I'm hosting a game!

[landlubber]

A) Don't get a debbie downer, that's annoying. We're still waiting on the rest of the folks to show up. If you think me and GH have a hard vote set for you, don't. Knock that off.

You've provided no evidence-based case, even after I prodded you for one repeatedly. I said you could talk to me in private, whatever it took to build a bridge. I really just want to know what you're thinking, because, by this point, I accept that at least one of you is almost certainly townie. I want the town to win, of course, but what avenue do I have left when it's entirely possible that 100% of the town is voting for me without elaboration, which, for all I know, has more to do with personal relationships than the game itself? I'm being realistic. That's all.

[landlubber]

Seriously, at this point the most suspicious thing about you is that you've been only half-engaged with us the whole time. You claimed you wanted robust discussion, but you only address half our points, at best. Give *us* something too.

Quote anything that I haven't addressed and I'll answer for it here and now.

[GeneralHankerchief]

A friendly word of advice.

It's the endgame. Stop waving around your good townie credentials so much. Instead, buckle down and find the mafia.

Your recent posts have provided me with food for thought. I'll be doing a reread tomorrow when I have time (5 minutes away from sleeping now). You should too. Then, we'll see.

[landlubber]

It's the endgame. Stop waving around your good townie credentials so much.

Well, I only ever insisted on my innocence because I wanted to get you two focused on each other instead of me, having suspected both of you after the Monty lynch. I didn't expect this tangent to get so consuming.

But, as a measure of good faith:

Unvote.

Fresh start tomorrow.

[seireikhaan]

Explain to me why a mafia wants to contact someone on day 1 who has claimed a role with no power that is not aligned with them.(the original crux of winston's argument, of which you are apparently basing *your* case).

Explain to me why GH saving someone he thinks is innocent at the expense of someone he thinks is less likely to be innocent is scummy.

If we assume GH to be mafia, explain to me why he would create a potentially suspicious, last minute vote switch that would highlight himself when he was not one of the people under threat.

Explain to me why me not laying over to die and give the mafia a free town kill is bad.

Explain to me why GH, as a mafioso with one theoretical partner left at most would call out the remaining players to make sure the mob lynch comes in to lynch us.

edit: tomorrow it is

[landlubber]

Explain to me why a mafia wants to contact someone on day 1 who has claimed a role with no power that is not aligned with them.(the original crux of winston's argument, of which you are apparently basing *your* case).

Explain to me why GH saving someone he thinks is innocent at the expense of someone he thinks is less likely to be innocent is scummy.

If we assume GH to be mafia, explain to me why he would create a potentially suspicious, last minute vote switch that would highlight himself when he was not one of the people under threat.

Explain to me why me not laying over to die and give the mafia a free town kill is bad.

Explain to me why GH, as a mafioso with one theoretical partner left at most would call out the remaining players to make sure the mob lynch comes in to lynch us.

1. First off, my case is at post 257, and I rely on way more than just the PM. I made my own argument. The way the PM was crafted allowed GH to test Visor's reaction, see why he thought the mafia would leave him alone, establish basic contact with Visor, etc. all while not revealing anything of his own alignment. Assuming that GH is mafia, he backed away from the PM after someone latched onto it, using rustiness as a crutch. If he's town, he was probably rattled by people finding suspicion in what he saw as nothing more than a friendly townie-to-pseudotownie greeting.

2. I'm always suspicious of private coordination, especially in games without masons or cops or anything else that would explicitly build a network. The Monty lynch was incredibly clandestine-- it was hard for me to tell that GH was voting for your benefit at all, given how messy everything got. It's also worth noting that I found your vote on Monty to be more scummy, hence my original vote for you. I thought Monty's actions that day were a pretty clear indicator of innocence (I said before his lynch he had been very helpful and acknowledged that my thinking on him, i.e. that he was a bit erratic, had changed). I had a hard time believing that he thought Monty was actually guilty. I still do, to be honest, but it makes more sense given that he counts you as an all-but-revealed townie.

3. That play makes sense if you're his partner and he wants to save you, does it not? ScumKhaan is in trouble, ScumGH can change the lynch, ScumGH does, ScumGH and ScumKhaan later say they've been in communication the whole game and think each other innocent.

