On August 26 2012 18:35 Stutters695 wrote: @GK & DP Well played, sorry for arguing with you so much towards the end. Clearly I need to work on recognizing blue roles because at most I had one of you as a JK. From a noob VT perspective lynching Golbat did seem like a shitty decision without the last RB coming in to verify his lynches. Rum and hindsight give me 20/20 so in retrospect I should have realized that given how adamant you guys were and my town read on you that you probably knew something I didn't instead of trying to come up with ways that you could be wrong. After the Thrawn mislynch though I was scared you guys were leading the town into another Thrawn type lynch where a "feeling" was going to trump getting the maximum amount of information for town. I feel like I should have argued for a YH lynch much stronger on D2 instead of just saying "hey, here's why lynching Thrawn is bad. Brb you guys decide." That was definitely a mistake.
Except we both voted against thrawns lynch in the end. Give us credit where it is due. And to be honest even though I read in the QT that my argument against thrawn was drivel (lol <3) he did seem scummy as hell by association with YH day one and night one. But in the end we did not vote for him and I even voted for Harry so I think it should have been obvious that we both had the best interests of town at heart. That being said, after thrawn flipped town when I was so sure he was scum my confidence in my own reads plummeted and I was sure we had lost. Thanks to BH <3 <3 <3 and GK <3 <3 <3 they pulled me through when I was sure all hope was lost.
Going through my thoughts on players one by one (and in no particular order):
DarthPunk: It was a pleasure working with you to pull off a comeback town victory. I had a town read on you even starting from day one. I felt your scum game was strong, but the difference in your play here was night and day. You proactively scum-hunted. This in and of itself didn't guarantee you weren't scum, which is why I still constantly reassessed my read on you even as I buddied you. The biggest "town read" I got on you actually came from YourHarry before I voted him on day 3. He fished for whether we were masons, and after he flipped scum I was almost completely certain you were town.
I respected that you stuck with your reads, but were willing to switch your vote to other people you felt were reasonably scum for the sake of consolidating town onto one candidate. I was stubborn and wouldn't budge on YourHarry (at least imo, for the right reasons). However, instead of getting frustrated with me and doing the same with your candidate, you reassessed the merits of both a SolarSail and YourHarry lynch and decided YourHarry was also reasonably scum and so were willing to consolidate your vote. This was, at least to me, the sign of a strong town player .
Town may have decided to elect me as "chieftain," as Blazinghand put it, but without having you there to help support and back up my reads it would have been much harder to rally town together. This is one of the reasons, actually, why I tried my best to always persuade you toward my lynch candidates first and foremost, as the only other proactive scumhunting townie. Because I was afraid that with this town full of passive newbies, they might grow resentful having just one guy telling them what to do. Falling onto emotional sentiment definitely isn't constructive, or pro-town, but was a factor I felt I needed to account for. I wanted no chance of it messing up town's winning chances.
Golbat: You lurked hard. Ironically, most of town decided to do the same. So, to your credit, of all three scum you probably blended in the most... It may have worked this game to some degree, but I would sincerely hope that you can be more proactive in both your scum and town play in the future than you were here.
One other point to note: Never Give Up. It's not over until it's over. When you voted yourself, it was pretty obvious you had given up. I admit it would have been incredibly difficult to come back from your position at that point. But if you decide to stop trying when you're in a tough position like that you'll lose 100% of the time. The same can't be said if you do try. I mean, look at town. We came back from 3 scum + MYLO to win, so don't ever discount yourself as having lost until you actually have... But I would like to thank your for self-voting, as it gave me a great opportunity to vote you without needing to roleclaim.
