Mini Normal 1843 - Endgame

[Hoopla]

Original Roll String: 1d13

1 13-Sided Dice: (7) = 7

[Hoopla]

VOTE: goodmorning

[Hoopla]

Vote: Hoopla

By using dice tags to determine who you vote, you prove (instead of merely claim) that your vote was made without any intent whatsoever. As such, your posts #5 and #6 are specifically designed not to give town any additional information. Because town needs information on the most important question of the game (who is scum), whereas scum is fully informed on that matter, your posts do not benefit town as much as they should. Why are you intentionally playing in a way that is more beneficial to scum then to town?

But Michel, if I used dice tags during LYLO or deep in the game, that would be an extreme faux pas. Better to get it out of the way on page 1.

I thought using dice rolling in the thread was not allowed?

I checked the mods ruleset before I did it. I agree dice rolling can be a bit overpowered, though.

[Hoopla]

Would you rather me roll the dice in LYLO or now?

[Hoopla]

^I actually find that logic quite appealing.

Michel, I ~retract~ my dice roll and will be saving it for LYLO.

UNVOTE:

[Hoopla]

goodmorning's fear of the dice is strange. Don't be afraid of what the universe has planned for you.

[Hoopla]

You actually have better odds of not being rolled now that you've already came up once.

[Hoopla]

Don't let that withhold you from explaining why you used them in the first place.

I owed the universe a favour.

ANYWAY

VOTE: goodmorning

...and not because the dice told me to!

[Hoopla]

I'm wondering what the likelihood is micheal would issue that PSA #1 as scum, I think very low. The only issue is the chance he thought of it from pre-game and planned to say it regardless of role pm, instead of just now (makes sense given the circumstances).

In Michel's only game (playing from the start) in the last few years onsite, he drew scum and didn't subject the town to a PSA. He tends to ask a lot of questions early in the game, regardless of alignment, but in non-newbie games the PSA-style declaration has only ever come as town (like here). In his slew of newbie games, pretty much every time he'd talk about how players should be acting and what to do regardless of alignment -- but I attribute that more to teaching newbies than anything, and on the whole his decision to go the extra step here this game with his lecturing is a town-tell for him.

[Hoopla]

First page discussion about dice voting
Second page post about not random voting

Only thing missing is a shameless bandwagon discussion

vote: goodmorning

Good to see Sotty has still got it after all these years!

[Hoopla]

^not bad, not bad.

I feel like goodmorning is close to finally cracking and going into full meltdown, but consider me voting for Raskolnikov too.

[Hoopla]

I can't believe we're letting goodmorning off the hook...

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Raskolnikov

[Hoopla]

Mostly though, the post saying she feels her scumread is about to crack under pressure but she changes vote is absurd to me.

I feel like it's fairly obvious from context that I am just teasing goodmorning (she seems like a good kid imo and I might invite her to start a town bloc if/when she proves her innocence to me) -- but really, who could resist such a juicy wagoning opportunity this early in the game?

[Hoopla]

Hoopla, don't you think that your bubblyness, as Rask calls it, should have drawn more reactions then it did? Are there players in his game who you expected would comment on it, but didn't?

I came out all guns blazing yet with no expectations about reactions at all. I know it sounds crazy, but I think I managed to pull it off.

[Hoopla]

Okay, if you're town stop talking like this then.

It's vague as to when you're "serious" or not which makes any given action low-commitment. If an opinion is convenient to hold on to, you can later say it was serious. If inconvenient, you can say it wasn't.
But in this case that feels like a stretch. You voted on dice and then said you voted not for it which implied it was at least somewhat serious, as well as what you said about switching. It's almost goes too far really.

Whatever align this has to end. Anyone can realise the issue here; if someone is disingenuous and saying things they don't mean as town, you are not any different from scum being disingenuous and saying things they don't mean. This behaviour from town makes scumhunting difficult so it shouldn't be allowed on principle past RVS (is this still rvs?) unless it's very obvious to be joking, which evidently it was not. And it gives scum an out when people do find a slip up.

It also just annoys me, but that's because I am a uptight bastard who gets bothered seeing people all cheerful-like and having fun... But that's not relevant here.
*ahem*

I want a serious read from you on me as leading wagon, goodmorning (good kid? is that a read or personality?), and whatever else you can offer. Underneath your attitude, I am vaguely familiar with your experience and particularly game knowledge from the setup theory threads, and even if this particular thing hadn't happened, I would want something from you anyways at this point to judge.

Raskol, I know you're frustrated, but you have to respect the shapes I'm throwing down here. You may not like it, but it's already netted us an L-2 wagon so I must be doing something right. As a polite compromise I'll give you my for real 100% serious read on the situation (sandwiched between angel emojis so you know I'm definitely for real no-takesies-backsies)

I thought BlackVoid's post illuminating your overly qualifier-y post was good and I like to reward good posts with wagon support. You're the best candidate I have so far, and I'm still reviewing your reaction to your wagon so no further comment yet. goodmorning is a good kid, but I have no read on her alignment yet. I think Michel is town. The end.

[Hoopla]

If you're town and think playing the game "rewarding" good posts with votes without having your own opinion is a good approach, I don't know what to say. For starting an rvs wagon, okay. It's still earlygame for now.
But if you play like this midgame or later (well you see your honor, I lynched him yesterday to reward a good post) it might be actually be for the best if I'm out of this early.

Do you feel like you're a chance to be lynched early?

[Hoopla]

Not everyone can be a leader. Some of us have to follow.

[Hoopla]

UNVOTE: Rask

Cool, Rask is town.

woah, woah woah, lets not jump to conclusions here...

[Hoopla]

Of those three I think Sotty is most likely. She had an empty vote, but at the same time added a few weak reads right afterword. Seems like someone who knew their vote was not good, so they decided to put down some content so as to not get blamed for fluff. 86 also shows more self awareness about the quality of her posts.

I like this as a tell in general -- scum often tend to overcompensate if they feel their vote isn't justified well enough... but Sotty can be a savvy scumbag. I honestly don't know how to read her and what tells apply to her these days. Perhaps a good ol' wagoning is just what she needs.

[Hoopla]

Alright, I think we squeezed as much out of the Raskol wagon as we could. Great job everyone!

More and more these days, I'm starting to believe that the first opening wagon that gets to L-1 or L-2 tends to be town a lot more often than random. Typically the less information in the game and the sooner it happens increases the likelihood of it being town. Why I think this is a trend is that at the beginning of the game any vote can be justified and there's no real information to go on, so there is more incentive for scum to plump existing wagons on town rather than their buddies. There's not really any incentive to distance heavily at the start of the game, because there's no punishment or scrutiny for voting town. Sure, scum still will vote each other from time to time, but there are more barriers along the way in order to achieve a L-1 or L-2 wagon on scum early, whereas when a town wagon emerges there's no hidden opposition ignoring it/voting it elsewhere -- everyone is considering it earnestly, as such, they tend to balloon quicker than scums.

To lynch scum, you need a lot of town zeroing in on the same wavelength or scum helping you. It's very hard to produce that perfect storm of town hivemindedness without genuine information that many players can agree on. And scum help is less likely early in the game, as they don't feel under pressure to distance themselves from each other -- convincing information pressures scum to distance. The reason for Raskol's wagon was decent, but I don't think scum helps us on this wagon very often (if Raskol is scum) and I don't think the reason is good enough to get five townies to vote him that often. It's easier combinatorially to assume Raskol is town and that scum have aided this wagon.

I don't have enough data to say for sure how pronounced this pattern is, but I think it exists and have been investigating it recently. Anyway, for a less impersonal, less statistically tell;

57 is a little ridiculous.

thatsthejoke.jpg

So Raskolnikov may have murdered an old woman with an axe but is still quite possibly Town, plus TwoFace. I think Scum probably gets the subtext more often than Town does here.

I agree with goodmorning's thought here. Raskol spent several paragraphs dissecting my posts oblivious to the nature of the jokester-y dialogue with goodmorning. I feel like that zeal comes from town curiosity thinking he's caught something, as opposed to scum manufacturing something.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: MariaR

[Hoopla]

Oh boy and so it begins this is gonna be fun!
Do you sr me Hoopia I sure hope so

That smells like fear to me!

[Hoopla]

I don't fear anyone what I smell is a challenge!

A solitary vote constitutes a challenge?

Or are you one step ahead of me and smelling the impending votes that are about to rain down upon you for your weird reaction?

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla, talk to me about Rask's case on you. Do you think he was accurate in accusing you of using associations?

Rask's case on me hinges on him believing that I strongly believed goodmorning was scum. I feel like it's obvious that wasn't the case, and the absurdity of Rask dissecting the situation so extensively yet missing the context is one of the reasons why he looks town. I've been seriousposting recently, so he probably thinks I'm town now and would like to humbly withdraw his case.

While you're here, how do you feel about getting in on the ground floor of this promising MariaR wagon?

[Hoopla]

Why MariaR? If you think that scum aided the Rask wagon, why vote a player that didn't vote him?

She's a fidgety nervous scumbag already bracing for conflict from a solitary vote. Are you not curious to see what will happen if we give her some more?

The only alignment relating to that wagon I have conviction about is Rask's. If there's one scum on his wagon (the most likely scenario) -- that's still the same ratio of scum:town as off the wagon anyhow. Are you still suspicious of Rask?

[Hoopla]

I dislike any votes on me.

Then why didn't you say anything about Rask's page 2 vote on you?

[Hoopla]

I think you sr me because you don't understand and that's okay when people don't understand things they try to shift blame to others you're no different

The fact you're continually insisting that I'm trying to soulread you implies that you know I'm town.

[Hoopla]

His actual case on you doesn't make sense to me. He says that you voted him based off of associatives with goodmorning. I re-read your posts and still can't find where you tried to tie Rask to GM so I don't know where that's coming from.

I think because I was "suspicious" of goodmorning, yet voting him instead, he considered me associating the two of them together. I could be wrong, but that was the only way I could make sense of it.

I actually agree with your previous post that there is just as much chance of there being scum off the wagon than on it so I don't get the pseudo-process-of-elimination.

It's not so much process-of-elimination. Just an observation from my experience that early large wagons often tend to be town.

[Hoopla]

Hey Maria, what do you think about my alignment?

[Hoopla]

Hey Maria, what do you think about my alignment?

What a random question I thought I was a nervous mess wouldn't my opinion on you mean nothing?

humour me!

[Hoopla]

What do you think about the fact that the Rask-wagon dismantled so easily? Also, do you have a read on BBT?

Wagons that swell rapidly based on little information can often collapse just as fast. I don't really have a read on BBT yet.

[Hoopla]

As an aside, I don't understand the purpose of Victor and Maria declining to share reads.

[Hoopla]

What do you think of the reads I have shared?

