@Black Pegged Dragon if Poyser hadn't have claimed his character and been open about being indy, would you be leaning him as town or scum at this point in time?
I'd say his play can go either way, I don't discount him being scum but like you, he's largely come across as his usual aggressive, bravado Town self
But looking past that, there has been an agenda this day phase with Lethal (and if Lethal had continued to play in the same manner), with him linking possible scum mates and maybe attempting to draw misleading connections
This could also be argued this Ultra train is a counter agenda
When it comes to Ultra's motives? Whether it's to save scum, bus scum, or bus Town, I don't know, him flipping would provide alot of info if those connections he made are there or it was a misdirection
His scum play is hard to read precisely because he blends in since he understands his town credibility isn't in danger and he's automatically a very calming presence to town, and as scum, he'd be able to take advantage of that
What flip do you think is statistically likely here?
Just wanted to quickly share my thoughts/findings before I catch up.
First, on Fang:
So it looks like Fang claimed indie out of sheer necessity. That's the only reasonable explanation I can think of I had assumed there's no reason for mafia to do so, but if he has no (free) fake claims available, he either faces the risk of getting counterclaimed in a sea of townies vs claiming an indie which probably exists but won't step up to risk correcting him.
Or at least that *would* be the risk calculus, if it weren't for the presence of Generic Townies. My best guess is that he wasn't aware those actually existed before he bluffed a power role early on, and then he ended up putting himself into a corner.
In short I think I misread him because of a misplaced assumption, and because I gave him too much credit. Interesting stuff.
---
Next, Lethal.
So I was ISO'ing Lethal in the night and I think he strikes me as a really likely partner candidate for Fang
Here are quotes from his ISO either mentioning Fang, or context surrounding him. It's a bit scarce, but:
Notice that these two mentions aren't real reads or leans, they're just observations without implicating him. Instead of explaining why he suspects Fang, he just explains why he suspects Ekko by association. If youlook at the rest of his posts he does due diligence for why he suspects players like Ekko/Tweet/Me but there's 0 depth here. And that's suspicious because a partner of Fang is less likely to have genuine progression, and more likely to feel the obligation to read him as scum but treat it as an afterthought and place the focus on players they can develop as suspects.
Now on to the juicier stuff:
A similar pattern emerges here, where Fang gets maybe barely implicated, but Lethal does not miss the opportunity to tie it to another player. Tied with a bow by a complete nonsense conclusion about a Fang/Yoshi/Ultra scum team.
Now the reason why this is a major red flag is because *Fang has already claimed Ind and Lethal is well aware of this*. So I think this is a big TMI slip. There's no reason for Lethal to be thinking in the dimensions of partnerships with Fang not only claiming, but by his own admission, he believed him!:
Finally, votes are a good indication of where his skin-in-the-game lies, and his pattern at EoD was to Vote Ekko, then hop on the Tweet wagon when it appeared, and then only lynched Fang at the last possible second:
^ Cherry on top is that if you look at the vote counter, he's not even the one who hammered.
Others have brought up how his behavior is suspicious in general, lots of activity excuses “I’m catching up (despite coming across as well informed)”, etc. But I think this in particular is pretty damining
[Vote lynch Lethal]
I also think his flip will offer some indirect info about Tweet which is good.
How do you know they're weak if my suspects haven't flipped yet
Your observation about Fang and who he interacted with is coherent though, because scum struggling to tread water has limited resource investment in the thread, and he's going to spend those resources trying to persuade players who are potentially sympathetic to him.
I can probably go back to the point of his claim and bring up you chasing around Yoshi with a stick while other players were trying to flesh out what his deal was.
Here's my take on the matter, I think if you look at any of my posts regarding Fang in a vacuum, they could look bad and be painted as such, because I was reading him as not mafia and took opportunities to go after other players, transparently.
But I think specifically if you ISO me honestly and look at the cumulative amount of interaction between us you really have to force a narrative of "distancing". I was holding water for the guy since he first got suspected in the first couple pages. In spite of that, I did vote him multiple times because the burden of his lies was just too great for me to overlook.
