EPT
My argument against him is mostly going to be analysis, but I'll talk about his meta as well. The two sources I'm using for his meta are LI, in which he was scum (link) and MTG Mini, in which he was town (link) to get a better understanding of how he plays.
1) Zelblade played D1 start to his scum meta.
To get an idea of how Zelblade starts his scum games off, in LI he opened up with a bunch of questions and soft-defenses of town players (link)(link 2). This basically lets him make some minor contributions until he can find a safe wagon to hop on (link) but only after someone else, a townie, has made a case against that guy (link). He's not afraid to break ground with his vote, but he doesn't make any new cases. I'm not gonna talk about his D2 play from LI, because of the notorious 2-way bus that game-- our D2 was the opposite situation, where two players that weren't in his Scum QT where attacking each other.
In his town play, Zelblade is different. As he goes into MTG, Zelblade is lurking but comes out swinging with a case against VE AND a case against NT (link). Also, as an aside, he seems utterly unafraid to lurk. He's apologetic about it, but he goes long periods of times, sometimes days, posting like once or twice in a 24 hour span with meh posts. He's admittedly a low-post-count player, but he doesn't put a lot of effort into "appearing" town when he's town. He'll disappear 20 hours, make a one-line post (link), then disappear for another 20 hours without contributing. When he comes back, he comes back with a read and a vote (link).
So how does Zelblade play here? Well, he starts off asking weird questions (link) and making a soft defense based on setup that was inherently reasonable (link). Typical Scum Zelblade. And as soon as the heat picks up on Pandain, he hops right on board. To really contextualize his Pandain vote, let's check out how he responds to claims.
2. Zelblade voted Pandain like he does in scum meta.
As town he distrusts weird claims: (link), especially ones without check crumbs (link) to back them up, and immediately calls out Zealos for a bad claim. Sounds like that informed his Pandain reaction, but when we see HOW he went about it, it's a lot more like his scum play than his town play.
His reactions to Pandain's claim and Pandain's play D1 match his D1 scum play in LI almost perfectly. He calls out Pandain for diverting the discussion WHILE hiding behind other player's arguments (link):
On June 06 2012 22:21 zelblade wrote:
Either way I would be perfectly fine with a Pandain lynch. The blueslip feels exteremely fake to me. Slipping like that is akin to making a major scumslip... and one is more likely than not going to be more careful about leaking their role no? As pointed out, the random vig claim as well as the random mason discussion managed to severly derail the thread which reeks of scum. A couple more points is that he tries to dump suspision on me through a vauge statement.
Either way I would be perfectly fine with a Pandain lynch. The blueslip feels exteremely fake to me. Slipping like that is akin to making a major scumslip... and one is more likely than not going to be more careful about leaking their role no? As pointed out, the random vig claim as well as the random mason discussion managed to severly derail the thread which reeks of scum. A couple more points is that he tries to dump suspision on me through a vauge statement.
JUST as he did in LI with his case and vote against Tunkeg AFTER ET made the initial case against Tunkeg (link)
On April 09 2012 21:54 zelblade wrote:
Giving my thoughts on the lynch candidates proposed so far.
My preferred lynch for today would actually be Tunkeg. He first starts off the day with his "random lynch", as well as a spreadsheet detailing the "scores" of everyone, and by extension, how "good" they supposedly are. Although he claims that his aim with this was to generate discussion, the content of the generated discussion, in my opinion, does not help town at all. Looking at the next couple of pages after his post, one will notice that what this has mostly done is do an excellent job of distracting town, instead getting most players to comment on how wrong his list is and agure what exactly a W/L ratio is. I personally dont feel that his list has managed to do anything in terms of scumhuting, and has actually distracted us from doing so.
//snip//
As such, this is why I believe that Tunkeg is scum. He has managed to waste a boatload of town's time discussing the vitrues of his so-called random lynch and why Jackal is bad, and his sput defense just doesnt click well with me.
Giving my thoughts on the lynch candidates proposed so far.
My preferred lynch for today would actually be Tunkeg. He first starts off the day with his "random lynch", as well as a spreadsheet detailing the "scores" of everyone, and by extension, how "good" they supposedly are. Although he claims that his aim with this was to generate discussion, the content of the generated discussion, in my opinion, does not help town at all. Looking at the next couple of pages after his post, one will notice that what this has mostly done is do an excellent job of distracting town, instead getting most players to comment on how wrong his list is and agure what exactly a W/L ratio is. I personally dont feel that his list has managed to do anything in terms of scumhuting, and has actually distracted us from doing so.
//snip//
As such, this is why I believe that Tunkeg is scum. He has managed to waste a boatload of town's time discussing the vitrues of his so-called random lynch and why Jackal is bad, and his sput defense just doesnt click well with me.
This is how Zelblade operates as scum: he finds a townie who's already been pushed, usually for saying something irrelevant, but also talks about the D1 candidate "wasting town's time" or "diverting discussion" in addition to reciting main components of the case the others have.
Contrast his town play in MTG when he votes to lynch MJ (link), in which he shoots down other cases and notably does not need to justify his case with talk about sidetracking the town, even though MJ WAS full of weird statements about consolidating evidence, jumping to conclusions, and odd vote justifications and non-justifications. He voted who he wanted lynched without fear and without worrying about repercussions.
On May 23 2012 00:00 zelblade wrote:
Apparently I screwed up that quote tag -_-
Eh I just realised its pluarity lynch lol. I am considering if I should dump my vote on zealos and see if it gains any traction or onto one of the three leading candidates. Kind of a hard decision since I wouldnt mind all of them dying.
Mattchew is still being a pain in the ass, though his posts are starting to get understandable, and he actually has more content than say, mouldy jeb. Probably not the best lynch today, think hes town.
