Signs and Void (Game Over) [TM2015]

[ChannelDelibird]

Well, well, well. This should be interesting. My team and I haven't come to a consensus on anything specifically worth doing at the start of a game but, if anyone thinks that there's anything with which we should get on, I'm all ears.

Bane: Titus

[ChannelDelibird]

Choose: One

[ChannelDelibird]

But we also need to know signs to use our roles, right?

Right. Whoever gets Baned can (and probably should) be protected.

[ChannelDelibird]

hiiii

also protecting a person who we bane would reaally defeat the purpose of giving someone a bane in general

Well, it's not like the mafia are going to kill scummy people if we Bane them. Titus's point about Alquin is possibly fair, but I wouldn't want to speculate as to how many people might share his Sign.

Tammy, you should probably read the PMs posted above.

[ChannelDelibird]

Just realised that I shot down my own argument there, no need to tell me.

[ChannelDelibird]

Yesterday and today helpfully my least-free-time days of the week but I'll try to read up at the office if I can. In the meantime, Shadoweh is scummy.

[ChannelDelibird]

I'm reading at the moment; don't tell my boss.

I also kinda want to pick

CDB

's brain (or maybe your team's collective brain), about the things you've guys talked about. Mostly, why did you make a post saying you guys discussed theory but didn't make mention of any theory?

I don't want to give the impression that we talked

lots

about theory, but while deciding on allocating tokens we discussed whether or not token-claiming would be a thing early on, for example, without coming to a consensus as to whether we thought it was likely or even helpful, especially in this game of all of them which has the most going on anyway. I didn't mention any specific theory because, as I said, we didn't settle on anything in particular that we felt needed to be brought up at the start of the game. But our brief discussions did make me open to the idea that other teams might have things they wanted to talk about, especially as I found my team-mates bringing up points of which I wouldn't have thought on my own.

At any rate, half of our team went away for the weekend just after this game's role PMs went out, so there wasn't a lot of time to talk about anything other than the abstract.

[ChannelDelibird]

Right. Whoever gets Baned can (and probably should) be protected.

What was your thought process here?

People who have their Sign made public by Baning are obvious targets for investigative abilities, which are only powerful if the scum are narrowing down by killing elsewhere. That was my thought process at the time; I'm reevaluating at the moment.

[ChannelDelibird]

Choice is obvious imo the only reason to submit two unmakes on one person is to pick different signs.

Fenchurch and I agree that this is more likely to come from a scum perspective than town (given that town have no idea what permutations might affect this).

[ChannelDelibird]

While I'm relaying opinions from the Black Goo, CES argues that we should use the Bane on a player who is hard to read (vezok is his example). This is because it's harder to judge scumminess on Day 1 before we see how any flips go and it would allow us to use investigative abilities on them - meanwhile, if scum kill them, we don't lose somebody we were quickly townreading. By avoiding a Bane on the No.1 scummiest player, too, we avoid complicating their potential lynch on Major Day 1. Again, I'm pretty much sold on his argument, especially the last part - I think Baning people who we intend to lynch immediately is a waste, though acknowledging that that could change later depending on what future Banes involve.

UnBane: Titus
Bane: vezok

I might pick somebody else later but I'm pretty sure that I don't want to Bane Titus, whom I'm reading as town.

Also reading Tammy as probably town but I don't know the dynamics between her, Zar, Empire etc. well enough to say that I scumread Zar as an extension of townreading Tammy.

[ChannelDelibird]

CDB, are the Black Goo nullreading vezok?

CES is the only one to have mentioned vezok so far, in the context mentioned above. I just read the thread and didn't get any particular reaction to him but I did it while tabbing back and forth to look like I was working, mostly just focusing on direct mentions of my name, so I'll probably read again tomorrow in case there was anything that I missed.

[ChannelDelibird]

I don't mind CDB's last few posts, but I feel like he's focusing on a lot of theorycrafting which is hard to get a feeling from.

That's perfectly reasonable; I haven't had time to delve too deeply into analysis beyond the surface level of catching up yet.

@CDB

, can I get your thoughts on Zar's play on top of the thoughts you already gave wrt Tammy's push for him?

As I tried to say earlier, I find it a little difficult to extricate it from the meta stuff on which I'm less comfortable commenting. The amount of time devoted to Tammy & communication thereto from his team thread seems understandable as either alignment (he either needs to get it cleared up as town or to do damage control as scum). I think his addressing of me here could be seen as asking things for appearances' sake, but I'm mostly OK with his contributions that don't require knowledge of how his interpersonal dynamics work in order to be understood.

[ChannelDelibird]

Y'all should wait for UT to explain it before you start speculating on what the explanation might be, yo. You even get a PT with rantbuddies with whom you can chew it over in the meantime.

[ChannelDelibird]

Why? It's not like we're lynching him or anything.

It's always more useful to get somebody's response

before

you show them what their options might be by talking them over. UT's not the sort to keep us waiting, so I'd rather we just let him talk about it and give us more on which to judge him.

[ChannelDelibird]

Yeah, I don't mean "do everything in a PT before you get here", just that it's probably more useful to talk about other things in here while we wait on UT.

Anyway I'm-a take off for the evening now, catch you all tomorrow for some more in-depth work.

[ChannelDelibird]

Diving into this now. Empire, CES says to tell you that if you'd like to suggest an alternative hard-to-read player than lurky vezok, that'd be fine too. As far as my own experience with vezok goes, the only one I remember is a game in which I was scum so didn't have to read him. So I've pretty much accepted CES's description at face value, having no reason not to do so.

Also, the Black Goo are agreed that Baning Empire is a bad idea and that you should all stop. I like all of the other currently voted-for options better.

[ChannelDelibird]

Reading through and taking notes for a big post, but interrupting myself because I'm kinda ruffled.

So random iso of cdb shows me that he've been focused with non-read stuff and the closest thing he has as a read is a null read on Vezok who he's baning.
I don't mind that slot eating rope.

Seriously? I have two stated townreads in the same post in which I bring up vezok. I've also mentioned a Shadoweh scumread in two separate posts! What I find impressive is that I'd actually be

fine

if you still thought that that was inadequate, but that you leave it out entirely to encourage my death is weird.

I also make no apology for not having much time to develop reads. On both Monday and Tuesday this week I had to wake up and go straight to work, after which I immediately had engagements for the evening (board game night and a concert), during neither of which I had time to read this game. Today is the first opportunity I've had to focus my attention on this game, which is what I intend to be doing all night from this point. I've been clear about the fact that they were busy days for me. Did you read the fact that I was posting during work? I dunno, man. This sounds like the most half-arsed "random iso" ever.

[ChannelDelibird]

Out of curiosity, how much time has Fenchurch put into discussing this game with you?

P-edit @CDB

We haven't often been online at the same time in the last few days because of my busy schedule so we haven't been able to discuss things so much as she's offered a few early reads and opinions that I receive a few hours after the fact. She's lost pace with the growth of this thread over the last day or so, but brought up the thing that I mentioned re: Shadoweh and backed up my townreads on Titus and Tammy. She thought UT's early posts were a bit scummy but I disagree.

[ChannelDelibird]

From the horse's mouth: she read the first 11 pages but hasn't been able to catch up since her own game started.

[ChannelDelibird]

Summation of some notes I made while reading up on new posts - still intend to go back over the first 20-ish pages now that I've the time.

I accept UT's explanation for forgetting about ffery's conftown status pretty much unconditionally. That shit happens more often than people generally like to admit when they're latching onto an obvious inconsistency.

I found Tammy's wall on Zar/Empire fairly convincing, both on the discrediting which she believes was happening and on the strength of that belief. I also found the player swap kinda skeevy. UT's suggestion that the Circlejerk might have felt it the only way to salvage the slot rang pretty true to me. I'd be pretty happy lynching Empire at the earliest opportunity, though that means I definitely don't want us to Bane him.

This from Cheetory came from earlier than my last post but I read it again when Bulbazak linked to it, and I find it weird. Given that nobody is in a position to vote as we know it, this reads as more likely to be scum posturing than it does town genuinely believing that they've found scum. Town has to be more specific in this game.

Though our team finds Shadoweh scummy from earlier, I like this line of thinking on Bulbazak and await his response with interest.

This post makes me think Marquis is town. Partially because it plays into the scenario which I already suspect, the one in which the Circlejerk parachutes in Empire as a 'surely he must be town' gesture, and partially because I have no idea what the benefit is to scum Marquis making this observation

and

Baning Empire for it. Empire is one of the biggest candidates for a lynch as soon as we hit Major Day 1, and while a scum Marquis would want to push this argument if Empire is town, Baning him too only removes the advantage for scum if Empire goes on to get the first lynch.

There's also the part of Empire's big reads list post on me that I want to address separately in case I go rambling, so that's next.

[ChannelDelibird]

CDB:

Don't like CDB's opener (#7), CDB's the kind of guy who, from memory, takes the early game very seriously to push for reactions and get reads. The opening reads very passively, especially the deference to the others on how to proceed. I dislike the mention of his team discussion here, feels like he's forcing it through to be like "hey dudes by the way my team and I are totally talking about this game."

I'm not that sure what else you expected from my opening post. Yes, I'm absolutely a strong advocate for making RVS as little of a thing as possible, but I'm pretty sure that no such thing was likely in a game with these mechanics - mechanics whose implications my team and I did not get a lot of time to chew over, particularly after role PMs went out - and given that my own position within even those limited discussions of the theory implications was one in which I found my team-mates having ideas that I didn't, I fully expected others to come in with a plan for the start of the game that I simply didn't. I was interested to see what people brought, and anticipated a different dynamic to the start of the game anyway because of this being my first experience with Team Mafia.

I think you can see the fact that I was doing some of the figuring-out that I hadn't been able to do in my team PT right there in the thread in my first few posts of the Day. Then on my next check-in that evening I got a bit put off by the angry tone of those early pages, particularly between two people whom I generally like in UT and ActionDan (who, by the way, needs to show up), so I left it for the evening.

So I Baned someone in Titus whose approach to the game doesn't gel particularly well with my own, as that seemed like a decent enough place to start with the Bane given that, when I started writing the post, literally nobody had posted.

[ChannelDelibird]

i) You have time to ignore my questions but you have time to take a potshot like this? Kay.

I was reading up on everything since my most recent post. I saw this one of yours from before that point because it got quoted later. If there are questions from before the point from which I caught up that I missed, then rest assured I'll be getting to them soon. Though if you'd like to point me to them - because I have, at some point, read every post in this game, even if just skimmed - that would be helpful. I may have already answered.

ii) Are you really getting on my case for the usage of the word 'vote'? Do you really think I meant anything other than vote to bane him?

I dunno. There's been so much discussion in this game about how best to utilise the Bane that it's honestly not that clear whether you wanted him Baned or lynched, and I am definitely considering actively which of the two I would want done to specific people when it comes to plans for the Day. I did not have your stated policy on the relationship between Baning and lynching burned into my memory.

iii) So you think I'm scum posturing to try and get UT lynched despite my back-and-forth with him where I tried to figure out what he was doing?

If your policy was to call for Baning first and ask questions later, I don't put a lot of stock into this, but I might find myself changing my mind on reread. As I say, it's one post that I was drawn to, out of context, which I found kinda off-putting, especially while it was drawn to my attention by somebody calling it out as problematic.

[ChannelDelibird]

Uh, have you spoken to your team about me (#754 implies that you have)? Because I find it very hard to believe that a guy who (probably still) believes I have no scum game suspects me in this game.

I hadn't brought up your slot at all to my team-mates prior to that post. CES told me to address you on that point, so I did. He actually hasn't had much of a stance on your alignment yet, but he's less leery of your swap with Zar than I am. (Like Fenchurch, he's not had a comprehensive read of the game.)

My impression was that the inevitable mechanics discussion was not going to prevent you from doing your own thing and that you were going to treat this like the average game in the beginning despite the Team Mafia aspect.

With the Bane rather than a vote, I don't think there's more that I could have done that would be more like a normal opening for me. I'd typically look at who 'randomly' votes for who and make some early moves based on that, but the change to Baning means that the same principles can't necessarily be applied, hence making the early theory discussion more important.

I don't remember how you tended to act as town in mechanics-heavy games specifically but I'll look some of this up when I'm not feeling like a zombie.

I doubt that you'd get many researchable games for this. I wouldn't normally sign up for a game with as many mechanical deviations as this. I'm here because I'm the member of my team happiest to deal with the number of players involved.

[ChannelDelibird]

Lurky Vezok, what? I disagree with his positions but calling him lurky is wrong.

CES's words, not mine, and I think he meant on a more general scale rather than in this game specifically. I don't have enough experience with vezok either way to agree or disagree with such a description.

PEDIT @TSO: Patrick has skimmed some but not all of this game, and not any of the recent pages. His main observation is that Tammy looks town but that her push on Zar is a little overblown. I am the only member of my team who has read the thread in full.

[ChannelDelibird]

@Aronis:

Hi.

[ChannelDelibird]

Right. Whoever gets Baned can (and probably should) be protected.

What was your thought process here?

People who have their Sign made public by Baning are obvious targets for investigative abilities, which are only powerful if the scum are narrowing down by killing elsewhere. That was my thought process at the time; I'm reevaluating at the moment.

