Dies to Removal

I really enjoyed some of this game.

Hamfactorial really disappointed me.

The fact that Jamie got counterclaimed was hilarious and I think if witch hadn't been able to do that, town would have definitely lost.

I don't think anyone's play was very strong outside of dechs.

I think azrael replacing in as innocent child (thanks again by the way) may have created a level of complacency in him on some level that led to weaker town play overall. Or it just might be the time of year and size of the game

Hunting lone killers is pretty tough for my playstyle. Too many false townie positives, too few scum tells. I was also hoping that the lack of activity on my part might actually start a real behavioral wagon going, so we could get some analysis off that, but it didn't happen. I also didn't count on being NK'd prior to a situation where a one-man team could win the game, so I was content to knock off all the easy choices for a while.

Post 759 was so clutch.

Dechs, that was AMAZING. Great job.

I suppose, if Witchunt were scum together with Jamie and cooked this up as an awesome gambit, he could be counting on us falsely confirming him through this chain of events. He could have held his kill in reserve all this time to convince us that Jamie had no other allies, finally used his kill to knock off Imopen last night in order to support his paranoid gun owner claim, and is only going to break out his kill once again when he can guarantee an instant win. That's one possible way.

There's a few others, none of them particularly likely. Most likely, I'm just misreading people.

I feel like we're most likely dealing with a single scum who doesn't realize it's time to concede.

My behavior-meter says Dechs and RCW are sounding pretty townish at the moment. Stardust also sounds town, but has had a few WTF moments which make me cautious about trusting him (the hammer). Witchhunt doesn't sound town to me at all, but I'm having a tough time seeing how it's even possible for him to be scum, given our role analysis.

Alright, let's leave no stone unturned. We've been clearing Dechs based on behavior so far. Should we?

Is Saulus is an ability, correct? So RCW could not possibly have anything up his sleeve to enable him to stealth surprise win, other than another neutral/hostile player cooperating with him?

I am thinking of this from a townie mindset. Everything is different because there is no nightkill. We have two 100% confirmed townies. I also strongly strongly believe that Dechs is town. Unlike in a normal game, these three townies will win the game no matter what.

Also, something I just realised, all of that is far more confirmed than your Ninja role claim.

I fully realise that I will be lynched if you flip town. Tell me, what do I stand to gain from living just one more Day? What alignment could I possibly be that would pose any real threat?

Cult.

RCW, right?

Let's kill RCW next. He's wriggling too much.

What is with people not answering direct questions in this game? Are you a lover and nothing else?

Jeez.
I'm Town Bulletproof Lover, I've took my role from Alien Bulletproof Lover, and I've tried my best to breadcrumb my role while acting like I was up for something hoping to bait nightkills.
The thing is that this whole mess with no nightkills made me wonder about the fact that we could either be facing no scum at all, some unlucky fellow that had both his nightkills stopped by someone or God* knows what else - Aliens are quite unlikely because I remember that somebody else has discarded an Alien card and those are not many.

I claimed being town HOPING to have the eventual nightkill targeted at me but I'm actually tired of this, so have fun with your game because now I've REALLY ended my potential usefulness.

Go ahead and lynch me if you want, I'm outta this.

PS: I'll keep my vote on rcw because I feel like he's not town. Azrael's ideas on WitchHunt make actual sense. I'm glad Azrael is an Innocent Child because that restricts the possible scum pool.

(* Jitter Crabs, actually)

Mafia is 20% ability usage and 80% voting & scum-hunting.

I'm an innocent child.

Vote: Red Nihilist.

That's right. I suppose we may want him to verify that he still has that ability available at some point, as we approach end-game.

Oh - only three of us are left, huh? I guess we might as well go ahead.

What's Dechs?

Why? Witchhunt could very easily be scum with a cop/lover ability, couldn't he? Behaviorally, he's the person who disturbs me the most by far. He got a free pass due to the counter-claim for a while, but obviously that's bunk in a multiple scum-team scenario.

Why would a townie say he was going to play his role for the town?

Why the sarcastic roll eyes and complete dismissal of my case?

Why don't we just have Witchhunt claim and call it quits for now.

I mean, no nightkills, that's great, but it allows people to potentially coordinate with Stardust Goo, if nothing else.

There's no downside? What?

Ok, rereading the game looking for neutral-specific tells.

