Mini Normal 2253 | Frogs! | Mason PT

[kennyk]

oooooh, good catch. that is definitely a crumb of some sort. will think about it after i get my hands on some coffee

But it was a far easier catch than getting your crumb (even with knowing where to look at).

[Datisi]

yeah, i am annoyed about the hammer because i often like to vote and pressure people and decide with that whether i actually think they're scum. but of course, stuff happens while i'm asleep.

us both being at least nullread is not good, but it's also not terrible. we were both on the elim wagon with arguably questionable votes, me especially. so if frogs flips green, i think our nk-equity goes down.

[Datisi]

of course, i will still reread the game during the night, and leave out my full thoughts here in case i die.

[kennyk]

of course, i will still reread the game during the night, and leave out my full thoughts here in case i die.

same

[Datisi]

well, uh, nevermind then, good wagon, solid hammer, good shit, high fives all around, etc.

[kennyk]

Like I said: I knew frogs was scum even before the game started.

[Datisi]

So I think Meg is scum trying to mislead any town PR or a VT trying to mislead scum into NKing them.

okay, so. there are a few roles where it would make sense to crumb your target before the night. mainly something like loyal mailman (so that the town knows who the mail went if the mailman dies), jailkeeper/roleblocker (if scum is killed day 1, and if someone dies night 1, whoever they targeted is confirmed town) or maybe a bodyguard. now, considering we're a masonry, none of those roles can exist. so the question is, vt baiting, or scum being funny.

i actually think this is more likely to be vt baiting. because, let's assume scum!meg - so meg saw that their partner just got hammered, they're not in a good position, and they decide to very obviously soft a power role because...? if they're scum, it will just make the game so much more difficult for them, because if they don't die tonight, tomorrow the pressure is going to be on them, and they're already not in a good position, so.

while it's definitely not clearing, i think this is +vt for meg. of course, remains to see if they actually die tonight or not.

[kennyk]

You are right. With the flip the percentages of Meg baiting are like 90 %. I guess that I am not the only one getting the hint. So if Meg lives through the night there will be questions asked as to what this hint was about. And if Meg by coincident would claim a role, that is occupied by someone else, it would be suicide. So a scum!Meg would very likely not do this.

Or it is a very elaborated plan: Meg softclaims with the hint, lives through the night (and NKing someone else) and on D2 claims "It was just a bait for scum. I guess they didn't take it.". But now I need to get rid of my tinfoil hat.

On the other hand I don't know if mafia wants to call this bluff or not. Maybe they just don't NK Meg because the hint was too obvious.

[Datisi]

i'm rereading the game, probably gonna be dropping some in-the-moment thoughts.

don't think andante is scum with frogs, the way she immediately attacked my townread on them in 49 and 51 doesn't exactly sound like something scum would do. like, if she's scum with frogs, she did that to attack me later on, but she never circled around to it, so like, what was the point?

at my reads in 265, in retrospect i have no clue why i was townreading emperor. i guess he's still tonally townie, but the flip doesn't exactly go in his favour i think.

and here comes andante, out of fucking nowhere, and starts screaming how frogs is scum. i really don't think this is a bus. frogs was in approximately zero danger at the time, the only vote on them was yours, which was claimed rvs. this would only make sense if andante was on the verge of death, but she wasn't she had a grand total of 2 votes on her, one of which was meg who everyone was scumreading. like, i don't see this being a bus?

also, the reason why i said that i disliked 325 from frogs. from an outside perspective, my vote on frogs was worse than andante's. yet, frogs only called out andante, and not me. why? my first thought was that andante is more poorly read from the majority of the game than i am. so it is in frogs's favour to fight with her, since they can maybe get her eliminated, but it's also not in their favour to fight with me, because that brings them closer to their death.

now, and argument could be made that it's distancing... but idk lol i just don't think it is

i am kind of not a fan of dwlee's frogs vote, it's sorta weird it took them that long to vote there.

ok, i've finished my reread. it took me multiple hours to complete this post because i kept getting distracted ahaha

[Datisi]

