Cthulu Mafia - TOWN (drunk) WIN, MADNESS SOMEWHAT AVERTED

[Chiaki]

Fuck. I'm not sure how much I'll be around today; I just finished work for the day (and hopefully for the week; unlike last week I won't have to put in a nine-hour day on Saturday), but I'm heading our for dinner and I'll be out of town (although hopefully not out of computer access) almost all of tomorrow. So, speedposting before I leave.

What I said before on Kyle before stands, but his contributions in Day 3 have been mostly solid; the only one I can find a hole to poke in is his most recent post, which is one very abbreviated case on Ethan's play over the entire game, followed by a list of "hey you, say something" lines. Reading townier than he was before, but there's only so much a day of good play can do to erase two days of bad.

Nathan: Gotta agree with the crowd here; the only substantive analysis he's done is on roles. Getting bogged down in flavor and roles is a problem the whole game has had, to one degree or another, but he's been the worst. I can't knock him for posting frequency or shallowness of content, just the focus of that content but it's something.

..and now I'm getting yelled at to get my ass out the door. More later tonight or early tomorrow morning (gotta be on the road by eightish), probably on Hayles from the way things are going.

[Hunter Sopko]

What I said before on Kyle before stands, but his contributions in Day 3 have been mostly solid; the only one I can find a hole to poke in is his most recent post, which is one very abbreviated case on Ethan's play over the entire game, followed by a list of "hey you, say something" lines. Reading townier than he was before, but there's only so much a day of good play can do to erase two days of bad.

Nathan: Gotta agree with the crowd here; the only substantive analysis he's done is on roles. Getting bogged down in flavor and roles is a problem the whole game has had, to one degree or another, but he's been the worst. I can't knock him for posting frequency or shallowness of content, just the focus of that content but it's something.

..and now I'm getting yelled at to get my ass out the door. More later tonight or early tomorrow morning (gotta be on the road by eightish), probably on Hayles from the way things are going.

Except I didn't bring a case on Ethan, save for bringing him up in relation to Ronald's case on him during Day 2.

Also, it's odd that you would say that the only substantive analysis he's done is on roles, but say that you can't knock him for shallowness of content... when pretty much the former implies that anything not role-related was shallow. It's a serious flip-flop there, in all honesty. And even worse when you're considering his role-related argument stuff was misdirected at best and unhelpful at worst... You're basically saying everything he has isn't that great but you're couching it in language that makes you appear skeptical of the case despite that.

[Margaret Houlihan]

((asdfgfd. Just woken up after 2 hours sleep, it is now the middle of the night. My motivation and health have been shot to hell, and that's why I'm only posting this now, despite having been around for most of the day. RP (role-play >_>) section was written earlier, rest is OoC.))

As far as my 'case on Dale' went, 'twas an early Day 1 vote, followed by not movin it because he hadn't reappeared (so, LaL) and then movin it to the most suspicious player. Yeah, Ty were town, but that don't mean he weren't suspicious. Day 2 were against Peyton, who he were defendin, which is where I started the day.

((Can't really say much for people attacking me with regards to the Cult Leader point against Nikolai. I saw it (and still see it!) as role speculation, which is a fruitless endeavour at best and, more likely, a distraction from actually scum-hunting.

Hargreaves, how was that an OMGUS poke, exactly? It was a response to your 'case', which consisted mostly of pointing you to my previous post. I'm somewhat thrown now by how quickly you jumped to "OMGUS!" because I pointed out a flaw in your post.
And I did mean a previous post, but that wasn't why it was obvious. I specifically mentioned Greaves' second point along with the case against Nikolai, which were both directly referring to Peyton.

...anyways. Nikolai's latest post does nothing to remove those suspicions. Past the first paragraph, we have: excuse of posting on instinct (which does nothing to remove my suspicions as it's just as easily a cover for a mistake as it is the truth), followed by some WIFOM on Jack. The next paragraph's mostly fine, and then he moves on to say "I'll look over Hutchins again" - when can we be expecting this one?
After this, it's his 'case' on me. This starts by saying I went after Jack on a misrep (truth: I said Jack seemed suspicious based on gut, but I chose to ignore this and pushed the case on Peyton instead.) He then claims I've used that argument as a major point twice - except this first case on Jack doesn't actually exist and I have no idea where I supposedly used this against him. He also says that it's a small point in the grand scheme of things which just reads to me as "It was a scummy mistake, but it's not important." He claims I missed the point of the reporting charge, when I said that Hadley's posts (early on) were all information and flavour, so I didn't miss the point at all, according to him. But I did. If that makes sense.
Vote definitely stays until we get something useful out of Nikolai - I feel like every post of his so far has been either a distraction from scum-hunting or reiterating previous points.

