8:4 Vanilla Nightless [TM2015] - GAME OVER

[Albert B. Rampage]

I'm not changing my vote today. You guys come up with all the cases and theory in the world as you please, from this moment on, this game is on pause for me until Nacho is lynched.

[Nachomamma8]

Will you give up the reigns of the town when I'm flipped and you're wrong again?

[Albert B. Rampage]

Yes, you have my word.

[wgeurts]

Eh, ABR.
That's an odd way to pressure and although I believe you're town it's also a rather convienient scum strategy. What makes you certain (or makes your team certain) on nacho?
If you're going to wait it out might as well say why so I actaully have a chance to see where our thoughts differ. You've found someone you want dead meaning you've found evidence, I'm intruiged.

[Nachomamma8]

The Empire Memorial Reads List, Part 1:

Kagami

: The biggest concern I have with Kagami is that all Kagami has done this game is tunnel GreyICE, which means, if GreyICE is town, Kagami's play has been worse than doing nothing: it's been actively and lazily attacking the shit out of town for literally no reason. If GreyICE is scum, then she's been railing valiantly against the most difficult to lynch scum player in the game instead of picking off his partners and his voice. I believe that Kagami, as a player, is smart and not emotional and is able to look at big picture play. She hasn't done that at all with her relentless push on GreyICE.

I also have a lot of difficulty believing her reads are actually real: she forms the GreyICE/Hoopla scum duo in 349 and never changes or doubts it once for literally the entire game. I believe it's impossible to read the game and have a scum group that never changes ever, especially for a player that isn't absolute shit. The reasons for her townreads in 698 were "these players showed resistance against GreyICE. these players are town.", which, again, is absolutely 100% horseshit because only bad players approach a game that shallowly.

In addition, there's also the whole fact that she didn't think to vote until 412 which makes no kind of sense whatsoever, considering the confidence level she was claiming on GreyICE much, much earlier.

Spoiler: Specific Rebuttals to Points

He complains that sotty is willing to town block with players who haven't even posted against, pointing to a list that is probably just people sotty likes/has played with before.

GreyICE has no motive to make this point as scum, considering it's a point that's easily rebutted by Sotty.

sotty is apparently pathetic and the worst liar ever. And is a legendary scum player in the next post.

Attacking a player with rhetoric isn't exactly uncommon in mafia.

There are other little things too. I don't believe town greyICE would ever utter "scum caught for the wrong reasons." He's just too smart to believe that. 277 is another ridiculous thing I don't think town-GI would say. "One of my townreads is scum" reads as "I'll have to 180 on one of my townreads once my scumreads are all dead."

"Scum caught for the wrong reasons" - fairly common statement, probably uttered by GreyICE in a good portion of his games if Kagami ever decided to glance through them, which she probably didn't. And, considering this was refuted from everyone who actually knows GreyICE, it also seems pretty strange that Kagami never looked at GI to see if maybe her perception of him as a player was wrong, but nope, just kept tunneling.

The comment on the second quote: it seems reasonable for GI to feel uncomfortable with the speed wagons are building, thanks to dynamics of the game.

Anyway, I challenge anyone to read greyICE's iso and find a post that both has content and is not contradicted by another of his posts.

This "challenge" is bullshit because it's incredibly easy to make an ISO that is consistent: being consistent is not being town. As for accusing or even implying GreyICE of not producing content when he's been one of the main drivers of the game... no thank you!

Your townreads are people who call you town. Your scumreads are people who question your alignment.

This seems like an odd accusation from someone whose townreads are "people that showed resistance to GI townread": it also sounds like bullshit (I didn't explicitly townread GI until very very late, don't think MS did but I might be wrong, wgeurts, ABR, Hoopla, nope).

Sotty:

Sotty shares a bit of the Kagami problem is that she tunnels far too hard on Seraphim for the majority of the game and doesn't really do much else. My biggest problem is how undeveloped her reads are outside of Seraphim: yes, it's great she's voting Seraphim and all, but what about everyone else...?

Her townread on Hoopla (which, considering she was the only person in thread with an explicit and consistent townread on Hoopla, should have been a priority to explain), consists of "I don't want to lynch Hoopla Day 1 unless she has a major scumslip" and "I have a hard time faking seeing Hoopla fake this as scum". The way she sort of passively avoided the wagon makes sense if she had a scumread/undecided view on the slot, but a good town read getting mislynched should have pushed Sotty to explain a lot more, just letting the wagon happen is a very strong scum signal.