Or it is a very elaborated plan: Meg softclaims with the hint, lives through the night (and NKing someone else) and on D2 claims "It was just a bait for scum. I guess they didn't take it.". But now I need to get rid of my tinfoil hat.

this is something that's very much possible, and it depends on the personality of the player. like, scum!me might decide to meme like this if i was in an already bad situation. but from what i've seen of scum!meg (recently modded a game where they were scum), i don't think it's very likely they would go and do something complex and confusing like this

[Datisi]

ok, so.

kenny & datisi - masons

andante - i think unlikely to be scum with frogs, the way she just dropped into the game and started pushing frogs out of nowhere, when the weren't in immediate danger but there were some scumreads brewing, seems unlikely to be s/s.

testarossa - her interactions with the wagon aren't *great*, but i still townread her posting individually enough that i think she's more likely town.

meg - there are two things that point at meg being town for me. one is the analysis of the crumb. the other is the fact that frogs never moved their vote from dwlee. "datisi, how the fuck does that point to meg being town?" listen. meg was by far the most popular wagon of day 1, right? frogs never moving their vote, practically never reacting to it properly means that they didn't *have* to react to it. meaning frogs didn't give a damn on whether meg gets killed or not. implying meg town. now, to be fair it *could* be that frogs was frozen scum who had no clue how to act around their partner's wagon, but i just don't think so. hopefully meg just dies tonight and i don't have to spend any more brainpower here.

now, i'd say my poe is emperor/dwlee/house, in that order.

emperor doesn't have much against him, but also not much going for him. he did seem tonally townie to me in the moment, but i don't have any exp with his scumgame, so.

dwlee is... fine, i guess? i am slightly worried about the fact that they were kind of scumreading frogs but not voting there. i don't have much else on them, i'm not sure if they're even solveable at this point in time.

and house, eh. i didn't like bugs's slot, i'm not impressed by house. the hammer might be scum seeing their partner is dead and pulling the trigger.

the only thing that's puzzling me is why didn't frogs claim a power role to draw one out. that implies a newbie partner, but i'm not sure...

i have to go eat. once i'm back, i'll type up a mechanical info post for you in the case i die tonight.

[Datisi]

ok, some mechanical pointers and advice for if i don't see day 2:

there cannot be any strong town power roles besides us. something useless like a mailman? maybe. anything else, cop, doc, bodygoard, jailkeeper? none of it. if anyone claims that, kill them.

it's possible that someone will claim mason with me completely unprompted. if they do so, it's likely they are a vt trying to die instead of you, i'd say don't counterclaim them. obviously use your own judgment, but my advice would be to not counterclaim that.

if you make it to final 3, claim that you're a mason, preferably claim first, but don't mention our crumb or anything else. it's possible scum will decide to counterclaim you. if they do so, you can prove you're the mason and show them the crumb.

[kennyk]

I haven't had the time to reread myself. But I can at least react to your mechanical post.

I guess, that in case of one of us dying tonight, there isn't much of a chance of anyone else claiming a strong PR. If anyone does, it wouldn't need much of a push from our side to get that someone over the cliff. As the general assumptions about the setup could be done by everyone, everyone could come to the same conclusion as we are: no strong PR together with (at least) two masons. So a mason claim isn't even necessary in this case.

Not counterclaiming on an unprompted claim seems absolutely logical. But what if that someone doesn't die N2 (assuming any ransom VT dies D2)? Wouldn't scum try to NK the other mason or do you think scum would see the bluff? The worst thing, that could happen, is that we both die before D3 and there is a scum fakeclaim on D2. Scum could always pretend, that there are three masons and they didn't want to reveal it on D2. If this is done in a plausible way, town is doomed.

For a F3 situation I was thinking about asking the other two, if anyone of them was the second mason. Only if none of them claimed it, I would claim (without the mentioning of the crumb). I am just thinking about the best way to claim. Is it just saying "It's me" or backing it up with some soft evidence like "We were both on the frogs-wagon" (or hopefully something slightly better). This could lead to a counterclaim with better evidence of connection between scum and you. Worst thing, that could happen would be, that this is believed and lead to an immediate vote by the VT. If I have time to react the crumb should be the winning move.