4. No worse than lynching another townie. To me, it was pretty clear that Monty deserved to live. Like I said before, you basically guaranteed that you would attract a lot of attention the next round, which, as you know, is LyLo. It's just not my style as town (if you had died, we would probably be focusing on Ishmael and JHT, who I'm feeling less and less positive about the more I talk to you two), but that doesn't mean it's not yours, I suppose.

5. Could be a lot of reasons. Maybe one of them is his partner, which would guarantee another vote on me. Maybe he was confident that he could maintain control of the discussion, keep them on the defensive. Maybe he thinks that JHT, Ishmael, and me won't be able to agree on a lynch and I'll be lynched anyway. It's not all that unreasonable.

[Winston Hughes]

It's the Clay and Billy show!

[Ishmael]

Vote: landlubber

I'm about 95% certain it's him.

Yes, you're going to ask me to back that up.

Yes, I can back that up.

No, I'm not going to back that up.

No, I'm not going to tell you why.

Just vote landlubber.

GeneralHankerchief, would you please back that up?

You're not going to back it up?

Okay, then.

vote: seireikhaan

Now, let me make it clear that I am not voting for 'khaan because of his late vote change yesterday. Whilst it does seem that scum pull such a move disproportionately more often, I accept that this does not necessarily imply causation and that in theory, at a basic level, it's a neutral move. I just want to head this off at the pass before we have another page's worth of discussion on it.

[seireikhaan]

GeneralHankerchief, would you please back that up?

You're not going to back it up?

Okay, then.

vote: seireikhaan

Now, let me make it clear that I am not voting for 'khaan because of his late vote change yesterday. Whilst it does seem that scum pull such a move disproportionately more often, I accept that this does not necessarily imply causation and that in theory, at a basic level, it's a neutral move. I just want to head this off at the pass before we have another page's worth of discussion on it.

Ishmael, would you please back that up?

You're not going to back it up?

Okay, then.

[johnhughthom]

Well, that's been an interesting morning, expected to come in and vote for GH or 'khaan, whoever had more votes, but we're going to let them away with yesterday? Okay. Interesting.

vote: khaan

[GeneralHankerchief]

Unvote: lubber
Vote: abstain

Pending reread in a few hours. I really don't like the last set of posts.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Ishmael, you took great pains to explain that the last-second vote was not why you voted for khaan. So why DID you vote for him?

[GeneralHankerchief]

Well, that's been an interesting morning, expected to come in and vote for GH or 'khaan, whoever had more votes, but we're going to let them away with yesterday? Okay. Interesting.

vote: khaan

So your plan was to latch on to whichever one of us looked more likely to be lynched? There's only one possible explanation that doesn't incriminate you, I'm interested in hearing what it is.

[johnhughthom]

I'm not really paying attention?

[GeneralHankerchief]

...okay, one and a half. Sigh.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Please note: This reread will only focus on the activities of landlubber, Ishmael, and JHT. I don't think I really need to explain why at this point.

Day 1

lubber lodges the first vote, a joke vote on Csargo. JHT gets a vote from Winston before Visor hardclaims. I do my thing and we go back and forth for a while. lubber doubts the veracity and motive behind Visor's claim and proceeds to get into an argument with Visor. His later point is that Visor's acting way too weird/not typical/outside the norm to be unsuspicious. This appears to be consistent with his later thoughts on khaan and myself.

khaan lodges a random on Ishmael, Ishmael is willing to let Visor live and lodges a "pseudo-random vote" although his reasoning is entirely random:

I don't trust landlubbers. I bet you've never even hunted a great white whale.

He also briefly mentions khaan's random vote as well as an unrelated, meaningless article I linked to in my "argument" with Visor.

Ishmael then switches to Winston in an accusation of bandwagoning on Visor. He adds this as an addendum, which normally I wouldn't comment on were it not for the fact that it references JHT:

EDIT: And of course, the host removed the suggestion to vote from you between the sign-ups player list and the game start player list. Clearly that's a subtle hint that he doesn't want his mafia killed off too soon. johnhughthom, you're next.

Later in the round, lubber switches to Visor mostly because he doesn't buy the claim/doesn't think it's good for the town. John comes in late, randoms Winston, and then unvotes him like two posts later. Lubber says that Visor might be displaying PIS by guessing the number of mafia. Continues arguing with Visor but keeps flying his "good townie" flag by saying it was a productive D1. John chips in with what he'd do if he was third party and got contacted by scum. This was from an argument with Csargo which was only tangential to the main debate going on at the time. John appears to agree with lubber's logic re: Visor but doesn't actually vote.