She's also not willing to scumread that many players: yesterday, she had a townread on ZZZX, wgeurts, ABR, Zar, Hoopla. If you add her to that townblock, you get {Kagami, Seraphim, Eddie, Nacho, GreyICE, Metal Sonic}. She said the only thing she had against Kagami was her lurking, but she made a few points and then disappeared. She pushed against Serpahim. She took light potshots against Metal Sonic. She soft-pushed me a couple of times to say I never was intense as I usually was, but never really advanced past that.

Her interactions with me are also seriously lacking: Sotty is one of those players I town block well with because she's very aggressive with me when I'm being inconsistent and she isn't afraid to push on me or call out my reads when she believes they're bad. I have trouble believing Sotty actually let me be as passive and laid-back as I have been this game (until late yesterday): she just gave me a free pass when she is used to a much more in your face Nacho, and I don't think she'd do that as town. I also don't think she'd let me think she was scum for literally an entire day phase without being more aggressive about erasing that read on her (not even a "I'm town, I pinky promise???), but that's a lesser point than everything else.

Her thought processes are also basically just lacking in depth: town-Sotty isn't afraid to pursue a variety of different avenues, she has small theories here and there, her reads are fluid as hell because she's constantly thinking about them, and even though I'm willing to allow a little bit dialed back because working in the coal mines is seriously tiring business, but this Sotty feels like a different person completely from normal town game.

Seraphim:

The scummiest part of Seraphim is how he goes from having good reads to having shit reads over pretty arbitrary reasons.

He starts out scumreading Silverwolf and Eddie: Silverwolf read dies because Kagami replaces in, he gains a Sotty scumread. Then, his Sotty scumread dies because Kagami posts a "convincing case" on GreyICE (which ends up in him cleanly unvoting, which doesn't make sense because 1) if GreyICE case was confusing, why the hell didn't he just sheep it? It was early game enough, and 2) Kagami's case for Sotty being town was "I've seen mislynched town do worse", which is actually one of the least convincing town cases in my life, so don't see how it would work unless Seraphim actually bought into the GreyICE = scum case, which leads back to 1), and his Hoopla read comes out of the blue, seems based on "lurking" and nothing else, and sticks with him literally the entire game. He never mentions Eddie again, despite the early scumread.

Other questionable moments:

-Votes Sotty because he thinks one of GreyICE/Kagami/Sotty is scum. Believes Sotty-scum implicates Kagami-scum but Kagami-scum doesn't implicate Sotty-scum. He believes this because Sotty is distancing from Kagami's defense (which implies scum together), and because he doesn't see Kagami doing this unless Sotty and Kagami were scum together or Kagami was town (Kagami doesn't white knight Sotty here... why?),

-All of #966, where Seraphim says he's playing for survival because "teams" and his philosophy background, which hopefully doesn't need any sort of commentary at all.

EddieFenix

EddieFenix... on first pass, seems a hell of a lot like Kagami 2.0, with much weaker logic and a hell of a lot more sass.

Things I like:
-General confidence and shittalking
-Bulba Capcom Crossover Theory (Where did this go? Why didn't you ever push me more?)
-Bulba and him being in sync posts

What I don't like is, again, the sitting on GreyICE all day and not really pursuing any alternatives which could possibly be scum. And his case on GreyICE is not so great, it's actually really really horrible. All he does is say that GreyICE's Sotty case is horrible salesmanship, and then absolutely nothing at all until the Hoopla/GreyICE team theory and #602, which is where the bullshit comes to a head.

Grey's first point is that Eddie didn't actually interact with his townreads in any meaningful manner, which is suspicious because usually people interact with other people before they're worshipping them as town as shit.

Eddie's rebuttal is that it's fucking astonishing GreyICE believes that Eddie's team isn't in his ear, which actually isn't a rebuttal at all and instead is a really cool "oh team mafia is my excuse!!!" bit like Seraphim's #966 was.

Eddie's attack on Grey is the exact same as Sotty's was waaaay back on Page 1 (namely, that he should have voted Hoopla before Sotty), which is an old accusation that was already addressed in 119.

Then he has an accusation that Grey called Sotty's scumgame "legendary" in response to a reference to a game where Sotty was town, so yeah that makes no fucking sense.

Then he accuses of Grey misrepping that he and Sotty have played multiple games together, even though I'm pretty sure Sotty didn't link any other games.

