TL Mafia XXXVII

On February 27 2011 18:15 Barundar wrote:
Case against LSB

Part 1: Was annul a bus?

From http://mafiascum.net/wiki/index.php?title=Bus bus on mafiascum:


The indicators in my words:
1) The bussee is already under town suspecion
2) The lynch faces little resistance
3) The busser uses the lynch for town credit


My arguments as to why annul was a bus:

1) First of all annul was already under what I believe to be town suspicion before LSB entered the scene. Deconduo had cast his vote on annul at least to pressure him, OriginalName had asked if we should start voting him, GMarshal had been analysing his post and found no contribution, Mr.Wiggles found his playstyle in mafia xxxvi to be indicative of a better player, that wasn’t showing in this game, and why argued that annul was suspicious.

All of these people argued for annul being suspicious, but they weren’t sure. A number of them tried to scumhunt annul, asking him to explain why he was acting up, trying to gather more evidence. That’s standard pro town play.

LSB wasn't as concerned with if annul was actually just a stupid townie, but more with getting him lynched. He didn't need convincing. I'll go more into detail with that in part 2.


2) A large amount of the votes on annul was for other reasons than him being red:


Annul might have acted suspicious, but he was by no means guaranteed to get lynched that day. All he had to do to avoid getting lynched was to start giving better reasoning, and take an interest in the other lynch targets. Yet he chooses not to:

It got to the point where he had to get asked to at least try in the thread:

After this post annul does a few longer posts. Let me repeat this: He gets asked in the thread to at least try. It’s not his team mates being annoyed with him on irc, forcing him to stop screwing around, it’s in the goddamn thread.

Despite relatively weak reasoning for voting annul, there was a lack of counter-bandwagons. Annul himself votes for gryffindor, so you would assume that if mafia had tried to save him, a bunch of votes would jump on Gryffindor. But this doesn’t happen, and annul didn’t try and bring a convincing case against Gryffindor himself. His reason was more just a justification of the vote, than an atttempt to convince others. Again, when asked in the thread:


He still refuses to fight for himself.

We know from mafia xxxv where he got LSB lynched, that annul can be convincing and lead a lynch. In this game he doesn’t even try, despite having access to a team of scumbuddies who can help his arguments or give his bandwagon weight. Here he doesn’t even try until asked to in the thread. He doesn’t role claim despite being asked to. He really only puts up a vote on a possible counter-bandwagon an hour before lynch time, and he doesn’t try to push the case.

Yet he flips mafia. Mafia day 1 lynches are extremely rare, and games are balanced around town missing day 1 lynch. I haven’t seen it in any of my other games on TL. Yet we got one, where a majority of the votes was hardly because they thought he was red. The push for him was weak, and could have been easily diverted to a player like Gryffindor or icemac. If those 2 aren’t red, then annul was a bus.


3) As pointed out under 1), there was already a lot of suspicion against annul by the time LSB entered the scene. Yet LSB takes the full credit for the lynch:



No credit to the players I mentioned under 1). Deconduo was the first to cast his vote, yet he doesn’t try to use it to prove his alignment to town. LSB on the other hand has no issue with drawing medic protection to himself alone. He initially offers it to Foolishness, who didn’t even have a vote on annul by the time he died, but quickly changes his mind. All LSB cares about is himself.

This is pure anti town behavior. Medic protection is just as much the threat of a player being protected, as it is the actual protection. Beceause medics actually rarely saves a hit, it's the mentioning of the possibility that is the real strength, it makes scum target others.


The day 1 pattern fits exactly step 1, 2 and 3 above. There is suspicion against a mafia player A when mafia player B enters the scene. Mafia player B pushes the lynch, and when mafia player A flips, player B tries to take full credit for the kill, not recognising other players initiated the lynch and uses the town cred to his advantage.


Question is, is this too obvious? Would LSB really follow the most obvious signs of a bussing mafia player?

First of all you have to remember LSB and annul have a history. When LSB enters the scene, annul has already gotten suspicion on him. It would be suspicious by itself, if LSB didn’t try to push annul. So say LSB and annul are on a team together, what do they do? They know they can’t suddenly appear to be friends. Since annul is already suspicious, why not make the best of it?

