Newbie 2082 - Game Over

[frogsfrogs]

Agreed on the second part of 676. It seems unreasonable for a scum team with Igor in it to have risked their kill on the chance jk doesn't go for him, no matter what.

Err, meant Val's 681, where he responded to 676!

[Greeting]

I'd still like greeting to explain their catboi read as well as talk more about igor. He's been favorable towards them all game and only explained, once, that they think they're acting within meta from a previous town game they were in together. Is it really that strong of a read on just that basis??

When it comes to catboi, I must admit I wasn’t very interested in them from the very start of the game. My assumption was that, knowing them from N2081, I will figure out if something is wrong eventually. I cannot say that he’s a full townread in my eyes, but he’s in the lower half of my to eliminate list for sure.

My reasoning may come off as simplistic here and it kinda is. But to be fair, I never felt the need to go in deeper.

1. Getting emotional in mafia games happens all the time. I used to look down on this, but to be fair, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just human nature. It is a sign of frustration and a pretty natural response to being wrongly accused. In my experience as a mafia player I’ve virtually never seen a scum do that. And you would need to be very convincing to fake it well. Catboi did visibly get frustrated and annoyed at the game, as evidenced in 306, 429 (I did the exact same thing, and also not willingly) and the posts that followed from then towards what was so far the peak of his wagon. Note borderline abusive posts like 488 lol. I’ve wanted to write posts like that, but held back - looks like catboi has slightly less self-control.

1a. Spat with implosion - similar to what I had with Val. This just doesn’t really feel like a mafia thing to do. Scum getting in spats with townies - almost always discussed in games, almost never happens in reality.

2. Their analyses are unusually deep for a scum. Reading mine was admittedly quite interesting. They actually took the effort to audit all my posts in this forum. That’s a quite desperate thing to do to get a read on someone, and scums don’t really have the reason to do that. I’ve intentionally made myself quite an easy target to eliminate and yet instead of saying „screw that, he’s annoying”, let’s go for it, catboi goes out of their way to test me to the best of their possibilities.

3. Thinking out loud - another towntell. Scums want to seem consistent to avoid getting called out on it. Some townies avoid it as well in order to not draw too much attention to themselves. In my experience, I have only had very experienced scums doing that thing. Catboi has been longer on this site than I’ve played mafia overall, so I imagine that they’d have the ability to pull this off, but in combination with 1, 1a and 2, it doesn’t ring any alarm bells in my mind.

There are, however, some things which concern me. I felt like there happened a spike in his activity when his wagon built up. Getting too defensive while being VT (they hardclaimed it) without any explanation seems odd. I find the ability to take risks with one’s own life as the peak of VT potential and I would expect an experienced player to know and understand that.

Nonetheless, we have a lying „newbie” and a polarising despot in the game which definitely managed to pick my attention and this is the direction that I’m facing.

[Greeting]

Darnit I was trying to get the page top. I got baited into saying it too early.

There's still one thing that's bugging me about all this Greeting talk, is what is the point Greeting is even trying to do with pushing Igor? Does he still think that Igor is scum, and just isn't thinking about the risks that come with this, because I don't feel like they actually have if I think they are town.

I am aware of the risks. Of course, it would be far from ideal if we vote someone who has a power role. But his carelessness fully assured me that, at best, they’re a Jester who will only serve as a distraction and essentially of no good use for town. They didn’t even use their supposed role Night One, because they thought they would be dead anyway. Or at least that’s one of their versions - not sure which one is considered to be the truth by others now.

Perhaps this can also be explained with my experience from N2081, where I actually held back town from eliminating a Jester-like player early in Day One thinking that they were, at worst, harmless. Ultimately, I was the one to hammer them and it turned out they were scum. This experience lessened my trust for players who are less invested or have an unconventional approach to playing the game.

[Greeting]

@frogsfrogs Oh, and you asked about igor. Read my previous posts (and 702) - nothing has changed so far. They’re still trying to pull off the inexperienced newbie card to mask their previous lies. I just refuse to buy it. I hate to say stuff like this as I don’t like to drag people down, but at best he’s just a really bad player lacking any goal whatsoever other than artificial drama - in short, a Jester.

[StrangeMatter]

Darnit I was trying to get the page top. I got baited into saying it too early.

There's still one thing that's bugging me about all this Greeting talk, is what is the point Greeting is even trying to do with pushing Igor? Does he still think that Igor is scum, and just isn't thinking about the risks that come with this, because I don't feel like they actually have if I think they are town.

