Newbie 1726 (Game Over)

[Jaack]

Hey cool it's my one year scumaversery

VOTE: delta9

What happened to the first 8 deltae? This mystery must be solved.

[Jaack]

I'm here! VOTE: Delta9 for voting me.

Excited to start my second game of mafia.

Why delta over ecane?

[Jaack]

Because it's the RVS and I chose one by random.

Well, how would you propose advancing out of rvs? We're probably not going to catch any scum with just random votes.

[Jaack]

To both of you: how are you planning to catch scum based on their experience?

[Jaack]

Was hoping to get an answer from caston before offering my take on things but whatever.

Got early scumbuzzes from caston and foxbird. Caston's 17 felt like he was trying to appease me more than anything.

Foxbirds initial interaction with caston looked kind of awkward. Also didn't particularly like his doubt casting on nacho before he's really done anything.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: caston

I could go for an early wagon to kick start this game.

[Jaack]

So... me casting doubt on someone who hasn't done anything is scummy because he hasn't done anything yet? What?

Yeah, it kind of is. Nacho's absence alone does not imply scum. If his lurking appears to be strategic (posting very little to try and avoid mistakes and give town as little info as possible), then I could buy it as scummy.

And I'm sorry, but what question are you referring to? Post 16?

The one in 22.

@ecane - what did you not like about 54?

[Jaack]

As I mentioned before, I asked the question to try and start some conversation. I have heard that newer players would tend to lurk if they are scum, and be more active if they are a town PR. So I was going to see where the conversation went.

I don't necessarily think activity is necessarily a town-tell/scum-tell for more experienced players, as they probably have developed more deceptive strategies.

My primary issue is that you asked a softball question. Scum have no reason to avoid a question like that and it allows them to artificially inflate their presence. It's not a bad question necessarily in a newbie game, but it's something best paired with more game relevant content.

Overall a lot of your posts seem to be more aimed towards fitting in rather than finding scum.

On that note, who do you think is scum?

Why was Foxbird's initial interaction with caston awkward? Why didn't you like Foxbird's small push on me?

Re foxbird and caston: I felt an odd tone shift between posts 18 and 20. I liked foxbird's initial question in the first post, but the way she shifted suddenly from inquisitorial to friendly and agreeable felt awkward.

As for foxbird's minor push on you, I did not like the whole 'I don't like this but it's not indicitive of scum' tone. Seemed like foxbird was trying to give rach the answer she wanted to read.

In other news, I liked nacho's entrance. ecane looks townie to me as well. Still have issues with caston, and to a lesser extent, foxbird. No one else has really pinged me either way yet.

[Jaack]

It's meh, as quoted above, his conclusion on Caston 17 is similar to mine, but it's not a serious push, and I don't really see what he's talking about with Caston/Foxbird thing.

Why don't you think my push on caston is serious? Also, what are your thoughts on ecane and delta?

I don't like Jaack's misrep of my doubtcasting on Nacho at all. He either didn't read what I said right, or he didn't want to. This discussion about Caston and me is just silly. And he's talking a lot about me - not delta, which is where his vote is. What's up with that? Only redeeming thing is that I don't like delta's posting, either.

1. I'm not voting delta, I'm voting caston.
2. I did not misrep you at all.

Let's look at the post I've taken issue with.

What do you think about the fact that Nacho popped in but did not lay down a vote not even an RVS one?

I don't like it at all, to be honest. Most ICs I've seen at least copypaste some sort of introduction in their first post, and the RVS vote should be a given, especially considering how slow the game was going. As far as I've seen Nacho also posted in another newbie game, but not here.

Nne of that is inherently indicative of scum, though, aside from maaaybe the lurking. We'll have to see how the situation develops.

That's a lot of shade to basically say 'his absence is not alignment indicative.' Town, I feel would just say something like 'it's annoying he's not here, but doesn't really mean anything'.

You're post reads to me like this - 'I can't really justify a scumread but I'm not opposed to you scumreading them' for it. It feels like you saw race was voting nacho and tried to push her in that direction without committing to a scumread.

[Jaack]

My mistake on the first one, then.

I assume by race you mean RachMarie? She asked me a question, I answered. Her vote was RVS (so she wasn't scumreading him in the first place), not much to push there. How is it even a "push" on my part if her vote was already on him? The most I could have pushed would have been to rile the other players up into voting him, too. If I wanted to do that, I could have just elaborated on my reasoning without adding the last sentence.
And I'm not sure why you're expecting me to have a scumread on, what, page 2? I'm not committing on page 2.

My primary issue is that you threw shade at another player while giving yourself an out. It's okay to not be confident in reads on page 2. But I take issue with how you deliberately avoided committing to the scumread before anyone took issue.

That being said I think we're mostly talking past each other at this point. Your defense has been adequate enough for now and I don't see the point in beating a dead horse.

Maybe a language thing, but between scumbuzz, and the appeasement thing being your cited reason, it didn't look like a strong case. Especially because you appear to undercut your own vote with the "I could go for an early wagon," comment, which implies more of a pressure vote than a serious one to me.

Fair enough.

I will say that my vote is serious in that I think caston is the scummiest player right now, but him already having 2 votes (even if they were rvs) was a contributing factor to voting him over foxbird.

Considering the two other players who were on the rvs caston wagon before me, ecane affirmed her vote on caston (or at least a scumread on him) pretty quickly after my vote, which is a contributing factor to my townread there.

Meanwhile, delta has not really acknowledged caston besides the rvs vote which definately seems strange. Delta moves into my scum pile

I have liked most of gratuitous' stuff so far. Probtown there.

[Jaack]

55 and 64 looked pretty open and genuine.

