Open 193 - Friends and Enemies: It's over!

[Sando]

Yep, nothing has changed about Vi's consistent avoiding of questions, see mine about why Vi found my D1 play scummy, and Zorblag's regarding previous games roles. I think that much of Vi's play has been trying to appear to be scumhunting, when not actually doing so. The early attack on me on D2, which was a pretty easy attack to make considering D1, with poor reasoning not backed up when questioned, before making an oportunistic jump onto Reck, again, with poor reasoning.

Away for ~24 hours.

[Ojanen]

Ojanen, you say that you are aware of the inconsistencies you brought up on Reck but still think he's town. Did you think he was probably scum at the point when you started pressuring him and pushing his wagon (in which case, when did you change your mind) or did you think he was probably town even then (in which case, why did you push his wagon)?

To address Vi, Zorblag and hito bringing up similar theme:
I got more suspicious of him at the beginning of D2, I didn't mind him so much on D1 at all, because to me he seemed like he was somewhat genuinely slightly anxious to be on PCE wagon in case charlatan flipped scum. D2 didn't like the way he seemed to be catching on suspicions (I remember this at least in regards to Vi's Sando case).
I reread him and found the point I raised genuinely potentially scummy. Frankly, I've grown disattached of my earlier thought process during the week, I don't remember the exact point when I flickered back. But the inconsistencies being a valid scumtell or not, he genuinely seems to not remember things. For instance, he asked earlier ABR to rank the scum on a list. ABR later explicitly said he thought this was scummy from Reck, to make him decide better who to nightkill. After a while, Reck asks ABR again if he does readlists, and that he'd like to have one.
Frankly, I'm rarely very confident. But extended uncertainty isn't an effective playstyle. Flipflops do the same thing better. So I went fully out on current opinion.
I mean Reck is a bit of an all over the place thing, but yup, I currently do think he's likely town.

Also, fuck it with the uncertainty.

I do not currently think Reck is scum.

I think he looks reeeeally inconsistent but I do not want to lynch him in the mindset I am right now. I just think we are more likely lynching bad play from town than scum. I wasn't kidding with my last waffle though (thanks for pointing out the obvious, which I also admitted in posting it, Serial). It's a totally flickering read.

@Oj-To me, your post basically translates to: "I don't know what to do right now, nor do I have any sense of direction for the future"...which doesn't exactly give me the warm and fuzzies. I realize you're essentially admitting this, but what is the point in posting that if it's all you have to say?

@VP: I said where I'm inclined to look, and

I said that I currently think the hounded Reck is poor-playing town

and that is the wrong way, which is not the non-stance you are describing,

Reck is a juicy easy target in this game if he's town.

Translation: "I still have a foot in both camps, but the Reckoner wagon seems to have become less popular now."

I do not want to lynch Reck currently and I said it very clear. [...] I'm expecting him to be town.

However it's good to see you finally took a stance on it:

I'm expecting him to be town.

At least calling you out got you to make yourself accountable.

I feel the need to this chronology in full.

VP, to address the general "dancing around lynches" line:
A caricature of the color I didn't like:
D1: Reck is scum with charlatan. Reck's reasons for not getting on the wagon indicate a link, everyone on wagon are probtown. Bad reasons for not voting charlatan despite being suspecting him, implied should get on wagon etc.
*Reck hammers when no hope of other wagons succeeding*
*charlatan flips town*
D2:Anyway, Reck is scum for dancing around lynches.

Ugh. More soon.

[Ojanen]

hito, I didn't catch you answering about how an Albert flip would give you more concrete opinion about Serial/VP, can you answer that? would be pretty interested.
There's a bunch of points I haven't addressed but I don't want to use all of my coins and not many of them would actually advance discussion I feel. It's getting old that I say tomorrow but I should have mafia time/access tomorrow.

[Vi]

I should finally have everything taken care of tomorrow night.