#19 from witchhunt has that indecisiveness tell that I pointed out earlier, which would make a fair bit of sense from a neutral.

#38 from Red sounds like the kind of detail that's unlikely to be falsified.

#41 from Red sounds pretty real, too.

Dechs really wants Stardust dead, early on.

Imopen's first post leaves me pretty unimpressed, doesn't contribute jack despite their being plenty of activity going on. His first caught-up post 105 is much better, though.

The way WH writes this post bothers me:

I'm counter claiming, I didn't have Town Lover, I had Town Cop/Lover as my card. I realize a Cop is a reasonably powerful role, and the reason I didn't pick it as my card was because there were so many factions besides Mafia and when doubled with the Lover portion of the card I didn't feel too keen on it.

I'm okay with revealing my previous sketchy claim simply because the counter claim profit is too strong.

Vote: Jamie

I'm in it for the town. If this backfires and I get lynched or NKed, you'll know to take out Jamie next.

He seems too nervous about justifying why he didn't pick cop, and then he takes the time to say that "he's in it for the town". Why would that phrase occur to him at precisely that moment? It seems most likely to come from someone who had a choice of how to play this, and chose to go with the pro-town action. See also my analysis in post 295.

Vote WitchHunt.

I'm going with my original theory of this game: Witchhunt, Jamie, and RCWraspy were scum-aligned. WH is the last one we should need to eliminate, if so.

In order of townieness to scummitude:

Az
Dechs
Imopen
Red

Stardust
RCW
WH

*puzzled*

I feel like I'm not going to get anywhere without another reread.

Or ever, this game.

Azrael, are you saying you have a daykill? Obviously I have no problem with you shooting rcw, though I'm surprised that you'd decide to go for that.

Az, please answer this. If you do have a daykill, I'd like to see it resolved like a second lynch, i.e. three people voting someone and you cast the "final vote."

I will not be using a daykill today.

Intention to kill: RCWraspy

MIght as well go with the 50-50 shot I guess. *shrugs*

PPE: *thinks really hard* Eh...

There are no good tells in this game and I hate it.

Sentence 2: I'd REALLY like to hear how somebody can have a "Saulus read" on someone else.

I read him as scum yesterday and more townish today. If he were a Judas instead, I'd expect that to flip around.

Azrael, explain to me how it's possible that WitchHunt is not town. Do you think he chose Cop/Lover as his ability? Do you think he targeted me at some point?

Do we have another confirmed lover that precludes him taking cop/lover as ability?

Yeah, this is actually interesting.
Are you trying to move the aim towards me just for the sake of it or do you just like to lynch your null reads?

It's day 4 and I've got no pro-town evidence on you. Everybody else has got *some* reason not to lynch them today.

Stardust's defense is based on his love of being town plus the cards he discarded.
Witch Hunt I could see lynching, but he actually talks enough for me to get a better read on him potentially.
Imopen is reading town. I'm not sure I like his role-claim, and it might be a false positive, but it's not something I want to pursue.
Dechs is reading hard town.
RCW is reading Saulus.

Process of elimination.

Alright. Vote Red Nihilist.

I'm actually having a tough time getting into this game, for the simple reason that my experience has been that playing against neutrals is a total crapshoot. There's a slight chance you can trust some of your stronger town-reads, still, but even that's difficult when you're playing against people who are genuinely trying to find other scum. They don't have to act like they're hunting scum - they actually are.

I'm also up to a few other things, but nothing particularly exciting or worth discussing.

I'm not certain how to take your argument based on card selection. There's a certain logic to it, but it's also asking us to put a lot of faith in the assumption that you're playing to maximize your chances of winning, and also that you didn't find the synergy of a black goo/cultist line of play too much to resist.

I don't especially know you well enough to be confident in that assessment, but what I do have is you plotting out the steps of the game far in advance as if you know that the game will continue for that long, and the premature hammer was just awful. Nobody else has given jack in terms of competing wagon evidence so far as I can see. RCW, obviously, is a real competitor too. But at least he's also given a relatively decent behavioral explanation for being Saulus over Judas, and I'm not uncomfortable letting him stick around a bit longer in the order based on that provisional read.

Or I'm just being practical in a completely not-deperate, no-kill scum situation.

But whatever, like I said, I barely care if I'm lynched. You guys will go on to lynch a bunch of people and hopefully hit the scum. The coin toss is heavily in our favour either way.

