Mafia 124 - Dilemma Mafia (Day 6)

[Locke Lamora]

Hi all, will attempt to catch up as best I can this evening.

[Locke Lamora]

Sorry all, been caught up with my modded game and work. I will prioritise reading brokenscraps and get to everything as quickly as I can.

Darla: do you mean you didn't submit a kill N1?

[Locke Lamora]

Thoughts on brokenscraps: a lot of vote changes early on is my first instinct. He votes for Final Fires, Jahudo, bobsnox and Whisky in his first 7 posts. He also seems to spread his suspicions pretty wide in general: see ISO 25 as a good example, in which he criticises votes from werewolf, Darla, Jahudo and Bud on the Llama wagon and still manages to maintain his Llama suspicion whilst also throwing out a conspiracy theory involving Yosarian, Fate & Llama.

I find this particularly scummy:

Don't have much time, but there is scum on this small early wagon:

12. Final Fires (4) - Brokenscraps, Bub Bidderskins, bobsnox, ender241

CMAR doesn't have time to explain anything but has time to go back and check an early wagon before making their "I don't have time" post? Also blanket and fairly unexplained. However, I'll agree it is interesting to look at and I'd guess there'd probably be a scum there too. Just don't love the way you presented it.

He implies CMAR is scummy for throwing this out there without explaining it, then he does exactly the same thing, which suggests the suspicion is disingenuous. Another good example of keeping lots of viable suspects.

Broken is still keen to push Llama right up to about ISO 26, then there's a little patch of not much content before ISO 30, when he votes for Bud, which seems like a reasonable vote switch to me given his position on Fate. Then he switches to Darla in 32; I think his points about the quotes here are good - Darla's Fate stance seems very ill-defined and not based on a plausible thought process. Now Llama and Fate/Nik are suddenly town because they can't be on Darla's scumteam; then the scumteam obviously changes again with the claim putting Darla at vig/SK. What bothers me is the way Broken just hops from suspect to suspect with very little indication that he's had to think about his reads at all. He pushes pretty hard for Darla-scum, then as soon as she claims he immediately alters his reads to fit in with this information as though this came as little surprise. I would expect a townie to spend a little more time reviewing and thinking about the connections when their top suspect is suddenly ruled out as scum. In short, I'm happy to:

Vote: brokenscraps

Will continue to read up and post my thoughts as fast as I can.

[Locke Lamora]

Well, I guess that means my reading up is a bit pointless. Good luck finding the scum!

[Locke Lamora]

Darla has to be scum, 3 kills a night seems highly implausible given the night actions. The only motivation I can see for Darla-scum not claiming the kill if she did make it is that she wants us to think she's red scum. Having looked at Yos' ISO, nothing there contradicts a Yos-Darla scumteam; he says he can see the logic behind the early Darla cases but doesn't back them himself, and most of his interactions with Darla have been him trying to encourage her to contribute and threatening to suspect her if she continues to lurk. Seems like what I'd expect from a scumbuddy reluctant to bus.

Fate: I assume you're referring to this comment from Jahudo:

Actually I'm hoping this Darla mislynch will save my buddy Yos, because a llama flip would def. screw him. [/sarcasm]

I'm going to take the opportunity to do some more reading back and get a better handle on the game.

[Locke Lamora]

Having a 'Red Mafia' as the only Mafia seems to be a bit too misleading to me for a Normal. It doesn't explicitly go against anything in the Normal guidelines, but to me it's not really in the spirit of the rules given that the guidelines state "A second anti-town group can be given a separate Mafia family name".

DP: exactly where did I say quick-lynch Darla?

[Locke Lamora]

Right, I've been reading back in pretty high detail, so here are my re-read comments up to the end of page 10. I've naturally concentrated on players that are currently alive and Yosarian interactions.

rekirtS, post 56: this vote looks incredibly disingenuous to me. He dismisses FF as 'obviously noob' and then votes for ender, who has just admitted he got used to it taking 5 to lynch. ender's play certainly doesn't look like scheming scum to me; it's either very, very bad scum not even attempting to lie low and stay in the background, or it's newbie town.

