Newbie 2085 - Game Over

[Prism]

I enjoyed the time I spent with all of you, and I am sincerely sorry that I could not continue. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and I look forward to playing with you all again in the future.

[Dwlee99]

Bless

gg everyone

[Laplacian]

gg, it's finally overrrr!

[fferyllt]

gg all!

Well done, Dwlee and frogs!

[Freedom]

Congratulations to the town on a well-deserved win!

I sincerely apologize for having to leave; the compromise of another game left me extremely distraught and unable to continue playing. I have since recovered.

This game was in many ways a disaster, and very atypical for the site with the number of replacements. Thanks to everyone who replaced in, especially to those who stuck around to the end.

I'll have more substantive comments/feedback for the game tomorrow if I have time.

Hope you are feeling better!
(I wasn't an official spectator FYI. I just glimpsed part of the game. Well done to the scumteam, though! They just needed a mislim. And obviously, well done to Town!)

[WINfried]

I sincerely apologize for having to leave

That is fine, we all have to leave games sometimes. It was good you did it promptly and didn't let your slot idle for days before like most others, which was really bad.

[Tejate Raichu]

GG folks. This was extremely chaotic. But I'm glad we pulled through in the end.

[MegAzumarill]

gg all

[hunterr]

ggs all, was fun spectating

[hunterr]

Although Prism's slot flipped scum, I should really stop tunneling on minute details I come across (third or fourth game I've done this?) and try to gamesolve based on other interactions occurring at the same time. Still much to learn I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and I hope I didn't come across as an asshole with that tunnel @Prism.

[frogsfrogs]

Oh man, gg everyone !! This was a really cool game despite the ups and downs

[frogsfrogs]

Thank you to everybody in the dead thread, that was a fun read ^ ^ glad we managed to pull this game out for town

[StrangeMatter]

GGs everyone.

[Prism]

Although Prism's slot flipped scum, I should really stop tunneling on minute details I come across (third or fourth game I've done this?) and try to gamesolve based on other interactions occurring at the same time. Still much to learn I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and I hope I didn't come across as an asshole with that tunnel @Prism.

None taken, I thought you were a major headache for me and you were a net positive for town.

I was admittedly very annoyed by the Binatog point, though: A lot of the job of an SE is pushing Newbies to be bold and move forward, and it was a rather gentle suggestion rather than a forceful shove. I'm not a perfect SE...as this game shows, but it did feel like I was being raked over the coals for not accepting every stated preference without question, in a similar way to not giving the 5 year old sweets every time. (Not calling anyone mentally or emotionally a toddler, just comparing the learning process and what's comfortable and easy isn't alwyas best).

For that specific point, the two players who knew me best-fferyllt and catboi-definitely have seen me do the same repeatedly. My reaction, though, was strongly AI: You were obviously town, and incidentally right, and that's such a dangerous combination that I could no longer sit in the null zone like I wanted but instead had to be a bit more forceful.

I strongly considered bussing Day 1 because of it, too, which for me is normally unthinkable.

[StrangeMatter]

Going into this game early on I felt like your posts Prism were a little apathetic and uncaring about how the game goes in comparison to the game I was scum in that I felt like something was a little suspicious behavior.

[Prism]

I've already been over it with her privately, but fferyllt's analysis of my partner interactions were mostly spot on. The only real point I thought she missed was that I didn't

want

to leave Meteor in the nullzone, but felt I had no choice. I thought my initial pivot off of them was very lacking, and wanted something better, but in the end had to settle and hope no one noticed. Again, I strongly considered bussing, which is

ridiculous

for a goon in column A.

There was one moment that I thought was particularly dangerous for scum:

I'm going to be honest, when I was reading Prism's posts before they dropped out I was at a complete and total loss as to their alignment. And I still am even with the swap. I can't tell if it was an intentional play by this slot's predecessor, but if it was hats off because I genuinely cannot tell if this was a scum play or a town play.

This was very perceptive by Tejate. It was absolutely intentional to be a strong-but-nulltown voice. I found this dangerous because this was the hard part of nailing me as scum here. fferyllt had the easy part, the knowledge that I hang out in that nullzone exclusively as scum, and I was surprised when she missed it after Tejate pointed it out.

