Himelander Mafia Thread (Over! Scum Win!)

[MissCiato]

I'll restate what was looked over in favor of a poorly stated observation. Pesco is playing entirely suicidal here. Any reason why doesn't sit well with me. The fact it is being receptively taken so easily sits worse with me.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here; do you think he is playing suicidally for a specific reason? I think that K4U is right in that aggressiveness plays positively for the scum. On the other hand, I don't feel like he's played like he is particularly interested in winning the duel.

I'm not actually sure what to interpret from this statement at all; I can't tell if you are trying to defend or condemn Pesco.

 :* I like this face.

[Kilgamayan]

So wallwallwall seems to be a bunch of chaff. As expected.

I find myself liking Kefit's and Alex's posts. Shocker of the century there, I know. I fully support the letting-town-decide-who-challenges-who plan Alex proposed.

I realize I misread what Tom said in his Pesco vote post earlier. Probably because I was in a rush. I understand his vote now.

My vote stays on Bardiche, he has done nothing to make himself look worse (though not for lack of :words:!) and Pesco has done nothing to make himself look better.

Not sure I'm feeling forcing UK to the gallows tomorrow, though. :ukwords: is standard TownUK fare.

[Kilgamayan]

In before Alice and Kiro.

[Pesco]

Guys, the game is broken. Confirm without a doubt a townie and have them steamroll ALL matches.

I'm feeling it safe to call Rou dumbasstown now. You guys can get my flip to confirm this isn't any namedrop.

To address the point about getting a vote on challenges, it's physically impossible to do. 3 people haven't chimed in yet and that's ignoring time zones. The majority of the players are in USA, you guys get to make the call without me or Tom getting a word in. Rou is GMT but he willingly screws up his sleep to mash F5 here anyway. 24 hours just isn't enough time for meaningful discussion to produce a challenge enough people agree on.

Early on circa page 2/3 the people theorycrafting said do whatever you think is right. I think issuing the quick challenge was the way. No RVS plodding just going straight into the necessary business. The only thing that matters to the combatants is what each other will flip. The rest of you should be identifying a town rep to break the game.

[?lice Bl?ckb?rn]

Been busy, argh, how do you people manage to post so much in so little time? Just catching up right now, but I do have to say that I strongly support Alex's idea at this point, simply because it makes it much harder for a Scum to pick a preferential challenge (while simultaneously giving us more tells to work with from both the pseudo-voting phase AND the voting phase on the challenge itsself).

ninja by Kilga: Good call (sadly though I'm not failing at Yukari )

[Kiro]

Serp: Just to clarify, pairing people up at the start in some fashion prevents Scum from choosing/controlling who they duel. In retrospect, that is a bad idea because it treats each duel as independent when they actually aren't (previous voting records come into play). Also, I realize now it'd be difficult to coordinate a generally agreed upon way of pairing people up because Scum can reasonably vote bloc for a method that prevents Scum v Scum duels. And I don't think the forums are equipped with a dice mod Carthrat could roll or something like that. On the other hand, it resorts back to people initiating challenges at will and Scum could take advantage of that and initiate to get kills. Having general approval for who duels who could work as mentioned by Alex, but it plays into a number's game and you're going to hand Scum some victories because invariably, they will get paired up with a Townie that must be killed off. I'm of the mind that you have to make Scum work for their duel wins rather than hand it to them on a silver platter.

As for Pesco v Bardiche: If Pesco is Scum, he'd have challenged Bardiche quickly and knowing Bardiche is Town, try to secure an early victory banking on the WIFOM that Scum wouldn't be so aggressive at the start to gain support. Bardiche being Scum on the other hand, relies on pure dumb luck that a Town Pesco chose a Scum on the FPMH. With that to go on and no precedent days to work off of, I'd rather take my chances and kill off the aggressor in control rather than the inopportune victim. Consider my vote for Bardiche to survive which I'll hold until everyone gets a word in.

Kilga: I'd hide my online status if it really mattered, but meh.

