Newbie 958 ~Game over!

[Coach Travis]

Yeah, this is a very tough situation indeed, never thought it would be down to the three of us, that's for sure. Seeing how I've thought both Incog and Equinox to be town lately, I think this will be really hard for me to figure out. I'll have to go through posts as well, though obviously now that NS is gone, his suspicion of Equinox is something I'll look into, and with a couple things we've mentioned on Equinox in day 3, I currently find her the better option, but I won't even think of risking a lynch until I'm totally confident this time.

[Incognito]

This is interesting. My initial thought tells me to vote Equinox because of the previous town read I had on Coach Travis due to the reasons I brought up Yesterday but with the Zach NK, I need to think a bit more about this - considering the fact that I brought up a case against Equinox Yesterday, I'm second-guessing myself as to whether a her-scum would benefit as much from a Zach NK as a CT-scum would. And then of course there's the WIFOM that goes along with all of this.

Either way, I agree - nobody should vote just yet. I'll be combing through the thread for interactions that I consider to be interesting and will have a bunch of questions for both of you to answer before coming to a decision.

[Nikanor]

Vote Count 4.1

Not Voting (3)

- Coach Travis, Equinox, Incognito

With three players alive, two votes are required to lynch.

Deadline falls on Friday August 6 at 22:30 UTC.

[Equinox]

Points of interest from a quick look at Shadow Dancer's posts:

[*] Shadow Dancer's fake investigation had Equinox as town. Obvious privileged information about my role aside, scum fake claiming cop commonly choose a townie to declare innocent in order to sway that townie to their side. As I've said on Days 2 and 3, it almost worked on me, as I was more willing to believe Shadow Dancer than brianj.

[*] The two people Shadow Dancer never voted in this game were LordChronos and Incognito. Shadow Dancer did, however, FoS these two. Point #1 crosses out LordChronos from the list. This leaves Incognito. Scum like to FoS their scum buddy for distancing, but they won't vote unless it's necessary.

[*] I know I said before that Shadow Dancer had pushed a case against Incognito, which made me think he was town. As it appears, Shadow Dancer built cases against almost everyone in the game -- brianj, Coach Travis, Earlder1, Incognito, Leech, LordChronos, and remouk (and later Zachrulez) -- so having a case doesn't actually clear anyone. All of these cases, except for two, were accompanied by a vote.

That is my defense and my offense based on posts by Shadow Dancer.

I'll go back and look at isolations in a bit, but at this point I think we have our scum.

[Incognito]

I got a chance to read through Coach Travis' posts particularly his early ones. One thing that I had long forgotten up until now was the push CT made against Alta early on in this game. In this post Coach Travis actually went forward and voted Alta to place his first non-random vote of the game and then he even went further than that and listed him at the top of his scum list in this post as well. He *did* eventually unvote him about 5 days later once Alta was replaced by Shadow Dancer citingthat Shadow Dancer seemed to be doing a much better job than Alta, but I too began to feel that way at that point as well so I can't really hold that against him. All of these initial suspicions that CT had of Alta make his Day 2 posting look even more interesting in retrospect in the sense that he didn't really ever let up on Alta/Shadow Dancer - if CT and SD were scum together, I'd just expect CT to try and "forget" about his SD/Alta-suspicions rather than continuing to keep them alive and well. It indicates to me that CT just might be genuine here. And then of course all of that led to the point where Coach Travis and Shadow Dancer ended up cross-voting one another in which SD's vote in particular placed Coach Travis at L-1 at a time when alternate wagons were definitely available. If they're scum together, it could have been the ultimate act of distancing, but I'm not sure I see the necessity for both SD and CT to distance from one another that strongly at that point.

Coach Travis, when you placed your vote on Alta during Day 1, how likely did you think it was that he would be lynched at that point? What in particular did you like about Shadow Dancer's entrance into the game?