Secondly LSB does not shy away from playing obvious when anti town:
HPmafia: LSB runs for mayor day 1, despite being asked by his team not to. As a result, Dr.H calls for a mafia bus on him (LSB was snape in this game, so we suspected he might betray us). Day 1 proceeds to have the whole scumteam accuse LSB, yet he manages to get RoL to trust him, and gets the lynch diverted. He also fishes out RoL’s veteran role, so on night 1 mafia stack hits on RoL to take him out. By day 2 it was blatantly obvious that LSB wasn't town alligned.

Diplomacy MiniMafia: In Qatol’s words:

PYP3 (LSB was SK): LSB pushes a plan that is centered around confirming blue roles, giving SK all the information he could wish for to blue snipe.

Busing his team mate to grant himself a town leader position, and direct medic protection on to himself only, is entirely the kind of power play LSB is known for.

Part 2 and 3 coming up.

On February 27 2011 19:04 Barundar wrote:
Part 2: LSB’s bad logic and scumslips

First of all, it’s difficult to pinpoint that exact moment in time, or post by annul, that convinces LSB that annul is mafia. In his first post:

He is keeping annul’s play style in mind, so he is suspicious of him.


In the next post LSB sound like he has already sorted annul as a lynch! Nothing happened between this post and the previous that should have raised his suspicion. But now it sounds like the lynch is already planned.


While discussing with annul this post comes up. He is bad for town, but not necessarily mafia.


His reason for voting. Doesn’t say annul is mafia. Note what a shit reason is, when was the last time you heard of someone who got persuaded to be modkilled? When LunarDestiny offered to get modkilled in mafia xxxvi, several mafia veterans felt the need to shout foul play in thread.


Still isn’t mafia.


Woops! Now not only is annul now mafia, he is also flipping red.
Between the last posts annul hasn’t posted, there has been no new evidence. There is no smoking gun. Yet now annul is suddenly red. What’s even more interesting is this isn’t even brought up while talking about annul, it slips out when he is trying to connect others to annul.

Now most people who has played mafia a few times will agree that there is no such thing as a proof of alignment, without either mod interference (like bumatlarge in mafia xxxvi) or stuff like DT checks after Godfather is dead. Even then a miller can mislead. In the end, the only sure thing is just a convincing analysis. For town there is always the possibility of being wrong. This result in a sliding indicator of suspicion against a player, that can get stronger or weaker depending on actions and arguments. Thus a vote for a townie is more a case of suspicion vs suspicion, where the guy with the highest amount of suspicion from the majority of the player gets voted off.

LSB doesn’t go through a process of higher or lower suspicion. There is an obvious inconsistency between lynching annul for being obstructive to the town, to suddenly know he is red. This is not the only time LSB foregoes the suspicion state. For a lynch on Jackal, LSB demands “proof”:

LSB is experienced enough to know there is no such thing as certainty, especially not on day 1. He dismisses the arguments I brought forward regarding Jackal, and while my arguments might be wrong, they should still raise suspicion. You can argue against the argument’s and disagree with the conclusions, but you can never get proof, since only mafia knows who’s red and who’s town.

LSB doesn’t need convincing of Foolishness either:

This argument has no behaviour support at this point in the game. It’s an arbitrary reason for placing trust in someone, and it lacks that distrust of others that is indicative of town behaviour.


In part 1 I mentioned that a bunch of townies was already suspicious of annul before LSB enters the scene. They tried to reason with annul, and they asked him to explain his actions, also known as scumhunting. LSB is not actually concerned with scumhunting. He instead tries to find connections to other players:




LSB doesn’t actually start scumhunting and asking questions before close to the deadline. In between his suspicious way of reaching the conclusion that annul was scum, he has a fight with annul, but not even here does he asks for explanations, or for better reasons. For him, it’s more important to find others to go after once annul flips red, than to actually get convinced of annul's allignment.

