Micro 900: Autumnal Mafia (Game Complete)

[Wickedestjr]

Hello everyone!

VOTE: emps

[Wickedestjr]

I haven't been able to eat ever since mafia invaded our town. How can you?

[Wickedestjr]

over 200

Where?

does it really matter?

Yes, it does matter. I would appreciate if you could answer this question. At the very least, it would be nice to know the nature of the 200+ games that you’ve played. For instance, there’s a major difference between playing 200+ games on a real-time site like epicmafia vs playing forum games like here.

[Wickedestjr]

Hey guys,

Briefly checking in here during my lunch break. Had I known that this micro game I signed up for would be the fastest moving game I’ve ever been a part of, I would and should’ve announced V/LA yesterday. I had a few hours to read through the thread but didn’t have any time to contribute anything. In general, I don’t like posting when I’m not caught up.

Ico, you vote me for ‘of all the things to comment on’ I only asked Wimpy about his experience. Just because it’s the only thing I commented on doesn’t mean it’s the only thing I wanted to comment on. It’s simply

the only thing I had time to comment on.

Wimpy’s experience was the thing I was most curious about after reading the first few pages (and I’m not the only person that was interested in his answer).

I’ll explain that more and contribute more of my thoughts/questions when i get home.

[Wickedestjr]

Menalque, you seemed very confident in your Wimpy scumread. Have you ever been that confident so early in a game before?

Wicked just FYI I’m expecting more posting from you this game even if it’s just like passing thoughts, bc I know you were often active in the scum pt in C9++ even when u weren’t posting in game

Why are you telling me this? Wouldn’t it have been better to wait and see how active I am rather than telling me your expectation right from the get go?

And fwiw, there’s a huge difference between posting in a scum pt and posting in a game thread.

[Wickedestjr]

Wicked, when yiu get time to read/catch up, can you tell me why was Wimpy's experience the one thing you felt like commenting at the time?

You know, at first I said this was because I didn't have time to comment on anything else, but, thinking about it some more, there really wasn't much else to comment on. I asked Wimpy that question on page 11 - by that point 90% of the thread was you/Mena/Wimpy engaging in a very repetitive/circular conversation. So I don't really see what I neglected to comment on.

If I had had all the time in the world to post during my lunch break yesterday, I would have asked Mena the questions I asked him earlier today, I would have critiqued the game-state, and admitted that I was having trouble getting reads on any of you three by that point. (I still am to an extent)

[Wickedestjr]

Okay I'm caught up. More in a bit.

[Wickedestjr]

I agree that having 20 pages of Mena/Wimpy/Datisi all arguing with each other was not pro-town at all. The three of them literally had over 90% of the posts in this thread at one point and it was all just repeating the same points over and over again. It's like Wimpy and Mena were both competing to have the last say even if that meant having the same conversation 50 times in a row. News flash: most people can read and are competent enough to form opinions on something without needing to read it over and over again.

---

Datisi:

neutral, slight town lean
-She seems to be genuinely relaxed, I couldn't detect any discomfort or awkwardness. As far as her Wimpy-push goes, I agree with Ico's point that she would be setting herself up for scrutiny if she was scum pushing Wimpy-town, so the confidence expressed here, as one example, feels unlikely to come from Datisi-scum pushing a known mis-lynch. I'm inclined to think it's not bussing either.
-There are a couple small things that feel off to me like the doubt she expressed in Wimpy at some points and her lack of paranoia with Menalque. I'm having trouble explaining why these things are rubbing me the wrong way.
-This is another post that feels a little strange to me. Menalque and I literally just got out of a scum game where our third partner used to say stuff like this.

Datisi, what makes your play here so out of your scum range?

Wimpy:

neutral
-It's pretty obvious he didn't have 200+ games on Mafiascum. There are very few people that have that much experience and his play didn't indicate that either. It felt like he probably played a large portion of those games on some sort of real-time site, especially given this response. I wanted to get a sense of how many of his games were actual slow-paced forum games like this one because that's actually relevant experience in my eyes. If he had 30+ mafiascum games under his belt then that would make me feel much worse about his play here than if he had like 2 games under his belt and wasn't used to the site meta.
-I don't believe that over-defensiveness is a scum tell, but it does feel like Wimpy was more concerned with arguing with Mena/Datisi than actually sorting them.
-On the other hand, some of his defeatist/1v1 posts feel kinda townish to me: see 358 and 640. I also kinda believe him when he says he doesn't care how people read him.

Menalque:

neutral, slight scum lean
-I don't like his overly-confident push on Wimpy.
-I don't like what he's done to the game-state (helping spam the thread, f-bombing the guy that he's confidently scum-reading who has now replaced out)
-I don't like his warning to me here. Not only does it feel like a misrep waiting to happen but I'm still not sure why he makes that post as town.
-Regardless of his alignment, I think he crossed the line in his treatment of Wimpy. It kinda sucks that Wimpy replaced out and is leaving the site. Regardless of how irritable he may have been to certain people, he shouldn't have been treated that way and this feels like the wrong outcome.

Menalque, I know that you strongly prefer town. Why did you want to coast this game?


UNVOTE: VOTE: Menalque

[Wickedestjr]

Welcome popsofctown! Please add me to your '08 neighborhood PT.

I'm caught up, I'll be responding and commenting soon.

[Wickedestjr]

Intent to hammer me two days into the game before I even respond to anything? wth?

[Wickedestjr]

@Wicked, kinda similar question to you, there's been a bit of discussion about Icon/alimdia/Luca, any reads there?

I'm inclined to think alimdia is town. He seems interested in scumhunting and there are a couple specific posts that feel genuine to me. Starting to lean that way with Luca too; the way he progressed to his Alduskkel vote feels genuine too. Iconeum is a hard neutral, maybe even a slight scum lean. I don't feel like he's actually trying to figure me out with his vote and I feel like he's easily capable of doing everything that he's done so far.

My question in 812 was mostly referring to this part:

Ico, you vote me for ‘of all the things to comment on’ I only asked Wimpy about his experience. Just because it’s the only thing I commented on doesn’t mean it’s the only thing I wanted to comment on. It’s simply the only thing I had time to comment on.

Wimpy’s experience was the thing I was most curious about

after reading the first few pages (and I’m not the only person that was interested in his answer).

I feel like I answered this in my 818 and 841. Not sure what you're looking for here.

As much as I do love playing scum, doing so is very stressful for me and it makes me panic about every post I make, to the point that 50-70% of my scum PT's are literally just me going

"buddy help me X did Y what am I supposed to do in response"

. Me being this ~relaxed~ and freely posting at the extent I am is out of my scumrange I think, especially in a game with no daytalk. (God knows how much I abuse daytalk.) Obviously that argument might not be convincing to others, but eh, it was more of a passing comment.

Thanks for explaining that. Is your scum pt with Mena public?

Why is both "me expressing doubt over Wimpy" (potential lack of TMI) and "lack of paranoia with Menalque" (potential TMI) rubbing you the wrong way?

I'm not sure exactly, I haven't closely reread those parts of your iso. I just know that on my first read through the doubting of your Wimpy read felt a little bit forced and later on it seemed like that doubt faded but I'm not sure exactly why it faded. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

And in the 20 pages or so that you and Mena were talking to Wimpy, it just didn't feel like you were interested in sorting Menalque. You say you townread him for tone, but a few posts later admit he can fake tone as scum. And why revisit him a few days later when you can try to figure him out now?

[Wickedestjr]

Wicked now has all these problems with Menalque’s earlier approach, so why didn’t he make any mention of his grievances at the time? He’s only basically repeating what Icon said regarding Menalque, but the difference is that Icon had no chance to intervene while Wicked did.

I believe he also said he didn’t see anything else that needed commenting on at the time.

He has all these problems with Menalque’s approach, so your think he would have said something at least.

This is not entirely true. See the bottom of my 818 - I briefly mentioned a few things that I would have spoken about regarding Mena if I had had the time.

I'll admit that Menalque wasn't necessarily a scum read at the point in time that I posted two days ago, but what is the scum motive for me to 'suddenly have all these problems with Menalque' ? If I'm scum, then basically you're saying I waited until everyone had posted and then decided I wanted to scumread Menalque after it became clear that that wasn't a popular opinion anyway? Iconeum is the only person that seemed to share that viewpoint.

I don’t really like Wicked’s subtle shading of Datisi, feels like he’s nitpicking at things to create doubts over the slot while still aligning with the popular opinion.

I just explained this a little bit more in my last post. If I have a slight town read on someone but also have a couple slight reservations, then how am I supposed to handle that? Keep the reservations to myself? Calling people out for 'shading' seems to be one of the new trends in site meta that I'm not a big fan of.

[Wickedestjr]

Shortened version:

...

Datisi:

neutral, slight town lean
...
Datisi, what makes your play here so out of your scum range?
...

Wimpy:

neutral
...

Menalque:

neutral, slight scum lean
...
Menalque, I know that you strongly prefer town. Why did you want to coast this game?


UNVOTE: VOTE: Menalque

Wicked chooses to list 3 players, and comes to 3 neutral conclusions despite putting out an extensive read on all 3, leaving whichever way to lean on any of them as the game goes.

I believe popsofctown made this same point against me. See my response to her later.