Archrun: I wish I had more I could tell you, but you didn't really live all that long to get into the groove of how this game is played. Your case against Jyuht was incredibly weak but tbh I don't feel it was enough to make you worth getting vigi shot over. At least not for lurker reasons, when at that point in the game there were people who hadn't really even made cases at all. But if you should have learned anything it's that being mega-lurky for the beginning day+ of the game is a good way of getting mislynched or vigi killed, so please don't do it in the future...
thrawn: I had a scum read on you early on based off my rather terribly constructed association case. But your vigi role-claim combined with your persistence in continuing to scum-hunt convinced me you were probably town, and not a good lynch target. Scum considered me "soft towards pro-town behavior" after this read on you. But honestly, just the fact that your claimed vigi kill made sense in the context of your actions the prior day, and that there was no vigi counterclaim, was enough for me to postpone considering you as a lynch candidate for the day. I strongly regret I didn't consolidate my vote onto the strongest counter-wagon of the time (YourHarry), as my vote for Ochrow/Obvious did absolutely nothing to help save you. For that, I am sorry.
Jyuht: You lurked incredibly hard all the way until your death. It's possible I could have mislynched you in MYLO had you not been NK'ed... But please don't get discouraged. I encourage you to consider this game an opportunity to improve your future play.
SolarSail: Emotional outbursts and early game trolling are bad... Refusing to provide scum reads as town is the equivalent of refusing to play the game. I wish you the best in the future, but you're going to need to step up your gameplay. These newbie games are a great opportunity, and I would highly encourage you to ask for the help of the newbie coach if you're struggling.
Shady Sands: Imo, town was pretty ridiculous in outing their most vocal player day one. Just as with Thrawn day 2, I should have consolidated my vote on the Thrawn counter-wagon on day one. I'm sorry I didn't do more to save you .
Z-Boson: I've already discussed the scum mistakes I feel you made, but I would like to say that of the three scum I feel your gameplay was strongest. Well played, especially for your first game . Your scum play is far better than mine is atm, and honestly I'm a little jealous .
Stutters: You had a few strong analytical posts, but spent the vast majority of your time lurking. And said like three times: "I'm going to check the filters and go to the store," with zero follow-up. -_-
Maybe I'm being more harsh on you than a few of the other "lurkers" here. But it's because I really felt that you could have used your analytical abilities to provide town some badly needed help. Instead, after YourHarry was lynched, your play fizzled out into pretty much nothing.
You have explained why you are busy. However, I hope you have the time in the future to play a strong game from start to finish. Honestly, in the future if you don't have the time you should probably get a replacement.
Obvious: I don't understand what prompted the emotional OMGUS on me and SolarSail when you had first replaced. But that being said, I am glad to have had the chance to play with you again, and to work together on the winning (town) team . As far as being a replacement goes, I can only imagine how tough it is to try to catch up on thirty pages of content and make a vote in the span of a few hours. I can understand how it would be hard for you to be as proactive in developing cases as I may have expected you to be when you first got in.
Mkfuba: Nk'ed night one, and your play at the time didn't really feel too strange or scummy to me. You kind of died before I ever had much of a read on you .
YourHarry: We had some pretty rough disputes throughout the game. You heavily relied on hiding behind your "meta," but when I saw that a scum agenda best fit your actions I was able to sort through all the WIFOM and get you to the noose. I don't know if it's justified to be critical of your playstyle, as you seemed to be able to stay alive much longer than the one time I've played scum (lynched day one lol).
But I still strongly feel that having both an anti-town scum and anti-town town meta is a good way of reducing town's winning chances when you actually role town. I saw from your much better-developed case against me later on that you can make some reasonable arguments when you choose to. It leads me to believe your general playstyle is entirely deliberate, and can be changed to be more pro-town. As such, I am dead serious about policy lynching you day one if you don't agree to help provide a pro-town atmosphere if we play again in the future. I won't let you hide behind your "meta" again.
And another word of advice is to be extra careful what you do as scum. Without your soft defense of Golbat, it would have been much more difficult for me to spot him. Golbat on his own was looking scummy for his lurking, but on that premise so was most of the rest of town. Your play was the biggest factor that gave him away. Your FoS on Z-Boson was also out of place, and helped me to spot him as scum. Just something to think about for your next game .
As such, I am dead serious about policy lynching you day one if you don't agree to help provide a pro-town atmosphere if we play again in the future.
Technically this would be a meta lynch rather than a policy lynch, since there are mitigating circumstances. Since YH is capable of playing in a certain fashion that you deem to be good for town, if he's not playing that, he's playing his scum meta. A policy lynch would be trying lynch him D1 no matter what he says or does.
