I had a town read on you silver, and hindu offing himself was trying to do you a favor. He halted discussion so that you wouldn't have to stake out a position on his lynch.
Were I in your shoes I would have killed seraphim, allowed switz to be mislynched, then killed archaebob and go into D3 with a reasonably solid position.
"If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh. Otherwise they'll kill you."
silverbullet999 wrote:you were proven town in my eyes from hindu..
Even if he was, you kinda had to kill the cop. First of all, Prox wasn't proven town to the rest of town just because hinduragi pushed a case against him. Secondly, even if he was, you'd have 1 mafia vs 6 town with 1 confirmed, just kill Prox the next night. Leaving a cop alive guaranteed either a cleared town or a known mafia, when it's 7 players alive and town has 2 mislynches, it's not reasonable to take that risk.
Earlier in this game, I think that town started off really strong with foilist13 spotting hinduragi. archaebob had the right idea but he missed something that connected silverbullet999... I'm not sure (I didn't read) why town started to shift towards the IC slot.
foilist13 wrote:I had a town read on you silver, and hindu offing himself was trying to do you a favor. He halted discussion so that you wouldn't have to stake out a position on his lynch.
This is interesting to me, I thought silverbullet999 was obvscum after reading the first 77 posts (before knowing the setup), but I really didn't pick up on hinduragi the way you did. I thought your case was convincing though, and after reading it I thought that the pair made a likely scumteam.
Good work everyone! Sorry I almost drew the game out by getting near-mislynched. Good to see my dying case vindicated though.
Prox wrote: I was hoping that by not claiming I'd confuse the scum, especially since it was unlikely that any experienced guys were there. I hope that helped.
I actually thought you were softclaiming doctor at the end of the day, so I would have totally been on your side if you had lived until D2. Unfortunately, you didn't, so it didn't really matter.
And Silver, you definitely could have made it through if you tried. You could have killed Seraph, like Porx and Foilist said, or you could have just not killed, fakeclaimed Doctor, and hoped Seraphim wouldn't have checked you overnight. It wouldn't have worked in this particular case, but if Seraph never checked, you would have easily lynched me today and could have gotten anyone on D3, especially G&H.
meh as i said i was demotivated from day 1 results and my other games... I retire once i finish up my other two games... well i may just replace out of one.
I learned a lot about scum and scumhunting in this game from archaebob and foilist. And the thing with shotty that made me realize things like OMGUS don't matter if there's no scummy intent.
When I backed off, I was pretty sure I was getting lynched anyways. I did that to make it seem like epic WIFOM. I also left that connection to Switz to try and make him seem like my scumbuddy. Overall, though, my performance as scum was fail but I tried to make sure I could at least save my partner.
Foilist wrote:I had a town read on you silver, and hindu offing himself was trying to do you a favor. He halted discussion so that you wouldn't have to stake out a position on his lynch.
I figured you guys would pick up on what I was doing. Anyways, good game guys. I thought we had Day 1 practically over until the replacements came in, haha.
Prox wrote:I thought Hindu made me seem scummy ^^
Yeah, that's what I was trying to do by backing off your lynch. =/
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Okay, that's it, I'm putting V/LAs in my sig from now on. I am fairly sure I announced V/LA in all my games and yet I have been prodded in all of them. >_>
Ah well, glad I investigated the right person! Sorry for making you wait for my result.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about the roleblocker. You still could have made it work for a day though because we would have gone right after G&H, because he said earlier he wouldn't kill if he was the last mafioso left.
Here are some comments for you all; I hope none of what I'm about to say comes off as condescending, I'm only giving my humble opinion and advice to the newbies. Enjoy.
Hinduragi - I really was 100% on you being scum from basically your first post. I'm not always as certain as I pretend to be (my unequivocal confidence about everything is a completely fabricated scumhunting tactic), but in this case, your play made it obvious. I'll bet you've already figured out the lesson you need to learn from this game . On the whole, I can tell you have talent for mafia, and I definitely look forwards to seeing what you do in the future.
Switz - Honestly, I think your play was very good overall. In particular, I felt your case on silver today was very well done, and was probably the primary factor in my unvoting. Also, your defense did manage to plant important seeds of doubt about the validity of my case, just by the sheer amount of torturous honesty emanating from it. A lesser player would have tried to come up with false explanations for things, which would have just set off our scumdars more. I think it's not improbable that we could have gotten it right today even without the cop result, so I applaud you for turning around your play. I definitely look forwards to more games with you in the future.
shotty - It was obvious to anyone who really thought about it that you were town in this game, so in that sense, you were effective. However, there's a lot of stuff you need to learn before you'll be helpful to the town's scumhunting efforts. Really focus hard on checking your logic before you do things; in another game, you could have easily gotten lynched for all the OMGUS, AtE, and wagon hopping you tend to do. Your instincts are good though, so I think with experience you'll learn.