I answered 129 here, Titus. However, note that I have never said that we should Bane the scummiest player. I think we should Bane somebody whom we are not reading clearly either way.

[ChannelDelibird]

DEAR CHANNELDELIBIRD PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTION BETWEEN STATING IM TOTES A SCUMREAD

You weren't the only one asking more or less the same question and I figured the post you quoted is as clear an answer as I could give you, though I do apologise for not mentioning you for clarity's sake. It's CES's description, on which he hasn't expanded (I'll leave a note for him to do so if you'd like, but I wouldn't expect a long answer), and I don't know enough about vezok to challenge it.

[ChannelDelibird]

You should see this game and know Vezok's not lurking. You don't need meta to see that.

Again, I suspect that CES meant it on a more general basis rather than this game specifically. I don't see why one game would change a description on that level, especially given that CES hasn't read everything in this thread.

As for what I think, I don't think that vezok is lurking in this game. I'm very much open to Baning someone else, as is CES, though I feel like too many people are using the Baning as essentially just a preview of the first Major Day lynch and I definitely want to keep the two separate, which is why my vote remains there over somebody higher up the list.

[ChannelDelibird]

As for what I think, I don't think that vezok is lurking in this game.

I also haven't got much of a read on him anyway, so I'm happy to agree with CES's conclusion at this point even if his working is wonky.

[ChannelDelibird]

I agree that we should get on with it, but I'm not sure that I want to Bane Bulba if there's any serious chance of him being lynched. I haven't properly caught up with the last five pages, though, as I'm just checking in from work after not a lot of sleep, so if there's an argument that I've missed about doing this that's more in line with what my team and I want, I'll see it soon and probably go along with it.

[ChannelDelibird]

DEAR CHANNELDELIBIRD PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTION BETWEEN STATING IM TOTES A SCUMREAD

You weren't the only one asking more or less the same question and I figured the post you quoted is as clear an answer as I could give you, though I do apologise for not mentioning you for clarity's sake. It's CES's description, on which he hasn't expanded (I'll leave a note for him to do so if you'd like, but I wouldn't expect a long answer), and I don't know enough about vezok to challenge it.

CES got back to me. Paraphrasing, he says that his only real recollection of vezok is that he isn't in the habit of posting much content. That's kinda my impression as well.

[ChannelDelibird]

Sure, OK, let's just get on with it.

Unbane: vezok
Bane: Bulbazak

[ChannelDelibird]

I think that's a hammer

Boon: vezok

since he's my actual towniest read, but I'm expecting to have to change this to actually get it done to deasvail or Tammy (I'd also definitely boon TSO if anyone else is thinking about it)

You don't want to wait until we know what the Boon is?

[ChannelDelibird]

The OPs say that "most" players have those abilities, but I think the wider point is that ffery is going to die before long and is therefore not going to have the time to make best use of such an ability.

This seems like kind of an awkward position because surely the people most likely to benefit from this Boon are those who need to match signs to use abilities, but we don't want to tell scum where our power roles are. There's at least one player in this game on whom I have a specific VT read rather than general town, so I want to be as oblique about this as possible and not just post a list of people whom I'd be willing to see given the Boon. I'm going to consult with my team before I vote.

[ChannelDelibird]

FFery should pick the boon person or the boon pool we vote in. We know scum cannot influence uf she picks directly.

Ffery picking a pool from which we Boon is a good idea. I would prefer to have some influence in choosing from within that subset as we know that town vastly outnumbers scum.

[ChannelDelibird]

Whoever gets the boon is going to be a target for Mafia.

So I think everyone needs to unvote. And then everyone needs to vote if they are ok with being booned. It spreads confusion for mafia over who is a PR and it also gives mafia wifom over if it is actually a good idea to go after whoever gets booned.

I don't want to see any votes on someone that hasn't said they are ok with being booned.

This is ridiculous. It is to literally nobody's advantage to claim anything other than being OK with being booned. PRs want it, VTs want to help cover the PRs, scum want to look like one of the above.

[ChannelDelibird]

I have a feeling I might need to actually read the thread.

Please.

[ChannelDelibird]

Tammy and/or DV, do you think this CDB sounds like CDB in The Wire?

I can understand you reaching for this if we haven't played together since then, but that game feels like a

very

long time ago. Pretty sure both of those people have more recent experience with me.

[ChannelDelibird]

Not going to have a lot of time again today but I'll be rereading the early game tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm here at work for the next few hours but if there are any bite-size questions that people want answered, I can do that. I can understand why there's talk of me being suspicious, I suppose, but I think me towning it up in this game is going to just something that's going to require a bit of patience.

PEDIT: Am I the only one who's uncomfortable with people just assuming that Tammy is going to be nightkilled?

[ChannelDelibird]

Cdb - you said that Patrick had looked at some but what about ces? Also did you use tokens to get town?

CES, as I think I've mentioned previously, has read portions of this game but not the whole thing. I've not really left anything out in terms of what I've reported from him.

I didn't use any tokens on myself as I didn't have a strong enough preference on alignment for it to be worth taking tokens away from those who did (namely Fenchurch and Patrick, who both took two for town). That said, I found myself more relieved than I had expected to draw town.

[ChannelDelibird]

Do I make you uncomfortable, CDB? :>

A little bit. I think I've established over a few games with you that I pretty much have no idea how to read you, and the idea of a good player whom I can't read coming after me is somewhat troubling.

I think Tammy is town and isn't getting lynched in the next 4 days. Should I be assuming the scumteam is going to let her live forever?

I honestly don't know. I'm townreading Tammy too, but I'm wary of us putting too much assumption into things like her Zar/Empire read, which I am thinking about a lot. I think there is a lot of WIFOM there that could be created by either a Tammy death or lack thereof, and my first instinct was that people assuming an immediate Tammy death might look pretty bad in retrospect if Empire were to later flip scum, as it would imply that they already knew that she had done significant damage to the scumteam.

[ChannelDelibird]

I thought you were scumreading me as a whole. Did something change there?

I still think we might be onto something with the post that Fenchurch found, but it is a scumread based on only one post so I'm not as convinced as I might be.

Empire hasn't been lynched yet, so she hasn't done any damage yet. I think that's a pretty baseless worry.

Sure, in real terms there's no damage done yet, but - at least in my experience - when I'm scum, my feelings are heightened. Things are much more likely to feel like triumphs or disasters. If Empire and I were on the scumteam, I'd have been pretty terrified when Tammy was getting people on board with a Zar death, and I'd still be worried about it. So I think that, were Empire scum, his team-mates might show signs of being more afraid of Tammy than might be justified by the gamestate.

[ChannelDelibird]

Oh, hey, speaking of my catch-up, GiF never got back to me about this. I think he should.

I won't pretend to have read more than my own entry in that list and the two at the bottom for now, but I'll definitely be coming back to it later.

[ChannelDelibird]

Oh, hey, speaking of my catch-up, GiF never got back to me about this. I think he should.

I won't pretend to have read more than my own entry in that list and the two at the bottom for now, but I'll definitely be coming back to it later.

I missed it.

And?

[ChannelDelibird]

That's the answer for both of your questions.

How did you manage to read so little of me? I mean, you clearly missed multiple posts. What was the point of the iso if you weren't going to read all of it?

What is your read on me at the moment?

[ChannelDelibird]

Ffery, I'd been holding off on your word as I'd hoped that you would nominate a shortlist of three or something, as some of us were talking about, rather than homing in on one person specifically, so as to make scum decide within your shortlist to get more choices on record. However, seeing as enough people have just ignored you altogether, I guess we arrive at a similar point.

Boon: vezok

because the confirmed town wants me to. My read on vezok is slightly town now, anyway.

[ChannelDelibird]

I'll stick with vezok, of the three.

[ChannelDelibird]

I'll stick with vezok, of the three.

Do you disagree with my criteria? disagree with my reads?

I think the criteria are probably about right, but I'm definitely not townreading Cheetory right now (I've not played with him before, which doesn't help, but he's hovering around null with a light scumping or two which I think I've mentioned) and I think I want a bit more time to figure out UT. Vezok's got a vibe of not caring about his image that I quite like, and I like the little proto-wagon analysis that he attempted re: the Marquis boon wagon.

[ChannelDelibird]

God fucking dammit, I knew I shouldn't have checked this from bed. I was just about to go to sleep then I saw this just as I set my alarm and now it's keeping me up. Phoneposting so I'm not going to go into any big response because I need to do that on a machine where I can tab around and type without having to go back and correct myself, etc.

The thing I know I want to ask now is how up-to-date is the meta you guys have on me, Empire? Is The Wire your main reference point here?

I will get into the things you've said as soon as I wake up.

[ChannelDelibird]

Let me respond to Empire before night hits. Just woke up, won't be long

[ChannelDelibird]

This is probably going to be long. Apologies in advance for the wall.

To be honest, I just kinda want to get the boon stuff over with because it's really boring to me and I want to get to the meat and potatoes of the game so if we could do that, that would be awesome.

Keep this in mind, yeah?

1) I've said this before but talking to Regfan again about it, we dislike the stance CES has apparently taken regarding bane'ing vezok due to him being hard to read from earlier today as that's not something we see town-CES believing (Regfan insists that even though vezok can be lurky, he's very transparent).

Look, I have no idea how much CES knows about vezok. I don't follow him about, and I certainly haven't seen enough of vezok to know if the two have often intersected. I can't speak to the believability of what CES says, except that I know it's coming from town. If you think this is truly something so absurd that CES could be believed as thinking it as town, do you think he'd say it as scum? I dunno. I just think this is a weird thing to get really hung up on. The far more likely explanation is that you/Regfan and CES think differently about vezok.

Also, we've not been fans of the attention the team overall is giving to this game. CES, in particular, was really participatory in all of his team's games in the last team mafia (I've been looking for his team's QT link from the old TM but I can't find it right now, if anyone can beat me to it, that'd be great) so the fact that he's not really all that here reads way off to us.

Right, here's the thing that's

really

bugging me. You remember that first quote of yours above? Can you really not think of a reason why my team might not have read all of this game? Patrick left a note overnight - he saw this case of yours and also thinks it's pretty ridiculous that you can't think of an explanation.

We've churned out 53 pages in less than a week, and in not one of those pages have we even been able to vote for somebody to be lynched. This game is a big, unwieldy brute with off-putting mechanics that are, at best, subtler and more difficult to analyse than a typical other game. Unlike me, who works fluctuating hours but can often check during my shift and I'm

still

having trouble getting all the work done that I need to on this game, the rest of my team work during the day and have other things than this to do outside of that. They're putting their own games first, which is perfectly reasonable, and when they get time to catch up with other games to help each other out, it's much, much easier for them to devote the time to catch up with a 15-page normal game than a 50-page behemoth. I empathise with this because I've been catching up with their games and it's a breeze in comparison.

I haven't been pushing hard for them to do more than they're able because I'm not a pushy person but I have asked nicely for some input over the weekend. A break for the Minor Night should be helpful, I imagine. But this is an off-putting game, and your lack of basic empathy how people practically deal with having four different games to read is frankly a bit bizarre.

2) The stance that CDB's entire team apparently thinks bane'ing me is a really bad idea in #754 vs. the later scumread on my slot in #761 still makes absolutely no sense to either me or Regfan. #754 in particular reads as though his team believes I'm town and the only way they can all agree that I'm a terrible bane is if they all townread me which makes no sense considering the later stance in #761.

What are you

talking

about? The logic is easy to follow.

1. In 406, CES proposes, and I agree, that the Bane is best used on someone harder to read, who's not the No.1 scumread and

whom we do not intend to lynch imminently

but whom we wouldn't cry if the scum eliminated them by nightkill.

2. In 754, "The Black Goo" is CDB and CES. With neither of the others caught up enough to offer comment, that was consensus enough for the time being. And yes, we don't want to Bane Empire. That fits exactly with 406. I should note - and I missed this at the time because I was busy passing on the vezok comment - that CES said at this juncture that part of why he didn't want to Bane Empire was because he felt that his alignment would become obvious in time. I'll make sure that he looks at what you've posted overnight to see if he thinks that's happened yet. Eagle-eyed readers will note that this means that CES isn't proposing an Empire lynch at this point. That part is all me, plus some leftover Fenchurch suspicion of Zar from the first few pages that she hasn't had time to follow up upon.

3. Confirmation that my scumread on Empire is in 761 and that it remains consistent.

3) Regfan also emphasized that he really disliked #776 as it basically says that CDB is not discussing his strongest scumread with his teammates, especially considering one has extensive meta with me.

This is my first Team Mafia, so I have nothing to which to compare our team dynamics, but none of us are particularly in the habit of bringing a read to our skype chat and saying "analyse this specifically", though if someone says they're about to go through one of the other's games, we might mention things in particular then. People haven't come to me saying they're about to read through this game, so I haven't asked for specific things - at any rate, I feel like one just generally needs to read the thread in full as the priority rather than homing in on anything, because there are far more players whom I haven't yet been able to sort at all on whom I'd like more input.

You don't know me IRL, so maybe this behaviour is weird to you, but I'm not going to push my team-mates for input because I am comfortable accepting that they will tell me what they can, when they can, and I can discuss it with them then.