I'll get back to you when you declare some reads punctuated with something other than variations of

"...is a good vote"

.

[Hoopla]

Oh, I just realised Maria is using "sr" as scumread. Dunno why I interpreted that abbreviation as "soulread".

Carry on everybody.

[Hoopla]

But she didn't say that. She said I wasn't sharing reads. Not sharing reads isn't the same as not explaining them. If she had actually said something like what you quoted I wouldn't be scum reading her.

What's the point in asking someone what they think about your reads when they're unexplained? Given two others (goodmorning and TwoFace) got that I was prompting you to explain your reads, I find it hard to believe you didn't get that was what I was asking for.

Which is the equivalent of insisting you explain yourself.

Then why didn't she just ask like Maria did?

Even when Maria asked for you to "share your reads with the class" you declined to share, so lets not pretend that you haven't had an opportunity to explain any reads. You've been prompted several times by different players in different ways and you haven't volunteered any explanations beyond the superficial. Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you're not just being facetious, I will politely ask you for some further explanation in a direct and easy to understand way. Hopefully my request for explanation has been presented in the correct format for you to reply:

1) Why did you think BlueBloodedToffee was a good vote?
2) Who are your two strong town reads? Why are they strong town reads?
3) Why did you originally think Maria might be a good vote, and why do you think she is town now?
4) Why are you suspicious of me?

[Hoopla]

LOL woops btw i just townsliped that i cannot be mafia with i am innocent or i am a pro at forum mafia in my first game

Usually when you point out things like this yourself they're less likely to be true than if someone else noticed it themself. Kinda like when people use the argument "I would never do X as scum", when that person has been doing X all game.

[Hoopla]

I kinda wanna vote Cloudkicker for his weird flirting. Do something scummy so I can vote you.

[Hoopla]

Given the trolly reputation of EM, I find it hard to give credit to such a slip. I'll let the others who know you better make that judgement call.

[Hoopla]

Hmmm, I feel like I have a lot of town reads and not many scum.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Sotty7

I've felt vaguely suspicious of her for a while for reasons I can't put my finger on yet. I also feel like she's been preemptively buddying me and has ruled out the possibility of trying to read me/interact with me today.

[Hoopla]

I've got a fair few townreads cracked. Victor, GM, Rask, TwoFace, and Cloud.

Mostly waiting for content from the lurkpool. In the meantime, if anyone wants to discuss any of those reads with me, I can probably go into that.

I agree-ish with most of those reads, but how are you town reading Victor? Is it along the lines of scum usually aren't brazen enough to be deliberately obtuse?

[Hoopla]

4) Again, this has been discussed in the thread. You went for attack over questioning. I'd expect a post like 261 to be the sort of thing you've have done naturally if you were town.

I didn't realise you were this obtuse and required such explicit, direct questioning in order to pry information from. I thought it was clear I was asking for elaboration; Twoface thought it was clear, so did goodmorning. I'm going to leave it at that though, because this is a dead end semantics argument.

Although I still don't know the purpose of saying you have two strong town reads and then not sharing who they are, let alone reasons why. Why bother mentioning them at all?

[Hoopla]

Nice attempt to deflect but your doing it again. You're equating not sharing everything with not sharing anything.

Why did you bother asking me what I thought of your reads, when the extent of your reads were

"X might be a good vote"

? Surely you must have known there was nothing there for me to comment on.

[Hoopla]

To attempt to engage you. There were any number of useful things you could have said:

"I think BBT is town and don't agree."
"I think Maria is a good vote as well"
"Why is BBT a good vote?"
"How scummy do you think BBT is?"
"Why did choose BBT over Maria?"

As just a few examples. It's not that you couldn't comment but you didn't.

And at that point, I told you I'd comment when you give something to comment on (your cue here is to give me something to comment on)

And then next TwoFace took over and reiterated the same thing, to which you started complaining about semantics, again, instead of providing something for us to comment on. It really shouldn't have got to that point, though. How about instead of throwing it back at me with

"what do you think about my two nothing reads and my two mystery town reads who are top secret fyi, ps. they're really strong reads"

you actually just said the reason for your reads? Do you literally need someone to hold your hand and ask you directly why you thought they were good votes? If your reasons are any good, just volunteer the information.

[Hoopla]

Victor, look what you've done to goodmorning. You've really upset her, and she's such a good kid. I think you should apologise to myself and goodmorning, and TwoFace while you're at it.

[Hoopla]

At this point, we are just going to be disagreeing over how to play the game, and I can't be bothered to waste my time further on you.

I agree we have playstyle differences. It's awfully convenient and/or lazy of you to find me suspicious for said differences, however.

[Hoopla]

Even if you didn't have expectations, surely you have some thoughts on the lack of reactions?

Mmm, not really. I haven't played with many people on this list. For all they know, that's how I always am and not worth commenting on?

[Hoopla]

From reading Mafia Discussion, I know you as someone with a very good grasp on mafia theory. For you to start the game with a dice vote and follow it up with a couple of whimsical posts feels to me like you went deliberately off meta in order to provoke reactions. That everyone basically ignored it, even when you went back to more serious posting, is extremely surprising to me. It feels like more players should have responded, as it would be a good way to get some discussion started. Simultaneously, I can kind of see scum deciding not to engage an experienced player. So I really want to look for players who could have reacted, but didn't.

Hey, just because I like posting in Mafia Discussion doesn't mean I can't have a cheeky LOL with my fellow players while the stakes are low! I find it strange how you are picking apart the opening of the game so rigorously but you're finding difficult to get a read on anything in the last 10 pages.

What do you think about the Victor vs. Me/goodmorning/TwoFace thingy? I know it's a lot of unnecessary semantics, but since you care about how people are reacting to me, do you find it weird that two people volunteered to step in and argue on my behalf yet nobody did the same for Victor? On reflection I kinda do, and I suspect them more than I do Victor (who I'm still trying to work out).

[Hoopla]

No need for what? To call you a shitty player? You said victor asking me why I wasn't voting since post 107 or whatever number was a good post. That's literally the most useless question of the game so far. So yeah that says to me that if you're town, your opinions are horrible.

phew, it's a relief you added that emoji to help soften the blow

sotty, you better go work on your game.

[Hoopla]

Don't feel like hoopla is pressuring sotty at all despite the vote.

*adds to my to-do list*

- laundry
- get in another argument with victor
- let goodmorning know she's a good kid
- post office
- defrost the chicken (no, not a euphemism)
-

pressure sotty

[Hoopla]

While you're here, Rask:

I got a little lost while interrogating Maria. You seem to know her well -- what do you make of her this game? What's her scum meta like?

[Hoopla]

I don't know whats wrong with me I'm reading but my head is just buzzing all the words are getting scrambled and I prob can't remember what was said on the last page
Someone ask me some questions please

What's your favourite animal?

[Hoopla]

I don't know whats wrong with me I'm reading but my head is just buzzing all the words are getting scrambled and I prob can't remember what was said on the last page
Someone ask me some questions please

What's your favourite animal?

I love hedgehogs and kittens

Cool, I like raccoons (:

[Hoopla]

*pressurising of Sotty begins*

Ahem, well Sotty, it seems I have been reading you as slight scum, but what if I told you I now think you are very likely scum. That's right. I have a lot of suspicion for you and my one vote is simply not adequate to convey the intensity of my scumread on you. How do you feel about that?

[Hoopla]

Wait, where's Rask? Is he getting a load of this??

[Hoopla]

mhmm you would, would you? Well, I must reveal this isn't a hypothetical and it is indeed the cold hard truth.

[Hoopla]

Yup I feel all those things.

So what's going on?

nm, just catching you flailing as scum

[Hoopla]

I can't remember. Are you scum reading victor?

I think he's slightly townie by virtue of it seeming likelier to me that if there's scum to be anywhere in that mess of an argument, it'd be goodmorning or you cashing in on the low-hanging fruit that is picking apart victor's arguments THAT I TOTALLY HAD UNDER CONTROL FYI

[Hoopla]

*

[Hoopla]

The reason I'm asking the question, as should be clear from the context...

Lets not go down this road with Victor again...

[Hoopla]

I have a question I forgot to ask TwoFace yesterday:

What's the point of the coinflip when you can simply reflip on decisions where you really want a yes (like flipping again to get on the Victor wagon)?

[Hoopla]

I was working on this yesterday, but ran out of time. Here are some READS:

FUTURE TOWN BLOC MEMBERS WHO WILL SERVE AS THE BACKBONE (ALONG WITH ME) IN GUIDING THE TOWN:

Michel

- I see him as a voice of reason type who we seem to be lacking in this town (not that everyone else isn't reasonable -- it just seems like everyone is all over the shop and shooting from the hip)

Raskolnikov

- seems to be the most universally read as town player, which will be useful for collective PoE efforts later in the game

TOWNIE BUT A TINGE OF PARAN

OIA:

BlackVoid

- makes good posts, is active and seems like a good townie, but from what I've seen of him, he seems competent enough to be able to fake these things convincingly. Hopefully he is town and can serve as a consultation role to the primary town bloc.

S

T

U

B

B

O

R

N

/

L

O

O

S

E

C

A

N

N

O

N

T

O

W

N

I

E

S

:

Maria

- unpredictable, but I'm a sucker for exclamations like

"It's fun to ask why people sr me because it's so much more fun to prove them wrong ^_^"

- I just don't see scum saying stuff like this as often as town

Victor

- has that abrasive town feel about him, but I'm mostly townreading him because of other people's reactions towards him.

LURKERS/NULL/DUNNO:

Jaack

- post some more please

I Am Innocent

- post some more please

Cloudkicker

- hard to get a read on his motivations when he is fresh to MS's metagame. Sometimes he says filler-y/random agreeing posts, but I feel like that's just trying to fit in and act in a way how he thinks is expected of him on this site rather than anything scummy.

SCUMLORDS:

Sotty

- Actually feel like she's closer to null these days, but I have too many townreads and by PoE I think all the scum is in my null/scum section

goodmorning

- If Victor is town, I think it's quite likely that one of goodmorning/twoface are scum jumping in on the dogpile

TwoFace

- see above, probs not scum together tho

BlueBloodedToffee

- Upon reread is my top suspect is BBT. I noticed the same thing BlackVoid did but didn't have enough to post about it, which is why make the declaration that Rask is town, then later in the day start questioning someone else about their Rask townread. Seems like scum making up an arbitrary read early in the game (rather than really believing it as town) then later, just throwing out random filler-y questions as is scum's wont, without really recognising it doesn't make sense from a town perspective.

Might be some partner combos that are unlikely within my scumlords section, so sprinkle in the null/lurkers where appropriate to get the rest of the team.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: BBT

[Hoopla]

I think the Sotty/BBT competing wagons look quite delicious and I am fascinated to see how they will progress.

