charter. Here is to me the defining post of the day, where he unvotes Peabody at a critical point in the wagon.

Upon further reflection, while many people are ignoring Peabody, there really isn't anyone trying to stop his lynch, which I would expect to happen if he was scum. Seems unlikely his buddies would leave him to the vultures without hardly a word or a last minute bus attempt.

This is an incredibly off post:

• a) First, I disagree that his buddies would do something noticeable with regards to the wagon one way or another. Latecomers to the wagon attract serious attention the next day, as do people who attempt and fail to stop the lynch. Unless they had a really empassioned argument as to why Peabody shouldn't be lynched, better to stay quiet.
  b) Second, there
  were
  people trying to stop his lynch! On that very page, SC and Tally both expressed a pro-Peabody sentiment and voted for the other. Tally's in particular was an unvote, definitely slightly reducing the steam on the wagon.
  c) Even if we
  don't
  include Tally and SC as in the above bullet,
  charter became exactly this stopping force with this and subsequent posts.
  . He goes well beyond a peabody unvote and suggesting an alternative bandwagon, to quite forcefully pushing either of two alternate wagons (myself or Cathart). It's as if he's screaming "I don't care which we lynch, just not Peabody." This sideshow becomes the single biggest distraction to the Peabody lynch. A simple "Oh, I guess I was wrong about Peabody" doesn't cut it for me in response to something that strong.

I don't think charter's overall play in this game has been altogether super-scummy, but this sequence of events is pretty up there. I'll compare him to other players when I get around to gathering those thoughts into a coherent post.

Also, apologies if these points have been made before. As I said, I'm not up-to-speed on days 2 and 3 yet.

Cam

p.s. Definite LOL at last two posts.

[Hoopla]

Hoopla, got a scumlist?

Like mathcam and a couple of others, my thoughts probably aren't up to date, and I owe the thread a reread. This is where my thoughts lie now though;

I'm still up for a CoCo lynch - he seems to vanish as soon as he isn't in the spotlight any more, and I've already illustrated his ties with Peabody on D1. It seems everyone forgot his claim under no pressure earlier in the day, also.

I'm not sold on the charter case yet, but I don't think he is as town as I once thought. The key points seem to be his theory Cathart and Peabody are buddies, but with a reluctance to settle on Peabody. I remember charter being most vocal for Cathart's head - I can understand scum motives behind this play, to set up a mislynch in case Peabody goes.

I've had mostly neutral feelings toward SC, but he is one I definitely want to reread in greater detail. Like he said himself, the fact flipped-town Tally was most suspicious of him, and his appearance on Cathart's wagon, and only being on Peabody's after his implosion isn't a brilliant voting record. More to come on this.

I still think mathcam and Cyberbob are town, but Cyberbob's all-day Peabody vote still irks me for some reason. Vaya is probably town too, but I'm disappointed he hasn't contributed much almost all game.

I'm also unsure of le Chat. The thing that immediately springs to mind is being non-commital, but I owe a reread on his play.


I'll be back soon!

[Cyberbob]

For people interested about my vote on Peabody being there for the whole day, I did give some explanation for this (as well as talking about the points at which I nearly moved it) back in Day 2 when Hoopla asked me about it then. I do think it's kind of lame of her not to have made any more noises on this front until now - by her lack of response to the aforementioned post I assumed that she had accepted my reasoning - but whatever.

I don't have time right now (posting from uni and I have a lecture in 15) to say much else apart from noting the high quality of mathcam's last post. Will try to comment further this evening sometime.

[Vaya]

Unvote

Actually, after thinking it over a bit, I'm pretty sure that SC is town based on interactions with Peabody. Peabody rather blatantly defended SC Day 1, it feels a lot like him buddying up with a townie and not the sort of thing I would expect between two scum.

I'm really not sure who might be scum at the moment. I'll have to give it some more thought later, I'm honestly just posting to avoid the prod/replacement right now.

[SerialClergyman]

At the risk of once again making a fool of myself, I'd point out that I've both seen and used the 'noone is defending them' point with surprising success. There's WIFOM to it, and there's the obvious problem that now someone clearly IS defending them, but it's actually a decent method of determining whether lynching the VI is a good or bad idea.

