Newbie 2076 [Game Over]

[Clasko]

Hi all~

There can only be one

Chimchar was always my favourite D/P/Pt starter, therefore I have determined you are the sus. D:

VOTE: alstroemerial

[Clasko]

I genuinely found chimchar overrated

Pagetop

Natural scum progression!

Who even takes pagetops like that, anyway?!

[Clasko]

@Hockey if you seriously meant to combine Cringe + Chimchar to make a new word then I'm legit lowkey mad at you but I appreciate the word play.

[Clasko]

Had a newbie game where someone said "tbh" over thirty times and turned out to be scum. They still won even after it was pointed out as a scum tell too.

if we're talking about the same game I think you're referring to, didn't that same person say they used 'tbh' constantly? Meaning it would be more NAI?

I'm not necessarily against considering the frequency someone uses a certain word to determine whether they're scum when analysing them as town v. scum, but it wouldn't be the end-all-be-all for me IMO, and it sort of lends itself towards 'meta' and IDK if I'm prepared to go there yet.

[Clasko]

What is everyone's experience playing Mafia?

@LQ: So, I covered this in a previous newbie game where I subbed out, so for the sake of Roden & T3 who were also in the game where I answered this question, I'll go into more deets:

I started playing on a forum called Neoseeker back in 2013-ish on some Pokemon forum or other labelled "The Evil Zoroark Game", and if you know Zoroark's ability in the mainline games, then you'll appreciate why it's aptly named.

Anyway, the games usually consisted of 48-hour days and 24-hour nights, and funnily enough they were usually hosted by someone called Zaicon, whom I've recently learned has also moderated games on this site as well, so, small world I guess.

As for this site, I've subbed out of two games due to IRL, completed my first, and replaced into a recent one, but I still have a lot to learn. After completing 5 newbies I'll debate whether to keep playing or just hang around mish-mash. I've mentioned before that the 10-day day phases exhaust me, slightly.

I sort of agree with Roden that RQS can divert relevant discussion points but I don't mind it within the first 24 hours of the thread opening to get a feel for how the game is moving forward.

[Clasko]

Switching vote to T3 for what is either some wild scummy behaviour, or a galaxy brain townie that will lead us astray anyway.

If we reveal who tracker is, scum knows who tracker is. They also know that, whatever the setup, there is one town PR left, and if they manage to snipe them, they can take out the tracker, who they 100% already know. Town is automatically far more likely to lose both power roles, if chance alone is factored in.

I mean... I'm not immediately sus of T3's suggestion tbh. I understand your POV, & granted it's a good tool to bring a conf-town into late game, but I like the idea of clearing one potential townie D1 to reduce our elimination pool.

Like, Tracker's kinda meh anyway, until there's only one Mafia left and then, at that point, Tracker can start conf-towning the people who didn't visit, kinda like a pseudo-cop, but it's contingent on correctly eliminating Mafia D1 to be fully effective.

I'm not a Tracker, though, to hopefully get the ball rolling but three people have expressed their disdain for the suggestion, or at least questioned the effectiveness of it, so.

[Clasko]

@Hockey if you seriously meant to combine Cringe + Chimchar to make a new word then I'm legit lowkey mad at you but I appreciate the word play.

wut

Never mind, must have been a typo.

Some initial reads coming soon~

[Clasko]

So, from most sus to most town as of this moment from my POV:

Hockey's #24 pinged me as scummy. It felt like he took the low-hanging fruit and saw something that could be perceived as scum/anti-town (when T3 posted) and used it to his benefit to get a strong start in the game by telling the village how scummy it could be, granted it was towards RVS, and they turned this around in #62, giving their reason for a TR, but I echo Turtwig's sentiment that it's something T3's able to do as either alignment and shouldn't be perceived as towny/scummy. More recently Hockey calls T3 a town lean but hasn't even changed his vote on him yet, so he's either lacking conviction, not immediately bothered about scum-hunting, or just plain forgot to change his vote - which is it?