There is more to Tejate's point here, regarding activity, questions, etc, but that can be saved for future games. I wasn't particularly trying to towntell this game until hunterr joined, and the most flourish I really had was intentionally keeping Taly out of the game and capitalizing on his attention being elsewhere. I also intentionally made posts to Dragons that where the goal was to have him constantly going back and forth on my alignment, too, which was kind of funny.

[Prism]

I love random questions at early stages of the game. That way, we will get to know each other and possibly gather info,

especially that I am a potential role that will help town.

I really don't like to acknowledge these outside of Newbie games. I don't think this is a good idea regardless of whether you are a VT or in fact a PR. It tends to cause more trouble than the gambit is worth, and the scumteam often winds up guessing correctly in light of the reactions. I hope that will not be the case this game.

i'm not so sure i like this it kind of feels forced

This was spot on, pretty rare that I scumclaim with a single post but this definitely fit the bill. I didn't think anyone would notice.

I had a specific progression on you in mind with hunterr that I don't mind burning without using. Essentially if I felt I couldn't get a hunterr vote through (and I wouldn't have, because mason), I was going to be very proactive in swapping before anyone else realized it and utilize a specific line of yours from another game, I believe 9:12, which was along the lines of "if someone has such a wonky/absurd reason for a read it's probably just town", to develop a 10/20 post sequence.

Generally I felt like I underestimated you this game and paid for it later.

[Prism]

For Laplacian, I think overall you played pretty well and were a shining example of how we're Too Old For This Shit that happened with all of the replacements and ahhlo. I get why you trusted Meg to just flip but that was 100% wrong and the extra elim was worth more than hiding the mason, and since you seem to have a mathematics background understanding that spare elims are the single most valuable resource town has should go a long way. Getting nightkilled is totally fine for compensation, and both of you claiming would have resulted in preserving the spare elim.

For frogsfrogs, I don't have a lot of constructive criticism of your play. I think you did really well straight through, very clear intentions and very obviously town. I think you especially did a good job of stepping back on your read on me and realizing you were arguing yourself into a strengthened and irrational view. Fundamentally, your mistake at the end of the day was what Tejate said: Strong proactive play has its benefits as scum and it depends on the player and what they're capable of. For players with a background in chat mafia, especially, tonal behaviors are rote and deeply ingrained. As a small sidenote, ffery was worried I was trying to pocket you but honestly I just knew you were probably never getting voted at any point, so no point in pushing.

For WINfried, very strong replacement, but I think you bought too much into preflips, and trusted your impulse a bit too much which led to some wacky twists. At some point it looks like you thought NK15 wouldn't counterclaim for no reason but, uh, depends on the player and NK15 has a...history of questionable scum behavior that I won't dive into here. I thought contextually Binatog's play differed from the previous even though I ignored it at the time, and don't really remember the rest of your reads/pushes off the top of my head. You might have also fallen into the same trap as frogsfrogs with buying into my generally good but NAI habits.

[Prism]

Going into this game early on I felt like your posts Prism were a little apathetic and uncaring about how the game goes in comparison to the game I was scum in that I felt like something was a little suspicious behavior.

Absolutely, and very keen eye!

[Prism]

I skipped the SEs for the most part other than specific points of interest, but if any of you actually want feedback/constructive criticism I can try to give it when I have time.

I am of course very open and welcoming of the same for me.

[Prism]

also catboi get dunked on LMAO

[Prism]

fferyllt had the easy part, the knowledge that I hang out in that nullzone exclusively as scum, and I was surprised when she missed it after Tejate pointed it out.

It might be a bit difficult to understand why this is.

In general, you have to justify living to Elo as scum, and coming out too forceful puts you at the top of the hit list. At some point, the skeptical eye comes back around and it gets compounded when you're on multiple miselims. It's better to save the towntelling for when it matters.

This is compounded by the setup in Column A, which can be very mechanically deterministic. You really don't want to bus here, and you want to either win in 5 way or set your partner up very well, and bussing is near-suicide. If you're in the hardtown zone, that reduces the PoE and threatens to either hit the roleblocker or be jailkept overnight, in addition to the risks above.

[fferyllt]

I'll probably mentally replay this game a few times over the next couple of weeks. I'm not sure if my decision to not fight my elim was a good one. It worked out here, but I think I could have made late day 3 a 1v1 between me and T3, which even if I had lost, would probably have made day 4 easier for town. I say that now knowing his alignment, though.

