/in-vitational 12: Mafia in #YOLOville - All wrapped up!

[Wickedestjr]

*Prod dodge*

This has been a busy week, but I'll be sure to make a post tonight.

[Faraday]

Day 2, Votecount 5

OhGodMyLife (1) - Tierce
Vi (3) - Benmage, Cogito Ergo Sum, Tammy
Cogito Ergo Sum (3) - Llamarble, Empire, Vi
Benmage (1) - OhGodMyLife
WickedestJr (3) - Shadoweh, Nachomamma8, Konowa
Konowa (1) - Deasvail

Not voting (1) :

Wickedestjr

• With 13 alive it takes 7 to lynch.
  
• Deadline is on 21st of March at 11:15pm GMT
  
• Countdown to deadline: (expired on 2013-03-21 19:15:44)
  
• Tierce is V/la

[Tierce]

Now without colors!

Weak Townreads

Benmage
CES
Llamarble (maybe he's stronger though. I can't decide :/)
OGML- I think 832 is scummy though.
Shadoweh

Scum

Konowa- I'm pretty sure there's been talk of people finding him 'not town', so why not a wagon?
Vi- Actually finding someone scummy overrules town ~feelings~! Saying I'm scum is weird too
Wicked- The main thing that sticks out to me is 739. If you think someone is scum and that they're about to be lynched, then would you really be bothered as town to defend against their accusations? I think scum are much more likely to feel this need, and I'm thinking that town wouldn't seriously respond in such a way, and I guess the 'emotional' response doesn't seem genuine either considering the situation.

Explain these, please. What you gave for scumreads isn't much of an explanation. I actually have to go back and see what alignment Empire is calling you to see if I can just plod along and ignore you some more, but #YOLO #LAYOVER #SCREAMINGINFANTS, so please entertain me with explanations.

(In the Azorean islands. Hi from Middle of Nowhere, Atlantic Sea, Earth!)

[Vi]

#SCREAMINGINFANTS

You packed the duct tape in the checked luggage, I see. :/

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

And how many people other than myself have you seen CES talk about to any significant degree today?

Your scumminess is very distracting, it's true.

Tammy, Konowa already beat it to me as the main thing is the slide off of CTD. CTD is certainly savvy enough to have dropped a subtle hint and Shadoweh catching it (or a team mate catching it + daytalk) would make her line of play feel very natural to me.

[Llamarble]

^ is a weird post.
I don't see how you believe this is plausible without searching for evidence of a hint.
I had a brief spike of Shadoweh bloodlust but it faded.

[Shadoweh]

Just to get my thoughts out as to where I am: Wicked (think points raised yesterday are valid and his responses don't really do anything for me), Shadoweh (think this sitting waiting on Wicked is Not Town, then with CTD flipping traitor the early push and then gradual slide bugs me).

You suspect me for waiting for your suspect to post? I don't have traitorvision, so sliding off of one is as null as being on a traitor wagon would be. It would be more like picking one townie over the other, and I don't tend to be particular as scum about that.

Vi: In ADwD I thought my team's traitor was town right up to when he was lynched (and originally thought he flipped traitor for the other team). I guess I can't prove that I missed Johhog breadcrumbing a PR here, but my ability to read subtle hints is provably awful. Besides, if he did wouldn't you be able to find it too now?

Still haven't read but I feel privledged enough to prod dodge as much as my target so #YOLO

[DeasVail]

Quick reads explanation:

I'm pretty sure I've said most of the stuff I have to say on my scumreads. I may type it all up together later though.

Llamarble: I remember liking something about his reaction to the wagon and the stuff about trying to play in a new way felt genuine to me. Other than that, his most recent posts seem a lot more like him trying to work out the game than trying to look town. I don't know if I can explain it properly, but it does feel like more than gut to me.

CES: I think the way he attacks Vi is really town. Not much apart from that, but just generally feels town I guess? I think he may be less involved as scum too actually (from what I remember of Mafia and the Kitties anyway).

OGML- Mainly N's play not matching what I'd expect, and I thought his attack on Empire was very town-like.