[Jaack]

The fact that my two stronger scumreads are both currently voting for delta inclines me to believe that delta is town, despite the issues I have there...

[Jaack]

@Jaack, do you not take experience into account when trying to catch scum? Post 22 seems an odd question. Is it an attempt to be confrontational for reactions?

I kind of explained this in 74, but my primary concern was that caston and foxbird were only really talking about what everyone's experience was, which alone is really useless. Its a question you'd answer the same regardless of alignment.

As for 22, I had issues with caston's 17 and foxbird's 20, so I pushed further on them. I wasn't enamored with either of their responses, and those two slots remain my two top scumreads.

Going to sleep now but I'm going to take a closer look at zorblag's opening tomorrow.

[Jaack]

Well I think zorblag has like tripled the content of this game already on his own.

I still have some hangups with the slot though.

1. Caston was rather scummy in his brief time with us.
2. While the only read of his I feel I could significantly argue with is scum-gratuitous, his reads as a while seem open to a lot of lynch options.

That being said, I'm not enthralled with my vote there anymore, and his reasoning on rach-scum looks pretty good.

Current reads

Town:
ecane
Gratuitous
Nacho
delta
Fiddler
Zorblag
Rach
Foxbird
:scum

Kind of feeling delta was more mislynch bait as opposed to scum.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: foxbird

This is a fine vote for now.

[Jaack]

[quote="In
Where is the null in that list? I'm having a hard time seeing a slot with a whole two posts spread out over two players being listed higher than Zorblag, who is pretty town in my opinion. You're even voting with him.

Also according to your lists you both (Jaack and Zorblag) think Rach and I are scum together, yet no one has actually elaborated on interactions between her and me. In 74 Jaack said I "gave her what she wanted to read" - wouldn't that only be applicable if I was scum and she was town?

Fiddler is a true null, everyone above him I lean town and everyone below I lean scum.

As for you and Rach, while I do think you are both more likely to be scum than town, that doesn't necessarily mean you are partners. I normally don't concern myself with partner tells day one, since more often than not, it won't be too useful. Better to look at pairs once you have at least one flip.

What makes you think zorblag is town?

[Jaack]

I think I briefly mentioned it before, but I don't think Scum!Zorblag would have come charging in as he did. You yourself said that he, like, tripled the activity in the game. His comments and reads have sparked discussion where there was none, and he took charge, which is very pro-town. A scum player could have banked on the very real possibility of town awkwardly shuffling their feet while the day timer ticks down to zero.

This is a fair analysis, but what gives me pause is that zorblag's slot was one of the status-quo wagons at the time of his entrance. If we did 'shuffle our feet' to deadline, his slot would have been one of the most likely lynches, with delta really the only other popular-ish options.

So yeah, discussion is pro-town, but I'm hesitant to give zorblag townpoints just for sparking it.

[Jaack]

@Jaack: Why are you voting with one of your scumleans?

1. I'm more confident in my scumread onyou than my one on zorblag.
2. I'd rather be on a wagon that's going somewhere than one that's stalling.
If I'm concerned with someone's presence on your wagon it would not be zorblag's but fiddler's, since at least zorblag has reasoning to back his vote up.

@gratuitous - What are your thoughts on foxbird?

[Jaack]

reading through the game sigh 7 pages and almost nothing at this point. I am finding it hard to really peg down several of the players and that sucks

I will be watching Inno carefully to see if he shows himself as town

Just finished a game where fox was one head of a hydra that tried to get me lynched, so I am thinking I may be giving her too much leeway as a newbie which is a bad habit I have. The fake claim gambit she and her hydra partner did then them and their scum bud who was being rather town read (Kuribo) almost lynched me then lynched Jiffy before he got back to the game.

yeah

VOTE: fox

I don't know if I'm missing something here, but how does this make foxbird scum?

Still feeling gratuitous is town. Nacho's ketchup is also pretty townie.

I do have growing scumfeels with zorblag. With both foxbird and gratuitous he moved from a scumread to a townread just as pushes on them started to get traction. While I kind of understand his reasoning behind each shift, it feels kind of jumpy to me, which doesn't quite gel with the general tone of his posts. Going to reread his is to see if I'm missing something.

Pedit-and there's three more posts of content to read and reread.

[Jaack]

Okay, time to review zorblag, starting with the first game relevant post. I've edited out some of the conversational stuff and bolded things I find noteworthy.

OK, let's get some thoughts out there and see what we can't do to get town moving.

• We'll want fiddlercrabontheroof's thougnts on the game soon so that we've got anything to work with for that player slot as alexs left us with nothing helpful.
  
  
• delta9 left us with a bit more, and I see what people didn't like about it. There's the initial vote (fine if dull,) posts that don't help the game state and then we've got the a sort of unclear post in 65 which vaguely connects to half the game in at least one way, but which doesn't seem to be something I'd expect Gratuitous to do much with in the post he was asking about (despite the answer given later.)
  I can see how it comes across as disengaged with what appears to be an attempt to throw something out there to be a part of the conversation rather than scum hunting.
  
  
  Having said that, the "I quit" as the followup under a bit of, not even pressure, but scrutiny perhaps, largely leads me to believe that our brand of mafia just wasn't the game for him. I'm inclined to call it a null tell.
  
  
• Given that last thought, here's what we get as reactions to this: almost nothing. Foxbird at least acknowledges that the "I quit" happened in his next post (2 days later,) but then applies a vote for pressure (as an aside, calling something a pressure vote is a good way for it not to have as much pressure in general,) after saying this could be scummy behavior or apathy thus putting a player who there's some reason to believe won't be there to defend them self at L-2.
  It's pretty easy to see potential scum motivation there.
  It would have been nice to see the others who were talking about delta9 say something about the abrupt termination of at least the train of thought if not his participation in the game as well.
  