[Clasko]

(I'm temporarily nicknaming alstromerial to Turtwig, if they're okay with this due to them having a similar-sounding name to Astra)
I need slightly more data on Turtwig and Astra to formulate a read, but moreso from Turtwig than Astra as she has placed a non-RVS vote down.

[Clasko]

Nothing immediately alignment-indicative has come from Egix yet, and the 'vibes' post on Hockey was a bit 'meh', but they're making an effort with their recent reads and are looking at alternate angles for them that weren't immediately obvious to me.

[Clasko]

T3: I'm willing to see how this slot plays out. I'm not prepared to close the door to a T3 D1 elimination. It feels like they're townlocking whomever townreads them at this point, which honestly just puts my back up. It's difficult to discuss this slot due to PR shenanigans.

[Clasko]

I think Roden townlocking T3 on a mere whim is a weird move. I think Roden knows better than that, given T3's eccentric plays, and I want to err on the side of Roden trying to bait reactions with it as town than scum. I agree with Rosa's #98 that Roden/T3 is an unlikely scum pairing. I want to see this slot do things other than associating with T3, because him saying "Scum will have a bad time D2" (or something to that effect), as if he couldn't

possibly

be scum himself, doesn't sit well with me at all.

[Clasko]

Margot is coming off as slightly town with her approach to the game. There's this consensus in some games that people who do scummy things in the game

must

be sus, when this isn't always the case, and they try to view/play the games as logically as possible. I'm willing to categorise her as town lean for now. Her back-and-forth on whether T3 is scum isn't pinging me, and I'm tempted to say scum don't want to seem inconsistent with their scum read by being, is he, or isn't he, about it. Additionally, refusing T3's townslip (when she could have stayed silent by not correcting him and use it to further cement her own position as town) gives me townvibes.

[Clasko]

I liked LQ's sorting of my slot and Hockey's, given the town is in low info state and at a slow pace, where scum may want to keep all of their options open. I'm mainly drawing from my own experiences when I gave less-than-stellar reads at the beginning of my first game to get a feel for slots and move the game forward.

To conclude I'll keep my vote on Turtwig whilst pointing my FoS on Hockey but keep in mind these are just initial thoughts as of rn.

[Clasko]

If I’m processing right, everyone has checked in since Hockey’s claim except for Clasko, so unless Clasko cc’s then we can clear Hockey. So we’ll see tomorrow when the V/LA ends but odds are good.

Mobileposting on today’s catch-up so I’ll be doing shorter posts.

@Turtwig if you saw the end of my #55, you would already know I claimed I wasn't the Tracker.

I agree with your reasoning for the Roden slot. Whilst it's easy to hide behind a strategy, I think they've chosen a weird place to position themselves, and a possibly unadvantageous one as scum given T3's play at the beginning of the game, which is why I would give Roden slightly more townier status than your null one to them, rn.
Hockey is more-or-less conftown (so now I currently have no scum reads), and your Margot read I agree with (but slightly different reasoning). We differ on our LQ reads, and additionally I agree with your opinion, and Roden's #167 (after looking at LQ's ISO at start of game) that the wagon on them was too quick to form over a speculation of RQS.

Do you disagree/agree with any of my reads? #115 to #121? Granted #115 is incorrect, and ig they're sort of a lifetime ago at this point.

[Clasko]

@StrangeMatter

Welcome.

Ok fine I'll just claim so we can get T3/Roden to play the game!! I am tracker, im gonna go for the night so i will probs re read game tmr afternoon or smh after work

If you aren't countering his claim, then Hockey is conftown.
(sorry for the SL, Hockey)

[Clasko]

@MargotRosa:

I can't really disagree with your reasoning on me tbh, except I will contest you on your 'meh reflection on RQS' because I literally put my heart and soul into it.
Seriously though, my 'close the door on T3 elim' probably comes from a place of paranoia rather than what he's done in this game - you say 'Roden feels more like a wildcard than T3' but I'd reverse that opinion. T3 will do whatever he wants to do. Like Hockey I also heavily struggle to read him.

