/Invitational 11: Pick your Poison 5 (Game Over)

[Patrick]

Votecount

ekiM (1) -- Ellibereth
zoraster (1) -- VasudeVa
Elmo (2) -- Kmd4390, DrippingGoofball
VasudeVa (1) -- Seraphim
ooba (1) -- Papa Zito
DrippingGoofball (1) -- mith

Not voting: Everyone else
17 alive, 9 to lynch.

Deadline: 11th of September, 6 am GMT.

[SaintKerrigan]

Kerri, why you choose Sera?

Because when I read late game-stuff awhile back (like after I replaced in) Seraphim looked scummiest to me.

[Seraphim]

Alright, I'm going to try and organize my thoughts on VasudeVa to see if I can come to a conclusion. Biggest aspect of his play: wagon-hopping and his eagerness to wagon-hop.

Sooo...Is it safe to throw out votes yet?

Vote: zoraster

Also, Hoopla's cake-y avi looks awesome with THC. Fooled me for around 3 seconds.

I don't like 'ooba's I have more scum reads than town reads' wall.

Vote: ooba

Also, you're reading way too much into that.

Vote: KMD

Let's get a serious bandwagon going on. Still interested in what ooba has to say to my point against him though.

vote: Hoopla

I want to see where this goes.

@Seraph: Well then SUCK ON THIS.

Vote: Zoraster

Excellent point.

Vote: Hero

Vote Zoraster

Clearly no one is as interested in Hero as I am.

If one decides to check the dates on these votes, which I will, it certainly is bizarre how much and how QUICKLY he changes his mind within a very short time window.
initial Zoraster vote: Thu Aug 12, 2010 2:23 pm
ooba vote: Thu Aug 12, 2010 5:17 pm
KMD vote: Fri Aug 13, 2010 1:01 pm
Hoopla vote: Mon Aug 16, 2010 4:52 am
Second Zoraster Vote: Sun Aug 22, 2010 10:12 am
Hero vote: Sun Aug 22, 2010 10:36 am
Third Zoraster Vote: Sun Aug 22, 2010 12:11 pm

Note at the beginning and end of this chart how he switches his vote in spans of time measuring less than 24 hours with a few exceptions. It's also interesting to note that these quick switches correspond to the beginning of the day, when wagons are forming for various reasons, to the end of the day, when wagons are desperately trying to form. The longest period of inactivity was when he was voting Hoopla for almost a week(NEW RECORD), which was when, coincidentally, the Hoopla wagon was at the zenith of its popularity.

In fact, every vote he has made seems to be "testing the waters" which he basically admits in one of his posts.

I move my vote where I think it needs to be. Besides, bandwagoning is a legitimate strategy D1. I switch my vote to whoever has the biggest wagon that interests me, with the intent to pressure and in turn gather more accurate information.

Um...eek? Basically, his plan seems to be to join bandwagons he finds "interesting" usually with no precedent and very little reasoning. Then, he never follows through with these votes. He claims the reason he bandwagons is to gather "genuinely Townie responses" from the players he's bandwagoned. But he doesn't DO that. He just changes his vote so he can bandwagon farther.

For example, he is currently voting Zoraster, who he has voted the most times in this game. When he switched the second time to vote Hero, had Zoraster exhibited the townie responses he was looking for? Obviously not because he votes him again in quick order. Also, had Hero established those "townie tells" in the 90 minutes you were voting for him?

He also doesn't start posting content until he has to defend himself from the attack that I started on him upon my entry into the game.

So, we've established that VasudeVa is opportunistic, but the ultimate question is, is he scum? I feel this is a fairly solid positive.

His bandwagon-hopping method of "scumhunting" seems to be a fantastic way to test the waters, to see what wagons are most viable for him to jump on. If he was really trying to bandwagon for reactions from the player, why does he keep making statements that implicate some of the players he votes as scum? For example, his ooba vote, where he says his(ooba's) wall of reads was scummy, or his Hoopla vote:

read Hoopla as scum because of her very uninterested responses to her wagon, quite unlike what I saw from her in Elliland.........And I'm voting for her lynch.

Or his Hero vote:

Nope. Bad attacks with bad scum-buddy coaching theory. Hero is defscum.

