Open 557: Deck of Stacks [Game Over]

[penguin_alien]

VOTE: beastcharizard

I

have

played with you, and you killed my entire family. VENGEANCE!

[penguin_alien]

Paschendale is an Innocent Child

[img]http://i.imgur.com/flRWu.gif
[/img]
This is the best news I've gotten all week.

Heh, I'd bitch about kissing up to the IC, but after I misread him for the loss in my last game with him, I don't disagree.

[penguin_alien]

Hm, day talk and role cop. I'd leave the traitor alone in hopes of confusing town scum hunting processes. BP and JOAT are mostly good for foiling a goon cop and not worth increasing the risk of giving town useful powers. Day talk is fun, and role cop is worth adding one PR to town.

Actually the traitor part might depend on my partner, if I thought we'd work well on our own as judged by pre-game decision-making processes or if I thought a third person would help cohesion. Not sure if I'd do recruitment in addition to or in place of day talk or role cop, given in addition to means five town PRs.

[penguin_alien]

I think I'd still take the potential for communication with more of my team over the JOAT one-shots. The point that that many town PRs makes for easier hunting doesn't hurt. And I guess RB and tracker are the only really dangerous ones. Successful bodyguarding still gets a PR killed, vig can help kill town, IC is apparently immediately publicized, and if the traitor isn't recruited, with a Mafia PR taken instead, goon cop is worthless.

[penguin_alien]

Saki, why are you trying to undermine the town IC?

[penguin_alien]

Did I give reads without noticing it again? Sleep-reading is a real thing, kids.

Mostly skimming now, but talah was an easy scum read in FEA, so I'm taking a dim view of the early scum reads there.

[penguin_alien]

Exciting Friday night, going back to earlier stuff:

I actually didn't know that taking BP changes you to Mafia Bulletproof. If the traitor is still bulletproof as well if you take BP/rolecop/daytalk I think that'd be optimal.

I don't think it's a good idea to talk about this topic this early on in the game. At least not until one of the scum dies.

I'm somewhat surprised there is serious discussion on page one. My newbie game wasn't anything like this.

Honestly this does seem a bit atypical, but I'm liking it so far.

It's nicer than reading handwaves or RVS for the sake of RVS, even if I'm voting for you currently. My vote is 100% RVS powered, I wanted to be the first to post.

Re: What would you pick as scum? I think i'd pick nothing, not going to elaborate on why as that would give scum ideas on what to do if they did the same thing. I can think of the value on asking what they'd do as that could help us find what the scum picked after some flips, but not the why, so I don't know why everyone's discussing that.

-Saki

I agree completely, no need to feed scum ideas this early on.

Why do you go from 'it's bad to talk about this' to 'it's a good alternative to RVS' to 'nope, bad topic'?

Personally I'm sort of interested to see if people circle back to that discussion once bodies start dropping.

I like Pim's 39. Throws down, takes responsibility. Town read.

talah-tn5421 fight over the undisclosed hydra is inane. It's a situation where both want to be proven right and won't move on. I don't have a town read on tn5421 at this point, but I'm not scum reading him for this. And this seems like the kind of stuff that usually gets talah wagoned early as I alluded to before.

tn5421, question: why would talah be so eager to 'scumpaint' you? Do you think scum are worried there won't be natural opportunities to get town lynched?

Voidwalker was about to get town points for his transparency in wanting to see what happens/not influence things in 42...and then I noticed him wagoning a dumb wagon. Scum blending?

Although then he immediately posts. So not actually lurking per se. Jury's out again.

tn5421, in 53, you say you don't like confusion with only three pages of content. But it's confusion about a specific issue; why does the amount of surrounding content matter?

I like SeeEmpty's style of antagonism to the IC. Yes, I'm a hypocrite; deal. And moving on, I like his antagonism across the board. He can be town.

Saki, there was a pretty limited array of reasons why you could have been scum reading talah off his first post. And do you really think scum is getting helpful ideas from knowing what people might have picked as scum? Generally speaking no one's suggesting how to use the roles obtained in novel ways. Just personal preference.

(and yes, I personally think it's courteous to say who's going to be in a game beforehand, especially when it's a player list entirely of singleton accounts; while I don't mind hydras, some people do. More of a theoretical suggestion for the future.)

mlearn2, do you think Voidwalker is lurking or is saying he lurks? Because I'd rather have someone in play who says they lurk and doesn't than vice versa.

Hey Finglove, I have a better idea of Voidwalker's stances than yours as of 68 so you can forget the policy lynch dealio.

Paschendale, having modded the Finglove-Voidwalker game in question, to say Voidwalker does this a lot is an overstatement; they're both relative newbies.

