Newbie Mini Mafia LXI - Page 19

This is Tere's initial list. I took the liberty of adding the link to the post where she provided these reads. There is not a single controversial read. When a player thinks critically about their reads, they will see things that others don't, and get different results. For example, at this point I believe that it was possible to put zlefin at least null based on a crucial scrutiny of his filter, and I demonstrated this here. Conclusion: Tere is not thinking critically about her reads.

Next, I will examine the reads themselves.

I can accept Tere's read on me. It feels like an easy read to make, but it is a conversational tell. Not much to say here. Same with her reads on ElyAs, jarjarbinks, and rsoultin. I already commented on her read on zlefin, though this isn't terrible. The main reads I have a problem with are her reads on Silverarte and Hier. I will comment on these at a later time, as I feel that they fit more appropriately later. Still, the overall picture provided isn't that great. The logic is sound, but there is not an indication of real analysis. I commented on this right away, and Tere's reads changed to include scumreads on stronger players. Could be a coincidence, or it could be a mafia player realizing she has to step it up. Either way, she definitely has the skill for it. Conclusion: Tere's scumhunting shows a lack of effort.

This post is Tere's next major read, posted on zlefin. It's not terrible, but it does seem to be mostly summary and less analysis. In addition, Tere did not immediately ask zlefin for more reads and try to help get a read on him, she only asked zlefin to share more after he asked if he should.

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At the end of Night 1, Tere posts her current reads. With Hier dead and with reasonable reasons to remove zlefin from her lynch pool, Tere added scumreads on ElyAs and The Shining. First, allow me to note that Tere keeps the same amount of town reads, leaning/null reads, and scum reads in every single list post. The amount is basically the perfect amount. While this isn't suspicious the first time, or the second time, after a while I do find it suspicious, we are humans, we aren't perfect, and we don't always end up with our reads exactly aligning in ideal proportions.

Her read on ElyAs isn't terrible, but her read on The Shining is. At this point, The Shining had been reasonably active and contributive. I mentioned that The Shining was going after me, and scum usually doesn't want to go after the most active posters. Tere didn't consider this at all, and effectively said that The Shining's filter was boring. Conclusion: Tere isn't fully thinking through her reads.

And again, there is a weak Silverarte read, but more on Tere's interactions with Silverarte later.

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Then come Tere's massive Walls of Text at the start of Day 2. Her vote analysis implicates ElyAs and The Shining. She says that ElyAs's vote looks bad for constantly expressing doubt and suggesting that he needs to look for counterwagons, but never actually doing so. Note that Tere suggested several times that she should look for counterwagons, and never did so, either. Of all of us, ElyAs put by far the most effort into looking for counterwagons. Conclusion: Tere's read is perhaps not genuine.

As for The Shining, his vote on Hier did not look that good on the surface, but he is honest about it, and I really like that. We all agreed that most of the lynches didn't look good at that time, so it's okay if he is uneasy about it. That said, Tere completely ignores the fact that The Shining's initial pressure on zlefin is exactly that, a pressure (The Shining stated this significantly before this post from Tere). And as a pressure, it actually looks rather towny. Conclusion: Tere's vote analysis is designed to implicate her scumreads, not the other way around.

Also note that yet again, Silverarte gets townread for something that I find suspect. Silverarte's vote is ill-explained, and for an easy target, which makes up for her being the second one on the wagon.

I also find myself townread for a vote which I don't think looked towny at all. I recently asked The Shining for his opinion on my vote, and here is his response.

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Next is Tere's night kill analysis. Not much to say here, while it is interesting, it isn't particularly useful. I do note that she says that from memory, rsoultin only expressed doubt on The Shining, and not jarjarbinks or Silverarte. However, rsoultin added that Silverarte is forgettable, which implies suspicion. I don't read too much into this, since she says it is from memory, but I still think it is worthy of note.

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Next is Tere's analysis of everyone's reads based on her two night shots question. Again, ElyAs and The Shining are made to look the worst. (Note that Tere's initial reads are obviously based on these analyses, so it isn't completely unreasonable, but it feels too perfect to me that all of Tere's analysis methods implicate exactly the same people).