[Carthrat]

DAY 1 CHALLENGE: Pesco vs. Bardiche

Vote Count
Bardiche (7) - Bardiche, Kilgamayan, Ranmilia, El Cideon, Kefit, Roukanken, Kitten4U
Pesco (4) - UncertainKitten, Serpentarius, Pesco, Tom

It takes 9 votes to secure a win.  Remember that you are voting for who you want to -win- the duel.

You have about 35.5 hours remaining.

Rules clarification/patch: In the event that scum outnumber town, it will be assumed that scum automatically clean up the remaining townie heads and add them to their win total. This was sorta implied in the rules but not explicitly stated and there may be confusion with the 'games ends when someone wins' note, apologies.

[Jam-Kiske]

Jeez guys. Posts between just 2 people nitpicking each other's posts get irritating.

Anyway, I'm probably going to wait for Pesco to say something that seems substantial before voting because Bard is so close to winning. I'm leaning towards also voting Bard though because Pesco deciding to just challenge right away and use the fact that his gut is usually right as reasoning seems to go with the idea that scum should try to challenge without drawing attention to themselves. Thus, it seems fairly scummy. That, and he hasn't really said anything worth mentioning yet...

[Pesco]

With the rules patch, we'd have to hit some scum with the steamroll. It doesn't change the fact that once a player is confirmed, the game is set.

You guys are too afraid of listening to instincts. Learn to use the rest of your senses other than just your eyes.

[El Cideon]

Guys, the game is broken. Confirm without a doubt a townie and have them steamroll ALL matches.

Bolding added for emphasis. Sure, that works in theory, but how do you plan to actually do it?

[FinnKaenbyou]

Early on circa page 2/3 the people theorycrafting said do whatever you think is right. I think issuing the quick challenge was the way. No RVS plodding just going straight into the necessary business. The only thing that matters to the combatants is what each other will flip. The rest of you should be identifying a town rep to break the game.

Except that there is no way to confirm Town in this game. If there were, it'd be completely broken because that one player would just wipe everyone in showdowns.

Seriously, you're still making no effort to actually accuse Bardiche beyond pretty much gut. He was running on people agreeing with the FPMH meta, and it fell through so he's given up. I call the 7 for 7 fallacy.

You guys are too afraid of listening to instincts. Learn to use the rest of your senses other than just your eyes.

Well I'm using my nose right now, and this post smells of utter crap.

[Chaore]

On the other hand, I don't feel like he's played like he is particularly interested in winning the duel.

This is pretty much what I'm trying to say. Poor reasoning is a meta staple, and he was mostly absent but... He seems pretty damn calm with the idea that he is getting lynched so far. Don't like it.

I'm neither condemning or defending, just making an observation. Suicidal play is, despite how it often goes here, never a good reason for either of those.

I'm going to be out for the day, but I will say Pesco's reactions are unfortunately, what I expected. Nothing good.

[Pesco]

Bolding added for emphasis. Sure, that works in theory, but how do you plan to actually do it?

Can't see what you bolded while I'm phone posting. I assume it's identifying a town champion. I've nom'd Rou because his retarded posting is easy to read. The rest is up to you guys to do right.

Rou: Do you not understand my words when I said how to break the game? Use whatever method you want to find your confirmed and then town wins. It's not like we didn't know the game was imbalanced from the beginning.

What fallacy? I think Bard is scum, FPMH is my justification. Sure you don't like it but if my car runs on frying oil, don't expect me to fill up with unleaded just because everyone else does.

[Pesco]

All you people that have agreed with Alex's idea: Where is the discussion? Real pro town of you guys being all quiet. And you expect consensus within 24 hours?

[?lice Bl?ckb?rn]

Fuck, I never should have joined a game where playing the setup is not only encouraged, but necessary. Argh. Damn me and my mafia addiction. Anyway! Just finished reading these past couple pages (for which the content/WoT claims are vastly exaggerated; most of it's just a Bard/UK spat which actually is fairly pointless and seems to revolve around extremely minor playstyle issues more than anything else), and after deciding to translate Smooth Criminal into (Standard) Hymmnos, time to finally post.

Moreover, you suggested that scum would avoid this, which isn't necessarily true, but the argument for that leads into WIFOM.