I like Desperado's confidence a bit, but after Mini 1524 I'm reserving judgment. I think I liked his confidence there and watched him roll town.

Saki, why are you trying to undermine the town IC?

More important question is, why do you think the purpose of my post was to undermine him? There's nothing in my post that remotely hints to that, and it's like you're doing the exact same thing the IC is doing, which is, misrepping my words.

-Saki

Oh dear, I'm doing what the confirmed town is doing...wait, so town mindset demonstrated? Score!

And there's a difference between interacting with the IC and implying that the IC isn't worth listening to. I felt your posts fell on the wrong side of that. Having just come off a game as an IC revealed at MyLo, I'm quite conscious of how interactions with such can go. There's a tone scum get when they don't like what an IC is saying but can't fight back in normal ways. I'm sensing that tone from your heads.

I just don't have enough on Talah to justify keeping my vote on him/her.

Phrasing pings here. Worrying about justifying one's vote rather than using it on scum. What changed between what made you vote talah and here?

tn, why in 89 do you have no read on Saki-Koromo hydra?

(psst, Finglove, I'm a she)

Heh, 97, do you really think the IC needs defending? Flawed premise is flawed.

(can't link in order to maintain integrity of hydra, sorry).

Fair warning, I see much of this and I will policy vote. I loathe the argument of 'I have this fact, but I can't show you because it might reveal my alt, but YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME ANYWAYS.' This isn't exactly something that needs to be specifically linked, given how ubiquitous it is, but I will get pissy if it becomes the go-to excuse.

mlearn2 feels surprisingly not-on-my-radar after the multiple posts. I don't have much of a sense of his stances either.

beast, other opinions?

[penguin_alien]

1) How can you speak to another player's confusion?

2) That doesn't answer the question of how threatened scum should be at this point in the game/how eager they'd be to grasp at any (apparently feeble) excuse to vote for town.

3) So what made you think it was TvT and then that Talah was the scummiest of them all after all? I don't see any shift in your posts indicating you thought talah was town at any point.

4) I'm aware you left them out and had them on your next reads list; I find it hard to conceive that you forgot about one of the most active players who was heavily involved in your line of scum hunting.

[penguin_alien]

Oh, was shos the scum? I kind of mixed you two up in my very casual spectatorship post-death then.

Fine, be kind of townish here then. :eyes suspiciously:

Seriously, thoughts on SeeEmpty and Saki-Konomo hydra?

[penguin_alien]

SeeEmpty, I don't have enough content on most of the player list to be comfortable with pushing a strong scum read, but I think at least one of tn/Katen is scum. Yeah, we have six pages not content, but a lot of it's crap, so.

I can elaborate on this now that NY 172 is over--this is a replay of the first day of that game where talah got run up for really weak arguments on account of how he reacted in part. Yes, talah was town there. So double no way in hell am I helping lynch him off what I've seen here.

[penguin_alien]

I can elaborate on this now that NY 172 is over--this is a replay of the first day of that game where talah got run up for really weak arguments on account of how he reacted in part. Yes, talah was town there. So double no way in hell am I helping lynch him off what I've seen here.

If this is true then that makes me even more suspicious of you.

The only 2 people we have pushed are talah for his reactions and you for your post that looked like buddying up to the IC.

The first push from your PoV should come as town if it's something you've seen talah get pushed for in another game and getting lynched as town, then that means that is something town tends to look as scummy as it's impossible for scum to lynch him on their own, so you can't be scumreading us for that pushas is something you've experienced town do. (In fact now that you've mentioned that, i'm going to be pretty suspicious of people that have no meta experience with talah but still found our push bad).

The push on you for your post that looked like buddying to the IC is because we know the IC is wrong, scum knows the IC is wrong, so scum is obviously going to help give the IC and town more reason to get their target lynched, but you never saw that as a possibility and you just dismissed it as a scum maneuver, so it's wrong to be scumreading us for that either.

So you really should explain where such scumread comes from as A) You're misrepping and I've shown it and B) You can't be scumreading us for something you've seen town do.

-Saki

Yeah...but see, scum was pushing talah quite heavily. And if you're town you should want to work with the IC, not pick divisive fights.

Behind on other content, but I'm A-OK with

VOTE: Katengecchi

[penguin_alien]

Voidwalker1234, why do you think wagoning without reasoning is useful? Looking through your ISO, I don't see much of anything in the way of reads on people. No paper trail. What are you thinking?

[penguin_alien]

Why does it bother you to the point you would threaten Katen with a policy vote but doesn't seem to bother you at all from Pim?