Visor lynched. Lubber voted Visor, Ishmael voted Winston, khaan and I voted BSmith, john didn't vote (tally doesn't have him listed in any category).

Day 2

Kage killed. khaan makes an oblique reference to Kage's Curse which I'm positive that only I caught (he also votes BSmith in continuation of D1).

Lubber says he's confused by Monty's non-perfect townie behavior. No surprise there. He also brings up Winston going Visor-GH-Visor on D1 when his vote wasn't needed for Visor to be lynched.

Ishmael comes in with a semi-long post on #136. Part 1 is agreeing with Monty that khaan and I are suspicious. Part 2 is agreeing with khaan and I that BSmith is suspicious. He lodges a vote on BSmith using the following reasoning:

Again, this comes off as somebody very deliberately trying to keep their options open.

lol

John pops in at 143 and says there's not much to look into re: yesterday's voting, backed up by good reasoning (scum had lots of time to decide what to do about Visor).

I defend myself for my actions the previous day, Lubber doesn't buy it but votes for BSmith using different reasoning (BSmith's got bad logic re: OMGUS). John votes Monty in the last vote before it ends:

Vote: Monty

Hasn't really made a lot of sense so far, and I'm still waiting for something to become clear.

Or even murky.

BSmith is lynched, courtesy of khaan, Ishmael, and lubber. John voted for Monty along with Csar. I posted but never actually lodged a vote, but probably would have joined in with the BSmith crowd.

Day 3

Csargo died. Monty calls out Ishmael to post more, lubber does the same for john. Hmm.

This is Ishmael's response:

As I mentioned yesterday I've been keeping an eye on him, but I'm just not finding him to be particularly scummy. I think there are definitely worse lynches than him, but there are probably also better ones as well (I'm just not sure who they are, yet).

Which immediately twigs Monty's scum sense. Ishmael asks if Monty thinks he's partnered with khaan, Monty's noncommittal. Lubber votes for john, backing up his earlier calling-out. John shows up but it's basically his usual self (ugh this is what happened in Campground too) so it's hard to keep that line of argument going. Lubber agrees and switches to Ishmael.

khaan and Winston get into their argument over my guilt re: Visor and other things. John comes in after it, doesn't mention it at all, and votes Winston. Ishmael says he thinks lubber is town and then says he thinks I'm the least scummy after lubber. Winston's also off his suspect-o-meter because Winston's acting a lot like lubber now in terms of offering analysis, etc. His order of suspicion at this point is Monty-khaan-john-Winston-GH-lubber. He votes Monty. Ishmael's average post length is also much longer than everyone else's at this point (I don't have any data with which to back this up, just eyeballing it).

Partly because he's the most scummy of the contenders, and partly because I want to see how the votes move in a tiebreaker round.

Winston offers up additional information about Monty PMing him, Ishmael remarks that's something that town Monty does. Not enough to move his vote off him though. Ishmael, Winston, and Monty want to agree on a compromise vote on khaan.

Enter chaos. Monty now pairs Ishmael and lubber as scum after khaan defends himself. I switch over to Monty. Ishmael says he's loving this phase end. khaan switches over to Monty about .00000000038 seconds before deadline. Ishmael brings up the fact that it might actually, defying probability, be me and khaan as a scum pair.

Monty lynched courtesy of me, khaan, and john. Ishmael and Winston (RIP) voted khaan, Monty and lubber voted Ishmael. Lubber says he would've switched to khaan had he been on but offered no reasoning behind the last-second vote.

Day 4 (today)

Winston buys it, as per Monty's prediction. FWIW, he also predicted that the scum pair was either GH/khaan or Ishmael/lubber.

I make my "I have evidence against lubber, vote him, no I'm not telling you" post. Lubber takes umbrage but votes for khaan. khaan plays along with what I'm doing and votes for lubber. The argument over whether voting to save yourself as townie is a good move begins. Lubber starts to get agitated. Lubber starts to get despondent. Maf thinking he might be lynched or townie realizing that if he goes, the town loses? Maf has margin for error this round, town has none. Statistically more likely that he's town.

Ishmael and john remain absent from this.

Lubber starts begging for me to show him evidence of any kind, against anyone. What a good little townie act. THE AWFUL TRUTH about khaan and my affiliation comes out. Lubber's still asking for evidence. We don't give him any, pointing out the logical flaws he's made and ignored over the course of the argument.