As far as other new content goes... the only thing that really stands out is Martin's post. One, the thing that Sopkyle pointed out. Two, he looks at two people in his short time here - one is "He's improved since I last looked, but that doesn't change things" and the other is, as stated, "agree[ing] with the crowd here." I know real-life issues have been claimed, but there's only so long I can excuse the play based on that.))

Now what in tarnation is a Me-no-ree-ko? That be one o'them beins from yer world?

((And sorry (mostly to Zenny) for the WoT. -.- Hate writing them, but I've spent long enough writing this and my head's hurting, so not cutting it down.))

[Chiaki]

Also, it's odd that you would say that the only substantive analysis he's done is on roles, but say that you can't knock him for shallowness of content... when pretty much the former implies that anything not role-related was shallow. It's a serious flip-flop there, in all honesty. And even worse when you're considering his role-related argument stuff was misdirected at best and unhelpful at worst... You're basically saying everything he has isn't that great but you're couching it in language that makes you appear skeptical of the case despite that.

The problem is breadth, not depth. Role analysis analysis isn't worthless, it's not bad play to focus on it to the exclusion of all else. Just like it would be bad play to ignore role information completely.

(Back as of about five minutes ago, reading more)

[Chiaki]

it's JUST bad play. Argh. Kept changing that sentence and stupid shit like that is what results.

[SnowFire]

Votecount.

Nathan Greaves [1]: Chad Hutchins
Nikolai Kolmogorov [1]: Ethan Hayles
Ethan Hayles [2]: Seamus (Excal), Jack Daniels

No votes: Everyone else

With 11 investigators, it takes 6 to lynch.  It is Potential LYLO.  Day 3 will end in 20 hours.

[Chiaki]

Okay, got to go to sleep soon or I'll be driving a few hundred miles without anything approaching rest, which would be bad. Part of the problem I've been having, and I realize lurking's lurking but I feel the need to justify myself, is that whenever I get a minute to read the topic it's always got a hard deadline attached, and having to produce something from the chaos that is a mafia topic in half an hour or else suffer real-life consequences does the opposite of ordering my mind. I get into information-overload and can't come up with anything coherent that isn't pure regurgitation. Doesn't help that I haven't played in a year. Ugh.

Anyway. The only people who've said things that really jump out at me now as scummy are Bill, Pietro (yeah, that's useful) and Kyle, so Kyle is who I will be focusing on. Possibly for above-mentioned reasons of information overload, but still, that's what I'm getting.

Day 1: He starts by going after Moses on flavor/PM-sorta-quoting grounds. That goes nowhere, and he ends up joining the pile on Tyrone....sorta.

"I suppose it's time for me to weigh in on the big monopoly of the day, Tyrone Callahan. He did draw my attention when he tried to piggyback onto my first sale of the day, when he clearly didn't in any solid sense upon looking at the official court records. I would still say that what happened between Moses and I was a matter of trust, in which I did not trust the man. Tyrone is attributing Moses' behavior during the day in a much more sinister light than that even, and it doesn't quite pass inspection, maybe even voids the warranty. It's stubborn and argumentative through and through. While Chad might just be right in that it may not help town either way, there isn't much in the way that does that has support at this point. I've never been one to follow trends arbitrarily, but if business is to remain productive and profitable one must see how the winds are blowing though." (OOC: The glib nature of the last sentence is more flavor than anything)

NINJA'D! Changing how this ends since someone else put him at L-1.

"So if you need an outsider's perspective, I suppose I would be fine weighing in on it if the town needs to decide."

His statement on the case is short on specifics, doesn't give any solid reason for why Kyle's own case on Moses was valid ("I did not trust the man") but Tyrone's isn't, but was (in theory) prepared to back that up with a vote that would have sent Callahan to L-1. Also bear in mind that he abandoned the case against Bike not because he thought better of it, but because it wasn't catching on.