@Sando: What part of "I'm busy and don't have time to catch up" was not in modern English?
As for the questions I'm allegedly evading, I don't see any questions from you to me in the last eight pages; the last one was answered in 680.
Troll's reminder about the previous game is bizarre on a number of levels, but why not.

I was one of the Masons in the previous game (what with the scum claiming a few posts later, this should have been an easy guess). The reason I held back about it is because me and my Mason partner - who can claim when he likes - discussed plans for how to approach the game. I expected my former Mason partner (if Town) to act in the same way in the rebooted game as he told me he would in the QuickTopic. (I actually like how this arrangement turned out tbh.) My plan was to ascertain ABR's alignment as soon as I could, and shamelessly puppy him or voluntarily become flamebait to lynch him accordingly. Unfortunately, this plan failed to take into account that I've never played with anyone like ABR before and I couldn't read him. Right now I'm thinking le Town, but as previously mentioned I hate this VP Baltar wagon, so.

Setting that answer aside:
Troll, why did you see that as relevant enough to bring back up again?
Sando, why was that relevant enough to contort it into an attack?

---

Since I may as well address the elephant in the room, I'll come back to my L-1 vote on xRx.
*Does anyone deny that xRx was, in fact, not acting like a Townie at the time of my vote (i.e. at least

trying

to point Town in the right direction)
*Does anyone deny that there was no way in perdition that anyone was going to hammer xRx? This is an invitational game; there are no flaming idiots who will hammer for the sake of hammering (and the not-necessarily-flaming-or-idiotic people who may have done so were already on the wagon anyway). Even if someone wanted to hammer xRx, they would have waited for hitochop to catch up on his reads.
*Therefore, can it be acknowledged that my L-1 vote was both warranted and perfectly safe? (Notice I haven't unvoted xRx until this point)

Fake edit: Ohhhh haaaay. I totally asked Sando about this

very same thing

in 680! I thought I used "elephant in the room" already ITT.

Sando calling himself an

easy target

(and attacking me for it) is lol.
It's just as funny as pointing out that lol, he

still

hasn't answered MY question (about commenting on the VP/ABR circus). I mean

really

.
Fake edit: See other Fake edit.

My next post will hopefully get to everyone else. Until then,

Unvote: xRECKONERx
Vote: Sando

(L-5)

[hitogoroshi]

hito, I didn't catch you answering about how an Albert flip would give you more concrete opinion about Serial/VP, can you answer that? would be pretty interested.

First off - yes, bussing exists and all that, but quite frankly I can't imagine ABR and VP being scumpartners. ABR flips scum, I'm willing to call VP-town barring extraordinary circumstances.

But more interesting is SC. For reference, here's his original vote on Albert, 694. And then look at 761. If you vote someone because you believe in your gut they're scum, and their wagon begins to pick up steam, this is such a frightfully out of character response. That was the post I was referring to when I said 'I'll have a specific post I'll refer to.'

And then there's 788. Hits every wrong note with me. He's talking about 'well, my wagon doesn't have a huge amount of support', but I think it's pretty clear he doesn't really have an interest in pushing the Albert wagon.

So let's review:

• ABR and SC are on the Reckoner wagon
  
• SC hops off, votes ABR
  
• ABR immediately OMGUS's SC back
  
• VP and I go after ABR for the swtich
  
• ABR OMGUS's VP; no more mention of SC from him
  
• SC stops pushing ABR's wagon, frequently states that he's considering ojanen's. Newest post makes a point of 'well gee, I guess this ABR wagon ain't working out...' despite the fact that it's at L-3 and is plenty viable

Notice what happened here. Reckoner was at L-1, and then suddenly these two slipped off of the wagon (and let's be honest, THEY were specifically what made the Reck wagon seem less popular and possible today.) They did it by 'gunning' for each other, but now ABR seems to have forgotten SC entirely and SC has been doing his damndest to suck any energy from the ABR wagon while he's sitting on it.

I'm calling it - if ABR flips scum, SC is probably scum with him.

