Simpsons Mafia GAME OVER - TOWN WIN

[SnowFire]

Responses:

Sir Alex (Actually, also Bardiche, since he mentioned me being useless, and AndrewRogue): Seems like our posts were seconds apart, but all I can say is repeat that I was at work the whole day.  I went to bed somewhat early last night when only EvilTom's post still existed after mine, then got up to see a whole huge flood of posts in the morning.  And, well, I do need to get to work, which is why it was only a statusy-type update and not a longer analysis.  This schedule isn't going to change anytime soon.  (The one exception might be times I go home for lunch, but that isn't overly common.  Check my previous posting patterns at the DL if you must - I certainly never go here from work.)

Remember, there was basically very little to go on early last night, and it was still the prod-people into responding phase to get things moving (which I did my piece on).  This morning I had little time.

Bardiche, neo response: Why do I want to say my piece?  Because you demanded me to, and as a good townie I want to help lynch the right people?

Yikes, checking replies, seeing they're flying past.  Okay, personal defense in this post, thoughts on our targets in the next.

[Xanth]

So yes, let's just remember me for my grand sacrifice that at least didn't immediately doom the cop. Not much I think I can say to help for later days.

Only thing I'll leave behind is that I'm a little annoyed at how I'm getting hit for metagaming when it's been thrown at me far harder than I've given out. But don't dwell on that any further, seeing as it's already taken out most of half a day.

Excal: given this position, it looks best to town for me that I suck it up here and let it go on, rather than waste another day with people attacking me again. Dying's a bitch, but given it being sudden death and all let's just minimise the damage.

Tom: best wishes and no hard feelings if you are town (well done if you're not), but please keep this in mind when you frame cases later in this game.

[Ranmilia]

Xanth, quick rundown on who you think is scummy and why while we're waiting?

[SnowFire]

Another cut myself short and post deal.  Seeing Xanth's post...  That's very...  noble of Xanth.  From the tone, he actually sounds town.  Is there anyway to change the train to someone non-Meeple, non-Xanth quickly?  I'm buying Xanth's towniness (Though maybe I'm falling for WIFOM too much, since I was accused of it earlier...)

[SnowFire]

Checking, the answers are either me (1 vote) and EvilTom (1 vote).  Well, I'm obviously town.  So... 

## VOTE EvilTom

Doing many posts due to the possibility of somebody hammering, so apologies to those reading the stream of consciousness.

[Xanth]

Alex: working on it now. Was going to post it, but was then ninja'd by Snowfire:

Snowfire: it's sudden death. You unfortunately may only vote for Meeple or Xanth to break the deadlock. If I thought I could get it on to someone else I wouldn't have accepted my death so completely.

[Ranmilia]

There are only 3 moveable votes, so that isn't going to work.  Gonna have to be (Meeple or ) Xanth unfortunately.

[SnowFire]

I was hoping that said one-hour extension would be granted, which would mean we aren't sudden death.  Though I guess that would retroactively mess things up.

[Carthrat]

We are not actually in sudden death because I've had a vote on meeple since page 2, shoving him one ahead of Xanth.

Should this, in fact, be a mistake of some kind which can still be compensated for, I would ##Unvote, ##Vote: Xanth due to copclaim.

[Excal]

And a quick check says Rat's right.

Well, whatever else happens, it's a rules call for Soppy, and a Hammer either way.

So, stop talking!

[Hunter Sopko]

Sonova bitch. No posting votes in the middle like that, Rat. My bad for not catching it.

HAMMER, STOP TALKING

[Hunter Sopko]

Times weren't great for Chief Wiggum after the Stonecutters. In fact, there were times he needed to sell most of his gun just to feed his family. When the Stonecutters were around, that kinda thing never happened. So when the new Stonecutters showed their faces, he couldn't help but join.

Obviously, is Wiggum was a better cop, he'd know that he doesn't fit the profile of one who could keep a secret very long. With the town aghast at the latest crimewave, they became increasingly fed up with the performance of said Wiggum.

Like many things in Springfield. This is punishable by catapault.

And much like Zombie Flanders, they had no idea that he was a Stonecutter until after he was launched when they broke into the police HQ and discovered, among other things, a copy of the most hallowed and sacred parchment.


Meeple (5): Cid, Bard, Andy, Cid, Delta, Rat
Eviltom (1): Bard, Xanth
Carthrat (0): EvilTom, Alex, Snowfire
Snowfire (1): Xanth, Alex
El Cid (0): Meeple, Excal
Xanth (4): Ryogo, Excal, EvilTom, Meeple
AndrewRogue (0): Strago, Cid
Delta (0): Andrew, Meeple
Bardiche (0): SnowFire

Meeplelard, AKA Chief Clancy Wiggum, SCUM ROLECOP, was lynched!