This post is interesting:

Well, I only ever insisted on my innocence because I wanted to get you two focused on each other instead of me, having suspected both of you after the Monty lynch. I didn't expect this tangent to get so consuming.

Please explain.

Finally, finally, Ishmael and john come in. Ishmael votes for khaan while citing and disavowing my previously-mentioned "vote lubber" post. He mentions nothing of the previous page-long argument aside from the fact that he's not voting for khaan because of his last-second move yesterday. I addressed this a few posts ago. John makes his post. I question him on it, he says he hasn't been paying attention. It's john so I can't even call him out for it. Damn you, john.

Conclusion

Lubber's been fairly active in the thread, interacting with most people and being very keen on advancing the perception that by-the-book non-scummy play by townies is the way to go about this. He's also grown more and more agitated as this round has progressed but provided reasoning for it earlier on (IRL stuff).

Ishmael has been an infrequent contributor. He makes longer posts than the usual. He commits but he doesn't. He doesn't typically join in arguments unless it's directly addressed at him.

John has been John.

Ishmael and John have never once interacted with or referred to each other in the entire game aside from that one weird instance of Ishmael pointing out how john's name was initially posted on the sign-up sheet as vote:johnhughthom. I find this very interesting. On Winston's D3 suspect list, he put john in the middle, "by default".

I personally think we're looking at an Ishmael-JHT mafia team upon rereading. They haven't really voted with each other, but they haven't needed to. They've come in, said what they've needed to say, and let events occur as they have. That said, I'm more confident in Ishmael being scum than john, simply because of his innate john-ness. That'll be research for another day if we live to see it. But in the meantime let's give ourselves another day to do it.

Unvote: Abstain
Vote: Ishmael

[GeneralHankerchief]

Quick addendum, since I don't want to edit a post that has a vote in it:

On Winston's D3 suspect list, he put john in the middle, "by default".

Should read "On Ishmael's D3 suspect list".

[landlubber]

This post is interesting:

Please explain.

By the beginning of this day, I had begun to think that one of you was mafia who had won the unyielding trust of the other. I doubted you would be so brazen if you were the mafia team, but I really couldn't fathom that both of you would be town (and I still have my reservations). So I appealed to my innocence (acting like a townie, apparently, is ~so 2010~) in an effort to get you two to critically examine each other the way you examine everyone else. It didn't work.

I haven't yet made a decision. I can't bring myself trust GH and Khaan, but Ishmael and JHT just haven't given the town anything to work with, and GH's discovery that they've never really acknowledged each other is a good find. I'll take some time to think it over.

[GeneralHankerchief]

What you have to recognize is that khaan and I were just trolling around at the start of the game. We weren't necessarily taking things seriously, we were just goofing around and having fun. Obviously we wanted town to win, because we're both competitive people who will take any and every opportunity to stomp on some fools who think they can beat us at Mafia, but scumhunting wasn't at the forefront quite yet.

You also need to realize that khaan and I are going to be a package deal in 99% of all situations. We talk on Steamchat nearly every day and have done so for many years now. Are we usually this blatant about it? No. But screw it, this was a small game, it was both of our first games in a while, and we were going to make the most of it.

But then a couple things happened. First of all, we were both left alive. I don't know about khaan, but I know that one of my usual flaws is that when I'm nightkilled, my activity drops way off, sometimes completely. Secondly, we were both under suspicion for what we perceived to be bad, illogical, disproven cases against us. khaan and I will sometimes, especially to each other, take the facade that we don't care, that we're above it all, but the truth is that we care immensely and deeply. We're fiercely protective of our reputations, and even more than that, fiercely protective of what we perceive to be the prevailing wisdom of the greater metagame which we worked for so long and so hard at to help shape.

So when we saw and see bad reasoning thrown around like it's gospel, we reacted. When said bad reasoning was used against us and actually picked up steam, we closed ranks. In the words that I've used to him several times now, the tiger was poked.

I wasn't fully locked in at the start of the game, but I definitely am now (I'm also drunk but that's its own separate issue). I think our goal, even more so than sniffing out scum and stringing them up to a tree, is to re-establish what we perceive to be the natural order of things. And that's bad logic being thrown back in its place, and even more so, the town going out on a limb and taking actual risks to kill the mafia. That's why I've been hounding you in the game as well as my big analysis post for being such a golden-boy townie figure, because by-the-bookness isn't enough in vanilla games. Not at the endgame, not with everything on the line.

