M54: Not a Carrot Conspiracy

[rdrivera2005]

Of the still alive people on the D3 EMC wagon, Rdrivera is the most suspect.

In fact his D3 voting pattern and behaviour is suspect all the way through.

After being almost absent D2 he declared Xorxes scummy N2 and started D3 by voting Xorxes.

Then Xorxes started a Bob McBob wagon which Rdrivera quickly joins. This wagon becomes a lead wagon, at which point Rdrivera leaves it, to vote Fluminator. Then Foxcastle and myself move onto the Bob wagon, bringing it back to equal first place, and again Rdrivera moves, this time to the rival EMC wagon, where he stays.

It seems strange in retrospect that Rdrivera would start the day voting Xorxes, then as soon as his top scumread Xorxes starts the wagon on Bob, Rdrivera joins it (alongside his top scumread), but once Bob becomes a viable wagon, Rdrivera jumps off, and twice joins other wagons that are potential rivals to Bob's wagon.

(At no point during D3 does he suggest Xorxes is bussing Bob. He later does suggest this in response to Balki).

It looks for all the world as if Rdrivera didn't expect Bob to be a viable lynch and then when Bob did become a viable wagon, tried to get Flum or EMC lynched instead of Bob.

Now he has come up with this "theory" that the Mafia are killing off the people who vote for them, and yet the logical consequence of this theory, as I have shown, is that Fox should be a top suspect for him - yet he appears to be looking for any possible reason to avoid voting for Foxcastle today.

##VOTE RDRIVERA

I am tired of this. I have been complete honest and open all this game. I don't know what more I can say.
Maybe you lynching me today will make you see what I am telling with other eyes. But honestly, I don't believe it.

[xorxes]

The exchange between Bunny and Kgray and Bunny and Balki, put Bunny on top of my townlist. Kgray moves a bit to the scum side and Balki have some towny moments. I still don't like his fixation that scum won't bus (scum won last game with all scum bussing emc on D1), but maybe he really believes this and it's not an agenda. I don't think Balki is a good lynch today and I will not vote him unless to save myself.

The argument is not that scum won't bus, that's a silly argument. The argument is that when they were winning and they had options to save a teammate, then bussing is more unlikely. Of course it could still happen and I don't think anyone has denied that. Bussing D1 is different to bussing D3 when the two main wagons were both lurkers and scum were close to winning.

[rdrivera2005]

The exchange between Bunny and Kgray and Bunny and Balki, put Bunny on top of my townlist. Kgray moves a bit to the scum side and Balki have some towny moments. I still don't like his fixation that scum won't bus (scum won last game with all scum bussing emc on D1), but maybe he really believes this and it's not an agenda. I don't think Balki is a good lynch today and I will not vote him unless to save myself.

The argument is not that scum won't bus, that's a silly argument. The argument is that when they were winning and they had options to save a teammate, then bussing is more unlikely. Of course it could still happen and I don't think anyone has denied that. Bussing D1 is different to bussing D3 when the two main wagons were both lurkers and scum were close to winning.

Bob would flip sooner or later (who do you think would be the lynch on D4 if emc was lynched D3?) and people pushing emc lynch would look pretty bad (exactly what is happening now). I can't see why a smart scum won't buss Bob. The fact you, Balki and Flum refuses to see this is making me really crazy.

I have a question to you, how sure you are I am scum?

[kgray]

@bozo yeah, those are all fair points. Two things I want to address:

What I find interesting about this post is that it occurred after emc and Chaqa were already wagons D3, but she had not previously indicated that Chaqa and emc were her top scum reads. She questioned Chaqa a little earlier D3, but Chaqa was already a wagon then as well, and she hardly mentioned emc previously.

To be honest I was probably influenced somewhat by all the pressure emc and Chaqa were getting. I'm trying not to let other people's reads influence my own too much, but I can't avoid that completely.

Near EOD, she changes her vote to emc:

Just before she changed her vote to emc, Foxcastle had changed his vote from emc to Chaqa. When Foxcastle asked here if she had seen his vote, she said she hadn't.

