Open 572: Nightless Vengeful Mayhem - Game Over

[Green Crayons]

Goddammit.

[Green Crayons]

Nope, I'm sticking to my guns.

VOTE: shaddow

[droog]

talk to me green
what went wrong

[Not_Mafia]

VC 10.01

shaddowez (1)-

Green Crayons

(L-1)

droog (0)-

Green Crayons (0)-

Not Voting (2)-

shaddowez, droog

With

3

alive, it takes

2

to lynch.

Deadline is in

(expired on 2014-12-28 20:00:00)

- Dec 28th 20:00 GMT

[Green Crayons]

Oh whew.

[Green Crayons]

TY droog for actually being town.

[Green Crayons]

Alright, so what went wrong? Riddle was town after all. I thought his positions and arguments were coming from scum, mainly because I thought his slot was scum. Also his arguments were bad, so that was also a thing.

[droog]

man ive been on that slot so long
even though my scumread faded
i wanted it to be scum so badly

[Green Crayons]

I agree.

[droog]

i know you wont have a shaddow 'case'
but whats your rationalization
thor bussing him
him voting thor

whats your take

[Green Crayons]

Spoiler: Thor's Push On Shaddow

VC 4.14

Bicephalous Bob (5)-

Thor665, droog, Phillammon, Dyslexicon, Fink

LYNCHED

Phillammon (3)-

Shaddowez, Bicephalous Bob, Bert

(L-2)

Shaddowez (0)-

Thor665 (0)-

droog (0)-

Fink (0)-

Dyslexicon (0)-

Bert (0)-

Not Voting (0)-

With

8

alive, it takes

5

to lynch.

Deadline is in

(expired on 2014-10-21 20:00:00)

- Oct 21th 19:00 GMT

^^^ That's the previous game day lynch VC. Below is the following day:

Vote: Shaddowez

Do you agree with that Thor?

As town I go after players I think look scummy.
As scum I look for things I would call scumtells and pursue them. I have always said that the best scum strategy is to be aware that town mislynch all the time, and don't get too married to the idea that, as town, you would be more 'right' because...well...no, you probably wouldn't.
People have long said I have a difficult to spot scum game and I have won awards and noms for scum performances moreso than town performances.
There's a reason I have a writeup in my wiki about scumspecting me.

@Thor: So why'd you vote for Shaddowez?

Because I think he is an appropriate mix of scum and null to explore/lynch today.

By my accounting we have, what, three more lynches to manage to hit at least one scum with?
Why not start with a guy I have no real read on of late?

I'm actually interested in what made you change your read of me, considering you had a town read on me in 955. The best guess I have is that I've been focusing on your "town reads", and you're trying to divert attention from the Phil wagon on to me.

Do you think you've managed to do enough to justify me keeping a town read from around 300 posts ago?

You're sounding like Droog from D2. Him and Dys have a couple posts starting in 98 about mislynches, and we see how well that's worked out so far.

I think it has worked out okay, frankly, it's not like we've lost people I've town read.
Do you think it's not working out okay?

I'm actually leaning town on Shadow - if he's scum he's flying totally under my radar.

Ooooh, and such an epic read to reverse on.

I suppose that's a question about how you scum hunt. Are you looking for people that don't "do enough to justify" a town read, or do you look for people that actually do scummy things?

I see no reason I can't look for both and use both as a tell. I do think "doing enough to justify a town read" is a very valid issue to raise at this point. I will agree you've been lurky enough you haven't done anything particularly scummy, but I don't actually see that as a point particularly in your favor.

If you're looking at activity, why isn't Dys on your list of scum reads?

Because she did something that is townish. I will happily agree with you that her play is bad, I've pretty much been saying that since Day 1. But me disagreeing with a playstyle is not always identical to me scumreading someone because I do accept that town can play poorly and at that point it's a question of whether they have done town or scumtells other than the bad play. For wgeurts the answer was 'no' and for Dyx the answer is 'yes'.

Actually, how about you provide a list of scum reads. Since the last read you gave on me is from 300 posts ago, I'm sure some others have changed as well.

I would say Bert with you and Droog in tight competition for second place. If I extend out to 4 then Phil. I would actively oppose a Fink or Dyx lynch at this juncture.

In a decreasing pool starting with ten people, I would have rather seen at least one scum lynched than three townies; so no, I don't really think it's working okay. The more that town does to mislynch people, the less work scum have to do to actually cause mislynches.