[Ishmael]

It's wonderfully refreshing to wake up and see a lengthy analysis against oneself. Very nostalgic. Anyway, for now I'll quickly sketch out why I'm voting for 'khaan - I'll get around to GH's accusations against myself, but that will have to wait a few hours.

Firstly, here's the position I'm starting from. I consider landlubber to be almost certainly town. If he's not then congratulations are in order and I've almost certainly thrown the game, but at the end of the day I feel confident eliminating him from my list of suspects. Of the remaining three players, two must be scum. As stated earlier I feel I don't have enough evidence to rule on jht one way or another. He might be scum or he might not, but I'd prefer to look at the other players rather than effectively flip a coin. Which leaves 'khaan and GH, of which at least one must be scum, and the one I find most scummy is the former.

I'll give a summary of my reasons for voting him to start with (in case I run out of time writing this up before I have to head off). Firstly, process of elimination - as mentioned above I believe at least one of he and GH must be mafia, and 'khaan is the better fit. Secondly, he has been giving the impression of taking the 'easy' vote most days, whilst building up his townie credentials and justifying his vote by dissecting the arguments of others, rather than putting his own forward. More on this below. Finally, I've been getting flashbacks to Vespasian all game, and that worries me (I don't expect this last point to sway anyone other than myself, obviously).

Now, on to some posts in a chronologically jumbled order:

Vote: Winston Hughes

You were quite rarin' to go on D1 and were quite on board with the Visor lynch. You 'bailed' off it and then switched back later, allegedly to stop a townie lynch, but your phrasing of "has to be" seems very off to me if that was indeed your goal.Since then, you've simply sat on voting for GH without really putting much explanation into it, a tactic I've used myself plenty of times as mafia. It makes you seem less random and like you actually have a goal when you really just want to toss a vote somewhere so people won't accost you.


Also, silly kids these days. I'm *always* scummy.

On the face of it, this seems like a reasonable justification for a vote. However, at this point I feel like Winston had already laid out quite clearly his explanation for voting for GH (I didn't and still don't necessarily agree with his arguments, but he'd definitely made them). In this case 'khaan's argument flips on its head - rather than Winston taking the easy vote without explanation, 'khaan is taking the easy vote with an easy, but flawed justification.

I am now going to proceed to ask you to back that up.

Would you please back that up?

I have now asked you to back that up

I will now vote for landlubber.

Vote: Landlubber

I have now voted for landlubber.

Yes, I know you like the symmetry, but at this point there was no justification given for voting landlubber. That only came retroactively, by attacking landlubber's arguments in response.

Your logic is bad because we said so. Since that seems to be the requirement for actual analysis instead of, say, thinking about it, here, I'll justify my vote for you.

It's fine, I can vote for you because monty is innocent and he said you are one of the potential mafia pairs.

The quoted post is just representative, as there were a fair few posts where 'khaan rebutted landlubber's arguments. I was trying to put my finger on why this whole sequence didn't give me the same vibe of 'townie analysis' I'd attributed to Winston and landlubber, and I think the reason is that 'khaan has for the most part been trying to pick apart the arguments of others (and therefore implicitly justify his vote on landlubber, at least), rather than promote his own cases. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with this - if somebody makes an argument, it needs to be open to scrutiny - but it is almost always easier to find flaws in somebody else's case than to make your own, and so it doesn't give off the same townie sense. Again, this is not a point against 'khaan - it's just stating why I'm not counting these exchanges as a point in his favour.

So is everyone having fun?

As a final aside, this post made me very, very nervous. Honestly, I was half expecting the host to reveal that there were three mafia and the town had lost that phase, just because of how much it came off as 'scum confident of victory.'

[landlubber]

Right, so this is where I'm at after hearing from GH and Ishmael.

GH and Khaan don't like my playstyle. They think it's unhealthy for the metagame. They think I haven't been risky enough. They think my logic is bad. This is all well and good, valid complaints I suppose, but none of it makes me scum. Assuming they're both town, they voted for me as a statement of dissatisfaction toward everyone who made arguments against them, not because they genuinely think I'm scum. That much is clear based on how often GH has criticized my content as too safe, too obviously townie (never mind that Khaan still has a vote on me-- if I'm so obviously town, what good would it be to lynch me?)

