Newbie Mini Mafia XLIII - Page 4

The point was made early in the thread that Spicy was playing defensively. I would rather term his play as "reactive".
Spicy's reply to this was as follows:

I thought maybe I should actually go and read Les Mafia. Oh boy.....

In Les Mafia, Spicydinosaur was a Parity Cop. I would characterise his play in the following way:

• He offered a lot of his own reads. I think this is partly because he was asked for his opinion a lot in Les Mafia - however, he does offer some up of his own volition.
  My feeling is that in Les Mafia Spicy is giving reasons for his suspicions, whereas in this game he is giving justifications for his vote. The distinction is slight, but it's there. Another way to say the same thing is that I haven't seen Spicy try to persuade anybody else of anything this game.
  
• He doesn't really ask many questions at all, which is similar to his play here. I don't see any reason for him to ask more questions as scum, so this is null.
  
• Number of posts which I would characterise as defensive over-reactions: ZERO. That's right, absolutely none.
  At one point in Les Mafia, more than a quarter of the thread was voting for him and he barely batted an eye. Perhaps this was because he always knew he could claim Parity Cop and escape the lynch.
  However, even in reaction to more moderate pokes (similar to what he received in this game) his response was measured, logical, and mostly in defence of himself, in contrast to this game in which his replies to pressure have largely been to claim that whoever pressuring him is scummier.
  

I strongly suggest that everybody read Les Mafia and get your own feeling for Spicy's play in that game.

(Before anyone yells out that meta isn't a valid tool for analysis, Spicy provided this HIMSELF to justify his actions. Obviously, he thinks that it is a valid tool to analyse his play.)

His argument with FirmTofu (you know the one) isn't particularly alignment-indicative to me. He is flinging a lot of shit at FirmTofu, but I can't say that he wouldn't do this as town too. This section of his filter could bear further analysis I feel.

Spicy's reads so far (shortly summarised) are as follows:

• Initial case on FirmTofu, which was trash. About half of it is based on the following:
  He claims I'm scummy because i am defensive when accused of being scum.
  
  
  On June 24 2013 12:36 FirmTofu wrote:
  I actually do believe Spicydinosaur is scummy, but not for the reasons that Hurricane Sponge states.
  
  In all of his posts, he is extremely defensive. At the slightest mention of someone accusing him of anything, he flares up in his own defense. This could be due to his personality or it could be that he is extremely afraid of getting lynched. If it is indeed the latter, he is likely to be a powerful role, town or mafia. This is my preliminary assessment.
  
  (It's funny that this real analysis is in agreement with my fluff analysis at the beginning of the game)
  
  
  
  He acknowledges that it could just be my personality, yet when I link past games to show exactly that, he ignores it. At this point he just backs off his scum claim.
  
  
  On June 24 2013 12:44 FirmTofu wrote:
  

  Show nested quote +
  

  On June 24 2013 12:39 Spicydinosaur wrote:
  

  On June 24 2013 12:36 FirmTofu wrote:
  I actually do believe Spicydinosaur is scummy, but not for the reasons that Hurricane Sponge states.
  
  In all of his posts, he is extremely defensive. At the slightest mention of someone accusing him of anything, he flares up in his own defense. This could be due to his personality or it could be that he is extremely afraid of getting lynched. If it is indeed the latter, he is likely to be a powerful role, town or mafia. This is my preliminary assessment.
  
  (It's funny that this real analysis is in agreement with my fluff analysis at the beginning of the game)
  

  
  
  I do this in all my games, check out Les Mafiafor a good example. Though i don't see how that is alignment indicative as no one wants to get lynched.

  
  I won't bother looking at your past games, because I believe you should only be judged on your actions in this game. As I mentioned before, you could very well have a defensive personality, so I am not saying you are definitely scum or anything like that.
  
  FirmTofu ignores it AND backs off his scum claim? This is OMGUS paranoia at its best.
  The rest of the case isn't relevant to FirmTofu being scummy at all. I honestly don't see the point in this case besides flinging shit back at someone who's mildly suspicious of him.
  
  
• Some short, meaningless stab at LoneMeow.
  