I am aware of the risks. Of course, it would be far from ideal if we vote someone who has a power role. But his carelessness fully assured me that, at best, they’re a Jester who will only serve as a distraction and essentially of no good use for town. They didn’t even use their supposed role Night One, because they thought they would be dead anyway. Or at least that’s one of their versions - not sure which one is considered to be the truth by others now.

Perhaps this can also be explained with my experience from N2081, where I actually held back town from eliminating a Jester-like player early in Day One thinking that they were, at worst, harmless. Ultimately, I was the one to hammer them and it turned out they were scum. This experience lessened my trust for players who are less invested or have an unconventional approach to playing the game.

I get that it would lessen your trust for players who are less invested, or have an unconventional approach to a game. However, it doesn't really make sense why you'd be fine with eliminating what you consider a Jester (I'm calling it wildcard though). It's weird because it feels like you know they are an UnCCed PR, yet still continue to push that slot because it's a useless slot and more likely to flip scum?

[StrangeMatter]

Seriously it feels like you're set on Igor's elimination, and making a decision that just straight up hurts town more often than it does help.

[frogsfrogs]

@frogsfrogs Oh, and you asked about igor. Read my previous posts (and 702) - nothing has changed so far. They’re still trying to pull off the inexperienced newbie card to mask their previous lies. I just refuse to buy it. I hate to say stuff like this as I don’t like to drag people down, but at best he’s just a really bad player lacking any goal whatsoever other than artificial drama - in short, a Jester.

Can I ask how you determine "pulling the inexperienced newbie card" from actual newbie play? Are there any specific posts where you feel like he's actively leveraging his inexperience? Because I feel like I've only seen him argue that he knows what he's doing.
I think it's been clarified to you before. Igor's final answer on his night action is that he was roleblocked, and both reports that he made before were lies intended to scope out catboi.

I

don't think it was successful or a great play-- I understand how that damages his credibility-- but can't you see how that's at least consistent enough to be maybe true? I can't get past how mechanically unreasonable it is for him to be called scum here. Even under catboi's setup 2c explanation, where there's a jk that does not know yet if igor is real or not, why do we dare vote igor today, on the chance that he's our real tracker?

review edit: yes, exactly what StrangeMatter says. I honestly consider it scummy to be still trying to argue for this, for your vote to still be on him. Scum would love for everyone to say "Yeah, wait, you're right!" and lim him without them needing to use an nk.

[StrangeMatter]

As much as I hate repeating myself on this, the last time someone ignored mechanics, in my Mini, (Mini 2235 - Gensokoyo) we lost because in ELO someone didn't realize that the only other town was mechanically cleared. As of right now, there are just zero reasons to make this Igor the elimination today and that's final.

[catboi]

There are, however, some things which concern me. I felt like there happened a spike in his activity when his wagon built up. Getting too defensive while being VT (they hardclaimed it) without any explanation seems odd. I find the ability to take risks with one’s own life as the peak of VT potential and I would expect an experienced player to know and understand that.

Nonetheless, we have a lying „newbie” and a polarising despot in the game which definitely managed to pick my attention and this is the direction that I’m facing.

For what it's worth when I learned the game I learned as town you should always fight as hard as you can against your own elimination as hard as possible and play to that maxim every game. Anecdotally I've been told the best thing you can do for your winrate as town in games is avoid being eliminated, which intuitively makes sense. I also know that in games, generally speaking,

everyone ignores the reads of the person they voted out

- it's like people have some notion of punishing the townie for acting scummy that they decide to ignore everything they said

That being said if I do get voted out I want to leave the best possible legacy reads I can and try to nail the exact team so me dying here won't be entirely in vain

Im fairly sure my extended posting spree here is out of mine and almost anyone else's scum range and would just be wildly anti-wincon if scum though because I'd be giving town more information to work with by spewing people as being unpartnered with me. I don't bother putting in a ton of work fake-solving if I know it's likely to all be rendered useless as soon as I flip red.


I don't think igorsprite is scum anymore, though, greeting - I think you have to get over your frustration him lying and acting in an antitown fashion, as i have, and kind of...try to look at overall play profile? like, just think back to day 1 and why you ere townreading him there, it probably still applies that he doesnt just egg on votes on him as mafia then claim PR (i also, again, think he doesn't openly state a PR read in-thread as mafia like he did a few pages back, he'd save it for the scum PT)

i mean i guess there's worlds where he fakes a red check and his partner yells at him to not do that and he gets forced to take it back, but meh. not worth thinking about, i think that's probably still pretty tinfoily

I'm with you on val but I think igorsprite is a red herring and you probably just need to to drop it

[catboi]

As much as I hate repeating myself on this, the last time someone ignored mechanics, in my Mini, (Mini 2235 - Gensokoyo) we lost because in ELO someone didn't realize that the only other town was mechanically cleared. As of right now, there are just zero reasons to make this Igor the elimination today and that's final.

