Newbie Student Mafia XII

On July 12 2015 06:22 Grokken wrote:
I figure it's time for me to make an actual post now that the thread is getting more active.

Sulfurus:

Has made a few posts, but only one-liners and contentless posts. I know you are here and reading the thread, why not try to post something more useful? Neutral read so far, maybe slight scumlean.

On July 13 2015 09:43 MoosyDoosy wrote:

tbh I have 2 suspicions but I'd rather wait. If I'm right, I'd rather not say it and die. Either way I doubt Mafia will try and kill me since some people apparently somehow see me as a possible scum and they will try and bus me. But knowing that they might kill me although there are better people to kill. ^.^ I love screwing things up for the Mafia.

On July 14 2015 02:00 n00bKing wrote:

Actually, I think that "when there is no other big suspicion on him" is a good time to scumlean a mafia teammate. Because it's unlikely that anything will come of it in the near term. And if something does come of it later, you'd be able to say "I was scumreading that guy since Day 1!"

That post from Grokken is probably a point in his favor, but it still leaves plenty of room for error.

On July 14 2015 02:13 n00bKing wrote:

Okay, so apparently I don't agree with much that silentwarrior has to say during Night 1.

"Second on scum list" is a fairly commonplace spot for mafia to put their teammates. Say that he looks scummy (in case he gets lynched) but don't actually try to get him lynched, because someone else is first on your scum list.

And for you to be "all wrong about this" doesn't really require mafia to have sacrificed Sulfurus. He could have been lynched against their will, and your reads could still be wrong anyway.

Of course, you having reads that are different from mine doesn't make you scum (and doesn't even make you wrong)...but I still don't have to like it!

On July 14 2015 08:46 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
To sum up

Scummer read is hardest on Grokken,

Town for me definitively is HtS, Scott, and Fidei.

Too many people posting too little (me included, before ~20 minutes ago). Need more activity please.

On July 12 2015 04:46 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
Right now its basically impossible to read into anything effectively, so Day 1 we might as well just flush out all of the lurkers, which I may work on when I get off work in a couple hours.

On July 12 2015 12:06 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
I'm strictly against considering policy lynches this early in the day. I'm saying we should get everyone to start talking because lurkers quickly become scapegoats, especially in newbie games where lurkers are often people who are just unsure of what to say.

On July 14 2015 07:54 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
Surprised they actually went after Kelsier. At least it confirms my worry that he jumped on Sulfurus as scum to try and assure his own safety; I was just about to post about that, especially since I had a totally unjustifiable scum meta read on him.

By the way, TJH isn't scum to me. He was an early bird on the Sulfurus scum train. That won't be enough to make me think he's town, but it is enough to give me pause before lynching him Day 2. Not ready to jump on that train.

On July 14 2015 08:09 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
I think Moosy is either playing a really abysmal town, or is scum. I'm still not sold enough to vote (I realize I say that a lot), but honestly constantly deflecting suspicion with sarcasm. Despite that sarcasm, he doesn't do shit for the town.


Why did this happen? It made little sense to ask me, other than I was one of the few early proactive people on the thread and it would make sense to get me on his side. He had no real reason to ask me specifically here, and no real reason to believe that my opinions would hold much weight.



There it is again. No reason to be prodding me except that he might suspect that I'm scum (unlikely at that point in the thread), or he's trying to deflect conversations, looking like he moves conversation forward, without actually doing so.

Then he didn't vote, which I didn't either because I forgot about the separate voting thread. So this is excusable because I suck :/

Also, he constantly uses emoticons, which I distrust by nature and generally indicate self-consciousness (I'm not kidding it often points to mafia). Never trust an emoticon.

The rest of his filter is absolute trash, by the way. Nothing helpful at all; all of his posts constantly criticize other people for suspecting him, while offering literally zero content to push the town forward. If he isn't scum, I'd still policy lynch him Day 3 since based_HTS gave us plenty of time. I need meaningful contribution from Moosey or I'm not likely moving off of my vote without heavy evidence on someone else.

##Vote: MoosyDoosy

On July 14 2015 08:45 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
1) Fidei.
Town read; pushing me for my admittedly shitty posting when there was no real consideration of it earlier is pretty darn town.

