Mini #1007 (Game Over)

[AlmasterGM]

No posts in 24 hours?

Come on.

[redtail896]

VT. Sorry, I thought that was clear from my previous ramblings.

Something about this setup stinks. Only a tracker and a doc? C'mon. I don't buy it for a sec.

Considering gonnano's claim would be anti town, and we only have a tracker and a doc, and there has consistently been only 1 NK, I'm inclined to believe that gonnano-G&H is a scum-town pair. I'm inclined to think G&H is the town half of that pair. Thoughts?

[AlmasterGM]

If I had to put my money on who was the scum between the two of them up until about 2-3 pages ago, I would have put everything I own on G&H, but gonnano's whole handling of the situation in general was pretty poor. So I'm in a toss-up right now.

FORTUNATELY, since they are both confirming themselves as lovers, IT DOESN'T MATTER. ONE PROBABLY ISN'T TOWN. PUT A VOTE DOWN.

[redtail896]

VOTE: gonnano

[Hoopla]

VT. Sorry, I thought that was clear from my previous ramblings.

Something about this setup stinks. Only a tracker and a doc? C'mon. I don't buy it for a sec.

Word. Town would be in for a royal fucking nine times out of ten if the only PR's in a 3-scum game were a Doctor and a Tracker. It's even worse with a Town/Town lover combination, which basically equals double mafia-kill. So, possibilities;

1) Everything we know is true, and the lovers are a town/town combination.
2) One of the lovers is scum, and this is the mode of balancing the mod has used to offset such a minimal PR game.
3) One of our VT's is lying for some reason. I hope this isn't the case, but that would almost certainly be idiotic play.
4) There is only two scum, which would also be a fair way to balance this game. Actually, this would be a pretty interesting set-up.
5) There is an SK who has chosen not to kill. Generally these set-ups can get away with less PR's.

I hope to god the first option isn't true, but I admit there is an outside chance of it happening - I've played in a couple of poorly balanced Mini Normals before. The good news is we have a mandatory review system in place to trump such poorly designed set-ups, but even still - outside chance.

The second option is the most likeliest, I feel, though it still feels slightly underpowered. This wouldn't be a bad result for us going into tomorrow if this is true, because we're almost certainly going to lynch gonnano. That'd take us to 1 scum in 5 players (meaning two lynches), with my death being the expense tonight.

I'm not ruling the third option out, but if we have a powerrole fakeclaiming VT, you'd better get your ass in here and fix it now, because you will not be believed tomorrow if you try to claim results then. It is not the right play. I refuse to acknowledge poor town play as a possible option for what is happening.

This option is possible, but 2:10 games are so rare (like ~3%) that I'd consider the fifth option to have a better chance. To be honest, that's how I'd play the SK if I had immunity of some sort (particularly NK immunity). Town would never go on an SK hunt, and you'd really just need to avoid the lynch. This still feels like a long shot compared to option two, though.

I feel like the probabilities are thus;

Option 1) 20%
Option 2) 50%
Option 3) 5% (even though I hate the thought of it)
Option 4) 10%
Option 5) 10%
Something else I might have missed) 5%

[Hoopla]

Espeonage - you haven't been here in 5 days, what's up? Can you give us a prod on Vel?

Everyone else: slap a vote on gonnano, you know you want to.

[Espeonage]

VOTE COUNT

3 -

gonnano

- Hoopla, AlmasterGM, redtail896 (L-2)
1 -

Kid Know Nothing

- Vel-Rahn Koon (L-4)
1 -

Vel-Rahn Koon

- gonnano (L-4)

Not Voting - ConfidAnon, Good and Honest, Kid Know Nothing

With 8 alive it takes 5 to lynch.

[Hoopla]

It's nice to have one anyway, though. When's the deadline exactly?

[Espeonage]

just under three days.

[gonnano]

I'm inclined to believe Hoopla. G&H is so hard to read because he only participates halfway, and I didn't think he was scum at first but now I'm not sure that I can tell the difference with someone who rarely posts and doesn't vote, and doesn't claim even when it doesn't break the no-lying playstyle.

Since I've got the votes already, we should probably just go ahead and lynch me instead of moving the wagon.
VOTE: Gonnano

Just in case the lynch goes through before I get a chance to post again, note that I still find VRK extremely scummy, and I'm not sure why Hoopla shifted away from him so suddenly. I can tell you one thing, the "humble acceptance" approach would be the first thing I would try as scum if I were in the situation that VRK was in.