And then calls him scum because he didn't rip apart ZZZX's PBPA for reasons that I don't really understand at all.

And that's it.
That's that entire case from that big #602 post, which is probably the worst case that I've read since I started reading this game. This makes sense from scum who is pushing a main scumread based on absolutely nothing until he actually tries to sit down and bullshit a case, but it doesn't make sense from town who is active and discussing his scumread with partners who are in his ear. It's also pretty great that this is the only piece of actual motivation or reasoning he even attempts to give: the rest of his reads is just straight rhetoric (see: Kagami read).

It's also a pretty strong tell that all mollie had to say is "Nacho's town" in our game: I've never really known her to read me without interacting with me and not being interested in interacting with me in game: maybe she can say that she doesn't want to step on Eddie's toes, but even mollie whose feeling out boundaries doesn't leave me cold and alone with that non-interaction.

I'm posting these now so I can take a break without being afraid of losing posts. I'm sorry for going overboard in Kagami read, just got excited I had a laptop again and had a bunch of overambitious ideas I had to curb so people actually read my shit.

[Zar]

wgeurts: I don't really agree with your Sotty read.

His first post (112) starts my town read on him. He's already starting to figure out the game, trying to see who's town and who's not.

I don't think we're seeing the same post 112.

I like this thinking. There are several players I am more than willing to bloc up with. (Hoopla, ABR, Nacho, Empire)

Hoopla, for once hadn't even posted when Sotty said this. Why would Sotty want to townbloc Hoopla already if she hadn't even entered the thread at that point?

yea the activity is digustingly low for a game start

Well I work all day in a job where I have no internet access. Expect my posting to be around this time every evening, weekends are more accessible.

I tend to see comments like these as red flags. As I mentioned before, Sotty felt compelled to comment on this on her entry as opposed to other game things ... I tend to feel scum is always more aware of their activity levels than town, and most often trying to explain what's keeping them away from the thread.

and her reaction to GreyICE is bad:

Because "tokens" is bullshit and voting me over Hoopla in that respect is even worse.

First, why is discussing tokens BS? I'm fairly confident (and so is Regfan) that it's a good as any place to start. I frankly don't see what motivations anyone could have to not keep from talking about this information unless you used your tokens to get scum in a setup. Pointing at Hoopla feels like a "look at her" deflection more than it is a justified response.

Then there's the interaction with GreyICE which I believe is TvT. Although his defences are a little shoddy I believe that he's truely convinced that GreyICE is completely pushing him off "lies", much as I did when MetalSonic voted me. He's received the similar tunnel-vision type play I admit I then got after MetalSonic and is trying to show everyone ICE is completely wrong and is early on biased into thinking ICE is scum for all his upcoming posts.

The whole argument on Sotty's OMGUSsy reaction to GreyICE's push and the focus on it reads as her being over-defensive and like a good reason to actually avoid scumhunting or posting other reads.

There's also the fact that he finds everyone that's voting him is scummy and opportunistic. This is something I do myself as town when I'm getting frustrated when a wagon forms on me. As when you're town you know at some point scum will join it, so you try to show the world that as you are convinced there are scum on your wagon. The problem is, people don't think you're town and therefore it makes arguing "scum are on my wagon" a really weak argument. This type of behaviour is something I'd expect from town, it doesn't really make sense as scum.

I think this you are underassuming Sotty's experience; I would think Sotty is perfectly capable of acting town (besides, making the statement that there's scum in my wagon) is not that difficult to fake to avoid being lynched as scum (both Nacho and GreyICE have already pointed out her scum game was legendary, so I don't think it would be above her to fake that sort of thing).

How exactly is 640 a nice post of hers? The logic used to townread Kagami just feels irrational. Plus, Kagami's logic to jump on GreyICE feels a lot more opportunistic than a valid argument.

[Kagami]

Nacho, you killed us N1 in capcom because we were tunneling your scumbuddy. What do you think we would have done on day 2, dropped it?

[Nachomamma8]

You tunneled our scumbuddy for actual reasons. You pushed on scum who weren't us.
These things are pretty fucking important.

[Zar]

Nacho: singer wanted me to ask you who do you think compromised from the GI wagon and why you think they did so on Hoopla instead of Kagami?

[Kagami]

Most of our reasons voiced in thread weren't actually that compelling to me, and the one that was was largely dismissed.