Because I've dealt with players who claim they have good information but can't reveal it for *reasons* and get tetchy over it. Sometimes scum, sometimes town. But it always leaves me frustrated as all get-out. See: Aunt Jemima in Death's Diner claiming to have scum tells on me that I was displaying but couldn't explain because it would involve revealing an alt (spoiler alert: I was town) and F-16 as Deviant Serenity in Micro 264 claiming I was playing my scum game but not wanting to give away his tells (spoiler alert: I was town, he was scum). It leaves the town deciding whether to blindly sheep, and it's dirty pool.

The difference with Pim was that he was choosing not to reveal something for the time being. I didn't get the sense he was insisting others agree with him sight unseen. I think a decent number of players try that tactic, albeit without necessarily considering what it gains them.

@penguin:

You have some questions in my wall 193. Plz answer

Naaaah. You're basically not going to be happy unless I town read you and agree with you, and since that's not happening, I don't feel like wasting my time with mincing little Q&A sessions.

I like Justin for coming in and pushing someone who's generally been townread in the person of SeeEmpty.

[penguin_alien]

I can't help but feel this is a bit scummy, even if I understand that you simply don't want to argue. Denying information is one of scum's primary tools.

Sure, if new information was going to come out of that. I don't think it will, so I'm not interested in spamming up the thread with more, "No, you!" walls, which is about where the whole thing devolves in the end.

Bottom line, I think the way they approached the IC was scummy, and all the talk of how they couldn't work with conf-town who was scum reading them sounds pretty cheap. Nothing since then has changed my mind.

talah asked where I am on other reads. So far I feel like I'm getting more town reads than scum reads, so:

Town to varying degrees: Justin, talah, SeeEmpty, Desperado (liking the relaxed style so far based on what I remember of his scum game). With me and Paschendale, that's half the game.

Everyone else:

beastcharizard--I kind of like his ramp-up as time goes on; he's a good player who cottons on to scum as the game progresses, and I expect to see good hunting from him.

Finglove--His early game thoughts are all right, but he backs off SeeEmpty quite quickly. Given that SeeEmpty got towny right quick in my estimation, it's not insane, but he was easily placated. The early stance against policy lynches isn't bad either. Not a strong town read--something doesn't set right 100%, but not my top priority.

mlearn2--Had zero recollection of him, but since I haven't ever interacted with him before this game, that's possibly on me. I like his entry post, everything from there starts torpedoing that read. After that point I get very little sense of what he thinks, as everything's either inconclusive or questioning other players without much follow-up. Scum read, and would probably vote him if I didn't feel like driving Katengecchi into the ground instead.

tn5421--unlikely to be scum with Katengecchi, and more to the point I want to see where he goes from here. I feel right now like he's a Wrong Place/Wrong Time townie. Jury's out, meh.

Voidwalker1234--There's some stuff that pings. The way he describes what he sees as scummy feels artificial, like he's looking to seize upon reasons to scum read people instead of actually scum hunt. Hate the whole 'unvote scum read due to replacement' when the slot's role PM hasn't changed.

Katengecchi: Asked and answered, your Honor.

So yeah, feeling stubborn about Katengecchi, would lynch mlearn2 as well, wouldn't defend Voidwalker1234. Those count as scum reads?

[penguin_alien]

Um... why would debating with me make someone scum? I'm town, but I'm not omniscient.

OK, since I'm self-centered and all, let's talk about my reads in 287. What there do you disagree with?

[penguin_alien]

CTD, you said you weren't sure about my play here (which, yes, I've been inactive lately; surprise!IRL things running amok) but now we're right off a game with town-me, and you know how I think as scum as well as anyone after 164. If you can narrow down your read on me, that would be super.

Mod, V/LA for me for 48 hours please. Thanks!

Yes, this means I almost certainly won't be moving my vote...

[penguin_alien]

Leaning town based on your play, but I didn't like your predecessor so you don't get a giant town endorsement.

Your point about town tells is a good one though, and I have to admit that unless scum went way underpowered here, they'd claim a PR on the way down. And possibly even more likely then.

VOTE: tn5421

L-1

[penguin_alien]

VOTE: Katengecchi

Let's see what happens.

[penguin_alien]

You're too intelligent to not realise that what will happen with a vote like this, is another day of pointless arguing over whether Katen's scum with or without TN. This is an entirely safe scum-vote peng.

Hey, look at that, someone defending Katengecchi. Who said I want to spend the day arguing? I'm also just fine with lynching Katengecchi. And why would we argue over whether Katengecchi's scum *with* tn541?

[penguin_alien]

Your point about town tells is a good one though, and I have to admit that unless scum went way underpowered here, they'd claim a PR on the way down. And possibly even more likely then.