[Hoopla]

Hoopla, when you get a chance, explain why Michel is such a strong townread for you. I've also seen his posting be a voice of reason but as far as alignment is concerned, he's null to me. The only thing you mentioned was the PSA-style declaration which you said you've only seen in his towngames. Do you have an opinion of his later posting?

I think his diligence in analysing the early game once everyone else had moved on comes from a pro-town mindset. If he was scum, he could have quite easily faked reads or made up something about what was currently happening, but instead chose to focus on the area of the game he has been thinking about more. To me, that looks like town trying figure out alignments (although not in the way I'd personally go about it) and doesn't seem like BS.

[Hoopla]

I am a newbie at forum mafia, i am not a newbie at mafia. I am a newbie about normalcy and stuffy like that but i was actually curiousa bout the roles. Believe it or not, i passed a good 2 hours skimming trhought the most popular roles on mafiascum and how its different than on em. I dont have any alts

Have you picked out a good fakeclaim yet? Don't go with anything too fancy for a first try is my humble advice.

[Hoopla]

Okay. Another thing I wondered about your list: you mention me as being competent enough to fake things convincingly. What are you basing this off of?

In the game you linked of Michel's, he won a four-player endgame with players that were actually competently analyzing the game and was a fairly universal townread. That shows he's competent at playing scum. If you have "tinges of paranoia" about me, what makes you confident enough about Michel where you think he can't fake his level of play?

People capable of independent thought in mafia are usually capable of convincing deception. You've had a couple of unique observations in this game and I agree with callforjudgement in your open setup thread -- lots of good thought in there.

And don't fear -- the town bloc will be thoroughly reviewed for imposters in due time.

[Hoopla]

I feel like this game is grinding to a halt, but how can that be when there are two delicious wagons on offer with plenty of seats still available?

As far as I'm concerned, if you're not picking between BBT/Sotty at this stage and you're not pushing hard for an alternative, you're active lurking.

[Hoopla]

I guess I'm gonna lurk then.

did you forget who you were voting or something?

[Hoopla]

I shouldn't have said anything!

[Hoopla]

I agree with recent murmurings about Jaack. His under-the-radar, just-doing-enough-to-skirt-by play is the archetypal D1 scum blueprint. I'm also not mad about recent attention on goodmorning. Seems like we're spoilt for choice today!

[Hoopla]

With that said, it looks like BBT is play for today. Hopefully we can L-1 a wagon and get a claim to assess before getting too close to the deadline.

I agree with this. My biggest pet peeve in mafia is the amount of D1's that wait until the last 48 hours to compromise, leaving little time to analyse a claim, and often reducing the town to chaotic scrambling if that wagon dissipates.

Really, the most interesting/alignment relevant things that happen on D1 occur post-claim, so lets get a move on. Maria, BBT, goodmorning, Innocent and Cloudkicker are wasting their votes and future time to analyse a claim/wagon as far as I'm concerned.

[Hoopla]

Hi friends. How goes? I saw the player list and replaced in without reading anything else.

Welcome old friend, but your slot is on the ropes. There's no shame in phoning it in if you're scum and hanging out in the dead thread. I'll be there after N1 to come and reminisce about days gone by.

[Hoopla]

How are you at the point of calling out specific teams 90 minutes after replacing in?

[Hoopla]

How are your reads so bad? Your entire list made me cry.

Actually, I feel a bit better about Sotty after rereading the game recently - she doesn't seem like the type to use wifomy self-meta about her activity as scum like this:

Okay, now I am embarrassed.

Take this with a pitch of salt, this is my first full game back in a long time. I replaced into a game last month towards end game and before that my last full game was team mafia last year were I played terribly as scum in a nightless game. My biggest strength was knowing when to bus and making it look rational and even realistic. I'm not sure how site meta is now but I would bus a lot. I started to get try and get away from that after I became known for it. Biggest weakness I would say forcing myself to post. As town I feel much more relaxed, scum became a pressure for me and I would over think everything and it would stress me out so my posting would reduce as a result.

BlackVoid noticed that Sotty's activity was way higher in this game than her scum game, so it seems like it checks out, and it seems a little too on-the-nose in terms of deception for Sotty to just say her scum game X while blatantly doing Y. I expect more subtlety from her and I now view that as a townish appeal to meta.

Jack has probably graduated to my scumpool mostly from PoE and his surface-level posting. Like I said earlier, his posting is the picture of flying under the radar and there seems to be noticable groundswell circling him now, so I wouldn't be mad if a Jack flashwagon happens.

As for the rest of my reads... how dare you bad mouth them! I'm mostly curious about your Victor scumread. Can you explain that one?

[Hoopla]

UNVOTE:

Let me just unvote for now and let Grey post some more. I kinda get the feeling there's a trigger-happy lolhammer just around the corner.

[Hoopla]

Yeah, I think vigging IAI is a pretty horrible idea.

I'm going to have to finally disagree with a BlackVoid post. How can you read the garbage he's been posting the last two pages and not think vigging him is a good idea?

Is it too much to ask for proper content from IAI?

[Hoopla]

I think he is spot on with his suspicion of GreyICE and possibly Jaack.

He's just parroting the current talk in the last few pages, as both Jack and Grey are the flavour of moment right now. If he hasn't bothered to post anything meaningful to show he's up-to-date with the game, then his reads probably aren't reads at all -- they're just... words. Actually, they're irresponsible words since he's putting someone to L-1 without being invested in the game. You don't see that as irresponsible or even scummy?

Why exactly should we vig him when there's an expectation that he'll contribute more?

Until we see it, he gets to stay as the vig target. Maybe this will motivate him to do something.

[Hoopla]

Not impressed with GreyICE's posting at all. Don't like the Victor scumread or the call to vig IAI. Both seem like easy targets given Victor got pressure early on and IAI never posted.

Also, why are you willing to call Grey out for attacks on easy targets and yet think IAI's scumreads and his garbage L-1 vote are hunky-dory?

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla, I don't see GreyICE or Jaack as "easy targets." I'm reading them as scum. From a recent game that just completed (Biker Wars), I think GreyICE is loud, vocal, and capable. I don't think scum would want to bus him because he'd be the one in it for the long haul.

They are easy targets. They're the two people most widely spoken about as scum in the last five pages, which is the only time IAI has been posting anything resembling content.

When IAI has the same scumreads as me, I'm more inclined to believe IAI is town and "gets it" than that he's scum, and my entire view of the game is flawed. That I should chuck it out and start anew because a guy who was too busy to post during the first week of the game has now caught up and agreed with me.

This is just mindbogglingly weird compared to your other posts are usually good and thoughtful.

- If you think IAI has caught up, then where are his posts detailing any of his thoughts? All he's done is have a petty setup spec argument with Grey who he then happens to vote.

- If you think IAI has not caught up, then it's extremely anti-town/scummy to put someone to L-1 when you don't know what's going on in the game.

So, which is it?

[Hoopla]

I think the ease with which this BBT/Grey wagon has powered along with virtually no opposition is throwing me off. This has been compounded recently by IAI's L-1 vote, Cloud's willingness to hammer it, and everyone pretty much sitting on their hands mildly content with the proceedings. No Jack has sprung up despite interest in it. There have been vague rumblings about the BBT/Grey wagon from Maria and Rask, but nobody is going WAIT A MINUTE, HOLD ON A SECOND HERE.

So... I am confused. And I'd like to see what Grey says. And I'd like IAI to come in here and explain his reads and have a chat with me.

[Hoopla]

Nobody else finds it weird that sotty was the leading vote getter twice and both times votes shifted to bbt?

The Sotty wagon has stagnated and has been no chance of going through for at least 10+ pages -- I feel like that's pretty obvious. Jack has more chance of being lynched at this stage than Sotty despite having two votes less.

[Hoopla]

Actually, I'm going to vote for Jack while I wait for Grey to start talking some more.

VOTE: Jaack


...oh good, he's here!

[Hoopla]

Also I'd deeply love to chat with MichaelSableheart. Very much so.

Michel is a tricky one to sit down and have a chat with. If you roll some dice, he's usually interested, though.

[Hoopla]

Grey, you should start scumreading yourself and Jack. I think it might change BlackVoid's mind.

[Hoopla]

Hoopla sounds far too reasonable and responsible and this is bothering me for some reason.

Is this because I haven't told you you're a good kid recently?

[Hoopla]

Grey, I have a question to ask you too. But I want to wait until Twoface asks his question.

[Hoopla]

@hoopla: ah, the jokes are back again hmk

Lets be honest, was there any other appropriate reaction to your comment about me that essentially boiled down to

"too townie to be town"

(the rare, but charming companion piece to

"too scummy to be scum"

)?

[Hoopla]

This has been a good hustle by Grey so far. He's really doing his slot proud, but I'm still not sold on Victor scum, sooooo I'm just gonna chill on the Jack wagon for a while...

[Hoopla]

How many points have I won so far, IAI?

Just curious hoopla, why the unvote, esp when a claim request was made? Did your read change?

My unvote was to prevent any cheeky premature hammers, as we still hadn't squeezed much information out of Grey yet.

Once again read pick your power day 2. Good hustle by GI is NAI.

Reread BBT and you'll get your answer.

My read on the slot hasn't really changed, but Grey is providing good value IF he's town, so I'm okay with letting him live a bit longer and maybe nail a scumbag or two if he's town. I feel like this might be a controversial position, but I really don't think there's that much difference percentage-wise between most of the viable lynches to be scum (even the best players aren't that much better than random on D1, imo). As such, I factor in value to the town into my D1 choices, and Grey has value if he's town -- whereas we don't lose as much if we're wrong about Jack.

[Hoopla]

Can you post a list of your reads from town --> scum? Maybe even with scores if you're feeling friendly?

[Hoopla]

I'd rather lynch Jack, atm.

[Hoopla]

Alright, I think it's my turn to ask Grey a question. It's private though, so please nobody else read it:

Spoiler: secret question

What's your starsign?

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla, I've been thinking about this game during the downtime and am going back and forth on you. I'd love it if you can help me understand your recent play.

As far as I can tell, you are townreading Michel, and Sotty7, maybe me and Victor. You are scumreading GM, TwoFace, and Jaack. Sotty7 has been consistently pushed as a counterwagon to the BBT-slot by your scumreads. So, how are you saying that the BBT/GreyICE wagon is going through without resistance when all your scumreads are either on the Sotty7 counterwagon or said that they would join it?

You also said having time to assess a claim is good. But to get claims, you need to put someone at L-1 with intent to hammer. If you unvote because you are afraid of a hammer, you won't get claims so I found that counterproductive because you'd be delaying a claim from someone that the majority including you agreed was a good wagon.