Just please, for the love of god, stop saying that WitchHunt might be town because he counterclaimed scum! Because he counterclaimed scum, you know he used that town card for his alignment!

Are you arguing that that's what I'm doing? Because there was a clear implication I'm not sold on that idea.

You could make a few weak arguments that it's a play more likely to come from pure town rather than a neutral, but I'm not exactly dying to rule anyone out. I'm also not going to completely forget that it happened while trying to understand his mentality and line of play, though.

Went back and read my notes, and remembered that Stardust was responsible for our rush-lynch of yesterday. That's not in-character for him, I think he's just trying to be fancy in a desperate, no-kill scum situation.

Yeah, I think I'm good if we knock him off today. RCW after that, most likely.

Townies: Dechs, Imopen, myself.
Counter-claimed Scum for whatever that's worth: Witch
Null: Red

Vote Stardust.

Lynching Imopen for choosing the wrong cop target is not my idea of a good lynch. I'm not particularly sold on anyone being town at this point except Dechs, IIRC.

This is the one:

YuanTi is more puzzling. There was the suggestion of waiting a day to lynch Annorax, which would have given the town a greater chance to mislynch. There was also his attempt to clear LG, early on. Definitely not as suspicious as either AoK or Kraj, but if we go through both those players without finding scum it's probably him rather than Nai or Lotus.


Analyst wrote:
Read this through for a moment, especially that last sentence. "But if we go through both those players without finding scum it's probably him rather than Nai or Lotus." I'm going to break down this
sentence to make sure everyone gets the gravity of this.

"But if we go through both those players" This doesn't imply anything. It outright says that it is Azrael's opinion that we should lynch either Kraj or AoK, then, failing that, lynch the other one. He's already stated, in this phrase, that he intends to take one of them out, then the other. Town should never make a plan like this. Reactions to various things, new developments, and all the rest change opinions. No one would do this unless they had information no one else has. Speaking of that, I'll be talking of said information later on in this post.

"without finding scum" Another great phrase. This is another one of those lovely statements that someone can make to sound town. Notice, this statement also includes night actions (like night kills and cops) without completely saying it. He also doesn't say 'without killing scum' or 'without lynching scum'. Those would imply that the lynches of AoK or Kraj would show theyre scum upon their deaths. But 'without finding scum' implies that we could reveal scum anywhere, Kraj and AoK are just the stepping stones to pulling that off.

"it's probably him" Almost done, folks, but this is a doozie. Let's look at the game right now. Kraj, AoK, Lotus, YuanTi, Azrael, me (Nai). Count em up. 6 people alive right now. One is scum (since 3 starting scum is broken in this game). That's a 5:1 ratio, as I said earlier this game day. Now, after two days and nights, past killing Kraj and AoK, 4 people will have died. That is, unless the doc, if we have one, gets lucky. That ends us with a 1:1 ratio. For those that don't remember Mafia rules, a 1:1 ratio means town loses. This is something I don't believe Azrael would miss. It's an innocent little statement unless you recall the numbers. More than that, though, Azrael ignores YuanTi in his sentence. He names the rest of us, but YuanTi isn't included. I wonder why.

"rather than Nai or Lotus." Now, this is where
things are really interesting. The 'rather' in this sentence implies that Lotus and I are actually valid options at this point, even if it wasn't game over at this point anyways. If he left off the part about us, there would have been a little more innocence here. This isn't the case. We're options at this point, even though he calls at least me townie right now.

I was so scum that game. Nai should have had my head on a platter after he posted this, but they let me slip away based on role analysis.

(Fixed)

This is the one:

[quote=Nai][quote=Azrael]
YuanTi is more puzzling. There was the suggestion of waiting a day to lynch Annorax, which would have given the town a greater chance to mislynch. There was also his attempt to clear LG, early on. Definitely not as suspicious as either AoK or Kraj, but if we go through both those players without finding scum it's probably him rather than Nai or Lotus.


Analyst wrote:
Read this through for a moment, especially that last sentence. "But if we go through both those players without finding scum it's probably him rather than Nai or Lotus." I'm going to break down this
sentence to make sure everyone gets the gravity of this.