He also thinks a lot of his posts read like excuses rather than actual reads and analysis (this is what has been bothering me about CDB's play in the most general sense).

I don't think that anyone with more than passing experience with me should be particularly surprised by what I've put out in this game. Perhaps there aren't really as many people in this game who know me that well as I might have hoped going into it, but a) I don't think this is something you should find too weird and b) it's not like I haven't stated reads and worked on them.

And hey, again, shit is harder to analyse when we're not even allowed to try to kill each other yet. I don't understand Banes and Boons nearly as well as I understand lynch votes, and it is my sincere hope that we can really start to get into this game when people properly start putting their money where their mouths are.

4) Regfan absolutely hated #1106 as he says it's like he's commenting on the possibility of a Tammy nightkill and how that can/can't be linked to me without really trying to read me or discuss my slot with his team.

That would be fair if it were the only post in which I discussed you, but it's not. I also don't think it's weird for me to be thinking about who might be nightkilled when we spent, like, 35 pages deciding how protection would work in this game.

[ChannelDelibird]

Regarding your meta on me, it feels like you've neither read as much as you should have from either before or after The Wire (in as much as anyone

should

read games that they're not in, because I have no idea how people do that, generally speaking).

People in this game whom I think could comment usefully on my performance here in relation to more recent games than you can reference probably include: ActionDan, Gamma, UT, ffery and maybe Titus. Dan, UT and ffery have the most recent experience of me as scum, in Reck's Retrospective Rehash, but Gamma's also seen me as a sort-of-serial-killer. Titus has worked with me as town recently here. There are probably some more recent games, but those are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head. I'll see if I can dig out some more if you'd find that helpful.

[ChannelDelibird]

Oh wow Empire caught something great here. For people who haven't looked at this yet, in 754, CDB says this:

Also, the Black Goo are agreed that Baning Empire is a bad idea and that you should all stop

. I like all of the other currently voted-for options better.

Empire responds with this:

Uh, have you spoken to your team about me (

#754 implies that you have

)? Because I find it very hard to believe that a guy who (probably still) believes I have no scum game suspects me in this game.

And then CDB says this:

I hadn't brought up your slot at all to my team-mates prior to that post.

CES told me to address you on that point, so I did. He actually hasn't had much of a stance on your alignment yet, but he's less leery of your swap with Zar than I am. (Like Fenchurch, he's not had a comprehensive read of the game.)

@CDB

, you should address this because this looks reallllllllllly nasty to me.

I didn't bring up Empire's slot before that post. CES popped up and said that Empire shouldn't be Baned and I agreed.

[ChannelDelibird]

If it's not obvious, I find Empire's case concerning. I'm used to questions about my excuses/analysis ratio - that part doesn't bother me so much - but he's weirdly wrong about obvious things like the timeline of my stance on his slot and weirdly rigid in his lack of empathy, which I don't associate with someone genuinely trying to figure things out.

[ChannelDelibird]

CDB's a mild townread. Bulba is a scumread.

Would like to know why you think both of these things.

[ChannelDelibird]

@TTH:

I have two questions.

1) Why did you swap with Antihero?
2) How well are you fulfilling that reason for swapping?

[ChannelDelibird]

(and I certainly don't believe for a second that CES would only think my replacement is "less skeevy", I think town-CES would have been a lot more unequivocal in that read).

I think this is an example of how it's difficult to scumhunt someone through the translations of their team-mates. CES didn't believe that it was a strategic move at the time and he doesn't believe it now. "CES is less leery than I am" was an accurate statement, but I'm trying to paraphrase from our chats (and it's possible that - unconsciously, I mean - I paraphrased in a way that emphasised less his conviction there because I was, as I say, more leery of the move).

He also says that he didn't do a great deal of analysis on his team's other games last time he was in TM. A lot of his chatting with chamber came after CES himself had died in his game, which he seems to recall zoraster mentioned in the post-game (something that he thinks might excuse you for thinking he was more active than he was).

CES still thinks I should trust you so I'll probably vote for somebody else when we finally get to the Major Day. But I'm far less happy than he is.

[ChannelDelibird]

CES still thinks I should trust you so I'll probably vote for somebody else when we finally get to the Major Day. But I'm far less happy than he is.

Correcting this because I misunderstood CES: he "still" trusts you even though he recognises that there are good reasons why he shouldn't. We've been talking, for example, about my feeling that reaching past me to scumhunt him specifically is something that you might do if you'd replaced into an in-danger Zar slot as a way of looking invested and knowledgeable, while the fact that you're essentially arguing through a third-party translation gives you more leeway to wilfully misinterpret as scum. It's clearly inherently flawed for you to focus on him as much as you are.

Other things that are bugging me include your focus on me and not on, say, the Antihero/TTH swap. You have a team-mate in the other game. I'm surprised that you've mentioned it only as much as 'does TTH like being scum?'.

I know that you

can

get sidetracked on misreading me because of our experience in The Wire, but it's like you can't decide whether or not you're paying attention to that experience when you read me here. That I find strange.

[ChannelDelibird]

I didn't bring up Empire's slot before that post. CES popped up and said that Empire shouldn't be Baned and I agreed.

Why would you say the Black Goo instead of just saying CES?

Variety, I guess. I'm a subeditor by trade; repetition is to be avoided. Plus it's always fun to say 'the Black Goo'. I didn't really put a lot of thought into it.

[ChannelDelibird]

Heh. Okay.
Can you walk me through how and why your vezok read has adjusted through this cycle?

For most of the game I barely noticed him, apart from him repeatedly and regularly saying that Empire is town. Didn't really know where to file that because I know neither vezok nor Empire very well.

CES suggested him as someone hard to read but who didn't contribute much so we could probably live with it if scum used his Baning to kill him. Worked for me.

Around the time when ffery volunteered him as her only suggestion for our Booning, I did a little look over vezok's iso, which is when the stuff that I mentioned here struck me. So for now I am townreading him.

[ChannelDelibird]

I wasn't aware that you and Empire didn't really know each other that well. Gonna try to motivate myself to read through your interactions again at some point with this in mind.

We've played maybe two or three games together at most but, as you might have gathered, CES knows him and his team much better than I do.

FYI, I currently have you as null-town. You seem natural enough and the post on which I pulled you up was probably nothing important.

[ChannelDelibird]

I approve of the TTH heat - Antihero doesn't like being scum and literally never posted anything 'in-character' in this thread and TTH's contributions have been well below what I think should have been expected (still want her to answer these questions) - but I am also interested in how quickly this wagon has sprung up given that she did not receive very much heat during the Minor Day. I'd like those who are voting her to talk about when and how they got to the point of scumreading her.

I have a few thoughts to get out! I got up to page 41 in a full thread reread during the Minor Night, which I think helped me a lot, and I should be finishing that this evening. Similarly, Patrick and Fenchurch started full reads but didn't have the time or sanity to finish but I'll collate what input they have so far when I write up some of my notes, which will happen soonish (just starting work this morning, we'll see how busy it is). The main headline is that I got a better handle on the Tammy/Zar stuff than I did on first read and my current read on Empire is now in the 'leaning town' pile, even though I still have some problems with the slot's approach to things.

Also, seeing as

Aronis

has been around without paying attention to it, I'd like to remind him that I made this post.

[ChannelDelibird]

P-edit: Why is your approval for TTH essentially Aronis's reason word for word?

Because it's fucking true? The fact that I made the most that I linked before the end of Yesterday should be proof enough that I've been thinking about this, at least. I also don't know why you think I'd randomly come in and start sheeping Aronis's reads of all people at 7 in the morning.

[ChannelDelibird]

EBWOP: "...made the post..." not most

[ChannelDelibird]

Also what is that other thing your talking about.?..Aronis could not have used the same reason precisely as me...but all the votes for the most part are TTH lurking votes.

The PEDIT was to me.

[ChannelDelibird]

Some things that I want to talk about. Mostly a collection of reread notes; if there's a lot or if my read isn't clear, I'll put a little tl;dr at the end of each to get across where I currently stand.

Spoiler: Zar/Empire

Why does Zar seem to expect Tammy to have gone back through all the post-game of the last Team Mafia to develop a read re: token usage on a person whom she already thinks she knows quite well? Ridiculously high standards.

Tammy's meta read of Empire comes across as something I could believe but then I don't have enough experience of Empire.

However, I think I must have missed this from Zar on first read, his last post in the slot which talks about how he would generally avoid Tammy etc. Generally, he comes off a lot better than I remembered and I'm now much happier about how the switch with Empire came to be, which was a sticking point earlier.

I wonder if Empire has a problem with this from Marquis, who has a good team but says they're all too busy to help out significantly in this game.

Empire saying that DV doesn't care about his image is off. DV has been talking a lot in this game about his being Paragon, what people expect from that, how he thinks he plays and how he expects his play to change in relation to that. He's very self-conscious. I don't think that's necessarily a scummy thing if he's only just won the title (first game since?) but i think you have to say he's massively image-conscious.

tl;dr

I have a lot of problems with the slot, most of which now are covered by my posts at the end of Minor Day One, and don't think I want those glazed over because Empire's brief response this Morning does not seem appropriately extensive. But I'm much happier about how the switch with Zar came about, which gives me more of a neutral-to-town baseline on the slot rather than it already looking bad when I was doing most of my previous reading on it. I'm now with CES in as much as, if you put a gun to my head, I'd say the slot is town playing a pretty flawed game, but we both have our issues. For example, CES can't understand why Empire wasn't more apologetic about the 'reading your angry posts is funny' thing. Patrick preferred Empire's first big reads list to his late-Minor Day case on me and has used the word "trainwreck" about the slot.

Spoiler: Supplementing vezok & Marquis townreads

I think scum would like to encourage confusion about their nightkill plans, so vezok reaching out to ffery to (it looks like) get a confirmed town's hypothesis on how best to counter scum seems like a pro-town thing to do.

Marquis talking about UT seems like genuine scumhunting.

Spoiler: DeasVail and Bulbazak

DeasVail's preference for Choice 1 strikes me as pro-town because it was what I was thinking.

This does sound weird about Bulba.

Bulba putting down a read on mastin who literally hadn't posted yet is what-the-fuck-worthy, even if trying to be a smartass is prrrrobably not alignment-indicative here.

DeasVail seems to have overreacted massively to what looked like a reasonable, if uninteresting, expression of support for Cephrir's read from Bulbazak. However, I do agree that Bulbazak saying he "looks lost" isn't reflected in DV's posts. Not sure whom I come out of this post agreeing with more.

"Okay Mastin, I think I see where you're coming from. It's how Cheetory's approaching the game, right?" - this is the most meaningless sentence ever. Every read is about how a player approaches the game. This feels like buddying from Bulbazak.

tl;dr

Leaning town on DeasVail (though I am always inclined to townread him on presentation alone, so this isn't as strong as my other townreads) and I am kinda unhappy with Bulbazak. He's in my pile of scum suspects, though Patrick (before I wrote up these notes, btw, and circa page 33 in his read) wasn't very interested in a scumread on him.

Spoiler: Man, my Cheetory read goes up and down like a yo-yo

Just gonna post my notes in sequential order and it should become obvious that I am going back and forth hard on this slot.

Cheetory asking Shadoweh to talk about the Fantasy Camp reference sticks out to me. Seems like the sort of fillery scum question that I hate, except it even has the potential to make widely townread Tammy look bad.

Cheetory encouraging Tammy to sleep on Zar read either reads town or Zar-buddy, can't decide which. Obviously more likely to be town of the two if Empire is town.

I know I just told him it's probably not important but I'm still not completely happy with this. If anyone's opportunistically jumping on UT forgetting that ffery is confirmed town, it's Cheetory.

This seems town from Cheetory.

tl;dr

Stuff still bothers me, I go back and forth, but my best guess at the moment is that Cheetory's likely to be town whom I just don't quite 'get'.

Spoiler: Still not a fan of GiF

This is in theory a good question from GiF but it seems like Cheetory should answer it after Tammy wakes up in the morning and either does or doesn't reconsider like she was asked. That would allow Cheetory to better make up his mind. So I don't know the best way to put this but I'm put off by GiF asking it now.

C'mon, Gif, really? Way too certain. Plus, if you are sure that town couldn't forget, why are hyper-sensitive scum (because they are) more likely to forget? If I were scum I'd be on eggshells around the confirmed town. And if he didn't forget, if he knew what he was doing, what is the benefit for either alignment doing that? This just feels like Gif is hoping to get UT mislynched in the near future.

Also just generally I think GiF's had a very minimal impact despite having circa 100 posts. I'm not impressed.

Spoiler: Quick point on Gamma, who is a very null read for me right now

Kind of weird to have no Tammy-Zar comment from Gamma here.

Spoiler: Uncomfortable with Espeonage

This from Espeonage feels like an attempt to get information to the scum about people's wanting/not wanting to be booned. I'm not a big fan of this as a get-out clause.