That's kind of an empty statement though - you're not dinging the method, you're dinging the result.
Yes, sure, a town lynch is bad - that said, the method has been fine and we are limiting the pool of potential scumspects with each move. Beyond that we can start looking at who is defending or pushing whom and draw ideas from that about possible teams.

Do you have some alternate method to consider, or are you just wanting to be seen bemoaning the town lynches?

It's still a reversal, no matter how strong it was.

Well...okay, but what the hell is this?

If I reverse a weak read that is hardly a shocking or strange thing. that's actually pretty normal. I just lynched a scum read and they flipped town - oddly that makes me go back and reconsider things in a new light. I submit it would be strange if all my reads remained rock solid, rather than having some shift. Also, you *presented* that shift like it was surprising or strange, how do you remotely justify that? A read change is not strange - it is the normal state of affairs. I did a much bigger one to Dyx back a few days going from 'scum' to 'solid town' and you didn't even bat an eye when I proclaimed that, so why does this one bother you so much?

be specific.
Please.
I'd love to hear this.

There are two points to be made about this. First is that results are often based on the methods used to acquire them (and vice versa), so it is generally futile to attack one without expectation of some backlash to the other, which is something I didn't do. Secondly, there was no "method" that I was attacking anyway. What my comment was aimed at was the notion that it is okay to mislynch townies, as we have enough days left to do so while still winning the game. I understand that, unless you're in an extreeeeeeemely lucky game, townies are going to be mislynched, I don't think it's okay to look at it like "Well, I don't care how many townies get lynched between now and then, as long as we eventually catch scum". That shows a lack of desire to actually find scum in any manner other than PoE.

I don't think I buy this. Your comment was along the lines of "cause that's been working so well for us" which is an attack - you were trying to cut down a read of mine and are now basically acting like PoE is an issue.
I have townreads, I won't lynch them.
I have scumreads, i want to lynch one of the bigger ones.
That is PoE, that is the definition of PoE, and it still involves other reads. Now, if we were sitting around in a vacuum just rolling a die and lynching whomever your issue would have a point. But basically you were complaining that I was scumhunting and you look scummy - that's what I got.

Reversing a read is absolutely fine, I never said there was a problem with doing that specifically.

Actually, yeah, you kinda did.

I asked why you reversed your read on me, primarily because you did so with no reasoning whatsoever and just placed a vote.

Did you think I had a strong read on you?

I would question that no matter who you placed it on, not just me. As everybody generally reads things other people post differently, having reasons actually helps people understand why you think that person may be scummy. The primary reason that I can think of to place a naked vote is because you don't actually have reasons for that read, you just want other people to try and read into the fact that you're voting somebody.

So now that my read has been explained, do you have any thoughts on that?

And regarding the early reads, in context you can't possibly have missed the fact that that post was all about Bob's page 2 reads. I said that looking at only pages 1 and 2 I'd have had a null read on Droog. In my first posts of the game I said that I had a townread on him, but those came much later, mostly from his conduct during Thor v. Blair if I remember correctly.

There is no discrepancy there.

I went and looked.
This is all true. (well, the Page 2 basis of commentary part - which is the important part)

Unvote: Shaddowez
Vote: Droog

L-2

To me, it really looks like Thor was attempting to do a Blair 2.0 by arguing about minute points of bullshit that made Thor seem active and insightful.

I'm also not sure what the strategy would be behind Thor suddenly pushing for a scumbuddy's lynch, especially when nobody had previously really suspected shaddow. All the other players Thor had pushed had been town, and so suddenly going "HEY GUYS HOW ABOUT THIS LURKER?" and pointing to his buddy seems out of place.

Alright, so my commentary was apparently wrong.

Thor-scum motivation for voting shaddow-buddy when nobody else was was that it allowed him to pretty safely vote a bud without too big of a fear of people joining him. At one point someone - I think it was Fink - asked Thor what he thought about the fact that nobody was joining him on his shaddow suspicions, and Thor basically gave the text version of a big shrug. Which is notable in how apathetic Thor was towards getting others to join him on the shaddow vote, in contrast to his pretty heavy-handed push of the other votes (as noted by acryon back when he was criticizing Thor's play).

Thor-scum motivation for jumping off of you and voting shaddow-buddy, and then telling me to join his vote/goading me into voting shaddow by pursuing my own shaddow suspicions, I guess was Thor trying to severely undercut my Thor suspicions by leading the charge against shaddow. Thor was a leading vote candidate at that time, tied with droog - so from Thor's perspective, even if he did get lynched, then his reignited shaddow push would look good for shaddow (it worked).