But what really sticks out here is that he ends up with 3 neutral reads, and makes no attempt at all to sort them.

This is absolutely not true. I've asked Datisi/Mena both questions and voted for Mena. How am I not sorting them?

Furthermore, it's strange to come to a neutral-(slight) scumlean on both Wimpy AND Menal. If those 2 are scum, Wimpy never replaces out. Ever.

And knowing this, Town!wicked could easily pick up on this and say 'both slight scumlean, but not together'. Fails to do so.

This is a pretty blatant misrep. Where did I say that Wimpy was a slight scum lean?

[Wickedestjr]

EBWOP: I also think it's a giant stretch to say that I should be townreading Wimpy just because my slight scum read was pushing him so hard.

[Wickedestjr]

@Wicked: What's your opinion of what I said here?

I feel like there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in Wimpy's posting. There's "I don't care if you scumread me but I'm also going to spam the thread with posts explaining why you shouldn't be scumreading me" and also "I think Datisi is scummy but I didn't call her scum it was just a page 2 vote that I said was serious."

Ehh. I'm not sure. He spends an absurd amount of time/energy in defending himself, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's doing it because he cares how Mena/Datisi are reading him. Oftentimes when I'm defending myself (like right now) it's because I see someone spreading ideas about me that are untrue or misleading and I want to prevent other people from buying into those ideas.

And I don't see the cognitive dissonance in the second part of your post.

Why do you believe Wimpy when he said he doesn't care how he's read?

-As I said in my last comment to you, I can see him over-defending himself against his scum reads.
-He seemed to be a little bit prideful - case in point him thinking that experience on epicmafia is the same as experience on mafiascum.
-Him repeatedly misspelling Datisi's name and getting her gender wrong are some of the smaller details that make me feel like he wasn't motivated by trying to get on Datisi/Mena's good side.

Tbh, thinking about it some more, I'm actually not sure if any of this makes him town necessarily but those are some of the ideas that were going through my head when I made that comment.

Dislike this "case" and vote. This just sounds like you don't like Menalque's playstyle in this game so far, so your vote is basically policy.

I will admit that my fourth reason for voting him (that he crossed the line) was a policy reason - I'm not going to deny that. Not sure why that's scummy of me though.

The rest of my reasons for voting him had nothing to do with policy.

[Wickedestjr]

His takes are bad. But what is worse than how I disagree with the reads...

What reads did you disagree with? From your wall post, it seemed like we were in agreement on the three reads that I provided yesterday.

...he hardly has any reads. There has been so much stuff in this game, so the emptiness of his posting is very concerning. You should walk away from the trio hyperposting fiasco with SOME kind of medium or strong read. At a bare minimum something like "I don't know what any of these people are, but these two are never scum together". There's nothing wrong with playing an ms.net game on your lunch breaks and not matching Datisi's hyperposting, but even a less active slot should be expected to have read strength here, Iconeum entering the game with a strong position being an example.

Firstly, I literally just completed a successful scum game in which I was able to provide reads on the entire playerlist relatively early on. I realize that self-meta always has to be taken with a grain of salt, but I think this proves that I am at least capable of BS'ing confident reads as scum. I even knowingly give a number of controversial reads in that game. So this feels like pretty weak rationale for you and Ico to jump on me for.

Secondly, as I said yesterday, I feel like the 'trio hyperposting fiasco' was extremely repetitive. So you might view it as 20+ pages of content. But I view it as 1 pg of content that was put on repeat 20 times. So even though 30ish pages had elapsed at the time of my big post from last night, I don't feel like we had 30 pages worth of information to work with.

Finally, the reason why I am struggling to come up with confident reads as quickly as everyone else is because I'm town. This is my first town game in over two years and yes, I'm having trouble finding my footing here. I'm also very much a perfectionist and I'm a little bit afraid to be wrong. I think expecting me to have confident reads two days into a game is kinda unreasonable.

[Wickedestjr]

Ughhh. Evidently I don't know how links work.

[Wickedestjr]

Oh I used the 'post' tags instead of the 'url' tags.

Here are the correct links:
I was able to provide reads on the entire playerlist
controversial reads

[Wickedestjr]

This game is only two days old?

It's three days old. Last night, it was two days old. Page count can be misleading.

His takes are bad. But what is worse than how I disagree with the reads...

What reads did you disagree with? From your wall post, it seemed like we were in agreement on the three reads that I provided yesterday.

Your Datisi read has way too little intensity.
Also I don't think I'd townread my slot if I couldn't see the PM. But hitting neutral is a whaaat?

So, you don't actually 'disagree' with my reads. You just don't understand or agree with the exact intensity or strength of my reads. Maybe I'm a different person that doesn't view the game precisely the way that you do?

[Wickedestjr]

This is where I'm at currently:

town lean: alimdia, Datisi
neutral: Luca, Iconeum, emps, popsofctown
scum lean: Alduskkel, Menalque


I'm feeling more confident in my Menalque scum read after reading his posts today. His play here feels very similar to the scum game that I just finished with him. Alduskkel/Menalque scum team is my gun-to-head guess right now.


I'm gonna take a break and watch some tv for a bit. Might make another appearance here in a few hours, but no promises.

[Wickedestjr]

I’m about 10 pages behind. I’ll post here in a bit.

[Wickedestjr]

@Alduskkel-

Why were you so sure that Menalque wasn't actually going to hammer you?

@pops-

If you weren't voting me right now, how open would you be to the idea of a Menalque bandwagon/lynch?

[Wickedestjr]

It was a much more popular/acceptable opinion when you voted Menalque than it was when you popped into the thread to ask Wimpy about his experience.

There can be plenty of motive as scum to suspect/vote Menalque when you did.

Iconeum's the only person I can remember suspecting Menalque off the top of my head. Who else am I missing? Also, I feel like you're giving me very little credit as a player by asserting that I would lurk through the

first day of the game

just to see where momentum was going before I made my own opinions. And a number of players were much more acceptable/popular options by the time I made my big post.

Just because there's scum motive to voting Menalque doesn't mean it's the most likely explanation for my behavior.

I don’t really like Wicked’s subtle shading of Datisi, feels like he’s nitpicking at things to create doubts over the slot while still aligning with the popular opinion.

I just explained this a little bit more in my last post. If I have a slight town read on someone but also have a couple slight reservations, then how am I supposed to handle that? Keep the reservations to myself? Calling people out for 'shading' seems to be one of the new trends in site meta that I'm not a big fan of.

The reservations felt more like nitpicking to me, and there is the obvious scum motive (as Alim keeps talking about) of wanting to create doubt about an obviously townread player. It felt like the only reason that paragraph on Datisi existed was to create a grain of doubt in the back of people's minds about her, and I didn't feel it was warranted based on the things you highlighted.

I repeat my question from before: if I have a slight town read on someone but also have a couple slight reservations, then how am I supposed to handle that? Keep the reservations to myself? I'm not going to be discouraged from voicing my inner thoughts just because you're throwing out this empty 'shading' buzzword.

[Wickedestjr]

@Ico-

It's one thing to scum read me. I get that, it's part of the game. But it's honestly starting to bug me that you are making strong statements about my posts without even double checking the validity of those statements. If you're town, I'd appreciate if you actually be open to the possibility of me being town rather than viewing all my posts through this scum-lens. Literally all three of your comments in this post are showing me that you are intent on scum reading me and aren't trying to see where I'm coming from...

1) Pops made the same comment I did earlier, yes. You never responded to pops, so your answer is invalid.
2) I'm literally going through your ISO looking for those 'questions' you asked to Dat/Mena. You only asked Mena if he's ever been so confident in his read. That's it. Not a single question to Datisi.
So yeah, it IS absolutely true.
3) It's not a misrep. I say you have both of Wimpy/Menal in neutral to slight scumlean territory. Which is exactly true according to your own readlist.

1) This is not true. I responded to Pops here.
2) You really think I would just lie about asking questions that I never asked? I literally quoted my other questions to Datisi and Mena in the post that you're responding to here. I literally handed them to you on a silver platter. I'm going to do it one more time:

Spoiler:

I agree that having 20 pages of Mena/Wimpy/Datisi all arguing with each other was not pro-town at all. The three of them literally had over 90% of the posts in this thread at one point and it was all just repeating the same points over and over again. It's like Wimpy and Mena were both competing to have the last say even if that meant having the same conversation 50 times in a row. News flash: most people can read and are competent enough to form opinions on something without needing to read it over and over again.

---

Datisi:

neutral, slight town lean
-She seems to be genuinely relaxed, I couldn't detect any discomfort or awkwardness. As far as her Wimpy-push goes, I agree with Ico's point that she would be setting herself up for scrutiny if she was scum pushing Wimpy-town, so the confidence expressed here, as one example, feels unlikely to come from Datisi-scum pushing a known mis-lynch. I'm inclined to think it's not bussing either.
-There are a couple small things that feel off to me like the doubt she expressed in Wimpy at some points and her lack of paranoia with Menalque. I'm having trouble explaining why these things are rubbing me the wrong way.
-This is another post that feels a little strange to me. Menalque and I literally just got out of a scum game where our third partner used to say stuff like this.

Datisi, what makes your play here so out of your scum range?