After a bit, Kyle straightens out his suspenders and tips his hat. "Well, I suppose any salesman worth his salt knows when to give up on a sale."

##Unvote: Moses Bike

"Hopefully if more evidence comes to light I will be able to unload the merchandise, but there's no profit to be made hawking a product no one wants.

 Soooo....you still wanted Bike lynched (if there's another way to read that comment, I don't see it), but were willing to put Callahan's neck in the noose instead, because he wanted Bike lynched more. I hope I'm not the only one that sounds off to.

Day 2. I'm fine with his switch to Hellsnake. Like I said before, Hellsnake had some of the scummiest play we've seen in this game. He doesn't have the world's strongest case when he casts the vote at the start of the day, but you don't need a strong case to prod somebody at day's opening. Hellsnake wilting under pressure was his own fault.

This, however, was not Hellsnake's fault:

In retrospect, the vote-tagging at the end probably wasn't the best way to go about that, but I'll stick by it. And just because I didn't bring him up doesn't mean I'm not still watching Bike. I'm waiting very intently to see how this claim of his works out, and honestly the only thing that will clear him as far as that is his death, as far as I'm concerned. Just dropping him from consideration due to this isn't the way to go, as it ends up the same if he is an extra death down the line or he is lynched today even, unless he's scum. So actually that might be the economic thing to do! Just throwing that out there.

And to Nathan, I know it's an uncomfortable suggestion, but look at it. We still lose him tomorrow if he's telling the truth, and if he's lying, we lynch a scum. Lynching a scum is NEVER gaining nothing. If you came out against this from the position that his lynch tells us nothing, it'd make a little more sense, but if he ends up being scum it is not. I never said that we should forget looking at everyone else either.

Yes, I know I pointed it out before, but it is really, really, really bad. The case against Bike was based in flavor and metagame and not much else and it was a Day 1 kerfluffle, and then Kyle comes out and openly suggests lynching him based on new flavor. There's no new argument here for why he's scummy, just some very bad logic - the idea that losing a townie to nightkill is as bad as losing one to mislynch, so why not risk the mislynch - that's supposed to get us to lower our standards enough to buy into the Day 1 case.

Says nothing about the Pietro case, but he doesn't have a single post anywhere between his last post on Day 2 (before Pietro was a going thing) and his first on Day 3. I think if I got up in arms about that, I'd be smote by lightning where I stand.

Day 3:

Decent, if brief, contributions on some new people, mainly Nathan, Ronald and to a lesser extent myself. Well, of course it's new people, since everybody he's expressed suspicion of to this point is dead, so town or scum, he's got to start from scratch. On its own it's a null-to-townie sort of read, but it's also the effect of two days of tunnel vision. That's not great.

##Vote Kyle Handley

This might be the last time I get online before deadline hits, so if I feel someone's scummy enough to vote on, I'd better do it now.

Aside from the aforementioned issues with Nathan, I'm finding Chad hard to read because of the (now well-publicized) flavor overdose. Also, Nathan, while I'm looking at Kyle-related contributions, care to explain this?

"As for Handley:

Just dropping him from consideration due to this isn't the way to go, as it ends up the same if he is an extra death down the line or he is lynched today even, unless he's scum. So actually that might be the economic thing to do! Just throwing that out there.

...Wait, what? You want to lynch the guy who's already claimed that some deep dark secret is gonna eat him up tomorrow? What do we have to gain from lynching him a day early, rather than spending today looking for other suspicious folk?"
((If we lynch Town!Bike, then obviously we've wasted a day and given scum an extra head. If we lynch Scum!Bike, then we've gained NOTHING compared to if we'd just waited out the day, noticed he was still alive, and lynched him D3. So there's no reason to risk pressing for his lynch (we lose out if we're right, and gain nothing if we're wrong) and the fact you're even suggesting this makes me feel uncomfortable.

Still think Pietro's passive suggestions are a little scummier than Kyle's in-your-face wrongness, though. Andrews and Nikolai (MUCH easier to remember than Kolmogorov) still need to exist.))

Yesterday, Pietro was just "a little scummier" than Kyle. Today, Kyle isn't even on your list of suspicious persons. In fact, you haven't even mentioned his name since arguing the Bike point on Day 2. Why?

And now, to sleep.