[Hoopla]

^ I think we just figured out the town half of this relationship.

I think it was incredibly telling that the only time G&H committed to something in this game (his claim) was when he realised he was in danger of being lynched (or killed via the lynch).

[Hoopla]

I feel like I ought to post my final reads too;

Redtail is almost certainly town, regardless of what these flips reveal. Kid Know Nothing is half cleared by my tracker claim, so I'd be reluctant to lynch him on that basis - it's just damn unlucky if he turns out to be a goon who didn't submit a kill in the same night I tracked him. Vel, I started to believe is town, but I wouldn't rule him out completely. Almaster is still probably town, though I'm not as passionate about that read as I once was.

Regardless of the flips, you should only be considering Vel and ConfidAnon tomorrow - seriously. I have a strong preference for ConfidAnon tomorrow if my opinion is worth anything to you, and if somehow this is a town/town lovers flip, you must always assume that you're playing in a 3-scum set-up, even though it is inherently unbalanced. In the case of a town/scum flip - you have two chances to hit the last scum, and I expect the town to figure it out.

[redtail896]

I agree with gonnano's suspicion of VRK.

Hoopla: I'm inclined to think we're in between situations 2 and 4. Either way though, we'll have 1 scum to find in 2 days. I kind of like those odds.

EBWOP: thanks for the confidence. I agree that VRK and CA are the primary people to search for.

[Hoopla]

I'm paranoid about a town/town flip, though. If it is, I really want ConfidAnon to die first.

[Hoopla]

I'm paranoid about a town/town flip, though. If it is, I really want ConfidAnon to die first.

Actually, if it is situation one - your opinion on what's happening has just been proven wrong, so you should definitely listen to

my

opinion.

[gonnano]

I'm with redtail. Either G&H and I are both town and there is one scum left, or G&H is scum and there is one other scum. Either way it ends up in a matchup of one scum against four townies.

[Good and Honest]

Even if the other players decide to lynch gonnano or me, that doesn't mean we shouldn't use the time we were given for gathering as much information as possible.

I'm not impressed with the activity on Day 3 in general. ConfidAnon is continuing as usual... Actually, today ConfidAnon is doing even less than usual - after at least having done one or two things on Day 1 and Day 2... After seemingly giving up, Vel-Rahn Koon has also disappeared recently - even though I specifically encouraged Vel-Rahn Koon to help develop the discussion. Apart from one post about Vel-Rahn Koon, Kid Know Nothing has also been quiet. And I don't think AlmasterGM has done much, either - at first AlmasterGM strangely didn't understand that Hoopla had unclaimed; after realizing that, in my opinion, AlmasterGM didn't quite explore the situation. And since then AlmasterGM has only been urging people to vote.

What disappoints me the most is that it looks like for the most part people aren't commenting on my thoughts and observations - I feel as if I'm only imagining that I'm playing with other players...

Hoopla, from your post #530 I got the impression that you were working on a new analysis which you were going to reveal shortly. I hope you're planning to do that before the deadline. Also, after unclaiming "Gunsmith", you told gonnano: "You're lucky you aren't being confirmed town based on believing my claim or not, and not finding my breadcrumb. You're town because of something else you said, that you almost certainly wouldn't if you were mafia". Will you, please, share what was it that gonnano said that at the time made you believe that gonnano was an innocent townsperson?

Something that happened during the trialogue between Hoopla, redtail896 and gonnano has caught my attention. In post #588 gonnano says: "I'll go ahead and say now what I was planning to say later, which is that I thought Hoopla might be a tracker who saw me target nobody and saw redtail target shotty, then was trying to get more info from redtail by claiming gunsmith". Taking into consideration that Hoopla has now claimed to be a "Tracker", that was quite a curious sentence. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what it means.

...Just like I still can't decide how to interpret redtail896's question to Hoopla, which I mentioned earlier: "What in your analysis is such a smoking gun?". Especially now that redtail896 has claimed to be a "Vanilla Townie"... I'm wondering about something. When Hoopla accused redtail896 of having a gun, redtail896 denied that and then said: "I just double checked my role pm. I don't own a gun". Has there been any game where a "Vanilla Townie" has had a gun? Did redtail896 really have to double check? It's not impossible, of course - I often double and triple check things I'm sure about - but I find this noteworthy.