LordChronos' posts were very different with regard to the level of attention given to Alta early on. While I and others spent some time trying to question Alta and read into his behavior a bit further, LordChronos pretty much ignored Alta altogether. The only point that I can see LC mentioning anything about Alta in a critical way was in this post where he calls out Alta for being "hypocritical" (this was back when Alta kept a random vote on remouk but mentioned that he wasn't really finding remouk scummy at that point). I didn't really see what LC was getting at at the time because I didn't see Alta's vote and comment as being contradictory but if LC was scum, I can see him possibly getting a bit antsy with his partner even for something very minor or not scummy at all. It would basically be a classic case of Stoofer's Syndrome (when you're scum, oftentimes your buddy's actions become even more magnified than they would if you were town looking in on them). The ignoring of Alta/Shadow Dancer pretty much continued all the way into Day 2 when LC eventually got replaced by Equinox. And I've already covered some points about Equinox's behavior towards Shadow Dancer back in this analysis post of mine. Now that NS is gone, I'm thinking much of what I've mentioned there is still valid.



So that's pretty much where I am right now. I'd like to see CT's responses to my questions but my current lean is towards Equinox being the scum.

[Equinox]

What benefit would Shadow Dancer have derived from "investigating" his scum buddy and calling him town? That's a suicide move.

[Incognito]

I really don't see why it would be a suicide move on his part to call his buddy town. The only part I could see is the other part of what you mentioned above about how a scum might claim an innocent result on someone who actually is town in an effort to "join forces" with them, but I don't think it's completely necessary for a scum to do that. I think it's equally as likely for a scum to claim an innocent result on his own buddy in an effort to play mind games with the town.

Further, I haven't seen any evidence from past games to suggest that scums will *always* claim results on actual townies - I've seen it go both ways.

[Equinox]

All right. Fair enough. That means point #1 in my earlier post is WIFOM and invalidated.

I'll have something up this afternoon -- most likely a bunch of questions, but otherwise I have my reads.

As for properly responding to Incognito's post...

[*] I am not LordChronos, so I cannot explain his actions. What I can say is that sometimes I end up ignoring some players in favor of grilling others; that

may

be what happened with LordChronos and Alta, but I'm not going to go back and check at the moment. (I'm saving that for the larger post later.)

[*] Interesting that he brought up Stoofer's Syndrome, yet the crux of his paragraph was LordChronos ignoring Alta and Shadow Dancer. Yes, scum will read their buddy differently from everyone else, but if that is the case, why ignore your buddy for most of the game except to point out this or that? That would just be a poor attempt at distancing.

[*] Most of Incognito's previous case against me was based on LordChronos's play. There's only so much I can respond to that.

[*] Is it strange to have three suspects, with Shadow Dancer as #3? I found Shadow Dancer's play strange, but even stranger to me was Incognito's interaction with Coach Travis, which I felt was fake. (I will cover this again in my later post, as it concerns Incognito's isolation read anyway.)

[Coach Travis]

@Incog:The thing with Alta was that a lot of my case on him at the time was based on the fact that he had been pretty much useless, and not really helping in any way, so I figured that was scummy. Due to the nature of my case on him, I didn't think it was likely he'd be lynched, because there was already a stronger case on Earlder 1, but I definitely wanted him to get some attention, which I felt he did by the time he was replaced.

As for SD, I thought from the start he was contributing much more than Alta, I liked some of his posts early, nut the one flaw I have in this game, is for whatever reason I always assume the best in people, like my lack of social skills are making me naive and easy to manipulate, so that also kinda plays into backing off so quickly at first, until I had a reason to find him suspicious again. So I think I was finding town because he was contributing a lot and making good posts, and not actually because I had a good town read. That even explains why I was eventually willing to write Alta's off as a pure newb.

Right now, I can see a case either way, though still leaning towards Equinox. A lot of the points on LC make sense, and I know she can't really defend against that, but it is the same role, so if the original player could possibly be connected to SD, it's possible they are partners.

[Nikanor]

Vote Count 4.2

Not Voting (3)

- Coach Travis, Equinox, Incognito

With three players alive, two votes are required to lynch.

Deadline falls on Friday August 6 at 22:30 UTC.

[Incognito]

I should probably briefly respond to some of Equinox's points too.

Equinox, can you point out where exactly Shadow Dancer made any kind of a case against you

or

your predecessor? I remembered him always thinking that you and your player slot was either neutral or town for pretty much the whole game, and I quickly glanced through SD's isolation and couldn't find anything major that he mentioned about either person in your slot, which seemed to confirm my memory of past events. I also couldn't find a single point in his isolation where he FoS-ed LordChronos either, which is another point you bring up in your own favor apparently.