[Princess Leia]

Jack: My "guarantee" is on Kolgomorov, not Andrews; if you want to make a case on Andrews, be my guest.
I don't necessarily see the "correctness" in Kolgomorov deducing that Pietro was playing like a cop, given that he was and knew he was a paranoid, i.e. non, cop.
Also, Kolgomorov has somewhat tied himself to Handley, in that if Handley flips an obviously scum role, Kolgomorov's looking mighty shaky for not mentioning it. (though if Handley's scum with a neutral role, obviously we learn nothing).

Hayles: I jump from nowhere to an implied second on your scumlist as soon as I mention you. Maybe I'm overreacting, but it felt OMGUSy to me. We can go back and forth on whether your post was or wasn't obvious, but I couldn't easily see who you were talking about and that certainly wasn't because I didn't bother reading it.

Man. Rereading Greaves he seems to be mixing genuine insight and bad logic in equal measure. The point about cheerleading the miller claims seems valid; the "why didn't you protect Pietro" argument is stupid (and obviously if he has a hint that someone is a cop he's not going to broadcast it).
So it is with the setup meta. He makes a good point: if Peyton is telling the truth, then there are three bulletproofs, therefore scum almost certainly has some way of killing bulletproofs. But then the conclusion he reaches in his original post is "I'm more willing to believe one of these kills - probably the slowkill, but I can't be sure - belongs to a third-party". Huh?
In his clarification-type post he comes to a more natural conclusion, and one I tend to agree with: "either there are fewer bulletproofs than we think, in which case Hadley is probably lying and two BPs was all we had, or the scum kill is actually the BP-immune slowkill". The only other possibility I can see is that the "normal" kill of Pietro was a scum one-off, in which case Hadley's claim to have been attacked seems suicidal.
But Greaves then jumps to "in which case Hadley is potentially an SK who faked being attacked N1 after he saw there was no scum kill to sell himself". Which, sure, could be the case (though don't SKs normally have to kill every night?), but he could equally well be, y'know, an actual bodyguard, who was attacked by SK!anyoneelse (or heck, even a vigilante). So I'm really not seeing "Either way, I'm struggling to believe he's Town"; it feels like Greaves is twisting the logic here to support his case on Hadley. Sure, I'll accept that his actions are consistent with his being scum or SK - I don't think any of us have been cleared on roles yet - but the case that he's not town needs to be made based on his posting, and all I see being offered here is the cheerleader point, which isn't enough.

What bothers me most, though, is the shift in the conclusion between the two posts. The point of logic is that you always reach the single correct conclusion, so what changed that had you thinking the slowkill was 3P in the first post but scum in the second?

[Nathan Greaves]

Yesterday, Pietro was just "a little scummier" than Kyle. Today, Kyle isn't even on your list of suspicious persons. In fact, you haven't even mentioned his name since arguing the Bike point on Day 2. Why?

"'Cause if I sit here and list every guy who's done something suspicious, I'd be accusing half of Marbury.
After last night Hadley looked pretty horrible given that there were already 2 bulletproofs, and the guy he supposedly protected before threw himself into a lake. Nikolai and Andrews started lurking yet again, and O'Malley went through his whole process of talking a lot but not saying much. Attacking all these people and throwing in points on Kyle as well is just overdoing it."

What bothers me most, though, is the shift in the conclusion between the two posts. The point of logic is that you always reach the single correct conclusion, so what changed that had you thinking the slowkill was 3P in the first post but scum in the second?

((When I realised that scum with a normal NK in a setup that supposedly has 3 bulletproofs and a bodyguard are pretty much screwed.))

"In terms of Hadley, I'll admit that I got sorta overambitious when it came to looking for a serial killer on the loose. Thing is, I'm pretty sure there really is someone else out there interfering, not some extra option scum has.
This is gonna sound kinda awkward, but I've been having these weird dreams for the last month. I never see who's in them - the guy's face is always blackened out, but it's always some sorta grisly murder. Scares the crap outta me, and the last dream had the guy just taking a walk into Marbury, all casual-like. Whether he was hiding here or returning to base, I've got no idea, but I hauled my ass down here the first chance I got."

((tl;dr - My Role PM seems to heavily suggest that there's an SK in this setup. Hadley fits the signs better than anyone else I can see.))