Vi, as I've said before I like a Sando lynch, but after these last few pages I like an ABR lynch more. You should check out this tasty wagon of ours. No matter how bad tasting SC is trying to make it sound I promise it's good and good for you.

[Vi]

I can go for a SerialClergyman wagon, but the motive behind ABR's moves D1 looks too Town to fake.

[VP Baltar]

As people no doubt could have deduced by now, I was Vi's mason partner in the original setup and part of my play this game was indeed designed to suss out ABR's alignment. In the Quick and Dirty game almost no one seriously pushed on him and he was able to escape through massive lurking. By engaging him in a slightly antagonistic way, I hoped to avoid this and I think I've at least succeeded in that.

I think Vi and I have arrived at somewhat different conclusions based on these interactions, but there is no doubt that I had moments of genuine annoyance in there as well and probably have a bit of a biased.

In terms of today, I think it's time we start talking seriously about a lynch. I think we've had a lot of good discussion today, but people are participating increasingly less (or simply repeating themselves), so it is probably time to lynch and move on.

IMO, xRECKONERx is still a fabulous lynch today. He hasn't acted any less scummy and has conveniently slipped into the background since attention turned away from him. In addition to that, almost everyone has taken a stance on him (eventually) so there is ample info available. The only reason people seem to not like a Reck lynch is because he is perceived as an easy target or is too scummy to be scum, which is not something I generally like to follow. I've played with Reckoner a lot as town and on a gut level I feel his play here is different (though he does always act scummy).

Sando is another lynch that may not be bad. I've been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt this game since I was wrong about him in the last game, but I cannot make heads or tails of his play this game. When he's not lurking, he seems to be doing his best to not comment on any of the main events that are taking place. His recent obsession with Vi, who couldn't be acting more town, is particularly illogical.

I personally would still support an ABR lynch today, but I'm not going to beat that dead horse anymore.

Any lynch beyond that is probably going to take a damn fine case from someone else to convince me.

Unvote, Vote: xRECKONERx

---

@Oj - I hope you don't think you're actually being convincing with your timeline considering you're just highlighting the parts of your quotes you think show you taking a stance while you're conveniently leaving out the caveats you were repeatedly slipping in there in case you needed to change your mind. Let's turn to the non-underlined portions!

It's a totally flickering read.

Reck is a juicy easy target in this game

if he's town.

You were repeatedly tacking on outs for yourself if you needed to, so I don't know who you're trying to fool at this point by highlighting portions of your quotes that better suit your argument.

[Ojanen]

@hito:
All right, but you voted Albert way before Serial*s 761 and 768 and said this:
[quote="hito 710""]# I'll admit a bit of bias in that an ABR flip would tell me a whole lot about my two most ambiguous reads (VP and SC)[/quote]
So what was the thought process at the time?

[Ojanen]

I*m somehow tired of arguing. To VP's assertion of me trying to fool someone, I didn't leave out any of that from what I quoted, I think any opinion on an unknown's alignment has an in-built "if" in it so I don*t see how saying it aloud is vague, flickering is quite obvious since I had just been calling him scummy a bit earlier and the later stance could just as well be argued to have a built in caveat if one operates in this thought system ("currently" and talking about flip-flops as setting up a possibility for bailout or something).

[Ojanen]

VP, what do you think about lynching me?

[hitogoroshi]

I can go for a SerialClergyman wagon, but the motive behind ABR's moves D1 looks too Town to fake.

I'll agree with you that I can see a town motivation behind ABR's D1 actions more or less as much as a scum motivation. You're losing me when you're saying 'too town to fake'. My suspicions on ABR are entirely found in his content on the last six pages. I'm talking about stuff like this:

I am sure about RECKONER. I can't lynch RECKONER if SC is going to be voting me. So I'm voting SC. Makes sense.

I don't know what you saw in his D1 play that's 'too town to fake', but does it really justify craplogic like that? That's what I don't get. It's like I'm the only one who realizes that between his vote on Reck and his vote on VP there was a very out there, strategic vote on SC.