I note that Tere gives zlefin a town pass for posting his two reads with minimal explanation. Just a bit ago, Tere was scumreading zlefin for posting with little information.

There is another strange read on Silverarte, but again, I'll talk about that later.

Her analysis of ElyAs's reads isn't terrible, though I again notice ElyAs being completely honest, which I really like.

Why doesn't Tere like The Shining's attack on me? He's the only one willing to do so at this time. Conclusion: Tere is making up a reason to be suspicious of The Shining (an incorrect push) while not really thinking about what it means (The Shining is doing something more daring than scum would want to do).

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At around the same time, Tere scumreads Silverarte, primarily for suspicious inactivity. Note that I already scumread Silverarte. That this keeps Tere's next lynch post with the perfect number of two scum reads (ElyAs moved to neutral).

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Then, Tere votes for me. I will cover Tere's behavior towards me in its own separate category, it's that special. Shortly after this, everything changes. The Shining has been moved up to a strong townread. Zlefin is placed as a solid town, jarjarbinks is a solid town as well. Tere also says that she is more comfortable with ElyAs in general, implying more than the one post. I understand Tere's complete reversal on The Shining, they were in an argument, and I can buy this. But completely changing her opinion on the general tone of ElyAs's filter? That seems off. Conclusion: Tere's reads are pushing a mafia agenda.

Tere spends the rest of Day 2 pushing me (Trfel), so there aren't any other reads of note except for a correct analysis of why Silverarte is scum.

I felt like I said this pretty well the first time. This is just a copy-paste.
Tere's behavior towards Hier has been strange and seemingly contradictory.
Right after being confident enough to vote for Hier, before fully analyzing the other people in the thread, Tere expresses doubt over lynching Hier. She also says that we should look for counterwagons. Let's see if she makes any effort to follow through on this.My point is that I feel it is reasonably safe to assume that Tere agreed with my reasoning that rsoultin should be nice about pushing Hier to encourage him to try and defend himself and not quit playing the game. However, this is at odds with the tone that Tere took when conversing with Hier (quotes supporting this will follow).
Here, I voiced what I think is the best defense for Hier. Since Tere has voted for Hier, and still expressed doubts and a desire to look for counterwagons, she ought to be interested in what I have to say (especially since she later said that she focused on conversing with her townreads, and at the time I was one of her townreads). Tere's quoted post does show some hesitance to lynch Hier, however her reasoning expressed in this post was later shown to be wrong (note that I am not saying that Tere expressed wrong opinions and is therefore mafia, the two are unrelated) My point is, Tere avoided the point of my post, and addressed it while avoiding answering it.

Hier finally comes back. Here are some of the posts that Tere makes towards Hier. Despite seeming open to other wagons and agreeing that it is wise to go soft when pushing someone in a newbie game, her posts seem to say the opposite.

And after this initial bombardment, then some other dismissive posts,And Hier is supposed to enthusiastically answer Tere's questions? I also agree with jarjarbinks here, it doesn't hurt at all for Tere to answer Hier's questions first. There is no reason not to.Still the same attitude.

This is Tere's first read on Silverarte. It seems rather easy to accept Silverarte as a bad lynch for Day 1. Tere's link is broken, but in that time period, Silverarte only had one interesting post, describing why she was scumreading Hier. But Silverarte's post is boring and does not show critical thinking.

At the end of Night 1, Tere posts her overall reads and voting analysis. Both contain a poor read on Silverarte. In particular, Tere's voting analysis on Silverarte seems rather poor, I get the opposite impression from Silverarte's vote and reasoning.

Then I scumread Silverarte. Silverarte immediately and suspiciously enters the thread, and Tere uses this suspicious entrance to scumread Silverarte as well. After several town reads on Silverarte, it seems that Tere is taking this opportunity to leave herself the option to scumread Silverarte if it is necessary.

I also note that Tere investigated Silverarte's previous game (a town game), and decided that her play in this game was very similar to her play in last game. Even from the first few posts, they are extremely different. Take a look for yourself.

Also extremely suspect is Tere's clear desire to lynch me before Silverarte. I will discuss this later, when I cover Tere's push on me.

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Now, a look at Silverarte's filter and how she interacted with Tere.