"I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the fact that Nikolai's made one post all day, and with deadline coming up there's a good chance his vote is gonna be nowhere. At least Andrews dropped a vote on Handley, but all the Ruskie's done is say 'Hayles is bad, but I'm going to disappear for two whole days again to reread'. There are some cases that you just can't get a hold of when you want to, so I'm gonna leave Hadley for now and ##Vote: Nikolai Kolmogorov."

[Chiaki]

Really? It's not like you were exactly wall-of-texting in that post. A line or two mentioning that you're still suspicious of him/not suspicious of him anymore wouldn't have exploded the board. Plus, isn't sitting there and listing everybody who did something suspicious is exactly what we're supposed to do?

[Nathan Greaves]

((Isn't that the logical assumption? If he hasn't done anything to lessen my suspicion in particular, surely it'd be assumed that I still thought Kyle was iffy but that other bigger cases had arisen in the meanwhile. He hasn't done much to criticise today, at least.))

[Chiaki]

You're the only one who knows what you're thinking; the rest of us have to read your posts. And yeah, we could assume that, but flipping from one case to another without regard for consistency of thought is one of the classic scum behaviors, and ruling it out based on nothing more than benefit of the doubt seems like a bad idea to me.

[Excal]

Sorry for the absense, should be back responding to stuff and reading again in about 8 hours.  Assuming I'm not too distracted by Djinn and IAQ stuff before he wanders off for Golden Week.

Also, nice to see you participating, Martin.

[SnowFire]

Votecount.

Nathan Greaves [1]: Chad Hutchins
Nikolai Kolmogorov [2]: Ethan Hayles, Nathan Greaves
Ethan Hayles [2]: Seamus (Excal), Jack Daniels
Kyle Handley [1]: Martin Andrews

No votes: Everyone else

With 11 investigators, it takes 6 to lynch.  It is Potential LYLO.  Day 3 will end in 7 hours.

[Tanaka]

Kay, Seamus? Comin' back in 8 hours ain't gonna do a lick o' good when the deadline's in 7.

Jack: My "guarantee" is on Kolgomorov, not Andrews; if you want to make a case on Andrews, be my guest.
I don't necessarily see the "correctness" in Kolgomorov deducing that Pietro was playing like a cop, given that he was and knew he was a paranoid, i.e. non, cop.
Also, Kolgomorov has somewhat tied himself to Handley, in that if Handley flips an obviously scum role, Kolgomorov's looking mighty shaky for not mentioning it. (though if Handley's scum with a neutral role, obviously we learn nothing).

Ah, I misunderstood.  Gotcha.  Though now that Andrews is postin' again I still don't have much t' go on.  His posts strike me as quite good content-wise, but that's a gut reaction and my gut's been wrong before.

And it's as yeh say, about the ruskie and the salesman.  I just had that thar symbiosis backward.

Hm.  I'm really not likin' Greaves' last few posts, t' be right honest.  Even if he felt he were gettin' too wall-o-texty, completely omitting Handley from his analysis seems a little off, and the "it should be obvious what my thoughts on Handley are!" just strikes me as scummy.  Additionally, the point he's bringing up against Peyton again isn't based off of anything in his posts, but just off of role speculation. Bad, bad, bad.  I'm very tempted to shuffle my vote off Hayles to Greaves at this point, but we still have a little bit of time so I'll hold off. 

Sigh.  6 more hours til deadline and I get the feeling a lot of people ain't gonna be around.  This sucks.  I'll try to read more into things but unless there's more content I don't think I'll reach any new conclusions.

[Helga Pataki]

Nathan starts off the day indulging in a little WIFOM regarding me in this post.  Then in his next post, he asks why I wasn't bodyguarding Pietro, which - seriously, read any of my Day 2 posts.  I'm pretty sure every single one mentions how Scummy I found Pietro.  Already addressed this.

What I find particularly bad about this, though, is his picking at my actual choice of bodyguard target last night in this post.  If I were to explaim my reasoning, much less state the name?  It would expose who I thought was a cop, including to scum.

Overall, I have a huge problem with Nathan's role speculation throughout the day.  I'd like to hope that problem isn't just OMGUS.  We are in a game that was billed as Role Madness.  We already had a bulletproof town reviver lynched in part because people couldn't believe he could have such a strong role (Kolmogorov's landing on Hellsnake at the end was explicitly because of this).