However I tend to think it applies more in larger games with more scum (max buddies are two here at the moment) where the effect is more pronounced and cam's point of b) is very good - it doesn't work unless there is a game-wide acknowledgement of someone as universally scummy.

Hoopla - your latest post highlights what I've been feeling for a while now - when you make posts about the setup, or policy or other such things I agree totally with you and find you very convincing, but when you push a case or mention your suspects I lose that feeling. Possibly nothing but there you go.

I think Peabody's post about Cyberbob's language (he 'feels' like a 'possible' townie was wishy-washy) was a standard peabody attack town, just as his attacks on Sens, Talitha and to a lesser extent Col were.

Reading over Peabody, I'm noticing he mentioned the confirmed towns a lot, which makes me suspect again that he's not really mentioning his buddies. Have a look at his most content full post, here.

He rarely talks about le chat, vaya and me (zz) but is quite vocal about just about everythign else. His exchange with coco in this post and this post is indicative of him not being partners with coco, I think. Plus he's all into the charter attack.

In fact, Cam, while your attack on charter is solid, it dones't acknowledge the reason I unvoted - Peabody's behaviour against charter for most of D1. Thoughts on that?

[charter]

Given that there were only 2 scum the first time around, why aren't we taking the default position that there are 2 scum this time?

Definitely possible.. However, like Cyberbob said, I don't really think we're going to be able to figure out the setup.

CoCo pushes charter often, and I am currently fairly happy with my assessment that charter chose Col Cathart D1 over Peabody because he could lynch Cathart and then use it to hesitate D2 on Peabody. It fits.

I can't deny it, it does fit, but have you gone back and looked at Peabody's actions towards me day one? He was trying to lynch me for awful reasons. It's pretty indicative of him trying to mislynch me.

Without actually checking, I'm pretty sure I've been in/seen quite a few games with two scum and with somewhat normal town roles and not heavy powered scum roles. Sometimes this is offset by a survivor or traitor or SK.

but I don't think you really believe I'm scum. Maybe you do, and your case is just meagre. I don't know.

Yeah, I'm kind of waivering on it. I want to reread le chat some more too as well, since I think he could be some kind of super sneaky scum. His latest post seemed to be a platform he could jump off on to anyone who is garnering suspicion today.

re mathcam's post: I don't know what I can say, all of what you said is true. I messed up flip flopping day one, just have to try and make up for it now.

Unvote

Actually, after thinking it over a bit, I'm pretty sure that SC is town based on interactions with Peabody. Peabody rather blatantly defended SC Day 1, it feels a lot like him buddying up with a townie and not the sort of thing I would expect between two scum.

I'm really not sure who might be scum at the moment. I'll have to give it some more thought later, I'm honestly just posting to avoid the prod/replacement right now.

You still need to explain why you voted him in the first place. That vote isn't going to magically disappear.

[Cyberbob]

Alrighty.

Hoopla, please make up your mind about someone. Almost every read that you've posted has been qualified into oblivion; chronic indecision helps nobody except scum as it contributes to stagnation (even your most recent one on the guy you're voting for was basically "not sure, must reread"). It would be really helpful if you could come up with

some

kind of a definite stance. Preferably one that involves voting or otherwise putting more pressure on CoCo (I agree - his activity pattern has been completely dodgy), but I'll take almost anything at this point as long as it isn't more of the same old wishy-washiness.

Vaya... what charter said. I also seem to remember saying (or at least seconding) this before: you're in too many games.

I like the cases on charter and SC (I like the one on SC a bit more), but I like the one on CoCo even more right now. As far as le Chat goes, I don't think he's scum; he just needs to post more. Vaya has made a few more posts overall, but le Chat has given us a lot more content as well as (IMO) generally being less scummy.

[Kublai Khan]

Official Vote Count

Players needed to lynch: 5

charter

- 1 - CoCo - (L-4)

CoCo

- 1 - Cyberbob - (L-4)

le Chat

- 2 - SerialClergyman, Hoopla - (L-3)

SerialClergyman

- 1 - charter - (L-4)

Vaya

- 1 - le Chat - (L-4)

Players not voting: mathcam, Vaya

No prods needed at this time, but activity is drooping a little bit. I may have to give you guys a deadline.