This is interesting because it means she thought she was tying the vote between Bob and emc at 5. Also, she offered to change her vote back to Chaqa. That is a lot of effort to save Bob from the lynch when she had Bob in her scum reads also, and her scum reads of emc or Chaqa was new to D3.

I see how this looks like I was trying to save bob. All I can say is that I was trying to lynch Chaqa, who I had been the most suspicious of for a while. When I thought it wasn't happening, I moved to my second choice.

[xorxes]

But you are looking only at the final vote. Chaqa for example was a strong pusher for a Xorxes lynch.

These were all the votes from the NKs (I think):

brainbomb: Vecna Chaqa Temasek
bo_sox: brainbomb
worcej: Fox Pjandy Bob
Chaqa: emc bozo Temasek xorxes Vecna Balki Bob Bunny Flum Fox Chaqa

If you really think they are targetting people who vote for them then you should be voting Fox, not me.

[kgray]

That D3 EOD exchange between kgray and Foxcastle makes Foxcastle look suspicious also. kgray and Foxcastle crossposted vote changes between emc and Chaqa with the apparent intention of getting either one lynched over Bob. When Foxcastle asked kgray about her vote, she said she would change back to Chaqa if Foxcastle kept his vote there. However, a few minutes passed and kgray did not change her vote, so Foxcastle changed his vote back to emc with the following:

Huh. He did something similar as scum last game. There were better options to save himself and he didn't...

Hm. Okay, between Bob and EMC, it's ##VOTE EMC

I find this reason for his vote change questionable because it is not accurate that emc did "something similar as scum last game". emc voted one time on D1 of M53, and it was for BunnyGo, who was a counterwagon, and emc's vote for BunnyGo made the vote a 3 way tie, including emc and BunnyGo. So, I do not think you could say there were "better options to save himself". Foxcastle's vote for emc tied the vote between emc and Bob with 4 minutes to go.

I do not know how likely it is that Foxcastle and kgray would communicate like that as scum partners, but after crossposting, maybe Foxcastle thought it would look more suspicious to just ignore it. Then, after kgray answered Foxcastle, Foxcastle did ignore her and came up with an unrelated reason to change his vote back to emc.

@bozo, if you assume I am town, do you still think Fox looks more suspicious from this exchange? I thought it was one of the few things that he did that seemed towny.

[Foxcastle]

But you are looking only at the final vote. Chaqa for example was a strong pusher for a Xorxes lynch.

These were all the votes from the NKs (I think):

brainbomb: Vecna Chaqa Temasek
bo_sox: brainbomb
worcej: Fox Pjandy Bob
Chaqa: emc bozo Temasek xorxes Vecna Balki Bob Bunny Flum Fox Chaqa

If you really think they are targetting people who vote for them then you should be voting Fox, not me.

Interesting that your conclusion here is "vote for someone else" rather than "the theory is incorrect."

[kgray]

xorxes vs. rdrivera and Balki vs. Foxcastle could be all town, I can see all of them believing the cases they are making, although patient zero could be hiding in there.

This would make kgray almost certainly scum.

Why?

[xorxes]

I can easily see you or Balki as patient zero, and I don't see any reason people could not see me as patient zero as well. What I find suspicious is Fox saying I must be patient zero when patient zero is almost indistinguishable from a townie without knowing who the rest of the scumteam are.

Why do you continue to utterly mischaracterize what I say? Is it deliberate?

I do not say, ever, that you "must" be patient zero. I say that you're likely Patient Zero, and I made a point that the reason you fit Patient Zero is that you are not solving (scum indicative), but you also do not fit the profile of "scum-Xorxes getting caught" and I think that's because you don't know your teammates.

OK, I'll correct myself, not "must" but "likely". I still don't see how anyone can be likely PZ at this point.

[xorxes]

Why?

