M73 - Fowl Play - Game Thread [HIDDEN]

[TheFlyingBoat]

Final group of celaph voters:
Demon
Bona
pyxxy
worcej
brainbomb
Blamp
TFB
damo

People who ended on celaph D1:
Bona
Eden
brainbomb
Demon
Kak
Chaqa

I find people who voted for celaph on D2 but not D1 to be interesting:
pyxxy - never voted celaph D1
worcej - wasn't around D1
Blamp - Stronb bus candidate
TFB - counterwagon
damo - never voted celaph D1

pyxxy is particularly interesting because he didn't actually try to end on celaph -- he tried to end on me, potentially to save celaph and kill me if we believe he saw ghug's vote or to tie if he didn't. He was just a few seconds late to the switch so he counts a celaph voter.

[brainbomb]

I think demonrhk is scum

[TheFlyingBoat]

I think demonrhk is scum

What makes you think so? I thought while low in volume, of the low volume posters he's been the best.

[DemonRHK]

I think demonrhk is scum

Death, taxes, and brain scumreading me.

The world is healing.

[President Eden]

thinking there’s probably one mafia (but not two) between Lamp and Maniac.

Maniac’s behavior makes sense as a mafia teammate trying to cover for celaph, but if that’s not what happened then Lamp’s behavior around Maniac makes perfect sense as an opportunistic shot to take a townie down with celaph. the team doesn’t really make sense; there’s an outside chance Lamp decides that Maniac is getting lined up and shot next after celaph goes, and that he needs to bus both, but more likely one of them is town.

obviously both could be town… but it starts to get hard to find a plausible team that has neither of them.

[DemonRHK]

thinking there’s probably one mafia (but not two) between Lamp and Maniac.

Maniac’s behavior makes sense as a mafia teammate trying to cover for celaph, but if that’s not what happened then Lamp’s behavior around Maniac makes perfect sense as an opportunistic shot to take a townie down with celaph. the team doesn’t really make sense; there’s an outside chance Lamp decides that Maniac is getting lined up and shot next after celaph goes, and that he needs to bus both, but more likely one of them is town.

obviously both could be town… but it starts to get hard to find a plausible team that has neither of them.

Ya, it's Maniac.

[ghug]

I want to push back on this because everyone has said that I was too scummy to be scum. I didn't pick up on that. I was misreading the situation to overstate how towny I was, and so I don't think that justifies a claim of me being highly capable as scum.

Ok but you're also like pretty smart and unlikely to do exactly that again, and it did work to an extent in that game.

pack it up boys, ghug called me smart

more seriously, sure? idk what i'd do but it's not this super great performance you're talking about

This wouldn't be a super great performance. It would be a fine one. Do you think you've done enough to be locktown?

[ghug]

Ok guys, hear me out: today was scum v scum v scum.

[President Eden]

Ok guys, hear me out: today was scum v scum v scum.

is this a confession? cuz you and Maniac are a decent enough pair and Boat completely could be the last one.

[BesharamSabi]

Just got home. Going to update spreadsheet while responding to people and rereading after I eat dinner.

[President Eden]

respectfully, as cool as the spreadsheet is, that’s going to be a lot of work to update, and now that we have a mafia flip there’s much more valuable direct data to look for instead.

do you, but you might consider something with a more efficient ROI

[Bonatogether]

Ok but you're also like pretty smart and unlikely to do exactly that again, and it did work to an extent in that game.

pack it up boys, ghug called me smart

more seriously, sure? idk what i'd do but it's not this super great performance you're talking about

This wouldn't be a super great performance. It would be a fine one. Do you think you've done enough to be locktown?

not really

[BesharamSabi]

respectfully, as cool as the spreadsheet is, that’s going to be a lot of work to update, and now that we have a mafia flip there’s much more valuable direct data to look for instead.

do you, but you might consider something with a more efficient ROI

That's fair. It forces me to reread. I want to reread those interacting with celaph. Hit two birds one stone

[ghug]

Ok guys, hear me out: today was scum v scum v scum.

is this a confession? cuz you and Maniac are a decent enough pair and Boat completely could be the last one.

Why are Maniac and I a pair?

[President Eden]

Ok guys, hear me out: today was scum v scum v scum.

is this a confession? cuz you and Maniac are a decent enough pair and Boat completely could be the last one.

Why are Maniac and I a pair?

to be clearer, as two options for being mafia, you and Maniac make sense. you’re not really ‘paired’ in my head but are ‘a pair’ of good shots to take right now.

[Chaqa]

JOAT is hereby instructed to shoot Maniac or ghug by order of President John Henry Eden.

[DemonRHK]

JOAT is hereby instructed to shoot Maniac or ghug by order of President John Henry Eden.

100% behind a Maniac shot

[BesharamSabi]

I also support the Maniac shot. I hope doc saves eden.

[President Eden]

ghug mini-case (psych it’s a real case) (double psych it’s a massive wallpost)

ghug unambiguously defended celaph throughout D2 and was actively shopping for other kills. That’s not condemning on its own, but it’s worth pointing out (as others have). Not going to dwell on this because it is what it is and it’s already been discussed.

The main issue is that as soon as celaph flips and we start to have some very good reasons to hand out strong townreads and build a more collective towncore, ghug immediately and decisively steps in to try to shut that down:

fwiw if ghug isn’t mafia then the entire fucking team piled on kak

There are four unknowns on the D1 celaph wagon plus worcej and rd not voting.

oh I forgot rivera and worcej. totally fair point.

but no there’s zero unknowns on the D1 celaph wagon. what you see there are six KINGS

The current state of the meta makes this exceedingly unlikely.

counterpoint: [vaguely gestures at things that actually happened in this game]

Yes, it should be approached on a per-game basis.