[Green Crayons]

As for shaddow's Thor vote:

So, at the risk of this looking like an OMGUS vote, I'm going to do this anyway:

VOTE: Thor

He seemed to be making sense most of the game, but now that it's getting down to the wire and there are less other people to pay attention to, he's blatantly not working with the rest of town. He's also discussed lylo a couple of times, making it sound like he knows we're going to mislynch and end up there. I don't like it.

(shrug)

I'm biased because I know that this shaddow post is a scum post from the fact that you haven't hammered yet.

So, trying to evaluate this in the most objective manner, the most I can say about it is that it doesn't say much of anything.

shaddow looks like he feels obligated to vote Thor, but doesn't necessarily really want to: he acknowledges that folks might see it as a OMGUS vote, so preemptively tries to kill that criticism, and then provides some pretty weak justifications.

As for why vote his buddy Thor-scum? I don't know. The VC was droog, Thor, and shaddow all at 1. Maybe he got nervous about him or Thor flipping without him having sufficiently distanced from Thor? Scum are much more worried about optics than town, so he could have been nervous about the following LYLO situation in which both he and Thor survived after having pushed through a droog-town lynch.

[Green Crayons]

Activity.

[droog]

Waiting for shaddow

[droog]

Dammit don't drop in lylo

[Green Crayons]

He's usually unable to post on Friday/Saturdays, I believe. We should get something tonight.

[Not_Mafia]

shaddowez has been prodded. They have 24 hours to respond in thread before being replaced.

[droog]

my plan to get everyone replaced is almost complete
its just you and me nm
together forever

[Green Crayons]

Just lynch him.

[Green Crayons]

So this game can be over.

[droog]

i want to hear a defence

[Green Crayons]

Alrighty.

[shaddowez]

Sorry guys, screwed up my V/LA date this time around.

I looked through the game again, and can't find anything scummy other than how he was acting yesterDay, so I looked more into GC.

YesterDay, GC and Riddle were determined the other was scum. I was basing my belief that Riddle was scum more on what the previous slot holders had done, because neither of them were making an impression on me either way. Now that we know he's town, I'm looking back at VCA to see what makes sense: (I know the D numbers don't exactly match up based on No-Lynches, so assume anytime I use "Day" or "D" I mean lynch)

Both slots were on the wagon D1, which is pretty much a null tell based on the quickhammer by wgeurts.
D2, wgeurts was basically a policy lynch. Riddle's slot was on the wagon, but GC's wasn't. To me, that policy lynch looked more town driven than scum. I know Thor was on the wagon, but considering how many people pushed for it there was no pressing need to have multiple scum on the wagon.
D3, neither of them were on the acryon wagon when it got hammered, and were both on Phil (confirmed town), so there's not really anything to garner here.
D4 - GC's slot put Bob at L-1, and Riddle's slot hammered. Knowing that Riddle's slot is town makes GC's slot look scummier, especially considering D5
D5 - GC's slot puts bert at L-1. Bert was very focused on Riddle's slot, and seemed convinced Thor's slot was town. This is the second Day in a row this slot puts a conftown at slot, making it eligible for lynching without actually doing the deed itself.
D6 - GC, who was riding Riddle for most of the Day, switches votes to lynch Thor. 1917 is very interesting at this point, as well.
D7 - this is a quicklynch on AA9, which Riddle started, but he was pushing for Thor/AA on D6. GC, who has made it obvious he realizes my time-based posting restrictions, jumps right on, knowing that it only takes droog to vote for the lynch.
D8 - Riddle (conftown) and GC are going at each other. This is a similar situation to what I brought up as a possibility for droog. Knowing that droog would be going for me again toDay, it made more sense to try and get rid of the person who would be going for him toDay instead, and have an easy lynch on D9...which leads me to....
D9 - GC votes for me immediately. Regardless of which of them is scum, if droog hammers scum wins. However, if GC is scum and knows that droog is town, he can assume that droog won't hammer. This "proves" droog's towniness, but doesn't reveal GC's alignment.

VOTE: GC

[Not_Mafia]

VC 10.02

shaddowez (1)-

Green Crayons

(L-1)

droog (0)-

Green Crayons (1)-

shaddowez

(L-1)

Not Voting (1)-

droog

With

3

alive, it takes

2

to lynch.

Deadline is in

(expired on 2014-12-28 20:00:00)

- Dec 28th 20:00 GMT

[Green Crayons]

Well, that wasn't really a defense, that was his best attempt to call me scum.