Prox - Great play. No complaints really. I don't really know to what extent your seeming scummy D1 was a deliberate ploy on your part, but it certainly helped the town find scum in this game. If you liked my scumhunting style, than I suggest you check out an article written by Albert B. Rampage in the wiki. "How to Focus On Scum And Get Them Lynched" is the one. See you around the site.
G&H - Well, what is one to say about you, huh? Your analysis is good, your instincts are good, and you did ultimately help the town. However, you do have to recognize that your playstyle is going to be a battle that distracts the town in every single game you play on this site. I strongly recommend that you at least shorten the length of your posts. People simply aren't going to care enough about your opinion to go through a novel each time, and since they already have to swallow your refusal to vote, you might want to at least given them that one compromise.
Great game overall, though I'm very disappointed in silver's attitude.
"What happened to your eye?"
"Ice pick, 1957. Anymore questions?"
"Just asking, jeez..."
The one piece of advice I'd want you all to come away with is that your gut is usually right, and always know more than you do.
Contradictions are great scum tells, but they are rare and take a lot of effort to consistently uncover. Read people in iso and in the thread and put yourself in their shoes. That's the best way to learn how to scum hunt.
"If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh. Otherwise they'll kill you."
Hello Kison! That must have been a dream scenario - you enter and immediately give town the win!
As I said earlier, in both of my previous games on this forum the town lost and I think the reason for this was that everyone focused just on a couple of players who were quickly lynched and as a result there wasn't enough information. In this game, the completely opposite happened - we used much of the time we were given and many players were discussed thoroughly. That certainly helped the town win.
At the beginning of the game, I almost had a feeling it was a team effort against drmyshottyizsik - Prox attacked drmyshottyizsik, Switz agreed with the attack, Hinduragi presented a case against drmyshottyizsik, everybody congratulated Hinduragi for the case... While I was happy that people were actively investigating, I didn't think concentrating so much just on drmyshottyizsik was a good idea. I also quite early decided that yes, Prox, Switz and Hinduragi sounded logical while drmyshottyizsik sounded illogical - but that alone didn't show who could be a mafioso. A logical person should sound logical regardless of role in the game and vice versa. drmyshottyizsik seemed like an easy target. So I thought it was more likely that one or more of Prox, Switz and Hinduragi was a mafioso than drmyshottyizsik being one.
I did notice something strange about silverbullet999 at the time and I commented on it - silverbullet999 unvoted me but then seemed to encourage drmyshottyizsik to keep voting me. I asked silverbullet999 about that situation and I wasn't really convinced by the answer but I wasn't sure what more I could ask so I decided to leave it at that.
Then archaebob and foilist13 came... and changed the game completely. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if the two players they replaced had remained in the game...
I was flabbergasted by archaebob's and foilist13's immediate accusations against Hinduragi. Before that I had just assumed this was simply Hinduragi's writing style... But Hinduragi's reaction to the accusations didn't impress me at all. It really sounded like: "How did they manage to catch me?"... I was puzzled that Hinduragi placed archaebob and foilist13 as the least likely to be mafiosi - just because they attacked Hinduragi?!
Hinduragi, it will be interesting for me to know whether you would have used the same style you did at the beginning of the game if you weren't a mafioso. As I noted, after the attacks against you, your style changed - you became somehow more aggressive and interrogative. I think that if you hadn't changed, it would have been easier for me to believe that your style in the beginning was simply a result of your personality.
A thought that crossed my mind at the time was that archaebob or foilist13 could be a mafioso trying to bring attention to Hinduragi so said attention wouldn't be on their partner... I even thought: "What if archaebob and foilist13 are mafia partners?"... but, of course, I knew that it would be an extremely big statistical coincidence if both replacements in the game were mafiosi. Still, I was confused when archaebob expressed suspicion of foilist13 and I wondered what that could mean about these theories of mine.
Then, of course, there was Haylen's behaviour. I had noticed that Haylen almost hadn't participated at all in the discussions and then made those strange last posts... At that time I was thinking of two possible mafia teams: Haylen-drmyshottyizsik and Haylen-Prox. Reasons for the first team: Haylen had remained inactive while people were focusing on drmyshottyizsik and there was drmyshottyizsik's post #175 which asked specifically Haylen to unvote Prox and vote Hinduragi. I also thought that could be the explanation for the unexplained vote for drmyshottyizsik in Haylen's last post.