I'm not afraid of a hammer. Like I said earlier, I think Grey has earnt his keep. The value he provides if he's town overrides the chance of that slot being scum. When I unvoted and moved onto Jack I sensed a real chance of a rapid wagon happening there, but maybe I misread the situation? Either way, I will compromise soon if nobody wants to lynch Jack and I'll get back on the Grey wagon.

[Hoopla]

Grey, if you value your own survival, you'd be voting Jack about here.

[Hoopla]

Jack? You're kidding right? He's pushing on scum and you want to lynch him? When sotty flips scum that's going to be bad for you hoops

The Sotty wagon has been on a one-way road to Nowheresville for

10

15 pages now. How many more pages of nobody voting Sotty do we need to see before you compromise?

[Hoopla]

Sorry, I don't value my own survival above a scum death.

Obviously I prefer not me to me, but given I've got until Thursday to rally a lynch on someone I think is scum AND I want to talk to Sableheart's replacement even more now, I'm perfectly content with this.

Classic Leo behaviour...

Grey, it's time to let go and help the town by supporting a viable counterwagon.

[Hoopla]

Although it does make me ask, why are you trying to pressure me before I've even gotten a chance to talk to Sableheart's replacement?

I've been extraordinarily clear that I want to clear up that slot because its communication, although town-sounding, was extremely lacking in insightful comments, and for someone who said he wanted to overexplain all of his actions his votes were explained pretty thinly. Now that he's replaced out, I'm even more interested.

Are you saying that you have him so firmly town that you're not even curious?

I'm curious, but not four days from a deadline. That slot is no chance of being lynched. Cut your losses and help the town by improving the chance of someone else being lynched. Of course, if you're scum, go ahead and do whatever you want...

[Hoopla]

Every time he gets to 4 votes, attention gets diverted elsewhere. That's a red flag if I've ever seen one so probably won't divert ever. I'm really thinking you're scum with him at this point. You're too good to not see this

There's just not that much support for a Sotty lynch any more, and that's why it has stalled where it is for so long. Towards the end of D1 you need to start lynching at the intersection of "good scum suspect" and "realistic lynch target". The longer you're stubborn, the more likely you'll be settling for just the latter. Right now, the town is deciding who to lynch while you're happy sitting on a nothing vote.

[Hoopla]

Why do you think Jack is town exactly?

[Hoopla]

Also, four days from deadline? Seriously? There's like mafia games where a day phase is four days long. You could organize a lynch in four hours.

No matter how good you think your reasons are on Victor and IAI, you don't have the cred to call the shots and rally the town. I'm throwing you an olive branch here; a chance of survival by getting a Jack wagon well and truly going, with an opportunity to improve your image and influence in the game tomorrow. He's your third suspect and it's D1 -- how much better do you

really

think the odds of Victor or IAI being scum over Jack are?

[Hoopla]

What's my fucking value to the town if you're not willing to listen to me? It's not like I claimed some fucking awesome power role or something (you have no idea what my role is), you're basing this entirely on the strength of my dayplay. So... how strong is my dayplay if you won't give me any goddamn credit.

Your thoughts have value IF you're town. If we had a full day tomorrow, I'm sure we could talk about anything. You could even interrogate Michel's slot, but now isn't the time. In saying all that, the spirited defenses of Jack put up by TwoFace and BlackVoid, along with your refusal to compromise makes me think that lynch isn't as viable as I thought anyhow and perhaps that window of opportunity has passed, so I'm jumping back on your wagon...

UNVOTE:
VOTE: GreyICE

L-1 again. Someone should declare intent soon...

[Hoopla]

Mmmm, okay.

I want you to remember something if you guys do lynch me. You're really bad at this game. I'm confirmed town, and I'm a much better player than you, so sheep my reads.

For such a good player, you're really bad at reading the game situation and playing accordingly. You're not in a position to force the town to go along with your top read.

And? If I get lynched I'm confirmed town. Trust me Rask, I'm a better player. Hoopla is trying to see how to play this. She wanted to threaten me into mislynching Jack. She can't, so she's decided to see if she can get my lynch off.

Your slot is a decent chance of being scum based on your predecessor's play. I don't know how you as play as scum or how to read you as scum, so as far as I'm concerned I wouldn't be surprised if you flip town, but in saying that, I wouldn't be surprised if anyone here flipped town. I'm realistic about my D1 abilities.

As for trying to get your lynch off -- besides that sounding like disturbing innuendo, if I wanted your lynch off, I wouldn't have unvoted you to begin with and given you a chance to survive.

[Hoopla]

I don't get talking to someone like this and then voting them to l-1 a bit later

It's called trying to further the game through compromise. Perhaps you and your crew sitting on the stale Sotty wagon should try it some time.

[Hoopla]

I don't see any wagon really going off besides Grey like I don't see anything starting at all

Does that not worry you even a little?

It does a little bit. If Grey is town, then I'd expect scum to be in the lurkers/people sitting on stale wagons content with the game state and not willing to put their neck on the line to further the game and put themselves in the limelight. Raskol, goodmorning, TwoFace spring to mind.

What other options do we have at this stage, though?

[Hoopla]

It's not like we have less than 24 hours or something we have 3 days that's plenty of time to come up with a lynch I think the problem is everyones reads are very spread out
I don't think the jaack wagon is going anywhere today so I['ll go on this one
VOTE: Victor

That's the thing. People always assume we have time and that others will come around to their way of thinking before the end of deadline, which prevents people from compromising.

^Good game-forwarding vote, though

[Hoopla]

I forgot to mention.

I will be V/LA from Nov 2-4.

so, I'll try and do a lot of posting before then.

[Hoopla]

aha, hoopla is trying to end the day fast so she can talk in scumchat before V/LA

I usually try and force compromises earlier than I have been in this game. You're lucky I've given everyone this much time to sit on their lazy votes!

[Hoopla]

I feel like when I'm not here nobody is really doing anything to compromise and just paying me lip service when I am here. So, some highlights recently; there have been good votes by BlackVoid to put Grey back at L-1, and by Maria to enable the possibility of the Victor wagon. We're at 2 and a half days still without a claim, so someone should declare intent on Grey or step up and get the Victor wagon going again quickly.

Hoopla... I hate. I've mislynched her, scumread her... she fucking sucks day 1. This is sadly consistent with her level of day 1 play. She hides behind it as scum, but I'm not willing to lynch her day 1 again just because her day 1 play is beyond bad.

Have you considered looking at this from another perspective, like that my D1 play may in fact be quite cool and good... and we just have different values? I like to move around my vote a lot, build wagons and then promote compromise early in the game because too often players won't relinquish ego and create stalemates that last until the eleventh hour and then suddenly any vote can be justified in a scramble. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the best/most alignment indicative stuff that happens on D1 happens post-claim, and you'll suddenly see the names in everyone's super solid

"ALRIGHT GUYS, THE SCUMTEAM IS X, Y AND EITHER Z OR J"

type posts change dramatically, and then again even more once we get flips.

You're under the delusion that you can solve the game D1 every game, whereas I value cohesion, compromise and securing an informative lynch that isn't just last minute scrambling. I think this is my best way to help the town instead of fooling myself I am nailing half the scumteam from spurious analysis. You are hyperbolic with the declaration of your reads whereas I value transparency about the strength of one's reads -- mine aren't strong at the moment, so I'm not going to pretend they are.

D1's are probably the main reason why I don't play much mafia any more, because reaching a compromise and organising a lynch on D1 is like pulling teeth, and it's laughable how many D1's follow this script. Arguing over inane shit all Day that gets thrown out the window after claims and flips isn't my modus operandi, and I'm confident the reason why you so frequently read me as scum when I'm town is largely due to playstyle differences. We haven't played together for years and I think I've become more radical in my beliefs (especially my D1 beliefs), and I also think your scummeta of me might be stale. I actually haven't been scum in two years and have no idea how I'd play it, so it beats me how you know my scumgame so well.

I don't know if this is a can of worms I want to open, and don't want to get into a big argument about this. This is just how I play, and hopefully you found something useful from this post either for this game or in the future. If you're town, I'd rather you spent your time doing a final reads post. Maybe try and pander to me and give me a top 2 or 3 in terms of sureness. I'll be more likely to follow your reads if you're honest about their strength and don't try and tell me the team is definitely X and five other players are defs town.

[Hoopla]

That's a whole lot of words and yet none of them helpful

A bit like your time-wasting vote on Sotty.

[Hoopla]

I have to relocate my mom tomorrow so will be fairly inactive. Doesn't seem to matter though cause town is content on mislynching.

You should pick between Grey or Victor.

[Hoopla]

You should pick between Grey or Victor.

Don't want me to lynch your buddy? Gotcha

Unless your role is a Septuple-Voter triggered by Time Wasting Sass and Delusions of Grandeur then that ain't happening...

[Hoopla]

No sorry, this is fucking bullshit. You admit quite freely that your day 1 play is absolute crap, and you have yet to have anything resembling a compelling scumread day 1.

As for reading you as scum, it's the same way I did in the PYP game. You play with a cold logic. It is hard for me to read as town, but when the logical thoughts behind your posts don't add up then you're scum. It's as simple as that. At the moment, I think you read me as town, are aware that your reads are actually garbage, and are selling yourself that the cohesion is worth sacrificing a townie you might be wrong about. Am I scumreading that? Well you're knowingly voting someone you have a town read on. Sorry if it leaves me conflicted.

I mean, you're welcome to dine out on the success of catching me as scum five years ago, but lets be honest, you don't have a particularly good strike rate when it comes to reading me. That's standard operating procedure for people like you; focus on (and talk up constantly) the times you were right, ignore the times it went wrong (maybe throw in some blame-the-victimy

"well you shouldn't have acted so scummy"

post-game rhetoric) and you come to the conclusion you're shitting reads of gold. You literally can't fathom your reads are in reality similarly as weak as mine. And you literally can't fathom that someone can play in a protown way other than your own.

I'm sad to say I think you believe this. Whether or not that's a town tell... eh, we both know your post is alignment neutral.

I feel like you rarely consider my posts from a town perspective. You're always trying to work me out through the lens of scum motivation. The problem with this is you'll always find something because we're so different. How do you think I play as town? Actually, why did you call me town when you first joined the game, when I had done even less at that stage? That doesn't make sense to me.

Anyway, I agree with you that my post here is alignment neutral -- I'm not going to pretend I couldn't fake that as scum. But I also don't have a town read on you like you claim. I think your thoughts have value IF you're town, but like I said, I don't know how to read you these days and I'm happy to lynch you in lieu of other good options. These sorts of situations are exactly why I like to push people into compromising earlier than usual. So we have time to adjust now that things are actually happening.

[Hoopla]

So you're confirming you're partners but I don't have the support. Sadly you're right but thanks for confirming I was right.

Oh rats, trapped again. I really need to work on this being scum thing.

[Hoopla]

I really need to work on this reading wall posts thing.