2) WonnaPlay
Lurk City, hard to know if spooked or noob, but sketchy either way. Because its a noob game all lurkers basically stay in neutral range, instead of my usual neutral-lurker range.

3) N00bking.
Neutral; dont like his filter but he voted for sulfurus, so the two cancel each other out.

4) Silentwarrior.
Shit-tier read list, bandwagonning, lurking. Didn't vote Moosy N1, so neutral or bad scum imo.

5) NHM/Tictoc
Awful posting but apparently had an excuse so mleh. Tictoc says he's followed the game, and showed that he was present in the thread, but has yet to give anything meaningful to the game, so he's on my naughty list until something comes up. Most lurkers commit, but he's already poked his head recently.

6) Moosy
Shit town, prodding him to post better hopefully he actually does, otherwise lynch for derailing conversation. No more discussion on him because its also just derailing now. C'mon man shape up.

7) TJ Huggins
Bandwagonned on Moosy, pointed a lot of fingers, but generally been pretty baseless. This isn't quite a 180 of what I said earlier, because I said in my post that he wasn't scum to me. That hasn't changed; I should have clarified that I didn't think he was that innocent either, he's high up on my neutral list. Just not enough yet to vote on him.

8) Grokken.
Seems pretty sketchy to me. Need to chug through filter again, but voting on me even before Fidei did just feels like someone trying to stand out and be opportunistic. He didn't start the attack, so he doesn't assume culpability if I get lynched and I'm town. He also can't hold onto an accusation.
That said, he didn't fight Sulfurus being lynched; he voted Moosy but didn't protest Sulfurus' death. That doesn't mean, however, that he's not my scum read. Because he is.

9) HtS
Untouchable right now. No fun there :<

10) scottblahblahnumbers
The WORST kind of lurker, if he was maf, I'd be willing to bet he'd be more active, especially since he's not on the noob list; who plays mafia multiple times without wanting to actually participate? For that reasoning he's really town to me, but damn I hate how he's basically not in the game. It's frustrating.

On July 14 2015 08:46 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
To sum up

Scummer read is hardest on Grokken,

Town for me definitively is HtS, Scott, and Fidei.

Too many people posting too little (me included, before ~20 minutes ago). Need more activity please.

On July 15 2015 08:31 Half the Sky wrote:
Silentwarrior....I know he's putting in the effort and people can't be in thread perpetually. But in the event that Gandhi winds up being a mislynch he might come under some suspicion. I can't put my finger on articulating it well at the moment (aside from the parroting, even the point by Scott was previously mentioned by WP, but a lot of people are understandably guilty of that) but the first two quotes of his long post at the top of page 25 are slightly biased in that they don't account for how a town Gandhi would act. Nowhere did he say "no one to make reads" but on Gandhi's end you do have a lack of followup. It could be suboptimal town or scum play. GE is in his second game ever on TL so believeable expectations aren't too high if a town Gandhi wants to prioritise lurkers.

Also 2 hours post-lynch depending on timezone is not considered too soon. Stateside, the EoDs (I'm assuming you are EU btw) are during evening rush hour, so who knows. I know you're new so I'm considering this part NAI for now. But popping up so soon after the lynch, 2 hours is not considered very soon. 2 minutes, yes you have a case.

Again I am a bit ahead and it is an associative read at this point in time (meaning can't know until a Gandhi flip) but I'm still null on SW at the moment. I think based on effort most newbie scum wouldn't give much effort. At the same time scum are concerned with "looking town" so I do remain cautious on SW.

On July 15 2015 08:41 Half the Sky wrote:


This is a decent point. He was a solo voter and having done too many VCAs to count I might be a little biased since he solo voted, but newbies probably don't have the concept of town consolidation down either, at least not yet.

On July 15 2015 11:52 Tictock wrote:


The issue with solo voting is that it makes it harder to look at vote counts after a flip. Ideally you want 2 solid wagons so that when you hit on scum you can start to figuer out which players on the opposing wagon are likely scum and which, if any, are scum bussing a teammate.

I'm pretty guilty of throwing my vote out solo in past newbie games, so I understand the temptation to ignore the majority and vote for your own reads. However if you think about it all it really does it make it easier for scum to swing the votes in their favor.

Maybe HtS can answer a little better, also I'm sure there is someplace on the interwebs that has in depth talk about what is good for voteing patterns as town.

