OK, so since I proposed my Gio/Cakez/MB scumteam theory in this thread, MathBlade has gone off on a rant in the neighbourhood and basically accused me of gamethrowing, and SirCakez has accused me of being scum. I was mostly checking to see if other people thought it was feasible rather than fishing for reactions, but that doesn't mean I'm going to disregard that sort of reaction if I
get
them.
I think it's fairly likely that MathBlade thought that the game was sewn up, and is reacting so violently because I'm trying to throw a wrench into that. Thinking the game's sewn up isn't necessarily a scumtell by itself, but in this game, where most of the players have expressed confusion as to what's going on and many players have threatened to replace out or disrupted the game to the extent of needing to be force-replaced as a result, I can't see town having that sort of confidence in a plan unless they were
heavily
underclaimed; it requires inside knowledge that has to come from somewhere.
Let's see what MathBlade's plan accomplishes: it proves, by day 9, that if Gio is lying about a Follower, that either SirCakez or MathBlade is scum with them; it proves that Nahdia is in fact a Jailkeeper; and it discourages non-groupscum players from nightkilling JaeReed. That's more or less it. Now, that information isn't useless, but it also isn't gamewinningly useful.
Meanwhile, on day 9, there will probably be six players alive; perhaps five, if Ankamius gets another kill. If we don't hit scum by then, the only way that town could win then would be if the scumteam
currently
has two or fewer members (and if there were any third parties, it'd require navigating a screwy ending, something which really doesn't give any guarantees as to what happens). This was, originally, a 22 player game. We've only seen one scumflip. The most likely number of scum for a 22 player game, by a long way, is 5; and 6 is more likely than 4. That means we probably have 4 scum alive right now (although I'm assuming they aren't all in the same faction; if they are, there's a reasonable chance that town has already lost). Given that this game casts a lot of doubt on the nature of the scumteam, it's possible that the scumteam is rather weaker to compensate for their information advantage; perhaps there are only 3 scum alive. Even then, wasting lynches pottering around lynching townies is a really bad idea, as even against a scumteam of 3 we'd need to play a perfect game from then on.
So MathBlade's been playing in one of the most anti-town possible ways; encouraging people to drift into the iceberg, happily doing mostly inconsequential things while town's numbers get lower and lower, and then probably eventually getting endgamed. The thing is, I was trusting them despite this due to Gio's result, which is effectively impossible to interfere with; OTOH, perhaps Gio's simply just lying about it, which would make a lot more sense. MathBlade and Gio being scum together would get round that issue, though.
Further evidence for this is that SirCakez is pushing the Almost50 wagon and getting very defensive when I accuse him of encouraging JaeReed to hammer it, and meanwhile implying in #
9826 and #
9829 that he doesn't particularly care if JaeReed hammers Almost. MathBlade's on the same wagon, and mostly responsible for encouraging it to grow. Additionally, in neighbourhood conversation, MathBlade has been very reluctant to lynch SirCakez, except for the past few days (when they suddenly changed his mind with a SirCakez scumread); it was quite a noticable change. MathBlade is
still
reluctant to lynch SirCakez, but for different reasons (they want SirCakez' inventor shot around to be able to confirm that Gio is a Follower, because ???). I guess you can put it this way: it's often possible to figure out someone's scumbuddies via neighbourhood, once you know they're scum (I've done it before). If I knew for a fact that MathBlade were scum, I'd be highly certain that SirCakez were one of their buddies, and willing to lynch/vig purely on that information.