Open 646 - Semi Nightless - Game Over (D6)

[Transcend]

@Wing

My read on Thor d1 before Karnos flipped:

Shifty as ****. His vote was horribly placed. I still am not ENTIRELY over it.

My read on Thor now:

Given I possess a scumread on Rosske and he's tunneling Tenshii right now. I believe he's misguided town. However due to his weird d1 and his weird vote, my lynch list would be Rosske > MHSmith > Thor. Meaning if your slot, Tenshii's slot or Giga's slot is scum, I will openly lose the game, given I get those lynches.

[Tenshii]

Thor not getting killed means something. It has to. Among the ideas:

1) Thor is the goon.
2) The goon doesn't understand how to make optimal shots.
3) The goon is trying to achieve something very specific by letting Thor hang around and Io (who has been much less active) get offed first.

Again, this is a decision that we KNOW was made by the last goon. It means something. We should be thinking about what that something is (though I probably won't actually do anything useful on that front until the weekend).

So how do you go about determining the motivation behind the night kill? The way I see it, you could paint anyone alive as scum using one of the three reasons you stated.

[Tenshii]

@Thor

Hypothetically, I get lynched and I flip town. Does that make you scum for pushing a town slot so hard?

I'm 99% sure you'll say "No because...." so whatever reason you have, just apply that to me defending Karnos.

[mhsmith0]

Well #2 doesn't apply to a decent # of people here (I'd happily point you to my record of good night kills, for instance binking cops twice in two nights in games where I was a wolf against a town with a cop).

And #3 is basically something where you can look at each person and try to think through "if they were a wolf, who is an optimal kill for them". Generically, Thor is a really optimal kill for most people who aren't Thor. So presuming that it wasn't Thor making the shots (and if he is the last wolf I think he's got some very difficult decisions to make going forward anyway), then it's either a screwup (in which case it's useful to think through who could have screwed it up) or it was done for a reason. So you look at kill motive and think through who would not have wanted to shoot Thor there.

And FWIW, you pop up as a very reasonable candidate for someone who both might have simply screwed up (since you're new) and might have had actual motive to not shoot Thor (since it might make you look bad for the person pushing you EOD to suddenly die). You're not the only person where motive is conceivable, but yes, you stand out as someone who could reasonably have wanted to shoot someone other than Thor.

[Transcend]

IMO reading into the night kill is stupid. I've learned to never do this in a previous game.

Just.

Drop it.

We have 2 universally townread slots. Them being Giga and Wingback.

If either of them are scum. We lost.

Deal.

With.

It.

Moving on that leaves scum in the bloc of {Thor, Tenshii, Trans (dem T's), Ross, Mhsmith}

FMPOV it's shooting 3 times in hopes of hitting one duck, same to everyone else in the bloc.

For Giga and Wing, it is not.

Making inferences on the night kill is dumb as **** BECAUSE ANY OF THE 5 OF US CAN MAKE ANY KILL OUR HEART DESIRES.

The correct thing to do is just focus on what has happened IN THE GAME because that's where the most TELLING information is. The night kill gives us INCONCLUSIVE information.

The way you guys scumhunt genuinely ticks me off sometimes because to me it reads like flipping a coin rather than actual analyzation of tells given throughout the course of the game

/rant

[mhsmith0]

@Trans: it's relevant information. Your lack of desire to think about it is not my problem.

Deal.
With.
It.

[Transcend]

It's not.

And I will not even think for one second that the night kill is telling.

I can link you a game where someone made an insensible NK and it bit me in the butt to prove my point.

[Transcend]

If only Io were here to back me up on this because she was briefly in this game fwiw.

[mhsmith0]

@Thor

Hypothetically, I get lynched and I flip town. Does that make you scum for pushing a town slot so hard?

I'm 99% sure you'll say "No because...." so whatever reason you have, just apply that to me defending Karnos.

I'll butt in and say that it makes Thor look worse, but is not damning by itself. Just like your defense of Karnos and attempt to find counter-wagons makes you look worse, but is not damning by itself. You reasonably fit the profile of what the last wolf might look like. OTOH you're far from a lock for the position. That's what reading, re-reading, and considering all angles is for. One of Thor's complaints about you is that you're not really putting your energy into finding the last wolf, but rather into just defending yourself.