Shadoweh- Not much apart from her just saying stuff that I think she'd say as town (I mean just general entertaining Shadoweh-type things). I've never played with her as scum though, so I'm not really sure if I'm able to distinguish that well.

Benmage- I'm worried this may be naive, but I actually think his recent lack of involvement could indicate not-scum. I guess I'm kind of sheeping on him mainly though, as I've heard he has a good scum game. He's another 'generally feels town' person as well.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Obviously I looked for one, 'marble. Not sure why you'd assume I hadn't.

Vi: In ADwD I thought my team's traitor was town right up to when he was lynched (and originally thought he flipped traitor for the other team). I guess I can't prove that I missed Johhog breadcrumbing a PR here, but my ability to read subtle hints is provably awful. Besides, if he did wouldn't you be able to find it too now?

1) Don't call me Vi.
2) I didn't want to be needlessly negative but daytalking scum buddy did seem more likely from the get-go.
3) As for me being able/unable to find it, scum being an informed minority seems relevant here. I know of traitors on westeros leaving clues simply by making a post that groups all the scum together semi-conspicuously.

[OhGodMyLife]

Unvote, Vote: CES

Reading Crash from d1, CES is among the people he never did much with (see Tammy's

773

for a full list). He ends up with two mentions:

Short answer: I haven't seen anything from him that indicates scum to me. This comment was mostly intended to get you and CES to do something more productive with your votes.

In the quote, 'him' is Vi, while 'you' is Benmage. Kind of coach-y, definitely a kid gloves approach. This is also one of the reasons I've been interested in Benmage, along with the l-1 'blame someone else' wagon hop on penguin. The other CES namecheck is here:

Johhog's CES vote is lazy and scummy. Instead of commenting on anything relevant going on or using his vote in a productive manner, he parks it on a player that has virtually no chance of getting wagoned based on his weak meta suspicion. Would vote.

Especially given the benefit of knowing Joh's alignment too, its a solid chainsaw defense.

Not much, I know, but enough for me to get off the sidelines, since people would rather whine at me than actually look at Benmage.

And no, I haven't finished reading the whole thread front to back yet. I'll get there.

[Nachomamma8]

OGML what happened to benmage?

LA for about a week.

[OhGodMyLife]

OGML what happened to benmage?

If you mean why did I take my vote off of Benmage, I think my post explained that pretty well. I'd still like to see him hang.

[Empire]

Came down with a cold but managed to muster enough energy to respond to stuff, sorry if it's a bit incoherent.

Empire - I know you're voting CES, but why are you scum reading him? Also, what's your read on Vi?

The CES vote is largely PoE. As far as their argument is concerned, honestly, I think both of them come off pretty badly:

- On the one hand, CES trying to push a weird almost BoP-type argument against Vi today is kinda shitty considering the general suspicion Johhog drew despite both his and your posts. A ton of people suspected him regardless, and unless you think a ton of people were just posturing about it, I don't really think ignorance of Johhog's softclaim is any kind of scumtell. Also, I know Vi doesn't read large portions of the game D1 in detail (for example, I remember Vi telling me after Castle Zar that he didn't really read any of MoI's posts) so him missing something like that doesn't seem farfetched to me.

- On the other hand, Vi pushing the whole "he hasn't really looked at anyone else angle" in #847 is pretty awful if you know anything about the way CES plays. Dude's pretty much one of the tunnel-iest people I've played with so him focusing almost exclusively on Vi is really CES just being CES, nothing alignment indicative -- Vi's played with him even more than I have so I just find that argument really weak. I don't know much about CES's scum meta (every time I've tried to metagame him it just ends horribly) but the idea that CES was trying to absolve himself of responsibility seems kind of ridiculous. CES can get away with a lot of things regardless of his alignment so I don't think he'd try a cop out kind of play like that as scum. My read on Vi is still very much TBD and I want to go through his meta one more time when I'm feeling better.