Wimpy:

neutral
-It's pretty obvious he didn't have 200+ games on Mafiascum. There are very few people that have that much experience and his play didn't indicate that either. It felt like he probably played a large portion of those games on some sort of real-time site, especially given this response. I wanted to get a sense of how many of his games were actual slow-paced forum games like this one because that's actually relevant experience in my eyes. If he had 30+ mafiascum games under his belt then that would make me feel much worse about his play here than if he had like 2 games under his belt and wasn't used to the site meta.
-I don't believe that over-defensiveness is a scum tell, but it does feel like Wimpy was more concerned with arguing with Mena/Datisi than actually sorting them.
-On the other hand, some of his defeatist/1v1 posts feel kinda townish to me: see 358 and 640. I also kinda believe him when he says he doesn't care how people read him.

Menalque:

neutral, slight scum lean
-I don't like his overly-confident push on Wimpy.
-I don't like what he's done to the game-state (helping spam the thread, f-bombing the guy that he's confidently scum-reading who has now replaced out)
-I don't like his warning to me here. Not only does it feel like a misrep waiting to happen but I'm still not sure why he makes that post as town.
-Regardless of his alignment, I think he crossed the line in his treatment of Wimpy. It kinda sucks that Wimpy replaced out and is leaving the site. Regardless of how irritable he may have been to certain people, he shouldn't have been treated that way and this feels like the wrong outcome.

Menalque, I know that you strongly prefer town. Why did you want to coast this game?

UNVOTE: VOTE: Menalque

And I tried asking Menalque additional questions here as well.

3) I do feel like you're misrepping me because you criticized me for scumreading both Wimpy and Menal, in spite of their intense interactions, when I pretty clearly said:

Wimpy:

neutral

which is not a scum read.

Honestly, I

am

starting to toy with the idea of a Mena/Wimpy scum team, so I'm not even going to argue with you on this one anymore, though.

[Wickedestjr]

Also, I've been reflecting on the game a little bit and I would just like to add that my Datisi/Mena/Wimpy reads post that I made a few days ago was not a post that I would have made under normal circumstances. Pay attention to the context: I was at L-2 when I wrote that post and a major reason for the votes was that I hadn't contributed anything on the day prior. So yes, that post was a little bit forced because I felt an obligation to show where my thoughts were at even though I didn't have many strong feelings by that point.

[Wickedestjr]

iconeum can you help me sort jester

he said the things i wanted to hear
but did he know what were the things I wanted to hear??

Wouldn't that make me neutral at worst?

I don't know how you get caught up in this thread and feel that your townread on Datisi has to be hedged

FWIW, in my scum game that just ended (which I'm realizing I've talked about an awful lot ), both of my partners (Menalque and Nibbui/Volpe) were consensus strong-townreads throughout most of day 1 and day 2. So I would say that's a small part of the reason why I'm treading carefully this game.

[Wickedestjr]

@Alduskkel-

Why were you so sure that Menalque wasn't actually going to hammer you?

@pops-

If you weren't voting me right now, how open would you be to the idea of a Menalque bandwagon/lynch?

it's pretty know because experientially I've read him better given large amounts of data.

in a vacuum, I'll read most players right day one or never will.
Iconeum is a pretty good example of that but it hasn't been scummy this game

No clue what you're saying here.

wickedjester is really scummy

but also likable

please send help

<3

that's just bad mafia
townread who you're going to townread
play to win, don't play like you fear to lose

I

am

townreading Datisi. That's not what we were talking about. You were criticizing the lack of strength I showed in that read and I'm saying that I just got out of a game with two partners who looked very obv-town, so I'm hesitant to strong-town read Datisi. In particular, Datisi's posting style reminds me a little bit of Volpe.

i guess i need to start calling him
estj

Not sure that's gonna stick. "Wicked Jester" has a better ring to it.

[Wickedestjr]

Wicked, in your last post you said you're scumleaning me but haven't indicated any reasons why. So, why?

Mostly a gut read - I hadn't seen anything from you that I thought wasn't fake-able and at the time, you kinda made sense as a Mena partner. I also liked Luca's line of questioning. Your refusal to claim is very interesting to me and I'm looking forward to hearing you explain that more.

[Wickedestjr]

brb watching survivor

Hey that's what I was watching last night

[Wickedestjr]

Dang who knew this micro game would be so much effort to keep up with

Spoiler:

[Wickedestjr]

I'm done responding to things tonight, I'll follow up with people tomorrow perhaps.

I haven't had enough time to push Menalque.

I

really

think people should consider voting Menalque with me today. I think I have a unique vantage point on his scum-meta right now seeing as I just watched him play for the last month with the knowledge that he was scum. His play here looks very similar.

Two quick points that I would like to make before I sleep:

1. I know that he strongly prefers town but his play here is not at all reminiscent of someone that is genuinely trying to scum-hunt or playing the alignment that they want to be playing.

• In this post from yesterday, he says that Alduskkel and I haven't done anything strongly alignment indicative yet he expresses intent to hammer both of us within the next few hours of writing this post: here and here. Town shouldn't be so easily willing to lynch their POE reads when we still have half the day left.
  
• If you will indulge my narcissism for a moment, he says at the beginning of the game that I'm one of the specific players he intended to get a read on and vote or sheep. And coming into this game, I would have expected him to want to interact with me. However, he has completely ignored me for most of the game. He has made no effort to determine my alignment or respond to my criticisms/questions to him. This feels really off to me, especially in combination with me voting for him and him being willing to hammer me so abruptly.
  
• It feels unnatural how he went from confidently scum reading Wimpy to now slowly backing off of that read now that pops has replaced in. I understand that he got angry at Wimpy and appreciate him admitting he crossed the line. But it feels like a convenient and intentional transition given that pops is either a more difficult mis-lynch or a stronger teammate for him if he's scum.

It feels like he's playing an uninvested scum game.


2. There are a number of specific posts that he's made that feel like they're intended to give the appearance of scum-hunting without actually having genuine intent. Two examples of this that immediately come to mind:

• Here he warns me that he expects more posting from me than in our previous game. It feels like him trying to give off the appearance that he's sorting me even though it would have been better for him to wait and see how active I actually turn out to be rather than instructing me preemptively like this.
  
• He repeatedly asks Ico to explain why he started townreading Mena even though Ico explained it. Ico literally responds by quoting previous posts and that's the end of the conversation. So it doesn't feel like Mena actually cared about this even though he asked multiple times. I feel like this is an attempt to earn townpoints by questioning the thing that scum-him would inherently want (people townreading him).

[Wickedestjr]

Wow. I'm not sure if that's a town post but it's a pretty amusing read.

I lol'd at these bits:

Spoiler:

if she is somehow scum
shake her hand
and buy her
onion rings

chocolate and macodemia
jester will you mine macodemia with me

oppppportunism

I don't know how to mine macadamia but I'm willing to learn.

[Wickedestjr]

Anyways, my reads were very awful yesterday with my top two scum leans both flipping town. So I have some rereading to do for the next day or two.

Mod:

I am V/LA tomorrow.

[Wickedestjr]

@pops-

No emps in your reads list? Also, I'm interested in the thought process you provide here. Can you show me any previous games that demonstrate your preference for lynching VT-claims on day 1?

I had a post for the Dead Thread typed up are you kidding me.

Really?

[Wickedestjr]

Dang I might have to check out this Secret Hitler thing that people are buzzing about.

I have been powerpocketed by an avatar change

I actually like this avatar a lot.

[Wickedestjr]

To be honest, I'm on the fence about pops. I could envision her being scum, but there are a few things that I've been thinking about recently that would give me pause about lynching her:

-Does Wimpy-scum site flake after being caught in this game? It's one thing to quit a game because someone's being a jerk to you, but to site flake because you correctly got caught seems like bad sportsmanship. Granted, Menalque shouldn't have treated scum-Wimpy that way either, but my first impression was that Wimpy-scum is slightly less inclined to site flake than Wimpy-town would be.
-Does Wimpy-scum consider posting his role pm? It felt like he was considering that as a sign of retaliation to make Menalque look dumb. But posting a scum role pm wouldn't help his case at all...

I hate reading into things like these because they shouldn't even be part of the game, but I'm having trouble ignoring them.

I'm also not sure that pops-scum hammers Menalque-town AND admits afterwards that she wasn't even caught up on the thread.

At the very least, I am curious to hear what you guys think of these things. I'm out for now - will be rereading the next day or two.

[Wickedestjr]

Hey all,

I'm home early today and will try to make sense of this madness. I'm caught up on everything that's happened today, but still want to do some rereading.

And I'm not sure if Pandora is town but if she is then I definitely don't want to let her down.

[Wickedestjr]

Could one person please un-vote pops? I'm not necessarily opposed to her lynch today but I would like if we could take our time with this decision. We still have like four days left. I'm not yet sold on her wagon and even if she is scum, I would like some time to figure out who her hypothetical partner could be before we lynch her.

@Pops:

Some of your recent stuff is making me feel a little better about you. The problem is that I don't have any other strong SR's, and information-wise your lynch makes the most sense today.

