WW27 Game Thread: Once there were 12

[Qgqqqqq]

I went after your vote early today as it was obvious how the other 4 votes were going to fall. The key to this whole day is your vote.

So why didn't either zak or novice see that and try to persuade me on a target as soon as they knew I'd be the swing vote (so last night)?

Allowing you to persuade them you are innocent can play to your ego. Which I know is a tactic that has worked against me before.

I don't think this would be it, as its pretty elaborate for the last day especially if they don't intend to post a real case on me - if this was it I'd expect more specific tells that I could refute or something - if this was their plan its certainly failed as today gives me a more favourable impression of you then them, and I certainly don't feel I've worked them round.

Am I correct in thinking that if jowy is scum then you think his partner must be me?

It could be zak, Jowys vote was just following you, but it feels like they wouldn't set up a showdown between the two.

[Jkaen]

Ok thats a shame if you thought only 2 pairs were possible it woudl make this job easier.

Since you still consider the possiblity Jowy could be partnered with Zak, then convincing you of my alignment is pointless, if the village is going to win the game I need to convince you Novice is more scummy than Jowy (hint some help in this would be nice Jowy)

Will try to pull together the case on Novice and defense of Jowy together as I think if you get this decision wrong the game is over

[zakalwe]

For Q:

It's been almost scary how close my thinking has been with Uberfish all game. We are playing the exact same game, and I'm a villager. Do you understand why I can't lynch him? I would be a hypocrite. I would lynch someone for playing the same game I've played myself. There is a high chance that he is the wolf. He got two villagers killed who couldn't defend themselves. But I agreed with him all the way, and I'm a villager. That's why I can't and will not put a vote against Uberfish in this game. I hope you won't judge me for this.

This is from WW25, where Jowy made a very deliberate declaration that he would never vote for Uberfish, in an attempt to clear Uberfish in the event that he was killed. Jowy was indeed killed, and Uberfish was indeed innocent, so this was a pretty slick play IMO. More importantly, it shows that even back then, in something like his second game, Jowy was very conscious of what he said during the night, and aware of how it might influence the scum's choices. I don't see him acting with the same consideration here.

I don't think I've accused him of having a poor understanding of the game, either. It's just his logic that has been shoddy. And yes, he's been playing a more conventional game style-wise than in his previous games. I don't see that as a town tell (not a strong scum tell either, but it fits the hypothesis).

By the way, Jkaen, if you want specific examples of your bias against me, check out WW24 and WW17.

[Jkaen]

Ok, lets look at the start of the game:

@Serdoa, I don't think we've ever seen that sort of scenario, and I don't think it would actually happen - people wouldn't let more then one day/night phase, people are too eager for blood.

It's a real possibility, I was kind of sweating as a GM in WW23 since there was a no kill by scum there, and a no lynch by town would have been a possible reaction. My rules didn't address the possibility so I would have had to make up a rule on the spot about a certain number of consecutive no kills/no lynches leading to a draw. Banning "no lynch" is an easier rule.

Anyway. I thought JKaen contradicted himself just now, but maybe not, after rereading. So in the interest of bandwagonning, Jowy.

It was a good ice-breaker but we don't really need to continue discussing the merits of a strategy that is forbidden by the rules of this particular game.

I agree.

Since people are speculating about it, what was bad about JKaen's post was basically that he appeared to say that Zak should know better than what MJW suggested, when MJW suggested it after Zak's post. Upon rereading though it seems that JKaen elaborates what Zak should have known better in the sentences following his "Zak should know better" statement. So it's just awkwardly phrased.

Well MJW is still acting like himself - suggesting really odd and poorly thought out theories.

If the town only lynched every other day, then what we are doing essentially is making the wolves have twice as many kills for no benefit, how on earth does that possibly help the town?

Somebody who I would hope would know better is zak. ASSUMING 3 wolves, having no lynch right now may well make no difference (not done the maths), but what if we get a roleblock in one night? surely that would change the figures.

I think any chance we have of hitting scum should be taken unless we have a very good reason not to

So his first major posts are highlighting something I didn't do and planting seeds for future use against me.

Then we have an interesting chain of emails. Again remember whoever the wolves are have had 2 days before the start of the game to work out any tactics, plus obviously ongoing communication in the wolf thread.

Look who first raises the possibility of policy lynching:

I really feel that it is asinine that Zak that no-lynching at the start of the game could be a plan at all. There are a zillion problems. For starts it is not "an average of one" the town needs for your plan to pay out. You need exactly one night kill per night. And it also rips the town off of a lot of information. Giving up a lynch is a major concession and a reasonable chance that it will work out is no-were near good enough. I also feel that it is not reasonable but the level-of-chance feels more plausible...

