I did an investigation that I promised to do. It's not like anyone was surprised that anyone would have posted that with multiple players (namely DL and myself) calling attention to its base material.

##VOTE bo, looks like a scumslip right there in the previous page. He says that if he dies town should look at me bussing. But, the premise here is that bo's flip would necessarily have to be scum, because if he dies and is town, then how could Ibe bussing him?

bo, I didn't vote Balki because I was more certain of the Espi lynch. My policy when there are multiple lynches is to vote for the one I am most certain of, and protect those I believe in.

guak: He didn't say bussing him. He said to give a heads up that he expected you to start bussing one of your scum buddies. He said it earlier than the previous page.

hmmm alright I will buy that, I understood it as bo saying I would be bussing him if he died. I guess I can see how that doesn't make sense.

@Tr: regarding your question, I have not dismissed that notion. I just firmly believe we have better chances of finding scum outside of the Balki lynch group right no because under the situation we were in it is actually scummier to have purposefully chosen not to move a vote to ensure a lynch than it was to bandwagon a wrong wagon.

So, what I mean is, yes, Espi can be scum, but he is not more likely to be scum than the people in the group of phil, jeff, Tr and Saladin

On that note, ##UNVOTE

I had other questions addressed to you as well. And I have several questions pending to Espi pending a few pages back.

I also previously stated that if someone had tried to force the tie by voting Espi I would have followed to force the lynch.

If you want to ask, ask away and I will answer. I already read through your case once and it is full of crap. I am not wasting my time fishing the hidden questions in that pile of crap. There is a simple explanation for me defending Espi and an even simpler one for Espi defending me. I believe Saladin pointed these reasons in a previous post, and his analysis is correct. I defend Espi because I think his lynch is pretty damn worthless. I have already asked several times what kind of info everyone expects to gather from an Espi town flip and no one has answered. I also believe that if he is scum, we will be able to get rid of him soon enough. The rest of your argument is extremely convoluted and what krellin would call 'creative writing' a la The Hound of the Baskervilles.

So please if you have any precise questions that need answers list them out for me

@guak ... I didn't say you were bussing me, I just said you might be bussing in general.

@phil ... then why not push Espi instead of half-assing on Balki? I don't understand why you would even concern yourself with supporting a lynch that you weren't voting for. To say "yeah, I'm okay with if it happens" is one thing, but to make comments time and again that say you would jump over to it and to try to push people to jump onto it before you associate your name with it looks really sketchy, especially since we mislynched him.

@Tr: showing youwere willing to vote Espi is not the same as voting to ensure a lynch like what DL did.

Page 21: guak town reads Espi, and Espi casts his vote on me, following the wagon.
guak: "New players drawing mafia usually thrust them directly into the center of attention (whether with scummy actions or good town play) because noobs relish the opportunity to manipulate others." The cases others have put up against Espi suggest he has been doing just that. Have you not read those cases? If not, why not?

@all ... in general, today is too quiet. We're 21 hours in and only 4 pages from the start of the day. I know it will get busier as the day goes on, but I am starting to wonder if the mafia are either lurking or if they were active yesterday and starting to slow things down today, thinking that a few decent late-day wagons are set based on day 1 and that they can drop a vote on one of them then. I would appreciate it if we could get more cases, more scumhunting, more reads, and a fair bit of input from everyone as we approach the halfway mark of the day. We shouldn't end up with four candidates again and the preparation to make sure that doesn't happen starts now.

I have read those cases and I think they are bullshit as I have not seen Espi try to manipulate anyone. On the contrary, I think he has opened himself to be manipulated by anyone.

I feel like we need a new wagon. ##VOTE phil. My case is still coming, but I think what bo just mentioned sums up why I think phil is scum.

Quote from Espi on page 35 "Well, now BB and DL know I am Town, and a lot of the analysis of DL on the sidelines for the D1 lynch has to be thrown out." He's trying to get suspicions of himself thrown out the window. Is this not manipulative? I'm still waiting for him to answer for it.

I'm sticking with my Jeff vote (and encourage people to look at that case again, it's on page 34 iirc, in my EON reads), but if that's not gonna get anywhere, I wouldn't be opposed to a phil wagon. There is potentially merit in what he says, though, so I would like to hear his response and would like to question him quite a bit before I do that.

Jeff: On page 33, you said "@TrPrado: I bear responsibility for it? You were my strongest scum read from D1. There it no way I was going to jump off of you, when you were in the lead with 4 votes, to lynch either of my two strongest town reads (at the time)." This was in response to me saying he and I both bore responsibility for the Balki lynch. The wagon against me had already disintegrated, since half of the people who were pushing jumped off to join the other wagon. With that wagon dead, saying it being in the lead was why you wouldn't jump off simply doesn't make sense. Can you explain what you meant? And which town reads are you speaking of? There were 3 wagons other than mine at EOD: Espi, guak (although this one became immobile), and BB. And would you suggest instead that the sole responsibility for the BB lynch should rest on those who voted for him?

@Tr: well for starters that post is in p35 well after the cases against Espi were built, so I do not think it lends credibility to past accusations of manipulation. Second of all, I think you are misunderstanding what scummy manipulation is. Scummy manipulation is when someone exerts influence to convince others to vote for someone other than their top scum reads in subterfuge manner. Sort of what bo is accusing phil of doing with Balki. Defending himself or trying to dispel suspicion from himself is hardly what I would call scummy manipulation. You can ask him what he meant with that phrase, and maybe get something out of him, but I do not think that is a scumtell.

Alright, I'm currently 18 pages in (was not around for most of today).

The things that stood out to me:

Balki's case on Espi is a major part of D1 and I feel like reactions to it will form a great part of D1 analysis. However, I want to see what was going on at the end of the day before I start using that. I'll come back to this when I've finished reading.