I realize that 'information' isn't the only reason for your pops-vote, but I feel like that's a bad reason. We're already too far in the game to be information-lynching. If we get it wrong today, we're in LyLo/MyLo tomorrow. And we have an 80+ page thread and a few days left to discuss, so why not try to feel more confident in your decision today?

[Wickedestjr]

To be honest, even though I'm requesting an un-vote, I very well may end up joining this bandwagon...

@pops-

I've been rereading some and there are a few things that don't quite make sense to me.

1. You have shown that you actually do have a preference for lynching VT claims on day 1. However, that doesn't explain why you chose to quick-hammer. The benefit of hammering Menalque was that it prevented other people from claiming and limited scum's knowledge about PRs going into night 1. But I've been thinking about this and the downside appears to be much worse if you're town. You didn't appear to strongly suspect Menalque and, if you're town, you also risk your own subsequent mis-lynch by quick-hammering him. So essentially you risk potentially setting up two mis-lynches just to immediately end the day and guarantee that no other people claim. It actually seems like you have more benefit to quickhammer as scum. Can you talk to me about this?

2. Your treatment of emps confuses me. Yesterday you typed out a long catchup post where you say that you are unhappy with his play, in spite of the fact that you had mistakenly scum read him in a previous game. And your resulting reads list had emps as your number two suspect. However, fast forward to today and you seem to lack paranoia about him. You said here that you're content blindsheeping an emps TR and in this post you use your past failure as a

reason

to justify blindsheeping a TR on him even though you previously were unhappy with him

in spite of that

. It also strikes me as odd that you're former number 2 scum read was forgotten in your 3am post and now your suddenly sheeping a TR on him when, as far as I can tell, nothing has really changed. Am I missing something here?

3. If you are town and we mis-lynch you today, then we go into LyLo tomorrow. So you should be trying to figure out who scum are and convincing us of those reads. However, your effort from night 1 involved posting a reads list that you wrote after drinking three shots and today you have mostly justified your Ico vote based on stuff that he has done today. That all feels a little weird to me. Can you give an updated reads list and sum up why you think the team is Ico/alimdia (if that's where you're still at) ?

[Wickedestjr]

You can tell it’s Autumn because the days are getting really short.

ba dum tsss

For real though: that pops lynch was unnecessarily rushed. I was enjoying her presence here and would have liked to talk to her about the things I mentioned in my last post. Emps’ hammer was scummy and she should have never been at L-1 to begin with... This is three games in a row there’s been a quick hammer.

Now we are in LyLo and Pandora is counting on me. Let’s PLEASE take our time with this decision. I don’t care if somebody claims scum, I’d like to use the time we have to try to figure this all out.

[Wickedestjr]

Yeah I’m a friendly neighbor.

N1: Ico
N2: emps

I was gonna say I targeted Aldu n1 and reaction test emps but never mind. :/

[Wickedestjr]

Crumbed it in my first day 2 post

[Wickedestjr]

It’s a crumb that I targeted Ico night 1. First letters of the quotes. Very subtle.

I would have crumbed my actual role on day 1, but I was at L-2 after like my third post and felt like crumbing something after getting votes wouldn’t carry much weight.

[Wickedestjr]

emps, why did you think your vote was L-1? Please explain that in as much depth as you can.

And I'm also curious: have you ever crumbed a PR as scum before?

[Wickedestjr]

I have a new scum team theory that I'm actually feeling pretty good about.

[Wickedestjr]

I know. That's the reason why I haven't shared it yet.

Something just kinda clicked in my mind once I saw the pops flip yesterday. If I'm right, then I think it might be a tough sell though. :/

[Wickedestjr]

So you're telling me you missed the L-1 votecount at the bottom of the previous page? And you said you liked my points against pops but missed the part where I requested an un-vote?

[Wickedestjr]

This is an interesting situation. I’m caught up right now and I’ll start figuring this out when I get home in four or five hours.

[Wickedestjr]

I see what you're saying. Not sure if I 100% agree with your conclusion, but I'm mulling it over.

I'm trying to collect my thoughts right now.

[Wickedestjr]

*thinking*

[Wickedestjr]

Luca, I would like to know more about what was going through your mind yesterday when you thought Ico was a tracker. I picked up quite a bit of heat on day 1 and kinda sparked the Menalque mis-lynch. Why would Ico-tracker think that I'd be the one performing a kill night 1? And why would he completely flip his read on me just by virtue of me not having visited Aldu?

actually, why is datisi alive here

To gives credit to emps' claim?

That seems the most likely scenario atm.

Run this by me again?
And why not emps-Datisi scum?

What don’t you agree with?

I agree that you/emps aren't scum together; I would be extremely shocked if that were the case, for a number of reasons.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything else that you said.

Your logic makes perfect sense but it paints a picture that doesn't make sense. There isn't a scum team that makes perfect sense to me right now. If you are scum, then that means Aldu's role is 100% meaningless and he's just a red herring. HOWEVER, it feels weird for me to call someone town purely because their role gives purpose to another role.

If we approached this under the assumption that every role should have a purpose, then that would make you, Aldu, and me all confirmable players in this setup. Three confirmable players versus a two person scum team. I don't know how powerful the scum are but it does make it hard to believe that you and emps are both town.

[Wickedestjr]

This setup is so weird. I can feel my brain melting from confusion.

[Wickedestjr]

If you're asking me to town!lock you or scum!lock you here, I cannot do that.

However, pops and Wicked go before you I think, barring shenanigans.

Also I picked up on ~something~.

And I'm willing to trust my gut /again/ for now. So I'm gonna say you're Town.

And sure. Could've said that right away to save me the quoting troubles.

Datisi, what was this all about?

[Wickedestjr]

I'll admit: it's pretty crazy how quickly you and Datisi claimed. I don't think either of you could have possibly taken the time to evaluate based on Ico's claim.

I think if either of you are scum, then you were very prepared for that claim.

[Wickedestjr]

Working atm, will answer in a bit.

No worries; respond when you can.

I'm just going to continue talking out loud.

[Wickedestjr]

I'm considering the possibility that Luca is an Informed Mafia Goon. Perhaps he is telling the truth about everything except for his alignment. From a setup standpoint, it would explain a lot:

• It gives purpose to Aldu's role.
  
• Aldu's role serves as a weird distraction for both town and scum, so it's fair.
  
• Scum are informed about a town-aligned power role, but it's a weak power role and they only find out on day 2 so it's not a mega game changer for them.
  
• The setup wouldn't have three confirmable players. It could conceivably just be a FN, named townie, and doctor which doesn't seem over powered.
  
• It explains how Luca-scum could claim so quickly.

Nobody's mentioned it yet, but the Aldu kill also slightly implicates Luca because Aldu was voting him.

[Wickedestjr]

emps confuses me.

Days 1-2 I felt like he looked townish. He seemed pretty relaxed and un-pressured to actually produce content.

Then he hammered. The hammer really confused me. I had just requested an un-vote, brought up more points against pops, and expressed that I was considering joining the pops wagon. So it seems like a slightly unnecessary move for emps-scum to make BUT I also find it very hard to believe that he didn't realize his vote was the hammer.

At first I thought emps' breadcrumb was legit because he didn't strike me as someone who was engaged enough in the game to actually plan that as scum. But the fact that his breadcrumb is literally the exact same thing that he said in another game (that Datisi was in) where he was mistaken as doc makes this a really terrible breadcrumb. It's just another item for this game's catastrophe-highlight reel if he is telling the truth.

[Wickedestjr]

I might need a couple days to make this decision. More tomorrow

[Wickedestjr]

You think me and emps aren’t partners, would you agree that me and Datisi aren’t as well?

Not necessarily. It would make some sense if you two were partners.

I think the two of you would have expected to win this game today with no silly business needed. So if you are an informed mafia goon fakeclaiming as an informed townie, then I think Datisi-scum has more incentive to just claim VT rather than add to the PR count.


And I think alimdia is a kill choice that makes sense for everyone. He was one of the more popular town reads yesterday. The Alduskkel death is more interesting to me. I’ll answer the rest of your post tomorrow, I’m slippin.

[Wickedestjr]

I disagree about Alim being particularly TR.

I thought he was a more popular town read than me, Ico, or emps. I believe that you and Datisi were really the only more popular town reads yesterday. And if one or both of you are scum, then that makes alimdia a very reasonable nightkill choice. If anything, I would argue that an alimdia kill makes the least sense for an Ico/emps team if we're just looking at who had town cred; I would have expected them to kill you or Datisi last night.

Also, given Icon’s reason for reading Alim as a PR, I’m sure he would have read Aldu as a PR after he refused to claim.

Personally I didn’t think there was anything pr indicative about either of them.

From my point of view, Aldu looked like a VT. I think it's a bit of a jump to say Ico-scum killed Aldu for looking like a PR, even though you didn't necessarily read him that way yourself.

I know that Ico said he thought alimdia was a PR, but Ico only admitted that he thought alimdia was a power role when you asked him about this post. If your theory is true, then I'm not sure if he would admit that as scum. And if Ico was scum that killed alimdia for that reason, then why would he also 'strongly advise people not to push alimdia' yesterday? I would think that Ico-scum might like to see the supposed PR get votes and potentially have to claim.

I think if me and Datisi were scum we’d at least have paused to consider claiming Tracker.