I would have no problem policy lynching a lurker like Azza or Classical_Hero* but I feel that Zak is or best shot now for not living up to his expectations.

*It's his first game but I'm pretty sure he is a lurker due to not spaming the Civ3 thread up even though he posted it. And his low post count...

The next comment on policy lynching:

I think it is unfair to policy lynch before seeing any sign of it, so suggesting it already is stupid. Azza doesn't even have the lowest posts.

On that note, I'd be interested to hear from mattimeo

A view supported by Azarius

Also, as Qgqqqqq said, policy lynching someone for lurking because you think they will when they haven't even played a game here yet isn't something I'd want to do.

At this point Novice jumps in with 'if we are policy lynching' (other than his scum buddy we were not) then we should go for Serdoa. Which I think is the first swing at trying to get rid of who would be his toughest opponent this game. Meanwhile parking a vote on MJW with a very handy 'for now' clause.

I think MJW's reasons for voting Zak are poor, so lacking other tells I could lynch MJW for bad reasoning/overaggressive pushing.

If we're policy lynching maybe we should lynch Serdoa. He seems to be too busy for this game, and I usually only home in on his scum persona through a process of elimination, which we may not have time for in this game.

MJW for now.

Before its pointed out, I did happily fall intot he trap and cross post with Novice. With what I think was a clear pressure vote, which moved upon his return.

To try and move things along a bit more, I see CH and Matt are being pressured slightly for low posts, but I have seen no real comment towards Serdoa, is this because the wolves want us to policy lynch the other 2 but not Serdoa?

In order to try and discuss something else today other than zak's opening post Serdoa.

[Jkaen]

Day one lynches are always a lottery and for the most part I am not a fan of day one lynches. I knew that from what I had read that Azza had no votes on him, so it was more than likely that he wouldn't get lynched. Day one is always the craziest day and generally just for this day no lynch is preferred.

I will move my vote for bad play from MJW to Classical Hero. Voting for someone who is unlikely to get lynched does not cause a no lynch, it just hands the lynch decision to scum.

I also find Serdoa's indignation at our suggested policy lynch to be an overreaction. Did you by any chance have a dentist's appointment today, Serdoa?

Continues to try and build pressure on Serdoa, while switching off his scum buddy onto a new player for not wanting to place a deciding vote day 1, something i think a lot of other players feel too

I also find Serdoa's indignation at our suggested policy lynch to be an overreaction. Did you by any chance have a dentist's appointment today, Serdoa?

I was surprised when I read it in zaks post and I still am surprised reading it here: Where to you find indignation in my posts? What I am: Surprised about who is suggesting such policy-lynch. I can't remember since when you are a spokesman for policy-lynches. I even explained why a policy-lynch would be bad in our situation (safe place for scum to put their votes which is unnecessary on D1).

Quite honestly, I'm again left surprised. Especially by you trying to use your bad and anti-town suggestion and my reaction to it as an indication for me being scum.

fake-edit: And I agree with Azarius. You took MJWs idea of policy lynching to immediately suggest a lynch on me - and besides me having just one post there was no reason yet for you to assume that I would have not enough time for this game - and Jkaen and zak both jumped on it. If not at least one of you is a wolf ... well, I guess in that case we really need a learning center for how to play village.

I've never been adverse to policy lynching, especially when it comes to lurker lynches. I always find them good options on day one. The point of singling you out was that I didn't want scum to freely steer the policy lynch onto the easy mislynch of their choice. I felt that if we were going to policy lynch we should do it for lurking and not for being new. At the time you had one contentless post and had indicated in other threads that you were swamped at work.

You've now jumped into action and that's a great development. Obviously I'm not suggesting you as a lurker lynch at this point, but at the time it felt perfectly justified.

Now Novice backs off Serdoa once a strong defense comes his way (something he will do later in the game against me). Also look at what Serdoa (probably the strongest proven villager int his game) thought about Novice's reasoning at the time.

And now he is saying that it was not a trap, but a genuine suggestion. But it wasn't really a genuine suggestion because he knew that the rules forbid it, he pointed it out himself.

This is bad. It was speculated, by MJW I think, that Zak's suggestion would have been a trap if it had been a legal suggestion. Zak clarified that it would have been a sincere suggestion. Would have been. Are you trying to conjure contradictions out of thin air, Jowy?

And then this post and the 3 after it make up the rest of day 1. And what is the content, just going on about zak's post number 1, either with MJW or others who would comment.

Hence the three wolves (to my mind) between them kept the village completely sidetracked that day. Zak maybe had to defend himself, but why was all Novice's energy on that conversation?

[Jkaen]

Sorry about resorting again to dead players words, but before Serdoa got killed again see the discussion and what he thought of the policy lynch. As I said at the time it told us nothing, but I wasn't as outraged as Serdoa was about it. Maybe I should have been.