It is now Night One! Send in night actions!

[Hunter Sopko]

The Stonecutters knew Dr. Hibbert had one habit that could always be counted on. His weekly attendence of the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They had to strike a blow for poor Wiggum, so they lay in wait for him at the Aztec. The recent crimewave made things relatively easy for them, as he was the only one in attendence. When the townspeople found him the next day, hung from the marquee still in his Dr. Frankenfurter costume, it taught them all a valuable lesson.

No amount of chuckling will save you from dying an embarassing death in lingerie.

Bardiche AKA Dr. Julius Hibbert, VANILLA TOWN, was killed overnight!

Day Two begins now! Voting ends in 48 hours.

With 11 alive, it takes 6 to lynch.

[SnowFire]

Well.  On one hand, we lynched scum!  Yay!  On the other hand it was an unpleasant surprise to get home and see we were already in sudden death.  And I got to look like a suspicious lurker due to returning to find that my requested short extension had kind of gone nowhere.  Of course we might have accidentally lynched Xanth had the extension been granted (and Meeple had given his amusingly sorta true copclaim at the same time), so whatever, what's done is done.  For future reference: Weekdays from 8:45-5:45 or so are generally out, and it's not uncommon to get home later than that.  And while I'm fine with checking up on Mafia in the mornings, I'm not setting my alarm earlier for the sake of the game, and when it's time to go to work I'm going even if my post isn't as long as I'd like.  Real life and all that.

So, as a general game maintenance item, can we please avoid expiration dates in the 3-6:30 PM range, extending at least to 7:00 in those cases?  Because I basically missed the entire second half of Round 1, tuning in only for the grand finale.  (Seems like it won't be an issue this round, with a midnightish deadline, at least.)

---

Back to business...  thoughts, now that I've had time to go through the second half of Day1.

Meeplelard - Nobody cares about my thoughts on him anymore, I suppose, but damnit I'd written some and I'm going to abridge it now so I don't feel like a total failure.  I wasn't very happy with the "he contradicted himself in the same post!" arguments, as that seemed mostly a stylistic issue true in Meeple's posts regardless of which team he's on.  Ultimately, I think we got a bit lucky here - I don't think Meeple was acting nearly as untoward as others, but obviously even random lynches can hit paydirt, so hurray for being wrong about him.

Xanth - Standing by what I said earlier that Xanth's last posts when he was on the execution block were not really setting off a Mafia vibe.  Also not really buying some of the initial anti-Xanth arguments that warning about possible lack of posting = OMG Scum.  So Xanth was a voluminous poster before.  Maybe things have changed?  Also, I'm not sure about the code of honor, if any, around these parts, but out-of-game matters/distractions aren't the kind of thing you lie about even if you're scum to me.

As for the other accusation, that he attacked Meeple and then voted Tom...  nothing wrong with saying "I suspect two people, but I'll vote this way."  This is, granted, the most suspicious thing we have on him, but I'm still inclined to call him likely town.  His seeming before-execution post had a strong air of "I told you so" to it which would be bizarre if he then flipped scum.  (Though granted, if the sudden death was a vanilla mafia-mafia w/role square off, obviously you let the roled mafia live.  I'll let others hash out how likely this is, but I don't buy it.)

Bardiche - I guess what I wrote up on him isn't really relevant anymore either.  Well, he was the first one to back killing Meeple, so not completely shocking he got offed.

El Cid - Also led the early raid against Meeple.  Very aggressive, but I'm inclined to chalk that up to his posting style, and I agree with El Cid that the town needs a few aggressive types.  On the other hand, he's accusing lots of targets - Meeple, Xanth, AndrewRogue, me, possibly someone else I missed - so it could just be scattershot.  Leaning town.

AndrewRouge - Also aggressively accusing lots of people.  Was third on the Meeple train after Meeple seconded his own vote for Delta.  I'm not liking the vibe from Andrew - more so than El Cid - but it could just be a personality thing?

EvilTom - Was pushing the "lynch Xanth" train the hardest, so I'm inherently skeptical.

Sir Alex - Defended Meeple (Which is fine, like I say above I'd have agreed with it at the time) and attacked me.  In fairness, you said it was Day1 style voting off gut, and Day1 is wild and woolly.  No read on him (though of course my masterful and insightful posts which lead to correct lynches will surely convince Alex I'm not scum?).