This is a very fair point. My only argument against this is that you/Datisi thought that your ability would earn you some town cred and you both planned on claiming what you claimed regardless of how everyone else claimed. But I really don't know...

[Wickedestjr]

If we lynch emps today and there’s still no ‘conftown’ player among the three final players then it plays into scum’s hands.

Alternatively, we could lynch emps' hypothetical partner and have him 'protect' me tonight. Hypothetically, catching his partner today might reveal something more about the setup and help us sort the two of you.

And I think the ‘fakeclaiming informed’ idea is something that also needs to be dropped - pretty much everything points to it not being the case. Wicked’s theory about me possibly being Mafia night 1 informed is actually something that, objectively speaking, could be possible. I think the game makes a lot more sense with a Town N1 informed, but I guess it wouldn’t have been impossible for me to be Mafia N1 informed with emps as the town doc.

I disagree. If I knew nothing about the game was told this was:
A. FN + Doctor + Named townie vs. Informed mafia
OR
B. FN + Named townie + Informed townie vs. ???

Then I would say that "A" sounds much more reasonable and balanced. If we go with "B", then that means there are three confirmable players in the setup and no other types of town power roles present.

[Wickedestjr]

Got to go. Be back soon.

[Wickedestjr]

Wicked, do you think amildia kill makes any sense from Icon/Luca? Because looking at those two teams (Icon-emps and Icon-Luca), Icon/emps strike me as more likely for it.

I actually think it's possible that Icon/Luca would kill alimdia. As I said before, I think it's less likely that Icon/emps would kill alimdia because they were lower on the totem pole after day 2 ended.

Not necessarily my own reads, but I feel like this is how we ranked in popularity of being town read after day 2:
Datisi
Luca
alimdia
Icon
Me
emps


And I wasn't taking into account the fact that Icon knew I was a friendly neighbor last night. If he and emps are scum together then, in my opinion, they essentially killed off the easiest mis-lynch possible given that you/Luca were more town-read and I had the ability to confirm myself to someone. It's hard to see them doing that given how low on the totem pole they were after day 2 ended. They also don't strike me as the type of people to kill someone just for wifom purposes.

In Icon/Luca world, I don't see why they wouldn't kill Wicked. If they had, they'd have LyLo where they were both generally Townread, alimdia would be going after emps, I would be going after alimdia, and the Wicked kill would implicate me, paired with general ~paranoia~. Plus they knew that Wicked would've most likely become unlynchable if he'd lived.

Icon/emps makes at least some sense in that regard, I think.

Hmm, I don't know. Maybe Icon is town. Maybe he's scum and thought keeping me alive would make him look slightly better.

[Wickedestjr]

I was short on time earlier today so this bit came a little rushed:

I disagree. If I knew nothing about the game was told this was:
A. FN + Doctor + Named townie vs. Informed mafia
OR
B. FN + Named townie + Informed townie vs. ???

Then I would say that "A" sounds much more reasonable and balanced. If we go with "B", then that means there are three confirmable players in the setup and no other types of town power roles present.

When I said "no other types of town power roles present" I'm referencing the fact that in option A we have an informational power role and a protective power role whereas in option B we've got multiple informational power roles (2 or 3 depending on how you look at it) and nothing else. A looks like a normal set up whereas B is pretty bizarre.

Then I would say that "A" sounds much more reasonable and balanced. If we go with "B", then that means there are three confirmable players in the setup and no other types of town power roles present.

If this is the setup, then there are 2 confirmable players. Luca isn't confirmable exactly, if he was we wouldn't be here.

Luca would be semi-confirmable. Let's say alimdia is the night 1 kill and we try to lynch Alduskkel on day 2. Then Luca claims and it becomes pretty clear that he is town because there's no reason for him to stop the mis-lynch as scum.

[Wickedestjr]

Either way this game is making me feel dumb.

The tricky thing is that regardless of Icon and emps' alignments, this setup contains a backup tracker with no actual tracker. So there's a guarantee to some level of crazy here.

[Wickedestjr]

@emps

why did you choose to use a breadcrumb that you had 'used' in another game with Datisi? Were you not worried about her noticing it?
And why did you bread crumb at the time that you did, rather than at the beginning of the game? I feel like a bread crumb should be something that you wouldn't normally say in a game.

@Luca

do you feel like your play here has differed from your scum meta? If so, how?

[Wickedestjr]

And with nobody even attempting to claim Tracker.

Wicked, where's your mind at? Which bracket should we be sorting today?

I'm pretty sure I want to lynch you or Ico today. Catching the scum between you two would help us sort emps/Luca. And on the off chance that emps/Luca are the same alignment, then I think it's slightly more likely they're town together than that they're scum together.

But I would like to figure out emps/Luca too. I'll admit that I've been focusing more on them the past day or so. Luca makes sense as scum when I think about the setup as a whole and also when I think about the night kills. But emps' hammer vote and doc breadcrumb are both so atrocious that I'm a little bit torn.

[Wickedestjr]

Datisi, which way are you leaning right now and why?

[Wickedestjr]

The only reason the Alim kill makes sense is if scum really thought he was Tracker, and you can seen from D2 that I thought Icon was Tracker and Icon, given he’s VT, must have thought Alim was Tracker.

Please let me know what you think about this.

[Wickedestjr]

emps, would you ever quick hammer pops like that if you were scum? Why or why not?

[Wickedestjr]

Hm... Wicked, if you're sure emps/Luca aren't partners, is it okay if I place my vote on Icon?

It would give me a certiain peace of mind, and if they're scum together I think the game is lost anyway so might as well let them hammer.

I'm fine with this if you are.

[Wickedestjr]

@Wicked: I haven’t played much as scum for a while, but I’m less interested as scum and enjoy playing as Town more.

I’d probably play in a very laid-back way and go with the flow

instead of actively trying to push lynches etc.

Also if I were scum I’m pretty sure

I wouldn’t have agreed to lynch Pops

as she was hard TR’ing me throughout.

I feel like these statements are a bit contradictory.

Also, I do feel like you were a little bit laid back and 'go with flow' yesterday:

@Pops:

Some of your recent stuff is making me feel a little better about you. The problem is that I don't have any other strong SR's, and information-wise your lynch makes the most sense today.

[Wickedestjr]

Lol. I was too.

[Wickedestjr]

you think that scum!me sees you ask for an unvote in the same post that i referenced as "making a good point on pops"

and then says

"fuck it ill do it anyways"?

I honestly don't know. That's why I'm asking.

Are you saying you wouldn't do that?

[Wickedestjr]

I disagree with Icon being less TR than Alim - only Pops SR him from that I remember. There was more general suspicion around Alim.

I think the point I made here is still valid even if you swap Icon and alimdia.

And given I thought Icon was Tracker, I NK him every time over Alim if I’m scum.

Are you saying there's no scenario where you would keep Icon-tracker alive if you were scum?

[Wickedestjr]

Luca, I don't know very much about you, so here's a completely off-topic question (nothing to do with the game). Which of the following activities sounds like more fun to you:

A. Spending time with fellow villagers, going out and eating a burger
B. Murdering innocent townies

?

[Wickedestjr]

you think that scum!me sees you ask for an unvote in the same post that i referenced as "making a good point on pops"

and then says

"fuck it ill do it anyways"?

Does this mean you would have been reading more carefully as scum?

[Wickedestjr]

I have a new scum team theory that I'm actually feeling pretty good about.

Did you ever share this theory?

No I didn't. It's not a theory that I'm too interested in anymore. I wrote that post before Icon/Luca/you had claimed, so things have changed.

[Wickedestjr]

I want to know what the dragon is thinking.

[Wickedestjr]

The problem with this game is that every time I start to feel strongly about something, I'm immediately proven wrong or I find a piece of evidence that throws that theory out of whack.

Like in this case, I was starting to come around to emps-scum but then I found a town game of his where he un-knowingly put someone at L-1. So that makes his hammer here look slightly more believable.

I'm just glad we ruled out an emps/Luca team. That's our accomplishment for the day. Reduced 6 possible teams down to 5.

[Wickedestjr]

look can we not talk about how blind and bad at reading i am

Spoiler:

[Wickedestjr]

My gut feeling right now is that this is a Luca/Datisi scum team. Feels like Icon/emps is the answer being pushed the most but honestly that scum team makes the least amount of sense to me.


This is how the possibilities rank in my mind right now, gun to my head:

Luca/Datisi
Luca/Icon
emps/Datisi
Icon/Datisi
emps/Icon


I’ll spend some more time on this later tonight. I’ve focused all my energy on Luca/emps when I should be trying to sort Datisi/Icon. Regardless of who the team is, I’ve town read all four of you at one point or another so I think scum have played very very well this game.

emps’ hammer was awful but I’m not sure he would intentionally do that as scum and I’m not crazy about Luca’s L-1 vote either.

[Wickedestjr]

I also looked at some of Plum's past games and it seems like they had a fair amount of power roles in them. Not sure if there would be four town power roles in a micro, but I wouldn't call it impossible.

I really think that confirming that Datisi/Icon are not a team as we did for you/emps is an unnecessary risk right now. We seem to all agree about lynching Datisi or Icon today so I don't there's no reason to do that.