The stuff early in this Major Day is annoying in that it doesn't feel like he's taken the time to figure out how the fuck his role works which, like, c'mon, you just had two days to figure out all that basic stuff, but I guess it seems kinda genuine? I certainly

wish

that town would care enough to figure things out overnight but that's probably not as true as I'd like. Maybe Espeonage just refuses to give enough of a shit.

tl;dr

Has pinged me a bit but stuff Today seems maybe genuine. If you're town, shape up a bit.

---

So this is me once again acknowledging that I think the TTH wagon is a good thing but I'd like to hear more from both her and those involved. In the meantime, I'm going to vote for another scumread because we have time to work on more than one wagon.

VOTE: GuyInFreezer

[ChannelDelibird]

We're not lynching Tammy.

[ChannelDelibird]

Nacho thought the interactions between DV and Marquis felt off. But the offness seemed mostly from the Marquis side. Which is a comfort to me because I was on my own in not liking Marquis in Gestalt.

Is! This! Not! Just! Because! Of! The! Off-putting! Punctuation! And! Shit?! Otherwise I don't really see it.

[ChannelDelibird]

Been away for 10 days. Will get to this tomorrow

Nice of you to warn us.

[ChannelDelibird]

@CDB: Why don't you like looking at how people approach the game? I think that's the best way to understand their mindset and thought process, which helps in figuring out whether they're town or scum.

You're missing my point.

Everything

comes down to how someone "approaches the game". Everything that everyone in this thread is talking about comes down to that. You might as well have turned to whoever it was you were addressing and saying "oh, hey, I get it. It's because of how Cheetory is playing, right?". It's an empty statement.

[ChannelDelibird]

I know I just told him it's probably not important but I'm still not completely happy with this. If anyone's opportunistically jumping on UT forgetting that ffery is confirmed town, it's Cheetory.

For the same reason as before?

I don't know if I'm happy with the way that I worded it before. As in the quote above, I think my concern is more than, if anyone was scum trying to take advantage of UT's behaviour at that point, your post looked the most like it. As should be obvious, though, I'm conflicted about it.

[ChannelDelibird]

Mod:

I'm going to be

V/LA from the 10th-17th

during the UK Scummers Meet. While this has the benefit of having all four of my team in the same place to talk things over, we won't have regular internet access, though we'll be seeking it out when we can to keep up. I'll probably be reading more than I post, though.

[ChannelDelibird]

UNVOTE: GuyInFreezer
VOTE: TellTaleHeart

[ChannelDelibird]

Well, get posting.

[ChannelDelibird]

@TTH:

I have two questions.

1) Why did you swap with Antihero?
2) How well are you fulfilling that reason for swapping?

Not very well, CDB. Not very well at all.
I'm currently in the process of getting my shit together.

You didn't answer 1).

[ChannelDelibird]

UNVOTE: TellTaleHeart
VOTE: GuyInFreezer

For the time being, at least. Carry on with your catch-up; interested to see where your vote goes, etc.

[ChannelDelibird]

CDB gives me bad vibes because I am 95% sure his votes on towI get he has to do his own investigation and shoving GiF as town is really antitown since I cannot prove it.

While I think that you're town, I don't agree with your read on a player who has the third-most posts in the game while still making very little impact on anything at all, as well as the things that are pinging me that I've mentioned. You're entitled to your read but, when you talk about it being based on ika, a player who is not in this game (and please, GiF, don't bring him in here), that does not make me drop everything to agree with it.

[ChannelDelibird]

I might be able to get behind an Espeonage vote instead, though. Will consider things before I take off tomorrow.

[ChannelDelibird]

UNVOTE: GuyInFreezer
VOTE: Espeonage

Works for me.

[ChannelDelibird]

Empire, I'm really sad to hear that things are so tough for you right now. All the best and hope you feel better soon.

That said, yay, singer! I'm glad you got a chance to play this Team Mafia in the end.

[ChannelDelibird]

Seriously? You wagon me exactly as I leave for a meet? That's really dumb. I'm on my iPad right now so I'm not really in a position to go back and quote several posts and do this with the proper rigour but here's what I think about the votes on me from what I remember of rushing through the ten fucking pages you posted overnight.

Bulbazak: What you're right about: my bane vote on you was a compromise (hadn't fully reread the thread yet, nothing else was going to happen, didn't have an exact vote count around but had the impression I was the -1 vote or similar). What you're wrong about: my vezok boon vote was not blindly sheeping ffery. Go back in my iso to that point. Ffery offered me three choices when I asked but I explained clearly why I chose vezok of those three, and she agreed with my reasoning, not the other way round (not that I influenced her read, just that I clearly wasn't parroting). Your analysis of my relationship to the TTH wagon also doesn't take into proper account my posts on TTH before the end of Minor Day and around my discussion with her when she showed up. You're also the one who started this wagon at literally the worst possible time to give me as town time to deal with it appropriately. You were already on my list of suspects. This doesn't make me feel better about you, but I don't want to scumread you

just

for scumreading me because enough people are doing it that at least some town are likely just wrong.

Titus: I don't understand why you're voting for me. If your only reason is sheeping Bulba, meh. I understand why you'd do that given your stated read on Bulba but it's pretty annoying. You've played twice with me as town recently, in Orient Express and Uncouth, and I'm surprised a little that you don't see similarities. I think you're wrong town, though. I hit that read early and I haven't seen any reason to doubt it.

Shadoweh: Even more than Titus, I don't understand why you're voting me. I can't remember your history of reading me too well as I just associate you with my own inability to read you either way, so I don't know if you should know better. But I guess you get townpoints for being the only one to bring up the subject of my V/LA, ecen if you then threw that away by voting me. But yeah, I'd like you to explain clearly why you have me so high in your scum list.

Singer, you're not voting me but I can see your suspicion. If the only reason I'm so high in your suspect list is paranoia, that's fucking lame. The only reason I was even that townread in RRR was Nexus bus cred. I think my play looks pretty different to that game already, and I'm a bit surprised that ffery hasn't noted the same.

You maybe have a few minutes to ask me stuff while I wait for more people here to wake up.

[ChannelDelibird]

Oh and CES says to tell singer that we're town.

[ChannelDelibird]

And both he and I want to tell GiF that he's not allowed to swap with ika.

[ChannelDelibird]

Singer: Over a skim read as I was doing yesterday, my position on your scumlist seemed higher than maybe it was.

Titus: meh. Not sure you and I are ever going to understand each other very well.

Approve of more Espe votes, though I've only done the briefest, most me-centric skim of the last four pages.

Will check again tomorrow hopefully but really not thinking much about this game while here

Peace and love,

CDB

[ChannelDelibird]

Internet not good enough to take time to go back to bulb post, quote, etc

Shadoweh: 'Reads list' as you call it not comprehensive reads list, just list of new things/things that changed for me after thorough reread of game. Should be obvious from fact I didn't get close to addressing/stating current read on every player. I did say earlier what about your early post looked off but it was more compelling then than now, especially as I was struggling to keep up during the early days of the game. Now one post out of 85 pages is less interesting compared to broader behavioural concerns about Espeonage/GiF or reservations about why Antihero replaced out (now somewhat assuaged). It's still there, but not sure I could vote you for it and nothing else with a straight face. Haven't been deliberately avoiding you, just haven't had anything else from you stick out to me either way.

Bulba: Refuse to multi-quote on ipad so I see five quote strips from you on me, will address one by one:

1) Don't pretend that I wouldn't be annoyed by this as any alignment

2) I asked for a shortlist, more than once. I got one choice before eventually getting three. I voted before the other two were volunteered but the intent is obvious and, as I say, reasons are vindicated by the fact that I say I'm sticking with vezok over the other two

before

ffery says same

3) I think you should look at the recently finished Uncouth mafia in theme park and look at my treatment of ika day 1 if you think I wouldn't express support for a major wagon as town while getting on with something else. Almost more important to make a point of doing something about little-spoken-about Gif than making even clearer the fact that I also suspected TTH, which should have been obvious from my questioning of her late in minor day.

4) if i were only arguing on basis of 'unfair time to wagon me' then that would be fair point, but I'm doing that AND addressing concerns as best I can. I can appreciate that you would prefer to vote your highest scumread regardless of availability but the unique advantage of this game is that you can pursue two targets today and still come back on me for lynch 2 when I have more time and internet to play properly (obviously helps to avoid mislynch on me but even if i were scum you would prefer me to have more time to make posts that would help you catch buddy tells later so it's hard to argue that wagoning me now is a good plan).

5) not trying to scare you, just being honest about my thought process. Post was as much for benefit of others reading it and trying to make up mind on me than it was for yours. In circumstances, hard for me to be substantive when not in position to easily reread and check over thread while making posts, so only natural that I am leaning on emotion and etc more heavily, but am responding to specific concerns as I can. You can dismiss my responses, as you have been doing, but that doesn't mean that they weren't responses.

Fen and Ces think we should do first lynch relatively early in deadline to better inform the second. I agree in principle but have neither the time nor energy nor capacity to help push that through any more than I am. So, uh, hurry up please

Fuck ipad walls

[ChannelDelibird]

As should be obvious i started that post intending to just respond to bulba on tone but ended up making myself go back to last page to reread his quote strips

[ChannelDelibird]

I forget who was proposing a scumteam involving me and singer but that seems super weird given me-empire interactions

[ChannelDelibird]

Internet is a little better this morning, going to try quoting as I catch up

Ok I have townread on cdb!

Why!

'Cause!

Ok I feel like explaining this now.

I think if cdb was scum he really wouldn't mind ika replacing into my slot bc it would just open up to be another big mislynch spot.
But CDB freaking out over it (+CES, which is a key point imo) shows that they are trying to figure out the game hoping to not get distracted by some weird play.

I dunno about CES but it's null for me. I just prefer games that don't include ika to games that do.

[ChannelDelibird]

Most of the last few pages appear to be confirmed town arguing with my highest town read. >.> I'm just gonna say to CDB that I don't buy your excuse that none of my 50 posts struck you or your team as alignment indicative in either direction. I also don't buy that you made a post solely to update your reads without including someone you were scumreading, even if it was just to mention you didn't care either way.

OK. You're wrong.

Given our experience together, I don't really buy that you don't buy that I could have very little to say about you. 'I dunno, null-scum' seems about standard from my recollection. As to the content of my catch-up post, that's either something you'll believe of me or not. That's how I operate and you'll get confirmation at some point.

I would have thought your team, ie the person you said was scumreading me, might have updated you on how she felt. Maybe she forgot to because as scum you don't really need your team's help finding scum.

I would have included more from Fenchurch if Fenchurch had read more of the game and offered more thoughts. But Fenchurch doesn't have time to read a 93-page game. Her time spent on games other than her own is being spent on the more manageable smaller games. I've already made that clear.

[ChannelDelibird]

Still very happy with an Esp lynch but saw talk of an ActionDan wagon and I'd be OK with that if we veered away from Esp for some reason.

[ChannelDelibird]

Have skimread the last few pages but not really taken it in beyond the level just above surface level due to lack of sleep and a meet cold. I should be back up to speed over the weekend.

[ChannelDelibird]

In process of trying to catch up but pretty much solidly in the UT boat of HOLY CRAP I JUST WANT A LYNCH, A FLIP, SOMETHING DEFINITE WITH WHICH TO WORK so pretty happy to go along with:

UNVOTE: Espeonage
VOTE: ActionDan

...especially as a) this reminds me a lot of his scum persona in the Reckoning invitational (exaggerated emotion) and b) it's >>>>>>>>> a singer lynch. I've been turned right off that prospect over the course of this unbearably long Day and the fact that the wagon still persists so heavily bugs me.

Getting me fully read up and in sync with things is probably going to take a few days as I'm still tired and ill and catching up with a bunch of things but I'll go over things when I can. In the meantime, I've got enough reads from enough pages of this behemoth to be getting on without all the minute details. Would still happily switch back to Espeonage

[ChannelDelibird]

Had a townread on him earlier, have almost no understanding of why this wagon exists, feel bad for doing it so uninformed but jesus christ we need a flip so badly

VOTE: T S O

[ChannelDelibird]

Fuck's sake, can't believe I forgot to even consider whether or not he had claimed. Chalking it up to having gone beyond desperation in how long it has taken us to get this far

[ChannelDelibird]

Do want to apologise, though

[ChannelDelibird]

VOTE: Vezok

TSO was willing to make sure no PR got the boon to stop Vezok from getting it. I want to know why.

TSO just flipped vanilla, and the boon voting happened before the minor night. What is there left to know about why that isn't already in TSO's posts?

[ChannelDelibird]

I don't get why TSO had such a resistance against Vezok getting it. If TSO got the boon, no PR could get it. I don't get why TSO thought Vezok getting it was horrible.

You're right. Maybe we should lynch TSO

[ChannelDelibird]

Really being a smart ass is not helpful.

What's so retarded about saying gee someone flipped town and had a really strong scumread and taking another look?

Because I don't understand what you're trying to say, and I don't think you do either, so I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe don't do your thinking out loud in this case and actually figure out what point you're making before you post. The reason I'm being snarky is because it looks like you're trying to decipher some secret information that TSO was hiding, when he wasn't hiding anything, he just thought vezok was scum, and being dead doesn't suddenly make him right.

[ChannelDelibird]

Singer, do you have a tl;dr of your Shadoweh read to which you could direct me?