My counter question to get you thinking about it more, what do you think could be good about solovoting?

On July 16 2015 00:25 scott31337 wrote:
I've been really busy as well, but I can't forget to vote this time...We don't need any modkilled townies.

##Vote Tjhuggins

On July 17 2015 03:51 Fidei86 wrote:
Got it.

BTW, my tinfoil hat world involves you and n00b being the scum team. But honestly, I think if that's the case then we could just GG now :-)

On July 17 2015 13:31 Tictock wrote:

Actually, SW you should tell us why you think TJ is scum.

On July 17 2015 13:31 Tictock wrote:

A quick browse of your one page filter shows me that this is your initial read on TJ



Then on D2 when TJ is being pushed by most of the thread you post this.



You never mentioned TJ in between those 2 posts. What changed your read?

On July 18 2015 01:01 Tictock wrote:
SW's D1 play. He comes into the game and in the space of 10 min makes his only reads of the day. He then solo votes based on those reads almost 24 hours later without really commenting on the rest of the game.

On July 18 2015 01:01 Tictock wrote:
[ Since I replaced in SW has completely ignored me. If he thought NHM was scummy enough to solo vote D1 why is he not even trying to get a read on me? I literally show up twice in SW's filter, once when he posts a list and my slot is suddenly neutral and once when he directly responds to a post from me.

On July 18 2015 01:01 Tictock wrote:
This point me be a little more neutral, but it fits with the "following thread sentiment" notion.
SW's biggest post was his case on Ghandi, however his "case" came well after I had been pinging out Ghandi most of the day and HtS posted a large case on Ghandi as well. Check where this post came in terms of thread sentiment against ghandi.

On July 11 2015 11:06 TJHuggins wrote:


Yo I have no clue wtf those acronyms mean can u put like Nydushermain (NHM) the first time you use an acronym so I can understand what you're talking about? Who is HTS?

On a game note, I think it's pretty good if we all say like what our mafia background 1) I don't know anyone except for nydus and 2) i always judge my reads on people against a background of their experience (e.g. easier to read someone new to mafia based on little things they do).

I have played video mafia on DailyMafia for almost two years and have never played forum mafia before. I am basically a god. I am in a clan called the elo angels because im so good and my elo is so high. My day job involves working with and for lawyers every day so i think about thinks pretty logically and might write formally at some points based on my mood. In video mafia I usually pick up on and push on (sometimes minor) logical inconsistencies and ive noticed ive been tunnelling a bit too hard lately so that may happen this game.

My only read so far is that Half the Sky is spamming.

[purple]Also it allowed if i just put every post I type in purple so taht you guys always know its me?[/purple]

On July 12 2015 01:49 TJHuggins wrote:
My initial reads so far is that i am town leaning on Fidei. I like the things he said in relation to spamming, and I think that him relating the perspective to a previous game where he was town feels like he's looking at the game from the perspective of a town. When he responded to HTS regarding talking about anti-spam being easy, he seems genuine. Or maybe it's just because I like his writing. No clue.

My initial scum read is Grokken. It's nothing all that strong but I'm getting a wierd feeling about the things he's posted. To me it feels like he is trying to find ways to participate and seem town by chiming in now and again but really has no clue what to write about.





I think that one sentence posts that appear to contribute to the game and don't really offer anything just kind of irk me the wrong way. I guess it's worth noting he did write that thing about Dota as well which was also one sentence but that's neither here nor there when it comes to the game I think. When I went back and read the post about him showing off his dota stats that actually reads to me a bit more towny now that I think about it, so not really sure.

just an initial read.

On July 12 2015 03:10 TJHuggins wrote:
I agree that it was grokken's town prodding question that got me suspicious of him in the first place.

On July 12 2015 09:57 TJHuggins wrote:
I agree with most about what has been said about Moosy. I'm trying to read this game similar to how I would read someone in video mafia (whether or not that is going to work remains to be seen). One way people often get on my "radar" if you will is by dropping sort of key phrases or acting in a certain way after being called out. In my first few months of playing, sometimes this scenario would happen:

A particular player, who may be lurking, or just doesn't sound the same (voice tone, pattern, activeness, etc.) would get pinged out by another player who would say that they "feel different this game" or ask "why they're not playing the same as X game they played with them in." In some of these cases, the person would respond back by saying some variation of the phrase "I'm trying to switch up my play this game" or "I'm trying something new this game." I started to realize that when someone came back with this response most of the time they ended up being a mafia trying to cover up for there change in playstyle due to the change in alignment, or sometimes it was just an excuse to lurk e.g. "I'm going to try to sit back and listen and try to get town reads this game instead of trying to pressure the mafia to see how it works."