[Wickedestjr]

One thing that should be considered is that the other scum (Icon or Datisi) has been protecting emps all game.

Examples?

I put Pops at l-1 because there was no alternative - I thought Icon was Tracker and he was saying not to push Alim and he TR you, so there was nowhere else to go.

What about emps? You could have given him more attention yesterday. Instead, your L-1 vote demonstrated your willingness for the day to end before he had even contributed. It effectively allowed emps to get through a second day without doing anything. You critique Icon/Datisi for protecting emps but I feel like all three of you were kinda tunneled on pops.

[Wickedestjr]

@Datisi

can you explain why you don't think it's Icon/Luca?

[Wickedestjr]

And no, there’s never a chance I don’t kill who I think is the Tracker N2, especially when it also happens to be be a good player (which Icon is).

You say this, but I feel like you could also make the argument that there's never a chance Ico-scum doesn't kill me since he

knew

I was a FN.

Maybe you’re biased due to the fact you targeted both emps and Icon, but I don’t see how that team makes the least sense.

I can assure you that this is not the case at all. I maybe had a slight town lean on Ico going into night 1. But I picked emps because I thought he was the least likely to be nightkilled last night.

My reasons for thinking Icon/emps is unlikely:

• alimdia is like the worst night kill choice for an Icon/emps scum team. I was the only person that was more mis-lynchable and Icon knew that I would be confirmed town today. I get that Icon thought alimdia was a power role, but he KNEW that I was confirmed town. You and Datisi have probably been the two most popular town reads this game - why do you both survive this long if Icon/emps are scum together?
  
• The setup makes a lot more sense with emps being town than with you being town. If emps is town, then we have an informational role, a protective role, and a red herring role (which serves as an equal distraction to both town and scum if you are informed mafia) - that feels like a reasonable and creative setup. If you are town, then we have three semi-confirmable informational roles, no protective power roles, and scum have no way of combating your 'informed' ability.

[Wickedestjr]

And Wicked, to say me/Datisi makes the most sense defies all logic and sense.

If me/Datisi were a team I would have claimed Tracker and won the game. Icon had just said he thought I was Tracker. Why would I claim a role that could so easily come from scum?

So you're saying:

If you claim tracker, then you win.
If you don't claim tracker, then we shouldn't lynch you because you didn't claim tracker.

So basically this means that you and Datisi should just get auto win because there's no town tracker?

Fwiw, even if one of you had claimed tracker, I wouldn't be so quick to view you as confirmed town.

[Wickedestjr]

@Wicked: I haven’t played much as scum for a while, but I’m less interested as scum and enjoy playing as Town more.

I’d probably play in a very laid-back way and go with the flow instead of actively trying to push lynches etc.

---

The only reason I gave emps a pass was because

I was sheeping Datisi and Icon

who were my top TR's for most of the game.

I was willing to look at alternatives, but

it was a closed-shop

. As I said, I TR Datisi and I thought Icon was Tracker, and between them they were unwilling to look at emps, you, or Alim. I also genuinely thought Pops was the best lynch Yesterday.

There was no-one else who was going to be lynched that day.

I had no way of knowing emps would come in and hammer without providing any further content.

It feels like you were playing to your self-described scum meta.

I am town. On day 1, I thought Menalque was scum but I was the only person voting for him. I was dissatisfied with the way things were going so I made a case and encouraged people to join me. He got lynched. It turned out to be incorrect but I still got my way because I actively made a push for it. Town is supposed to push for what they believe in rather than sit back and let others call all the shots.

I understand that pops was your preferred lynch yesterday. But if you are town then you should have pushed for emps to contribute something before day's end if you thought he might be scum coasting.

And the underlined bit seems like a poor excuse. You are experienced enough to know that you run the risk of an early hammer by putting someone at L-1.

[Wickedestjr]

I don't have the time to respond to everything because I have to go to sleep now, but one quick thing:

And not only would neither me nor Datisi claim Tracker, but I'd claim the Town version of my scum role,

which would hold no water whatsoever.

That's brilliant.

If no-one else is claiming Tracker then

that pretty much makes me conftown as well, because there would be no other function for the Backup-Tracker.

It would be entirely useless without my role.

Evidently you

did

think your claim might be believed when you first claimed it.

I feel like I'm being perfectly reasonable - I'm reading your posts, I'm responding to all your comments, I'm not voting for you right now and I don't even want to lynch you today. Believe me, I'm putting a lot of thought into this. There's no need to call me deluded or a brick wall.

[Wickedestjr]

It's all good, you're fine.

I'm still open to 'emps-scum', it's just not the way I'm leaning at the present time. And again, I feel like catching the scum in {Ico/Datisi} helps sort you and emps.

I'll admit that your frustration does feel kinda genuine but I'll think about all this more tomorrow.

[Wickedestjr]

Should have stated my V/LA today. I know the deadline is closing in on us. I'll have more time for this game tomorrow and Wednesday.

[Wickedestjr]

is it bad that i might just end up sheeping wicked?

no pressure bro

Yep no pressure at all. I'm doing just fine.

Spoiler:

[Wickedestjr]

@Ico

I think it's pretty unreasonable of you to seriously suspect Luca/emps right now. Let's pretend/assume that's not the team. Why do you think makes most sense as Datisi's partner and how confident are you feeling?

[Wickedestjr]

*Who do you think

[Wickedestjr]

I did some rereading during lunch today and am kinda starting to consider a Luca/Ico team instead.

It explains a lot, including the Luca/Datisi non-tracker claims. The only points of confusion with this are:
Why do Luca/Ico keep Datisi alive?
And I’m also not sure if Luca shoots my Luca/Datisi theory down so hard if his partner is actually Ico.

I need to do some more digging.

emps what do you think?

[Wickedestjr]

I'll admit that this 'informed' mechanic is very new to me. I've just recently started playing forum mafia again and I don't think this even existed a few years ago when I used to play. I've taken the time to look in other games to see what types of information people usually get. If anyone's interested, I ran a search for normal/micro games with an 'informed' role here.

Some personal takeaways that I'm recording for my own benefit but may be of interest to others:

• Seems like this ability is more often given to scum, but not always
  
• The information can be pretty much anything (e.g. 'you know this person is a doctor' or 'you know some of these roles may exist' or 'you know there are 4 VTs', etc.). It's pretty bizarre to me seeing such a variety of different types of information all within the scope of this 'normal' mechanic, but now I know.
  
• This game is the most similar to what Luca is claiming to be. There was a player in that game who knew someone else was a town-aligned doctor at the start of the game.

Worth noting also that Luca just got out of a game where scum had an informed member. Perhaps that would make him slightly less inclined to use it as a fake claim here, but I don't really know.

I'll be honest. After taking a look through that, I'm a little bit less confident in Luca being scum. One of the other issues I had with Luca's claim was that it meant there were three informational roles (him, me, Aldu) and zero protective roles which seemed very unusual/imbalanced to me. However, I saw some setups in my search that had several investigative roles and another setup that had several protective roles.

Maybe there's no doctor and this setup is just kinda like an informational potpourri with three very different types of investigative abilities: a FN who can slowly inform people of his own innocence, someone who thinks they're a backup to someone who can follow people at night, and someone who finds out about the back-up tracker at start of day 2. It does seem kinda strange to me that Aldu's role would exist purely so that someone else could be informed about him. But now that I think about it through this 'informational potpourri' lens, maybe it's not so unreasonable...

[Wickedestjr]

Wicked, please seriously consider emps/Icon.

I definitely will.

[Wickedestjr]

I really appreciate you guys all being so patient with me. I know my reads have been all over the place this day phase; I'm just trying to consider all the different possibilities.

But it looks like I'll have to cast my vote tomorrow night, so we'll see where my reads end up by that point.

I just feel the pressure and really want to get this right.

[Wickedestjr]

You won't be around when the deadline strikes?

Deadline will hit at noon on Thanksgiving day my time. I'll probably have some time to post that morning, but given the holiday I might not have time for any last-second deep/groundbreaking analysis. So I'm planning to vote tomorrow night, maybe 11-12 hours before deadline at least.

[Wickedestjr]

@Ico

I'm leaning towards voting for you tomorrow night. Let's say you have roughly 24 hours to convince me otherwise. Unfortunately, we've never really been online together at all this game. But here are some things that I would like you to talk about please:

1. Why should I be townreading you? And why should I be scum reading Datisi? Note that I am fully convinced you are not both town.

2. How likely is it that the scum team is Luca/emps? Why wouldn't they hammer you and how could the setup just be FN + back-up tracker?

3. If you were scum, how likely is it that you would kill alimdia? On a similar note, how likely is that you would keep me alive as FN?

And I think you should be voting for Datisi right now.

[Wickedestjr]

Ico, couple things:

why should I be townreading you?
have you ever seen scum refrain from quick hammering like this?

And I’m not voting for Luca today. Maybe tomorrow but not today. If you’re town, then you should vote Datisi.

[Wickedestjr]

I read that post already, Ico. I’m caught up.

And don’t call me lazy. I have taken the time to read through your iso. And I’ve taken the time to read through Datisi’s iso. I am basically certain that this isn’t Luca/emps so that means one of you/Datisi has to be scum and, even as townish as you’ve been, you haven’t looked as townish as her. How can I justify voting for Datisi when even her 1v1 opponent can’t do it?

