Emergency Mini Mafia! - Page 3

On June 12 2012 09:59 Blazinghand wrote:
I'm here to talk about Zelblade. He's scum.

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):

JUST as he did in LI with his case and vote against Tunkeg AFTER ET made the initial case against Tunkeg (link)

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.



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.



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

On June 14 2012 06:49 Snarfs wrote:
On zelblade, there are two things that make me think that he's the best chance at hitting scum we have tomorrow (that have happened in this game, much of what blazinghand said in his case was meta and I think Artanis showed just how biased meta can be):

The first one was the wishy washy post where he ends up voting blazinghand. BH and Artanis have discussed this already and I agree with them that there seemed to be quite a bit of cognitive dissonance between his thoughts and his vote.
For reference, the post is here: [click]

The second thing I noticed when reading zelblade was his strange insistence that claiming that there are 4 mafia in the game was a reason to lynch furerkip. Zelblade's reasoning wasn't that furer had scumslipped, but rather that furer had claimed that something was in the OP when it wasn't. This misrepresents what furer said though as he doesn't claim anywhere that it says in the OP that there are 4 mafia.:

First he tries to push the idea that furer claimed that it listed 4 mafia in the OP even though that's not what ghost says. ghost claims that "It could be an extrapolation, or it could be a scumslip". I personally don't think that scum would ever blatantly lie and believe that furer was guessing the number of scum based on the number of roles available. I find it very hard to believe that anyone actually thought he was saying that it literally says in the OP that there were 4 max scum:

Then, zelblade attempts to gain support from other players for a furer lynch. He hardly tries to pressure furer at all and is waiting for others to jump on the wagon first:

He then continues to try and push furerkip for the next 3 days even though he has clearly disappeared from the game and would be perfect scum bait for a mislynch:



Thoughts?

On June 05 2012 07:51 Artanis[Xp] wrote:
Agreed, Blazinghand.

Given furerkip's statement about how long VE's claim was, I decided to take a look at his previous claim in MTG Mafia to compare the length.

I had a null read on VE's claim at first because of the fact that both Millers and veteran mafia players should claim miller in a game where the miller is self aware, this does slightly push the case in favor of a mafia VE, but it's still a weak case. How VE will handle himself the rest of the game is going to be a lot more important. My concern however is that he shits up the thread regardless like he did in MTG Mafia where he tunneled WBG hard as town, and did the same as Toad as mafia, meaning that him tunneling someone isn't indicative of alignment. To be frank, I'm not sure how to read him.


VE as a veteran is likely to get checked by a DT. By claiming early he prevents getting checked by a DT. We already know he would check red now regardless of whether he's lying or not, so a DT check is now useless.

On June 09 2012 05:24 Artanis[Xp] wrote:
This shit is confusing the fuck out of me and I don't have enough time to read things through thoroughly at this time. My initial read on Hyaach was that his early comments were too dumb to be mafia. His RB claim after BH claimed to be RBed also feels like it's not something a mafia would do. Either he's playing dumb, or he's telling the truth. I wasn't planning on killing BH today but with no day kills it feels like someone has to be lying. The thing with BH not instantly bussing Pandain after his claim doesn't work in his favor either. My gut says Blazinghand, and that's where my vote goes.
##Vote: Blazinghand

On June 09 2012 20:20 Artanis[Xp] wrote:
Okay, it seems that for Hyaach to be town there needs to be both a Town roleblocker and a Jailkeeper. For Blazinghand's claim, there just needs to be a vig and a mafia roleblocker. Going to go occam's razor on this.
##Unvote
##Vote: Hyaach

On June 14 2012 07:39 Artanis[Xp] wrote:
Can't say I saw that shot coming. I was expecting myself, Snarfs or Shraft to get shot. Guess they got a blue read on her somehow, or her reads were making sense. Regardless, zelblade's case is still the strongest by far to me. It was also made by Blazinghand whom was doing anything he could to stay alive and is as unaware of factions as we are, so his case can be seen as legit in that regard. It also raised some good points regarding his behavior.
##Vote: Zelblade

On June 13 2012 03:46 Artanis[Xp] wrote:
Blazinghand, I've been more than willing to discuss any cases which I have done plenty yesterday, as well as provide my own case on snarfs which you debunked well. Let me provide you with my interpretation of your case.


I would hardly call that a case. It's two paragraphs. What you've posted right now is a case, what he posted in that post were some mild accusations. He's also asked a bunch of questions in MTG mafia. Three questions in a row:



And he had many more questions. The lurking behavior is a sketchy claim at best; he's been inactive as both scum and town, though I will give you that he does appear to put in more effort when he's scum. I also don't feel he's put a lot of effort in "appearing" town in this game. Can you pinpoint out the exact posts this game where you feel he tried to "appear town"?


I just showed how Zelblade asked questions in MTG mafia too, which means it complies with both his town and scum meta. He also hopped on the VE bandwagon in MTG mafia, and the Mouldy Jeb mafia earlier as well. You seem to find things that correspond with how he played scum and then completely negate to search for if he did these things as town too, which he has.


What I'm seeing in these two different threads (one as mafia, one as town), the main difference I see is how much Zelblade tries to put in effort when he's scum to look town. Zelblade has jumped on bandwagons both as town and as scum though, so bandwagoning Pandain is not something that points to Zelblade being scum. The second part holds more water, but isn't enough for me to consider him mafia.


Wait, isn't he just talking about his case in both the previous two posts? It seems he pays more attention to making cases when he's scum rather than when he's town, where he talked more about the other suspects in the quoted posts.


Hey look, we have an actual argument. I like this point. I just searched zelblade's history on MTG mafia and saw him post nothing of the sort.


I don't like how his vote looks either. Yet I have seen many vote like this and still flip up town. However, this point coupled with him talking more about scummy vibes this game than his town game do give me the impression that Zelblade is red, where the first two points were more null. I might change my vote, I'm not sure yet. Giving some examples in this game where he tries to "appear" green would be helpful.