I got a similar feeling looking back at what Moosy said (the quote that many have already noted), though I'll admit I didn't catch it the first time. One thing that I did catch, which I thought was kind of odd, is the quote below, though I'm not quite sure what it means yet.



It's a pretty innocuous post on it's face, but what stood out for me is that he is deferring to Ghandi before making judgment. But Ghandi's role in the context of the quoted posts is so minor that I can't think what he could possibly add to the conversation that would in turn color your judgment on Grokken's alignment. In fact, I never even mentioned Ghandi in my post. If he disagrees, ok, but why is he saying he needs to wait and see what Ghandi says?

Not sure if I want to lynch him today, but he's on my radar. I still want to hear more.



I think you're reaching a bit here. This post seems so opposite to everything else you've written this game. What gives?

On July 12 2015 23:33 TJHuggins wrote:
Right now I'm at the point where I feel comfortable enough to ##vote MoosyDoosy. (reasons here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/mafia/488742-newbie-student-mafia-xii?page=10#191)

I woke up this morning to see more posts from MD that read scum to me. I didn't think you were even allowed to vote for yourself. To me I haven't seen any protown content coming out of any of his posts, and his recent ones seem blatantly anti-town. And what really stands with me is that these are posts from someone who claims to apparently have been unanimously townread by all players but one in some recent previous forum mafia game. See his post on July 11 2015 at 16:30, ("I was an earnest townie last Newbie Student Mafia game with a monster filter. :3 Besides ruXxar everyone pretty much knew I was a townie which is why I want to change things up here and make things interesting.")

I'm not buying it that this is a result of you switching up your play.

On July 13 2015 03:43 TJHuggins wrote:

Can you explain to me how I am supposed to differentiate "shitty townie" play from Mafia play? The way your posts are reading to me now it sounds like you are a mafia resigned to their fate. If that's not the case then what is your play here? Do you have anyone you think is mafia? Anyone that you think is town? Any reasons for those reads? Any reasoning for why you have been writing/acting like a 14 year old for the last 12 hours? I'm going to be seriously upset if you are lynched and flip town because all that I will be thinking is: "What the fuck?"

On July 13 2015 06:31 TJHuggins wrote:
Figured I would post where I am at before EOD (for obvious reasons). Here's a scum list for me right now in order:

1. MoosyDoosy
2. Sulfuras
3. Grokken

Scott, NHM, and silentwarrior are all in a 3rd category for me which includes players that haven't impressed me with their content and have not left any last impact on me. Might be mafia, might be town. I would rather wait until day 2 to deal with this group since it may give them more time to provide content for me to figure out their alignment. Personally, I'd rather kill someone whos acting scummy than someone whos just a crap shoot (actually if this were video mafia I would pressure them and force them to talk but I can't really do that here.)

If at EOD 2 I still have nothing on those three, I would advocate to shooting, cop checking, lynching them. I would caution against vig shooting or cop checking any of the lurkers this night because I don't think it will really help progress our scum leads much. A vig shot is better saved on a clearly scummy person (same logic as above) and cop check better on someone whos a bit more active.

On July 13 2015 07:03 TJHuggins wrote:
Wait what... the vote count was changed after the day ended. This is some shitty modding.

On July 13 2015 07:15 TJHuggins wrote:


You pointed that out but none the less his vote was included in the voting thread for quite some time both before and after. I thought that perhaps it was frowned upon but no strictly forbidden. The fact that it was not corrected until after the time in the day ended is unacceptable imo. I feel very strongly about the integrity of games that I am in and it just annoys me when something like this happens.

On July 13 2015 07:21 TJHuggins wrote:


The mistake was made: that's fine. Everyone makes mistakes. To retroactively correct the mistake after the day ends instead of leaving it as is? Unacceptable from a game integrity standpoint. But we got a mafia; it's whatever. I get passionate about lynches.

On July 13 2015 07:22 TJHuggins wrote:

My point is the vote remained on the voting thread and was included in the vote counts until a minute or two after the day concluded.