@Everyone. Isn't practically everything WFIOM, outside blue role investigations?
@GK I thought my defending Golbat would be along the lines of my meta. It's WIFOM, but I thought scum Golbat would have hard time making the Jhyut night kill. Disagree?
Also I defended Thrawn using the exactly the same logic. Do you remember? Thrawn flipped town, so I thought my defense of Golbat was almost called for.
As for FOSing Z-boson, his accusation of me playing the sole meta game and thus Jhyut NK means I am scum... I thought that was a FOS worthy post indeed.
And remember the Thrawn/Ochrow scum suspects that started because they agreed and defended each other. They turned out to be towns together.
Taken together, I am not sure if defending a player or busing a player could be used as associative tells. For example, me refusing to get on the Solar wagon when the lynch candidates seemed to be me or Solar. The interpretation has been made that this is because Solar is my scum team, therefore I had to start an original case against GK. This is what I hoped people would think.
So, I think it's WIFOM. If not, I could have made soft-defended or awkwardly FOS'ed town players to incriminate them.
As for playing my meta, I think it's because I actually don't know how to scum hunt. Period.
To me everything is WIFOM. I could try to post in a style that would be more acceptable and in line with how other people on this forum think, but I would be lying to myself when I make cases.
Oh and I almost forgot. You did an excellent job, GK. It was super impressive.
"@GK I thought my defending Golbat would be along the lines of my meta. It's WIFOM, but I thought scum Golbat would have hard time making the Jhyut night kill. Disagree?
Also I defended Thrawn using the exactly the same logic. Do you remember? Thrawn flipped town, so I thought my defense of Golbat was almost called for."
The difference between Golbat and Thrawn is that you accuse Golbat pretty hard, and gave him quite a lot of attention considering his lurker-status. Then, you turn around and soft defended him... This was really not at all like Thrawn, who you soft defended first and persecute later. When you have suspicions of someone being scum, generally you don't discount them and forget. The same can't really be said of "town reads," which often are more fickle.
"Oh one more thing. I forgot to ask: What did you think was my scum motivation for choosing Archrun lynch over Shady lynch on Day 1."
You temporarily voted Archrun, but your final vote was on Shady day one. You can vote switch all you want, and I will be accordingly suspicious if you don't justify why. But who you voted at the end of the day is especially important. That you switched onto Shady last-minute felt scum-motivated, but really why do I need to repeat myself here? I have a filter that discusses the same content in it...
"As for FOSing Z-boson, his accusation of me playing the sole meta game and thus Jhyut NK means I am scum... I thought that was a FOS worthy post indeed."
Yes, you FoS'ed Z-Boson, but why didn't you also FoS stutters for making arguments related to meta? You're right that in the case of Z-Boson you didn't implicate him as scum, but it was something that made me a little more suspicious of him.
WIFOM, as a concept, is bad and should typically be avoided unless you know what you're doing.
Let's take a look at the classic example:
Now, obviously there are two choices and you can't figure out what's what, right? But the other clear thing here that makes it WIFOM is not just the W, but the IFOM. The wine is in front of the fellows, and each goblet is easy to drink from.
Because both choices are functionally indistinguishable (my wine vs your wine is basically the same except one is poisoned) you can't make a decision. In an example where one is NOT, though, things change. Imagine a new version of WIFOM:
In order to deliver the poison, I can put it in my own goblet, or I can put it in your goblet, but if I do so there's a 50% chance I'll die on the spot.
This is an entirely different game. This is what a lot of scum actions, NKs, bussing etc are about, right? Because although scum CAN take sub-optimal actions, doing so can cost them (such as shooting Jhyut did-- this left good townies alive). In fact, really it's more like this:
In order to deliver the poison, I can put it in my own goblet, or I can put it in your goblet, but if I do so there's a 50% chance I'll die on the spot. Also, depending on how good you are at scumhunting, if I try to poison your goblet, you might spot me since you're peaking out from under your mask.
When you do stuff that has consequences, takes risks, or is harder than other things, it's not WIFOM. I mean, it is WIFOM, but really it's Wine That May Be Harder To Poison. These things add up over time.