My main reason is not something that anyone else will be particularly convinced by. His town game and scum game are pretty similar, but one thing he never does as town is townread me off the bat. If there's one person that always has suspicion of me no matter what I do it's rivera (and I usually return the favor, but I think less than he does to me). I may be wrong, but that's the strongest indicator.

This on D5 is so unbelievable. Your main reason to scumread me is a half joke I made on my first post? This is not town Xorxes.

I don't think it was a joke, we already went over that. I'm not trying to convince anyone with that argument, just explaining where I'm coming from.

[kgray]

noob scum (from what I've gathered, most scum) are scared of smart, talented, town players. Xorxes, Flum, Balki have reputations as that (I've only played with Xorxes before, but I've gathered from reading that everyone who knows them respects their abilities).

So...they are prime targets for scum to kill. Why aren't they dead? One argument is they ARE scum. One argument is that the scum team is so scared of the watcher, that they are avoiding them so the watcher doesn't catch them.

My post is: a noob scum team would certainly be targeting them, AND would not be thinking about the watcher so much to avoid them. So it is unlikely to be an all noob scum team.

So what conclusions are you drawing about the "noobiness" of the scumteam? And why are you ignoring the fact that the scumteam can talk to each other? You and Fox have both made arguments about the composition of the scumteam that implies that they can't communicate with each other. What's the difference, in your mind, of a scumteam (besides PZ) made up of one "noob" and two "good players" vs a team made of two "noobs" and one "good player"?

If you think the scumteam is unlikely to be all-noob, why does it matter if there are any noobs at all? Surely the experienced players would control the night kill and general strategy, and the noob would have very little say in what happened?

I just don't get what the point of all this analysis is.

It's weird when these arguments are made so much in the abstract instead of naming names. The conclusion of this discussion you two are having is that you two could not be the scum team, but neither one of you is saying it explicity.

That was not my intended point. I know that the scumteam isn't just noobs because I'm not on it, and I'm the only noob left. My issue with this line of thinking is that it doesn't lead us anywhere. Speculating about how experienced the team is overall is pointless because there only needs to be one experienced player on it who would be making the decisions, and the team would still seem experienced. Because they can talk to each other, having three experienced scum players is indistinguishable from having 1. Fox had a similar argument about the scumteam composition earlier, and when I asked him about it he didn't answer:

I'm going to start with ##VOTE CHAQA

Killing Bo is an interesting way to narrow the lurkier end of the pool. Are they trying to convince to mislynch the last of the lurkers, or daring us to? Given that the remaining players down there are EMC, Pjandy, and Bob, I would bet that one of them is scum.

Or maybe it's two. Maybe it's two of them and one experienced player on the main team, and the experienced player is the killer, and he knows that if he gets caught, it's likely that the scum team will get modkilled for the loss (or just that new players will get hosed by town), and that's why he's been targeting players unlikely to be Watched. I feel like Bozo is the best bet for that scenario, actually. Or maybe Balki. (Not that I scumread them for their play otherwise.)

It just doesn't make sense to me to think about things like this. Where does this line of thinking get us? Do Bunny and Fox really think these are tools we can use to catch the scumteam?

[xorxes]

Are Rdrivera and I the most widely scumread of all the players at this point?

I think Kgray and Damo are also scumread, but they seem pretty far behind us.

I would like everyone to list who they think is the most scumread. Not who you scumread the most, but who you think others scumread the most. The top 2 at least, go for 3 if you think there's a clear set that's ahead of everyone else; if you really think there are 4 people who are all nearly equally scumread, list that, I guess, but I think four borders on unhelpful.

I would say you are the most scumread. I don't see a clear second, one of rivera/Balki maybe. kgray is starting to get scumread now but has not been before. Flum, damo, Bunny and I got a few scumreads as well. Jamie I think was the most townread until the "slip". bozo has not been much scumread I don't think.

[xorxes]

The exchange between Bunny and Kgray and Bunny and Balki, put Bunny on top of my townlist. Kgray moves a bit to the scum side and Balki have some towny moments. I still don't like his fixation that scum won't bus (scum won last game with all scum bussing emc on D1), but maybe he really believes this and it's not an agenda. I don't think Balki is a good lynch today and I will not vote him unless to save myself.