I don’t see any reason to townread Bona, Chaqa has a history of bussing and has been weird, and RHK and brain are both townier but not locks. I don’t see why you’d write any of them off entirely, let alone all of them.

I don’t see any reason to townread Bona

what.

bro you cannot be serious lmao.

you flat out do not believe this. i refuse to believe you believe this.

you could have sold me on “not ready to townclear Bona” but the kid has been solving his fucking ass off all game and correctly lit celaph on fucking fire for almost a week now.

someone vig this man

I do believe this.

• Bona has proven to be highly capable as scum.

• His posts aren’t standing out to me as much as they usually do.

• One of the biggest contributions I do remember is the Simp score work which, while great, is data analysis, which has a history of being something scum hide behind.

• Another big contribution is killing celaph, but he was an early voter day 1, when celaph wasn’t active, and it’s very easy to imagine scum looking at last game and deciding celaph is dead weight not worth protecting. Day 2 means even less to me, because there’s no fucking way celaph wasn’t heavily bussed after how D1 went down

Town tends to lose games where we catch scum early I think in part because there become a bunch of more obvious kills and we don’t spend time aggregating data on the people who come out of the scum deaths looking good. Let’s not exclude half the game from the PoE again because we caught one.

As I noted in my response to the first message in this group, the correction on worcej and rivera is valid and well-received. If ghug stops there and maybe throws in a bit of advisory caution not to ignore the people in the towncore all game then sure, whatever, he’s being a bit of a Debbie downer but point would also be taken.

The issue is that he overreaches pretty badly. Sweeping cursory principles like “the recent meta doesn’t favor a lot of town clears from this” is not helpful unless it’s applied to the current game with reason to suspect the people who are ostensibly in the clear for having pushed celaph both days. A townie who’s skeptical in this situation backs this principle up with specific examples, both from past games where that principle holds true, and of players in this game who might be trying to skate by. A mafia who’s just trying to disrupt potential town group cohesion tosses it out there as a generic reason to shade that cohesion and focus energy on other games (which are not relevant) instead of this game (which is).

When challenged, his reasons for trying to shade everyone range from mildly ludicrous to completely ludicrous:

- I already challenged the Bona claim specifically, so this bit is a slight rehash, but to reach as far as to say “no reason to townread Bona” instead of “Bona looks okay but isn’t lock clear” is just wrong. It’s the type of lazy overreach that mafia trying to shade Bona makes. I will demolish the weak pretextual arguments he eventually tries to make to back this up in a bit, but it’s notable that his overreach specifically targets Bona, who is (1) very townie this game and (2) very prone to getting hanged incorrectly. Bona is exactly who the mafia would want to preserve as a viable miskill and it’s telling that ghug goes after Bona to accomplish that exact purpose.

His specific reasoning simply doesn’t hold up. First, and I’m sorry son, Bona has not proven capable as mafia. He’s gotten caught out every time he’s been mafia and he’s routinely hanged and sussed out wrongly. He’s proven capable of hunting effectively (when he’s not being lazy) and I think he has potential to be good at the mafia side of the game, but he’s not there yet. So that’s wrong, and more to the point I don’t even think ghug believes it himself. It’s the exact type of insincere praise ghug will throw at people he wants to win over when he’s mafia.

Second, “his posts aren’t standing out as much to me as usual” is a totally amorphous claim with no elaboration (you will see more of this as we continue).

Third, he acknowledges that the SIMP analysis was “great” but “has a history of being something scum hide behind.” This is a reason to townread Bona. A townie finding himself typing this statement revises his claim. A mafia committed to a position presses forward. The historical note is nothing more than another generalization from past games with no attempt to make it relevant to this one. It’s just another superficially plausible statement masquerading as real analysis.

Finally, he says that killing celaph is “another big contribution” but that “it’s very easy to imagine scum looking at last game and deciding celaph is dead weight not worth protecting.” If killing celaph is another big contribution then that is another reason to townread Bona. Basically see previous note. OK, it’s easy to imagine a mafia looking at celaph and deciding he’s dead weight. Is that what actually happened in this game? Townies develop this idea and come to a conclusion. Mafia float the implied premise and then never follow up, having accomplished their job of sewing doubt just by raising the question.

- He claims Chaqa “has a history of bussing and has been weird.” The latter is another totally amorphous and sweeping claim with no evidentiary basis. The former is true, but is too superficial to be useful, and ghug knows this as he always decries people using such simplistic logic when he’s town. Chaqa does bus when it’s appropriate, but Chaqa’s done way more than that. He flipped to celaph at a decisive moment in the explicit hopes of either swinging celaph or catching people trying to save celaph when he had a perfectly viable out in staying on Kak. Then he (admittedly after some prodding) produced an entire theory of the game implicating several people based on celaph being mafia, and has doggedly pursued that ever since. This goes far beyond the kind of reactive basic bussing that mafia would execute, and while it’s not impossible to come from Chaqa, it is exceedingly unlikely bordering on impossible.

- Declaring Demon and brain as “townier but not locks” is more or less correct, but not helpful. There is no reason to object to adding Demon and brain to a town core based on what we’ve seen so far. Advising caution is one thing, and could even be townie indicative of the right kind of paranoia (but for ghug is probably null as he’s sophisticated enough to fake that). Outright rejecting the premise with perfunctory statements is blatantly pushing scum agenda.


CLIFFS/TLDR
- ghug really wanted someone besides celaph to flip, minor but whatever
- ghug makes a series of very weak arguments trying to prevent the formation of a towncore which:
(1) badly overreach,
(2) beg many questions for further analysis which a townie would do but he doesn’t, and
(3) also display the very kind of sweeping generalizations he decries as overly simplistic when he’s town.

get his ass

[DemonRHK]

Wall? That's a fucking dissertation.