On July 16 2015 08:11 TJHuggins wrote:
Shit I missed the vote. Sorry guys.

On July 16 2015 08:30 TJHuggins wrote:

I may die. But, considering a significant amount of people think that I am mafia (see the three players who voted on me this day), understandably so since I have been very inactive this day, I think it wouldn't be terrible for town if I did die. It will save me from potentially getting mislynched, and keep someone who is much more towny in the game.

So I will let the Mafia make the decision.

On July 18 2015 08:42 Tictock wrote:


Where? Show me that post, I have looked through your filter and failed to find and mention of TJ between those 2 posts I quoted.



I saw that post, pretty sure I mentioned it in that case on you as well. I even stated that that point was sorta weak and that was part of why.

I'd also like you to give us your thoughts on WP.

I know I know, I'm a demanding A-hole.

On July 18 2015 19:36 Fidei86 wrote:
Okay, I'm now 100% convinced that SW is the final mafia.

Looking at the evolution of his reads, it's totally bogus. He solo votes on NHM N1. He then town reads TJH for putting Sulfurs second on his scum list, but as discussed, that's actually a massively scummy thing to do. The crucial part, next, is that he does this massive big long post on Ghandi, presumably in order to make sure that town stays on the GE wagon. He doesn't say ANYTHING else about TJH at all. But then, with literally no explanation, he moves TJH down into his 'scum' category, despite TJH having said basically nothing between SW's first read of him as town and then.

I couldn't have solved this game without the following people:
HTS - so glad I was town with you. I think if you had rolled scum, it would have been GG.
n00b - I won't eff with you I promise
Grokken - Bro, you did a nice job as cop, checking exactly the right people and trying to help town without making yourself a target for NK. Props. I'm very impressed. You've got a bright future here.
TT - Buddy, what can I say. I'm sorry about the things I said yesterday. You were the first one on the SW wagon, and without you this wouldn't have been possible.

TL;DR If I can see this far, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.

On July 18 2015 19:54 Fidei86 wrote:
Your answer wasn't sufficient. You said that you had answered it. I assume you're talking about the post where you kick around the argument that TJH was actually seriously scummy for what he posted re Sulfurus, but you hardly reached a conclusion. It reads to me, with the knowledge we have now, that you were caught trying to back your mafia buddy and didn't want to bus him but also wanted to distance yourself from him.

On July 18 2015 20:05 Fidei86 wrote:


Okay, I just can't restrain myself from making this post, because it's such a gimme:

1. This post is a total distortion of what happened. Nobody straight up believed TJH's claim. Lots of people (TT, for example) said that the claim was bullshit straight off. HOWEVER, if you don't have the necessary counter-claims, the correct play from town is to lynch the red check 100%. If the red check is off, you then lynch the false-cop. But you always lynch the target first, because then you don't run the risk of accidentally lynching your cop.

2. Nowhere in this post does SW express any actual claim to town. He berates town for believing TJH's claim, and he says thanks to Grokken, but he doesn't actually try and move the agenda forward or even hint that he might be town.

3. He's riled. Mafia get riled when they are close to being caught. They just can't help it. I've seen it time and time again, in real life mafia and in forum mafia.

4. Specifically, this is the first time that we've seen SW post this directly. Everything else has been pretty bland, but this has real fire to it.

On July 18 2015 20:26 Fidei86 wrote:
I mean, it probably doesn't need to be said again, but I might as well:

I don't think anyone came out and said they straight up believed TJH's claim. Lots of people displayed skepticism. N00b said that he wouldn't have moved his vote anyway. HOWEVER, as I explained above, good town players should absolutely move their votes onto the cop claimer's red check, as you get the same amount of information as you would if you lynched the cop, but without running the risk of actually lynching the cop. The situation obviously then changes if you get a counter-claim. Here we have a very believable counter-claim coming from Grokken, who plenty of people have been reading as town.

Also, everyone is going to move to TJH if they haven't already - we know that HTS is offline and she'll switch 100% when she gets back. So there was no need for you to be angry at all. The fact that you are/were is a massive scum tell, in my opinion.

Please don't take this personally - I know that Mafia is a game of lying. Next time maybe you'll roll town, and you can put everything you've learned from being Mafia this game towards being a good town next game.