[*] Interesting that he brought up Stoofer's Syndrome, yet the crux of his paragraph was LordChronos ignoring Alta and Shadow Dancer. Yes, scum will read their buddy differently from everyone else, but if that is the case, why ignore your buddy for most of the game except to point out this or that? That would just be a poor attempt at distancing.

My point there was LC's response to that first action that he said he found suspicious about Alta seemed a bit uncharacteristic coming from him because he didn't really ever seem to follow up on it either. Looking back on it, it looks more like a slap on the wrist than an actual attack since it was followed by absolutely no other comments about Alta or Shadow Dancer for pretty much the remainder of his (LC's) time in this game.


I'll wait for your comments about what you consider to be fakeness coming from me before commenting on that since I'm not really sure what you're getting at there.

[Incognito]

Right now, I can see a case either way, though still leaning towards Equinox.

Even though you say you're leaning towards Equinox, can you point out why you can see a case on me?

[Coach Travis]

Well, I currently believe Equinox is scum, but what I mean is I won't totally dismiss the possibility that it's you. I know my problem early on(and even yesterday), was I was so fast to dismiss people for various reasons, when it's obvious someone has to be scum. So basically, I'll give Equinox a chance to make her case against you, and then examine it to see if I believe it as much as yours, though right now I do feel the better case is against Equinox. I really just don't don't want to make a mistake here, so I'm not dismissing any possibility.

[Equinox]

Equinox, can you point out where exactly Shadow Dancer made any kind of a case against you or your predecessor? I remembered him always thinking that you and your player slot was either neutral or town for pretty much the whole game, and I quickly glanced through SD's isolation and couldn't find anything major that he mentioned about either person in your slot, which seemed to confirm my memory of past events. I also couldn't find a single point in his isolation where he FoS-ed LordChronos either, which is another point you bring up in your own favor apparently.

The lack of a "real" case was not in my favor. The two people Shadow Dancer never actually voted or presented a real case against were Incognito and LordChronos. The only reason I threw myself out in point #2 about Shadow Dancer's isolation was because of his "cop investigation" I presented in point #1, as well as some inside knowledge. Your position that scum have been known to do both has invalidated my former point, but I stand by my belief that Shadow Dancer did it to gain my trust.

Your point that Shadow Dancer never accused my slot is somewhat incorrect. Shadow Dancer felt some scummy "vibes" from LordChronos in 199. After DTMaster posted his giant walls, Shadow Dancer rode on the "case" toward the end of Day 1. Later, when Zachrulez confronted Shadow Dancer about his choice of investigation, Shadow Dancer used that reason.

Shadow Dancer did not interact with LordChronos on Day 2 because that was when he received his "investigation" results. It would not have made much sense to heavily FoS someone you're going to declare innocent later. The claim was undoubtedly planned in advance... perhaps by your hand, you sly scum, you.

Really, you are just as cunning as the other Incognito...

---

Let's turn it around to you. The crux of Shadow Dancer's case against you:

[*] Incognito has an intransparent playing style behind which Incogscum can hide.

[*] Shadow Dancer's FoS was brought only

after

brianj presented his list of reads, with both scum on the "higher confidence" side of the scale. High time to start distancing.

[*] When Equinox started jumping on Incognito, Shadow Dancer suddenly turned around and asked for a case. There was no evidence that Shadow Dancer's read of Incognito changed between brianj's post and the post where Equinox is challenged. In the same paragraph, Shadow Dancer starts talking about how "slippery" Incognito is. Wishy-washy, much?

[*] ...and then we never hear from Shadow Dancer regarding Incognito again.

I've just logged in, so I did this response first; I'll continue with my isolation reading of Incognito and then post a vote.

Coach Travis, you are going to be the deciding hammer. Please decide this carefully.

[Equinox]

Oh, I never posted the results of reading Coach Travis, did I...? Here it is.

Points of interest from reading Coach Travis in isolation:

[*] Coach Travis really has been hunting scum. I don't know what was different when I read his posts in context, but from these posts, he's been putting in effort to hunt down the mafia. The problem, I think, was his early emphasis on his reactive playing style, which set off alarms, including my own.

[*] Coach Travis appears to be honest in his assessments of people. More specifically, he hasn't overexplained or underexplained his stances.

[*] Coach Travis took steps to rectify issues with his playing style. Most of his comments are in Day 1, and they resurfaced on Day 2 only because Equinox triggered them.

