Red Wine Mafia: Game Over

[Empire]

Do I get to lynch you yet?

I'm town yet again so I'm gonna have to politely ask you to Get Rekt.

Vote: Espeonage

[Empire]

Not in the best mood right now due to how awful my job search has been going and this thread needs a bit of focus so let's try something a little different here.

T S O, Mindgamer, and CTD all look townish to me so far.
The Silver Bard has offsite experience so I'm not sure if the towntell in #9 applies.
Espeonage's #4 pinged for me, the last line specifically.

[Empire]

I don't care if hes scum or not, Hes getting lynched, we can figure out who the scum are day 2. Hes never going to be anything but disruptive, and is a detriment to the game whether hes scum or not.

I don't think he really qualifies as disruptive though. Putting aside my dislike for policy lynches, dude does appear to actually be doing stuff (giving some reads and some reasons for them) despite the trollish and somewhat offensive presentation.

Cabd is town for complete failure to scumhunt.
Chamber is town for being mad.
CTD is scum for not self-voting.
Empire is... VOTE: Empire
Espeonage is probably town.
Mindgamer is town so far.
Pjovek should probably be replaced.
Tammy / Projectmatt may contain an empirebuddy.

Wrong vote, cap'n. I'm town and I'm kind of surprised you don't see it, even this early.
Agree with chamber-mad = chamber-town.
Why are you reading Espeonage as town? I haven't really liked anything he's posted so far actually. The post I quoted in particular felt like a lame attempt at getting the game going (latching on to something easy, even in the first page, while not pushing it in any substantial manner).
Why the CTD scumread? His entrance to the game felt a lot more comfortable / loose than what he did /in-vitational 12 (basically, a limp attempt at mimicking his meta).
I don't think 'complete failure to scumhunt' is a tell for Cabd either way, especially this early in the game. To be completely honest, Cabd is one of those players I'll probably end up being wary of for the entirety of my existence in this game.

[Empire]

About to head out to lunch and then more job searching / work but a couple of things I forgot:

Espeonage makes a rather poor choice for an early day wagon.

Why?

And especially I don't like that he puts me in possible scum, that always makes me suspicious.

Why does putting you in possible scum always make you suspicious?

[Empire]

Feeling increasingly better about The Silver Bard being town.

That sucks because you're one of the players in this game I expect to be able to read me.

How? We only have one completed game together in which I was town and you were scum and I barely gave your entire slot much thought.

[Empire]

I've seen Pjovek scum. This isn't it.

How would you describe Pjovek's scum play?

[Empire]

Our skype talks tell me you're decent at cold reading me and we've discussed things about yours and I's play such that I expect you to be able to use that "inside info" to sort me now that it's go time in a game.

Don't expect me to not get cold feet now that it's actually go time.

[Empire]

Busy weekend, will have to catch up on Sunday.

[Empire]

I think you're reaching there and think it's a pretty typical attack to get the game moving and get a reaction.

Ok let me try this again since I apparently didn't do so hot at explaining it last time.

No vote, don't want to make enemies?

A lot of times, I see this kind of entrance from scum -- a leading, accusatory question based on stretchy reasoning as a ways to make it look like they're contributing pushing the game past RVS (examples from other games: #1, #2, #3 - the third one isn't phrased in the form of the question but it is in essence the same as the other two). The thing you'll notice in the two examples is that there's no real follow up or drive in them, just a limp throwaway post that appears to be moving the game towards serious time but isn't really.
Probably did a poor job of explaining this, but there it is.

Also, I haven't fully caught up yet, but the rest of his posting up until now just seems like wallflower scum to me. He's posting stuff coachy / kid's gloves type stuff like #61's comment to Pjovek + posturing about informative wagons in #85 and it just seems like he's trying to appear helpful without really involving himself in the game.

Actually, thinking about it again, why am I the only one voting this dude? >_>

[Empire]

For some reason, my PC can't access this site (among other places), so I'll be limited to phone for a while. I've caught up with this thread and am working on a big reads list. Should be able to post it up there.

CTD, to answer your question, I think Tammy's town. Reasons for why will be up there in that big post.

[Empire]

EBWOP: should be able to post it up there when I get PC access again.

Fuck phone posting.

[Empire]

I'm still working on the list (and in fact going to meta you, aren't you excited???) and I'd rather just post the whole thing when it's finished.

[Empire]

I'm about to head into the Friday / Saturday dirge but I at least want to get the strong townreads up today. Before I do that, though:

He knows he's obligated to ask me "how is it you aren't reading me as town yet??"
#120 is best read as "well it looks like SB is gonna not be assailable; balls."
There is a general aura of weakness. "I'm not sure if the towntell in 9 applies" (also ungood for towntell-dispelling)
In 306 he is Surprised that he has made a case that sounds convincing against someone.
Tammy's town without much quibbling because he knows she'll Town eventually.