And you didn’t answer either of those follow up questions.

Why should I be townreading you? You know your meta and your play in this game better than everyone else. If you’re town, you should be aware of some specific things you are doing here that you wouldn’t be doing as scum.

And you never answered if you’ve seen scum refrain from quickhammering like this. That should be an easy question to answer. If you haven’t seen that before, then it makes it especially difficult for me to believe that you genuinely think Datisi is town.

I’m encouraging you to vote Datisi because, on the off chance I change my mind and decide that you’re town, I would want to lynch her instead so I would like you to put your vote on her if you’re town. If you’re scum, then by all means keep voting Luca.

[Wickedestjr]

If Luca and emps are scum, then they deserve to win already. I don’t want to win for something as simple as them not being able to coordinate a quickhammer

[Wickedestjr]

Cool so this means Ico is scum unless the team is Datisi/Luca.

I’m probably going to vote Ico soon if emps doesn’t beat me to it. Just want to check a couple things first.

[Wickedestjr]

Are you still around, Datisi?

[Wickedestjr]

I was rereading some of your play on day 2. In general, it felt like you may have flown under the radar while Ico and pops were going at it, so I was interested in taking a closer look.

At start of day, you said that you thought Menalque would be the mis-lynch that lost us the game but, interestingly, you were pretty quick to decide that you wanted to lynch pops and then me. If you were so confident in pops/me being scummy, then why did you make that comment? I know you weren't a fan of the Menalque bandwagon. That just struck me as a little bit odd though.


In general, I'm also just interested in hearing where your head is at wrt Luca vs. emps. How strongly are you leaning towards emps? To be honest, the nightkills are probably the biggest thing still preventing me from thinking this is an Ico/emps team.

[Wickedestjr]

Sorry for disappearing just now. Something came up.

So you're saying those posts I linked weren't you betting the game on pops/me?

[Wickedestjr]

Did you notice emps' bread crumb before he revealed it today? What do you think of his explanation for lack of motivation that he gave here?

[Wickedestjr]

VOTE: Iconeum

======[]

[Wickedestjr]

Okay good. I apologize for being so paranoid this game.

Hopefully we're both alive tomorrow.

[Wickedestjr]

Yeah it might be Icon/emps. Not too confident, though. I will need a few more days to figure this one out. And I am

V/LA on Monday

.

Luca, how do you feel about bussing?

[Wickedestjr]

Luca was this your first time playing with Ico?

I used to like distancing as much as possible without actually bussing.

Can you expand on that? In your opinion, what is the difference between distancing and bussing? I'm wondering if your interactions with Ico could ever be SvS.

I think Icon was informed of a back-up Tracker but not who it was, which explains why he was surprised when I said I was informed not only of a BU Tracker but also of his identity.

Can you explain this in more depth for me as well? Ico said he was surprised that you didn't claim tracker.

[Wickedestjr]

the ico maf informed flip makes me think that ico was informed abt a backup tracker and they nked aldu n1 so then luca was able to fakeclaim informed town n1

Run this by me again?

[Wickedestjr]

I'll be honest, this isn't a slam-dunk easy decision for me. I'm slightly leaning towards voting emps right now, but there are things that make me feel uneasy about both of you. I spent some time rereading tonight and will need a couple more days to do some more digging.

[Wickedestjr]

I'll have more time tomorrow to share my thoughts.

[Wickedestjr]

Thanks for those answers Luca.

As I said, self-defence is limited, but if I were scum with Icon I would have distanced more on days 1 & 2, and probably wouldn't have bussed D3 as there might not have been any need - you weren't even scumreading Icon for most of the day.

Hmm your take on days 1-2 is interesting to me. I think Ico was playing really well days 1-2 - why do you think that you would have wanted to distance from him?

[Wickedestjr]

Luca, at the present time, these are two of the biggest things preventing me from confidently town reading you.

1. When I asked you to describe how you're playing differently from your scum meta, you said here that you would play in a laid back way and go with the flow as scum (instead of actively trying to push lynches). The problem is that I still think that your play this game has resembled your described scum play style. These statements from you fall in line with that:

The only reason I gave emps a pass was because

I was sheeping Datisi and Icon

who were my top TR's for most of the game.

I was willing to look at alternatives, but

it was a closed-shop

. As I said, I TR Datisi and I thought Icon was Tracker, and between them they were unwilling to look at emps, you, or Alim. I also genuinely thought Pops was the best lynch Yesterday.

There was no-one else who was going to be lynched that day.

I had no way of knowing emps would come in and hammer without providing any further content.

Your only counter to this was talking about your Aldu push. But I reread your back and forth with him and you only started pushing Aldu after he attacked you. And he originally attacked you

for being on the side lines

. So I don't feel like that's a great counter example. And I saw that you tried arguing that I was more laid-back than you were but I don't believe that was true. I made a push for the Menalque lynch in spite of the fact that multiple people (Datisi, pops) made it explicitly clear that they wanted to sort him on a later day. On the contrary, it seems like you were content to follow the crowd on the pops lynch even though you didn't seem fully convinced in it.

2. I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around the Alduskkel and alimdia kills coming from an Ico/emps team. (P-edit: I see your explanation for this.) But it's not just the fact that they kept Datisi alive. It's the fact that they kept both you

and

Datisi alive for so long (in my opinion you two were the most popular town reads of the game). Instead they chose to kill two players who could have potentially been mis-lynched. And I also don't think that Aldu/alimdia really did anything strongly PR indicative. If anything, Aldu's refusal to claim made me feel like he thought he had nothing to lose. And alimdia saying 'let's keep the pr talk down to a minimum' is something that he would have a vested interest as a VT just as much as he would as a PR.

To be fair, Datisi made a good point about how you/Ico could have killed me for the win given that she suspected alimdia and alimdia suspected emps. And I'm also aware of the fact that Ico's information could have given him some reason to kill Aldu or alimdia that's just beyond my perception of the game. But I'm not fully comfortable accepting this yet.

Luca, I have a question for you about this: how much confidence in a PR-read is needed for scum to shoot someone that they could have potentially mis-lynched?

[Wickedestjr]

Regardless of Ico's partner, I feel like he was trying to make this confusing by keeping me alive + pushing a Luca/emps team yesterday.

[Wickedestjr]

My biggest issue with emps is his lack of interest in scum hunting on days 2-3.

im not trying to solve the game that much because i dont rly like want to i guess

the 1st 20 pages and the fuckfest the rest of this game has been hasnt exactly made me want to play the game more

emps, I find this explanation hard to believe. I agree that the first 20 pages of this game kinda sucked. But that was 80+ pages ago. I feel like the Mena/Wimpy thing is very much in the past.

And it also didn't seem like your effort level dropped until a few days later.

What can you say to convince me this explanation is true?

[Wickedestjr]

I naturally distance as scum. I would have at least had more arguments/debates.

It makes no sense from a strategic PoV to TR my scum partner all game

when he was widely TR anyway and then bus him needlessly in LYLO. You thought me/Datisi was the scum team,

why would I bus Icon in this situation?

One could make the argument that scum wouldn't want to throw shade at their partner if their partner is a widely accepted TR. If you and Ico were partners, then you two were already popular town reads through most of days 1-2 so the town cred gained from distancing might not be worth the risk of attracting unwanted attention to each other.

And I feel like the bolded parts are a bit contradictory or WIFOM-ish.

[Wickedestjr]

Wicked, you were definitely more laid-back than me D1. You made one good post against Menalque, but that was it. Apart from that you didn't push anyone at all. I pushed Aldu, Menalque and Alim D1.

*sigh* I feel like you keep missing my point here. My point has nothing to do with the quantity of effort exerted in this game. I cited my own Mena push not because I'm trying to convince you that I put in more effort on day 1. My whole point with that was that I pushed for a unique lynch that was experiencing resistance. Whereas I feel like you were taking the path of least resistance all game: you expressed support of the Wimpy bandwagon when he was getting lots of attention, you followed Ico to vote for me, you voted Aldu after he attacked you for being on the side lines, and then you followed me on Mena. Those are all the steps that I can remember. Where did you push alimdia on day 1?

D2 was an unusual situation - it was a bit of a closed shop. I had two strong TR's and they weren't interested in lynching the slots I might have compromised on. Furthermore, I genuinely felt Pops had to go D2 and I stand by that now. It was the correct lynch for D2 as my uneasiness about that slot would have remained.

Again, I just feel like this is a little bit lazy if you are town. If you thought there were other slots that deserved attention then you should have put your foot down. Just because your strong TR's aren't interested doesn't mean you just stand back and let them dictate the course of the game.

In your last post before putting pops at L-1, you admitted that some of her recent posts were making you feel better about her. We still had plenty of time to make our decision on day 2, so why the rush to put her at L-1 in spite of those second thoughts?

I also don't get why Aldu and Alim were killed, other than that Icon clearly thought Alim was a PR, and given his reasoning for thinking that it's understandable that he would have used to same logic to read Aldu as a PR. I stated earlier I didn't see anything PR indicative from either of them.

As for your question, I guess quite a lot of confidence.

I agree with you that 'quite a lot of confidence' would be necessary.