However, I was much more convinced of the Haylen-Prox team. The only thing Haylen did in the beginning was vote for Prox in a somewhat pecuilar manner. And then Prox brought that up on several occasions during the game... Also, in Haylen's last post, Haylen told Prox: "You have no idea how pissed off I'm getting over people twisting my words. I seriously advise you to stop" - I thought that was another instance of distancing from a mafia partner. And, of course, there was this famous sentence of Haylen's: "I am pretty sure that Switz is town, if he is scum, then he has been coached by experienced scum in the quicktopic". I really couldn't understand the purpose of that sentence. My only interpretation was that it was meant to bring attention to Switz and AWAY from Prox - the real person whom the experienced Haylen had "coached" in the QuickTopic...
The interactions between archaebob and silverbullet999 had also caught my attention. It definitely looked like silverbullet999 voted for me just because archaebob asked why silverbullet999 wasn't voting. And I have already commented on how puzzling silverbullet999's reasons for the vote were: "I'll be suspicious of him the whole game". One is supposed to be at least a little suspicious of each other player... And then there was that "silverbullet999 strikes back" moment which I'll discuss below.
So, Seraphim replaced Haylen. I was really surprised that Seraphim immediately accused drmyshottyizsik - I would have expected that Seraphim had previously come across other players with peculiar behaviour (and that doesn't automatically make them mafiosi)... Then Seraphim switched accusations to Prox - so Seraphim attacked the two players who I suspected could be mafia partners with Haylen. What did that mean?... And after that Seraphim claimed to be a "Cop". I didn't know what to think about that - as I stated, in my opinion, Haylen's behaviour didn't make sense as a "Cop"... I supposed that Seraphim thought the situation was critical because of the "legacy" Haylen had left so only a "Cop" claim could help... But still, that was a huge risk which I wasn't sure Seraphim as a mafioso would take.
At that time Switz made an "impulsive" vote for Hinduragi. I was shocked because I wouldn't expect Switz to do something out of the blue like that. It seemed to me just like an excuse to vote someone... I had no idea what Switz's intentions were.
But things didn't look good for Prox, who had become the centre of attention. And I did think it was likely that Prox was a mafioso - especially with the contradiction I pointed out where Prox voted/placed a "Finger of Suspicion"/unvoted Haylen... But then Prox made those explanation posts... Seraphim said "That entire last post was a giant batch of Appeal to Emotion that doesn't convince anyone of your town-ness"... However, I was convinced to a large extent that Prox was an innocent townsperson by those posts (who knows, maybe I'm too sensitive?). They just sounded so honest to me...
Hinduragi, when you explained why Prox couldn't possibly be a mafioso, that didn't make me suspect Prox more, it just made me find your behaviour stranger. Although, who knows what I might have thought about that if Prox had survived until Day 2...
Let me now return to silverbullet999. I had observed how during the whole game silverbullet999 was playing very quietly. I had the feeling that silverbullet999 may have a "power role" and that's why I didn't comment on silverbullet999's behaviour for a long while. But then I thought: "OK, silverbullet999 might have a "power role" but might just as well be a mafioso. And in that case I'll really regret it if I don't comment on silverbullet999's behaviour..."
So I compared the way silverbullet999 played in this game to the ones in Newbie 940 and Newbie 965. I found many similarities between Newbie 940 and our current game - silverbullet999 was relatively inactive in both but had "silverbullet999 stikes back" moments... However, everything in Newbie 940 seemed natural because that was silverbullet999's first game. Here, as I stated, everything seemed "planned" - as if silverbullet999's idea was to replicate the behaviour from Newbie 940 but in an even more quiet way.
There was also that remarkable post #280. It definitely felt like silverbullet999 was saying: "I wasn't very active so far because I was observing things. The time has come for me to share my observations, here they are!"... but, in fact, silverbullet999 just made a few comments on the players that had already been discussed a lot. That seemed to me like a simulation of contribution.
I have recently also come to realize something else that was strange about silverbullet999's behaviour - silverbullet999's interactions with Haylen and foilist13 weren't real interactions at all; they were based solely on past experience together.
I said it would be curious if once again the person who had experienced the "silverbullet999 strikes back" moment (in this case - archaebob) turned out to be a mafioso. silverbullet999's reaction was: "How would you feel if I was correct?" - which I found interesting because I thought it sounded like it was meant to imply not so subtly that silverbullet999 was an innocent townsperson...