Your entire bandwagoning theory/premise/strategy gets invalidated by your play. It seems very much fabricated to give credibility to a playstyle that is very anti-town. You never follow up your scumhunting premise, I haven't even seen any evidence of scumhunting besides calling your wagon and everyone on it anti-town by implying that your wagon was a counter-wagon running against the Hoopla wagon.

If I am being coached with this playerlist, I'll probably get good advice and NOT get wagoned. Also, being coached increases the chance that I'll be dissonant/ungenuine. What say you about that? Do you think I'm faking this because my scumbuddies coached me?

If I were your scumbuddy, I would actually try to coach you to "act as you would when you were town". To try and achieve that VI status so people basically ignore you, allowing you to basically do whatever you want.

In conclusion, I'm pretty damn sure VasudeVa is scum.

[DrippingGoofball]

Seraph, we're not lynching the Lynchalicious One today. You're just going to have to cry in your beer at the QT Bar with your scumpals.

[Seraphim]

I'm not just willing to ignore him or leave him to his idiotic antics. And you seemed pretty eager to lynch him yesterday.

Besides that fact, Elmo is a terrible lynch today. And I can't drink. So. Yeah.

[populartajo]

WTF IS THIS I DONT EVEN

[Kmd4390]

Tajo was the vig kill. No, I am not claiming vig. It is just painfully obvious.

[DrippingGoofball]

Amished's opinions:

TOWN:

PZ
VV

MILD SCUM:

ooba
Troll
Hoopla

SCUM:

Hero
KMD

But then again he was hardly pushy about it.

[Kmd4390]

See, that's the thing about elmo. He was giving opiinions here and there but you'd have to look to know what any of them were. He didn't push the issue. No getting in the way of what he disagreed with or trying to push what he wanted. Just a passive voice. No stepping on any toes.

[Herodotus]

I'm not seeing how anything productive is going to come out of nightkill speculation just now, and I do see a rather big negative (Vig-fishing).

For that (and other reasons):

VOTE: DrippingGoofball

I agree with mith.

Amished's opinions:

TOWN:

PZ
VV

MILD SCUM:

ooba
Troll
Hoopla

SCUM:

Hero
KMD

But then again he was hardly pushy about it.

I think that's oversimplified/inaccurate. I have little doubt he was suspicious of Seraphim, for instance (see his ISO 20.) But more importantly, this is further vig-fishing, done indirectly.

---

The use of the janitor means that the scum had much less reason than usual to avoid the Hoopla wagon (though if the competing wagons (zora, Vas and to a lesser extent KMD) were on townies, they also had little reason to care enough to be on it.) However, they DID bother to cover up Hoopla. The question is, why?

Because it was used on a presumable townie, this doesn't matter as much as it could have, but in theory, the janitor role made the scum have slightly less incentive to bus each other before it was used. Using it on the first member of their team to be lynched would have been the sensible play.

[Herodotus]

The question is, why?

I meant to write my guess about the answer, but I ran out of time.
Either
1. the scum were on hoopla's wagon and didn't want to be noticed (but it seems unnecessary for them to be voting hoopla heavily unless there was a wagon on one of their own team that was seriously competing with the wagon on hoopla)
2. hoopla was scum (unlikely for obvious reasons)
3. the scum undervalue the janitor - I think if it was used well, it could have been worth at least one mislynch - and just decided to have 'two day ones' as someone put it on day 0
... or some combination of 1 and 3.
4. idk

[mith]

"Using it on the first member of their team to be lynched would have been the sensible play." - Or on the first power role to claim, if that player was likely to be lynched anyway (and I don't know what reason they would have had to think Hoopla was a power role).

I suspect it's most likely 3., unfortunately (the "use it day 1 in all/most situations" plan). I remember when Troll suggested this (post 15) as the obvious scum play, I thought he was crazy (day 1 janitor is annoying, but not really worse than that; while they could potentially have caused mislynches or claim-count-confusion by waiting) - but after Hoopla's gambit it stands to reason that more players thought "two day 1s" was a good reason to use it.

Of course, that doesn't mean bandwagon analysis is completely useless - the janitor use probably affected scum play in some way. (Just not sure which way - were they more inclined to pile on the innocent wagon, knowing they would be hidden? Were they setting up future lynches on the basis of Hoopla's non-flip?)

[SpyreX]

If she had explained what she was doing without actually placing the self-hammer, then (a) the scum could have retracted their use of the ability, and/or (b) there would have been some doubts that the gambit might have been staged (would you believe someone who, in response to a wagon forming on them, claimed that they were only pretending to act scummy?)