"But if we go through both those players" This doesn't imply anything. It outright says that it is Azrael's opinion that we should lynch either Kraj or AoK, then, failing that, lynch the other one. He's already stated, in this phrase, that he intends to take one of them out, then the other. Town should never make a plan like this. Reactions to various things, new developments, and all the rest change opinions. No one would do this unless they had information no one else has. Speaking of that, I'll be talking of said information later on in this post.

"without finding scum" Another great phrase. This is another one of those lovely statements that someone can make to sound town. Notice, this statement also includes night actions (like night kills and cops) without completely saying it. He also doesn't say 'without killing scum' or 'without lynching scum'. Those would imply that the lynches of AoK or Kraj would show theyre scum upon their deaths. But 'without finding scum' implies that we could reveal scum anywhere, Kraj and AoK are just the stepping stones to pulling that off.

"it's probably him" Almost done, folks, but this is a doozie. Let's look at the game right now. Kraj, AoK, Lotus, YuanTi, Azrael, me (Nai). Count em up. 6 people alive right now. One is scum (since 3 starting scum is broken in this game). That's a 5:1 ratio, as I said earlier this game day. Now, after two days and nights, past killing Kraj and AoK, 4 people will have died. That is, unless the doc, if we have one, gets lucky. That ends us with a 1:1 ratio. For those that don't remember Mafia rules, a 1:1 ratio means town loses. This is something I don't believe Azrael would miss. It's an innocent little statement unless you recall the numbers. More than that, though, Azrael ignores YuanTi in his sentence. He names the rest of us, but YuanTi isn't included. I wonder why.

"rather than Nai or Lotus." Now, this is where
things are really interesting. The 'rather' in this sentence implies that Lotus and I are actually valid options at this point, even if it wasn't game over at this point anyways. If he left off the part about us, there would have been a little more innocence here. This isn't the case. We're options at this point, even though he calls at least me townie right now.[/quote]
[/quote]

I was so scum that game. Nai should have had my head on a platter after he posted this, but they let me slip away based on role analysis.

Yeah, whatever, I have no problem with people lynching imopen, even if I think he's probably town. The lack of nightkills makes this game really weird in that it doesn't really matter the order that we lynch people as long as we're lynching people that will eventually be lynched. I generally agree with WitchHunt's list of rcw, imopen and Red as the first three, so really it doesn't much matter who we lynch out of that initial pool. Once they're dead, if we haven't won, then we move on to others, probably Azrael. We should mass claim at some point in there and you guys can figure out where you want to slot me in, but this game should be very easy unless we have two aliens hiding out somehow. So long as WitchHunt is last alive, we're probably good.

Hey Dechs. You read my mafia theory article. Do you remember the very last real life example I posted in it? The one where Nai nailed me to the wall?

Yeah, at this point, I would happily lynch whoever a lyncher needs us to lynch aside from a confirmed town, if they're prepared to claim it. Lyncher and cult-leader are our only two remaining viable possibilities for scum, right? In this game, it's not as if mislynching someone who may or may not be a town player is going to cost us a nightkill as well. It's a straight 1 for 1 swap to turn the lyncher into a townie, with the added benefit that the person we delete might just be scum.

PPE: Aliens, too, I guess. Statement stands.

Or maybe they didn't realize they'd lose their kill by attempting it and becoming cult. Did we verify that becoming cult disables kills?

If becoming cult doesn't disable kills, it's possible that mafia intentionally targeted Stardust in order to increase their chances of winning with multiple cultists, and is planning to use their kill to kill non-cultists.

Course, it's also possible that the scum didn't believe your claim either, Stardust. They might have thought you were a power role who was bluffing, and wound up screwing themselves over. That would be pretty humorous.

They wouldn't. It'd be an act of desperation.

Risk losing your nightkill for the rest of the game just for the chance to be on a team that you don't even know exists? Not likely.

Dechs, I'd rather you targeted no one. If any scum role has a redirection ability, you're toast.

Can you explain this? Why does redirection of Dechs' ability really matter at this point in the game? Frankly, I'd love it if that happened because then I'd know there was a redirector with little downside otherwise.

Not likely, just tough to explain the repeated no kills at the moment.

Are we sure no one has information based on possibly preventing one of those kills?

Not sure it helps the town to explain that latter question, just take my word for it. We don't want Dechs to use his ability.

They wouldn't. It'd be an act of desperation.

Dechs, I'd rather you targeted no one. If any scum role has a redirection ability, you're toast.