What do you think about Grey's claim?

[Hoopla]

Welcome to the game Creature.

[Hoopla]

hoopla why are you giving long playstyle lectures instead of campaigning for someone to be the last vote on the grey wagon? Like, isn't your whole point that wagoning on D1 is an extra pain in the ass? I don't think you have #7 locked down at this point. I guess maybe BV?

Admittedly selfish reasons. Hopefully I will get through to Grey and help him read me as town in future (if he is indeed town). I didn't/don't expect anyone else to read that/do anything with that post.

Anyhow, a VT claim makes me a pause a little bit and if we had more time I'd look into Grey's past to see what his claiming history is like. Traditionally in mini normals, VT claims are more likely to be true, as scum tend to fakeclaim PR's, but this is a pretty good/experienced playerlist, so it's also possible he believes this could be a decent spot to fakeclaim VT as scum.

I'm not as confident as I was before, but since I'll be away for most of the Day, I'm not going to throw caution to the wind and jump on the Victor wagon that may or may not go through (and that may or may not yield a more convincing claim that I can't switch back from). So, I'm happy to end the Day here if someone wants to step up to the plate and hammer Grey.

[Hoopla]

Hi friends. I've returned from holidays. Haven't read anything yet from D2. Will be posting soonish!!!

[Hoopla]

First of all, kudos to GreyICE for replacing into a probably doomed slot and putting a ton of effort into providing analysis for the town -- I think if I were around late in the day that effortposting might have been enough to sway me and I'll review your reads later. Some anti-kudos for the predictable name calling and blame-the-other-guy spazzing out, but whatevs.

Personally, I find the mason claim highly likely to be true. I'm very curious about those who claim scum do this all the time, because I rarely see it... at least not in mini normals where balance can be judged upon massclaim. Two mason fakeclaims will stick out like a sore thumb in a sea of PR claims if they are indeed fake. The most likely situation is we have two masons and one other good PR or two masons and two weak to middling roles. There's pretty much never two masons in a town with three or four other PR's, so we can easily tell later in the game if the mason claim is fake. So, everyone should just drop it until massclaim occurs... which we'll be doing the Day before mylo/lylo.

Anyway, while I'm catching up, I see there is a goodmorning wagon and how could I not take that opportunity? I still think there was a scum involved in that nonsensical argument that Victor/me/goodmorning/TwoFace had yesterday. She almost certainly isn't a mason too which is bonus points in my eyes for avoiding accidentally wagoning the other mason.

VOTE: goodmorning

...more to come.

[Hoopla]

The vote on IAI is the same sort of lazy vote parking as she did with me.

I agree with this also. When the two major wagons of yesterday have turned out to be town (assuming the mason claim is true), I find her vote-parking yesterday when no scum was under pressure quite suspicious. Scum tend to stick with votes more often when their position (and their buddies) are secure, as there's little motivation to alter the game-state, put yourself in the limelight and take risks moving attention elsewhere. Her IAI vote today is an extension of this pattern as it's another relatively safe vote that can't really be challenged.

[Hoopla]

Hoopla who else do u suspect? Thoughts on Sotty?

I'm not particularly suspicious of Sotty anymore. I found the meta analysis of her being more active as town and quiet as scum convincing. I wouldn't be super surprised if she's scum, but there's at least three others I'd lynch before her.

I think Maria and Rask are probably town. I think Cloudkicker is loltown. I feel like my Michel town read has expired since it's literally 1000 posts later and I don't have any real read on Creature yet.

My scumteam are in IAI, goodmorning, Jack. Maybe someone like Sotty/BV as a wildcard. I'm still kinda in catchup mode, but that's where I'm at right now.

[Hoopla]

A. We don't have 2, we have 1. Scum doesn't have to all FC together.
B. Historically, # of roles in Normals has been decreasing. We could very well have few enough PRs that a couple Masons wouldn't look that weird. And Scum has a vague idea how night-strong Town is - their # and roles have to balance.

If Victor hasn't been NK'ed by the Day before LYLO, we make Victor claim his partner. We then massclaim as town. We either catch Victor as he claims no partner, or he ties himself to a buddy and we catch him AND his partner by setup speculation.

Historically, there has only been one Mini Normal out of hundreds where I've collected data, that the town has had 2 PR's. Typically the town gets 3-4 PR's (depending on what the scum gets). As such, it should be obvious in most massclaim situations if the mason claims are fake or not. Two mason fakeclaims + 3-4 other PR claims... yeah, the mason claims will be bogus. One or two other PR's? The mason claims are highly likely to be true.

Most of the time, the mason claim is true, and Victor will soak up the NK in one of the coming nights (I am a little surprised scum didn't try and kill him tonight), but regardless, if it is fake he has painted himself into a corner and will be caught. There's no point going after him today when there's decent odds the claim might be true. We find out either way after massclaim.

[Hoopla]

Sadly it's something any scum can say.

I'm laying down the blueprint for what town should do with our mason claim and massclaim in general.

It may be something anyone can say, but I am sad that I actually have to say it, because it's clearly the optimal way of dealing with things.

[Hoopla]

Creature, why did you say this:

Still think GM is town.

When the previous mention of goodmorning was here:

Raskolnikov

goodmorning
Hoopla

Jaack
Creature
BlackVoid
VictorDeAngelo
CloudKicker
I Am Innocent

Sotty7
MariaR

How exactly did she go from a suspect to "still think she's town"... when you never townread her to begin with?

[Hoopla]

Did you look her posts between these two posts?

"Still think gm is town" implies you thought she was town to begin with, which you didn't.

[Hoopla]

What happened between 1230-1290 that made you think she's town?

[Hoopla]

Her posts.

Hell, idk how to explain it, I am getting a different vibe from her.

That sounds like nonsense to me and you're just saying things for the sake of saying things. Same with your random scumreading then townreading Maria.

[Hoopla]

Is anyone here familiar with Creature and how he plays? Does he just say things without reason and then change his mind without reason?

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla RE: spec: There are probably 3 Scum, not 2, so who's to say what Scum might/might not be willing to do? Also, 3 Town PR +2 Mason wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility in most folks' opinions.

I, too, am a data collector. I'm not going after Victor today, as you may have noticed.

But all this theory is hiding the fact that you're not actually doing anything!

I was just about to dump some data, but then I realised this might influence scum's fakeclaim actions and there's a chance we can catch multiple scum if I hold onto that info until we massclaim. Regardless, it's highly likely we can discern the truth of the mason claims upon massclaim.

As for my activity, I've been back for less than 24 hours. I'm slowly easing myself back into the game my friend, don't you worry!

hoopla, you realize that if what you're implying about creature is true, i'm much more likely to be town? i don't know that that's something you ought to have picked up on given that you're voting me.

I'm still trying to figure out how meaningful Creature's wafer thin reads are and if it's actually suspicious. The only good point in your favour is how stubbornly you're trying to keep Victor as a suspect... I don't see scum take that approach to mason claims very often. Buuuuut, I'm still keeping my vote here.

[Hoopla]

I find your reads odd and largely opposite to mine. I don't remember if you talked about it more, but what was your logic for a Creature town read?

[Hoopla]

Can I just assume scum wouldn't bother putting in the time to do that?
Was leaning town on you for gm's shade but wow.

I don't understand the point of IAI doing all of that, and what the conclusions of all that work is, but I agree it's townish for him going out of the way and doing it.

I'm still not sold on the Sotty wagon and would rather be lynching gm.

[Hoopla]

Hey goodmorning, how are you feeling about the L-1 Sotty wagon?

Most of the votes on Sotty are nrg...

(I don't know what nrg means... not really good?)

[Hoopla]

Eh, I'm not super sold on the Sotty claim (I'd probably believe a VT claim from her 100% of the time here, and would expect her to claim something like this as scum), but the good thing about having two PR's claimed, is scum can't really afford to not NK them if they're town, which will aid us in PoE calculations as we may not have to test either of those claims.

[Hoopla]

Sorry for my inactivity recently everyone. Just been dealing with some life stuff.

ANYWAY, I see a wagon has finally crystallised on Jack recently. Bonus points for some good town reads being on it. Soooo, I'm going to switch...

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Jack

[Hoopla]

^two delicious townies

you disagree?

[Hoopla]

I also think that hoopla voting alone on gm (who isnt getting lynched) isnt a good play as scum when youre being heavily fosed

mmm, there's no point voting goodmorning when everyone has bailed from that wagon!

[Hoopla]

First of all, I just want to apologise to the town for my passive, and lets be honest, rubbish play this phase. I fell behind, found myself completely out of touch and simply couldn't muster the fire to counter the growing feeling of apathy. Increasingly, I feel like perhaps mafia isn't the game for me any more, as I'm finding most of the things people say to be a high consistency of NAI noise and there's just too much of it to wade through... I just don't know what is scummy these days in today's meta. This is a pattern that has been occurring more regularly in the last couple of years, and it's simply not fair on the other players in the game. So again, apologies for my bad play.

Oh yeah, hoop when you get here you should claim.

I'm a friendly lil VT.

[Hoopla]

That sounded sincere.

@Hoopla, I'm not going to vote Jaack over you. He's been a townread from D1. Will you help me lynch any of my scumreads?

I still think Rask and Maria are good people of the town. So, of all your reads I'd be most inclined to lynch Sotty, but that would probably just be based on the claim alone which sounds fishy to me. I really think she claims a largely unprovable decent value PR there 90% of the time as scum and almost never VT. She obviously always claims Tracker as town Tracker, but now that I think about it, given we probably have two mason claims, there's likely only one or two other town PR slots, but there's three scum slots remaining, and since she claims something like this as scum almost always, it's actually more likely this claim comes from scum just from the number of scum left vs. number of PR's left.

I also think Jack is a decent chance of being scum, so I probably wouldn't switch unless something with a real shot of going through occurred.

[Hoopla]

I also think Jack is a decent chance of being scum

Why do you think this?

Pseudo-PoE I guess, as I just haven't seen much from him that makes me go, "oh ok, probs town", whereas I have with a handful of others. I know it's too late in the game to not really have any concrete scumreads, but realistically, I feel like many of my scumreads aren't particularly accurate, so voting with people I think are town has been a key factor in my votes.

[Hoopla]

Hoopla who are your top scumreads right now

Others I'd be willing to vote today would be goodmorning, IAI and now also Sotty if it gets off the ground.

I don't know if a team within those four reads looks viable, as the game is still a bit too big for me to get into PoE mode, but yeah.

[Hoopla]

voting with people I think are town has been a key factor in my votes.

Who are your strongest townreads that you are trying to vote with and who are weaker townreads?

Maria and Rask are those I'm voting with, although you're probably my strongest town read at the moment, so like I said, I'd probably vote with you on a Sotty wagon if it started up.

Victor is likely town.