It does not take a degree in Astrophysics to realise that Scum principally do not want to off themselves in a game wherein having large numbers of Scum alive is even more important and  useful than normal.

I fully agree with Kefit's setup analysis in #91. That being said, I don't think that this inheritly makes Pesco Scummy: both because doing such a rash movie is something stupid for a Scum to do D1 - this is the worst possible time for a Scum to attract any form of negative attention to himself, and also because it's Pesco and Pesco never makes any fucking sense at all.

@Bard: If Knox ever saw how Pesco operated he'd probably lynch him in real life for gross violation of all of his principles.

@Roukan: except why would you assume that Scum!Pesco_{thisgame} is even LESS contributory than the typical Town!Pesco, which by Pesco-meta is far LESS contributory than the typical Scum!Pesco.

As a result, I consider anyone that thinks that challenging people without discussing it and getting everyone's approval is more likely to be scum.  So Pesco loses points right off the bat.

Then he also says some things that makes me think he doesn't actually expect Bard to flip scum (that one post that says that even if he flips town it's all good comes to mind).  I'm not liking some people voting for Pesco either (Chaos, EvilTom and UK stick out).

Bard himself wasn't real impressive at first, but I feel like he's gotten better.  I didn't like his overly defensive nature, but he's gotten better about that since he started attacking UK.  So yeah.

Translation: Pesco's bad and there are things pointing to him being Scum and simultaneously I don't like the people voting for him oh Bard is kind of crappy as well and he's kind of overdefensive but he's improved about that so let's vote Bard.

Now, who in these 3 paragraphs do you not find scummy? This is surprisingly bad reasoning from you, but I'm willing to attribute this to the flu. For now. Want to see improvements soon.

...actually, this looks really terrible, like, hasty wagon jump terrible. You are definetly someone to keep a careful eye on D2.

He seems pretty damn calm with the idea that he is getting lynched so far. Don't like it.

Think for a bit. It is good for Scum in some situations to lose Townies due to Town vs. Town matches, but it is never good for Scum to lose one of their own due to either a Town vs. Scum *or* a Scum vs. Scum match. So one of 3 things are true: Pesco's Scum together with Bard and he's trying to trade his life off to "confirm" Bardiche, Pesco's Scum and Bardiche is just some random mark that he's hoping to off today as Scum's first kill, or he's Town. The first option can basically be discounted at this point as being implausible thanks to Roukan's suggestion in #33: A Scum-Pesco would be dead by the end of D2 even if Bard wound up being the D1 lynch. If both Pesco and Bard are Scum, this is strictly terrible for the Scumteam. Now, even if Pesco is Scum and Bard is Town, he'd want Bard to be the one lynched D1...not himself. Bard's posts so far aren't great, and he's said enough to unnerve me over them, and apparently several other people. So why attract horrid amounts of attention onto yourself and get yourself lynched at a time when you dying is strictly bad for Scum as opposed to a time when it comes with the tradeoff of a single Townie kill? It just doesn't make any damn sense at all. Overall, his playstyle strongly supports Town-Pesco, despite it being absolutely hateful.

I'm leaning towards also voting Bard though because Pesco deciding to just challenge right away and use the fact that his gut is usually right as reasoning seems to go with the idea that scum should try to challenge without drawing attention to themselves.

This sentence contradicts itsself. Please restate/fix your reasoning or re-think your case, thanks.

@El Cid: either there exists a sane mod-confirmed cop in this setup combined with enough confidence that he did not hit a GF or frame-bait, in which case this game breaks, or there isn't, in which case there is precisely no way to *confirm* someone as Town. Yes, I do not think that word means what you think it means here - without some form of rolemagic saying LOL YASE THIS GUY IZ TOTLLI LEGIT!!1!11!1!1111111!!!!!!!1!11!!!1!!!1111oneone!11!111!!!111!!!111!!!11!!!!!!! you are always, at some level, left guessing as to your ""confirmed"" Town's alignment. And there are several people in this game who are capable of playing excellent Scum games and appearing perfectly Townie. Which is why this idea, while gamebreaking if it were possible, really is not possible. Even a Sane Cop isn't terrible - we have no reasoning as to why the person he hit couldn't have been a GF, or someone who got Lawyer'd at the right time in-game.