On February 27 2011 19:08 Barundar wrote:
Part 3: My response to his OMGUS


I posted my analysis before you entered the picture, and before annul came back to spew nonsense. I doubt mafia was pressured at that point. They would be now though! How silly of them to initiate a fight with the guy who made sure he got the most town cred from yesterdays lynch.


It’s day 1, there is limited information to pick from. Didn’t stop you from providing “proof” of annul of course. What’s interesting is you didn’t find Jackal’s post scummy at all. Other people did, and Darmousseh found it reasoned enough to vote for it. I still don’t know if Jackal is town or not, but you seem to do.

Only mafia know’s whos innocent and whos guilty. The rest of us only have our arguments and assumptions.


Nope, it’s an argument. I invoked past analysis on Jackal’s behaviour in my case against him. I might have be wrong, or I might have been right. Point is even the best analysis and most obvious reasons can be wrong. Your denial of this fact as a mafia vet is laughable.

Lol yeah of course I used analysis in my analysis of Jackal. Now you are really trying hard.


There is no contradiction. My argument was 1) of the 2 above, Jackal was posting unlike his past games. When he started posting more like he normally did my suspicion dropped a bit. Sadly that’s how suspicion works for us townies.

Now let me show you a contradiction: if Jackal is such an awesome scumhunter, why don’t you place him as such on your list? You place him as an easy bus, yet I can’t recall jackal actually being lynched except as mafia. On the one hand you argue Jackal is a great scumhunter, on the other you argue he is an easy bus. So which one is it?


I completely agree. See this post.


You feel the need to green claim? Second time you claim townie. And wtf is up with you constantly sucking up to Foolishness, you scared of him?

On February 27 2011 04:26 LSB wrote:
There are three goals for night kills
1) Take out good players
2) Take out blues
3) Take out active players.

Generally TL mafia shoots down all active players until the town kills itself with inactivity.

Now, we can devide the people into 4 groups

Btw, I define bus as mafia started lynch.

Priority 1: Automatic night 1 snipes if possible
These players are proven scumhunters
LSB
Foolishness

Priority 2: Active vets
These player have quiet a few games under their belt and are pretty active
Barundar
CubEdIn
darmousseh
GMarshal
Beneather
seRapH
kitaman27
Mr. Wiggles
chaoser
LunarDestiny
deconduo
why

Priority 3: Kill if you think they are blue
These players are generally inactive, or easily to bus
Coagulation
Jackal58
Kenpachi
annul
gryffindor
ohN

Uncatagorized: Newish people, sort them into the three groups as they start playing
icemac
OriginalName
JBright
astroorion
Gofarman
MaxwellE
Conversion
kevconsim
ICanFlyLow
Ser Aspi
LastArgument

---

Please note, this isn't really indicative of skill. Someone like Jackal58 who is good at finding scum is increadibly easy to bus. On the other hand, people like DocH and Pandain (they aren't playing) are active, but aren't really good at finding scum.

And this is all subjective some names I don't recognize, and I made it off of what I remember. Especially Priority 1

On February 27 2011 04:32 LSB wrote:
How to use the list
Firstly, the list should sort of establish a minimum threshold for a lynch. Basically if we are going to lynch a priority 1 person, the analysis must be far better than a priority 3 person, because if we're wrong, that would be far worse for the town.

Secondly, we have to keep a watch of Priority 2 people. These people will start dropping like flies at night. At the same time there probably is 2-3 mafia in the list. This list may prove useful in the latter stages of the game, where there are lots of dead people.
If Beneather and Barundar are the only ones left in Priority 2, and everyone else is a dead townie their, we can be 90% sure they are mafia.

So this will be the Priority 2 watchlist. It won't be useful now, but day 4/5 it will be very useful as a place to start looking for scum

Barundar
CubEdIn
GMarshal
Beneather
seRapH
chaoser
LunarDestiny
deconduo
why

---

"But LSB", you ask, "does this work?"
Yes!
Look at Pokemafia. Infun is a priority 1 player. It was interesting how he didn't die. Well, that was because he was mafia.

In addition, by publishing this list, mafia will probably be more warey of killing people who are priority two. It also gives an incentive for newer players to post lots, so they will get into priority two.

If people have any suggestions for changes to the list, just post/pm me.