The Saladin interactions in particular are extremely interesting, and give me my first three reads:

SALADIN - TOWN

I've said it many times before in Mafia, and I will say it again - Mafia members do not propose systems that are obviously controversial or thought of as bad for town. New players often do - but not as mafia, because as mafia the thought is always 'How will town react to this?' whereas as town, what other people think of your idea is not as much of an issue - indeed, you want people to react to it to promote discussion.
Saladin's proposal for No Lynch is along these lines - it was clear from earlier posts that it is frowned upon on this site, yet he went for it anyhow.

GUAK - SCUM

Guak's reaction to Saladin's no lynch preference was to instantly call him scum and go for him, completely failing to consider the above. This feels like an attempt to get an easy town lynch to me - this is something Mafia do, latch onto something that seems obviously scummy and press it hard without having any other evidence. It's easy to get people to rally behind such reasoning, which gives a fairly easy mafia-directed lynch.

BO_SOX - SCUM

Bo's reaction to the Saladin wagon was to latch on behind Guak's reasoning and try to get the wagon rolling, without any further evidence of his own. However, he did take the effort of restating exactly what Guak had said, to make sure it looked like he was giving evidence. This is also something Mafia do - jump on an easy read to get a wagon rolling on town, but make sure you can clear yourself by having a certain amount of reasoning in your post to be sure you're not implicated as having no reason when the townie flips.
He also completely fails to consider why a mafia Saladin would avoid showing himself up by voting No Lynch.

I'm going to keep my vote on Bo for the moment, but I am happy to switch it to Guak too. I'll try to get the rest of the thread read through by the end of tomorrow - I'll be travelling for pretty much the whole day, but I have all the pages saved to my laptop so I can read them without internet, and I should be able to get internet so as to be able to post (albeit extremely slow internet) on the ferry back to England.

Rereading EOD and start of night.
ND, guak, and bo: I've read through Bakli's slip a number of times now, but I still don't see it as him making the claim that he thought earning town cred was MORE important than finding scum, especially given his defense set earning town cred as tertiary, behind finding an lynching scum. What set you off so much about his slip that you wouldn't consider his defense valid?
Espi: That question would have also been addressed to you, but nothing in what I'm reading from you suggests you agreed with it on your own. Can you explain how your performance during and after EOD would suggest anything other than you distancing yourself from getting Balki lynched?

phil: Your defense for staying on Espi is that you thought he was a better lynch. If this was the case, then why didn't you try to convince others to join the Espi wagon during the EOD?

guak: I just noticed another pending question. When commenting on my reads, you said it was important to look at both my first and second reads list while accusing me of treating my new one as more important. However, you got an important detail about my first reads list wrong. This was that I had read ND as town in both, but you said that the first one had him pegged as scum. If you thought my first reads list was so important in determining the quality of my second, why is it that you didn't even bother reading the first one?

I think I should add that bo did the same thing for Espi as well. Balki presented his case against Espi at the bottom of page 8, and almost as soon as bo showed up on the very next page, he jumped on the wagon as well.

Though the way I've been looking at it, Espi did have exactly a page (four posts of which were his) to defend himself before bo jumped on. And bo did drop Espi on page 12. That all seems somewhat towny to me.

As for guak, it has occurred to me that it looked like he was using his pre-established philosophy to tell him who to vote for. Basically voting by the rules he set for himself, rather than actual investigation.

I had gotten a feeling of town for guak in my last read through, but I can't pinpoint why. I should take another look through his posts.

That was in response to captain.

If you had two scumreads up for lynch, and both were reasonably strong, would you argue in favor of the one you were voting, and wouldn't you express your support for either lynch?

Okay, so the question addressed to ND, guak, and bo is also addressed to you, phil.

@TrPrado: I have already answered that question many times. Go to Page 32 and re-read the first half for more information about Balki and my vote.

@All: Have you noticed that Espi has been very quiet today? Possible change in play style?

TrPrado, he said, or at least implied, that he was scumhunting in order to get towncred, and that his posts were meant to get him towncred.

No he didn't. That was a tertiary thing by his own defense. He said that the goals of posting in order of most to least importance was as follows: finding the mafia, convincing others to lynch the mafia, and then to convince others that he was town. In his mind, he seemed to have it pretty clear that you couldn't find the mafia if you were dead, and it would have been pretty hard to stay alive if no one thought you were town. Is this not a credible mindset whatsoever?

@Phil

Here is your most recent quote from (pg. 40) regarding the Balki bandwagon and then (again the quotes you gave in the lead up to the wagon). I find your quote on page 40 to be amusing simply because of your earlier statements.

“bo, I didn't vote Balki because I was more certain of the Espi lynch. My policy when there are multiple lynches is to vote for the one I am most certain of, and protect those I believe in.” (pg. 40)

“Espi, by all means, vote Balki, the scumslip is perfectly valid evidence, “ (pg. 25)

“I must admit, Balki's style of defense is pretty convincing of his guilt.” (pg. 26)

“No, it is not semantics. The goal of a townie is, by any means, to ensure that there are town alive when there are no mafia alive. Earning towncred is secondary to finding mafia, particularly since finding mafia is a way of earning towncred.” (ibid)
“I can switch to Balki just ahead of deadline, and also he'd have to switch to guak, but yeah.” (pg. 27)

“Hell, if someone switches to Espi now, I would probably kneejerk vote Balki.” (ibid)

So to reiterate you were most certain of Espi, yet were doing the following: 1) telling Espi who to vote for? 2) arguing to the Balki lynch due to convincing guilt, 3) hedging your vote and saying definitely you would switch?

Are these quotes evidence of you pushing the Espi lynch wagon and protecting (those) you believe in (Balki)?