I asked what redtail896 meant when saying in post #557 "VRK wanted to shift Zach to CA" but received no answer. Since there isn't that much time left and I want to say something about this, I'll just have to hope my interpretation is correct. I assume redtail896 meant that during Day 2 Vel-Rahn Koon as a whole avoided commenting on Zachrulez, instead concentrating on ConfidAnon. While I agree to an extent, I actually felt that during Day 2 Vel-Rahn Koon's focus was largely on me - early in the Day Vel-Rahn Koon mentioned me as a main suspect. After that Vel-Rahn Koon interacted mostly with me, in the end announcing intending to vote for me. What I mean is that if Vel-Rahn Koon were trying to shift attention from Zachrulez to someone else, that "someone else" was more me than ConfidAnon.

I have talked about the possibility of Hoopla and AlmasterGM being mafia partners so I guess I should point this out: when redtail896 mentioned AlmasterGM as suspect number 2 (after Vel-Rahn Koon), Hoopla replied: "I think you're stretching it with the AGM suspicion. Don't you think a more natural scum reaction would be to try and diffuse the Zach wagon by starting another?". redtail896 agreed with that point but added: "However, what do you think of the other elements of my suspicion?"... However, there was no answer as in Hoopla's next post Hoopla claimed "Gunsmith" and asked why redtail896 had a gun. The attention just went in a totally different direction...

I still don't know why redtail896 was so confident Hoopla's "Gunsmith" claim was true. Hopefully redtail896 will explain that at some point.

It looks like ConfidAnon is playing in quite a few games. That might be an explanation for ConfidAnon's inactivity here... but it doesn't mean people shouldn't pay attention to ConfidAnon. In any case, I wonder why you decided to participate in so many games at the same time, ConfidAnon?

So far I haven't commented on Kid Know Nothing much and that's not good since every player should be examined. Kid Know Nothing, you didn't answer me when I asked you about your mentioning that your vote for AlmasterGM on Day 1 "held little in the way of reasoning". If you thought it "held little in the way of reasoning", why did you vote for AlmasterGM? That came all of a sudden as before that you hadn't talked about AlmasterGM; you had concentrated mainly on ConfidAnon. As a matter of fact, in your post previous to the one where you voted AlmasterGM, you stated your vote would be on ConfidAnon.

This brings me to my other question - you focused so much on ConfidAnon at the beginning of the game... but after that almost didn't mention ConfidAnon. Why? On Day 2 redtail896 asked you to what extent your case against Zachrulez could apply to ConfidAnon and in post #457 you answered: "I was going to look into him next, actually. Sometime later tonight"... But at no point did you mention the results of looking into ConfidAnon. In that same post #457 you said: "CA, why are you finding it hard to make a post in this game? There is plenty to comment on. If you'd like, I can certainly give you a lot to answer" - but you didn't. It's true that later gonnano asked ConfidAnon several questions but, if you had questions yourself, you could have also asked them.

I see the last few comments. Hoopla, my confirming gonnano's words has nothing to do with whether I'm a mafioso or not. This was a very particular situation where another player's fate was depending on me in a very special way so I just couldn't remain silent. In any case, I'll repeat that even if you decide to lynch one of us two, as much time as possible should be used for discussion. I have the bad feeling that the lack of comments on Day 3 might prove to be a problem in the future...

[redtail896]

...Just like I still can't decide how to interpret redtail896's question to Hoopla, which I mentioned earlier: "What in your analysis is such a smoking gun?". Especially now that redtail896 has claimed to be a "Vanilla Townie"... I'm wondering about something. When Hoopla accused redtail896 of having a gun, redtail896 denied that and then said: "I just double checked my role pm. I don't own a gun". Has there been any game where a "Vanilla Townie" has had a gun? Did redtail896 really have to double check? It's not impossible, of course - I often double and triple check things I'm sure about - but I find this noteworthy.

I asked for the smoking gun because I wanted to know what it was. I thought that he was far too accusatory of me, and I wanted to know why. And I honestly did check my role pm; I play in multiple games, and wanted to make absolutely sure that I had matched the right role pm to the right game. I don't understand why you find either of these things noteworthy. And again, you simply state that such things exist; you decline to present any actual analysis of them.

I still don't know why redtail896 was so confident Hoopla's "Gunsmith" claim was true. Hopefully redtail896 will explain that at some point.

I had no real reason to doubt the claim. I had Hoopla listed in my personal notes as strongly town. I did question her sanity though, because I knew that a gunsmith positive on me was impossible.

Also, your continuing insinuation that Hoopla is scum has been noted. If Hoopla is scum, then the only town power role in existence is a doc. That is far too weak to be the actual situation.