I see your point but the only way he's ever going to be cleared is if he's real and we flip the mafia roleblocker toay which is not really a reliable thing at all

otherwise you have to evaluate him on the balance of his play

I've had games where people refuse to even consider an uncced PR claim as scum despite that PR acting in a very scummy way

So really, the challenge is to just forget about the claim and read igorsprite on his own terms (and as I said, I think on balance he's probably town here)


As I've been saying though, this suspicion from Greeting basically never ever comes from scum here, it just doesn't. Very, very few scum players knowingly try to push cases that are unpopular. You need to separate your feelins of disliking the case from whether or not it has scum motivation (sort of like how Greeting has to do the same for igorsprite's play)

[implosion]

Okay. So. I'm here, and fed, and etc.

First, regarding MafMen: my rough impression of him has improved over time. I will need to reread him to make sure that that's based on something real, but basically my impression is that he's continued to have takes that don't really feel like scum interacting with the game state.

Second, regarding catboi: idk. I am really not sure if they'd be going through this rigamarole for this long as scum. The statement that this is outside of their and almost anyone's scumrange is like, probably true. The amount of stamina that that kind of thing would take as scum is really high. I know at least when I'm playing scum it's a lot of effort to fake a post that I think is reasonable and doing that much for that long, etc. I'm not calling catboi locktown or anything but I am being convinced they're not necessarily the best lim for today. The fact that they've softened on me without me doing anything at all to warrant that i guess could be in response to people not buying the push on me but it's also just like, idk, not how i'd be looking at the game as scum there.

Unvote

More coming.

[implosion]

Regarding greeting:

I am aware of the risks. Of course, it would be far from ideal if we vote someone who has a power role. But his carelessness fully assured me that, at best, they’re a Jester who will only serve as a distraction and essentially of no good use for town. They didn’t even use their supposed role Night One, because they thought they would be dead anyway. Or at least that’s one of their versions - not sure which one is considered to be the truth by others now.

If you're saying we should policy lim igor... tough break, we have one mislim left (assuming someone dies tonight). We're not wasting an elimination on igor based on him being "at best a jester". We're limming whoever we think is most likely to be scum. I understand you think igor is up there, but I think it's clear at this point no one else agrees that igor should be eliminated today. You should direct your attention in more useful directions.

[implosion]

Val repeatedly telling catboi that catboi is scumreading igor while catboi tries to tell Val that catboi is not scumreading igor is... a look.

[implosion]

The more i read the more i feel like i have absolutely no finger on the pulse of this game. I'm doing that thing that i always wind up having regrets over where i try to go back and read something where i claimed someone was obviously town and i have no idea why the hell i thought that.

Or I guess I'm trying to read val with active bias in the opposite direction and yeah, his early play is reasonable enough as scum.

This isn't to say that I'm immediately convinced that his kind of BS arguments against catboi make him scum but, etc.

[implosion]

Like, Val's singlemindedness toward catboi right now is really offputting. Even igor, absolute closed box of reasoning that he has been, has admitted now that catboi's posting is giving him pause. Val seems absolutely convinced that every thing catboi posts is tainted. There is like, so little of substance that Val has posted today that isn't about why catboi is scum. I feel like if catboi is scum then they're playing an incredibly good game here, a game that deserves recognition in the sense that like, I don't understand how someone can be so unwaveringly confident that catboi is scum in the face of the past several pages. I can understand scumreading them in spite of that but I can't understand an

unwavering

scumread on them.

[catboi]

Okay, so, with regard to MafMen, buckle up, it's going to be a bit long (don't have time to wait for implosion anymore, i've decided)

His scum games on this forum are all old, there's a 3-year playing gap like I said, but there was a fairly clear pattern in his scum games from prior to that break. For refrence, the games are:

Newbie 1869
Micro 813
Mini 2014

So, in all of these games, he exhibits a tendency toward overconfident TMI townreads on people, while generally lacking the ability or willingness to fake scumreads and make cases on people. Kind of a typical pattern amongst players who don't have much experience playing scum. Overall I would say his demeanor in those games is kind of meek, except for maybe some flashes of defensiveness when pushed, he was overall unwilling to pick fights with people and push on townies.