Q, zak, novice, MJW imo you all didn't even discuss other options that were presented. c_h was as lazy a lynch as you can get and claiming there was nothing better (Q) or it was a policy lynch (which is stupid in itself on D1 on a new player) ignores the facts (again imo). What you all did was discussing zaks first post and than discussing whom to policy-lynch before you "policy-lynched" c_h. That's it. Sprinkle some "Oh Mattimeo plays D1 as he always plays D1 so he clearly has to be scum" into it for good measure.

You could have instead discussed my case on Gazglum or Jkaen. But what did you guys do instead?

zak: Decided to not even mention it, instead voting Azarius for a weak reason directly in the next post after my case.
novice: Decided to ignore the case and instead voiced his lack of understanding for the perceived indignation in my earlier post.
Q: Ignoring it, going for c_h and stating later that nothing better was available.
MJW: Discussing meta...

And note, I'm not suggesting that my case would have been better or that you did wrong by not following me. But that you didn't even discuss it - or anyone else - is imo telling, especially regarding zak and novice.

MJW could be scum, but if he's not, Azarius looks a bit shady for post #52.

I don't get that part of post #62 zak. Azarius vote in #52 for MJW because he felt that MJWs thinking makes no sense. The thinking he talks about here is MJWs explanation why zak should never have suggested a no-lynch. Why would Azarius be shady for that if MJW was not scum?

I didn't see any strong or even non-weak cases yesterday, so if I didn't comment on your cases Serdoa that was probably why. My comment would just have been noncommittal noise. With cases like that I prefer to let the accused answer for himself. I think Jkaen did, and Gazglum was sleeping.

I didn't see any strong or even non-weak cases yesterday, so if I didn't comment on your cases Serdoa that was probably why. My comment would just have been noncommittal noise. With cases like that I prefer to let the accused answer for himself. I think Jkaen did, and Gazglum was sleeping.

I guess my point got lost: It is not that you didn't comment especially to my case. It is that I feel that you and zak both have not even bothered to look at other targets. You were fine with the lynch on c_h and given my past experience with you two that is hard to believe if you are village, as this lynch was built on 1 (!) sentence that you considered bad play. I mean honestly novice, you tell me you didn't bother to look at other cases as you felt they were weak but the case you voted upon isn't anything but weak itself.

Again, I'm not taking issue with you not commenting other cases or waiting for others to reply. I'm taking issue with you letting the lynch on c_h run its course, even helping it along, without considering other cases.

Ok, Novice's first vote of the day below, a clear defense vote (hence not his fault when turns villager) but also gets in preparation for when MJW turns scum. I then question the approach and get no decent response.

I see Azza addressed his ch switch here:

I moved off c_h because his posts didn't give me anything that resembled a scummy vibe, while Mattimeo's post that I quoted in my vote did.

I will vote Gazglum, since the current scum meta is to kill your accusers, and because he wanted to tunnel on Mattimeo yesterday based on a small suspicion. If Mattimeo is town (more likely than not) this puts scum that much closer to a villager vs. villager showdown on day one. Tunneling is also useful since you don't have to keep looking for scum (or admit that you can't find any).

Bonus scum point for telling us that we would regret a MJW lynch (since MJW's alignment should not be apparent to a townie).

Is 'current scum meta' also dont strongly push your target day 1, just piggyback onto a safe vote?

JKaen, my answer to that is: Maybe, although I think most people playing scum these days would try to act with more conviction than that. Wishy-washing and pursuing policy lynches is what got me killed as a Ghoul in my last scum game, so I would certainly try to avoid repeating that mistake.

Finally one of my favourite quotes, the scum paranoid defense to a question nobody had asked. Way to early after just 1 night for Novice to get any heat about still being alive

Just to preemptively defend against the "why is Novice alive?" attack: Serdoa didn't give the impression that he was going to lurk. And I did catch some heat, from Serdoa. Additionally, I didn't scumhunt well on day one, and scum may have taken Serdoa's alleged overreaction to the policy lynch suggestion as a power role tell.

[Jkaen]

Novice spends the next few posts in a mixture of attacking Jowy, and still going on about the scums day 1 distraction attempt. The main meaty attack is here:

No, Jowy, they are not obvious questions. I'm trying to piece together what went on with you yesterday. One uncharitable interpretation is this:
- when deadline neared and it was time for everybody to take a stance, you made a highly dubious case against Zak with multiple logical flaws.
- you acknowledged the flaws as they were pointed out but still didn't move your vote
- your backup candidate was Gazglum, which he conveniently became after he had gone to sleep
- when Gazglum came back online you were uninterested in pursuing him. Or Zak for that matter.
- when questioned by me you vote for me instead of answering my questions

So forgive me if I seem to be faking activity, I'm just trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. After all, I have not come to expect brilliant logic from you. If Serdoa and not you had made that post against Zak yesterday I would have voted for him in a heartbeat.