I actually have to go back and see what alignment Empire is calling you to see if I can just plod along and ignore you some more, but #YOLO #LAYOVER #SCREAMINGINFANTS, so please entertain me with explanations.

I have him as a pretty strong townread. Granted, I'm not exactly a DV-expert (and I don't know why people are treating me as such) but his early play re: his CTD vote and his later justification that it was some sort of reaction test reminds me of his early play in Sherlock where he jumps into the fray by doing something that draws him lots of attention and is not really something I can see him doing as scum, he'd be more likely to take some sort of textbook approach to the game (and a quick look at Mafia with the Kitties confirms this). There are some moments where DV comes off like he's genuinely struggling with the game (#204/#205) -- he's more than capable of bullshitting reasoning as scum and I'm pretty sure those two posts came at a moment before people generally started struggling getting reads here (or at least saying so) so this stuff doesn't come across as posturing to me (agree/disagree?). There's also a bunch of tonal markers I have for DV that he's hitting (extreme self deprecation, undermining his own cases, etc.).

I had a brief spike of Shadoweh bloodlust but it faded.

What gave you the bloodlust spike and why did it fade?

Not much, I know, but enough for me to get off the sidelines, since people would rather whine at me than actually look at Benmage.

Erm, no one is actually whining. You came into the thread parking your vote on Benmage and never really gave any reasons behind your push while lamenting that no one is going after him so I don't really get what exactly it is that we're supposed to be looking at. Especially considering a decent portion of the roster (hi) has Benmage as town.

[Benmage]

Its funny, less I do the townier I appear. I'm going to have to screw you all one day.

That day is not today.

Sorry been busy with Obamacare scare f-ing my business. RL drain has caused a sitewide mafia decline. This game is feeling the brunt.

[Benmage]

I also don't think this game is anywhere near critical mass, and although the scum will be good players, so are most of the town.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

OGML, why did you think benmage is scum?

- On the one hand, CES trying to push a weird almost BoP-type argument against Vi today is kinda shitty considering the general suspicion Johhog drew despite both his and your posts. A ton of people suspected him regardless, and unless you think a ton of people were just posturing about it, I don't really think ignorance of Johhog's softclaim is any kind of scumtell. Also, I know Vi doesn't read large portions of the game D1 in detail (for example, I remember Vi telling me after Castle Zar that he didn't really read any of MoI's posts) so him missing something like that doesn't seem farfetched to me.

I didn't really "push" anything. It's a fairly minor scum tell and it seemed like a nice thing to have accompanying my vote. I didn't even care enough to check if my memory of events was correct.

[Vi]

- On the other hand, Vi pushing the whole "he hasn't really looked at anyone else angle" in #847 is pretty awful if you know anything about the way CES plays. Dude's pretty much one of the tunnel-iest people I've played with so him focusing almost exclusively on Vi is really CES just being CES, nothing alignment indicative -- Vi's played with him even more than I have so I just find that argument really weak. I don't know much about CES's scum meta (every time I've tried to metagame him it just ends horribly) but the idea that CES was trying to absolve himself of responsibility seems kind of ridiculous. CES can get away with a lot of things regardless of his alignment so I don't think he'd try a cop out kind of play like that as scum. My read on Vi is still very much TBD and I want to go through his meta one more time when I'm feeling better.

Don't you think I kind of get this?

Like, CES is obnoxious and tunnels as Town, but

not to this extent

. You played in Tierce's game too, etc.

As for "absolving himself" - would it sound better if I said it was one of the least meaningful votes on the wagon?

I didn't really "push" anything. It's a fairly minor scum tell and it seemed like a nice thing to have accompanying my vote. I didn't even care enough to check if my memory of events was correct.

"I push crappy arguments just in case it helps people vote Vi"

When you're actually pushing the "smiley tell" it might be time to wonder if you're digging your nails a little too deep into the bottom of the barrel while you scrape for things to pick out.

[Tierce]

Stop being bitter, Sixkuya.

UNVOTE: OhGodMyLife
VOTE: Cogito Ergo Sum

There is a lot of snow in Minneapolis. Thankfully, it's all on the ground and it's beautifully sunny. Also, wheeeeeeee.