[Wickedestjr]

Luca what did you think of this idea:

One could make the argument that scum wouldn't want to throw shade at their partner if their partner is a widely accepted TR. If you and Ico were partners, then you two were already popular town reads through most of days 1-2 so the town cred gained from distancing might not be worth the risk of attracting unwanted attention to each other.

I hate WIFOM speculation, but that's exactly what you're doing by putting so much emphasis on the night kills. You thought it was me/Datisi yesterday based on night-kills, that's now been proven wrong but still you persist with this theory. Can't you judge me and emps by our actual play this game?

I know that night-kill analysis always needs to be taken with a grain of salt. In general, I just don't believe that scum teams go for the unexpected/wifomy kill as often as people think they do.

It feels like you're starting to get impatient with me again. My reads have never been based purely on night-kills. I didn't think it was you/Datisi very long (seeing as I voted to lynch Ico yesterday). And half of our conversation tonight has been based on your actual play this game.

[Wickedestjr]

I pushed Aldu when he had zero votes - that's not path of least resistance. It doesn't matter if he attacked me first, that's beyond my control.

I just think it's interesting that your only unique vote was in response to someone calling you out for being on the side lines (and that person was the person you uniquely voted).

I wasn't lazy D2 - it was a particular situation where I was at least 90% sure Pops was the right lynch. I didn't want to push her SR Icon because I thought he was Tracker. Both of my TR's had no interest going anywhere near emps, and Icon warned off pushing Alim. Given I thought Icon was Tracker, what was I supposed to do here? I felt for sure Pops was the best lynch, and as I said I stand by that.

How confident were you that pops would flip scum? You say you were 90% sure she was the right lynch - how much of that was just because of the informational benefit?

You left out me. Why didn't you put more pressure on me during day 2? And even if your TRs were uninterested in an emps lynch, I think you could have given him more attention.

[Wickedestjr]

Why would me/Icon not kill Datisi?

I can think of at least two reasons:

2) Icon has a lot of experience with Datisi and probably thought he could manipulate that
3) Datisi was a very convenient 'target' for a doc claim.

Furthermore, who has more reason to kill Datisi last night, scum!me or scum!emps?

I would say the Datisi kill is slightly more likely to come from emps-scum.

[Wickedestjr]

Going to sleep now. Thank you for all those answers. This has been a helpful conversation.

One last thing: 'information' appeared to be one of your reasons for lynching pops on day 2? Can you show me any other town games where you have advocated 'information' lynching on days after day 1?


I want to take some more time to do some more rereading/digging. So I might be a little quiet in this thread for the next day or two.

[Wickedestjr]

One more thing: I feel you've been quite critical of my D2 play, but you didn't actually push anything on D2 yourself despite not SR'ing Pops. Perhaps if you look back at that then you could relate to my stance a bit more.

Honestly I feel like our stances were completely opposite. I think you're still missing my point.

You put Pops at L-1 in spite of having some doubts, just because your strong TRs weren't allowing any other lynch that you would be interested in. I never pushed anything because the day ended before I even got the chance - I had asked someone to un-vote so I could have time.

[Wickedestjr]

the ico maf informed flip makes me think that ico was informed abt a backup tracker and they nked aldu n1 so then luca was able to fakeclaim informed town n1

emps, can you explain this again?


And can you name/show me another game of your's where you lost interest like this?

[Wickedestjr]

It all comes down to this lynch emps. I know it's not your decision, but you're making it pretty tough on me if you're town. Why should I be townreading you right now? If you're feeling up to it, tell me whatever you can to convince me that I shouldn't vote for you right now.

[Wickedestjr]

Fair enough, but

you had the benefit of knowing why Icon had switched his read on you

, I didn't and thought it was because he was the Tracker, which influenced the decisions I made on D2.

True.

[Wickedestjr]

I can't believe it, but I'm actually coming around to an Ico/emps team... after I spent so much energy arguing against it yesterday.

What a game...

[Wickedestjr]

Hmm. Luca, it's interesting to me that you were so adamant about how you would have distanced from Ico if you were scum given that it seems like you have a tendency to distance whenever you are scum. You're telling me that, as scum, you would just follow your typical routine and distance from Ico? Do you never mix it up at all and town read a partner?

The other interesting part of this is that you said you would go with the flow as scum but that you also would have distanced from Ico (which would have gone 'against the flow' given that Ico was a popular TR).

[Wickedestjr]

Random thought: I wonder if Ico knew there was a FN in the game before I had even targeted him...

[Wickedestjr]

All the other investigative roles have some sort of weakness to them. Alduskkel was seemingly a backup to nothing. Luca didn’t get his info until after night 1. Maybe my weakness was that my role’s ability was not a complete secret to scum.

And Ico’s play at start of day 2 (saying “we’re not lynching Wicked” or putting me at the top of his reads list) could have been an attempt to broadcast to his partner that I was the FN. If his partner already knew that there was a FN, then they may have gotten the hint.

[Wickedestjr]

I’m probably gonna cast my vote tomorrow morning.

[Wickedestjr]

Alright here it comes...

[Wickedestjr]

VOTE: emps

=======[]

[Wickedestjr]

Awesome, thank you. Well done to you too - you figured out Icon/emps pretty quickly yesterday. And your explanations for everything today really helped me figure this out.

[Wickedestjr]

Yeah it is. From past experience, 5 person LyLo usually feels like game over. Thank goodness we had a confirmed town to

create paranoia and drag both days out

make it easier.

I actually feel like the setup made more sense with you being town as much as I tried to figure out ways you couldn't be. Your interactions with Ico on day 3 also would have been some pretty amazing theater if you guys were actually partners. And it also wouldn't have made much sense for the two of you to keep me alive to give Ico town-cred only for you to bus him immediately anyways. Those things combined with emps' lack of effort and unbelievable quick-hammer made me feel more comfortable voting him.

[Wickedestjr]

emps and Icon had me completely fooled for most of the game, though.

[Wickedestjr]

Good game all. Thanks for modding, Plum!

[Wickedestjr]

Happy birthday pops!

Wicked new avi is really cute...

I think I'm 25% more inclined on TR'ing him now

Noted, lol.

[Wickedestjr]

The Plum and Datisi pt's were fun reads.

Then I passed out at 4, and woke up around 5 to write this masterpiece. I was legitimately still half asleep when writing it. The typos and the atrocious grammar... And it's about maybe half coherent? How is this the post that convinced Wicked to hammer I don't know. I honestly don't even remember clearly that I wrote it - I just remember falling back asleep and dreaming of losing the game because it was revealed that the mafia were actually Luca Blight and Formerfish. Who's not even in this game. Hmmmmmmm.

LOL. I had 99% made up my mind that I was gonna vote Ico. I don't know what I was really looking for at that point. I guess I was trying to see if you might scum slip or something... but I also wanted to get some of your last minute thoughts in case you got nightkilled.

[Wickedestjr]

woooo im ass at scum and probably town but i wouldnt know abt the town part because i havent rolled town in 3 years

I can't speak to your town game, but I don't think you're bad at scum; most of us were townreading you on days 1-2.

I'm guessing you hammered pops on purpose? I honestly couldn't tell.

[Wickedestjr]

Fwiw, my conspiracy theory at start of day 3 was Icon/Datisi. But I was kinda embarrassed because that didn't really make sense with how the mass claim eventually went down.

[Wickedestjr]

Okay good. I apologize for being so paranoid this game.

Hopefully we're both alive tomorrow.

also i thought this post was obvious bait?

because the impression i've gotten is that wicked still def wasn't 100% on me being town
and saying this here pretending he is was baiting the possible scum in luca/emps to kill me so he removes a suspect the next day

It honestly wasn't bait. When I wrote that, I was thinking that if Ico flipped scum there was no way I could ever vote you the next day. I wasn't 100% on you being town, but I was confident enough that I'd bet the game on you being town and wanted to work with you.

Also, dang I didn't realize you were setting alarms to respond to me. I kinda felt bad about pushing both days so close to the deadline like I did. Sorry about that.

That’d be ironic considering his signature.

that would have been golden

[Wickedestjr]

Wicked - I respect your considered approach, and your case against Menalque, despite being wrong, was still one of the best posts in the game imo. Apologies again for losing my patience with you a few times as you were obviously willing to listen and reconsider your view, but it didn’t seem like it at the time.

Thank you Luca. To be fair, I may have played devil's advocate a bit too hard at times. I appreciate you being a good sport and enjoyed lynching scum with you.

[Wickedestjr]

It's pretty obvious he didn't have 200+ games on Mafiascum.

I’ve had over a hundred on this site actually. I stand behind everything I’ve said/done this game. The things people found scummy about me obviously was quite silly.

In that case, I'm sorry for assuming you didn't have that much site experience. Fwiw, I think I might know who you are actually. If I'm right, then this game had

another

'08er.

I did realize I made a mistake returning. Thanks to the mod for running the game.

I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, hostility does occur in games here sometimes. However, I do think Menalque is sincerely apologetic about his behavior towards you whereas other people wouldn't have admitted their mistake there. Sometimes when things are getting heated you just have to step away for a bit. I think your exchange with him could have been less damaging to the game if either of you had been willing to hit the pause button sooner.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience here and wish you all the best.