Oh! OK. That makes sense! My misunderstanding of the word was, sort of, the culprit in my latest posts.
But if this is the case, would you say that: the inference that Golbat is likely town based on Jhyut because Golbat would have had harder time lynching Jhyut is WIFOM?
How about: conclusion that Thrawn is likely town because scum Thrawn would not have liked to NK Archrun, which would have made Thrawn look bad?
Basically, the Jhyut NK was a bad move, and here's why: No matter who you are, as scum you benefit from Jhyut being alive. If you're Golbat, sure, you benefit, but if you're YourHarry, you also benefit from him being alive because he's an easy mislynch target. Mislynches help scum regardless.
The Jhyut NK is neither WIFOM nor useful in any sense: it just doesn't say anything. Jhyut was a threat to nobody and was useful alive to scum regardless of who they were. All it says is scum made a bad judgement on their NK.
Now, regarding the Archrun NK, given that there are 2 NKs and a claimed Vigi, who was pressuring his NK target the day before, you should accept the Vigi's claim on its face. If the Vigi is fakeclaiming, the real vigi can just counterclaim, then you can lynch both of them, and boom: you've caught one scum. a one-for-one lynch trade is fine. Given that the vigi didn't counter claim, Thrawn was 100% confirmed not Mafia. He might have possibly been the SK, but you'd find that out if there was another 2-kill night later.
The D2 lynch should not have happened and there's no reasonable justification for it.
On August 27 2012 15:01 YourHarry wrote: As for playing my meta, I think it's because I actually don't know how to scum hunt. Period.
To me everything is WIFOM. I could try to post in a style that would be more acceptable and in line with how other people on this forum think, but I would be lying to myself when I make cases.
Oh and I almost forgot. You did an excellent job, GK. It was super impressive.
Tbh, I was kind of in the same boat in many ways until day 3 of this game. My philosophy on scumhunting my last two games was that there's these "scumtells" that you can catch scum with. Scum like to lie. They love to flip-flop on votes. They love to be wishy-washy. If you find a good scumslip, you've found your scum... etc. etc.
But really the way that I used to find all three of you had very little to do with your wishy-washy stances or flip-floppy votes. For each of you, I asked myself if your actions served a scum agenda.
I feel the most telling example this game was with Z-Boson. While I feel his scum play in general was strong, he definitely gave himself away with his last-hour vote switch proposal. As town, when would you ever say, "I think Solar and YourHarry are both scum, but we absolutely must lynch Solar first. Switch your votes now!!!"
Doesn't that sound a bit ridiculous? But from a scum perspective it makes perfect sense. Z-Boson is really trying to keep YourHarry from getting lynched and clinch the scum win.
And that is the premise for scumhunting I'm taking moving forward. You, or anyone else for that matter, can pile on all the WIFOM you want. But actions speak far louder than words. Is the story between players A and B consistent, or are tensions between them clearly artificially constructed? What purpose does this proposed policy serve from a town or scum perspective? etc.
I've gone from looking at "scum tells," that town or scum alike can make. And gone into looking for scum motivation in what a player writes or does. I have Blazinghand's wonderful coaching to thank for that. It may be general advice, but it is priceless in getting the right foot forward in finding scum in this game.
Honestly GK after seeing you play this game I think I'd be better off taking coaching advice from you rather than the other way around lol. Until Solarsail asked me for coaching I still thought he was scum and Golbat was town.
Initial defense followed by later accusation vs. initial accusation followed by later defense. There is a difference. I guess this is a valid point, under my new understanding of Wine That May Be Harder to Poison. But I don't think it should have been too significant of a tell - otherwise, I could simply start out defending a townie then accuse the townie, before my scum flip to incriminate the player.
GK wrote: You temporarily voted Archrun, but your final vote was on Shady day one. You can vote switch all you want, and I will be accordingly suspicious if you don't justify why. But who you voted at the end of the day is especially important. That you switched onto Shady last-minute felt scum-motivated, but really why do I need to repeat myself here? I have a filter that discusses the same content in it...