[Clasko]

For when you come back: are you able to explain why that was?
On that note: I'm finding Alstro's 130 to be meh, mainly because I don't vibe with the reasoning given in the first and last paragraphs.

Yeah - 'vibes' is kind of ambiguous, compared to your reasoning for reading slots later which I thought was much more solid.
That's why I'm calling it 'meh' - neither here nor there. Turns out you were right about Hockey, though.

Same question to you as I had to Turtwig: Any of my reads you vibe/don't vibe with?

[Clasko]

The wagon on LQ built up a little too fast. I think it's weird that he's focused on me saying "honestly" once, and he's clearly panicking and scrambling to avoid getting elim'd.

But this is feeling more like a townie flail than a scum flail.

Like, less like his back is against the wall and more like he got ganged up on and he doesn't think it's fair. Plus, there's basically been zero resistance to this wagon. If LQ is scum, then his scum buddy would have to be bussing him extremely early into the game.

First scum is almost guaranteed to be between LQ and Margot btw. It's pinging me as TvS pretty hard. Pretty sure we can turbo elim both if the first one flips green.

@Roden:

Given you thought LQ's flail was townie, would you yeet Margot first over LQ?

[Clasko]

Uhh... I'll join in with LQ here for the time being even though a green flip doesn't say much at this moment in time:

VOTE: T3

[Clasko]

Why would u specifally out that you are not tracker. Dont think town does this? Also this post implies that u dont sr t3 so what changed enough for u to vote them in 216?

I think you need to elaborate on this T3 read

Lol what, voting someone that you dont even SR. Also if you are voting them, why do u expect them to be a green flip?

I think this slot may actually be scum besdies thier towny ish reads earlier

So can you give me a good reason why you’re voting the same person as Lickity?

The question asked is a good one. I generally don't like people sheeping me anyways because it's too much pressure. Ofc Clasko can't know this, but still rubs me the wrong way with the way it went down.

Claiming not Tracker felt like damage limitation as opposed to a straight-up claim, as in, like, one person out of nine doesn't have one of the possible six town-y roles. It probably wasn't the smartest but whatever.

I totally understand how my vote post on T3 can be construed as a slip, but I still maintain his green flip doesn't say much. He's kinda taking a back seat, resting on the laurels of his Tracker plan, or w/e, and using it to give an unfounded locktown on Roden that lacks true justification.

Let me make my feelings on T3 crystal clear - at this moment in time, I neither scum read him nor town read him. I found his idea at the beginning of the thread interesting and not inherently suspicious, so I'm not immediately seeing why Hockey and Margot are using the word 'contradiction' to describe my actions wrt reading them, but to each their own I guess? Prior to my sequence of recent posts, T3 just repeats himself: 'Roden locktown, Hockey locktown, LQ kinda sus won't say why' and unnecessary shade with 'oh Egix is here I guess' yet

he

complains of the game being stagnant? It was more a pressure vote to try and get a bit of info out of him, like, if he won't respond to Hockey when he asked him for a reads list in #138 then maybe a vote will help move him, and with LQ initiating that potential wagon, I felt almost compelled to jump on. I felt comfortable shifting my vote from Turtwig because they were actually giving reads and opinions on certain people... y'know, with reasons?

As it stands, I have no scum reads, and will have to look at the thread with a different thinking cap, and if I can't find scummy posts then I'll reduce my PoE by discarding the most towny people and selecting from a pool of null people, which looks like this for me rn: (from most to least null)

{StrangeMatter/T3/Turtwig/Egix96}

Although I'm convincing myself Turt/Egix aren't S/S - even though Egix's vote on Turt wasn't a particularly strong push, I don't think a scum partner immediately brings the other to e-4 to keep them as an elim option? Just an initial thought. So with that in mind I'll keep my vote on T3 as Strange is still catching up. Egix I'm more comfortable with out of the bunch because they took a side with the supposed 'slip' and is actually using their vote.