I felt the risk of being the designated elo miselim was too much to voluntarily allow it to happen, much less fight against it.

I'm not as good a feedback as Prism is, but here are my thoughts, mostly about players who were in the game when I was.

frogsfrogs

- Your Day 1 play was incredibly town and made for an easy read. The main aspects of your play that came off so town was the immediacy and fluidity of your reactions to what was happening in the game, and as well as fluid and immediate, your stances were always understandable and pro-town from another town player's perspective. I think the interactions you and Prism had, that Dwlee was questioning at the end of day 4 didn't paint you as scum at all. If anything, being such a shining beacon of town, and being correct about many of your townreads, might have led to your being night killed in a different setup that played out differently. I only became concerned about you because your activity dropped off so much after day 1. Late Day 3, I was hoping to provoke AI reactions from both you and T3, and I left the game feeling like I had accomplished that!

Tejate Raichu

Your replace-in to Binatog's slot was super town-looking. With just a few posts, you were able to evaporate my concerns (and I think this was a pretty universal reaction from town) and took your slot completely off the table as a miselim. One thing that bugged me a little bit, but not enough to change such a strong read was that you indicated a couple times that you were going to do some analysis of players (particularly our erroneous not-masons pool on day 2), but didn't really get to it. There's a risk in assuming that you'll be around on the next game day, and leaving thoughts off the table at the end of the game day. It has to be weighed against giving scum too much info to work with that night, though. We were intentionally leaving a big hole in our day 2 work in order to leave some ambiguity about specifically who we thought the mason was, and that I think was a valid strategy.

WINfried

I thought you also made yourself incredibly town by play on Day 1. My main feedback to you is that even if you are certain a player is scum, it usually pays to interact with them to some extent. If you're right that they are scum, you may lull them into dropping some associatives with their scumbuddy that can be figured out later. And, if you're wrong, you give them a chance to show you that you are. Late day 3, when you finally let me into the reads and analysis discussion, it helped me a lot in terms of being able to think objectively about what was going on in the game, even though it didn't change your mind about my alignment. Getting to bounce some thoughts around didn't improve the Day 1 outcome, but I'm not sure what we could have done differently, beside just yeet the fake counterclaim instead of the fake claim.

Laplacian

Looking back at your play, I think the main thing that concerned me turned out to be a factor of your time zone or when you were able to be active in the game. You were often a little late to whatever event occurred and someone else had already benefited from having the first, unself-conscious reaction to it. I feel like the overall strategy of whichever mason was run up claiming cop was flawed, and I think other players have gone over that in detail. But, since you and Megs chose to do that, your hammering megs was superb distancing that took you off the table as mason to the rest of town.

A small shout-out to hunterr

Your interactions with Prism looked incredibly town to me, so much so that I almost moved you up into the top tier of my reads list. My one tiny flash of concern basically came down to knowing that EM alumnae often have scum playstyles that fool forum mafia players because of the quick and natural-feeling interactions and reactions to players and game events. Arguably, my biggest mistake this game was not holding onto that read after you replaced out. I hope our times in a game intersect one of these days!

[Laplacian]

For Laplacian, I think overall you played pretty well and were a shining example of how we're Too Old For This Shit that happened with all of the replacements and ahhlo. I get why you trusted Meg to just flip but that was 100% wrong and the extra elim was worth more than hiding the mason, and since you seem to have a mathematics background understanding that spare elims are the single most valuable resource town has should go a long way. Getting nightkilled is totally fine for compensation, and both of you claiming would have resulted in preserving the spare elim.

Yeah, I agree the flip was suboptimal. I said in mason thread that outing mason and being 6v1 with known mason was better than 4v1 with hidden mason, but just didn't have the energy at the time to try to talk them out of it. Plus it was a funny reveal at least

[Laplacian]

Laplacian

Looking back at your play, I think the main thing that concerned me turned out to be a factor of your time zone or when you were able to be active in the game. You were often a little late to whatever event occurred and someone else had already benefited from having the first, unself-conscious reaction to it. I feel like the overall strategy of whichever mason was run up claiming cop was flawed, and I think other players have gone over that in detail. But, since you and Megs chose to do that, your hammering megs was superb distancing that took you off the table as mason to the rest of town.

My time zone is US-Mountain, I just had a borked sleep schedule since it was between semesters.