  
• Nachomamma8's play has mostly been fine if lackluster. There are clear acknowledgments that his resources are being used outside this game and that he hasn't had the energy for it so I'll live with that for now, but I'm hoping we can get more engagement in the future.
  
  
• I sort of agree with ecane in Post 99. It's a bit of a simplification, but too much of Gratuitous's play feels like responding to questions without expanding much and not obviously looking into what others have done. It's not as clear cut as my initial reaction was when I went back and looked in isolation, but there's less clear concern about finding scum than in answering questions than I'd like. This isn't to say that you shouldn't answer questions as town, but town should always be looking at motives for the game going on around them.

I'm going to stop here for now before this gets too long, but I'll post more in just a bit. I haven't finished going over everyone in isolation yet, in paricular I need to look at Jaack and Rachmarie.

Zor's initial read on me:

Having asked that, I'm actually fine with Jaack's play for today. If he's town he's poking about like he should for the most part so we can default there for now. If he's scum then he'll be alive in the later game and we can bother with that later on (much like I said about Nachomamma8.) As long as he keeps doing things that make connections for the future he's not a good day 1 lynch.

Further summary of zor's reads

@Foxbird, I could see how that could be the case for delta9. The timing bothers me a bit (your post was 2 days after his, but with the activity state in the game in general being what it was at the time that's less useful than it might otherwise be.) I'm not saying I'm sure you're scum; I'm saying that I can see good scum motive for that action. I also tend to think that you're dancing around calling people scummy a bit (Nachomamma8 and delta9,) which I don't love, but will admit that I do as well. It could be playstyle but I don't have enough information to determine that yet.

I also think that scum could easily be lurking this game (in fact they almost certainly are in that I'd say that pretty much the entire player base can count as lurking.) I don't think that I'd call lurking to the point of being replaced (alexs and possible delta9, though that I'm reading as a more intentional quit at this point,) scummy lurking so much as disengaged lurking and not so alignment indicative.

The longer fiddlercrabontheroof goes without posts now the worse he looks though, so there might be something more there.

I try to follow the pronoun preference that people have listed, but if I was one of the people who called you he I apologize. The internet is a place where assumptions get made, sometimes despite our best attempts to avoid them.

@Everyone, at this point I'd put my reads as follows:

Scummy enough to be a lynch candidate today: Foxbird, Gratuitious, RachMarie
Lurkers we could lynch and I won't be too sad based on play till now: delta9, fiddlercrabontheroof

Not worth lynching today for at least one reason: Jaack*, Nachomamma8
Probably Town: ecane

*Jaack might be closer to probably town, I need to think about it a bit. It's not as strong a town read as ecane certainly, and as I'm saying it's not a lynch I'd be at all interested in pursuing at this point.

I don't have a hugely strong scum read on anyone at this point and the biggest thing I want to see in the next 3ish days in content from everyone.

And here's his follow up to the Rach-scumread

@Foxbird, Her scum hunting. Or rather the lack of it. She's got plenty of presence and I know that she's busy, but the biggest reads she's coming up with are based on lack of activity rather than what people have done. That doesn't offend any active players (which scum usually want to avoid doing,) and doesn't feel to me like town seriously trying to figure out the game state. She's given answers to the questions I've asked, but little else to push the game forward. There's also the same vague lack of commitment to calling things scummy that I'm mentioned a bit concerning you.

That's a lot of quote junk that I probably could have cleaned up better, but I think that gets all of zor's initial thoughts on each slot.

fiddler/alex: No read on fiddler because there is nothing to read, although he does hedge that statement in favor of a scumlean, bolded in 125
delta/IV: Not really a read on delta, also due to low content, but again hedges this with a scumlean, bolded in 110
foxbird: When talking about foxbird's vote on delta he says "It's easy to see potential scum motivation here" (also bolded in 110) which is about as weasel wordy as you can describe a scumread.
nacho: townreads
jaack: almost the exact same read as he gives for nacho, although I seem to be slightly more town
ecane: unexplained townread, although basically everyone seems to be townreading ecane
gratuitous: similarly to his read on foxbird, zorblag uses a lot of hedging language to scumread gratuitous
rach: I have no really issues with this scumread in isolation.

Now the only one of his reads which I felt was incorrect in that I really disagree with the end result was gratuitous-scum, but the constant hedging and weasel words are pretty scummy.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's go through the progression of zorblag's play since then.

At the end of his ketchup, zorblag is voting foxbird.
Having been momentarily appeased with his slot, I decide to join the foxbird wagon and vote in 129.

I'm going to note here that prior to this point in the game, I had been pretty much scumreading foxbird and the caston/zorblag slot about equally, but had been voting caston/zorblag for the reasons I described in 88, which is to say, because the wagon on caston was larger. I will get back to this.

After my vote, here is zorblag's next post.

I do have good news though. It's pretty easy to get my vote off you if you want to. Just convince me that you're trying to catch scum. Like I said, my reads aren't exceptionally strong at this point so rather than spending effort defending yourself I'd recommend spending the equivalent effort showing me who else is scum instead. That helps the town more anyhow.

This quote reads more to me like zorblag wants to stop scumreading foxbird and is looking for a reason. I'm assuming that based on his vote for her, foxbird was zorblag's number one scumread, but this doesn't read at all like he's trying to push fox.