Margot's gone down in my reads slightly - she didn't yet decide if my post was a slip and has kind of gone quiet, as if she's waiting for the dust to settle before forming an opinion on recent events, but I did see the whole lockdown post thing as reasoning, so.

Roden's still a town read, enforced in my #211, and has overtaken Margot. LQ is still my most non-confirmed - they're looking solve-y wrt my slip and asked relevant follow-ups earlier (unrelated to the slip) in #162 and #178 that gives me good feels.

Spoiler: Sad

even though they're breaking my heart rn. ;-;

I'm finding it hard to believe Clasko slipped like that. I want to see his response first before discussing it more, but I genuinely don't think scum would make that careless of a mistake, and I think he actually gets some accidental town points for that. If you're voting Clasko, it should be because he voted T3 when he isn't even a scum read.

P-edit: @Roden Ah... yeah, I don't SR them, but see if you agree with my reasoning for the vote, anyway.

[Clasko]

I'd probably still vote LQ first. The flail looked townie, but Margot hasn't really done anything to earn scum points from me. Unless she does some real scummy shit before EoD, I'm putting my vote back on LQ.

All right. I'd be more comfortable with Margot if she showed recently but I get your PoV.

[Clasko]

I…don’t actually think he actually is claiming Tracker, and just joking about this. Are you also just joking about them being confirmed Town?

I'm no Sherlock or anything, but my first clue was when he said "I am tracker"

[Clasko]

I would kind of like to know where Turt, SM and Margot stand on the 'slip' as of rn and would also wonder if T3 and LQ are just gonna deathtunnel me at this point, and if so is it solely because of the 'slip'? Like, is this gonna be an issue being taken into D2?

[Clasko]

I’ll ask Clasko this. What would you make of a red T3 flip?

So, I'm not 100% sure of what the question is, so if you had something more specific in mind, let me knwo and i'll answer, but I think T3's red flip has a good chance of clearing me and Roden:

Me, because, assuming scum!Clasko and scum!T3, then after my slip (which, in this context, IS a scum slip), T3 has two options: 1) point out the slip immediately to gain max. distancing points, or 2) claim ignorance and go about as they were. The first option puts scum!Clasko at risk of a D1 elim, and following my elim, scum!T3 still has to get three townies elimmed for D2, 3 and 4 with one/two town power roles out there - this is heavily against scum!T3's wincon if we're both scum. T3 is a wildcard, but is competent, and competent scum always play to wincon, meaning option 2 is much more likely.

Roden, because of their play at the beginning of the game. Newbie games tend to be more focused on homing in on what looks surface-scummy, so immediately they both aren't doing themselves any favours by locktowning each other for intangible reasons that they refuse to elaborate clearly on, which, again, I think goes against wincon as it opens them both up for potential elimination. Too much risk for VERY little reward IMO.

As for everyone else, it's hard to judge based on the limited interactions, but something I will say, and this is more of a consensus thing, is that if T3 flips red, then LQ's scum equity with T3 increases by a fraction. Scum are likely to interact with their partner in the main thread in some form or other, whether it be through votes, arguments, pushes, busses, or what have you (to avoid being seen as a pair), and their vote towards LQ feels like a classic "pushing without pushing" to get some distance/seem busy with eachother, but this is based on consensus rather than the player's meta.