Frankly, I couldn't care less about the metagame, and I don't care that you think my playstyle has damaged it. I was never exactly a mafia legend. I played this game because I like arguing with people, not because I wanted to create prevailing wisdom of orthodox and heterodox strategies. I can accept sacrificing myself for the town-- I'd rather die than distract and deflect as a townie. But sacrificing myself for the metagame? Not a chance.

I like Ishmael's argument. It says things that I had thought but couldn't quite express. Yes, yes, there's still the question of his ignorance of JHT, but I had more or less the same reaction when he refused to argue against my vote on him. Am I sure of this? Nope. Am I taking the easy way out? Maybe. But this is where I've landed after a lot of thought.

Unvote, vote:Khaan.

My apologies if this vote irreparably damages the prevailing wisdom of the game. I'm playing how I know to play, and that's all I can do.

[GeneralHankerchief]

GH and Khaan don't like my playstyle. They think it's unhealthy for the metagame. They think I haven't been risky enough. They think my logic is bad. This is all well and good, valid complaints I suppose, but none of it makes me scum. Assuming they're both town, they voted for me as a statement of dissatisfaction toward everyone who made arguments against them, not because they genuinely think I'm scum. That much is clear based on how often GH has criticized my content as too safe, too obviously townie (never mind that Khaan still has a vote on me-- if I'm so obviously town, what good would it be to lynch me?)

Two quick things:

First of all, I never voted you out of any sort of dissatisfaction towards playstyle whatsoever. I voted you for a different reason at the start of the phase which will remain anonymous until the postgame. Secondly, in regards to khaan keeping his vote on you, that was because I specifically requested him to do so (assuming he even agreed with my analysis) for a few hours until both you and Ishmael had the chance to respond. Now that that requirement has been fulfilled, we'll see what happens next.

As for Ishmael, I'm not really going to touch onto his post too much since it was clearly made for your (lubber's) benefit. I'm eagerly awaiting the much-promised Part 2 where he addresses my accusations.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Also, lubber, if you truly believe that khaan is mafia, then you need to assign him a scum partner. I'm assuming that's me, right? Do you have full confidence in us both being scum? Because if you don't, then you need to look elsewhere.

[landlubber]

it was clearly made for your (lubber's) benefit.

Sure, maybe it was. Maybe he's coddling me, trying to sway me with camaraderie. I'm not gonna lie, I respond to kindness. At this stage in the game, though, I have more faith in him than I do in you. You had begun to convince me by the end of last night, but you really lost me after all the metagame stuff. I don't have time to worry about that, I really don't, and I don't buy that you two went after Winston for the sake of the metagame.

Also, lubber, if you truly believe that khaan is mafia, then you need to assign him a scum partner. I'm assuming that's me, right? Do you have full confidence in us both being scum? Because if you don't, then you need to look elsewhere.

We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Maybe JHT? Could be that Khaan asked him to lay low so that they both wouldn't be accusing everyone but each other. I don't believe you're mafia-- the metagame thing explains your motivations behind this game perfectly. It is worth noting, though, that I don't have full confidence about any pair of mafiosi. I'll probably be surprised no matter how this game turns out.

[seireikhaan]

Right. So here are my options, apparently.

a) Keep my vote on Lubber. I won't do this because while I disagree with a lot of what Lubber has posted, his tone and arguments don't strike me as a mafioso; rather, an exasperated townie. Regardless, if I did, this would be super suspicious because(kudos!) other people have noticed this as well.

b) If we assume the above to be true, that basically means I think it's Ishmael and JHT. If I'm just picking one, I personally think it's Ishmael. You spent the entire game lurking and being non-committal. Even after the monty lynch, you wouldn't stake any real claim to the idea of me and GH being scum buddies, by virtue of phrasing it as a question. Much earlier in the game, you talk about keeping an eye on me and GH(parroting Monty), and then go on about how we made a good case against Bsmith, which you then apparently disavowed any knowledge of by saying I've never made a case. Oh, and how about that "highly persuasive argument"(your own words!) Even now, in this round, it took being voted to actually get you to explain anything. And yet *I* am the one who has explained nothing this whole game. Truly, that is a masterpiece you've created. Yet, if I vote you, it's now just an omgus vote to save my own skin, regardless of you actually lurking this whole game doing nothing.

c) I can vote for JHT, which might be okay, except that he's more of a 50/50 shot in my book- he's being classic john, an unreadable tree. The problem is that I'm fairly certain he has a 100% reproduction rate on this tactic, regardless of alignment.

d) Or I can wildcard it and vote GH. I won't do this because I think it's very unlikely he's mafia based on what I've already said.