[*] To conclude, I'd like to think Coach Travis is town based on Shadow Dancer's actions toward him (refer to my first post) and based on the stances he took in this game.

[Equinox]

Before I delved into reading Incognito, I took a look at DTMaster's catch-up posts to see what Shadow Dancer was talking about. Shadow Dancer had "let slip" that scum didn't want to let DTMaster finish his analysis. Unfortunately for all three of us, DTMaster suspected Coach Travis, Incognito, and LordChronos to varying degrees.

I do not think this is coincidence.

Didn't read his post before nightfall, did you, Incognito?

Coach Travis, I sometimes don't provide reasoning for my votes to try and see who might be thinking along the same lines as me when I place an unexplained vote. I figure that if a person can see what I see when I didn't even have to explain it, there's a decent chance that the person who has seen what I've also seen is likely thinking along the same lines I am and could potentially be pro-town. I wouldn't realistically leave an unexplained vote on a person up until the point that the person gets lynched, but I do think it's a good initial indicator.

I fail to see any pro-town motivation behind this. Town do not need to find other town; their sole objective is to find scum. Using process of elimination to scum hunt is just handing the mafia victory on a platter. Besides, and you would know this, being on the same wavelength does not indicate alignment by any stretch of the imagination; it just helps you find out, assuming you are scum, who is easier to manipulate.

Bullet points:

[*] Incognito asks good questions... as expected of the IC.

[*] Incognito managed to avoid mentioning anything significant about Alta, despite the questions around Alta's play. Pro-town IC should have noticed something at the very least.

[*] Incognito appeared to have difficulty with solid reads. I believe this has already been discussed, but it's still worth mentioning. Other, less experienced players were getting reads on players; it is surprising to see Incognito have trouble. Stoofer's Syndrome comes to mind here.

[*] Incognito did some distancing from Shadow Dancer with some questioning and more questioning. The first questioning aims to get Shadow Dancer to take a stance; the second is more to get a grip on Shadow Dancer's stance than to determine alignment.

[*] In that same post, Incognito presents some suspicion against Shadow Dancer's slot, despite lack of mention of Alta elsewhere on Day 1. This is the first time he talks about Alta's play in any sort of detail.

[*] Later, Incognito does not see a case against Shadow Dancer. No other mention of his stance regarding Shadow Dancer was made between the post where he had "suspicions" and this one. Something changed and went unmentioned, or it's just inconsistent play.

[*] Lynch all liars. Uh, I mean, there is no pro-town motivation to mentioning how he didn't read DTMaster's posts. If town didn't read it, they'd just read it later and talk about it as if nothing strange happened... because nothing strange happened, merely honest neglect. Scum not only feel their own actions are scummier than they are, but they also feel the need to explain, almost excessively, the reasons behind their actions. This is one of them.

[*] Incognito leans town on Shadow Dancer because of only one action -- metagaming. That may be a valid reason early in the game to read someone because there's no other information, but this is a poor excuse of a town read in Day 2. Besides, scum can do metagaming, too. It's just a matter of how much time one has and how dedicated one is to the game.

[*] In his response to Equinox's accusation about the lack of PBPAs, Incognito says he didn't want people to bank on them too much when he himself isn't confident. Lack of confidence in reads aside, this isn't very pro-town. Town needs information; any information you can provide, no matter how little, can help. Confidence issues can be addressed with a disclaimer. You just outright refused to provide it.

[*] Why base your suspicion against Equinox mostly on her predecessor's play? Oh, that's right... because Equinox can't defend LordChronos's actions without using divination.

[*] Incognito's response to Zachrulez is defensive. He brings up his "town credentials" as a shield. Town knows they do not need to do this because their actions are innocent.

[*] The last time I saw Incognito talk about Shadow Dancer, Shadow Dancer was a "leaning town" read. No apparent changes in opinion between that post and his intent to hammer. Even when Incognito was talking about his trichotomy (suspects after DTMaster's death), he claimed Shadow Dancer to be town. Wishy-washy, much?