For quite some time, Silverarte did not mention Tere at all. This is Silverarte's first post that refers to Tere. And it is a scumread, largely based off of my own post. Note how the last paragraph is keeping options open, and trying to look certain. She is definitely sitting on the fence.

This is the one interesting post in Silverarte's filter. And again, scumreading Tere is the topic. Silverarte seems to show a different tone and voice when talking about Tere than when talking about other people. However, when it seemed like Silverarte was in danger of being lynched, she stopped posting reads. The only natural thing for her to do would have been a scumread of Tere, as she has been stating that earlier and you want to push scum reads while being lynched. But Silverarte leaves nothing. My impression is that she did not want to risk implicating Tere through yet another case.

All in all, the interactions between Tere and Silverarte are extremely suspicious. Look at the weak townreads that Tere gave Silverarte, and look at how Tere's view on Silverarte changed. Then, look at how Silverarte was much more willing to write cases on Tere than anyone else (this is a first time scum player's problem with confirmation bias, townreading everyone who is town and having no reads left; I had this problem in my scum game). Finally, Tere was very desperate to get me lynched instead of Silverarte, despite them both being her scum read.

I could go on all day about this one. This is one of the worst pushes I have ever seen. Tere is a skilled and experienced player, and she shows her experience through how she pushes for my lynch. But if you ignore the tone and methods and look only at the reasoning, it all falls apart.

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First, look at how Tere's read on me evolved leading up to the push. She had always townread me for various reasons. I also note that four times, I made a read, and Tere later made that same read (if for different reasons).

1. Tere initially scumread zlefin. Later, I posted some reasons why I didn't read zlefin as scum. Later, Tere's read on zlefin changes here. Since zlefin's play did improve, this isn't that suspicious. But Tere made a read change that followed my own (Trfel's).

2. After this, Tere townreads ElyAs for one post. I don't really mind this read, but note that I (Trfel) expressed thoughts that ElyAs is town not long before.

3. At around the same time, Tere scumreads Silverarte, primarily for suspicious inactivity. Note that I already scumread Silverarte.

4. After rereading the game, Tere posts an analysis with several changed reads. The Shining has been moved up to a strong townread.

Conclusions: Tere is not reading the game as critically as she could be if I made all four of these reads before she did. To my knowledge, Tere never made a read before I did. Furthermore, Tere is scumreading a person who has made very similar reads all game long.

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Second, look at the circumstances leading up to the push.

I've been very suspicious of Tere all game. I made the initial case on Tere, which led to her being widely scumread by the end of Night 1. Then, I backed off, after a long time of suspicions. After Tere's heated argument with The Shining, I still maintained that Tere was probably town. This gave Tere a leg to stand on, in the form of some breathing room to make her push and some credibility for it. Perfect timing.

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Third, I posted that I would be gone for much of the time leading up to the lynch. If you are going to try and lynch the player with the largest filter in the game, doing it when they say they will be busy is probably the best time to do it.

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Fourth, look at the timing of the push and the case. This is a push relatively late into the day, and Tere has stated several times that she hates EOD vote switches and wants the vote to be settled well in advance (here is one example of this). This timing is perfect for scum to start a mislynch wagon. There is enough time to make a case and push it through, and everyone is likely to see it and respond before End of Day. However, it's much harder for the player being lynched to provide a defense and gain support for that. While the player is defending a (presumably) big case, the accusers are free to push the lynch unchecked. Furthermore, there is a significantly reduced chance that players have time to see the defense and respond to that before End of Day. I note that while Tere's case on me is quite long, she finally posted it with less than three hours to End of Day. Assuming that it takes maybe one hour to respond, there are two hours left, and this gives Tere 150% of the time that I get to push the lynch, and it gives people 150% of the time to see Tere's case on me than they do my defense.

In addition, this case seems to have taken her about three hours to type up (from this post where she solidly calls me scum to this post, Tere's case). While her case is long, I doubt it takes three hours to build. Remember that Tere was solidly scumreading me before she started making this case, so she already knew what to say and what to look for (or her scumread would be completely unwarranted). My guess is that she was either lazy about producing the case (since she just wanted me lynched, for which there is no real incentive to post it sooner, not town interested in the truth), she didn't actually know what she wanted to say ahead of time (indicating that her read on me is falsified), or she wanted to wait until later to give me less time to defend myself (clearly scum trying to get a mislynch). Note that this left me in the thread for a significant amount of time being scumread without anything to defend myself against (I swatted ElyAs's case easily).