1) For the record, I still am pretty surprised you aren't reading me as town in this game (and I'm not even going to go into the fact that I'd say that as both alignments).
2) Alternatively, "oh cool, he towninated, thank god I don't have to worry about this slot right now" which is what it actually was.
3) Uh, I'm not sure where in the world you're getting aura of weakness from. I feel as comfortable as I've ever been with a Town PM. (Also, see next post coming up for the TSB stuff).
4) That wasn't be being surprised at my case being convincing (in fact, one of the few things I

don't

worry about / don't underscore as scum is the quality of my cases) more me being surprised that people up to that point had been ignoring Espeonage who was exhibiting classic passivescum behavior.

[Empire]

Putting up the strong townreads now (Tammy / Katsuki / chamber / Llamarble) first, the weaker townreads (T S O / projectmatt / CTD) when I come back tonight.

Tammy:

• The best way to read Tammy is to see how she reacts to suspicion. There's a colossal gap between how she takes being suspected as town vs. scum -- as town, she tends to takes suspicion almost as a personal attack and reacts very violently / explosively whereas she tries to tone that down quite a bit more as scum. The way she responded to Cabd / ffery in posts like #282 is representative of her town game (in particular, the sarcastic / dismissive way she calls Cabd "Mr. Tammy Meta Extraordinaire" and tells him to go talk to me about her meta).
  
• I like that her statement in #254 that she put herself in observation mode early in this game because she felt like she could just do that here, it shows she's not interested in catering to the audience and has confidence in her ability to naturally be obvtown over time (these are particularly strong Tammy-town traits as she has about as much confidence in her scum game as I do).
  
• Her comment in #437 where she's suggesting that I've been ignoring her is also a great sign of the Tammy-town as I think she'd be, well, scared shitless around me frankly if she were scum in this game with me.

chamber:

• The major thing with chamber is his sheer level of mad at Pjovek. From my understanding, chamber tends to only really feel some sort of investment in the game when he's town and when he's having fun (see: this post + his dislike of being scum generally). His reaction to Pjovek seemingly disrupting the game fits the bill with how I'd expect him to react as town (shows that he cares about the game and is steamed that someone is disrupting his enjoyment), I think he'd be a lot more likely to let it slide / not really give a shit as scum.
  
• Llamarble already went into this, but I liked his knee-jerk reaction scumreads a lot, especially #308 and the level of surprise / shock in it. As a general matter, I think scum try to be way more careful with their reads / thoughts / positions in the game and are way less likely to post unprompted, unedited responses like those.

The Silver Bard / Katsuki:

• The kind of cheeky / wifomy claim in #9 is stuff that for some reason I see come from town way more often than scum (if I had to go Pretentious Mafia Theory for a bit, I'd say it's probably because scum tend to play a lot more stiff / awkwardly in the early game than town usually do). The reason I didn't see it as a slam dunk at the time was because of his off-site experience at teamliquid, where they apparently do some uh pretty weird shit, and I wasn't sure he'd appreciate me talking about where he came from -- I know when I first started playing games here, I really didn't like talking about my old site due to the flack it gets.
  
• The "I know I'm town so people scumreading me makes me question their motives" attitude in #93 rings genuine, especially given what he says in #97 about the transparency of his town game. It gives me the impression that he thinks his townieness should be so apparent to everyone that he finds it hard to believe others wouldn't see it.
  
• Speaking of #97, I liked that he was so open about the level of transparency / accuracy people should be expecting from him + the suggestion that people should lynch him if he fails to meet this standard. I don't think he'd created such expectations for his play he knew he wouldn't be able to fulfill as scum.
  
• Katsuki's a lot harder to get a handle on because I find his playstyle very hard to read but I really liked #152. My interpretation of the post was that it was a kind of "sigh of relief" type of reaction from Katsuki -- from what I remember, Katsuki tends to view himself as an easy target as town due to his playstyle so I saw the post as him being relieved that he doesn't have to worry about being attacked.

Llamarble:

• I tend to really hesitate to give Llamarble an early read as I've learned the hard way that he can have a really slow start as town. That being said, as a general matter, he tends to become way more involved in the game the more it continues when he's town whereas when he's scum, he just kinda stagnates in limpness for basically the entire game. The progression from the more cursory stuff #65 to more detailed / intensive posts like #412 + #420 fits the aggressive gamesolving I know he does when he approaches the game as town.
  
• Minor things like his confidence / cheekiness levels also strongly point in a town-'marble direction. Examples include the "teachings in Advanced Mafia" line in #412 and the entirety of #359.

P-edit:
@Llamarble: *sigh* whatever then. For what it's worth, my soup is a ways smaller than yours.

[Empire]

Will get to this tonight, been away all weekend + something of an emergency just came up today.

[Empire]

About to head into a job interview, will catch up in here at some point today, sorry for dropping the ball so far.

[Empire]

Hey so it absolutely pains me to have to do this but my life has gotten to the point where I don't have time for mafia at all and I need to focus on dealing with all of that stuff.

@mod: Please replace me.

Good luck with everything guys.