Ryogo, Excal, Cathrat, DeltaFlyer, Strago - I don't really have a good impression yet.

Tentatively, I'd continue to aim my fire at EvilTom this Day2, but interested in other thoughts as well.

[Sierra]

Expected as much. Remaining suspects from yesterday are still relevant:

Snowfire: Ninjapost negates a fair bit of what I was going to say here, but not all of it. My present concern is this: Snowfire, you speculate about the possibility of "continuing" pressure on Tom, but I don't see a whole lot of material in the record for you to build off of. Your vote for him late yesterday was, as per your post, simply to try and provide and alternative to Xanth and Meeple. Other than that, you haven't provided any material on him other than finding him disagreeable because you think Xanth is town. I do not consider this much of a case. Can you give us something more? I also think you read too much into Xanth's posts of late yesterday (more on this below).

Xanth: Lots of fluff and chatter which space could be better used actually scumhunting, etcetera. I've been over this. His resignation late yesterday gives a null read since it's understandable behavior for either alignment (it makes sense for a town Xanth to take a lynch in place of a possible cop, and it makes sense for a scum Xanth to take a hit for Meeple because Meeple was a scum power role) so I'm not factoring that into my analysis at all and hope others won't either. Having trouble thinking up specific questions I want to ask him; will wait and see what he comes up with this morning before deciding whether or not to move against him.

~

Random thoughts on ther people:

-Andy: Looks better for going after Meeple early, for all that I have trouble linking him to particular cases.

-Delta/Strago: Flying under the radar still. Delta has a seemingly legitimate excuse in his defense but the grace period won't last forever. More activity = doubleplusgood. Meanwhile, Strago seems to be avoiding everyone's notice while only minimally posting. This will not do. Thus:

##Vote: Strago

Stragovarius! Inquiring minds require you to tell us who you think is scummy right now.

[SnowFire]

El Cid: I was trying to keep my points succinct, but sure, I might have been too clipped on EvilTom.  My concern with EvilTom is precisely the pushing the Xanth lynch, as you note.  A) I don't buy the Xanth logic.  This is not fatal in and of itself, as townies disagree.  However B) This started up after Meeple was already starting to accumulate votes.  We know in retrospect that Meeple was scum.  It's certainly reasonable for scum to try starting an alternative train to save one of their own, and rolecop is certainly worth saving.

That's pretty much it.

[Sierra]

I'd counter with the fact that the two trains developed apace. Meeple got a vote, Xanth got a vote, Meeple got a vote, Xanth got a vote. The Xanth votes didn't come out of nowhere at the last minute...although yes, Meeple's vote in particular did drop in at the end of the day, and it could be argued that he did this precisely to trigger sudden death overtime and wheedle out of his own death. However, even if this is so, it says as little about Xanth's alignment as does Xanth's apparent willingness to die yesterday, and for the same reason: he was the only player with enough standing votes to be a possible substitute for Meeple. Scum could've easily decided to try to sub him in for their rolecop. All of this is speculation, of course, but that's the point: we can't be sure enough about any of these theories to conclude from them that Xanth is town.

I confess to being rather alarmed by how certain you are of Xanth's alignment, especially when it involves suspecting another player solely for building a case on Xanth. It just seems too early in the game to have that kind of trust in anyone.

[Ranmilia]

Well, that was... something.

Having been wrong day 1 and all, I'll have to think about things for a while here.  Considering the circumstances, Snowfire and Rat are looking pretty good to me right now.  Insane gambit possibilities notwithstanding.  

Excal, Ryogo and to some extent Delta are giving me bad vibes right now.  The first two obviously were on the not-Meeple trains early and didn't want to switch.  In less tangible terms, I went "Wait, Excal's in this game?" when he posted in sudden death, and am still going "Wait, Ryogo's in this game?" right now.  That's enough for me to lay one down on him here.

##Vote: Ryogo

Delta, well, straight up, Delta is Delta, day 1 scum lynches are pretty weird, and Delta on a scum team is one of the ways I can see them happening.  We aren't really likely to get much out of him no matter what, though.  So hm.

Xanth also being scum is another way, and one that on reread I'm not counting out yet.  I'm even less sure what to say about him supporting the Meeple train without being on it, but it still doesn't look all that happy to me.

Strago/Andy/Cid/Tom look fine at the moment.  They've all been saying reasonably intelligent things.  I don't see Strago as low content at all, in fact he's one of the posters who stick out most in my mind.... though I don't agree with a lot of the things he's been saying, they don't look scummy.