@hito:
All right, but you voted Albert way before Serial*s 761 and 768 and said this:

# I'll admit a bit of bias in that an ABR flip would tell me a whole lot about my two most ambiguous reads (VP and SC)

So what was the thought process at the time?

At the time, I was willing to call it town points for both VP and SC. But when I saw 761 it just hit me as so off that it put the idea of SC-ABR scumteam in my head, which is why I asked for a bit of time to give my opinion.

I'm liking VP's lynch list because it's more or less right in line with my own (though I'm also willing to go for SC). I disagree, though, that we should 'stop beating this dead horse.' VP, we seem to be the only ones that notice the horse is dead at all, and I think this is worth some more work. As I said from the start, it's hard not to like a Reck lynch when confirmed townies love it so, but this resistance to an ABR lynch is something I want to push at now, rather than defer to.

[VP Baltar]

VP, what do you think about lynching me?

As I said before, I don't feel that I've come to a definitive conclusion on you. I think your attacks on me, both yesterday and today, have been pretty bad and poorly constructed, but that could easily be coming from you being busy in RL/having a mild biased toward attacking me when we are in games together. On those grounds, I don't think lynching you is something I'm all that interested in today.

If you haven't already outlined these recently, what are your thoughts on SC and Sando?

[Ojanen]

Frankly, I have no effing clue on Serial.
I thought he was town D1, but I gained some meta N1 and I don't think I can read him based on what he has done so far here. I'm generally maintaining a special paranoia on him in mafia until I figure out how to read him since I suspect I might have positive bias towards him. (Could also just be too skilled for me.)
I didn't really understand this recently:

Having said all that, I saw a bit in Ojanen's case that was disturbingly hitting home. Zorblag and I thought Amished was a mason warning us off voting VP on D1, which is what all our crappy secretive code structure was and the double take from me on D1. I imagine the scum were trying to kill masons, so either someone else noticed it or troll is looking scummy. Or our fail secret talk gave it away.

He said he was thinking about joining VP wagon. This was the only reference I saw to it later. I understand the reasoning on Zorblag. But I don't get why he would have thought about joining VP wagon based on this, wouldn't the speculated scum rationale rather indicate a town VP?

Sando has not exactly been the epitome of involved but I don't see him as scummy here.
I hydraed with him as scum once upon a time. I have gradually formed the same clear thing as I had with Amished actually - in quick and dirty mafia qt and game thread there were two very different Amisheds, and I recognized the guy from the quicktopic here. Same with Sando; the two were quite different, and I recognize the guy from our hydra talk, not the one from that game thread.

Why do you think I have a mild bias toward attacking you btw?

[VP Baltar]

Why do you think I have a mild bias toward attacking you btw?

Eh, just a vibe mostly. I know I have a naturally scummy playstyle at times, so I think you just pick up on that and run with it. Of course, it's also interesting to note that we've never been the same alignment...so perhaps that's the cause of us disagreeing often. *shrug*

[Albert B. Rampage]

Sando, Vi, quit being silly and vote for RECK.

[Albert B. Rampage]

Unvote, vote RECK

[hitogoroshi]

That's L-1, just so you guys know.

[Albert B. Rampage]

No, it's L-2

xRECKONERx(4): Debonair Danny DiPietro, Zorblag, VPB, Albert

6 to lynch.

[CryMeARiver]

Please hate me

[Albert B. Rampage]

GTFO scrub

[xRECKONERx]

Sorry guys - work/homework/parties are getting ta be crazy. I'll try and have something up tonight.

[Albert B. Rampage]

Can you claim though?

[hitogoroshi]

No, it's L-2

xRECKONERx(4): Debonair Danny DiPietro, Zorblag, VPB, Albert

6 to lynch.

Ah, yeah, my apologies - I was going off of a vote count a page ago and I forgot about Vi's unvote.

[xRECKONERx]

Im'ma plain ole Vanilla Townie.

[Albert B. Rampage]

Aite well I think we got to lynch here. No choice.