To me, early game looks like a lot of newbie play drawing heat and people taking the opportunities to hop around easy wagons.

DBE's Whiskey vote in 85 is definitely at odds with her reluctance to vote previously. To be honest, this reads most like a buddy trying to prod Whisky into contributing, but that clearly wasn't the case. Then in 103 the justification isn't much better; that she was doing it to 'get his attention', which makes little sense to me as she wasn't willing to vote to pressure other suspects previously but now she uses it just to make Whisky answer a question. There's also this particularly scummy comment on Yos:

I am still not sure what Whiskey sees as so scummy about Yos, and not Bob / Jahudo who're also on the ender wagon, but it's worthy of a look back at Yos' posts for me. Maybe he's seeing something I'm not, (although it'd be helpful if he articulated it more clearly if he is town.)

Essentially, Darla doesn't get the Yos case at all, but she's leaving her options open to look back and hop on the case at a later stage. Definitely reads like a buddy here.

Nikanor is glib and vague in 110, plus takes the opportunity to try to laugh off his lurking.

Darla seems to be warning ender that she's trying very hard not to vote him in 112, but at this point the meta is still enough to excuse the 'obvscum' things he's doing. There seems to be dissonance in 120, particularly with the comment "I just think that ender's play has made him the perfect target for the scum to tunnel in on him, and hey for all I know he IS scum." So is he an easy target for scum, or scum himself? Darla looks to be struggling between painting ender as a newbie victim and trying to maintain the possibility he's scum.

Over the next page or so, Darla goofs by thinking that Nikanor is not voting for rekirtS, as well as managing to criticise him for the awful reason that he mentions 3 people but doesn't vote for any of them. I'm not quite sure what to make of the Darla-Nik exchange from 137-139. Nik says that he thinks rekirtS' posts read like he knows everyone's alignment, at which point Darla decides that rather than ask him for examples, she'll do a quote by quote breakdown of rekirtS play! Then, despite not demonstrating that she'd found any examples of what Nik's talking about, she comes out the other end with a scum read on rekirtS. The total lack of scrutiny of Nik's voting reason makes me doubt how genuine Darla's criticism of Nik was initially.

Yos 144 expresses doubts about the Darla wagon due to not really seeing anything suspicious from her and asks people to clarify. Not dissimilar to Darla's earlier comment about Whisky's Yos suspicion.

In 149, Jahudo has clearly examined Darla's ender meta and determined that although some of his play is consistent, the caution in voting is not. Town points for that.

Ender bizarrely offers to die first in 150 to help show that Darla is scum. I'm really not seeing the survival instinct in this comment, especially as his slot has already drawn a lot of heat.

rekirtS 152 makes me wonder if he's actually interested in answers to any of his questions. He's asked several at this stage, but there's not a lot of follow-through, evident here in him missing Darla's answer. I think this is part of what Nikanor might have been trying to get at; they look like empty questions that have no relevance to his interest in the game

160 from Yos is one of the interactions with the Darla wagon that gives me a strong feeling they're buddies, as he basically states that the wagon is a valid one but he's not 'confident' that the things they've pointed out are a strong enough tell.

Jahudo 172 is again pro-town; he could easily take the opportunity to push an ender lynch as ender is not making himself look any better, but he seems to be genuinely trying to figure out his alignment rather than backing an easy lynch. I also like 190, which I think expresses the scummy points of rekirtS' play very well.

Ender 214 and 215 are almost laughable in how ludicrous they are. He basically says he thinks Bob's scum but then votes FF. At this stage I don't see the motivation for any alignment for playing like this; I don't think mafia should be played like this full stop.

221: CMAR hasn't received his role PM when he's starting his read? Really, really don't like this - it's just an excuse to say whatever he likes on those first couple of pages and remove all semblance of connections.