Anyway, Hinduragi committed suicide and I knew why - so that the partner wouldn't need to comment on Hinduragi's situation. Which meant that the partner was most probably a player who hadn't had the chance to react - Switz or silverbullet999 (or even archaebob)...
When the night came, I thought there were only two possibilities for who would be killed - Seraphim (if the "Cop" claim was true) or I. After all, if I survived until Day 2 and another player was killed during the night, that would prove that I'm not a mafioso. So I wasn't even excluding the possibility that no one would be killed... As a result, I was baffled that Prox was killed.
And then archaebob immediately presented a remarkable case on Switz. I must admit, at that time I thought: "Oh no, if Switz is indeed a mafioso, archaebob has single-handedly solved the case!"... Which, of course, would have been a great achievement for archaebob (who, after all, was the one to discover Hinduragi), but I wouldn't have felt like I have helped find the solution. So I hoped archaebob was wrong about Switz...
After that Switz appeared and immediately noted that the fact that someone was killed during the night proved I wasn't a mafioso... This made Switz more likely to be an innocent townsperson in my eyes because I didn't think a mafioso would be willing to point that out.
When I made my last post, I just wanted to examine Switz and silverbullet999. I planned to comment on Seraphim in my next post (after Seraphim appeared, of course) because that was another main suspect - especially for surviving the night.
As I said, I was confused when archaebob showed silverbullet999 the post by Haylen that sounded "pressured" but was made after archaebob's initial comment. I thought archaebob might have made a mistake but I also felt that could have been a trap for silverbullet999 - I just didn't know whether archaebob set that trap as a mafioso or as an innocent townsperson... But the fact is, silverbullet999 accepted that and didn't bother to check the chronology of the posts - after having done it previously. My interpretation (although I didn't state it in my last post) was that silverbullet999 wasn't actually that interested in examining archaebob - which meant that all of silverbullet999's previous interactions with archaebob, especially the "silverbullet999 strikes back" moment, were most probably simply a simulation of activity.
I'm really proud that I found those things in the Switz-Hinduragi interactions which I said made it less likely that they were mafia partners. Yes, it wasn't 100% evidence but I was proven right.
I must admit that I don't like obvious solutions. That's why even after my last post I was hoping the solution would be something unexpected - for example, if the second mafioso was drmyshottyizsik, archaebob or foilist13. I thought that if someone is going to replace into a game and immediately attack their partner (who had previously stayed away from attention), that would be an experienced player like archaebob and foilist13. After all, archaebob unvoted Hinduragi soon after the initial attack and switched attention to Haylen...
As for foilist13 - one of the main reasons for my suspicion was Hinduragi's last post before Day 1 was over: "Anyways, I just have one last thing to say: Kudos to foilist for keeping his case on me"... I believed the idea was to make any connection between Hinduragi and foilist13 seem absolutely unlikely... Hinduragi, I'd really like to know whether with that post you intended to cast some suspicion over foilist13.
Anyway, as much as I enjoyed my unlikely theories, I knew that the choice would most probably be between Switz and silverbullet999. I had shown evidence that Switz may not be Hinduragi's partner. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there was NO such evidence for silverbullet999 - NOTHING proved that silverbullet999 couldn't be Hinduragi's partner. And, when I came here, it was indeed revealed that silverbullet999 was the second mafioso.
I have to say once more that during the period of time when I made post #200 I was feeling really, really bad. I hope I'll never experience something similar again in a game of Mafia. But otherwise, I did enjoy our current game. It was very interesting to see how everything seemed to suddenly change from time to time. What I loved the most was how the whole time I felt that every solution, even the most unlikely, was possible. This feeling was fantastic - and it was great trying to explore in my mind all of these different possibilities...
By the way, Haylen, don't think I've forgotten - you promised you'd take notes throughout the game and I really want to see them!
Finally, does anyone remember that I said this in the beginning: "Well, I see that some of you have said why they love our moderator... I'll tell you all why I love KittyMo when the game ends!"? KittyMo, I love you because, while I know it was all random, I once again received a "Vanilla Townie" role. I didn't really want to have a "power role" because, as I explained, I think I prefer relying only on my thoughts to having some special abilities... and I certainly didn't want at all to be a mafioso! So you (unknowingly) contributed to my playing experience!
Thank you all for playing with me!
And thank you, KittyMo and Excedrin, for moderating our game!
. On the whole, I can tell you have talent for mafia, and I definitely look forwards to seeing what you do in the future.