From the perspective of a townie who wants to make a difference in the outcome of the lynching, the final voting may not always reflect the most scummy reads. A townie could have thought that Shady was the second most townie person after Thrawn, in which case his final voting action of choosing Shady over Thrawn - after attempting to push Archrun wagon which at one point seemed possible - is understandable. By the same token, the final voting status is sometimes circumstantial. I think the circumstances that accompanied the change in the voting is more substantial than the final vote.
For example, if Archrun lynch absolutely seemed impossible, and I was simply making a show before voting Shady, then it would be scummier.
Of course, from my perspective, I wanted this to be my town tell. That if Archrun and Shady both flipped town, I wanted people to think I am likely town - by Wine That May Be Harder to Poison reasoning.
Also, I wanted people to suspect Thrawn - if I ever flipped scum before Thrawn - for my insisting Shady lynch of Thrawn.
So in that sense, I was scummy. But I think I still have hard time understanding your reasoning of my scum motivation.
I wasn't paying too much attention during a lot of D1/2 sorry ;_; um I guess I'd have to see the vote counts. Lynching Thrawn instead of Shady D1 shouldn't be a particular scumtell since both were town, and you weren't even on the winning wagon D1. It's more a matter of how you explain your votes than how you vote. Like, a town player could be on every mislynch wagon and still come out looking townie as long as he is reasonable, contributing to analysis, etc.
On August 27 2012 15:52 Blazinghand wrote: Basically, the Jhyut NK was a bad move, and here's why: No matter who you are, as scum you benefit from Jhyut being alive. If you're Golbat, sure, you benefit, but if you're YourHarry, you also benefit from him being alive because he's an easy mislynch target. Mislynches help scum regardless.
The Jhyut NK is neither WIFOM nor useful in any sense: it just doesn't say anything. Jhyut was a threat to nobody and was useful alive to scum regardless of who they were. All it says is scum made a bad judgement on their NK.
Now, regarding the Archrun NK, given that there are 2 NKs and a claimed Vigi, who was pressuring his NK target the day before, you should accept the Vigi's claim on its face. If the Vigi is fakeclaiming, the real vigi can just counterclaim, then you can lynch both of them, and boom: you've caught one scum. a one-for-one lynch trade is fine. Given that the vigi didn't counter claim, Thrawn was 100% confirmed not Mafia. He might have possibly been the SK, but you'd find that out if there was another 2-kill night later.
The D2 lynch should not have happened and there's no reasonable justification for it.
Ya I admit Jhyut was a bad lynch (and I am directly responsible for it ).
I see. I guess I agree that mislynches help scum regardless.
Definitely Jhyut being alive would have helped me AND Golbat immensely. But wouldn't it have helped other players less? Like those that were receiving less attention, e.g. Darth?
As for Thrawn: being scum made it easy for me to tell that Thrawn was vigilante. Which is the reason for my initial defense. So indeed it may have been a mistake to suddenly accuse him - to get along with other players in the game.
"Initial defense followed by later accusation vs. initial accusation followed by later defense. There is a difference. I guess this is a valid point, under my new understanding of Wine That May Be Harder to Poison. But I don't think it should have been too significant of a tell - otherwise, I could simply start out defending a townie then accuse the townie, before my scum flip to incriminate the player."
I'm glad you understand now... You're right that a read like this could be craftily exploited if you're aware of it. However, in a newbie game I really didn't think that far ahead meta-wise. From a town perspective, suddenly soft defending someone you've accused so much makes little sense. And that's as far as I went with it.
It may not have been entirely conscious on your part, but also you paid a lot more attention to Golbat than to others in the lurker category. So it was really a combination of the two (soft defense, after lots of attention) that made him look suspicious.
And by the way: If you really intend to "out-meta" a read like this by doing this even as town you can probably expect getting mislynched .
Honestly, regarding your votes on Archrun and Shady:
You were vote switching so much on day one I really didn't take anything except for your final vote all that seriously. I admit that may have been a mistake on my part, but there you have it...
I didn't know why you guys wouldn't believe my vig claim.... a lot of the case against me was because of how I was pointing at archrun the whole game... yet you thought me being vig and shooting archrun was unreasonable. there was also the possibilty of an sk but that's something you could have figured out by waiting
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