[Vi]

Stop being bitter, Sixkuya.

I'll be sour instead. (>")>

[Llamarble]

I had a brief spike of Shadoweh bloodlust but it faded.

What gave you the bloodlust spike and why did it fade?

Various things and various things. One totally useless one is that I thought she said something CTD said that sounded scummy, then realized it was quote fail.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I didn't really "push" anything. It's a fairly minor scum tell and it seemed like a nice thing to have accompanying my vote. I didn't even care enough to check if my memory of events was correct.

"I push crappy arguments just in case it helps people vote Vi"

When you're actually pushing the "smiley tell" it might be time to wonder if you're digging your nails a little too deep into the bottom of the barrel while you scrape for things to pick out.

It's more "I will mention tells that are kind of neat but not all that strong in passing for rhetorical purposes." You're just making it sound bad by pretending I'm pushing them.

Can the competent people finally get round to looking at Vi? She's being pretty obvious.

[Wickedestjr]

"his reads and justification to those reads" - 1. Which reads, what justification?
"Pointed out things which I used to read other players" - 2. What does this have to do with anything?
"I don't get the impression he's 'faking' anything" - 3. Why does something that doesn't make sense to you make it hard to fake?

1. In particular, his reads/comments on Johhog, Konowa, CTD, and BM in post 96 seemed more likely to be coming from town.
2. I think it means Llamarble is more likely to be town. Is there something wrong with my logic here? How is this not relevant?
3. It doesn't seem genuine because it doesn't make sense. My stance: it doesn't make sense to me, HOWEVER, it seems genuine.

Oh sorry. In Post 103 he makes sure to follow up with Ben why he called CES scum. Benmage had previously called both Empire and CES scum in Post 42 without any reasoning for either, so why is CES the only one that wicked mentions? (He also does a similar thing with wondering why Tierce thinks N is scum in Post 248)

Benmage singled out two players as scum very early on (page 2ish). His scumread on CES came after just one post from him;

We won't.

Vote: penguin

That's a pretty significant page 2 stance for Benmage based on hardly anything. There's nothing unusual about my question.

Wicked- The main thing that sticks out to me is 739. If you think someone is scum and that they're about to be lynched, then would you really be bothered as town to defend against their accusations?

Yes, I would. Ftr, it wasn't 100% obvious to me that penguin was going to get lynched. I was hoping my post would sway any undecided players. You could also say that I was angered by penguin's points and wanted to show that they were invalid as a result.

[Llamarble]

Can the competent people finally get round to looking at Vi? She's being pretty obvious.

I just did, and I'm having trouble seeing it. Do you think Vi faked the 4 scum thing and the scum-probably-didn't-kill-johhog thing?
I guess it is kinda hard to believe a smart townie assuming the traitor kill came from the scumteam given that it just doesn't normally work that way and CTD would be at least as weird a scumkill as johhog.
So OK, there is that. I did think late D1 was an important time though with Penguin finally towning, and the reaction to that seemed rightish to me.

If you think a traitor-crumb might take the form of outing the entire scumteam, wouldn't that be reason enough to take a little time and go look for it?
I didn't find anything when I did.

VOTE: Konowa
Tammy also looks like scum as of the latest pass.

[Wickedestjr]

Wicked's play so far has been a big bag of "eh". There's a lot of promises, "sorry I'm not playing good enough", "I'm so busy" that I would expect from scum returning to a playerlist like this.

Please please please please don't connect my inactivity to a scum motive. I am genuinely super busy- I wouldn't lurk excessively as scum. If I had been given a scum role pm, I wouldn't deliberately resort to lurking/not playing, even with a playerlist like this, for the following reasons;
-I am almost never scum. I wouldn't just ruin a rare opportunity by... not playing.
-This is a great playerlist. It would have been a great way to test my play as scum.
-I do just fine as scum. If you look at all of my games as mafia, you'll see that I either survived to the very end or was lynched because I was confirmed scum. And not being familiar with the playerlist works both ways- most of the playerlist is unfamiliar with me, which would be beneficial to me as mafia.
TL;DR - I wouldn't be afraid as mafia.