[Datisi]

replying point by point:

i didn't say you need to claim mason, i'm just saying that person has to die. you can absolutely push them with "no way two town masons + whatever they claimed in a micro, kill this". i'm just making sure you're aware of the balance implications, because i see you're not that experienced with normal games and i want to make sure you don't get convinced by scum in a final 3 scenario that 2 masons + a cop (or anything else) is something that can ever exist in a micro game, no matter scum power roles.

i don't think scum is likely to see the bluff, especially considering the second mason is unyeetable without a counterclaim. your worst case scenario here is impossible - there cannot be three masons in a 9 player game. the only remotely possible way here is if scum who fakeclaimed mason says "i was fakeclaiming mason as a vt to try to bait the nightkill", and i don't think scum is generally likely to be making plays like that. nobody in this playerlist, as far as i know, is the "type" to do that. (except maybe me but i'm obviously not scum hehe)

claiming in a final 3 scenario is a bit tricky and probably best figured out by the thread atmosphere for when you're actually there. it can also be done that you claim vt and ask who the mason is. the thing is, if everyone claimed vt, scum would be aware that the mason is claiming vt and that they're baiting a mason claim, so it would be natural to assume that masons do have some strong crumbs. but again, if it comes to it, i'll leave this part to you.

[Datisi]

like, for final 3, another reason why my advice would be to claim mason first is because scum then has a choice - counterclaim you as the mason, or counterclaim the vt as a vt. whereas if you all claim vt, then scum (1) has no clue who they're going to counterclaim if they claim mason (2) is aware of the fact that the last mason is baiting, which means they probably have a plan - and i think both of these make it much more unlikely that you'll get counterclaimed than if you claim mason outright.

but again, neither here nor there, follow your heart based on who is left in the endgame, etc.

[Datisi]

now, i'd say my poe is emperor/dwlee/house, in that order.

also, rereading now and i see this is kinda confusing. this is from towniest to scummiest in my poe. though rethinking now, i'm not sure which one of emperor/dwlee i'd put as more likely scum. idk. hopefully it's just house lol

[kennyk]

To your response:

I didn't read your initial mechanical post in a way, that I have to claim mason if another PR is claimed. As you said, there is no need to. Any VT could deduct the same thing. And especially in a F3 scenario I wouldn't believe a cop claim (or something along that line) for balance reasons. I am indeed inexperienced in normal games, as this is my first game outside the newbie games since 2006 I guess. But from the current newbie setups I can clearly see what could be a balanced setup. And a setup with 2 masons + 1 cop vs. 2 scum (one of them a simple goon) is definitely unbalanced. So theoretically it has to be more than two scums for a 2 masons + 1 cop to work or both scummies have very strong power roles (which one evidently hasn't). So if we get to a F3 without being endgamed, there can only be one scum and one VT (or maybe one minor PR, but with a major scum PR) left.

[Datisi]

lol @ scum killing in my poe? okay i'll take it

[kennyk]

Just in for a quick post (my time management these days sucks).
I didn't expect this NK at all. I would have thought a more generally townread slot would have been the target. I didn't know what to make of Emporer. But maybe scum had the same problem and thought that it was some sort of PR play.

[Datisi]

my thoughts are: either
(1) scum found something they thought was a pr crumb from emperor, or
(2) scum is killing off-wagon and that implies partner was on wagon. which makes me wanna vote house anyway lole

[Datisi]

mmm, not a good move for both of us to be questioning meg over it. now if one of us dies, there's a neon sign pointed at the other saying "they talked about meg's crumb during the night"

[Datisi]

heh, testarossa is 100% right that scum!me never posts 347 if i am scumbuddies with frogsfrogs. let's see if my "haha, i am totally town but you shouldn't townread me because of that" actually succeeds in getting me scumread.

i am slowly getting worried about meg again. if they're a vt who was trying to bait the nightkill with that one post, then it would make sense for them to kinda... effort more today in order to appear more townie. they're not doing that, though.

[Datisi]

oh, house really was scum, and i went full clown mode after correctly reading the slot as scum for the entirety of day one. as expected.