But I think if I were distancing I would look a lot different. At no point did I do that little dance and a jig a scum partner does where they type up a post epicly owning their partner before casting them to the shadow realm. I didn't even *try* to make myself look good when I did vote for him, something I'd obviously do if I was bussing.
This is preemptive since Ratchet actually hasn't posted his "case", but I think that's because he doesn't have one.
I don't recall saying anything about you, actually, other than you being bald. This is extremely defensive, and contrasts with your very casual demeanor through most of Day 1.
Craig, I don't suspect you, but that's a completely uncharitable view of my play, I'd say even phoning it in I do more lifting than most players here, and certainly you who spent most of your time rimming Poyser. Which I won't even criticize, because looking at your attempts to branch out on your own, you should probably keep following someone's footsteps.
Not the person you asked, but I'll weigh in, this sort of ability is rarely scum. I'd reserve maybe a 20% chance for surprise factor.
There's an argument to be made about whether he should claim character nonetheless, however, because character was the exact dimension that Fang ran into a wall with, and because of that, should probably be standard for everyone making a claim.
I'm going to go out of my way for a rare defense of Ekko and say in his cumulative contributions to the game, the typing attributed by a single finger of his outweighs anything you have so far brought to the table. While if you're town, it's easy to see you as being low hanging fruit, you've done relatively little to give yourself benefit of the doubt.
That doesn't mean they have access all at once. Someone brought up that Gramma used a currency system to purchase claims in a previous set up. I mean, obviously you know him better. But logically I don't really see why Fang claims indi, specifically, otherwise. You can't even chalk that up to him being a singular idiot, because he has probably around 4 other people on his team who helped coach that play.
I don't think I was trying to undermine Poyser, I was having a back and forth with him on the merits of him power wolfing (I think). The point of him and I voting for Fang was brought up and I did agree that at that point, there didn't seem like a lot of team equity. I was sussing you D1 and honestly just wanted to throw out a vote for you and see the reaction. I didn't think it would go anywhere and really wasn't interested in getting people to follow me at that point. I didn't slide back onto Fang. I woke up with four hours left in EOD and I wasn't going to have a no lynch D1 when we had a potentially dangerous Fang. I threw a vote back on, not knowing what the VC was, and I nearly hammered Fang. I'd say your timeline is fairly accurate. But you still haven't really talked much about me bussing Fang, then.
People being from WS or not literally never enters my thinking at all. I’ve pushed tweet twice this game lol. I play to win and people buying into that kind of thing is unhelpful to this game because the whole accusation was disingenuous to begin with from a guy that has been twisting facts for the entire game (plus tpein)
I don't think this is an active thing, I just think its easier for us to understand each others metas so we're more likely to defend each other based on meta.
hence the scenarios where we all defend someone based on meta while others are suss of them (see lethal)
It's hard to get into statistics, especially because I would have to divorce myself from my own read. If I try to gauge statistics using my own read exclusively, I believe I tend to be more right than I am wrong, so a number on it would probably be about 70% Scum?
This is the first time Ultra properly addresses anything related to Aurelian. I think it's notable then that his dismisses the argument RDK initially makes as weak, but makes no attempt to actually address this with RDK. Instead he talks around the issue, and frankly I think the point of him being the Admin of the site is pretty silly. I also think the "he has offered nothing" argument is a pretty soft blow, because the issue wasn't his lack of content, but the perceived defensiveness around his play. He makes no mention of this.
This vote then comes after Aurelian has started receiving them. Before this, Ultra gauges how confident Poyser may be in this read - Ultra has done very little casing of Evans himself up to this point. I'm not even sure why a meta read would sway him to begin with. Just noticed this - Ultra liked this post for some reason. Why? I have no idea. It doesn't seem to jive with his impression of the game at all.