Nik 226 is a little weak, especially given that there's been a good level of content in the first 10 pages. All he basically does is point out that ender's trying to get townpoints by suggesting his own death and then votes for him.

Pomegranate replacing out just makes me realise that there's been nothing noteworthy from the slot in 10 pages.

My town-scum list at the end of page 10:

TOWN
Jahudo
Pomegranate
Nikanor
Ender
CMAR
Darla
SCUM

Honestly, Jahudo's the only living slot that read particularly pro-town in all of that. Pom gets to be second pretty much by default because I didn't really pick up on anything scummy. With Nik there were a couple of minor scumtells but nothing that leapt out at me. Ender is there basically because his play is so ludicrously lynch-worthy that I don't think it's likely to come from scum but I can't really warrant placing it as town as it's impossible to discern any pro-town motivation either. rekirtS/CMAR pinged my scumdar a few times, particularly with rekirtS' lack of follow-through and CMAR's reading without a role PM. Darla read as very inconsistent in when and why she was willing to vote, did not treat her suspects in a manner that indicated a town thought process, most notably when she failed to question Nik further about his rekirtS suspicion, and by far had the most obvious buddy interactions with Yos with both of them managing to say they didn't suspect the other but leaving a clear path open to bus if necessary later on.

Will continue this tomorrow.

[Locke Lamora]

I think it's very likely DBE is scum and we should definitely lynch her today. Her claim makes it incredibly unlikely she could be anything but scum and the more I read, the more I think DBE is a Yos-buddy. I'm taking the opportunity to read back now because frankly, I have a lot to catch up on and if the game wasn't in a bit of a lull, I wouldn't have so much time to do it.

[Locke Lamora]

Yeah, not buying 3-3 at all. I think people are probably right in saying that it's not the best use of time to read up fully now without the info we'll get from today and tonight, so I will:

Vote: DarlaBlueEyes

[Locke Lamora]

I'm a VT. 3-shot commuter? Is that even a Normal role?

Fishy next.

[Locke Lamora]

Llama seems pretty unlikely scum at this stage; it'd either require him to be scum with Jahudo, in which case Jahudo's been extensively plotting a potentially risky claim for a very long time by clearing Llama after N2, or he'd have to be a gun-investigation immune GF, which seems unlikely. I think the best bet is that either Jahudo or DP is scum because I don't think town has both those PRs unless scum has something pretty powerful in return to counteract, and framer-goon doesn't seem like the world's most powerful scumteam. Both of them being scum seems unnecessarily risky at this stage, so I don't think it's particularly plausible. DP would be my pick right now because from a quick read, Jahudo's claim meshes quite well with his play and I found Jahudo to be pretty town in my early-game reading (although I need to do a lot more). That leaves Fishy, who I honestly don't have much of a read on at the moment, particularly as Pom's slot did nothing, and need to look back at him in much more detail.

Questions for Jah:
Why didn’t you claim your result on DBE, given that you were prepared for her to claim/be lynched?

Why did you target Yos, when you knew he’d have a gun one way or another?

Can you give me a list of scum games where you reached massclaim, and if you can be bothered tell me what you claimed?

Are you getting Darla mixed up with Yos here?

[Locke Lamora]

Well, given that everyone has posted since Fishy has declared that V/LA and no-one has made a move, I'm going to go ahead and say it's a safe bet Fishy is scum.

Vote: Fishy

I've been struggling for time a lot but I'll do a reread as soon as I can looking for possible Fishy connections.

[Locke Lamora]

On reflection, perhaps we shouldn't have killed Yos when we did. I really didn't play great when I replaced in but I felt like from PoE there was almost no way I wasn't going to get lynched. It worked in the sense that Yos' death made DBE an obvious lynch, but there wasn't much else we could do after that. People were calling me and DP scum together from the moment I got in the game so there was no amount of distancing or bussing we could do that would change that.