There was absolutely no question in my mind as soon as I saw that post Hoopla was town. While it was awesome it would have only been awesomer if the net result was a confirmed town and a whole bucket of analysis AND a shot for a scum flip.

That said while the first thing that comes to mind when you say "I totally saw the breadcrumb" is an eye raise you are right about as scum counterbalancing that plan by knowing about it. Which means as scum you've opted to blow smoke (???) or you're scum with hoopla (?????) or...
you're town.

I'm thinking its the latter by a margin.

That said VV is still scum.

Unvote, Vote: VV

[Kmd4390]

Spy, you're doing it wrong. We need to lych elmo today.

[DrippingGoofball]

SpyreX, are you smoking crack or something???

Or are you protecting your buddy Elmo???

Jesus. How many hints does it take? We're lynching Elmo. Here's the key to the Greyhound, start driving.

[DrippingGoofball]

For that (and other reasons):

VOTE: DrippingGoofball

Another one? mith, you need to bus your partner, too. Get on with the program. You can't save him with counterwagons.

[Kmd4390]

Dgb is definitely on the right track.

[mith]

Kmd: At this point, I think you may as well spell out what you're hinting at.

Lynching Elmo is a terrible idea, though. If he's scum, he dies tonight, and we don't out the Vig. (If he's town, you're an idiot either way, but at least we force the scum to use kills instead of doing the job for them.)

[DrippingGoofball]

Urgh?

No.

We catch scum, we lynch scum. We need informative lynches. If we lynch scum, then the vig can take a chance at some other player at night.

It's like you want to tie up the vig tonight so that you don't have to worry about being mowed down yourself, or your non-Elmo buddy.

[ooba]

Kmd is claiming track on elmo to someone?

If it was tajo, elmo should shoot himself today (or) be lynched tomorrow.
If it was Amished, I see no reason why elmo should be lynched; or why kmd choose to soft claim today.

If it was someone else (and was blocked by JK\WD), we should take a call on how scummy target was.

[Kmd4390]

Elmo didn't even hint at suspicion of amished yesterday. I checked before voting.

[Herodotus]

Kmd is claiming track on elmo to someone?

If it was tajo, elmo should shoot himself today (or) be lynched tomorrow.
If it was Amished, I see no reason why elmo should be lynched; or why kmd choose to soft claim today.

If it was someone else (and was blocked by JK\WD), we should take a call on how scummy target was.

Could you elaborate please? I'm not following this post at all.

[mith]

DGB, Kmd: Kmd's result makes it

likely

Elmo is scum; I absolutely agree with that. His lack of Amished suspicion yesterday does not make that a certainty, though, and lynching him is still not the correct play. Let's break it down:

If we lynch Elmo:

a. Elmo is scum! Hurray. We have gained some "should we lynch Elmo or not" information to inform the Vig kill.
b. Elmo is the Vig. We've lynched a power role for absolutely no reason. Congrats.
c. Elmo is a(nother) Tracker. We've lynched a power role (and chalk it up to bad luck).

If we don't lynch Elmo:

a. Elmo is scum! The real Vig shoots Elmo in the face tonight. Meanwhile, we've gained other wagon information today, rather than just the "reaction to Kmd claim/Elmo wagon" information.

Pretty much a wash with the above a.

b. Elmo is the Vig. We haven't lynched a power role for no reason. Scum are forced to use a block, and probably go ahead and kill him as well (since he would be all but confirmed tomorrow by virtue of not being shot in the face).

Strictly better than the above b.

c. Elmo is a(nother) Tracker. If scum did shoot Amished (and tajo was the Vig kill), Vig kills Elmo, and we've killed a power role (and chalk it up to bad luck). On the other hand, if scum shot tajo (and Amished was the Vig kill), the Vig has reason to believe Elmo isn't scum, while scum have no reason to think Elmo isn't the Vig - so scum again are forced to use a block and kill, while the Vig can do something else.

Strictly better than the above c.

In fact, given that last bit, I don't think Elmo should even claim unless he

didn't

target Amished (in which case we do lynch him and then Vig Kmd if Elmo is innocent).

If there is a flaw in my reasoning, by all means, point it out.

[ekiM]

Has KMD actually claimed to have a tracker result or not?

[ekiM]

And if so shouldn't Elmo claim before we start discussing what our response to his various claim possibilities would be?