This is in response to Poyser questioning Ultra about his Evans read. It's frankly nonsensical, Poyser has just told him he has a meta tell on Evans, one that he is not certain of, but one nonetheless, and Ultra is apparently confused that he needs to convince Poyser that Evans is scummy? What? This is a pretty hedgy defence. Of course he could be Scum, he is not saying anything of note with that. He now agrees with the case in general (despite having not said anything on it directly) and then tries to say maybe it's just low-hanging fruit - at this point I should provide the context that Ultra is at least as familiar with Aurelian as Ekko, X and myself are. This is in response to me, questioning Ultra's profile of Evans being an "unconfident Scum". For context, he has already been told by Poyser that his meta read is shared by others, and asked why he was dismissive of it, and he didn't have anything compelling to address that. Also of note - by this point Aurelian has a wagon established on him. This is in response to Aurelian. I'm not really sure what this is. At first, I read it as piggy-backing the suspicon of Yoshi, by virtue of him referencing a previous game he played with Yoshi. I could see this being in refrence to Aurelian himself, and in that case it's a straight up defence (contrasting his play with a scum player from another game, and then concludes that he isn't approaching this from a scummy angle). In other words, neither interpretation I have here reflects well. He continues to talk around the wagon. At the risk of submitting to confirmation bias, this just reads coyly. He knows Fang. He knows Aurelian is known as Fang. Come on. Just quoting this for added context around the posts he was making at the time the Aurelian wagon was forming. In reaction to Poyser seeking a claim from Aurelian. Chainsaw defence. There are a couple more posts around this, but I don't need to quote them all here. This however, deserves mention. This is a little in retrospect, so bear with me. But given how Aurelain played his claim, we can assume that Scum didn't have a very clear role for him to fake. Given this, this post from Ultra reads to me as attempting to discredit the value of receiving claims before it is even done. Ultra has no real prior experience with Gram as a host - he subbed out of Game of Thrones after Day 1. Even then, it's just one game. Why does he know better than others more familiar with Host!Gram? I don't know what he had seen from Aurelian so far in this game to hold any reasonable expectation that he would be able to post his way out of a wagon. Given that Aurelian was already starting to come across as stalling, I can see a very clear angle here where Ultra removes the suspicion around said stalling while a fake claim is in the oven. Not quoted here, also - he was very confident Aurelain wouldn't claim at all. He goes from telling me that risking exposing a Cop early in the day (he misrepresented how early it was) was just unsound play to telling me that yes I'm right but it doesn't matter anyway. Added context. In response to me suggesting that, should he fail to claim, we should just lynch him. I feel like at this point, Ultra has set his stall out, pretty transparently, to play cover for Aurelian in the hope that something else picks up. I mean here he is essentially advocating I direct my attention somewhere else just for the sake of doing so. As Poyser also noted, Ultra's position on seeking a claim has changed from "this is a bad idea" to "yes but he won't claim so let's look elsewhere". Also of note - Retrolize apparently agrees with Ultra at every single turn here. Further context. Of note, Ultra hasn't really explained why he things Aurelian might be town. He just thinks it apparently - despite noting earlier that the arguments against him are sound and worthy of pursuit. Also, the last part in hindsight comes across as trying to set up that my approach here is unsound, which is fairly fallacious given the lack of supporting evidence. No points for self-awareness, especially after having made a fair deal of posts attempting to get the thread to look elsewhere.
The key part I want to note at this stage is that Ultra starts pushing Evans the moment Aurelian starts receiving pressure. If you take anything from this set of quotes so far, let it be that pattern of behaviour.
Here we have Ultra seem to lean into a scum read on Yoshi. This is noteable, because if we assume that Yoshi was the designated duel target for Aurelian, which seems plausible, this could pretty easily be Ultra doing some legwork on that. I's harder to reconcile the other way, because Ultra seems to come around in the below posts to Aurelian potentially being scum, and tries to tie Aclo to him. Why, then, is Ultra even concerned about Yoshi?
I also don't recall Ultra doing much regarding Aclo today. From his perspective, the pieces are lining up here, no? This post is fine, but I didn't want to not present it and be accused of misrepresenting the context. -Break-
I want to take a quick aside to address this to Fang specifically - I have nothing personal against you. I don't know as a person. My association with you starts and ends in Mafia. You can accuse me of bias or whatever, you're entitled to that opinion, but I don't use anything in these games to make determinations on someone as a person. I have had more than my fair share of spats within Mafia, as you could probably tell. For me, it stays within the game. You don't have to like me of course, plenty of people don't, hell I know I'm not all that likeable, but I'm not very comfortable with the notion that you feel I have some personal beef against you. I really just don't.