The point I'm trying to get at with this zorblag/foxbird stuff, is it feels like zorblag was manipulating me to move my vote from him to foxbird by giving me a wagon I'd obviously had some interest in for a while. Once that was accomplished, he tried to manufacture a way off the wagon to let me drive it instead. If I successfully drive the lynch I wanted, then I take the fall when foxbird flips town. (this is assuming that foxbird and zorblag are not partners, which if they are, then I officially need to just roll with the reads I get from page one and ignore the rest of the game) If the wagon sputters, then I'm distracted for another day.

tl;dr version - I feel like zorblag's initial push on foxbird was to try and get me to vote foxbird as opposed to any real scumread.

That took longer than I expected to piece together, but I want to get it out there.
UNVOTE:
VOTE: zorblag

[Jaack]

@Jaack, you seemed to be on the last night of day 1, but didn't post anything despite the fact that given you stated positions it really made sense for you to do so. What's up? What am I getting wrong about that?

Honestly, I had a post I was working (well by working on, I had a few quotes that I was going to talk about but never actually got to the typing part) on but got distracted by the televisions.

The main point was going to be that I was getting a PR read from grat which is why I so ardently townread him without bringing up the reasons, but I was plenty wrong there obviously. I could go into it more if anyone would like to know, but I'm not sure how useful it would be at this point.

I do have some thoughts on stuff that's happened today, but I want to talk about end of day stuff yesterday first, specifically zorblag (who was the only one really posting at that point so...). I still standby virtually everything I was saying in 209, but zorblag's play since then has done little to calm my fears there.

His initial response in 211 is... okay. The general tone is 'believe what you want to believe, but you're wrong.' Doesn't strike me very much as either town or scum.

I do take issue with 238. In general, there is a lot of justification for an intent to hammer that seems like he was worried about how a hammer would look on a PR. (I get the sense from this post that, like me, zorblag saw some PR-ish elements in gratuitous' play)

But what really struck me was his twilight post (243). It's kind of subtle, but it at least feels to me like he was pre-emptively trying to discredit any attempt I would make to lynch him D2, which why wouldn't I try to lynch him D2 when 1. He was my number 1 scumread at the end of D1 and 2. He just hammered a different townie.

All in all, a lot of times when I'm reading zorblag's posts I get the feeling like he's thinking about how people will read his posts/act in the future and trying subtly push them in a more beneficial direction for himself. It just feels a little to pre-planned for town.

VOTE: zorblag

Will get to IV/Rach later today

[Jaack]

Uff busier than I would like. Lots of zorblag to respond to but that might have to wait until tomorrow but I wanted to get my IV/rach thoughts in before bedtime.

My initial feeling was that rach was townier than I had previously thought while I was scummier but on a reread, I've shifted back to IV being totes town and rach being back in the scum side of things.

Scum rolefishing, if it even exists, does not look like what IV was doing. Scum would likely be more hesitant to openly talk about softclaiming and the like.

I don't really like how concerned rach was about being lynchbait. At the time of that post (254), she had one vote on her, and 5 players HD yet to even check in this day. Felt a bit paranoid in the 'town is on to me' sense as opposed to the 'scum wants me dead' sense.

Next thing on my agenda is my pr read on grat. His early posts (specifically 40, 41, and 44) felt really devil may care kind of attitude. They didn't look like he was trying to avoid a scumread, which I know is a kind of feeling I get when I have a pr.

The big thing that mentally 'confirmed' it for me was the 'I'm not getting lynched' line from 196 which seemed awfully confident for a VT who was not widely townread.

I could go into it more if you'd like but I am falling asleep, so I'll finish up/respond to zorbag in the morning.

Pedit-oh joy more to read
Pedit2-oh actual joy iv agrees with me.

[Jaack]

Sorry yall for my absence but I've been swamped. Will get to this later today.

[Jaack]

Okay skimmed everything. I have a few minutes before work to respond to a bit of stuff.

@nacho-yeah, my case on zorblag is a good deal of paranoia, but I've yet to see anything to comfort that paranoia. I will try and better articulate my case on zorblag after I get home from work.

Something that did pop out at me that I do have time to note was the oddness of 316 and 317. It reads to me as hyper-self aware, which is something that I associate with scum. That being said, I haven't read foes analysis closely yet, but I'm definitely going to be looking at how polished it looks.

[Jaack]

Hooray free time!

Going to catch up on all the things I wanted to talk about.

[Jaack]

Okay, initial read on foe is a town lean. Aside from that self-awareness I mentioned earlier, nothing foe's done looked particularly scummy. I did like 337 in particular. I don't think I would vote foe today.

I'm pretty sure that both scum are in {zorblag, rach, foxbird}

Yes, I'm still scumreading zorblag, because at times I feel like he's playing a day ahead, but I get what nacho was saying that there is a lot of paranoia going into that. That being said, I've been tunnelling him pretty hard (mentally at least, since my posts today have been too rare) and kind of been ignoring other players.

I think that others have pretty well established the Rach-scum case. As I said before, I liked foe's case in 337.

As for foxbird, most of my icky feelings from D1 remain, and I didn't particularly like the opportunistic swing onto Rach in her recent posts. (could be either scum leaping at a mislynch or scum panic-bussing)

Still feel relatively confident in my townreads on Nacho, IV, and ecane. If I'm wrong and both scum aren't in {Zorblag, Rach, Foxbird} then... ecane I guess That being said, I wouldn't vote for any of them today without significant revelations.

To expand on the IV-town read, since there seems to be some interest in that lynch. I feel like IV's reads haven't been curated like I would expect from scum. Scum reading universal town read ecane upon entrance is not something I would expect scum to do. It's a read that both draws attention and is difficult to maintain for long. And what would be the scum purpose? Ecane wasn't getting lynched D1, most likely wasn't getting lynched D2, and if both IV and ecane lived to D3, the read would no longer be particularly relevant.