I mean, every post he makes comes with the caveat of "I don't know enough people here, I'm behind" and it wears me down.

I mentioned that I don't know many people here in ONE post. And I haven't said anything along the lines of "I'm behind" in half of my posts. Nice misrep.

...and sorry for wearing you down?

Post #484 doesn't make sense for Wicked if he was lost,

This is a terrible terrible point. Are you serious here? Firstly, I NEVER said I was lost. I said I was struggling in post 254, yet still managed to take several stances. Secondly, the contradiction you imply here is absolute bs, considering post 484 came after twice as many posts as post 254. Struggling on page 11 means I should also be struggling on page 20? No way. Come on now.

letting a lot of those reads drop to the wayside doesn't make sense

I have no idea what this means. What are you trying to say here?

his reasoning for the townreads he has are shit.

No. It's not. This is the kind of reasoning I always use and I have had a tendency to be pretty successful with my reads as town.

Not arguing with Vi-scum cases and instead pulling the whole "oh, what's the chance Vi gets lynched today?" card is bad,

Firstly, what Vi-scum case? Secondly, at the time I asked this question, unless there were PRs among PA/N/CTD, I very strongly believed a Vi lynch was not going to happen. There's nothing bad about that.

the "I'm unvoting but he's STILL MY TOP SUSPECT" is framed like a defense as opposed to "I'm unvoting because NO ONE WILL LYNCH HIM (shadoweh)",

No it's not. There's nothing I would really be defending against in this case. I was simply establishing that my stance hadn't changed.

the "every vote is opportunistic" attack on penguin is stupid considering she's made 2 votes so far,

Sure, penguin had only made two votes, but some other players had made more. And IIRC, every player that had cast only one/two votes had at least cast one non-opportunistic vote. e.g. N.

wanting his townread N to claim as opposed to the person he's trying to lynch penguin to claim is similarly bad.

Um... again, are you serious? Doesn't matter where I stand, especially in this situation ON DAY 1. If somebody's at L-2 and the time's almost up, then that somebody needs to claim. N could've been my strongest town read in my entire experience of playing mafia and I would've asked him to claim in that scenario. I could've even been in N's position and I would've claimed. It's the correct play. Worth noting that Llamarble did the exact same thing, and IIRC you completely ignored him.

So there's a whole lot of and not a lot of .

I'll agree with the latter point, but not the former.

[Wickedestjr]

I've only played with a mafia traitor once and even that game was years ago. A brief check of that game showed that the mafia traitor in that game knew who the mafia were but the mafia didn't know who he was. I'm going to assume that's the case here, because I believe that is the typical setup. A skim of that mafia traitor's iso shows that they expressed suspicion of all three mafia in one single post very early on- in general they made it very obvious to the mafia that they were the traitor. If CTD was a mafia traitor, then the last thing he would want to do is attract the mafia kill, obviously. After thinking it over, the only possibilities I see are;
a.) He expressed suspicion of all the mafia. - Probably not the case, considering I town read most of the players he attacked.
b.) He mentioned/referred to all of the mafia in one of his posts (on at least one occasion). - He probably would have done this in his first serious post, indicating that the mafia are Shadoweh/DV/Empire. I'm not sure that he would have done this, however, if two of these three players were to flip mafia, then I'd happily lynch the third.
c.) He avoided suspecting any of his scum partners. - Seems plausible considering I town read most of the players he attacked and he was fairly tunnel visioned.
d.) He didn't use any particular strategy. - Possible. There's a risk of the mafia killing him, however, he avoids being easily connected to the mafia.

Tbph, I could see CTD try any of the last three strategies (b-d). I need to think about this. (I mostly posted this just as a reference for later).

I like the CES bandwagon, but I prefer to

Vote: DeasVail

. This weekend I intend to give the game a closer look, to take a confident stance on CTD's mafia traitor flip, and to post a detailed scum list.