We couldn't push you, and we didn't find you especially scummy at the time. We were just highly confident bro was scum. Pie had commented that it would be funny if the scumteam were all defending bro, but we didn't really believe it.

Your defense of GI consists of: Scum wouldn't make a bad push that could be easily rebutted. Rubbish rhetoric shouldn't be scrutinized. It's totally ok that GI was positioning to scumread one of his townblockerinos because wagons were going fast (I don't think they were at that time)? A "challenge" to find a single consistent point in someone's iso is rubbish because making a consistent iso is easy.

Is that an unfair summary?

[Kagami]

I just feel like people are townreading GI for anger and aggression, and then rationalizing that.

[Nachomamma8]

I just feel like people are townreading GI for anger and aggression, and then rationalizing that.

Maybe! I think you're scumreading GreyICE because magic which is even worse!

[Nachomamma8]

Nacho: singer wanted me to ask you who do you think compromised from the GI wagon and why you think they did so on Hoopla instead of Kagami?

Eddie/Kagami both came over from the GI wagon on Hoopla instead of Kagami to save Kagami. They both came over at pretty much the same time, and they both used ABR asking them over to the wagon as an excuse to join it.

[Nachomamma8]

Scum wouldn't make a bad push that could be easily rebutted.

No, I didn't use it to call Grey town. I said there's no reason to make a push like that unless you're genuinely misunderstanding something because that really isn't difficult to correct.

Rubbish rhetoric shouldn't be scrutinized.

Calling Sotty trash was clearly rhetoric he was using to push her lynch/his opinion of her play in this game. It has nothing to do with his opinion on Sotty's scum play back in the day, which was legendary. Taking these two instances and calling them a contradiction and pushing it as such is stupid.

It's totally ok that GI was positioning to scumread one of his townblockerinos because wagons were going fast (I don't think they were at that time)?

Your point here was fine.

A "challenge" to find a single consistent point in someone's iso is rubbish because making a consistent iso is easy.

Is not a town tell, correct.

[Nachomamma8]

Most of our reasons voiced in thread weren't actually that compelling to me, and the one that was was largely dismissed.

They were compelling to me! And I don't remember reading any reasons that were complete and utter garbage, which seems to be what your reasons here are :/

Like, you're a good, logical player. I expect you to have good logical reasons to do things, ESPECIALLY if you're being extremely aggressive and confident about them, but here your reasons are bad enough where I'd probably attack any player peddling shit like that.

I don't believe you wouldn't look elsewhere for scum. I don't believe you would still be confident in the case you dropped. I don't believe you clear a third of the game because "you took my side day 1!".

[Kagami]

Rubbish rhetoric shouldn't be scrutinized.

Calling Sotty trash was clearly rhetoric he was using to push her lynch/his opinion of her play in this game. It has nothing to do with his opinion on Sotty's scum play back in the day, which was legendary. Taking these two instances and calling them a contradiction and pushing it as such is stupid.

I'm sorry, but no.

If you believe someone to be a talented scum-player, you don't then say "haha, I caught you, because you're terrible!" If anything, play that resembles bad scum play is a town tell. I've been in exactly this position and correctly townread players who I know to have too refined a scumgame to make certain plays. To do the opposite is bizarre.

[Nachomamma8]

You're a legendary scum player. This means you were a great scum player in the past.
Your play this game is terrible. This means your play in this game has obvious holes.

These two statements aren't mutually exclusive.

[Nachomamma8]

Can you not do something other than argue about GreyICE?

[Kagami]

I haven't "cleared" anyone, except maybe ABR and sotty after a GI scumflip. While I recognize it to be an unpopular opinion, "townblocking" is stupid. A vengeful strat has a wildly higher EV

[Nachomamma8]

I agree we should do vengeful from this point forward, at least.

[Kagami]

Can you not do something other than argue about GreyICE?

I can, but that only weakens my position in a situation where I'm already likely today's mislynch. (hint: I have scumreads in your townblock, which makes them effectively untouchable until there's a favorable scumflip)

[Nachomamma8]

What is your read on me?

[Kagami]

I have the worrying sense that you're town.

[Nachomamma8]

I thought so.
Can you sell me a little harder on your GreyICE read? Do you still have the same feelings about all of your points on him?
How did your read progress as the game progressed? Did I read you right when it seemed like you just immediately thought he was scum by his Sotty push and never faltered from that point on?

[Kagami]

once the kiddies are asleep. Need a longer post for it.