We don't know what Scum have.  It may include a doublekill, possibly available only once but possibly more than once, and CERTAINLY bypassing my protection at the least.  I'll note that the two claimed bulletproofs we have flavor for, Hellsnake and I, both mention what ammounts to immunity to normal weapons - his post here, and my discussion with Moses here.  Not looking so "impossible" for Scum then, is it?

By the way, as I go back to look at Day 2 stuff, I notice another thing about my bulletproof claim.  I made it in the first place to head off speculation that two people sharing the same role were unlikely.  (Hellsnake and Daniels both being millers - little did we know what was to come...)  Nathan questioned the two of us being bulletproof in a throwaway line on Day 2, and Moses explained this to him in the very next post.

Once again, for me to be guilty of what Nathan claims requires a truly extraordinary gambit - doubly so for a Serial Killer, since that's a 3rd Party role that NEEDS to survive to win the game.  As 3rd party I would have no interest in Hellsnake's fate (Scum or Town, just another corpse), so why expose myself to danger to head off an attack on him?  Why make a claim to have acted on Moses when Moses was already known to be suffering from a possible slowkill?  If Nathan wanted to push me as Scum, I guess I could see that gambit (because I could still win if my gambit failed but helped Scumteam as a whole), but doing it as a lone 3rd party player would take way more balls than I've got.

Holding off voting until I've taken a look at other people.

[Helga Pataki]

BTW, Jack, I at least should be around at deadline.

I have to run some errands right now, but I'll be back well before that (7-8 PM my time, so after dinner, and I don't have any plans for the evening).

[Princess Leia]

Briefly: I should be around at the deadline. I still think Hayles is worse - I don't remember any positive contribution from him - but I wouldn't oppose a Greaves lynch, and am willing to vote to lynch him rather than anyone else (certainly rather than Kolgomorov) if it comes down to that. Finger remains on Hayles, will convert it to a vote a couple of hours before deadline if nothing changes.

[Bardiche]

Ronald Dale;

Regarding Ethan Hayles...

This post has the opening statement that basically boils down to him lurking and posting just to avoid that claim. Uh what why mention that?

His last post in D1 shows he has suspicion on Tyrone and Peyton, the latter because of the full analysis that reminded Ethan of who were lurking. The former honestly feels like a bandwagon hop, given his three serious posts on the day were a vote for the wrong reasons on me, then changing that into a lurker prod and an offhand comment Tyrone didn't seem that terrible to him and then a full-swing TYRONE IS SO SCUMMY HE MUST BE LYNCHED vote on Tyrone, which seemly stems from Tyrone giving up.

At least that's what he's bringing up and I don't really like it. It doesn't feel genuine, it rings of bandwagon hopping at the last moment.

His second Day 2 post is a reaction against me, reflection on Tyrone and ends with a justification on his case on Peyton which I honestly disagreed with at the time and still do.

The offhand comment seems a bit off to me though. Kinda like acknowledging something's going on but not bothering to read deeper into it. By this point in the game it's the first time he talked about anyone not Callahan, Peyton or me. Mind that he repeats his "it could be suspicious it could not be" he used in Day 1 as well to justify not paying any mind to a dispute ─ it feels to me he really likes staying out of conflicts and out of the spotlights. Maybe a bit too darn much for my tastes.

Still stoked solely singularly on certain people, and if you read this post it should be noted he only talks about the three leading people other than Peyton. And only Pietro doesn't strike him as bad town-- until Hellsnake says he'll contribute later, then says he'll be gone for x amount of hours and then STILL posts.

What, was it suddenly so scummy that someone decided to contribute after all?  And the obligatory mention of me, probably so he can jump on me if there's a case to be made, I bet.

Promised reread and content; does not deliver. Careful accusation against Peyton at the end of the post for... "not enough content", but apparently nothing really WRONG with his posts EVER other than "lots of fluff, no content"... obviously disagree. Kolgo gave us little to work with and flawed content, but WHAT IS THIS FLAWED CONTENT?

And his current "case" is just sitting on the Russian for "content", even though we are in friggin' LYLO.

Right, Ethan Hayles, maybe you need to review your own content because you've never bothered articulating your cases except for your case on Peyton, which was... oh, what was it? "Reporter + No Content".