[Clasko]

I guess I was expecting more of a kind of elaboration and an explanation for why they said "green flip." IDK maybe I saw it and it didn't register in my brain because I didn't see what I was looking for. "Doesn't tell us much" is literally sweeping the entire issue under the rug. Like, the whole reason people think it IS a slip is for that specific comment. So for them to just say, "It doesn't mean much" like why are we supposed to just buy that explanation? It's literally a non-explanation. I was looking for an explanation and didn't see one. :shug:

I don't have a defense to give you regarding the green flip comment, unfortunately. Margot's right in that it's just unfortunate phrasing and I didn't give it much thought, but in the context of this game, it's at least another angle of conversation.

Your #250 looks fairly decisive in that you're gonna keep your vote on me until EoD, is that the case for you rn? Am I likely to flip red in your eyes? Or is it more like you can't get away from the 'slip' in your mind when considering whether I'm scummy/towny?

[Clasko]

Slightly worrying that five people aren't voting right now, and No Votes don't tell us anything, so, maybe change that and stuff.

I'll probably rearrange/update my reads list in #267 next time I check in because that post was kinda scattered towards the bottom, there.

[Clasko]

@Margot wrt your #305, I want to ask you where Egix and T3 place on your reads list update since you forgot to mention them?

[Clasko]

Also wanna ask SM who their two strongest elimination candidates are rn for D1, and why?
I say two, because one is most likely me which you've hinted the potential reasons for in #279 and iterating that doesn't say much.

[Clasko]

Is anyone able to explain why they Tr Austro (blame phone) in less vague terms than this? As of yet I am unconvinced.

... Nothing outside of gut, but I like them trying to get more information out of me by actually engaging, like, they aren't just making conclusions without follow-up, but I want to see more from them.

[Clasko]

I'll probably rearrange/update my reads list in #267 next time I check in because that post was kinda scattered towards the bottom, there.

This is still happening btw.

[Clasko]

What happened to Clasko?

LQ: Sir, we've found Clasko's fingerprints on the murder weapon! It MUST be him, no?
T3: Not now, sargeant.
LQ: But, sir... if we flip the knife over *turns knife* the words "Clasko's Knife" are clearly engraved on the ha--
T3: DISMISSED, SARGEANT!
LQ: (;-;)

[Clasko]

VOTE: MargotRosa

Margot's slot need a bit of pressure. She says "I am definitely liable to read into things a bit too much" in #148 when, actually, the inverse is happening since #140 and #305 are close to being mirror-images of each-other and I see little progression, combined with her enveloping herself almost solely in conversation with LQ makes me feel like she's trying to ride out the day, so I want to pressure this slot before she fades into obscurity given we're close to deadline and will have to come to a group consensus as to whom the elimination should be. It would be helpful if she answered my #332 for starters.

[Clasko]

Sorry Hockey, I forgot to answer your "Why? We only have four days left", and VCA is a thing in later days, like, the more votes we see D1 the more we can analyse later for connections (who jumped on/off, and why), and the people saying who they thought were the potential sus without votes felt non-commital. The game has picked up in this regard from when I made that comment.

[Clasko]

I want a bit of time to ingest the discussion on the last two pages. Initial thoughts are that Roden/LQ aren't scum/scum as this sort of argument feels hard to fake, almost like a clash of ideals and lends itself to pointless bickering considering RQS was the reason for LQ's wagon at the beginning of the game.

[Clasko]

On a more serious note, I want to ask SM (but I also want everyone to chime in) if it's better to extinguish the seeds of doubt I had accidentally sewn in my #216 by making me the D1 elim today.
Given I'm even suggesting this, you can probably guess my alignment and role, but I think my elim has some advantages:

- The 'slip' is resolved, which may mar D2 discussion if unchecked.
- We don't accidentally 'out' the other PR by bringing them to e-1 and force them to claim, which feels especially important given Hockey has already outed

If I'm going against wincon with this suggestion, then I sincerely apologise and will accept all responsibility but I think it's more beneficial for the game to keep the other, less disposable PR, hidden as opposed to my slot that is just a big, fat question mark, and I wouldn't be suggesting this if not for the 'slip' and Hockey didn't out.

Let me know what you all think.