I also understand why people have taken issue with IV's town read on the foe slot prior to foe doing things, but I see no scum motivation from such a read. I don't get why he has the read, but I don't see why he would do it as scum.

I guess the full read list would be
Town:
Nacho
IV
Ecane
Foe
Foxbird I guess
Rach
Zorblag
:Scum

I'm kind of fluxuating on the last three... they are all about equally scummy in my mind.

[Jaack]

Oh look a lot of posts.

Like I'm not getting IV-scum at all.

I see zero scum motivation for hard-townreading foe without that slot having any game related posts.

Like the reason that some people seem to be getting at is rolefishing. Which, yeah, maybe, but it would be the most awful attempt at rolefishing ever - no one is going to counterclaim a maybe possibly bread crumb.

This isn't to say I think his reason for town reading foe is a good one, just that it's not scummy.

[Jaack]

Going to talk myself through some stuff

OK so it looks like ecane, rach, and zorblag are voting IV and voted so in that order. Nacho appears to have interest but prefers foe as a lynch. Foe has not made clear his stance on this iv stuff, but 391 implies he finds IV-scum to be a reasonably likely thing. Foxbird seems to have talked herself into townreading IV.

So if I continue to assume IV is town (which I am because I'm pretty sure he is) what is every players scum motive for how they have reacted to this emerging wagon.

Ecane-started the initial vote on IV, although rach had just given indication that she would be looking at IV more closely. There was also that stuff at the beginning of d2 between IV and Rach so it's not like an IV vote would be one that went nowhere.

Since then ecane has mostay stayed in the background (I'm one to talk but whatever)

Verdict: nothing outright scummy, but nothing that doesn't make sense as scum. Going to review this iso.

Rach-at the point rach voted IV, the three most popular lynch choices were zorblag, foe, and rach herself (the most immenant lynch). Rach has also been pretty hard townreading zorblag, so her options were to stay on foe or push IV. I think that pushing on IV makes the most sense from rach-scum. Since then rach has mostly justified the vote with PoE. Just looking at rach's reads, she has clear town reads on nacho, zorblag, and ecane, and recently shifted to townreading foe. She was town reading both foxbird and I D1 but hasn't mentioned us since, although I can see the possibility that town-rach simply has IV as the scummiest of the players she hasn't expressed a town read for D2.

Verdict: yeah, this works as scum pretty well, although I would like to see her thoughts in foxbird and I since she's using PoE as a primary reason for voting IV.

Zorblag-third on the wagon, zorblag has actually been the driving force of the IV wagon. I don't think that heavily pushing a wagon is an alignment relevant thing, and while I don't agree with a lot of his arguments they don't strike me as outright scummy.

Verdict: There's nothing decisive either way.

Nacho-not on the wagon, but thinks its reasonable. Has kind of argued both sides of the wagon (sees it's merits, sees it's flaws)

Verdict: yeah this is still the towniest thing ever. While I can see scum in the hesitant but willing to join the wagon, I don't think 422 would come from scum who later planned to vote IV.

Foe-Implies that he thinks either IV or Rach will flip scum in 391 without actually mentioning IV. Other than that, doesn't talk about it much.

Verdict: uff I was town reading foe before, but I really don't like 391. Feels like he's playing both sides as opposed to trying to work things out.

Foxbird-says she finds IV genuine and townie in 416. That's it!

Verdict: Could be scum trying to avoid a mislynch, but not enough there to say anything.

FINAL VERDICT: lol mostly just jumbled myself up, except now I'm thinking foe is a lot scummier that previously believed.

Actually

VOTE: foedufafa

Going to review this is (along with ecane) but I feel good about this because I feel bad about 391

[Jaack]

And what the fuck both sides are you talking about? I don't know how to read IV and I've made my case clear on Rach. You think it's scummy that I think one of the three people that are going at each other's throats will most likely flip scum?

I've seen your case on rach.

I found the phrasing in 391 to be strange given that case. You said that one of the three (IV, rach, and zorblag) will flip scum, you don't think its zorblag, which means you feel pretty sure that one of rach-IV is scum.

You also claim here that you don't know how to read IV, which is the most uncommittal lame read in existance. It's not even a null/mixed feelings read. In fact its not even a read, its a way to avoid discussing one of the lynch targets. And yet, in 391 you definately imply that you would be willing to lynch IV.

@rach - are you still townreading foxbird as well?

[Jaack]

While rach is not my preferred lynch at this point, she is in my reasonably likely to be scum bucket, and if ecane doesn't hammer before deadline, I will.

I still prefer a foe lynch though.

[Jaack]

VT here

[Jaack]

I endorse no lynching and I also endorse not discussing anything else until a decision is made either way.

[Jaack]

I would vote no lynch, but I was under the assumption it was 3 votes to no lynch.

If foxbird and rach want to no lynch, then I'll vote.

That being said I'm not overly opposed to playing today out.

[Jaack]

Okay going to talk my way through this, so apologies if this gets too train-of-thought-y

I don't think that Nacho would claim BP as scum. Going into today, he was probably the most universally townread player in the game. There would be relatively little advantage to fakeclaiming, as he probably wasn't going to be a primary lynch target today.

While I'm not going to just give him a free pass for the rest of the day, I'm going to focus my efforts elsewhere for now and just assume he is town unless someone makes a strong case as to why nacho would claim bp as scum in his situation.

Next on my agenda is some basic VCA, looking primarily at the end of day vote counts.