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With that in mind, look at how exactly Tere started scumreading me.

Her first post with suspicion of me is here. After apparently rereading the thread, she comes back here extremely confident that the mafia team is Silverarte and Trfel, but it is not explained at this time. Notice how she really wants to lynch me instead of Silverarte, despite having both of us scumread. This behavior doesn't make much sense, unless she is worried that with more time I will find a way to save myself (indicating that she is just trying to get me lynched, and not trying to actually figure out who is scum).

Note that Tere posts her reads here, and they are the exact same as my reads (except for Tere and Trfel), though I arrived at them first (yes I know that I posted them in a list after, but the reasoning has been clearly expressed in my filter). Normally, a reread isn't enough to decide that you are confident that someone is scum if you have been following their reads the entire game and they are actually reading everyone the same way that you are.

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Finally, Tere posts her case for why I am scum. I am not interested in showing why this case is wrong, but I am interested in showing why this case shows that Tere is scum.

1. First, Tere scumreads me for trying to make it known that I have been putting effort into this game. I maintain that while flawed, it is human to want credit for the work that one does. In addition, Tere has been talking about how many Walls of Text she has been posting, and how late she has been staying up, and all of the filters she has been looking at. Since she plays the same way, she shouldn't be scumreading me for it.

2. Then, Tere blames my filter for not being clear on who my scumreads are. While my uncertainty could potentially be attributed to a mafia trying to keep his options open, it could also be a townie who is does not have all of the information. This is fine, but Tere ignores several times where I placed suspicions that showed critical thinking, analysis, and commitment. One example of this is my case on Tere. I also feel that it is somewhat bold to be vocal about not wanting to lynch as many suspected players as I did, because if those players do end up being lynched and flip scum, I look pretty bad. You can't really expect me to be 100% confident when defending someone who is highly suspected, as there is generally a reason they are suspected. Tere seems to be intentionally misrepresenting me.

3. This point is wrong. I saw something I didn't understand, so of course I asked about it. When I realized that rsoultin was suggesting that Tere was softclaiming vigilante, I was frustrated that I had drawn attention to it and frustrated that rsoultin had made a fuss about it. The fact that I had not noticed it initially suggests that I am either blind, or not interested in bluehunting.

4. I criticized Tere's reads because I felt that they were not suggestive of a player who is critically scumhunting. I don't think it is wrong to criticize someone's reads. If you don't criticize people's reads, you are losing an extremely valuable method of analysis. In addition, I already stated that my early vote on Tere for Day 2 was a pressure vote, and Tere had already accepted that explanation.

5. I posted my reasons for scumreading Silverarte. Tere then scumread Silverarte. I wanted to know why Tere was scumreading Silverarte. This is not an unreasonable request.

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From here, there isn't much to see except Tere's miserable attempt to get me lynched instead of Silverarte while also scumreading Silverarte just as confidently. I can't say it any better than The Shining did in this post.

Everyone else is town.

ElyAs is a claimed doctor, and by this point I'm sure that everyone has seen it. We can be reasonably confident that ElyAs is town. In addition, his filter seems to show a clear thought process and scumhunting.

Jarjarbinks hammered Silverarte instead of Trfel, so he is very likely to be town as well. His filter also doesn't show many indications of being scum, while many things suggest that he is trying to figure out the game.

The Shining has been extremely obvious town for quite some time. From his initial defense of my suspicions on him, his alignment has been pretty clear. The way that he has scumread Tere clearly shows this.

The case for zlefin being town is a bit weaker, but I still think it is very likely that he is town. His filter has shown indications of scumhunting, and he seems to be working to make his thought process more clear. In addition, several of his recent posts have seemed quite townie to me.

That leaves me and Tere. This post makes it pretty clear where I stand on Tere. I think that my filter also makes my alignment pretty clear. Here's a hint: we're dealing with Tere and Trfel.