This early in the game, and again he is working together with zak defending his post and getting involved in the associated debate. Somethign I have seen him do with nobody else's cases this game.

Let's answer your post point by point.

Novice seems like a good lynch today. Yesterday he was all about policy lynching and punishing bad play, plus a bandwagon attempt on me. I now know that out of four of his targets, three are villagers. Villagers obviously do target villagers all the time on Day 1, but what makes it worse is that he didn't have any good reasons to target these people, only easy-to-hide-behind policy crap. I find it strange that Mattimeo got a free pass despite being one that would fit a policy lynch.

I can't policy lynch everyone. I picked CH for his bad play and because I strongly suspected that he wouldn't contribute in any meaningful way if we let him live. The fact that he apparently didn't even read the rules seems to confirm that.

When Serdoa make this argument it was a reasonable point, here you pick on the weker extra bits of his accusation and ignore the harder part to answer.

Novice tried twice to start something against Serdoa, but could not get it going.

I did? I only remember one thing, and that was a suggestion that Serdoa would make a good policy lynch as long as he only had the one vote.

If I'm questioning someone that doesn't mean I'm trying to get "something started". I may as well be trying to stop suspecting someone.

Looking with hindsight I agree he was fishing for traction on Serdoa, which he didn't get.

Serdoa dies the next night. Coincidence? If it was scum trying to set-up novice for a miss-lynch by killing Serdoa, I think they would have already tried to get the bandwagon going 20 hours into the day.

You lost me. If scum wanted to set me up for a mislynch by killing Serdoa, why would they try to get a bandwagon going on Serdoa on day one?

If you got any traction on Serdoa you may have targetted somebody else at night, as it was there is only a false trail, normally if scum try setting somebody up it is advertised in huge flashing lights.

It could still be a pure coincidence, of course. Novice has also said that he didn't find anything scummy Day 1 and that's why he went with policy lynches, but as soon as night 1 had ended, he pointed out multiple plays that he found scummy from Day 1, and also voted to lynch Gazglum based on those "scum points" as he calls them.

I voted Gazglum after rereading and after night one added additional (albeit weak) evidence. The case felt too weak for a lynch on day one, and like you, I was reluctant to vote him when he was offline. Immediately after night one was a good time to attack him because I knew he was coming online and could defend. That reminds me, unvote.

Surely a weak scum case is better than no case at all, again this seems a reasonable point

Perhaps he read my post analyzing his play and realized that he's been too cautious and might be in trouble soon?

I actually did realize that I might be in trouble soon. Does that make me scum? If scumhunting makes me scummy, should I not do it?

Here he is just being silly, but I would argue he has done very little scum hunting all game.

And the final point is that he asks questions that have been answered before or have obvious answers, which can be an attempt to bolster his post count and make it look like he is contributing more than he is.

I addressed this above.

Now, could you answer my questions?

[Jkaen]

...

Another big attack defending not just him but once again Zak, very similar lines of argument from the previous one, so I dont intend to go through it item by item

He continues to home in against Jowty for the rest of the day on similar lines, before the post his whole defense is based upon:

I notice that MJW is top of the post count. It's amazing how little scumhunting he has done with those posts.

MJW

... And that is it before lynch time. Way to drive the lynch and be pivotal in it. I was going to say its a really weak argument, but its not even that.

Trying to get credit you continue to trade on all game with such an offhand accusation seems very poor. Plus the wording gave you plenty of opportunity to last minute jump off if you felt it could be done cleanly.

[Jkaen]

Ok that takes us to the end of day 2, and the big credit lynch of MJW.

Qgq do you have any comment on all that?

Am I wasting my time by even trying to sway you against Novice?

[Jowy]

Jkaen sorry, I had to sleep and go to classes. Will catch up and post later today.

Some short new points:

- Zak & Novice have 4 suspects (at least in some form), but all they've done is try convince Q to vote with them, their biggest scum candidate from the last day. Why not try to convince me or Jkaen to agree with them? If they suspect everyone, I would imagine everyone could either be a wolf or a villager in their minds, in which case only focusing on getting Q on your side seems really strange. It is not the same with me and Jkaen, who have clearly identified the exact scum duo, so naturally we would try to convince the third villager to join us.

- Zak, check out Hanlon's Razor. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Yes, I have some good moments, but I also have many terrible moments. This is my third game ever. I've made mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. It just shows how desperate you are that you would claim I'm an exceptional player and every mistake of mine is one done intentionally to sabotage the village.