[Deltaflyer]

I am glad to see that we hit scum.

Xanth seems to be rather suspicious to me right now, as scum could have forced a lynch on him during sudden death. However, I suppose a different view would be that the people who were not on the major trains may well be town, since they did not go for Xanth.

I agree with Sir Alex again, in that Excal and Ryogo do need to contribute more. I, myself also need to do this, and I will do so.

Snowfire worries me, he appears to be attempting to lynch EvilTom. To me it almost seems obsessive, with him attempting to lynch ET. I do not see this as a continuing concern, however, since he has recognised this. I am not stating that he must not focus on ET, but needs to focus on others also.

Ryogo, what? Stop lurking and post, PLEASE!

More when I return from school.

[Xanth]

Well, this is kind of embarrassing. This feels like holding a handshake session at your own funeral.

As much as some people are reading yesterday's last minute circumstances as at best neutral for me, I will at least try to argue for my sake that if I was scum looking for damage control then that was a really bad course of action for me, because if I was lynched (and I hope everyone at least agrees I was expecting to get lynched) and flipped scum then people would boggle as to why I didn't just hammer Meeple and at worst get lynched the next day instead, which would lead to people working out Meeple's fake claim much quicker (and wouldn't risk the actual cop). No gain anywhere. The correct course of action in that case would have been for me to remain silent and just naturally gain the next vote, as really would have happened with the cop claim. My own farewells make no sense if I then flipped scum, but I won't make a big deal out of that.


Likewise for unbelievable scum plays, Rat is now all but cleared in my head, for bringing the extra vote to light not long before someone (probably SnowFire or Alex) would have had to drop the extra vote on me, when staying silent would have served him.

Similar but less so for Snowfire. Whilst he notably wanted someone who was not-Meeple to be lynched, his goal did seem to also be not-Xanth, which would have been all too easy to justify.

Delta actually looks reasonably good to me now, because his vote was key in keeping Meeple pushed ahead, and I can't see him knowingly push a scumfriend ahead when there's a train on a townie to pursue instead that he could have really easily been on given his late entrance.


Given that a jump from Meeple to me didn't come earlier, I'm unsurprisingly more suspicious of people who were already on my train, although do keep in mind that my lynch was basically inevitable anyway and hence sure, scum could just sit back and wait for someone else to do it.

I started writing a passage about how I was actually supportive of Tom for being anti-Meeple as a secondary case to his nuke on me, but on reading over the thread again what I actually found was a single point of argument that he passes off with metagaming.

Likewise, I noted my concerns with Ryogo and Excal's votes at the time. I have to go now, but will expand and continue when I get back in about five hours, when I should ahve all the time in the world.

[Strago]

Oofghlefark. Work = an unholy bitch, yesterday. I'm really sorry I disappeared and was unable to leverage my vote. Now it is time for me to look back over the topic and take things in; the better to respond to El Cid's query and very reasonable vote.

[Xanth]

In fact yes, having had time to think over what would have happened if I were scum, I conclude that my actions at the end of the day would be completely and utterly suboptimal (as outlined in my previous post) with no benefits other than to potentially serve making me look better now given survival, but as I hope no one is going to claim that I actually in any way expected to survive that set up that doesn't cut it either. I will now stand by that as a damn good reason why I'm town, and won't hear for it to be hushed down to a neutral or negative read unless there's an actual case against it (I could still have just missed an avenue, after all).

I am now back. Everything else to follow after lunch.

[Xanth]

Right, here we go.

So, I'm mostly pushing Rat, Snowfire and Delta to the side for now. That leaves Cid, Strago, Ryogo, Tom, Alex, Andy and Excal.

Very briefly on Delta:
scumDelta + townXanth => Delta pushed teammate crucially ahead when he had free rein to drop it on a townsman instead.
And in the likely case that people won't let me off easily:
scumDelta + scumXanth => hilariously poor teamwork that gets in each other's way all over the place and seemingly no effort made into railing on to a townsman, other than Xanth re:Tom.

So even when looking at it from not my position, I really can't see scumDelta at this point.


As much as Cid has continued to dog my case, he was a major proponent of knocking Meeple ahead yesterday, and as much as that seemed like a bad idea late on, the momentum of that through the day now speaks loudest to me. Sure it's possible for team scum to plan out drama like this ahead of time, but I find it hard to believe it would be quite so badly planned to miss out on the votes or not to make a bigger push for me or someone else.