I think Cloudkicker is loltown, although I expect I will never know for sure either way with him as I simply don't understand how he thinks. With others there is always the promise of them revealing themselves later in the game, but Cloudkicker less so.

[Hoopla]

The scum on this wagon are Creature and BV

Why exactly?

[Hoopla]

In an ideal world I'd actually lynch either GM or cloud and let sotty and jaack sort itself out in massclaim, but neither seems viable.

Usually I agree with this line of approach with regards to sorting claims out, but there is a risk of a Sotty-scum situation where a Mason is NK'ed tonight, then Sotty fakeclaims a guilty tomorrow. If you follow it and are wrong it leads the game to a 2:3 lylo with no info D3 and D4 as people were automatically following a claim/counterclaim scenario. That endgame would be highly favourable for scum imo, particularly when the town's reads have been quite polarised.

[Hoopla]

Scum don't wanna draw attention on themselves but they don't mind putting it in hammer range

I feel like BlackVoid has been very involved and putting himself in the limelight in critical situations, like around claim time and late wagon votes. To me he is drawing a lot of attention to himself. Also, him reaching out to me and trying to get me back in the game and providing content felt town motivated when he easily could have lurked and let me be lynched. But no, he is drawing attention to himself and trying to rally alternate wagons now when an easy mislynch in me is available.

I don't agree with all his reads, but I think this would be a particularly creative variety of deception if he is scum.

[Hoopla]

What in your opinion are the major flaws of my 817?

The major flaw of that post is it's too long and you have wildly opposite reads to me, so I find it hard to trust massively constructed cases that are almost certainly tainted with all sorts of biases.

[Hoopla]

Can I get quotes cause I have no idea what game you're reading

You're critical of BlackVoid putting the Grey wagon within lynch range on D1 whilst ignoring he was on the wagon to begin with, unvoted him and was highly active at a very unstable period of the game when Grey was trying to save himself, considered options elsewhere, and then

revoted

Grey again. His play was absolutely in the limelight and looked like he was trying to figure out what was going on and what to do.

Today, he's reached out to me in my eleventh hour and is trying to rally a lynch elsewhere. Again, what's the point of doing that when I'm an easy mislynch up for grabs.

He's usually active and having his voice heard in critical stages of the game like this, which I think is a town mindset, as scum will often sit back and evaluate their options and won't often flip-flop and try to move the wave of momentum elsewhere (especially when it's moving it away from a townie, like he has with Grey and now me). It's risky and creative as scum to not sit back and accept mislynches when they fall into your lap, because you won't always get townread for it (exhibit A: your view of BV now) and risks opening the door to a chaotic scramble where scum could be lynched instead.

[Hoopla]

why would mafia tracker exist vs masons

For the unpredictable lol-modwifom.

Not a very likely reason, but some mods do weird design things like that to keep towns on their toes. More likely is a Mafia Role Cop which can provide "went nowhere" results on VT's safely, and also makes more sense in a Mason setup.

[Hoopla]

I think the night kill was picked very well by the scum.

easy now, nobody likes a bragger

[Hoopla]

You're lowish hanging fruit I'd say why wouldn't he try and get a vote on another town going this can play out for any scum and it's very like

*Scum switches wagon to another player and lynches it or gets it to claim and it flips town*
Scum: oh well guess I was wrong! *goes back on first wagon*

Personally I just don't see scum being the proactive playmakers trying to change the way the wind is blowing when it has already settled on town. I see this sort of play more often from town, and I'm not putting it past BV to be able to do it as scum, I just think it's less likely.

Usually the scum template at critical junctures like those are more along the lines of lurking, sitting at the base of wagons (or votes going nowhere), not getting super involved in trying to upset the applecart and just letting townies make the scummy looking L-1 votes and hammers, and then attacking them tomorrow.

[Hoopla]

except the point, as scum, is not to get caught...

Well yes, but the point is also to get town lynched.

There is risk involved in not accepting town lynches when then materialise, as you often don't get townread for moving the votes elsewhere, and just increase personal risk (and on your partners) for no reason. You have to be reasonably sure you'll look good from putting yourself in the spotlight in order to do it. Otherwise it's easier to sit back and accept the sacrificial lamb the town has offered up for you.

[Hoopla]

What changed between these two posts? It seemed like you wanted to leave Sotty7 for later but now you are more in the camp of lynching her today being a good idea.

Realising that combinatorally (surely that's a word), there are probably more universes where she does this as scum than as a town Tracker. Also, the worst-case scenario where a Mason-NK, Sotty guilty claim tomorrow is alarming.

[Hoopla]

Right now the realistic lynches are probably
Sotty, hoopla, gm, and it looks like me and maybe you.

I think I'd need your support to lynch gm though. If not then it's sotty or hoop.

I don't think you're a realistic lynch today?

Anyway...

do de do doo

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Sotty

Will switch back to Jack, or to goodmorning/IAI if need be.

[Hoopla]

So what changed between these posts?

I had a similar conversation just recently...

I still think Rask and Maria are good people of the town. So, of all your reads I'd be most inclined to lynch Sotty, but that would probably just be based on the claim alone which sounds fishy to me. I really think she claims a largely unprovable decent value PR there 90% of the time as scum and almost never VT. She obviously always claims Tracker as town Tracker, but now that I think about it, given we probably have two mason claims, there's likely only one or two other town PR slots, but there's three scum slots remaining, and since she claims something like this as scum almost always, it's actually more likely this claim comes from scum just from the number of scum left vs. number of PR's left.

[Hoopla]

mmm, so someone that has been thinking about association tells and pairing; sotty and jack don't make sense as partners, right?

[Hoopla]

No they don't. What about it?

i felt weird following jack onto this wagon, but if sotty is scum, he's probably town...

...so all's well that ends well

[Hoopla]

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Hoopla]

The Hoopla Reposting Service hard at work

Hoopla who are your top scumreads right now

Others I'd be willing to vote today would be goodmorning, IAI and now also Sotty if it gets off the ground.

I don't know if a team within those four reads looks viable, as the game is still a bit too big for me to get into PoE mode, but yeah.

voting with people I think are town has been a key factor in my votes.

Who are your strongest townreads that you are trying to vote with and who are weaker townreads?

Maria and Rask are those I'm voting with, although you're probably my strongest town read at the moment, so like I said, I'd probably vote with you on a Sotty wagon if it started up.

Victor is likely town.

I think Cloudkicker is loltown, although I expect I will never know for sure either way with him as I simply don't understand how he thinks. With others there is always the promise of them revealing themselves later in the game, but Cloudkicker less so.

The only player I didn't mention for town or scum reads was Creature, so lets slap him in the middle.

[Hoopla]

Why are there so many people against the of lynching a PR claim just because it's a PR claim? How exactly do you plan to lynch scum if you're afraid of lynching a PR? That's what scum will almost always claim in situations like these.

Besides, it's highly unlikely a Tracker is going to generate any useful info now if she is indeed truthful.

[Hoopla]

Basically for setup spec reasons. If sotty is scum there probably is another pr in that place as masons aren't enough, and they'd likely CC then later.

Yeah, there will be one or two other PR's with the masons. But we sort of self-select ourselves into just lynching a VT if we assume scum always claims PR in that spot and we're unwilling to lynch a PR claim. Don't you find it convincing that there are (probably) 3/13 slots she could roll scum and always claim something like this vs. 1-2/13 slots she could roll the remaining town PR(s) and claim this?

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla: So when I said "let's lynch Victor, he's Scum" and he said "I'm a Mason," and everyone said, "oh, we shouldn't lynch him then," everyone was wrong?

Nobody's saying we shouldn't lynch PRs ever. They're saying we shouldn't lynch PRs today.

The difference is Masons are a provable role by linking them with a partner (which we should be doing tomorrow), and can be assessed very accurately from a setup spec perspective. A Tracker claim is never really provable, could be scum aligned or a Mafia Role Cop and is just much harder to evaluate from setup spec as it's a weak-ish investigation role that's existence could go either way if the setup is something like Mason/Mason/Doc or Mason/Mason/Doc/Tracker.

[Hoopla]

Hello friends!

Well, that's a great flip for us. I feel like the Sotty flip pretty much ensures BlackVoid is town, to the point that any suspicion of him borders on conspiracy theory and I'd be willing to put the game on the line on him being town. Given Jack also looks quite now from that flip, I just don't see BlackVoid taking the line of derailing a town-town wagon battle between Jack/myself and redirecting it onto scum. There were plenty of ways to look good from your positions with regards to mine/Jack's wagon battle, but helping derail it onto scum well you have two mislynches available is some hardcore turbo-bussing that unnecessarily opens the game up for town.

You don't see it every game, but this could very well be the fabled all-town powerwagon that nailed Sotty. The only question mark I have is Raskolnikov, but at this stage I'd rather lynch off the wagon, as I don't think scum double-bussed Sotty and think there's 1-2 scum off the wagon.

Maria's hard defenses of Sotty are a creative stance to take as scum and I'm not sure how adept and intune she is with current meta to make this play (it seems like nobody is too suspicious of her atm), and I'm inclined to believe she's the type that would probably find an opening to bus when the writing was on the wall for Sotty.

goodmorning working furiously to start counterwagons while the Sotty wagon is building (and largely ignoring it and not talking about it until asked) seems suspicious on the surface, and I hesitate to use this line of logic, but it's almost too obvious and I'd her to be more conscious of her reactions during that period of time. And if I'm scum and I'm seeing Sotty going down, I'm definitely not going to play the way goodmorning did - it just looks really fishy pushing unsupported counterwagons while the rest of the town lynches scum. I don't know, I might have to revisit that one later, but that's my initial impression.

Today I'm probably going to lynch between Creature and Cloudkicker. I want to do more of a reread before I vote, so more to come soon. This post gave me the heebie-jeebies though, and makes Cloud my top suspect atm:

And you sotty, i dont want to be a dick to you but you should really fucking step up your game if ur real, like now

"goddamn it Sotty, we really can't afford you to get lynched right now, step up your game so I don't have to suspect your claim more any more"

[Hoopla]

Now I think about it, IAI kill suggests against maria-gm, as both are likely too lazy to masonhunt and IAI reads-only weren't threatening to that team.

However cloud obviously noticed the slip as he pointed it out, and hoopla is a smart cookie anyways.

I didn't notice/remember that slip. Although I still don't really understand why they are considered a mason/scum slip? Can't he just have been preparing to talk about TwoFace's reads in the thread?

[Hoopla]

Hello friends!

Well, that's a great flip for us.

ewwww

why do people have a phobia of acknowledging a scumflip? it isn't 2008 any more.

[Hoopla]

Hello fellow townies! Sure is great we got that scum lynched yesterday huh?

Indeed it was! I'm glad you agree old pal.

[Hoopla]

Alright, back online now.