Final Vote Count - Day 1

Gratuitous

(5):

Nachomamma8

,

ecane

, Foxbird, RachMarie, Zorblag

RachMarie (2):

Gratuitous

, innocentvillager

Foxbird (1):

fiddlercrabontheroof

Zorblag (1):

Jaack

No Vote (0)

Final Vote Count - Day 2

foedufafa

(5):

Nachomamma8

,

Jaack

, RachMarie, Zorblag, Foxbird

RachMarie (1):

foedufafa

innocentvillager (1):

ecane

ecane

(1):

innocentvillager

No Vote (0)

(Green is for people confirmed as town, blue is for people that are town from my perspective)
Well one thing that obviously sticks out is that Nacho, Rach, Zorblag, and Foxbird were ALL on both wagons. More notably is that Rach, Zorblag, and Foxbird were in both cases, the last three voters on each wagon.

I'm not going to concern myself with either my vote for foe or ecane's for Gratuitous, because I know us both to be town. I'm also not overly concerned with either of nacho's votes. Not only am I leaving him in my townpile for now, but they were both the initial votes on each wagon, which is the least notable portion of wagon development.

Now in context, both zorblag's and foxbird's hammer votes were because we were near deadline and there was only one real lynch option at the time. Those two votes are not ones that strike me as particularly interesting. It is in both town and scum's best interest to hammer in both situations, so there's little to be said unless there is something egregious about the way they did it.

So that leaves four wagon-votes to look.

Foxbird's vote on Gratuitous (230)
This is... not my favorite to say the least. While I think that gratuitous was a vote that made sense for her at that juncture, as her other two scumreads, me and delta/IV, had no other votes on them at the time, I'm not sure I like the justification she gives when she votes for him.

I'm not getting lynched today so you should find a better choice

This pinged me hard, gut thing. I'm not sure why. Strangely overconfident and bossy on a D1 with a couple of days left and no clear lynch target in sight.

@foxbird - could you elaborate on why you found this post notably scummy?

This might be in your more recent stuff that I haven't bothered to tackle yet, so in that case I'll run into it when I do that.

In terms of partnering, I could see this vote coming from foxbird+anyone, but it makes most sense paired with Rach as a scumbuddy. Rach was the leading wagon prior to this point, and the only other wagon with multiple votes on it was on foxbird herself.

Verdict - I want to hear from foxbird about it, but my initial reaction is that this is a reasonably scummy vote.

Rach's vote on Gratuitous 234
This came pretty quick after foxbird's vote. In fact, there was zero content from anyone other than Rach between them! (That is not actually that exciting). Most of Rach's reasoning is based around her experience with Gratuitous in one previous game. The most notable thing I see here is that rach claimed to have given grat too much leeway. And while she hadn't really been pushing grat too much prior to this vote, she did repeatedly express some level of suspicious feelings toward him. When I first saw that is felt off, but now that I'm talking myself through it, it doesn't seem so bad.

In terms of partnering, there is nothing notable. All living players are in her townreads in this post. Whenever I get around to partner analysis, I'll take a deeper look here.

Verdict - Nothing strikes me as particularly scummy - certainly less scummy than foxbird's vote here - but it's not a super townie vote either. Meh.

Rach's vote on foe 452
Oh boy, not liking this one much at all. Basically the reasoning is 'sheep nacho; I have no good scumreads.' Yeah, this could very easily be an honest feeling and it fits into her play for most of the game, but it's still breaks down to voting for a town player that Rach had recently (365) shifted from scumreading (and voting) to townreading. That seems pretty bad. It's also noteable that nacho hadn't really made a case on foe at this point. I had a minor one, but rach was specifically following nacho.

In terms of partnering.... I guess it makes rach+nacho even more unlikely, but that is already among the least likely scumpairs in the game, so its not noteworthy.

Verdict - Yeah, this looks pretty scummy to me.

Zorblag's vote on foe 503

Here is your musical entertainment for the following discussion.

So for most of his comentary relating to foe prior to this, is to continually push nacho to explain his vote and that the reasons for voting foe weren't good. He disagreed with my reasoning, but admits we've agreed on like nothing this entire game, and he didn't like rach's vote for similar reasons to what I just talked about above. And then nacho makes his case and zorblag votes because foe is reasonably likely to be scummy. It just doesn't really add up to me.

He spent most of his vote post talking about rach instead of foe. In general, his vote seems to be 'I no longer want to vote for rach, and this vote isn't that bad' as opposed to actual conviction that foe is scum. It was close enough to deadline so I can see why town-zorblag would do this, but at the same time, I still didn't really like this.

@zorblag - Could you articulate your thoughts regarding foe were yesterday? You talked with him and about other player's opinions quite a bit yesterday, but you didn't really say what you were thinking, even when you voted him.

In terms of partnering.... This vote shifted the vote from rach to foe. That makes a sense on a basic level, in regards to a zorblag+rach team, but its a little to blatant of a connection. Just something to remember I thought for later.

Verdict - Ehh, I have issues, but I want to hear zorblag's response first

Okay, that's all for now. Next I want to look more at IV since I didn't get a chance to with this analysis, and take a more broad look at pairings.

[Jaack]

Have a few minutes to catchup

Did you get the chance to glance at the exchange that I've had with Foxbird so far? What did you like about her responses/what did you dislike about them?

The one thing that popped out was once again Foxbird tried to back out of her D1 micro push on you that I took issue with earlier. I don't like how she's tried a few times to deflect interest in that post.

Don't have time for much more, will add more later tonight.