To the extent this is fair, as either alignment you're better off putting more energy externally (scum-hunting or fake scum-hunting, depending) instead of internally (defending). It's more challenging and more rewarding that way as well.
/rant

[Transcend]

Tenshii defending karnos is justified because not that long ago I was the Zachstralkita in my sig and he was the Transcend. He's good scum.

[mhsmith0]

It's not.

And I will not even think for one second that the night kill is telling.

I can link you a game where someone made an insensible NK and it bit me in the butt to prove my point.

NK motive is not conclusive in and of itself. It is a piece of evidence. Everything is evidence. VCA is evidence. Meta is evidence. The quality and reasoning behind peoples' votes is evidence. etc etc

That NK motive analysis worked badly for you in one game does not discredit its meaning or usefulness generally. Moreover, that you do not want to talk about it does not mean that you are in charge of the conversation. If you don't want to talk about it, don't talk about it. But others can and will consider it as they deem appropriate. If that offends you, too bad.

[Transcend]

It mostly just annoys me because I've learned from experience it's generally USELESS.

Do you think scum are gonna be predictable?

Scum are gonna make whatever kill they deem appropriate to win them the game. This can be by matters of either mapping their game out in the correct or for WIFOM aka making a kill that is unlikely for them to make in most POVs.

Like.

Give me one time where you won a game because of kill meta.

[Transcend]

And I bet you ten bucks that the reason that player was scum was NOT due to kill meta but some other bs they did in the game.

Seriously.

[mhsmith0]

I can give you an example of where my wolf team LOST a game in part because of kill motive (not meta). Fruit Salad
mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/1337-Fruit-Salad-Mafia
Crunkus is last wolf, town is:
Trafficone
LordJVK
Revival
UDC
sjg

coming off a wolf lynch

UDC and sjg are largely pocketed at that point. Lord and Revival are screaming about how crunkus needs to die, Traffic looks a bit sketchy bit is overall reasonable about how crunkus needs to die. Crunkus shoots revival. Lord laughs his ass off about how shitty the shot was, traffic makes a clear analysis about how no one other than crunkus could reasonably have made the shot, complete with a thoughtful and interesting "here's where each of us shoots if we're the last wolf" bit, and crunkus BARELY squeezes through the day (and shouldn't have) and then F3 is an easy lynch of crunkus.

NK motive wasn't ALL that doomed him, but it absolutely hurt.

[mhsmith0]

Do you think scum are gonna be predictable?

Scum are gonna make whatever kill they deem appropriate to win them the game. This can be by matters of either mapping their game out in the correct or for WIFOM aka making a kill that is unlikely for them to make in most POVs.

Right. Wolves will do what they think is best. But generally speaking, a wolf who isn't Thor would really want to get rid of Thor ASAP. That's a fundamental motivation behind what most players here would do if they were the last wolf. But Thor isn't dead. And yes, it's meaningful. What it means is open to interpretation and debate. But it's alignment-relevant information that can and should be part of the discussion, even if you don't like it.

[mhsmith0]

I would put at near 100% that scum is within Giga, Wing, mhsmith, and Tenshii.

I can accept that maybe scum didn't bus Karnos, but the idea that scum didn't vote KTS seems highly unlikely.

Talk about why? I'd think that wolves would, all things considered, prefer being off wagon, both to avoid heat and to potentially set up the next mislynch.

[Transcend]

Okay, at least you believe that night kills shouldn't be "damning" tells like me.

I'll take your point into consideration but please put mine into consideration too.

It's from the Fire and Ice game hosted by beeboy: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=66176

So bear with me it's a bit confusing, there was a slot that had 4 players that was scum.

The first two players in the slot were irrelevant. I'll talk about the third and fourth players.

Third player in the slot was Garmr. Him and Firebringer (town) were buddying all game. FB townread the Garmrslot, Garmr buddied FB. It was hard buddying to the point of Garmr fakeclaiming mason and Firebringer sheeping the bad votes he made on keybladewielder (noob town).

Now Garmr had replaced out, so the 4th player in the slot was projectmatt. Due to the exchanges that Garm/Fire had, FB townread projectmatt anyways. So matt buddied with Firebringer, but not as hard.