I'm on the fence about whether massclaim will be beneficial today. If we have a protective role or a Watcher, then it's much better if we keep that hidden until tomorrow, in my opinion. In all the 3:10 games since Mini 1105, setups with masons have had a protective role or Watcher 43% of the time, so we are incurring risk by outing such a role. I'm not going to pontificate too deeply about what I expect from scum in a massclaim situation, as there might be some situations where I can pseudo-clear a townie or a scumbag implicates themself.

We absolutely need to massclaim before mylo/lylo, but since we lynched scum yesterday, I think there might be more value in waiting until tomorrow. Preventing a kill tonight forces scum to try and find the source the following night or else risking giving the town an extra mislynch.

[Hoopla]

Upon a reread I found myself continually gravitating to conspiracy theories with regards to some of my strong town reads. I know BlackVoid and Raskol have been the key players entertaining associations, so I want them to tell me why Jack-scum doesn't make sense now? He was very influential in getting the successful Sotty wagon going yesterday, after vote-parking on her most of D1. But was there anything else specifically?

Looking back, I don't think Sotty was all that scummy, and I find it strange her lynch was so heavily talked about even when other stuff was happening. It seems like the whispers for Sotty were artificially inflated with scum help and I think there may have been some heavy bussing of her throughout D1 keeping her in the limelight more than her play warranted.

Raskol and Sotty had some colourful dialogue on D1 and on first glance that didn't look like scumtheatre, but Rask more than once uses his influence as a widely town viewed player to start linking players to Sotty. A couple of examples:

Don't feel like hoopla is pressuring sotty at all despite the vote.

I have a new conspiracy theory that involves BBT and sotty distancing while voting other people.

For BBT the maria scumread is for being useless/idling and relative to the sotty read you should feel the latter is stronger, as it's sotty pushing BBT for what bbt says is a very shallow way.
Sotty has what sounds like a strong bbt read too but wants to lynch twoface for something that sounds a lot weaker and kind of lame. Earlier pushing of each other is reasonable to assume wouldn't go that far, given weak reasonings given at that point. Sotty asking me if his bbt meta was outdated possibly expected me to say it was.

~~

Idk, maybe I'm getting sucked into the allure of Sotty's scumplay and am giving her too much credit for being able to orchestrate how the town will perceive her interactions with her partners. Certainly a large part of what makes distancing look convincing is that it both scumbags are playing their part, not just Sotty -- and Jack and Rask have both told convincing stories with regards to Sotty if one of them is indeed scum. I think I just find it weird that so many people were so confident in sitting on Sotty votes for ages on D1 (TwoFace, Jack, Rask) and with good conviction. It seems suspicious that all these townies were on the same wavelength and nailed her so early in the game. I want to assume it's too coincidental and one is scum who knows the truth.

Weirdly, I didn't rediscover any paranoia for BlackVoid and am starting to not be repelled by his reads so much any more.

Well, this post went off tangent in a billion directions and I don't know where to go with it now or if it's even worthy of reading, so I'll just end it here still confused and kind of hungry.

[Hoopla]

^Having said all that, it really does seem like Cloud is the obvious choice today. I think I'm just scared the game is PoE'ing too easy and somewhere along the line my eliminations must be wrong, and the obvious candidate today is wrong. Damn my stupid brain.

[Hoopla]

I don't know maria well enough to know if she would intentionally subvert site meta like that, in our last game she seemed pretty bus happy.

Thinking about Maria more: I think she shoots from the hip a lot and doesn't layout and prepare her stances as much as analytical players, and I consider subverting site meta and hard-defending a buddy to be a conscious, planned decision. You don't just hard-defend a buddy instinctively... I think.

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla, as far as MariaR is concerned, here's what we do know for sure:

On D1, Sotty7 and BBT/GreyICE were competing wagons for a pretty long time. MariaR never took a stand on them. ISO the mod from around here and keep scrolling down until 825. The Sotty7 wagon was always present, never with less than three votes. Then keep reading MariaR's posts from 825 (pages 34 and 35). MariaR says she'd lynch Victor, Jaack, or me. Then she throws a lot of black smoke around the Grey wagon (see 850). TwoFace tells her that Sotty7 was the counterwagon and that it stalled. She ignores him completely. Then says that the Jaack wagon is not going anywhere and jumps onto Victor. She hated the GreyICE wagon but was ignoring Sotty7 for whatever reason.

As far as hard-defending a partner is concerned, when someone is calling the team, the instinctive response is to attack that person because bussing won't get you any cred. So, when I started D2 saying that Sotty7 and MariaR were scum together, she reacted by pushing me.

Actually pretty good points re: her play around the end of D1. I think I must have been skimming over her posts then as I'd filed her away as town.

As for the second point, I still don't think hard-defending is the expected, instinctive play from Maria. They killed off Sotty's biggest challenger N1 and then still had to deal with you and others coming after Sotty. Seeing all this heat on Sotty would influence a lot of scum to bus, I think, or at least start "thinking" about that slot and chiming in for fear of being linked. Why hard-defend and link yourself super obviously? Isn't it more likely she's town and just has a lot of zany reads that she

really

believes, but is just wrong?

[Hoopla]

It's that he's the "obvious lynch candidate" to you, but it's not clear if that's a function of him being the most likely lynch or if you independently think it's the best choice. You've mentioned him the least compared to even your theories and paranoia, so I want to know more about how you came to him as your most obvious choice.

It's both really.

I think his interactions with Sotty yesterday are suspicious as he claims suspicion for her yet still wants to defend her based on the PR claim, which is an easy way for scum to say they were all for it, but also giving himself out to vote elsewhere. I think this is suspicious given how willing he's been to hammer and get claims throughout the game, yet has found a way to dodge the Sotty wagon.

It may just be the EM playstyle belief regarding PR claims, but he makes sense from a PoE perspective where everyone else except Creature has a better reasons for being town based on their interactions with Sotty. Really, that's the most important thing that's happened in the game, so I'm weighting my opinions more based on how well they work with Sotty now. And put simply, the most universally agreed townreads and the masons were largely responsible for the Sotty wagon. The only blind spot is you or I guess Jack, but it regardless, it's difficult to see both of you as scum, so

at best

, I think there's only one scum on Sotty's wagon and probably none on it, although I have privileged information in knowing I'm town, and as such, can make sweeping conclusions about the wagon much easier as I know I'm still being considered in other's PoE's.

I'm still going over who I want to lynch. I probably won't entertain my conspiracy theories today about you or Jack, but I kept having them and thought they were worth mentioning so I did. I think the game makes more sense when you consider it from a perspective that Sotty was always being pushed as scum, far more than her play warranted. But really, I think this sort of thing just happens to me when the game narrows down really quickly to a small pool of players. It just seems too easy. I am also warming to BlackVoid's suspicion of Maria, I'm not ruling goodmorning out and I haven't dedicated enough time to figuring out Creature yet either.

Everyone seems to make up their mind much quicker later in the game which is funny, because I feel like I spend most D1's ready to lynch while nobody else does. Now you all get to experience my to-ing and fro-ing.

[Hoopla]

BlackVoid, what do you think about my thinking that massclaim may be more beneficial tomorrow rather than today? I think the value of there potentially being a Watcher or protective role far exceeds any gains we get from massclaiming today. Really, the only thing we gain is potential improvements for PoE calculations and locking scum into fakeclaims earlier than usual. But we get those improvements in PoE tomorrow, and the scummiest player(s) will still have to claim the traditional way upon being wagoned.

[Hoopla]

Rereading the end of yesterday, I actually find Creature's actions (and ultimately his non-actions) quite suspicious. He spends a lot of time aimlessly waffling with Maria while others try to determine the lynchpool and what is viable. Then, as Sotty collects a couple of votes and her wagon starts to build he neglects to mention it, and then simply isn't online at all for the rest of the Sotty lynch.

At least when Sotty's wagon was happening, goodmorning was doing her usual thing of pushing unrealistic wagons by herself and Cloud was, well... here, and talking about Sotty while she was being wagoned, even if a lot of it looked incriminating.

It's also funny watching Creature try to paint goodmorning and Cloud as suspicious for their wagon positions while also being in the same boat as them:

Votecount 2.Final

Raskolnikov (1)

CloudKicker ,

Hoopla (1)

Creature ,

Jaack (2)

Sotty7 , MariaR ,

I Am Innocent (1)

goodmorning ,

Cloudkicker and goodmorning look bad there.

[Hoopla]

Raskol, I've seen you weighing up the validity of a variety of different scumteams today, but you've not mentioned Creature at all, which I don't get. What did he do that was town enough to exclude him from your PoE?

[Hoopla]

Hey Hoopla I couldn't move my vote from Hoopla because it was night.

Hey Creature, you cheeky lil scumbag, you were online and posting while Sotty's wagon was four votes deep without saying shit about it. No sleeping excuses for you, bucko.

[Hoopla]

I'm still not ready for a lynch yet (or even a claim) when we haven't even decided if we're massclaiming. I know we've all got the taste for blood, but everyone calm your tits and slow it down.

[Hoopla]

This is the creature I know, and barring GM he's been pretty much the same as me as far as game approach.

And "Waffling with maria", despite how it sounds, makes a lot of sense from anyone whose played with maria more than once.

Since you seem to be a Creature expert and are clearing him for, well... I still don't get why after reading this post, how exactly does his scumplay differ from this?

[Hoopla]

That seems like pretty flaky reasoning to me, or at least nowhere near strong enough to discount him from teams. If you're going to be looking at teams at this stage, at least do it properly.

[Hoopla]

It's the mirroring tell.

I don't know what that is.

[Hoopla]

If you're reaching the same conclusions as me, but completely independently and often without even knowing, you're thinking along the same lines.

His style is low information by default, but what is there I haven't seen anything malicious in.

A lot of the players are sharing pretty similar views as you, me included, subbing in me as town and Creature as possible scum. Where are my town points for being one away like Creature is?

Also, if this tell is so potent to the point of completely clearing Creature, the antithesis of this is someone with polar opposite views of yours must be exceptionally scum, so why isn't Maria your top suspect?

[Hoopla]

I think this game is best solved through POE just because I have strong townreads but not very strong scumreads. I'm not doubting Arona and Jaack. I went over Sotty7's ISO again to look at how she treated GM and Hoopla. I just have a couple of questions before I can set them aside as town and continue POE'ing further.

Yes, I think PoE is one of the best ways to catch scum, but it irks me to no end when people make relatively arbitrary eliminations like Rask appears to be doing. It just takes one wrong elimination for the whole house of cards to fall down.

@Hoopla, how good would you generally say you are at orchestrating interactions with your scumbuddies? Looking at your previous games, you've seen and been scum with Sotty7 before. Any firsthand insights on how she plays scum and treats her partners?