[Jaack]

A bit of time to post some more ketchup

@Jaack, my vote yesterday was largely as you describe. Your case on why foedufafa was town was unimpressive, RachMarie's claim that Nachomamma8 had a case was nonsense, and then when Nachomamma8 made his case against foedufafa it struck me as mostly overinflated. My personal read based on the answers that foedufafa gave was a slight town read. The reason that I changed my vote when I did was that I was more convinced at the time that RachMarie would flip town than I was that foedufafa would. Given the timing and activity those were the two viable lynches; I went with the least bad one as, despite what innocentvillager is saying here, that's the better move day two given the information gains.

What were your feelings about RachMarie at the end of the day. You've very consistently had her at the top of your scum pile (and are looking at potential partnerships with her now.) The one thing you seemed to have against foedufafa was Post 391. Could you go into more detail on why that was more damning than all the play that you'd seen from RachMarie which you'd disliked up to there?

As far as your explination, it's fair enough. My only lingering question is, in a perfect world, what lynch would you have desired at the end of D2? Because for most of the end of D2, you weren't advocating lynch options.

With Rach, there's been stuff I haven't liked, but there has also been content I didn't think made a whole lot of sense coming from scum, specifically he reads in about the middle of D2, when she basically townread everyone but IV and only scumread him based on PoE. I didn't think that made much sense coming from scum, who I figured would have more of a plan on who they wanted to mislynch. That being said, that logic breaks down a bit with how quick she turned on foe when that became an option.

As for foe, I thought that 391 was the scummiest post in the entire game, and his resulting discussion of his IV 'read' was, well, not exactly townie looking either. There was nothing quite as damning with Rach's play, so it made foe a preferable lynch.

@IV - Who was your prefered lynch option at the end of D2. You've walked back your ecane suspicion, you townread Rach at the end of the day, and you were obviously against the foe lynch. Zorblag? Me? Foxbird?

[Jaack]

@IV - Who was your prefered lynch option at the end of D2. You've walked back your ecane suspicion, you townread Rach at the end of the day, and you were obviously against the foe lynch. Zorblag? Me? Foxbird?

This is a good question, and tbh, I didn't know. I liked Nacho's case for town-Rach, so me being all for a Rach lynch was suddenly dissolved.

I never suspected ecane, ever. Lol.

I would've been fine with any of you/Zorb/Foxbird, but I didn't know who or why so I didn't push. Also, an NL was not a bad option at that point, since we would just get the ML later, so I didn't really see any priority in pushing a lynch. Ecane was almost certainly going to die anyway.

I could've tried to stop the foe lynch, but honestly there was not much else I could've said. I said my reasoning why, most of you thought it was a "poor angleshooty reason", so there's not much else I can do to stall such a lynch.

I don't really understand your approach here at all.

You were fine with a number of lynch options, but not with the two options prefered by town. Okay. Then why spend your time voting ecane, when not only did you already assume she was almost certainly going to die, but had already tried and explained your reasoning for the same trick with the same player earlier that day?

That being said, I stil think you're probably town because of things I described D2, but this is pretty ridiculous.

Going to finish up rereading IV and share some thoughts.

[Jaack]

Okay, I'm pretty sure that exactly one of IV or Zorblag is scum.

At the end of D1 and early D2, I was in a Zorblag deathtunnel mindset and the only person to join me on that wagon was IV. Which means if Zorblag, IV, and I are all town that means no scum took interest in two townies leading a mislynch. That seems rather unlikely to me.

Now that I'm mentally running scenarios, looking at this agnostically (as in, if I didn't know my own alignment) I could be the scum in this scenario, so I'll play out all the hypotheticals for posterity.

1. Zorblag is scum; IV and I are town:
This works. The other scum wouldn't necessarily bus in this scenario since Zorblag's lynch wasn't inevitable or even particularly likely yet. To many others were hard reading him town.

2. IV is scum; Zorblag and I are town
This works. IV would be trying to take advantage of my tunnel.

3. I'm scum; Zorblag and IV are town.
This works, although I would generally expect that the scum on a two person wagon would be the second person, particularly since IV had said that he didn't think my case on Zorblag was super strong.

4. Zorblag and IV are scum; I am town
This doesn't work all that great. Their back in forth D2 doesn't read SvS to me at all. Although I guess it would explain why their scumreads on each other faded as the day went on, I don't see crossbussing making too much sense in this scenario.

5. Zorblag and I are scum; IV is town
This actually makes a little sense now that I'm considering it lol. Zorblag had the townreads to survive a planned attack from me. This is something we could have planned. It's not accurate because I'm not scum, but I can construct a good narrative here.

6. IV and I are scum; Zorblag is town
This does not make a lick of sense. If Zorblag were our hypothetical nk target, there's no way we would have tried to push his lynch like that the next day without some town cooperation or previous coordination. And if he wasn't our nk target, then why would we have been so desperate to lynch him the next day.

So I guess I've ruled out Zorblag/IV as the scum team, and sort of inadvertantly ruled out foxbird/rach as well.

Going to think on this more.

[Jaack]

One of IV and Zorblag has to be scum. Therefore you and rach can't be a team together.

This also means that one of you is almost certainly scum, with a very slim chance it's nacho.

I'll have to re-check connections and the like to see the most likely candidate.

[Jaack]

Sorry yall, been having Internet issues.

Not that anyone has been here to participate

[Jaack]

@Jaack, you seem fairly sure that Nachomamma8 is town at this point, can you say why that is? It shouldn't be his claim as he's got nothing to lose as scum making that claim based on the knowledge scum have of the setup. It's actually a better claim for scum to make than VT because it gives more wiggle room for no kills if they want to make them. innocentvillager pointed this out earlier, but I don't recall whether that was before or after you made your post about Nachomamma8's likelihood of being scum. Is there something else or is that it?

Well, nacho was my number one town read going into today even without the claim, and it's a read I continue to hold, but the claim is a decent size part of why I'm not interested in lynching him, at least today.