Wunderbar. But you know what, screw it. I'm going with GH, because I think he's right. Lubber, seriously, look at what Ishmael has posted this entire game. He has done nothing but waffle and give vague points about agreeing or disagreeing with people. He even POINTS OUT two different times I've made an argument he thought was legitimate at the time. And yet, now, when pressed, the best he can come up with is that I've not been scumhunting? That's ludicrous. What's to trust about someone who's done or said nothing the entire game and yet only now contrives an argument he himself contradicted just a few days ago?

Unvote: Landlubber
Vote: Ishmael

[GeneralHankerchief]

We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Maybe JHT? Could be that Khaan asked him to lay low so that they both wouldn't be accusing everyone but each other. I don't believe you're mafia-- the metagame thing explains your motivations behind this game perfectly. It is worth noting, though, that I don't have full confidence about any pair of mafiosi. I'll probably be surprised no matter how this game turns out.

No, we need to cross this bridge right now. As you mentioned in the above post, we don't have time to do otherwise. If JHT is your proposed partner for khaan, fine, but you need to be clear about it and more importantly, you need to be certain about it. You can't say "khaan is definitely mafia oh and maybe john is his partner i hope". At this point in the game we need them both.

I'd also like to clear something up about my metagame post. That should not be construed as the crux of my argument against Ishmael or anyone else in this game. The only lens that it should be viewed through is the lens of a defense and explanation of my actions, some of which I freely admit were questionable, during the game. The only reason that I went after Winston is because khaan and I sniffed out a behavior he had in the thread that we had both personally used as mafia in the past. That's metagaming, but it's the kind of metagaming everyone does - scumhunting.

[landlubber]

Well, shoot. Khaan's made a lot of good points now, especially that Ishmael admitted to being swayed by Khaan earlier. I would like to know the reason behind your vote on me (although I don't expect one by now), and I can't admit to understanding why you disagree with my content beyond the "too townie" complaint, but now it seems like Ishmael deserves a second look.

I'll be unavailable all day tomorrow because I'm moving into college, so I really do need to make a decision now, but I'm unsure. The more I think about your relationship with GH, the more it makes sense that you two would coordinate to save each other. I'm also still rattled by your arguing with me after I tried to defend myself from a case that didn't exist, and I'm sure there are reasons for that whole ordeal I'm not grasping, but you've done good work just now.

unvote, vote:Ishmael

I'll be online for a little while longer, and I hope to hear why Ishmael went from praising Khaan's arguments to dismissing them. Don't think my vote is set in stone, because I'm very aware that I'm looking like the swing vote and I take that seriously.

[landlubber]

You can't say "khaan is definitely mafia oh and maybe john is his partner i hope".

Indeed, and I haven't thought for sure that Khaan was mafia for most of this phase. I'm deeply unsure about who's mafia and who's not. I realize that that's not what anyone wants to hear from me right now, but it's the truth.

[GeneralHankerchief]

I fully expect Ishmael to post a defense regardless of your availability for the rest of the phase, but I find it interesting that he chose to further his attack on khaan in his limited time as opposed to defending himself. If we assume that there's two scum left and they win if the town lynches wrong tonight, mafia can afford to play it differently from the town. Ishmael went really gunning for the killshot knowing that he had the opportunity to end it this day phase. Even if he failed, his partner still has a chance to turn it around tomorrow. Meanwhile, if Ishmael was townie, he knows that if he dies, it's game over. I think natural instinct as townie, keeping in mind the scenario, would fall towards defending yourself first.

In any case, I recognize that this has been a rather intense day phase, and if any of my arguments got too barbed or personal or what have you, please accept my apologies as this was not my intention. I just really got into the game for the first time in a very long time and wanted to go out there and kick some butt.

[landlubber]

In any case, I recognize that this has been a rather intense day phase, and if any of my arguments got too barbed or personal or what have you, please accept my apologies as this was not my intention. I just really got into the game for the first time in a very long time and wanted to go out there and kick some butt.

Eh, you did what you had to do to win. If you're town, I owe you big time, because I was ready to write us off, vote for Khaan, and ignore the thread. If you're mafia, you deserve the win. No ill will.