[gonnano]

Going into tomorrow...
-Hoopla is essentially confirmed town unless another PR comes up, and even if one does show up that person will need a real humdinger of an excuse for not claiming during the massclaim.
-redtail is almost confirmed town because of his response to Hoopla's gunsmith claim. The chance that he saw the breadcrumb and played off of Hoopla's gambit is small enough to disregard -- I was looking for the breadcrumb and still wasn't sure that I had found it.
- KKN is basically confirmed by Hoopla's investigation. If G&H is town, KKN is basically confirmed town because the likelihood of there being someone else to submit the kill on N2 is almost nothing. If G&H is scum, it's possible that KKN is scum, though given G&H's refusal to vote, I find it highly unlikely that he would submit a nightkill unless he was the last scum left.

This leaves you with CA and VRK as suspects. However, a town player will get killed tonight, which means that if G&H and I are both gone the game goes into MYLO. So you'll have only one chance to pick the scum.

If you are willing to assume that I'm town (I'm pseudo-cleared by a N1 investigation), I think the best play might be to postpone my lynch. If we lynch CA or VRK today, we confirm the alignment of one of the two viable suspects. If we're wrong, there will still be enough townies around to lynch the other one tomorrow (again, I'm including myself as town). After we find the scum, we rewagon me and kill G&H for the win.

In hopeful anticipation I will
UNVOTE: Gonnano

[Hoopla]

HELL NO.

[gonnano]

Why did you have to ninja me? I was just getting back on to say that I completely forgot about AGM, so my plan sucks.
VOTE: Gonnano

[Good and Honest]

I don't see why I shouldn't explore Hoopla's potentially being a mafioso. I don't know what would be "far too weak" but there is always the possibility that some of the players didn't reveal their true roles - although Hoopla seemingly doesn't really want to consider this.

gonnano, what about AlmasterGM made you reconsider your plan? By the way, if you had looked more closely at my previous three games (especially the third one), you'd have found out that as a mafioso I would never kill anyone at all.

redtail896, what caught my interest regarding your question "What in your analysis is such a smoking gun?" was that it included the word "GUN". And while it may just be a coincidence that later Hoopla claimed to be a "Gunsmith", I hope you'll agree that this was curious.

I think Hoopla's post #729 gave me an insight. I honestly believe redtail896 may be a "Serial Killer". And since you want an analysis - perhaps you double checked your Role PM to see if a "Serial Killer" has a gun. If I'm not mistaken, a "Serial Killer" typically has a knife, not a gun. If that were the case here, it would explain why you sounded so confident when repeatedly stating you didn't have a gun. Also, if what Hoopla says about immunity to night kills is true here, when you combine that with the fact that many of the players have mentioned you as a likely innocent townsperson (i.e., someone who won't be lynched), your approach to this game would definitely make sense as a "Serial Killer". Most of the time I don't share such thoughts but it would be amazing if I turn out to be right... So, redtail896, if I'm wrong, I'm really, really sorry...

[Vel-Rahn Koon]

I've gotten prodded and I'm drowning IRL between research and teaching. I will have something to comment on over the last 3 pages tomorrow. Brief skimming, I don't see a Town/Town lovers pair, especially if we have 3 mafia. I would be more inclined to think it would be T/T lovers if there were only 2 mafia. But also remember that Espeonage has a lot of his experience playing Mafia on another site, so things may not be "standard" for how it's done here. I'm inclined to vote for either of gonnano or G&H and take the chance on there being a Town/Mafia pair (which is the standard way to make a lovers pair, isn't it?) than to go off any other data for the day.

I don't think that we necessarily can get anything out of Hoopla's track targets - I don't think we'd see an investigation-type role in a game without some way for the Mafia to counter it (via Godfather or similar), so I'm not sure we can take the trackings at face value. It's fully possible that one of Hoopla's targets is "investigation" immune.

Gonnano is at L-1 right now. I will wait to vote until tomorrow so I can do more in the way of posting and maybe catch up to everyone else.

[gonnano]

I don't see why I shouldn't explore Hoopla's potentially being a mafioso.

Have you explored the possibility that if she wasn't the tracker someone else would have claimed a power role?

gonnano, what about AlmasterGM made you reconsider your plan?

Nothing about him specifically, just the fact that I missed someone. I thought we would be going into MYLO tomorrow, but we aren't.

[gonnano]

also, I think that the relative weakness of the town could allow for a mafia with no roleblocks or immunities, especially if G&H is town.