[ChannelDelibird]

I want to do some rereading, hopefully tonight, to refresh a few things but I'm pretty certain that I won't be voting for either Titus or singer. I don't hate the Aronis wagon. UT will require some scrutiny but I feel like he's one of the players I'd rather keep around for longer to get a better read with fewer players around.

In the meantime, VOTE: Espeonage.

[ChannelDelibird]

I really don't think Titus is scum. The effort to make herself more accessible to read while still trying to do what she thinks is best looks very town to me, even if I think she's wrong about a bunch of things.

Going to see the Avengers tonight but will try to read up either side of it.

DV - I think you're looking at my comments about you being self-conscious as if they were meant to be an examination of your alignment. They were meant as a comment on how (whoever it was I was talking to at the time) was reading you, and how I thought

their

comments looked weird. They were saying that you weren't self-conscious at all and that was my way of saying that I couldn't understand why they had come to that conclusion, which made me think they might not be reading you honestly. Can't remember which person this is referring to right now but I'll revisit it later.

[ChannelDelibird]

Hi guys, I'm going to read and write what I can during work over the next few hours but here's a message from CES to ffery, paraphrased:

When it comes to pushing someone who looks town but who hasn't posted super-often in a 150-page game with this many players, something must be off with how you scumhunt. CES was hoping that your push on TSO indicated that you actually had something but now you're coming after me, he thinks you're just settling for easier lynches and crossing your fingers, without the conviction to actually lynch scummy people.

[ChannelDelibird]

Also, people "sheeping ffery" onto me who've read the back end of her iso should be ashamed of themselves. If you've given up agency so much that

that's

the strength of read that you're sheeping, then I think that's pretty pathetic, and this is coming from someone who would have hammered almost literally anyone had they been in TSO's position when we finally got that far.

[ChannelDelibird]

My main approach to posting over the next couple of hours is probably going to be 'scan the last few pages for mentions of me to which I need to respond before I latch onto anything else' for obvious reasons, so let me know if there's something that urgently needs my attention that I might not see by looking for the word 'CDB'.

[ChannelDelibird]

Also, the wagons I could get behind at this point are Shadoweh, CDB, AD, (probably Titus but it kind of makes me sick now), UT, and...meh, I dunno...I feel like I'm townreading everyone. -_-

Have you actually got a reason to suspect me beyond "boo hoo he won Retrospective Rehash"? Given how Empire felt like he was trying to figure me out a bit, and that your slot is one of the ones with whom I have interacted the most directly, it is really frustrating to see you come in and just take this stance.

[ChannelDelibird]

i am so tired of taking this game seriously so i am taking this opportunity to mispell everything i can for the next 24 hours

esp dat seams fiyn

wat aboot cdb tho

i jst warnt to lynnch cdb

fuckin' why? Does the 999 micro come into it?

[ChannelDelibird]

I've actually kind of been seeing some potential buddying with me from CDB, in reading back through the game

I could do this

Oh, please elaborate. I had a scan at our double-iso after reading this post and I have no idea where you think I'm saying anything beyond what is both obvious and normal.

[ChannelDelibird]

I think he's really cheeky

What do you mean by this?

and I can't figure out where his priorities lie cuz I know he was in the place with scummers for the meet but then he's been not really around

I'm certainly willing to admit that this has been a struggle since I got back from the meet, though, newsflash, since when is falling behind a new thing for me? I kept up as best I could while I was at the meet but haven't really found the time to do the massive read-through to get up to speed that I feel like I need (whether I

actually

need it is another question, but when the thread grows a million pages you tend to feel obliged to know what happened). This is partly due to the fact that Nexus and I have been setting up our new large theme game over the last couple of days, so a lot of my mafiascum time has gone towards that, but I still don't know why I'm one of the only ones shouting about this: SEVERAL OF YOU PEOPLE HAVE OVER 200 POSTS IN THIS GAME. TITUS HAS MOTHERFUCKING 656 POSTS. Do you seriously expect everyone to keep up at that pace?

and I have a hard time trusting what little he's contributed

Here's the thing, right: I haven't contributed that little. I've contributed a perfectly sensible and readable amount. I've contributed less than some people in this ONE HUDNRED AND FIFTY PAGE GAME because OF COURSE I HAVE. But that doesn't mean that you can't look at my iso and see me doing my part.

[ChannelDelibird]

I still don't know why I'm one of the only ones shouting about this: SEVERAL OF YOU PEOPLE HAVE OVER 200 POSTS IN THIS GAME. TITUS HAS MOTHERFUCKING 656 POSTS. Do you seriously expect everyone to keep up at that pace?

[ChannelDelibird]

I think your espeonage vote is bad and that you should feel bad about it.

mostly because I think his posts show dem town motivations which I already went over forever ago.

I don't really agree with the latter, but I freely admit that my Espeonage vote probably needs a refresh. I voted him because I didn't want to vote for any of the other wagons at the time.

who else do you think is scum?

This is a good time for me to answer this question, as much as to myself as to you, but I think it's likely that I'm going to be deciding on people I'm willing to lynch from a people of people on whom I don't have townreads at this point. When your foothold on the game is as mine is, that feels the safer way to go, but I'm just going to discuss my state of play on everyone and see where that gets me.

Actiondan

- Could still lynch, though I'm not gripped by certainty of his scumminess as I was in the Reckoning invitational, and I feel like I might be able to read him better when the numbers have thinned out. I'd like to hear his opinion on me, having been one of the people to eventually figure me out in Retrospective Rehash.

Aronis

- Probably scum, to be honest. Has had the generic lurker thing going on for a long while, seems mostly content to just skate along while we argue and argue and argue.

Bulbazak

- This read probably needs another refresh because I haven't read much from him since my last big posts, but there are definitely things that bothered me before about which you can read in my iso. The fact that he's been pushing me doesn't endear him to me but I'm not sure to what extent that's pushing me towards thinking that he is scum. Certainly would lynch him over most of the current candidates, at least.

Cheetory6

- Been up and down for a long time but now settling pretty solidly on town. I like his frustration at how the Day is slipping towards another 'oh well, let's hope ffery's right' and I think he's been genuinely trying to figure out me and others.

Deasvail

- Probably wouldn't lynch Today? I'd go back and look him over if I thought there was any chance of him being lynched Today but I doubt there is so I'll probably leave him for later.

Espeonage

- Was pretty strongly put off by his entrance to the thread and most of his posts since have been in a style that I find relatively unreadable but have a vibe of being deliberately so in a way that I find irritating. Honestly not that sure how much of my read is scumminess (the entrance to the thread definitely felt that way) and how much is frustration. Again, would lynch over most of the available candidates.

Formerfish

- Thought Marquis was reasonably town, only thing I've read of Formerfish so far is a deeply lame vote on me that's probably null but is definitely disappointing. At least own the fact that you're sheeping ffery instead of cushioning it with a read that couldn't be more half-arsed.

Gammagooey

- Town, at a guess. I can picture quite vividly you planting this vote on me from across the room at the Reckoning and not budging even as I address you directly. I think it's super lame, but I think you believe in it.

GuyinFreezer

- Thought was scummy earlier, now I don't know so much. His utter conviction that he's found a hard towntell on me (I think it should be null as fuck, though) sounds genuine. Probably wouldn't lynch with any certainty of getting scum from it.

Mastin2

- Literally no opinion. Wish she would shut up about how dead she's going to be.

Oversoul

- Solid town, mostly a holdover from the Tammy read but the glimpses of Oversoul that I've actually read (not many, I usually avoid walls) seem fine.

Shadoweh

- This one's going to bug me. If she's town, then she's doing a pretty god-awful job of putting herself in my shoes when trying to figure out my read on her. The truth is this: Fenchurch picked up on that one post that I mentioned a long time ago, and I agreed that it looked a bit scummy, but there wasn't much since, and I'm not very comfortable with basing an entire read on one post in a huge game like this. I can sort of see where she could be coming from when she cites my confessing a concern that she was coming after me as a reason to find me scummy, but I slightly more strongly get the feeling that it's just a thing that she's using because she thinks it can get me lynched, like she's latching onto it as an unfortunate thing for town to say. But the trouble is that now this whole read has got wrapped up in several layers of itself - and I blame only myself for this - where I'm aware of the fact that I've pretty much always found her null-scum for no clear reason before, and there are things here about her that genuinely bug me but I can't tell whether it's just that at work again, am I confirmation-biasing myself, and so much of her interactions with me that I should be analysing to find her alignment are directly wrapped up in that. I want to say that her working on that specifically makes her more likely to be scum taking advantage of my fuzzy read on her, but is that just bias as well? Fuck knows, honestly. When it comes down to it, she'd be one of the first people whom I shot if I became an unlimited dayvig right now. I would be super relieved if she were to flip scum, and I think she's got a good chance of doing so relative to many other players, but I've lost all sense of trust in how I handle this read that I wouldn't be shocked if she flipped town.

singersigner

- Came around to pretty solid town soon after my long rebuttal to Empire a while back, still sitting there even though I dislike singer's willingness to vote Titus and her stance on me.

TellTaleHeart

- I may have missed discussion about what her Minor Night action meant and I owe myself a read-through her posts since becoming more active but I do still think she could be scum based on the circumstances of her replacing in and her behaviour in the immediate aftermath of doing so. Would vote over most other players.

Titus

- Thought was town early on, still think is town, deeply uninterested in mislynching her just when it feels like I've finally got a solid read on her for the first time in possibly forever.

Untrod Tripod

- Often scumread by other people in early-to-mid-game for pretty dumb reasons, which makes me want to not lynch him just out of spite, and I also sympathise greatly with his stance on how unhelpfully long this game is and so would quite like for him to live a while as I feel I'd get more out of a later game with players like him around. I saw this while reading back just now and I can't quite decide what I think of it - it feels just a little too self-conscious for my tastes, a little too aware of his place in the gamestate, but it's possible that that's just something that UT has learned to think about more than I have. There are people whom I'd lynch UT Today in order to protect, but ultimately I don't have any particular expectation of a scumflip from him right now and would like to keep him around for a clearer read later.

Vezokpiraka

- Is vezok still in this game? I dunno, haven't read a post from him in ages, though, y'know, skimming. Owed a reread on account of lapsed time but I doubt we're in any danger of lynching our Boon Today so I'll let that wait until at least Tomorrow.

So what does that leave me with?

People I definitely don't want to lynch Today

Cheetory
Oversoul
singer
Titus

People closest to the above category on whom I'm not quite confident enough to bump up:

DeasVail
Gammagooey
GuyInFreezer
vezokpiraka

People I guess I would lynch, if perhaps reluctantly:

Formerfish
Mastin2
Untrod Tripod

People whom I think might flip scum but on whom my reads are conflicted:

Bulbazak
Shadoweh

People whom I could pretty happily lynch Today:

ActionDan
Aronis
Espeonage
TellTaleHeart

[ChannelDelibird]

Unofficial vote count so that I can figure out my next move:

(5) ChannelDelibird: Gammagooey, Titus, Shadoweh, Formerfish, Bulbazak
(4) Titus: Espeonage, vezokpiraka, Aronis, singersigner
(2) singersigner: mastin2, Untrod Tripod
(2) Espeonage: ActionDan, ChannelDelibird

(5) Not Voting: DeasVail, TellTaleHeart, Oversoul, Cheetory, GiF

I really, really don't want to vote for either Titus or singer, but I'm also well aware that there is currently zero momentum behind the Espeonage wagon for reasons that I don't understand (did people just feel like that's been done and moved on to the next thing instead of considering coming back? Obviously, though, that read of mine likely wants a refresh so maybe I just missed something).

You know who I'm happier lynching. If someone wants to start a wagon on one of those people, I'll get on board. If it comes down to a direct choice between me, Titus or singer, I genuinely don't know which of the two I'd vote. I really don't want to have to make that decision, because I think both of the wagons suck balls.

My biggest frustration right now is that several of the people driving my wagon are people who look very town to me and should know better but are in the group of people who are happiest with posting a lot (I'm looking at you, singer and ffery. Titus should probably know better but she seems to be pretty great at reading me badly, on experience, so I'm less shocked and frustrated that she's voting me). Ffery, I agree with CES that it seems like you've just got frustrated with the game and are pseudo-voting me just because I haven't posted all that much and maybe you'll get lucky. I wouldn't want to be in your position, confirmed town who's liable for mass sheeping from people who aren't doing very much, but in that position your stance on me (a pretty throwaway, half-hearted one) is incredibly damaging from someone whom I'm pretty sure was townreading me earlier.

[ChannelDelibird]

Right, going to get lunch and get on shift. I'll be checking this thread when I can over the next few hours but I'll be out in the evening.

[ChannelDelibird]

*mid-sandwich post*

CES reminds me of this from TTH, which I had forgotten:

As I will be confirmed in the next minor day (don't ask),

so probably wouldn't vote for her Today I guess except to save myself.

[ChannelDelibird]

I don't want to invest an awful lot of time in actually scumhunting you right now, TTH, if you're claiming to be confirmed Tomorrow, but I have two observations:

1) If you were townreading me earlier, I have no idea how you could reverse so quickly given the above, but I'll wait until you can expand later, I suppose.
2) Why aren't you being harder on DeasVail for his reaction to my posts than you are on singer? Why are you even assuming it's the reads list that made her have that change of mind?