@Pesco: I presume there is a lack of discussion because SirAlex posted his idea just a little over 12 hours ago, and it's during a time when a sizeable chunk of the playerbase (which lives in North America) would be asleep. Also, there's the issue of today's match already having been decided, thanks to you, which makes the specific thing Alex mentioned in post#144 completely irrelevant for this day phase. That being said, I do support actual discussion today, which has been somewhat lacking, beyond a fairly pointless Bard/UK spat that took up most of pages#4 and #5. Sigh.

Currently not sure what to think. I'm fairly confident that Pesco's Town by the above analysis, but at the same time I'm not finding Bard overly Scummy. Will need to think about it for a bit before voting, especially with wagon numbers being what they are at the moment.

[Kiro]

Pesco: What Alex had suggested seems to be the best way to go for early to midgame. You create matchups (now presumably between 2 scummy people rather than 2 Townie people due to Carth's clarification) and hope a Scum dies without having gotten a duel win. The problem I forsee is that in the endgame, you're going to run into some situations where you might give Scum an automatic victory just to eliminate a suspicious person who's already had 1 victory. Endgame probably has to play it like normal mafia way with people directly challenging who they think is Scum.

On the other hand, you advocating a designated Townie to win all matches is an extreme gamble. Choose wisely and you force Scum to react adversely to discredit this person or something like that. Choose poorly and you pretty much will give Scum the game short of eliminating all of them once you realize a mistake's been made. But the advantage I see with this strategy at the moment is that there are more Townies than Scum right now so just based on probability, you'll more likely pick a Townie. Pesco's nomination of Rou is interesting just because Pesco is tsundere for Rou I've seen him right about Rou most of the time. Rou's posts do look consistent with that of his Townie play hanging onto little bits of a conversation and trying to make something out of it. If Pesco flips Town, it may not be that bad of a gamble.

Given the recent development, it does seem we'll probably have to put faith in a few people anyways. Get scum to react and that may actually better prove the towniness of a candidate. I think it's an idea that could be worth pursuing and it does make Pesco look more pro-town than before. The tradeoff though is that he'd still need to die to confirm there's no Scum bias in his picking Rou. And even if Pesco flips Town, people would still have to agree to take that chance with Rou. That throws my vote choice up in the air because I would have to make a judgement call on the chances of Bardiche being Scum so as to prevent them getting a head start. I probably won't be back for around 24 hours, but if pressed for time, I'll probably still vote for Bardiche's survival.

Cut by Alice: It's not really the part about someone being "100% confirmed" but rather offering up a candidate and see if there's any nervous reaction or weak attempt to discredit said person. That gets discussion going and may give us new angles to pick out Scum amongst us all without necessarily giving the candidate a need to take multiple challenges right away. Also want you to state who you would vote for sometime before the Day ends just to have it on record.

[Pesco]

Sleep is not an excuse coming from you, Alice. :V

Kiro: Indeed sacrificing myself to confirm my read on Rou might give scum a head start. But from me knowing myself to be town, I would obviously suggest that you lynch Bard and then have Rou kill me the next day. Town vs Town is not that much of a loss and we might get to nail ScumBard in this process.

[Kitten4u]

Translation: Pesco's bad and there are things pointing to him being Scum and simultaneously I don't like the people voting for him oh Bard is kind of crappy as well and he's kind of overdefensive but he's improved about that so let's vote Bard.

Now, who in these 3 paragraphs do you not find scummy? This is surprisingly bad reasoning from you, but I'm willing to attribute this to the flu. For now. Want to see improvements soon.

Uh the people I didn't mention?  Maybe it's just the way I worded things, but I don't understand what you're disliking there.  Pesco is scummy because he attacked before everyone had posted and before we had a chance to discuss stuff.  I like Alex's plan (which while I didn't explicitly state that in my last post I thought was obvious anyway) so naturally I dislike what Pesco did.  I think scum is more likely to jump on a random townie quickly because they cannot just sit back and watch this game.  If they simply let townies kill each other they will lose.  I also get the vibe that he does not expect Bard to flip scum.  I cited that one post that said that even if Bard flipped town it wasn't that big a deal because it stuck out to me.  This points to him being scum because scum wants to challenge random townies and win.  Sure it's risky for him to do it like that, but it's Pesco.  Banking on WIFOM and meta doesn't seem totally unlikely to me.