Now, in 3 years a lot can change, but playing scum is hard and I'd sort of expect him to be more rusty/out of touch from not having played n a while, rather than having hit a new level (having taken a long break myself, I felt significant rust in my first games when I was playing scum after that hiatus).


You could say that maybe he's exhibiting that tendency toward TMI townreads in his early posting in this game, with stuff like 49's "greeting is probtown", 52's read on pseudoaristotle, 61's "im not getting scumpings from anyone", and calling his wagon pure in 72. But, where it differs, I think is what comes after that.

(as an aside, I like the comment in 58 about trying to move the game forward, because again in his old games mafmen struck me as kind of a lazy scum player who'd be fairly content with a game being inactive as it would mean less pressure on him to post)

What mafmen does, attacking val for being "gross and disingenuous" in 142, is just wildly outside his established scumrange, val is a very verbose player who's a pain in the butt to argue with, most scum see that type of player and simply steer clear of them, but he doesn't do that, he continues to press at val, accusing him of misrepresenting greeting in 147, the whole explanation of what he's doing in 162 reads super genuine where he's explaining his goals and getting annoyed at val for overcomplicating things in their argument, I think town is more likely to have feelings like someoneis making things difficult, it's harder when you know the person you're arguing against is arguing sincerely. It's also a bit of an empathy read because I'm feeling how manipulative and disingenuous val is being in his arguments.

reaction to greeting threatenin to selfhammer in 210/211 feels believable too, the kind of thing that can be faked but i think in particular the disappointment and confusion in the second post where the person he was defending says something he thinks is antitown reads believable to me and he starts trying to lecture him to set him on the right path

The de-escalation in 261 I also believe, like he got an answer at that time that satisfied him, but then the continued incredulity in 269, I basically agreed entirely at the time with the reasoning here that Greeting's "VT slip" wasn't a meaningful scumtell of any sort

but I think the way he keeps trying to argue with/persuade val even after unvoting him is towny - for most mafia I think if they decide they're done pushing someone, they leave them alone, but him continuing to argue with Val in 288 and 296 (among other posts) shows a legitimate desire to try to persuade him to his view - most mafia don't bother with this, I don't think it's close to MafMen's range at all - I felt like him getting into that argument might have been a scum tactic at the start of the day but reading it over again, he's really trying to get his view across, not just argue for no reason

in 317 he clarifies he doesn't view Val as town, but I think even there the way he's arguing with val but not necessarily pushing him shows a solving intent

Even though it was wrong I don't really hate the obsrvation on Thyn in 318, I can see town having a problem with that post, I like that he's attacking something specific he fnds scummy rather than just vaguely calling thyn wolfy.

Even the re-eval on me in 333 makes sense, I guess, looks like he got pointed at me and actually reread my posts and found them lack -

this is notable, because, again, as I said, MafMen tended to be very overconfident in his TMI townreads in his old scum games, and rarely wavered on them

- here he re-evals on both Thyn and me when we're doing things he doesn't like, and he even waves on Greeting - he doesn't display an absolute certainty that Greeting is town, just that the reasoning he was being attacked for wasn't good.

I'm incredibly annoyed by him deciding in 446 my reaction to getting fake guiltied was bad, as I've already said, but regardless I

can

see town thinking that and reacting the way he did to it.

granted he's seemingly flinging stones at EVERYONE, like in 464 and 521, which COULD be scum keeping heir options open, but I feel like that's wildly out of line with his past scum meta - I'd be surprised if he went the opposite direction and went the route of blindly attacking almost everyone to make them look bad, I think it's more likely coming from a paranoid townie mindset. (this probably the one part of his ISO where I could see it being someone playing a good scumgame, I just have to trust that my meta-eval is correct)

And again, the whole sequence where he asks me about my old game in 526, followed with the unvote to give me "room to breathe" in 530, only to start doubting himself in 532 reads super organic, it's a sequence very few scum players think to fake - maybe they take their foot off the gas and say they're reconsidering me, but they do it all in the same post, it'd be constructed, it woudn't get out in bits and pieces as the gears are turning in his head

I think on overall play and comparisons with his past scumgames, MafMen is very likely town and shouldn't be voted out this game.