Having infamous buddies sounds fun.
-/Break-
So by now, Ultra who was town reading Aurelian, voted him for not claiming (fair, though Ultra earlier didn't seem to care about a claim) then, once the claim came, unvoted him (also fair) - the reasoning though appeared to imply that his vote would normally stick, but he was concerned about an early hammer. There has been no Indie claim yet, so why isn't Ultra unvoting because he thinks he's town? Quoting this to say, I don't actually know why Ekko concludes this. It seems like a reach to me. See below for the claim in full to make up your own mind.
I don't hold the conclusion against Ultra, I thought he was Indie too - but I think this is a very forceful way of saying it. "Beyond doubt" - really?
@Arp Bladstrum This is the image I mentioned earlier, if it means anything.
As an aside throughout all this I don't really like Ekko's process leading to his conclusion on Aurelian being like Daenarys. Giving me food for thought. Ultra begins to look elsewhere. He begins to move the eyes back to Evans, now with the claim maybe going over better. Why does scum Aurelian make this post? He doesn't even end up following Ultra, but Ekko.
Key takeaway from this is, like earlier in the thread, Ultra's pushes end up coming at convenient times to sway the thread. When Aurelian was pressured, Ultra pushed Evans. When Aurelian was gone for a while, Ultra made a point to say that the lack of claim wasn't suspicious and to get the thread to look elsewhere. When Aurelian claimed Indie, Ultra softened the blow and wanted to get people thinking elsewhere again, though he totally wants to kill the Indie. It's a repeated pattern. To help compass thinking, this posts tells me that Scum were hoping people would see the Indie claim and just move past it. Therefore, I have some suspicion of people who wants to really sell the idea that he must be Indie, or to give him a Night. Dalton comes to mind here, too. I think this idea of Lethal having "outed" himself is posturing, and it's pretty convenient given Aurelian is again being swayed away from.
Of coure, Ultra jumps on the tweet wagon. This is after revoting Aurelian to make a point to Ekko. He does jump off earlier than most, something RDK noted, but I don't hold that in favour because scum would obviously know Aurelian is a dead man walking at this stage.
Not much more else to say here. In conclusion, I think positionally Ultra comes across poorly with Aurelian flipping Town, and I don't see anything in their interactions that couldn't be easily faked. There is a lot of softballing in here - I think after the claim didn't really get the pressure off the scum team knew they had to cut bait eventually, at the same time there was a clear pattern of wanting to delay Aurelian flipping until perhaps today. That would give him the duel, which might have helped his case.
I'll go through T-Pein, back to sleep for a bit I think.
First, I think it's fairly easily to say "CoNvEnIeNtLy" I look for alternative pushes when I was reading him as town or at least not-mafia. Woo. You're free to insist that in of itself is scummy but establishing that I sought alternative wagons given my stated motivations is not really that compelling.
Secondly, I actually legitimately didn't recognize fang as fang early game. If you're calling me a list, straight up, then you shouldn't be hedging about a conclusion here.
On an individual level, there's a lot of observation of what I could be doing as scum mate, but a lack of a coherent thesis of what I *am* doing. Which is a seriously valid question, why the fuck would I do all this hot potato shit with a buddy who shits the bed 5 minutes into the game? I've gone long for buddies historically, but in that context it was when I needed to go long or accepted the risk to close out the game. I could see an alternate scum self maybe aligning with a couple of points you brought up, in particular around the points involving not excluding other wagons, but otherwise I don't know why I would go out of my way for someone who clearly hasn't earned it. Remember, Fang reached a near majority in just the first couple hundred posts of the game. From then on, it's not a matter of if he's getting lynched but when, and Ab-so-fuckin-lutely not with his avoidance of the thread and eventual indie claim. You need to assume I'm strategically incompetent enough to not understand this.
The sounder approach would be to bus him and look for some opportunities to derail, or set up future wagon narratives. Which is also my assumption when I'm trying to figure out candidates for his buddies.
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