Patrick is reading along with these current posts and thinks about as highly of TTH's response to me here as I do. Neither of us can see any critical thinking.

[ChannelDelibird]

actually @cdb
are you going to be around in an hour or sometime in the next few hours after that? i don't really want to bug you about a bunch of things then if it's going to take you half the remaining deadline to talk about it.

I'm currently at work and will be for the next nearly-four hours, so if things get busy I can't guarantee that I'll be here to talk in depth, though I'll make an effort. As soon as I get off shift, I'm heading out and won't be back until around 11.30pm UK time, which is just over eight hours from now. I'll be tired, but I'll look to respond to everything I can then before going to bed.

[ChannelDelibird]

If I'd meant "I have no idea why you could be voting me", I would have said that. I said "I have no idea how you could reverse your read so quickly". It's not like my reads have come out of nowhere, but your reaction not only to me but to people like singer who expressed approval was utter revulsion. It's the strength of that reaction that I don't buy from someone who previously thought I was town.

[ChannelDelibird]

The first is just that you haven't done anything that I view as amazingly town that I've seen you do in previous games. I townread your slot in Reckoning 3 for basically the entire game on the basis of one of your early posts seeming really really town motivated. The absence of that isn't really a reason to lynch you on its own but seeing you with a hundred something posts and nothing that to me says "oh actually that's pretty town" DOES make me want to murder you.

The second is that you've put basically no effort into actually PUSHING your reads here.

That much I appreciate and acknowledge with regards to my scumreads, though I'm pretty happy with my approach overall.

You've had Titus as strong-town for the entire game but gone into all this detail about so many other players and given basically nothing about why you actually think Titus is town.

Hi. There's also another thing from very early on that makes me think she's a certain

type

of town but I don't want to point to the post or which type I think she is because I don't want to give scum any information. It's something upon which Fenchurch first picked up at around the same time as she mentioned the Shadoweh thing to me.

You're also voting Esp but haven't bothered going into any detail whatsoever about why you think he should be lynched over anyone else.

I tried to express what was bugging me about Espeonage early in my read here, but as I acknowledged above, the read needs a refresh. However, I

have

talked about why I think he should be lynched over many other people in that I've been talking openly and honestly about my reads on other people in comparison. But, again, I agree that I've so far been unable to get my teeth into a juicy scumread. Have I mentioned that this game is obnoxious? Because it is.

There's less than 2 days until deadline, the wagons are you and a strong town read of yours (and to a lesser extent another strong town read of yours if you want to call 2 votes a wagon), and you've spent your posts explaining null reads instead of actively trying to affect the course of the game. You've put up a list of people you'd rather lynch and then done nothing to actually get people to vote them instead of Titus.

Your scummiest reads are a pile of lurkers and a dude who's claimed to be able to confirm himself tomorrow, which would be fine imo if you were ACTUALLY pushing him and actively trying to convince people that his posts make more sense from a scum-saving-himself mindset than town, but you're voting someone who you've just stated you think is generally unreadable (albeit maybe intentionally so) and frustrating you instead.

You complained about people trying to lynch you earlier today as the first lynch when you were at a meet when you weren't capable of affecting the game. And the you came back and continued to do nothing to meaningfully affect the game, instead pointing to some people and saying that they should be lynched instead of the current wagons. I think you're a very competent player and that you can tell just like I can that the main wagons aren't going to change at this point without someone going into detail on why they think Titus is town or a specific other player is likely to be scum, and I think it's clear given the deadline and what you've done so far that you'd rather not do that.

so yeah no this isn't about 999. this is about you seeing where this game is going and you strongly disagreeing with that, but not putting in the focused effort to actually change it.

OK, so let's talk about my approach to things at the moment.

I'm behind in this game. There are huge chunks of it that I've just not had the opportunity to read properly from when I was away at the meet and since I've come back. You've played with me before, as town, so you know that this happens to me and I'm pretty sure you should know that my instinct is to get defensive when things like this happen. I'm pretty sure the Balto invitational reflects this, and I'm certain that games like The Wire Season 1 reflect the fact that the one thing that I know that I can do when I'm behind is talk about myself, my thought processes, and how I play.

No, I've not got a strong scumread that I'm convinced is the right one to push and showing exactly why I believe in it. I wish I did have one. For the record, though, I'd also like to point out that I'm entirely capable of faking that kind of conviction as scum or bussing if I can't hook onto anything better. Players from Retrospective Rehash know that I can fake the kind of pro-town behaviour that you're describing. While I agree with you that I'm not currently doing as much as the game

needs

me to, I don't think that your theory fits the evidence.

Also, while I agree that I'm not pushing another lynch very strongly, I'm also being as open and honest and available as I can make myself right now because I know I'm town and that's my best way of showing that I'm the wrong lynch. People moving off me and onto other people, by understanding why I'm playing how I'm playing, gets us closer to a scum lynch, even though I don't like the alternatives on offer - and, as has been shown, I'm explaining why I don't like those alternatives as well. We can't all be relentless town leaders - and, Christ, in a game like this I think we could do with fewer of them right now - and I think I've been pretty clear in what I'm willing to cooperate to do and why.

If I had the time (and, frankly, the will to live) I would absolutely be digging up an alternative wagon, but I don't. What I've had time to do is this. Perhaps if people would stop POSTING SO FRAKKING MUCH it wouldn't be such a mammoth task for people to delve through the thread to dig up an alternative to the crap that the regular posters are offering us.

In other news, Patrick and I agree that 3693 makes you look pretty town, and the post I'm quoting here doesn't shake that.

[ChannelDelibird]

Huh, sorry, must have got stuck in my read over the last few pages. On that now.

[ChannelDelibird]

OK, first thing you need to understand, Titus, which I don't know how you don't already, is the following:

I HAVE NEVER, UNTIL THE SORT-OF THING IN MY READS LIST A PAGE AGO, SAID THAT VEZOK WAS LURKING IN THIS GAME.

The

only

thing that I have done on that front is pass on CES's off-hand description of vezok as "lurky", which I believe was a comment on vezok as a player in general and not in this game. I haven't confirmed that with CES but I think he read the posts I made after I passed on the comment and would have corrected me if I'd misinterpreted. It was an arbitrary example of a player who was hard to read, which was CES's point. Apparently CES doesn't know vezok that well. That's fine. I certainly don't know him well enough to have corrected that interpretation. But you've run with this comment ever since as if I had specifically said that vezok was lurking in this game, which I have gone to great lengths to explain that I was not, and it's really annoying to discover that you still haven't understood.

He also says GiF is a scum because his many posts are not memorable. There's 20 players and play focused on around forming town coalitions.

a) You're misrepresenting how convinced I was in that read
b) No, YOUR play has been focused around forming town coalitions. I think the concept is a gigantic pile of bullshit. Someone making a lot of posts without any of them having anything that stuck in my mind as defining what they were trying to do is a bad thing.

FFery picking a pool but us having some influence is good, because town vastly outnumber scum. What? If Ffery made the sole pick, we would know there's 100% town influence and 0% scum influence so what's the point behind town having more influence.

Hey, I dunno, how about the fact that ffery's influence just caused whatever the TSO wagon was? As a town player, I didn't want to give up all my agency to a player who, while town, could easily be wrong about things. I thought picking one of three was a good compromise that still allowed town to think together. Talking things out is how town wins things, not letting one player do all the work. That's how you catch errors.

CDB's GiF read focus on him not being present. Common sense says that some people hunt differently where they don't need to be at the forefront. That's literally all there is to his GiF post and the fact he missed a question awhile ago. There's no teeth there at all.

Yeah, you're right, the read wasn't very strong.

He also drops it when facing any sort of resistance.

Leaving aside the inflammatory language, I don't think you get to make this point immediately after the point beforehand. Weak reads get dropped when stronger things come up. You're acting as if I thought my GiF read was god's gift to townkind.

The resistance to having ika here when the game is demotivated and ika can obvtown himself quite well are also awkward to me.

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY THAT I DON'T LIKE IKA? HOW MUCH CLEARER CAN I BE? I OBJECTED TO THE IDEA OF HIM REPLACING IN BECAUSE I DON'T LIKE HIM AND WOULD NOT LIKE TO PLAY WITH HIM. IT'S NOT ABOUT TACTICS. IT'S ABOUT ENJOYING MYSELF.

There's no response from CDB regarding half the players.

Bullshit, whenever I have time to push myself to get a big grasp on this game I post as much detail as I can about as many players as I can.

Overall, his strongest two expressed reads are the most difficult for me to comprehend at all.

That's because you're doing it wrong.

[ChannelDelibird]

I don't know what there's not to buy. I think DV's scum anyway so why would I give a shit if he gives you a pat on the back for the reads list?

Because you did to singer, who has votes on her, so presumably if you were right about this then her risk of being lynched increases as a result of you pointing out her reaction. If I were town in your position I'd be taking any opportunity to call out a scumread on doing something scummy.

You're also ratcheting up the strength of the townread I stated earlier on you quite a bit if you're painting it as such a drastic reversal.

No, all I'm doing is responding to the fact that you acknowledged that you'd had a townread on me as you made the reversal. You drew attention to it. I've very much owned the fact that I need to reread a lot of your posting so I actually don't know how strong the townread was. I'm going off what you've said.

Add in the fact there's no evidence he read anything in my ISO past the flash wagon at the beginning of the day.

I LITERALLY ACKNOWLEDGED THIS

TellTaleHeart

- I may have missed discussion about what her Minor Night action meant and

I owe myself a read-through her posts since becoming more active

but I do still think she could be scum based on the circumstances of her replacing in and her behaviour in the immediate aftermath of doing so. Would vote over most other players.

[ChannelDelibird]

Ugh I'm getting behind on work, will try to be back a bit before I go

[ChannelDelibird]

before I get back to work

calling me town for 3693 is dumb

you're dumb

[ChannelDelibird]

there are plenty of posts here that I doubt I could or would fake as scum but poking a scumread to see if they'll be around in an hour isn't one of them.

Maybe. Dunno. We liked it. I don't mind rescinding the townread for that one post if you insist. Still think you're town. Wanna fight about it?

[ChannelDelibird]

Yeah guess I'm not going anywhere

[ChannelDelibird]

in fact

the ACTUAL reason for me being town you have seen in 999 cdb
and it is me constantly, relentlessly, UNCEASINGLY giving a shit about the game and what's happening in it.

calling me town for asking you if you'll be around in an hour when I think I'm pretty clearly town to you for completely different reasons is an easy way for you to dismiss me as town to everyone else while you continue posting at people to defend yourself.

While I buy your belief in your vote on me, I haven't read enough of the game since before TSO's lynch to fairly gauge how relentless and unceasing you've been in the pursuit of my murder, so I don't actually think that's directly applicable here, though my experience there is certainly informing my read on you here.

[ChannelDelibird]

I can accept that, and I've already said that I can totally see you parking this vote on me and not listening to my defence as you did a few times at the Reckoning, so I'm not surprised. But me responding to you is as much for everyone else's benefit as it is yours. I'm confident that, the more that I talk and show what I've been thinking in this game, the more people in general will understand that I am town.

I would very much like to go digging into suspects but this is all I have the time to do right now, having explained for whom I would vote and why, as well as responding to things in real time, even if I wouldn't actually vote for TTH right now.

[ChannelDelibird]

Well, I'm almost out of energy at this point, so this might be it from me for a few hours, but I think you got too distracted by my townreading 3693 to listen properly to the parts of this post that explained my motivations. While I think your motivations are town, and maybe you haven't played enough forum games with me, I don't think you're doing a great job of understanding what I'm trying to do in the time that I have for this game.

[ChannelDelibird]

Ooooof. That one hit a little too close to home.

[ChannelDelibird]

I mean, I am trying to redirect you in a sense? I feel like you should know I'm town by now, even though that's demonstrably not going to happen, so I'm trying to redirect you to the parts of my posts that I think should have already shown you that. I don't think that's something that I am more likely to do as scum.

Basically there's nothing in that post just there that I don't agree with, but it's like you think that, as town, I would definitely have something that I knew I wanted to push right now, and I don't know why you think that that must be the case given my availability patterns. I think my stances on everyone are totally understandable, but I guess I would.

I can tell we're going in circles here but, like, I dunno. I don't disagree with you in principle but I'm sitting here knowing that I'm proof that your argument is damagingly inflexible.

[ChannelDelibird]

if you want the titus wagon dismantled and someone else to be your counterwagon its about time to do it by any means necessary.

I mean, yes. I agree. But my schedule, and everything that led me to this gamestate, is what it is. If I weren't busy tonight, I would be digging through ActionDan and Aronis and Espeonage and Bulbazak and Shadoweh to figure out which needed to die most urgently. But I am, so I can't. I will make an effort to either do some of that when I get back tonight or (less likely) wake up early to do some of that before work tomorrow, but I don't expect to be much less busy tomorrow (it's possible that my evening plans will fall through, though). That's what I'm getting at: you seem to think that I definitely would already have latched onto something and pushed it hard as town, but time and 150 pages that I haven't read thoroughly enough to be a pushy authority on anything say otherwise.