Which brings me to the rather interesting time frame of the 'sudden death' last night. Given that my vote wasn't down on Meeple, I'm surprised that team scum would not be more afraid about my ability to invoke survivalism to kill their teammate regardless of the claim, especially when I'd made it pretty clear that I'd be returning quite shortly after the deadline. I'd expect scum with the power to do so to have used the perfectly reasonable excuse of 'putting the hammer down before Xanth gets the time to hammer the copclaim', so I'm inclined to believe more in those who could but didn't, which mostly throws up the people already covered one way or another - Bardiche, Snowfire and Cid. Alex also gains some credit even though he announced an intent to hammer, because again he could have just said that the rest could wait until the start of day two if he was scum worried about my impending return (it's not like he would have taken flak for making Snowfire wait).

Which leaves us with those who couldn't, either from being on me already and/or not being around at the time. This leaves me with Strago, Ryogo, Tom, Andy and Excal to consider (to confirm, it's not like I'm completely ruling out the others).

Of those, first off:

##Vote: Tom

If I'm looking for any sign of team scum trying to work their way around Meeple getting lynched, then Tom's step up into a full assault on me is the biggest sign anyone could possibly find. This came at the point where Meeple had just become the vote leader and I was suddenly the only likely alternative (Rat was technically also on two votes to match my two and Meeple's three, but that included Tom's own joke vote). The ferocity of the attack so early on boggled me at the time as stated, but the timing and effective result do nothing to change my suspicion.

This is getting too long. Splitting the rest into a different post.

[EvilTom]

Likewise for unbelievable scum plays, Rat is now all but cleared in my head, for bringing the extra vote to light not long before someone (probably SnowFire or Alex) would have had to drop the extra vote on me, when staying silent would have served him.

I'm incredibly concerned that you're clearing Rat for pointing out a votecount error. It would have surfaced quickly at the next votecount, and had no real impact on the game. Pointing it out didn't change anything, as hammer had already ocurred. Town or scum are equally likely to point out the error. Big red flags here.

As much as some people are reading yesterday's last minute circumstances as at best neutral for me, I will at least try to argue for my sake that if I was scum looking for damage control then that was a really bad course of action for me, because if I was lynched (and I hope everyone at least agrees I was expecting to get lynched) and flipped scum then people would boggle as to why I didn't just hammer Meeple and at worst get lynched the next day instead, which would lead to people working out Meeple's fake claim much quicker

That's one possibility, but we're in the dark about what scum was trying to do. Scum could have had a plan to pull you out of the mess - a doublevoter to hammer Meeple after all your heroic theatrics. Anything's possible, so to say that scumXanth wouldn't have acted in such a manner is pretty dicey and gets into WIFOM. I'm not prepared to make such assumptions.

Similar but less so for Snowfire. Whilst he notably wanted someone who was not-Meeple to be lynched, his goal did seem to also be not-Xanth, which would have been all too easy to justify.

I'm not really seeing the logic here.

In fact yes, having had time to think over what would have happened if I were scum, I conclude that my actions at the end of the day would be completely and utterly suboptimal (as outlined in my previous post) with no benefits other than to potentially serve making me look better now given survival, but as I hope no one is going to claim that I actually in any way expected to survive that set up that doesn't cut it either. I will now stand by that as a damn good reason why I'm town, and won't hear for it to be hushed down to a neutral or negative read unless there's an actual case against it (I could still have just missed an avenue, after all).

Scum fuck up. We saw that happen with Meeple! Having 2 scum as the lynch candidates on day 1 happens too. As I said before, we don't know the setup. There is no way I'm reading that as proof that you are town.
Also I don't like the bursting about a right to supposed confirmed townyness (bold text).

As far as I'm concerned, Meeple's flip did not give Xanth any town points. His recent fallacious and gung-ho 'arguments' have earned him scum points, if only because of his assertive manner - "I'm definately town".

Snow's behavior - "EvilTom voted Xanth, therefore EvilTom is probably scum".... newby or scummy, I can't tell. Bad logic either way.
Also, just noticed that Snow spent a fair bit of time defending Xanth's actions yesterday.

I'm actually finding myself agreeing with Delta quite a lot - this is a rare event.

The most pressing concern though is to get lurkers to talk. *prod* Ryogo, Strago, and even Rat.

Blah, too tired right now. Not confident enough to put down a vote, I'll re-read in the morning and do so then.

Ugh Xanth ninja.

[EvilTom]

I'm surprised that team scum would not be more afraid about my ability to invoke survivalism to kill their teammate regardless of the claim

Unless you're part of team scum?

Typical motive for Xanth to go after me though.
Anyway, too tired.. I'll return in the morning ~_~