I still think nova is scummy. But mouldy more so. Agree with marv's case generally.
##vote: Mouldy Jeb
Also I am going to sleep soon (school) so I probably cant change my vote (deadline sucks for me as usual -_-).
Apparently I screwed up that quote tag -_-
Eh I just realised its pluarity lynch lol. I am considering if I should dump my vote on zealos and see if it gains any traction or onto one of the three leading candidates. Kind of a hard decision since I wouldnt mind all of them dying.
Mattchew is still being a pain in the ass, though his posts are starting to get understandable, and he actually has more content than say, mouldy jeb. Probably not the best lynch today, think hes town.
I still think nova is scummy. But mouldy more so. Agree with marv's case generally.
##vote: Mouldy Jeb
Also I am going to sleep soon (school) so I probably cant change my vote (deadline sucks for me as usual -_-).
He talks about other players being scummy, but says this target is the most scummy. He does not waffle and waver. He doesn't justify his vote or ameliorate the hard edges his case with lip-flapping.
His D1 vote on Pandain looks JUST LIKE his D1 LI vote, and nothing like his voting and case-making when he's scum. This is Zelblade trying to deflect attention and make up easy reasons to vote easy targets, just like when he was scum in LI.
Section 3: Zelblades Reaction to Hyaach v BH is scummy regardless of Meta
Zalblade's D2 vote on me (link) and his D1 vote on Pandain, coupled with the accompanying cases, look exactly like his scum voting, and nothing like his town voting. In fact, he spent so much time talking about how much he was "bugged" that scum would make my roleclaim and how Hyaach, who had to be town if I was scum, gave him "scummy vibes" that I thought he was voting to lynch Hyaach, not me.
On June 10 2012 02:28 zelblade wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +
I'm going to just go with bh I guess.
##unvote
##vote: blazinghand
+ Show Spoiler +
Well since no roleblocker is claiming and i cannot be around during the deadline I will be making my decision now.
At the start of the day I believed that bh wasnt lying. Well until ghost brought up the meta changes that is. I can understand him wanting to change his playstyle.... But i think that he would have said something like "I'm going to try to be less agressive" pretend if that was the case no? A minor point of course. I am unsure about his reaction regarding pandain's claim. I definitely think him playing it off was possible, but I found this post wierd.
Note the this is an instant reaction. Let's say someone claims a role that you have and it is exteremly unlikely there are two of the same role. Wouldt you stop for a little while and give it some thought about how you are going to react to what is very possibly a fakeclaim? I don't see why he would post this. By the way, this is before where bh claims he realized he slipped so.... It's not a cover up.
What is really bugging me is this - why in the world would a scum bh claim vig? It makes no sense. He didn't know he was getting roleblocked, and doing so would force a 1-1 trade with hyaach at best.
Onto hyaach, he has given me scum vibes at the start of the game. Not going to elaborate but his general posting and luckiness made me feel off about him.
Claiming rb as scum makes sense, I already explained why somewhere in my filter, so this is a null tell.
His jailkeeper claim is sketchy too. Exteremly convenient. The lack of a town rb claiming (not exsisting or simply not willing to claim?) weakens it quite a bit. I can see ehat he means when he says that he shot down every jk scinerio though. It's definitely possible that was faked. However, I'm actually inclined to believe this claim since my gut says so. His recent posting seem to have a fearless aura which makes me feel that he's town.
At the start of the day I believed that bh wasnt lying. Well until ghost brought up the meta changes that is. I can understand him wanting to change his playstyle.... But i think that he would have said something like "I'm going to try to be less agressive" pretend if that was the case no? A minor point of course. I am unsure about his reaction regarding pandain's claim. I definitely think him playing it off was possible, but I found this post wierd.
On June 06 2012 11:18 Blazinghand wrote:
dude you are aware there are like RBs and shit in this game
dude you are aware there are like RBs and shit in this game
Note the this is an instant reaction. Let's say someone claims a role that you have and it is exteremly unlikely there are two of the same role. Wouldt you stop for a little while and give it some thought about how you are going to react to what is very possibly a fakeclaim? I don't see why he would post this. By the way, this is before where bh claims he realized he slipped so.... It's not a cover up.
What is really bugging me is this - why in the world would a scum bh claim vig? It makes no sense. He didn't know he was getting roleblocked, and doing so would force a 1-1 trade with hyaach at best.
Onto hyaach, he has given me scum vibes at the start of the game. Not going to elaborate but his general posting and luckiness made me feel off about him.
Claiming rb as scum makes sense, I already explained why somewhere in my filter, so this is a null tell.
His jailkeeper claim is sketchy too. Exteremly convenient. The lack of a town rb claiming (not exsisting or simply not willing to claim?) weakens it quite a bit. I can see ehat he means when he says that he shot down every jk scinerio though. It's definitely possible that was faked. However, I'm actually inclined to believe this claim since my gut says so. His recent posting seem to have a fearless aura which makes me feel that he's town.
I'm going to just go with bh I guess.
##unvote
##vote: blazinghand
Look a tthis post and this vote. This isn't what a town player would do. If you were unsure, you would cast a vote for BH and say "yeah he looks scummier" and yeah, if you're gonna be afk for the rest of the day, you lay out your thoughts. But read this post and ask yourself-- is this how a town player writes a case, or how a scum player tries to duck responsibility and come out looking townie at the same time?
In fact, this is not how Zelblade ends any of his vote posts as town-- he never feels the need to justify himself or fill himself full of doubts like this. He probably anticipated me not flipping Mafia and didn't want to look too bad on the wagon. Typical scum play.
This doesn't look at all like MtG Zelblade.
This looks like LI Zelblade.
This looks like scum. Let's vote him, and not waste a lynch on the SK who wants to help town.
##vote: Zelblade
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jGxGV.png)