This song and dance has gone on long enough. Greaves is the other guy getting my big black eye.

##VOTE: Ethan Hayles

[Hunter Sopko]

Hokay. Time to put my money where my mouth has been today.

While I've been focusing more on Nathan, my three main suspects today have been the three people who were on both trains, which are Nathan, Jack and Nicolai. I guarantee at least one of these people is scum.

Nathan's play has been questionable, and going over it I see a high probability of scumitude. But when I get down to it, Nicolai still comes off far, far worse than him. Nicolai had two posts in the first two days after the jokevote phase. While the content of those was passable, this is still textbook scum lurker strategy. Today he's just been kinda blathering on non-committal-like. It feels like we're constantly doing the same thing, which is go after the people who stick their neck out with bad play and leave the people who are being OVERTLY SCUMMY alone. This isn't to say I'm ignoring the possibility of Martin Andrews being guilty of the same thing, but Nicolai has the mark of voting for both lynches on him. While I can totally see Martin's lack of a vote yesterday being calculated, we have to go with the evidence in front of us.

I still don't know what to think about Jack. He's sort of all over the place. Still behind both Nicolai and Nathan though in the grand scheme of things. Possibly behind Martin Andrews as well, but still one to watch if the flip does not go our way.

All things being equal, I have to go with Nicolai on this one. I don't particularly like my company in voting, but thats how it goes sometimes.

##Vote: Nicolai

[Princess Leia]

No, dammit. I am not comfortable putting someone at L-2 in possible LYLO, which this is, but I'm even less comfortable having Kolmogorov tied with him. ##Vote: Ethan Hayles.

[SnowFire]

Votecount.

Nathan Greaves [1]: Chad Hutchins
Nikolai Kolmogorov [3]: Ethan Hayles, Nathan Greaves, Kyle Handley (Sopko)
Ethan Hayles [4]: Seamus (Excal), Jack Daniels, Ronald Dale (Bardiche), Samuel Hargreaves
Kyle Handley (Sopko) [1]: Martin Andrews

No vote placed: Peyton Hadley, Nikolai Kolmogorov

Ethan Hayles is 2 votes away from buying an entirely new farm.

With 11 investigators, it takes 6 to lynch.  It is Potential LYLO.  Day 3 will end in 4 hours.

[Helga Pataki]

Two of the other people I wanted to look over seem to be the developing trains of the day.  Seamus, the third, will have to wait.

Starting with Ethan.

Day 1 is Day 1.  I desperately hope we aren't so bereft of evidence as to have to dip into that well.  He was on the mislynch train.

I covered his early Day 2 play on, well, Day 2.  Whether I was reporting (rather than WoTing, which I'll be the first to admit), I leave to others to judge.  I still hold that jumping on me for reporting, which means not providing content, and then acknowledging that I'd turned him on to content when he re-read my posts was lolwhat.  He started this strange case on Day 1, which is fine - but on Day 1 when he posted it, he didn't seem to consider it all that strong even for Day 1.  On Day 2, when we had quite a bit of new information, he jumped onto it with renewed vigor.  Later he'll explain that he obviously would have noticed Pietro (>_<) and Andrews himself as he went on, but... yeah.

And of course, this came the morning after somebody tried and failed to nightkill me.

After initial reflection I thought, oh, he'd be crazy to press that case on me if he'd been involved with the nightkill.  As I think about it more, though, he didn't know I knew I'd been the target and may have thought that when I didn't claim, I didn't realize what had happened.

A weak case early in Day 2, OK, I guess.  A weak case early in Day 2 against a person someone with a nightkill power wanted to eliminate and couldn't?  To me that's a lot more suspicious.

I had a long post about the rest of Ethan's Day 2, but in looking below I see BarDale has covered the exact same points I was going to make there.

Only thing that strikes me is that Ethan backed off me toward the end of Day 2, jumped right back on with his first major post of Day 3 and then immediately jumps right back off when I explain the Kolmogorov/Cult Leader thing.

The main thing that bothers me about Ethan is his aggressive Day 2 push on me, and only because of the previous night's activity.  I can't get a good read on his Day 2 without looking at Kolmogorov, who is next anyway.

[Helga Pataki]

Quick note: Seamus and Kyle.  (Although from glancing at the topic Kyle looks good so far today, so whatever.)