[catboi]

Like, Val's singlemindedness toward catboi right now is really offputting. Even igor, absolute closed box of reasoning that he has been, has admitted now that catboi's posting is giving him pause. Val seems absolutely convinced that every thing catboi posts is tainted. There is like, so little of substance that Val has posted today that isn't about why catboi is scum. I feel like if catboi is scum then they're playing an incredibly good game here, a game that deserves recognition in the sense that like, I don't understand how someone can be so unwaveringly confident that catboi is scum in the face of the past several pages. I can understand scumreading them in spite of that but I can't understand an

unwavering

scumread on them.

i think val's playstyle as either alignment is to hard aggressive tunnel and just resist all other outside voices, meta-wise I have basically no handle on it at all despite trying to dig on it for a bit earlier, I was going to try to show you he's capable of making ~reasonable sounding posts as mafia in his one completed scumgame so I don't think he's town for necessarily being able to, like, post well

and even then I was unsure other than his posting tilting me incredibly hard because I've had to deal with tunnelers before, I was really just waiting on you to come back to the game because I felt more confident I'd be able to sort you based on interacting with you

[catboi]

I also want to say right now: I think

frogsfrogs

has been

super

selective in the things they are choosing to post and respond to in-thread, generally relegating themselves to a very narrow band of arguments about igorsprite's claim and avoiding all the other stuff, and I think it's highly mafia-indicative, hat they just don't know how to make a rebuttal to what I'm putting out and so are just willfully ignoring it

[catboi]

The fact that they've softened on me without me doing anything at all to warrant that i guess could be in response to people not buying the push on me but it's also just like, idk, not how i'd be looking at the game as scum there.

FWIW it's a combiation of things, as I said it's got to do with thinking your responses to me screaming bloody murder that you were 100% scum were genuine, but even then I was unsure, basically my only belief here was that as scum you'd just continue to direct an agenda onto me where as town you're a good enough player you ought to be able to find me.

Which is kind of an annoying and cruddy way to be judged on reads because it's not like no one is ever wrong but I've been caught as scum before basically because someone called me out on reading them in a way I shouldn't have been and that was what I was trying to do with you here

[catboi]

IDK how you feel about frogsfrogs but I guess the one player I haven't really gone some length on is StrangeMatter, idk if you want to discuss that one, we can, since you've mentioned their slot being one you haven't given much consideration?

[implosion]

StrangeMatter I mostly am just confused why they're seemingly universally above null; it feels like they've played quite on the outskirts today, haven't really committed to any hard stances or... voted at all yet. If you're town then they could easily be scum coasting on a good gamestate. Or if you're scum they'd make sense as a partner.

It says something that I can look through their entire ISO, where they have tons of dialogue with you, and I actually have 0 clue what their read on you is right now or at basically any point (even their answer to my question asking about their reads specifically mentioning you doesn't answer it).

frogsfrogs I still need to do more work.

[catboi]

I think StrangeMatter mostly feels very earnest even if their stances aren't really clear, stuff trying to explain what they think is best to do, talking about how a past game was lost because of people ignoring mechanics seems like a believable concern

But, well, if I'm going full scorched earth here I might as well say I'm pretty certain pseudoaristotle effectively PR slipped on day 1 and that's basically colored my read of the slot ever since then. I might have wanted to still hide it but igorsprite said the same exact thing in-thread a while ago, so F it, might as well quit holding back on that read because otherwise I start to sound TMI-ish

[catboi]

(Strange, don't confirm or deny anything in response to that. I know me saying that at all is anti-town but I feel like I have to be completely transparent here)

[frogsfrogs]

I also want to say right now: I think

frogsfrogs

has been

super

selective in the things they are choosing to post and respond to in-thread, generally relegating themselves to a very narrow band of arguments about igorsprite's claim and avoiding all the other stuff, and I think it's highly mafia-indicative, hat they just don't know how to make a rebuttal to what I'm putting out and so are just willfully ignoring it

Yeah, I've admitted before already to sometimes reading through the thread, having my own reactions and taking stuff in, but then blanking on what to actually say. :/ Definitely a lot of what I've posted today has been related to the Igor case, but it's been about pursuing a thread on greeting that's been totally confusing me and I still think looks not town. I've realized so far that they're... firm in stating the belief and not active enough right now to hash it out. Fine. I keep reading through your big greeting analysis to try and digest it and I think it makes me waiver my read on you more than it does him.

[frogsfrogs]

Absolutely not let’s not put Catboi at E-1.

I think this post is the best case for Strange being maybe town. Scum would want to talk it out for a bit and then hammer, really, right?