I'm not sure how that wasn't clear in my last post, but there you go.

As for the other people, I just thought some of their reasoning was kind of lame.  Town do want to win their duels becuase it prevents scum from winning if it's scum vs town (obviously in town vs town it doesn't matter as much, but townies won't know who scum is).  Chaos trying to spin that and a couple of other perfectly fine statements doesn't sit well with me. 

As much as I wish it was, posting WoT is not a scumtell and Tom using it as an actual (and like the only one) to vote for someone doesn't sit well with me.

With UK I'll just say that I agree with Rou because this post is too long already.

In the case of Bard I don't find him all that scummy anymore, but I wasn't real impressed with his early posts.  They seemed reportery and defensive.  Since he's gone on the offensive and has provided what I consider a satisfactory defense (in most places, I'll admit that he does nitpick sometimes, but I think he's said enough good things to outweigh the bad) I really don't think he looks bad anymore.  Especially since his early behavior can be explained with him going WTF at Pesco.  Combined with the way Pesco (who I think is scum) attacked him I think Bard is likely town.

---

As for Pesco's plan...I can't deny that the reasoning behind it is good, but I'm not comfortable going along with something coming from someone I think is scum.  I like Alex's plan better atm.

[?lice Bl?ckb?rn]

Oh wow. I just realised that you vote for the person you want to live, and not the person you want lynched, in this game (which, as multiple people have mentioned so far, is totally bass-ackwards and needlessly different from every other instance of mafia ever (Rat can we please change this starting D2? Please?)), which makes K4U#146 look a lot less bad now.

@Pesco: not my excuse personally, but the excuse I used for p. much everyone else in North America, really.

[Pesco]

What's your excuse for the people that ARE awake in North America now?

[El Cideon]

@El Cid: either there exists a sane mod-confirmed cop in this setup combined with enough confidence that he did not hit a GF or frame-bait, in which case this game breaks, or there isn't, in which case there is precisely no way to *confirm* someone as Town. Yes, I do not think that word means what you think it means here - without some form of rolemagic saying LOL YASE THIS GUY IZ TOTLLI LEGIT!!1!11!1!1111111!!!!!!!1!11!!!1!!!1111oneone!11!111!!!111!!!111!!!11!!!!!!! you are always, at some level, left guessing as to your ""confirmed"" Town's alignment. And there are several people in this game who are capable of playing excellent Scum games and appearing perfectly Townie. Which is why this idea, while gamebreaking if it were possible, really is not possible. Even a Sane Cop isn't terrible - we have no reasoning as to why the person he hit couldn't have been a GF, or someone who got Lawyer'd at the right time in-game.

The skepticism above is pretty much why I questioned Pesco on the matter, yes. Such a plan would be a risk even with cop claims. Pesco's suggestion of Rou as "confirmed townie" here also isn't convincing me because I'm not entirely clear on the reason for picking him. "Retarded posting/easy to read." I'm guessing there's metagaming at work which means nothing to me because I don't know most of you and I'm seriously not taking the time to read previous games in full to get caught up on it when I don't put much stock in metagaming anyway. If it's particular errors Rou has made that lead to Pesco's impression of his towniness, well, I have to note that scum are just as capable of screwing up as townies are, but if you want to give me specific examples of things he's done this game to support your idea then that's a much better way to convince me than saying "I'm sure he's town because I know him from other games."

[FinnKaenbyou]

Use whatever method you want to find your confirmed and then town wins.

LIKE WHAT? META READS DO NOT GIVE CONFIRMATION.

except why would you assume that Scum!Pesco_{thisgame} is even LESS contributory than the typical Town!Pesco, which by Pesco-meta is far LESS contributory than the typical Scum!Pesco.

It's his Town meta, but overblown. He's trying to manipulate his own reads.