I will note that three of the four people I'm most suspicious of (Hayles, Greaves, Handley), are all on the third!  Not sure what to make of that.

[Helga Pataki]

Nicolai Kolmogorov.  In Soviet Russia, Town Lurks?  Let's see.

The most prominent case against Kolmogorov is that he simply hasn't been around much - a single, solitary post on Day 1.

Looking at that - yes, I hate to look at Day 1, but let's look at it anyway for at least this much - we never DID get an explanation of Kolmogorov saying he tutored Chad.  There was mention of player meta behind this statement, but does that just mean he was speculating on player meta in a flavorful way?  We've yet to find out.  The rest of the post, in which he lands on the Tyrone train, is a whole lot of flavor surrounding repeats of other people's arguments.

Kolmogorov initially appears to be set for more near-zero Day 2 presence, promising to read the topic and post in "a couple hours."  Instead he doesn't return for more than 24 hours.  When he does, he settles his vote on Pietro, which obviously I thought was a good call, but he gives not a single iota of REASON for doing so.  This looks terrible to me when I reread it, especially knowing that Pietro was, all evidence to the contrary, Town.  In fact, when Kolmogorov does actually comment on Pietro, he seems to think he's playing about like a Cop would.

Why is that important?  Because in addition to the lack of a case on the person he's voting for, look at the timing.  Kolmogorov only contributes on Day 2 AFTER the Two Town Trains already formed and picked up a full head of steam.  In other words, by the time he put his opinion in (despite giving almost no actual opinion on the person he ended up voting), by the time he actually participated in the thread in a meaningful way, we were for all intents and purposes LOCKED IN TO A TOWNIE LYNCH.

Then the Cult Leader kerfluffle.  Previously, Kolmogorov seemed to recognize that alignment-switching roles were out.  But then he reacts to Hellsnake as though such roles are back on the table.  He switches and votes for Hellsnake right after that, saying the snake's role is unbelievable due to power level.  This comes right after the Cult Leader line, so it's not hard to read it as a continuation of that, though in fairness that's not explicit.

I've already mentioned the MAJOR problem I have with people voting based on what they think is too powerful.  Same applies here as to Nathan's case on me, except in this case we have an actual flip backing up that this is a bad idea.

Kolmogorov has only one major post here on Day 3 (shades of Day 1?).  (His first post is just complying with confirmed-townie Moses's request to post who he investigated.)

He mentions how "Hellsnake was terrible for several reasons beyond his role" - a position several people, most notably also Kyle, have advanced, and one which I strongly disagreed with.  Remember my last post of Day 2 where I was going to do a huge analysis of Pietro and Hellsnake and had to rushpost the summary of it?  IMO, Hellsnake actually contributed a lot and scumhunted well prior to his roleclaim.  The only legit case on him was the sloppiness of how he went about that claim, and even that turned out to be wrong.  I'll chock this up to philosophical differences, or maybe not doing the same degree of in-depth reread with that focus.

Kolmogorov doesn't like how Ethan selectively remembered the Cult Leader stuff.  Well, if we're not liking inattentiveness, how about missing which player Ethan was even attacking re: Cult Leader in the first place?  It was me, not Jack.

Like Kolmogorov I have trouble getting a read on O'Malley/O'Excal.  UNLIKE Kolmogorov, I don't believe all four of our "Millers" are innocent and I'm not inclined to just throw out Moses's investigation from Night 1/Day 2.  We still have a scenario that fits his numbers:

Three Millers, Three Scum, One Godfather.  Six from the Outside (the three Millers and three regular Scum), Four from the Inside (Three regular Scum and the Godfather).  Didn't someone else say they were nearly certain a Godfather exists?

If that's the case, one of the four claimed Millers would be Scum.  It can't be Hellsnake, who is dead town.  Daniels looks the best of the three surviving Millers to me, Kolmogorov the worst (so far; O'Malley to follow after dinner).

Ethan looks better to me because Kolmogorov looks like the worse of the two, but I could also see Kolmogorov as being bussed.

I see Hargreaves STRONGLY believes Kolmogorov to be Town and implies there's role info backing that up, though?  Hargreaves has looked good to me so far so I'm inclined to listen, but Kolmogorov looks really bad on this reread.