The argument is not that scum won't bus, that's a silly argument. The argument is that when they were winning and they had options to save a teammate, then bussing is more unlikely. Of course it could still happen and I don't think anyone has denied that. Bussing D1 is different to bussing D3 when the two main wagons were both lurkers and scum were close to winning.

Bob would flip sooner or later (who do you think would be the lynch on D4 if emc was lynched D3?) and people pushing emc lynch would look pretty bad (exactly what is happening now). I can't see why a smart scum won't buss Bob. The fact you, Balki and Flum refuses to see this is making me really crazy.

I have a question to you, how sure you are I am scum?

I'm not sure, but you're my top suspect. How sure are you I am?

[kgray]

Bob would flip sooner or later (who do you think would be the lynch on D4 if emc was lynched D3?) and people pushing emc lynch would look pretty bad (exactly what is happening now). I can't see why a smart scum won't buss Bob. The fact you, Balki and Flum refuses to see this is making me really crazy.

I have thought about this too. I don't think it's valid to assume that bob would for sure have been lynched D4, though. A lot of the push for emc was for "information" knowing bob was scum. I don't see as strong of a case for voting bob for "information" after learning emc was town. And bob certainly could have been lynched for other reasons, but there's no way of knowing what would have happened. It's just a whole lot safer for the scum to avoid losing a member. They would only have needed one more mislynch if we hadn't gotten bob.

[Foxcastle]

I'm going to start with ##VOTE CHAQA

Killing Bo is an interesting way to narrow the lurkier end of the pool. Are they trying to convince to mislynch the last of the lurkers, or daring us to? Given that the remaining players down there are EMC, Pjandy, and Bob, I would bet that one of them is scum.

Or maybe it's two. Maybe it's two of them and one experienced player on the main team, and the experienced player is the killer, and he knows that if he gets caught, it's likely that the scum team will get modkilled for the loss (or just that new players will get hosed by town), and that's why he's been targeting players unlikely to be Watched. I feel like Bozo is the best bet for that scenario, actually. Or maybe Balki. (Not that I scumread them for their play otherwise.)

It just doesn't make sense to me to think about things like this. Where does this line of thinking get us? Do Bunny and Fox really think these are tools we can use to catch the scumteam?

I think it is helpful to think about things like this, yes. It creates scenarios that you can test against what people have said and done. It is helpful to think about potential scum teams and scum pairs rather than only trying to sort out individuals individually. The idea that we should not think about things that we cannot absolutely know is foolish. The entire game is based on speculating about things we cannot absolutely know.

[rdrivera2005]

The argument is not that scum won't bus, that's a silly argument. The argument is that when they were winning and they had options to save a teammate, then bussing is more unlikely. Of course it could still happen and I don't think anyone has denied that. Bussing D1 is different to bussing D3 when the two main wagons were both lurkers and scum were close to winning.

Bob would flip sooner or later (who do you think would be the lynch on D4 if emc was lynched D3?) and people pushing emc lynch would look pretty bad (exactly what is happening now). I can't see why a smart scum won't buss Bob. The fact you, Balki and Flum refuses to see this is making me really crazy.

I have a question to you, how sure you are I am scum?

I'm not sure, but you're my top suspect. How sure are you I am?

Exactly the same, you are my top scumread but I fear I might be tunneling. What I find odd you just don't seem to have doubts.

Imagine I flip town, who do you will vote next day?

[xorxes]

But you are looking only at the final vote. Chaqa for example was a strong pusher for a Xorxes lynch.

These were all the votes from the NKs (I think):

brainbomb: Vecna Chaqa Temasek
bo_sox: brainbomb
worcej: Fox Pjandy Bob
Chaqa: emc bozo Temasek xorxes Vecna Balki Bob Bunny Flum Fox Chaqa

If you really think they are targetting people who vote for them then you should be voting Fox, not me.