• A pretty wishy-washy stance on Xzavier:
  
  On June 25 2013 23:11 Spicydinosaur wrote:
  I'm not liking Xzavier as a D1 lynch but i see why others are voting him. Before chrom threw a vote down on him he did 0 scum hunting and his posts were just policy and/or fluff. With that i can clearly see a vote. However what he has done since the votes started piling on has convinced me he's town. An unproductive town before the vote, but a townie no less.
  
  Insulting 1/2 the people in the thread is not the best way to stop a lynch on you, in fact its a good way to guarantee it. Then he throws a quick vote on aqua with a weak reason to back it up. The vote felt very reactionary like he was going for the first scummy thing he could find, not very calculated. I know some people dont like meta in newbie games, but here i feel Xzavier was just being a lot more cautious with his scum hunting after what happened last game which didnt go so well. I also feel that a scum xzavier would be more self conscious of his 0 scum hunting up to this point and would have put something down at this point.
  
  
  He sees why Xzavier is being voted but doesn't like the lynch? His following arguments are bad, though I think it's just plausible that a townie would believe them... but this would be a classic scum reaction to a leading townie wagon.
  
• Never gets around to giving his read on me until after the deadline when it's mostly irrelevant.
  
• His case for Hurricane is that Hurricane has only posted fluff so far - Hurricane was AFK since the time when nobody had posted anything but fluff. A distinct lack of critical thought about this case.
  

I may have missed some reads but I don't think any of them were significant.
In short, none of these reads make me think "town" and they all seem pretty convenient from a scummy perspective.
Do I think Spicy's scum for not arguing harder for a switch away from Xzavier onto Hurricane? Not really, the thread sentiment was pretty strong against Xzavier at that point and it would take an awfully strong townie to face up to that. But it certainly isn't a towny indication, either.


tl;dr I haven't found much of anything in Spicy's filter which makes me strongly think town, and unlike Onegu I'd expect there to be something if he was town. My gut says scum, but I want to look for more before drawing final conclusions.

As far as I can tell the case on Onegu boils down to a few main points:
1) His 'apathy' to the day one wagons - generally indicative of scum not wanting to take responsibility.
2) The less-than-persuasive nature of his cases

Is this a plausible interpretation of Onegu's actions if he's scum? I think it is. However, it is not the only possible interpretation.


1) Onegu did, and always has had, a scumread on me. I suspect it's mostly a gut read, since the reasons he's raising are not very strong. He was at one point the primary force behind my wagon, I'd say; at least he was arguing his point. However, at a certain point he jumped off my vote and went to Alakaslam instead. If he's scum, he could have convincingly stayed on my wagon for a great deal longer than he did - hell, he could have rode that wagon all the way to a mislynch without looking terminally scummy. He wasn't under a great deal of pressure to move his vote at that point, except from me - I have difficulty seeing the direct scum motivation for this move.

Question: After switching vote to Alakaslam, do you think Onegu *could* have switched his vote back to me without looking absolutely awful, whatever his actual alignment?
As such, was he actually as apathetic to the lynch as the final place his vote ended up might indicate? Onegu had already taken a fair bit of responsibility for his read on me.

Furthermore, do you think Onegu was capable of effectively arguing against the strong prevailing thread sentiment towards the end of the day? I don't.

2) Just because he's wrong, and hasn't made accurate cases, is no guarantee that Onegu is scum. The question you have to ask yourself is "Is Onegu honestly searching the thread and trying to find scum?". Again, for me, this is a definite maybe.
I still want to see Onegu play some more to convince myself whether he is sincere in his accusations.
Other people in this game are reading filters and making high-level, rational conclusions from their overal understanding of the game, and that's a town indication for me. Scum prefer to nitpick because it's harder for them to be caught out in a lie or inconsistency, and is inherently less work. They're not interested in
That being said, just because someone isn't effectively hunting for scum doesn't mean they aren't trying to hunt for scum. I think the most important thing in trying to read Onegu is to assess whether he is honestly and sincerely trying to find scum.

tl;dr I think there is a reasonable explanation for Onegu's actions from both a town and a scum perspective.