I don't think it's unlikely that scum would make that claim, but I would think it would have been something scum planned overnight. As such, I'm not sure why it would be nacho to make the claim. There has been exceedingly little interest in lynching nacho this entire game, and, for better or for worse, town is likely to be more hesitant in lynching a claimed BP than a claimed VT.

There was a decent amount of interest among living players in lynching you (zorblag), IV, and Rach on D2. I would expect if one of you were partners with nacho, that player would have claimed BP instead. And foxbird, while there wasn't much interest in her at all yesterday, was not exactly squeaky clean coming out of D2, and certainly a more likely lynch than nacho. (Furthermore, as I've come to the conclusion that one of {zorblag, IV} must be scum, a foxbird/nacho team with nacho claiming BP is really unlikely)

If you have a case on nacho, I'll consider it, but I'm not particularly interest in lynching outside you or IV right now.

[Jaack]

Okay time to finish pairing analysis

Zorblag-Rach
Sooo much interaction here, to the point that I doubt scum would talk to and about each other as much as they have in thread, particularly in a game as relatively lurky as this.

That being said, despite zorblag's scumread on rach for much of D2, they did sort of cooperate on pushing IV. There's something. Furthermore, Zorblag has pushed me and Rach as a likely scumteam. That would put him in a position to lynch me and win or lynch Rach and have the spotlight on me D4.

VERDICT: Ehh, Occam's Razor leads me to assume that two scum wouldn't occupy the thread as much as this pair has. I don't think this is the scumteam.

Zorblag-Foxbird
I might be a bit biased because I kind of want this to be the scum team because these were my first two scumreads of the game, but there's something there. Specifically D1 stuff.

In general, a lot of the interactions between these two slots seemed fishy D1, both when caston was here and once zorblag replaced in. D2, zorblag puts foxbird into his vaguely townpile and doesn't concern himself too much, although this could be because foxbird wasn't really doing much D2.

Foxbird has seemingly settled on townreading zorblag due to effort. That's not exactly something worth commenting on other than to note it exists.

VERDICT: Yeah, its doable, but most of a case on this pair relies on D1 stuff.

IV-Rach
On the one hand this seems unlikely, mainly due to Rach's play today. I doubt rach would have been so willing to bus IV in mylo. (Both early, before anyone had expressed any inkling of direction; and now, when there doesn't seem to be an inevitable lynch.

Looking back at previous days, Rach made a pretty sudden flip in the midst of Day 2 from IV-town to IV-scum. Well its not that sudden as she expressed a desire to review her town read there earlier in the day, but it was reasonably sudden.

IV voted Rach right from his replacement in, and in general has been pretty focused on rach as a lynch choice until being seemingly convinced of her townieness at the end of D2 by nacho. It's noteworthy, because this flip essentially ensured the foe lynch. With rach being a less viable option and the people who were hestitating on the foe wagon (IV, zorblag) not offering other options, foe's lynch became inevitable.

VERDICT: I kind of want to write off this possibilty due to Rach's behavoir today, but there's enough stickiness in days 1 and 2 to make this feasable.

IV-Foxbird
Foxbird was concerned with IV's predecessor D1, but unvotes IV as soon as he enters. Most of Foxbird's commentary on IV on D2 was hesitant (416 iss a good example, with foxbird kind of talking her way into a town read) Same thing with 509, calling something inno did as weird without further commentary.

IV hasn't shown much interest in foxbird until today, kind of writing her off as townish. Now, as the two of them have been generally elevated to the two most likely lynch options, they've turned on each other.

VERDICT: This works pretty good. Maybe the best

FINAL VERDICT: I'm pretty sure it's IV/foxbird. IV/Rach and Fox/Zorblag are doable, but make less sense and are more based on possibilities than actual evidence.

IV's last gasp push for a no lynch is the final nail in the coffin for me.

VOTE: innocentvillager

[Jaack]

The fact that a second vote instead of a FoS was placed on inno by Jaack pushes him higher above Fox

Why would I simply fos in this situation. We're less than 2 days from deadline and activity for most of this game has been lacking.

[Jaack]

@Jaack, could you address this please:

I have trouble with your answer about RachMarie though. The calling most of the game town that you're saying that she was doing in day two was something she was doing stretching back into day 1 (Post 135 and Post 207 both talk about using POE as a reason for her current vote, and Post 234 gives at least town leads to 6 players day 1 (with one scum who she's voting for and a meh could be scummy for the player who had never shown up.) That's behavior that wasn't new day two at all and yet RachMarie was consistently in your scummiest players list, so it shouldn't be something that's holding you back from her on day 2. I also have a lot of trouble with Post 391 as the scummiest post of the game to the point where it's going to override an entire game's worth of suspicious behavior. What is it that you've found scummy about RachMarie throughout the game so far that's kept her so high on your scum lists?

I scumread rach mostly due to her weak D1. Her early votes were for mediocre reasons (noteably her initial vote on foxbird, which had no seemingly relevant reason) I continued the read into D2, because I didn't like her interactions with IV in the beginning of that day.

Overal, there was stuff that piqued my interest but no smoking gun. When I re-evaluated rach later in D2, around the time I voted foe, I took more notice of the PoE thing, and after further review and confirming her reads, I came to the conclusion that a lot of my scumreading of her was unfounded. Her game was more directionless than I would expect from scum.

This isn't to say I've written her off as scum yet. In fact, her reaction to my vote is totally ridiculous, and is making me more seriously consider IV/Rach as a likely pair now.

[Jaack]

Congratulations to town for a well deserved win.

Seems I need to work on my lategame some...