And yes, this is an excuse. Of course it is. That doesn't make it wrong.

[ChannelDelibird]

This has probably been one of the most pointless arguments on which I've ever spent this much time, hasn't it? I hope somebody got something out of it, at least.

[ChannelDelibird]

I guess I'll have to address it if no other wagons have formed by the time I get back later, singer ... do you have a particular post or two that best sum it up? I did read your Shadoweh case btw, thought it was relatively unexciting despite my feelings on that slot.

[ChannelDelibird]

OK, I'm back. I'd really hoped that more people would have chimed in while I was away; I want alternatives to the current wagons. I don't know for how long I'll be awake tonight but I think the first thing I'll do is read singer's links on Titus, although my mind is not as open on that front as it really should be. Then I'm going to have a look at some of my plausible suspects and get a vote down. Otherwise, I'm generally here if there's anything people want to ask me.

[ChannelDelibird]

I want alternatives to the current wagons.

cough do it yourself

Come on, I know you're reading. What part of 'I'm going to have a look at my plausible suspects and place a vote' didn't make sense to you? I know you're probably too far down the rabbit hole right now to see sense but c'mon, dude. Wait to see what I get done and then complain if you have to.

[ChannelDelibird]

PEDIT: I didn't say I expected anything, Gamma. I said I was hoping. Take off the fucking scumglasses.

---

On singer/Cheetory's Titus case, as briefly as possible because I want to get to other people:

singer's 3641: Titus is a very particular person, who often sees things in quite different ways to others. I can believe that she believes the weird distinction between meta and meta as highlighted in the first part of this post.

The bit about the changing stance on singer, re: trusting ffery's read on Empire, is maybe the part of this post that I find most interesting but, as I believe that she's genuinely trying to be more accessible in this game by encouraging cooperation between people she thinks she's reading well, I don't find it particularly weird that she's talking about contributing part of a case rather than a full one of her own.

The thing about 'wants coaching that assumes she's town' actually sounds like an argument for Titus town, if anything.

singer's 3645: As far as using ffery as a shield to reduce responsibility for her own choices, I don't necessarily disagree with this, and the I think the game as a whole needs to do it less. Having an innocent child for 130 pages or whatever it's been is incredibly distorting. But, again, I don't think that's necessarily something that's more likely to come from Titus as scum. I think it makes a lot of sense as either alignment, but particularly for a town Titus who's trying to be more approachable and cooperative.

The weird "stop scumreading me for being a decent person" part is maybe the part that makes me most want to vote Titus out of what I've been shown here - I have the hardest time explaining how such a statement makes sense - but it's not much. I really can't help feeling that this is the sort of argument that happens with Titus all the time, in that her playstyle and way of thinking rubs a lot of people up the wrong way

and

she's actively trying to do something different in this game so it makes total sense that that would grind on people in this game. Essentially a lot of what I'm reading here just brings me back to 'it's a personality clash' and that doesn't make me want to vote for Titus. As in a lot of games, I think a lot of Titus's conclusions here make very little sense to me, but I feel like I can understand the intent under it, more or less. And I really don't want to let go of that, because it feels more fundamentally true than nitpicking at her individual posts, because I don't think I've seen a Titus game in which there isn't a major flare-up on her like this.

Cheetory's argument, as best as I can follow up without going back to dig up quotes from that truly terrifying Titus iso, revolves around claiming the detect being bad (I dunno, not sure I have a good enough handle on the mechanics to get into a debate there when there's every chance that Titus would just think differently to me on what's good practice anyway) and that he thinks she's doing too much teambuilding and not enough scumhunting. Maybe it's just because I'm someone who she's scumreading fairly vociferously, but I don't feel like she's neglected that part of the game so much. I agree that the teambuilding stuff is excessive, but I don't see why townTitus wouldn't hit that as hard as this if that hadn't been very much her intention in dealing with the game that way. It's not even as if we can point to her and say that approach isn't paying off because we've only had one lynch in this game so far.

tl;dr

Titus case feels like it boils down, fundamentally, to whether or not you believe that she's taken this approach genuinely as town. I don't find a compelling reason to disbelieve that, so I don't want to vote for her.

[ChannelDelibird]

'scumglasses' was meant to be a thing about you seeing scum when you look through them, not that wearing them makes you scum

I'm still townreading you, I'm just really tired at this point and probably losing some of my finesse with words. Busy shift combined with arguing with you for hours, seemingly fruitlessly, has left me very low on energy. Looking at ActionDan atm meanwhile

[ChannelDelibird]

Going to start with ActionDan. I'm having a read over his iso (probably won't do this with everyone but think he should be concise enough for my eyes not to bleed).

One thing I find a bit off is how he talks

a bit

here and here about Marquis's read on TTH but it's nothing particularly serious and not really presented as something that's pressing or requires a response from Marquis to break anything open. But when he comes back three days later he implies it's more important than it looked before. That thing just doesn't feel like the sort of thing which would suffice me as an entry/exit point from the thread as town. I'm struggling to imagine town Dan caring enough to latch onto that three days later.

Espeonage case is lame, basically

For someone who keeps promising to read me, and has really recent experience with me as scum, it looks really weird that this is the only post in which he actually deals with me in any meaningful way, and even then it's very fence-sitty

Well, I got to the end of it. My eyes are drooping a bit so might reconsider this in the morning but basically there's not very much in it that grabs me. Part of the reason why I got pretty scared of ActionDan while he was alive in Retrospective Rehash was that, when he actually bothered to engage with the game, he had a lot of conviction behind him that I don't see here. I see pretty lame reasons on Espeonage (I know, I know) and an almost bizarrely casual relationship to the major wagon that sprung up upon him - like, we got a bit more activity from him around that time, but there's not really any of the passion that I would associate with townDan facing his own lynch.

I'm well aware that this, the part where I'm trying to dig into my suspects and actually figure out whom I want lynched instead of me, is a conveniently shitty time for me to get too tired to be as coherent as I'd like. Tomorrow's going to be similarly busy for me and I don't know how much more of this that I'm going to be able to do, but I'll try to get up with a bit more time in the morning to do things, and hopefully work (afternoon again) will be quiet enough for me to do some more work, but it's a matchday so who knows. Evening's likely to be busy too, but if I get done quickly I'll have a little bit of time before deadline.

In the meantime, at least overnight, this is a better option than the other wagons for sure:

UNVOTE: Espeonage
VOTE: ActionDan

[ChannelDelibird]

eh, Marquis stuff at the top there is probably confirmation bias talking, but I do think the main argument that I don't really see any real signs of town Dan townily caring about the game is valid. But there's no escaping the fact that I started that iso wanting to see scummy things, at this point. Still a better lynch than current alternatives, still believe my reads as detailed earlier. Think that's it from me tonight, I'm pretty beat. I'm gonna be pretty frustrated if more people overnight don't take a stance on my posts today.

[ChannelDelibird]

I'm here, barely. Obviously you've rebutted yourself a bit there but, yeah, basically I feel uncomfortable coming into a thread on which I'm behind and still declaring 'this is the most useful place for my vote right now' when there's a lot of stuff that I haven't read yet. The times when I've been more caught up with this game are the times when you can see me being as useful as I can, I think

seriously bedtime now bye

[ChannelDelibird]

Shadoweh, I don't know why you think someone on my team called you a good player. It was me. I don't think I implied otherwise. The wine bottle thing is pretty much how I feel, tbh, though no drinks were had yesterday.

Vezok, vote ActionDan ffs.

Posting from bed, will get up and be back soon

[ChannelDelibird]

Your read on me is amusing to me in the sense that you sound like you have a bottle of wine in front of you. It would go a long way if you just answered the concern that I brought up of who exactly called me a 'good player' on your team, and why they think that. My thoughts are stubbornly stuck on that point because it doesn't make sense. Fenchurch hasn't played with me, so even though she's scumreading me she doesn't have a basis for whether I'm good at it or not. CES probably hasn't even said my name. Patrick is unfamiliar with me too. And you were fairly condesendingly dismissive of me in Fantasy Camp. So it seems like a sentiment that either came out of nowhere in order to pacify me despite me being someone you would prefer to die.

Bleary-eyed, I didn't answer this fully. You mentioned Fantasy Camp and a) given my swift exit, I can remember almost nothing about that game and had filed it under 'games in which I null-scum read Shadoweh because apparently I suck' and b) I'm sorry if I was condescendingly dismissive of you. I don't recall but it sounds like one of my worst qualities, so yeah, I apologise.

CES had just read this post of yours too and finds it strange that you ruled him out of saying it for badically no reason. If it

had

been one of my team who said it (again, it wasn't, and I'm clearly in the habit of saying when reads have come from my team-mates), then by your own logic CES is the most likely one to have said it. He doesn't understand why you've decided that he couldn't have.

[ChannelDelibird]

3AM or not, I think it's a massive, massive copout to check out of here without actively reacting to the largest wagon's massive series of posts.

[ChannelDelibird]

Right, given the situation, I think I have to do this now. I have been trying very hard to avoid having to do so.

I am Cepira Rulk, the Harrier.

I am a Tracker, slightly modified

.

If I match sign, I get to track my target on Major Nights. If I track them using an ability that needed them to match sign, and the sign they submit is the same as their own, I also get told the name of the ability I see them using. The only drawback is that I don't get results for actions that target me.

I correctly Detected a player whom I thought might be scum and might perform a kill during the Minor Night.

I actually would have been tempted to go in harder on this player Today but I was still hoping to have the wagon on me fall away without having to claim so that I could be more sure of getting the investigation away.

Right now I don't want to give away my Detect target and their sign if I don't have to - there's still a chance that I could use it, though the necessity of claiming makes that less likely. But I will if people whom I think are town think that it would help them decide whether or not to get the frak off my wagon.

This absolutely should not have come to this, but here we are.

[ChannelDelibird]

Also, goes without saying, protect the frak out of me Tonight please and thanks

[ChannelDelibird]

About to start work. What I have the time/energy to say right now:

Of course I didn't say out loud in the RRR thread that you were scaring me, why would I? I felt that way because I was scum and you were right. Is this really a thing you're saying?

I

agree

that the TTH/Marquis thing wasn't really a thing, that's why I immediately contradicted it

I didn't have the energy to go into the Espeonage thing, which is my biggest regret of starting that post last night with the intention of a thorough case(ish) on my suspects, but at any rate hypocrisy is not a scumtell and I don't have to have made a good case to think that yours was lame

[ChannelDelibird]

I mean, to be fair, if you're town and I were in your shoes right now, I'd be a bit offended by that sorry excuse for a case too. It's also pretty easy for scum you to pick apart as well, because it's the shitty ramblings of a half-asleep, conf-biased madman who simply feels obliged to get

something

out before going to bed so as not to have spent his entire day speaking only about who he doesn't want to lynch, but I'm not under any illusions that that was a slam dunk.

Of the suspects available, I looked into you first because CES said he'd vote for you in a pinch (his reasons weren't much more detailed than 'you made a bunch of posts around the time of your wagon and none of them had anything particularly town about them). If work is quiet this afternoon (dunno), I'll try to look into others too but I've probably committed at this point to you as my alternative wagon of choice, given time available. Still don't hate it, but conscious of the fact that I haven't got a great case.

[ChannelDelibird]

If it gets to the point where I'm going to have to be hammered (and it still frakking shouldn't, btw, there are enough people and enough time to save me), please give me a chance to out the sign of my target. I think it's worth doing if I'm not going to survive.

[ChannelDelibird]

Maybe I'd spare him for Aronis. maybe. I still don't really like the conviction he had telling Vezok to vote me when he had a shitty case and knows it.

The more important part was that you =/= me

[ChannelDelibird]

Also because I was half-asleep I initially read UT's vote as one on Dan rather than me, so I thought vezok's vote was more premature than it might have been

[ChannelDelibird]

I felt that way because I was scum and you were right. Is this really a thing you're saying?

Yes, because it wasn't in the post-mortem afaik

Well however many weeks later in post-game I didn't feel the need to address that specifically, but you can probably tell from our mafia PT that I was generally crapping myself from the day when we lynched Shinobi onwards. But honestly that's just a weird thing for you to assume that it didn't happen. You must know scum get scared when people are onto them

[ChannelDelibird]

Maybe I'd spare him for Aronis. maybe. I still don't really like the conviction he had telling Vezok to vote me when he had a shitty case and knows it.

The more important part was that you =/= me

There are 17 players who aren't you

Oh come on, don't pretend that post isn't in the context of me vocally hating the other non-me wagons. You're allowed to be angry and you're allowed to think I'm scum but don't be wilfully blind

[ChannelDelibird]

I posted what I think of every player very very recently and explained why you were in a small group of people for whom I would prefer to vote. The difference is thinking other people were town. And I've also said that I had very much intended to look at the others for whom I had expressed satisfaction with voting last night, but I couldn't stay awake long enough, and I've said why I started with you as opposed to the others.

[ChannelDelibird]

I don't want to distract you too much here. So I'd appreciate it if you read other people, formed fresh opinions. If you're town and get lynched, I'm not going to be happy about it.