Sotty7's interactions look so much like she's buddying a townie who's mildly suspicious of her on and off. There's just a nagging voice at the back of my head wondering if Hoopla and Sotty7 are actually good enough to pull off something like this. But I still think if this was orchestrated, it would go both ways with Sotty7 trying to look good from a Hoopla scumflip, but it's been a very one-way affair which is why I think Hoopla is town.

I don't know. I haven't been scum in... literally years as I don't play much these days, so I don't even know how I'd approach it any more. We both used to be considered to have strong scum games (actually I think people still see Sotty as a very strong scum player). My biggest strength was my ability to boss games around as a town leader/key voice in the game and orchestrate things in a direction I wanted the game to go, whereas I think Sotty's strengths were more along the lines of very convincingly simulating her town game as scum, but these are all long ago memories that are hazy, nostalgic and simply not very meaningful beyond the surface. I think it's fair to say we are probably both different players these days.

I did notice similar things to you about Sotty and her placating/buddying up to me at times, which was something I found triggering my suspicion of her, especially on D1. Actually, it's how I used to catch a lot of people back in the day; if someone I knew expressed too little paranoia/curiosity about me and seemed to want to just keep me onside, they were often scum.

[Hoopla]

No, it's a micro thing. Approach and conclusions.
I was I think the only person annoyed at the possibility of the d1 wagons being TvT. Because victor was town yet greyice started towntelling a bit.
Creature replaced in and started along the lines you'd expect, thought bbt/GI looked townish so looked at victor. But similar to me he came away town there too and ended up meh about it and looking at other people.
The list progression is pretty classic creature and 1604 is him in a nutshell from what I've experienced. You have to consider too why he'd do that maria questioning rather than what most people have been doing, it doesn't really read like buddying to me, and it's pretty much what I did my last game with her. And the hard defending thing he I thought about and just see him bring it up independently.
His reaction to specific things too. I start doubting someone, I read they then have a very good post, and then there's creature with "oh nice, guess they're town after all" and it's uncanny.

In general too he's more interested in clearing people than anything else which is a pro-town approach by nature. Though he was a little quick on the judgement today.

I don't really agree with your reasoning for eliminating him but also don't wish to continue this any further. I will say if he is such a concrete read, why am I just hearing about it now after probing for reasons, because I've never felt like you've expressed how town you view him. You seem to be under the impression that Creature is an obvious hivemind townread that didn't require much explanation or convincing of others, and I haven't seen you volunteering to dissuade those pushing the Creature wagon today, which I'd expect if this read is genuine. He is one of the most realistic alternate candidates, so why no chime in 'bout that?

[Hoopla]

I'm going to chime in in a bit but in the meantime, does anyone want to comment on why I'm still alive? In fact, I'd like everyone's comments on that. I was obviously right about Sotty7 which means I'm very likely wrong about someone else. I want to hear thoughts on who that could be.

oh.

Vote: BV

I agree this is an uncharacteristically airy remark from BV (BV; you ain't dead because twoface was very town D1 and we have masons soaking up NK's now), but why is it scummy?

[Hoopla]

While those questions are dangling, I think it's about time to readdress the cloud surrounding... Cloud. Simply put, he has to be one of the lynches before lylo. I see the game going one of two ways here:

- The town hivemind has correctly zeroed in Cloud via PoE (and some Sotty interactions); he's the obvious candidate, and this game is shaping up to be wrapped up neatly by PoE before lylo. Mason games (especially when the mason roles go to players that would ordinarily be lynched/not NK'ed without that claim quite often get well solved by PoE as better/townier looking players live deeper in the game than usual).
- The town hivemind has incorrectly zeroed in on Cloud and this game isn't as solved as we have been lead to believe today, and everyone's reads need a massive reevaluation because I feel like the PoE well might be poisoned if Cloud is wrong.

There are too many universes where Cloud is scum and an easy win is around the corner, sooooo I think playing the percentages and lynching Cloud today is wisest, and I'll let go of Creature and the conspiracy theories dogging my subconscious for now.

So, Cloud. Consider this intent. Claim in your next post.

[Hoopla]

Since mafia can talk during the day, why wouldn't he just say this in his private chat? This is only a tell if communication between the mafia is restricted.

I didn't know scum had daytalk until reading the rules literally right now, sooooo I guess take that point back.

I also want a fullclaim. I can't think of anything that would benefit from waiting.

[Hoopla]

for a second i was excited about this being a pure scumtell

then i read the ruleset

now i'm sad

^me too actually, hah

[Hoopla]

I thought you already read the rules to check if you could use dice tags.

I remember doing that. I don't remember seeing scum have daytalk.

[Hoopla]

p-edit: Hey Hoopla, do we setup spec maybe only 1 remaining Scum?

There's only been six 2:11 games since the shift to 13p and they generally don't give the town much power. We find out regardless and get an extra unexpected mislynch chance in 3p lylo if we're wrong, so I don't think it's worth considering.

[Hoopla]

I would like also anyone voting me + the guy who showed intent to describe why am i the best lynch atm (jaack dont need to)

Claim your full role. The benefit everyone else gets in trying to figure out the setup outweighs any benefit you believe you're facilitating.

[Hoopla]

Except as a PR, with a claimed Mason, you should be less likely to buy Sotty7's PR claim, not more.

Eh, that's a perspective for those in tune with mafiascum balance ideals. Cloud's an EM player where everyone in the game including the mod probably gets a PR -- and also explains why he didn't want to lynch Sotty based purely on because she claimed Tracker.

[Hoopla]

I crumbed my role too btw and my whole d2 was sort of a soft

I would look for it, but that involves reading your posts again sooooo.....

...just tell us.

[Hoopla]

Wow, lots of posts again.

I'd still prefer us to be locking Cloud into a hardclaim (he hasn't done that yet, right?) before we dismiss him today. Still catching up again, but will be considering Creature/gm/maria/Rask most likely.

[Hoopla]

mmm, still not really feeling the maria lynch based on the hard-defenses and frankly, her strange catalogue of reads throughout the game. I just don't think it's as likely she presents such bizarre reads and chooses that line of interaction with Sotty -- you do this if you're super intune with the metagame and know how people are going to perceive you for doing it, and no offense to Maria, but I just don't see her as that type of player.

[Hoopla]

mmm, still not really feeling the maria lynch based on the hard-defenses and frankly, her strange catalogue of reads throughout the game. I just don't think it's as likely she presents such bizarre reads and chooses that line of interaction with Sotty -- you do this if you're super intune with the metagame and know how people are going to perceive you for doing it, and no offense to Maria, but I just don't see her as that type of player.

My problem is if not MariaR, then who?

Creature, obviously. I still don't know why people other than Rask are clearing him (and still am not sold on why Rask is).

Then one of goodmorning/Raskol.

[Hoopla]

I don't know what to think of MariaR's VT claim but for now I'm fine with getting back on Cloud for a hard-claim and going from there.

VOTE: Cloud

This is L-2 so Hoopla, you should probably vote him if you want the claim.

He didn't claim last time we left him dangling and I don't want to open the door to a Maria quickhammer if she's scum and fears the lynch will turn on her today.

[Hoopla]

Do you have any reason for scumreading Creature besides him not commenting after we both voted Sotty7? I think he's town but it's really hard to explain given his posting style.

PoE primarily.

And I find it strange people are so willing to dismiss him, when at this stage there are often decent reasons to dismiss a lot of players. For example, I feel like Maria's hard defenses are a better reason to dismiss someone than Creature's posting style.

[Hoopla]

If he doesn't claim at L-1 with intent, what makes you think he'll claim at L-2?

...what makes you think he'd fullclaim by doing the same thing as before?

Cloud, prove me wrong and just full claim. The game isn't going anywhere until you do.

[Hoopla]

The stuff about Michel is specious D1 reasoning which is fine for D1, but doesn't hold much weight over time given a lot more meaningful things have happened throughout the game. About Creature specifically, I feel like he is such a different player to you with such a different mindset that when you start saying things like

"I expect that's something that scum would be too self-conscious to say"

it weakens your case, because you're clearly applying a broad understanding of how scum play to a very niche and unusual player. I just don't think you can be so confident with your expectations about very different players. Really, a lot of your case hinges on you knowing what to expect from him, and it's very easy to subconsciously project what you'd do as scum in a given situation and assume they're reading the same playbooks as you and would do the same.

Finally, there's Sotty7's push on him. I think his vote on the wagon came across as easily attackable because he didn't give any reasons. It seemed more like that she was taking advantage of a townie who put down a weak vote on her as opposed to cross-bussing.

Sotty was a pretty good busser, and I don't think she'd deviate too far from her meta in her return game to not muddy the waters with some good distancing somewhere along the line. Looking at how her partners react to her seems like a more fruitful line of inquiry.

Can we discuss your read on Rask? More details on why you are scumreading him and whether it's a strong enough read that you are considering him as a lynch for today.

PoE again, really. I feel like he's been key in narrowing down the lynch pool away from Creature who I suspect, without directly doing it, and if there was to be a bussing vote on Sotty's wagon it's likely to have been Rask. I feel like I'm really digging my heels in on my Maria read and ultimately, would probably lynch Rask over her. Creature is still my pick and I haven't thought enough about where goodmorning fits in all this, but she's there too.

[Hoopla]

That's honestly not how I play as scum no need to risk hard defending a goon
VT btw

Why did you claim?

[Hoopla]

LETS GO TEAM APPLES

VOTE: Creature

[Hoopla]

Also...

Bringing creature into the lynchpool is extremely necessary if scum don't wish to get PoE'd scorched-earth style.

Why do you think scum need to widen the lynch pool when falsely narrowing it is just as good (if not better)?

[Hoopla]

On the whole I'm starting to find Cloud's non-claiming antics quite town for some reason. I just don't see why scum would bother to irate and goad the town into hammering them out of frustration whilst teasing out a claim.

The thing is, when he posts stuff like:

I crumbed my role too btw and my whole d2 was sort of a soft

I dont even know the setup specs and apparently my role is considered weak-ish

...it implies that he's been thinking about a fakeclaim since D2, and a specific claim since the time of that second quote. If he does have an ace up his sleeve as scum and has prepared a fakeclaim since D2, why does he now delay it and risk being hammered and not being able to tell the story he has so carefully sewed? In general I think scum are more likely to appease the town's constant requests, especially if you've had a fakeclaim cooking in the oven and ready to serve.

It's just much simpler to assume he is town and thinks he's playing his role well by doing this. I think the whole shebang is too creative for someone like Cloud to pull off as scum.

[Hoopla]

BlackVoid, your calls for a hammer on Cloud are antitown, and I don't really know what it accomplishes other than punishing Cloud (which in turn probably punishes the town).

[Hoopla]

Do you agree with my logic that Cloud's shenanigans more often come from town than scum?