[*] In the posts after this, Incognito begins throwing Shadow Dancer under the bus, followed by the hammer. He claims his flip in reading Shadow Dancer was first from Shadow Dancer's willingness to do metagaming and then Shadow Dancer's L-1 of Coach Travis. IIRC, Shadow Dancer received heat for his vote; that was a signal for Shadow Dancer's scum buddy to start bussing.

tl;dr

Incognito claims to have been actively scum hunting, yet he seems to have a strange lack of reads early in the game. His inconsistency regarding Alta and Shadow Dancer shows an unwillingness to throw his buddy in the fire yet a need to keep a distance; considering that both Alta and Shadow Dancer were already suspicious by himself, town may have lynched too early if Incognito took the distancing too far. Further, Incognito explicitly stated he did not read DTMaster's posts prior to the night kill when there was absolutely no need for town players to do so (and doing it "in the interest of self-disclosure" is rather unnecessary). LASTLY, for some spiffy WIFOM flavor, why is such a high-quality, pro-town, actively scum-hunting IC

still alive

? Surely it's to trick us all!

[Equinox]

VOTE: Incognito

[Coach Travis]

Not sure what to think of the case on Incog. I'm trying to come to my own conclusion right now, since this very well could come down to my vote, and I'm going insane. The problem I'm having is a lot of the points on Incog were already explained by him, pretty well even, though I can see a connection to SD, and it is possible to come to the conclusion he was SD's partner, but I'm not sure if I believe it. Though obviously his whole trichotomy thing could have been because he knew SD was scum, due to being partnered, and was doing more distancing. Or he could really could have thought at least one of us was scum. I really wish I was better at reading people for clutch situations like this. I really can see a case on either player right now. I'm definitely going to to take more time, see if I can ever sort this out. Though I'm still not sure about this whole "fake" thing Equinox sees in Incog, so between that and generally not being too sold on that case, I'd still probably lean towards voting Equinox right now.

[Equinox]

The problem I'm having is a lot of the points on Incog were already explained by him, pretty well even,

His experience would make him better at explaining himself, regardless of alignment.

Look at everyone's cases, not just mine and Incognito's. Then look at his play. He's skilled scum.

[Equinox]

I should address this, too:

Though I'm still not sure about this whole "fake" thing Equinox sees in Incog,

Well, how has Incognito been honest, in your opinion? He has said certain things that don't come out of town, and he's even outright refused to state his own stances until much later in the game when he was pressured into it. Town players are a lot more straightforward than what Incognito's been doing.

When I accused Incognito, it was a gut feeling from his interactions with you. At the time, I thought you two were a scum team, so it may have been confirmation bias on my part -- though I still stand by my stance there. Some of the things he said and asked you did not feel like a townie honestly questioning to find alignment or a town IC teaching a fellow player. It just felt manufactured. Add this to how utterly null Incognito was in the early game (he acted more like an aloof IC than an actual player), and we have a "fake" interaction.

[Equinox]

EBWOP:

When I accused Incognito of being fake*, it was a gut feeling from his interactions with you.

[Coach Travis]

Yeah, I realize he's very skilled and obviously has experience manipulating people, which is why I'm hesitant to lynch anyone until I'm more sure. One thing I don't like about him is how he suspected you about the connection to SD in day 3, then when you defended against that he thought you seemed townish, then just used the same argument again today, and mostly focused on LC, which really can't be defended either way now because LC's been replaced. Things like that make me unsure, but he's so skilled it's also hard to make a case against him, because he's very smart, very careful, so that's why I'm having a really hard time here. I can see both sides, and I'm not sure if all I have against him is that his experience makes me really nervous or if I really find him scummy. Going through his posts a bit, I actually can see how I was to quick to trust him about an unexplained vote because something like that really doesn't benefit the town as far as I can tell where scum don't need reason because they know everyone's alignment.

And, I'd need examples of what seemed fake. Reading through his posts I still can't really notice anything. I agree that he seemed very null early on, though.

[Equinox]

Also, Incognito's response to Coach Travis doesn't have anything wrong on the surface, but my gut doesn't like it. It's like a fake response. It might be due to my suspicion of Incognito, though. Still! Gut no likey.

It's the first paragraph that set me off. I guess it felt a bit too conversational... but in general, it just didn't feel right to me. I know, gut != logic. That's all I've got for calling Incognito "fake," though.

[Incognito]

Right, so I just got back from work, and Coach Travis hasn't hammered yet so it must be Equinox.

vote: Equinox

I'll respond to Equinox's points as well as any questions CT might have for me and look for other points of the thread that show why Equinox is scum.

[Equinox]

Everyone in this game knows Coach Travis is town. Don't bother with that, scum.