And sweet mercy why are there still more WoTs seriously. T_T

[El Cideon]

As for Alex's plan, I'd say it's an acceptable experiment, at least for the immediate future. Scumbloc strongarming in challenges they want is not terribly likely early on, but much moreso if town numbers dwindle later in the game. We can reassess things after a couple days if there's reason to believe it's not working.

[Pesco]

I'm calling Rou Town because I know him personally.

When I know something of you personally, I WILL use it for an advantage. That is all.

[Kilgamayan]

You do realize there's more to Mafia than convincing yourself you're right, right?

[Chaore]

As for the other people, I just thought some of their reasoning was kind of lame.  Town do want to win their duels becuase it prevents scum from winning if it's scum vs town (obviously in town vs town it doesn't matter as much, but townies won't know who scum is).  Chaos trying to spin that and a couple of other perfectly fine statements doesn't sit well with me. 

The fact he said that is more of what I wanted to know than the FACT he said that. Read, K4U, I know you can do that VERY VERY well. I am not disagreeing with 'Don't die is a rule in mafia'.

I'm disagreeing with how it was phrased. 'Win duels' is not the same as 'Don't lose duels'. Why does he say specifically WIN? Its the exact wording that makes a difference.

However, I'm just about to say Bardiche is fairly poor at wordplay in exactly that aspect. I'm half expecting a double town here. This is pretty much the only damning point I found, and he does have a half-excuse for it.

Still not convinced against Pesco either. Alice says what I was trying to rather nicely, suicidal play is NOT very scummy. Scum is more likely to make their shots precise.

I still however, have a very bad feeling there is a reason behind such play that will be a nasty surprise. I'm not thinking vanilla here, Alice. THAT is why I don't like it too much.

[?lice Bl?ckb?rn]

I'm disagreeing with how it was phrased. 'Win duels' is not the same as 'Don't lose duels'. Why does he say specifically WIN? Its the exact wording that makes a difference.

This is just nitpicking and playing absolutely idiotic Gotcha Games(TM). This is not Scumhunting. It does not catch Scum. On the contrary, it does a decent job sometimes at giving the illusion of someone doing actual Scumhunting, and when I've seen someone use it, they were overwhelmingly Scum.

Also, what possible sort of role could a non-vanilla Town Pesco do in a Town vs. Town duel that would be amazingly terrible? Seriously, enlighten me on this, I'm curious.

[EvilTom]

@Kitten4u: Who ever said I was using WoT as a scumtell? Established scumtells won't work in this game, as has been pointed out numerous times. I voted based on WoT because it gave me a headache.
We're probably not going to catch scum based on scumtells or scummy play or what not. We will need to look for patterns in the records. I'm also wary of those pointing out strategies to break the game; scum might know something about the setup which we don't.
Also sorry for inactivity, I was at a wedding for most of yesterday/last night. Haven't really had time to follow the game properly.

[Chaore]

Also, what possible sort of role could a non-vanilla Town Pesco do in a Town vs. Town duel that would be amazingly terrible? Seriously, enlighten me on this, I'm curious.

For one, it could be a role completely out of left field. We've already got a new set up, so obviously more than a FEW roles could have a nasty change or replacement to fit with the new system. This game runs differently, if every role works the same way I'd be outright shocked. We have really no absolutes on what roles are like this time around, Alice. Someone playing Suicidal does not seem like it will have absolutely beneficial effects.

I can be completely and utterly wrong and carth just used a few non-killers, I'm just saying something reeks about this. I can not simply say 'Oh Pesco gets himself killed, Sure, Sure, Just a dumb townie move' and leave it at that. Apologies if I -should-.

[Carthrat]

DAY 1 CHALLENGE: Pesco vs. Bardiche

Vote Count
Bardiche (7) - Bardiche, Kilgamayan, Ranmilia, El Cideon, Kefit, Roukanken, Kitten4U
Pesco (4) - UncertainKitten, Serpentarius, Pesco, Tom

It takes 9 votes to secure a win.  Remember that you are voting for who you want to -win- the duel.

You have about 17.5 hours remaining.