A hydra of RadiantCowbells and Ranger was on matt's ass, MagnaofIllusion (formerly Io ) got lynched. I put in my bullshat ISO that I scumread the mattslot as well.

My faction killed Tammy/Sickofitnumbers, his faction?

They didn't kill RC/Ranger

They didn't kill Me

They killed ****ing Firebringer.

Now I was in a 1v2v4 situation, so I NEEDED to lynch mafia or I was basically toast.

Javajoe was obv awful town, SnarkySnowman had townslipped that day and been overall obvious town. Key was also blatant town. I poe'd that Alban was one of the fire goons.

So it was RC/Ranger vs. Projectmatt for me.

I made the COLOSSAL MISTAKE of assuming that Matt and Alban wouldn't kill Firebringer. So I assumed it was RC and Alban. I ignored RC's tunnel on Matt because I had a feeling he was tunneling town, due to the kill meta. Also when Alban wasgetting lynched, RC hard defended Alban. So I figured wolves were RC/alban.

Key gets lynched because RC is dumb af and gave his hard scumread hammer.

I got night killed by the scum anyways, but if I didn't get targeted by the fire goons, I would've lost anyways because I axed RC who I thought was fire goon due to kill meta.

So from that day forth, I learned to NEVER rely extremely hardcore on kill meta, because the gambit PJM did was incredible and it made me 180 him and fos someone I was pretty sure was town.

[mhsmith0]

Oh yeah, you should never just let yourself be hardcore WIFOM'd by a single NK, especially going into LYLO. Most of the time, you let your townbeard hang around, but it's not impossible to choose something else and gambit. In general though you let the townbeard stick around - the game RC just finished, open 645 http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=66955 had Zack the IC stick around all game because he'd been pocketed, which ultimately (in part) led to the town loss.

But yeah, it could always be a gambit, especially in LYLO. At this particular stage of the game, though, a gambit is, while not impossible, relatively less likely. Bluntly speaking, Thor is the best town player here (if town). Letting him live incurs a potentially serious cost. For a wolf not to shoot Thor, it's either because Thor is the wolf, or it's a mistake, or the wolf thought that there was a particular gain that was worth incurring this cost. It's not a big neon sign saying "only this person would do it", but it gives some insight into what the wolf is up to, possibly into the wolf's mindset, etc. So yeah, it's worth considering. But no, it's not automatically clearing or damning to anyone.

[Transcend]

But what I'm saying you made a case that the Io nk leads to it possible for any of the 7 of us to be scum, so delving deeper into it seems, kinda useless? When there's tells in game that would probably be much more helpful.

[Transcend]

But ye mhsmith I do agree that Zach should've seen he was being manipulated by Bins.

I dunno lol.

[mhsmith0]

IMO, NK motive points to a likelier wolf inside {Thor, Tenshii, Rosske}. Not any kind of lock result or close to it, but it's a piece of evidence. I don't think Gig ever wants to shot not Thor there, ditto Luna. Any consensus town read who, if the last wolf, is in great shape to potentially coast to the finish, would (presuming they are thinking critically about their decisions) shoot Thor last night and never look back.

I also think it's highly likely (though not certain) that as last wolf you'd shoot Thor there so as to lock in his read of you as derpy town but not wolf. I'd represent myself as also unlikely to let Thor live, but since that's self-meta, you should take it with a grain of salt (even though I'd happily SPK my way through the player list and try to pull my ass out of the fire when it was "my turn" at 5p or 3p).

So in terms of NK motive, it's suggestive. Not conclusive, but it's evidence, and worth considering. Or I'm just WIFOM'ing and confusing you because I'm the last wolf, in which case what I'm talking about carries a much different meaning.

[Tenshii]

Oh yeah, what's SPK? And what's smokescreen?

[Transcend]

Oh yeah, what's SPK? And what's smokescreen?

no idea lol

[mhsmith0]

SPK = Strong Player Kill. i.e. if you're a wolf, just kill the best player in the field as a generically optimal shot. Not sure what you're referencing wrt smokescreen though.

[Tenshii]

Rosske brought it up in 1623 and 1678