What I don't understand penguin, is that when you took your vote off Katen last night it was in response to the case Crash made. And the Crash case wasn't that he thought tn was a better lynch than Katen, it was that he believed Katen could not be scum. But then you came right in and laid an early morning vote on Katen. So what changed between your accepting Crash's point last night and making an immediate vote on Katen this morning?

Vote: penguin_alien

Because somehow yesterday we didn't lynch. I'm not saying I wasn't complicit in that, but quite frankly I was busy with the main thing that was important enough to be V/LA for and wasn't online. Yet there was a VT claim that didn't get lynched in the absence of anything better to do. That to me indicates scum buddies who didn't want one of their own hung. It's only slightly mitigated by the part where it dumps us back in odds because giving PRs information via flips to help direct night actions is also important, so it obviously wasn't a strategic NL.

Knowing that tn5421 was town doesn't make me feel better about Katen. Add on that the case was from CTD, who declined to respond to my challenge to read me, and yeah, things changed.

[penguin_alien]

I really don't like Justin's vote on Penguin.

Eh, I'm more interested in how he responds to my last post. No pressure there, matey!

[penguin_alien]

^ Heh, don't really care, TBH, if you think my wanting to vote Katengecchi is valid. It is what it is.

Yes, I asked CTD to take another swing at reading me, since he prevaricated like hell. And I'd have no problem with him telling me to bug off, given the lack of urgency of such a read. And I actually kind of like his response to it today: not feeling obligated to make something up. Not enough to move my vote right now, but still. Kind of wish he'd done so yesterday; better late than never. As far as him not answering it yesterday, his answer didn't involve any heavy analysis, just a one-line explanation. The fun of written Mafia being that multiple subjects can be addressed at once.

You claim I'm willing to quicklynch Katengecchi. What exactly makes you think that?

What exactly is your point about my vote shifting? I had a bit of time to check in, I took it, and tried to help a lynch go through.

[penguin_alien]

Are you not saying here that you don't need to spend the whole day arguing, that you would be just fine with lynching Katen? If not, what exactly were you saying?

Because quicklynching implies lynching without thought. I don't expect everyone to jump here, but I'm OK helping to provide the early pressure.

I'll take a look at what the mlearn2 slot and CTD are doing when I actually have time.

[penguin_alien]

Mod, I will be V/LA for a week (through 6/4) due to personal issues. I apologize to you and the players; if this is too long a V/LA for the game, I understand if you need to force-replace me.

[penguin_alien]

Back, sorry folks.

Having skimmed, it seems this is a different Saki than I assumed. Not sure if that's enough to change my mind, but until I get a sense of what's going on,

UNVOTE: Katen

I assume people have questions for me or whatever; let me know. I'll be catching up and posting later today with whatever I pull up otherwise.

[penguin_alien]

PA, I think Justin summarised most of the case against you in 574; I'd be keen to hear some answers.

Answers: at the end of yesterday, I put my vote where I thought scum was most likely to be. I made it clear I was then absent. I was surprised CTD avoided giving a read on me or responding, and it made me skeptical of his alignment, which made me less confident in his case at the time. To be clear, it was the doubts about his alignment that undermined the case, not that his not commenting on me directly impacted his Katen case.

When this day started, I did intend to see how reactions to Katen-wagon played out. RL interfered with my ability to follow up on that effectively; oh, well. And I thought the other head was Saki-Saki, not a different name including Saki, which colored my impression of the slot. Mostly because I wasn't getting a town sense from what I expected of Saki...which tracks with this not being Saki.

Given short time on deadline, I'll claim now: VT. So if you want to lynch me, go for it. Better to sort out the doubts about my being cavalier now than at a LyLo situation.

I don't think much has changed on my reads. I'll figure out where I think scum most likely is soon and post a more useful thought/vote.

[penguin_alien]

Katen is at four votes, not hammer-range. I'd vote them to avoid a no-lynch, but I don't think they're scum.

Talah, beast was voting you. You think he was doing that without a scum read?

Looking back over things, between mlearn2 and Burning_Earth, that's a scummy as hell slot.

VOTE: Burning_Earth

[penguin_alien]

In any case that's probably a conversation for beast and I, don't you think?

Hey, talah?

Fuck off.

#1 pet peeve: being told that I'm 'not allowed' to comment on something I find interesting outside of a reaction test scenario.

[penguin_alien]

At this point I'd vote Finglove if Muffin keeps being townish. Scum can get weird about their own NKs.

[penguin_alien]

At this point I'd vote Finglove if Muffin keeps being townish. Scum can get weird about their own NKs.

What's your read on Empty?

-Koromo

I had him as town. I think I liked his style.