Interesting that your conclusion here is "vote for someone else" rather than "the theory is incorrect."

Do you think the theory is correct?

I think most theories about scum motivations for NKs are very wifom, and they are more likely to be used by scum to "explain" what they were doing than by correct guessing. If I had to make a guess it's that they are trying to find the watcher, but it's just a guess and not something to put much weight on.

[Foxcastle]

Are Rdrivera and I the most widely scumread of all the players at this point?

I think Kgray and Damo are also scumread, but they seem pretty far behind us.

I would like everyone to list who they think is the most scumread. Not who you scumread the most, but who you think others scumread the most. The top 2 at least, go for 3 if you think there's a clear set that's ahead of everyone else; if you really think there are 4 people who are all nearly equally scumread, list that, I guess, but I think four borders on unhelpful.

Balki:
Bozo:
BunnyGo:
Damo:
Flum:
Fox: Fox, Rdrivera >> Damo, Kgray
Jamiet:
Kgray:
Rdrivera:
Xorxes: Fox, Rdrivera, Balki

[Foxcastle]

These were all the votes from the NKs (I think):

brainbomb: Vecna Chaqa Temasek
bo_sox: brainbomb
worcej: Fox Pjandy Bob
Chaqa: emc bozo Temasek xorxes Vecna Balki Bob Bunny Flum Fox Chaqa

If you really think they are targetting people who vote for them then you should be voting Fox, not me.

Interesting that your conclusion here is "vote for someone else" rather than "the theory is incorrect."

Do you think the theory is correct?

I think most theories about scum motivations for NKs are very wifom, and they are more likely to be used by scum to "explain" what they were doing than by correct guessing. If I had to make a guess it's that they are trying to find the watcher, but it's just a guess and not something to put much weight on.

I do not think that theory is correct. I am generally biased against it, since I think scum teams leave people who scumread them alive to create WIFOM. I think there is no specific evidence for it in this case, and it's more likely that they're looking for the Watcher, and targeting away from the 'usual suspects' to avoid the Watcher and (as I've said) make it seem less suspicious that you and Balki (and Rdrivera) are still alive.

[kgray]

I'm going to start with ##VOTE CHAQA

Killing Bo is an interesting way to narrow the lurkier end of the pool. Are they trying to convince to mislynch the last of the lurkers, or daring us to? Given that the remaining players down there are EMC, Pjandy, and Bob, I would bet that one of them is scum.

Or maybe it's two. Maybe it's two of them and one experienced player on the main team, and the experienced player is the killer, and he knows that if he gets caught, it's likely that the scum team will get modkilled for the loss (or just that new players will get hosed by town), and that's why he's been targeting players unlikely to be Watched. I feel like Bozo is the best bet for that scenario, actually. Or maybe Balki. (Not that I scumread them for their play otherwise.)

It just doesn't make sense to me to think about things like this. Where does this line of thinking get us? Do Bunny and Fox really think these are tools we can use to catch the scumteam?

I think it is helpful to think about things like this, yes. It creates scenarios that you can test against what people have said and done. It is helpful to think about potential scum teams and scum pairs rather than only trying to sort out individuals individually. The idea that we should not think about things that we cannot absolutely know is foolish. The entire game is based on speculating about things we cannot absolutely know.

I am not saying we shouldn't think about things we absolutely cannot know. I'm saying I think you're putting too much importance on coming up with explanations for things that already have really obvious explanations. That doesn't mean that your scenario can't be true. But we could think of a million that could be true, and we should not ignore the simplest, most likely scenario.

So when you say the part that I underlined, I find it really weird that you're trying to come up with reasons to fit certain people to the scumteam. You even say you don't even scumread Balki or bozo (at the time). So what is the point of bringing this up? Why do you think that the killer is more likely to avoid the Watcher if his teammates aren't as good/experienced/whatever? Why wouldn't they want to avoid the Watcher anyway??

I guess I just don't understand where you're coming from. Regardless, I think there are a lot more important things to focus on at this point.