I would like to do that but I'm at work right now and I don't really have time to do more than react to new posts, I can't go digging around in isos and take proper chunks to time to reevaluate. I wish I could, but it is what it is.

I could be doing the same I guess, but I'm resistant to changing my vote if you're going to continue clinging on to yours for your stated reasons

I'd switch to Aronis if he had more votes than you. I'd switch to a lot of people who aren't my top-tier townreads if they had more votes than you.

As you go from town --> scum reads the amount you say about each decreases until you come to the 4 people you were scumreading and didn't have much to say at all.

That's correct. My townreads are much stronger than my scumreads. That happens sometimes. Given the deadline situation, I could certainly be expected to vote for lots of people, but if time weren't a thing I don't see why you'd expect me to vote for people outside of the big boxes where I sorted people into how willing I am to lynch them.

[ChannelDelibird]

Yes, but you know that came after the part where I was already pretty unsure of you in comparison to others, right? It wasn't like that was the foundation of what I said about you in my reads list. That was something that happened after I already knew that you were in the pool of people I'd be happiest lynching. I didn't randomly pick out one of my townreads then decide to iso them to find things that support their being scum. I don't even know what you're trying to say about me any more

[ChannelDelibird]

If time weren't a thing I like to think I could have done much better on someone than what I farted out on you

[ChannelDelibird]

PEDIT: TITUS, PLEASE LEARN TO READ, I DID NOT SAY I DETECTED SOMEONE LIKELY TO BE KILLED. I DETECTED SOMEONE I THOUGHT WAS LIKELY TO BE CHOSEN TO PERFORM A KILL IF, AS I SUSPECTED, THEY WERE PART OF A MAFIA TEAM. COULD YOU PLEASE, PLEASE ACTUALLY READ THE WORDS THAT I POST AND STUDY WHAT THEY MEAN. FOR ONCE!

If it gets to the point where I'm going to have to be hammered (and it still frakking shouldn't, btw, there are enough people and enough time to save me), please give me a chance to out the sign of my target. I think it's worth doing if I'm not going to survive.

Why do you think this is a good idea?

Because I'm actually confident-ish in the read, and I'd like for him to die soon if I'm lynched. I'll just say it, for the sake of transparency.

I detected Aronis

, who I think is probably lurker scum letting the loud players just fight it out among themselves.

I really, really, really dislike role-based excuses for how people are playing. Because they come a lot more often from scum than town. I also think given your stated reads and how weak all your scumreads are that this really is just an excuse for playing in a way that people are finding scummy

That's not quite what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to excuse my whole play - the only difference to how I would have played this as a VT, I suspect, is that I would have just sat on Aronis since the end of the Minor Day. This is just to explain why I haven't pushed Aronis

and that if you honestly think that someone outside of that is LIKELY enough to be scum that you can make a better case than your previous one throwing darts at ActionDan, you should be making that case.

You can tell from my reads list that Aronis is my strongest scumread but I don't really have anything to push - it's just the fact that he's probably generic lurker scum - so I got a bit too enamored with finding something else to do and taking advantage of my detect to hit him at night. In a game where I can't always expect my night actions to work even if I target the right people, having the advantage of definitely being able to track a suspect and therefore lynching somebody else was really appealing.

Also, implying you're worth protection right now to me sounds basically deluded.

I have a powerful pro-town role, and if I survive this wagon then it'll be because people believe that I'm town - because, look at ActionDan, it's not just going to be a formality based on claim alone - so at that point those are the ingredients for someone being worth protection, yes.

[ChannelDelibird]

CDB remind me why you're townreading singer

not going to waste work time explaining something that's already in my easily isoable reads list from yesterday

[ChannelDelibird]

fair

i think there are probably about 2 scum in the pile of people that everyone's written off as not lynchable today. Who do you think is scum that has basically little or no chance of being lynched today?

Dunno about people who 'everyone' has written off but in terms of people who look very unlikely to be lynched soon but on whose towniness I'm not sold, I guess you'd be looking at the likes of Bulbazak, Shadoweh, maybe someone like mastin (if I could read her at all), Formerfish, UT? I'd feel far better about voting for the first two there than the latter three, though. Also not sure what this question is trying to accomplish but I'll just run with it

[ChannelDelibird]

Increasingly feeling like I shouldn't be playing this game.
Like.
Damn.
Someone ask me something or ask me to do something because I am just not feeling fucking anything right now wrt this game.

Talk about the claim and what we should do with it, I guess, if you can't even read my iso in general. But pretty sure we need you to be more active than that

[ChannelDelibird]

I really dislike the strength of CDB's role.

Tracker + Rolecop?

Yeah, but the chances of that actually coming together are not that high

1) I have to correctly match sign on my target
2) My target has to be using an active ability
3) They have to be submitting the same sign as I am (i.e. their own)

[ChannelDelibird]

FUCK'S SAKE, ESPEONAGE, WE HAD PLENTY OF TIME

[ChannelDelibird]

quick tell me if you want Aronis's sign, I'm not sure

[ChannelDelibird]

Bank Gamma as HARD TOWN for his interactions with me here, I can understand how he's fallen so far down the rabbit hole even though I'm beyond frustrated with him for doing it

[ChannelDelibird]

Still think the singer slot is EXTREMELY UNLIKELY TO BE SCUM and would strongly advise against lynching her. At a push, Titus is slightly more likely to be scum but I still think she's probably town on overall approach

[ChannelDelibird]

Think Shadoweh's stance on me needs a thorough examination.

Honestly don't know about Dan but I think there's a pretty good chance you'll figure him out with enough time so I guess I'm not so worried there.

Probably Bulbazak is the other person who I think needs more attention than has been given.

[ChannelDelibird]

oh, uh, I'm not dead

stand down

[ChannelDelibird]

Inspired by Espeonage's fairly dreadful vote on me there, let's pick out the best and worst votes on my wagon:

Gamma: Fine
Titus: It's a terrible, terrible vote, but still town
Formerfish: A really shitty sheep on ffery's half-hearted read, heard nothing since, very possible scum
Bulbazak: Has suspected me all game for no clear reason, possible scum
TTH: Random outburst on me was weird as fuck, think possible scum but we'll see tomorrow
UT: Can't remember if he hated Titus/singer wagons as much as I did, if he did the vote is fine
vezok: Probably OK in the circumstances but I don't love it
ActionDan: probably null
Espeonage: at the very best, poorly thought through

[ChannelDelibird]

Also not sure what this question is trying to accomplish but I'll just run with it

reaaaading you maybe you clown

No, I mean, I got that part, but I don't know what answer you were expecting beyond what I've already talked about. but I can't be arsed to argue the point because I think you're town so I'll just answer what I can

also FYI in roughly two hours I'm going to be even less available than I currently am but I will check in sneakily when I can and also should be around for a bit just before deadline if it's not over by then, but I'm not going to be very awake by that point

[ChannelDelibird]

I don't understand how people like Oversoul can sit here and post as if my last few pages haven't happened. Talk about the claim, at least, ferchrissakes!

Why do so many people seem to be just letting this nonsense happen?

[ChannelDelibird]

oh OK you're right I don't know how I forgot about that, but you haven't responded to my response

[ChannelDelibird]

Oversoul, you're thinking about it as if it's a scum ability, I'm not - because it isn't. I agree that power roles for scum sound pretty strong when they can all detect the same person. But ask yourself if this is appropriately powered for town who can't detect more than one person per major night.

Re: how point 3 works, I only get told the name of the ability that my target is using if the sign they submit to use it is the same as the one I submitted to track them

so let's imagine a world in which someone has the sign Horse

If I track Gary, whose sign is Horse, I have to submit Horse on him or I don't get any result. Then, if I successfully matched sign on him, if he uses an ability called Badger on somebody, trying to match sign on his target by submitting Horse, then I also get hold that his ability is called Badger. If he submits the sign Potato on his target, I don't get told that the ability is called Badger, but I do get told who he targeted.

I don't know if I can put it more clearly than that

[ChannelDelibird]

VOTE: Gamma

[ChannelDelibird]

Could somebody please do something about this, please and thanks

[ChannelDelibird]

VOTE: mastin2

I'm going to be checking the thread intermittently but not a lot of time to post things other than votes for the foreseeable

[ChannelDelibird]

I can make an espe vote happen if we're going for it

[ChannelDelibird]

VOTE: Espeonage

[ChannelDelibird]

I'm a bit more here now than I was before but I've also got some other stuff to do before bed. Given that it looks like I'm going to survive the Day, I don't think there's a great deal pressing for me to do right now beyond continue to check the thread for changes. Mostly just posting to confirm that I'm more or less up to date and to say thanks ffery for playing on in a pretty thankless position and for putting together these reads before you go.

[ChannelDelibird]

Gotta go to bed, so it's Espeonage or bust, I guess. See you on the other side.

[ChannelDelibird]

I just woke up, so here are my fleeting thoughts which I will get to solidifying later:

1) After a bit of debate with my team (I wondered if it was worth rolling the dice on anyone other than Aronis, they said no), I tracked Aronis and got no result, so either he did nothing, or he targeted me, or I got blocked.

2) GiF's death seems weird, as only Titus seems to totally recognise that he crumbed something powerful. Titus, who do you think is more likely to have killed GiF? (Singer, no need to make the obvious reply, I can already hear it)

3) why are so few people (just Cheetory, from quick read of overnight posts) talking about how infuriatingly antitown mastin was at the end of Yesterday? We should have had an Espeonage flip and nobody can tell me that that wouldn't be a good thing. Instead mastin just pranced around, actively resisting being relevant. CES thinks she could do it as town but, while I agree that's probably possible, the fact that she could do it as town only makes her more likely to ape that behaviour as scum, and it sure as fuck ought to be punished as either alignment. I'd Bane her but I actually want scum to have a reason to kill her if she's town.

4) Eagerly anticipating TTH's first post Today.

5) Choice of Lock was clearly the best but think it was so clear-cut that self-conscious scum are more likely to have quickly approved it rather than risk arguing for Unlock. That's my half-baked theory, anyway, might try applying it to people later

6) Once again, want to target someone scummish but unlikely to be lynched this major day for the Bane. Would quite like to do the minor day fairly quickly if possible for sanity's sake. Haven't quite figured out my preferred Bane target yet as I'm trying to figure out who I'm most likely to want to lynch first. Espe idea seems meh as he might be lynched but I could probably live with it. Think I'm more likely to pursue other lynch targets this Major Day

7) very tempted to pick up ffery's UT read and run with it. Also want to have another look at Bulbazak, DV and Formerfish imminently, I think.

[ChannelDelibird]

Can you direct me to where you thought it was universally understood/believed that GiF was unlynchable?

My first reaction to that statement was "whuh?" but, actually, I totally believe that town-Titus would think GiF unlynchable by that logic. While that

might

also sound like a reason for scum-Titus to kill GiF, that post feels like it's coming from a town perspective (if Titus thinks this would be the obvious consequence of how she interacted with GiF, I don't know why she'd align herself so closely with him as scum, both to make him more "lynchable" in her head and to mean that a GiF kill doesn't immediately point to her).

[ChannelDelibird]

something I meant to say in that post but forgot is that Titus would believably think that

everyone

would see GiF as unlynchable as she does even if I don't think it could be more obvious that a bunch of people think very very differently to her about a lot of things.

[ChannelDelibird]

OK, looks like TTH is town then.

[ChannelDelibird]

This Bane feels like it'd at least be less of a waste to use it on someone we're actively intending to lynch immediately, but since we know from Viktor that scum have at least one player with a non-factional ability, it seems strictly more efficient to try to use them separately.

[ChannelDelibird]

Um, sure CDB.
Why isn't it safe to assume that multiple scum have non-factional abilities?

Obviously they have one - Viktor - which the Bane could inhibit, but I don't know if they have more than that and there's currently no explicit evidence that they do. I see no need to make unnecessary assumptions, though I suspect that it's likelier than not that more than one has a non-factional ability.

PEDIT: Sure, vezok, its effectiveness assumes we Bane scum. It is a pretty awkward one to talk around, really, because we don't want to bring out unnecessary claims.

[ChannelDelibird]

@CDB...did you ask hito what a track would return as a result to any actions that didn't go through because of sign shenanigans? No result? Or no response?

If you mean 'what would happen if my target submitted an incorrect sign?' then no, I actually haven't. I'd sort of assumed that a failure to match sign means you technically don't use an action, but you bringing it up makes me realise that I don't have a particular reason for that to be true instead of any other possible interpretation. I will ask hito about it.

CDB

, can members of your team run an analysis to see how many actual days we have left? I'm worried that once another day or so has passed this game is going to thin out very quickly and we may be at death's doorstep quicker than we think.

I assume you mean CES? I'll ask. The thought has occurred to me. Given that this game is presumably vaguely intended to run on a similar timeframe as the other Team Mafia games, it can't be that hard for scum to start getting off multiple kills per Night.

[ChannelDelibird]

Espeonage's attitude towards self-Baning Today feels pretty VT. I'm not sure I'd lynch him any more, despite my anger that he didn't die Yesterday.

[ChannelDelibird]

Why does it feel VT? It felt forced to me. A self-bane appeases the town and says "look at how sacrificial I am being" when in reality it hurts the town a lot. Espeonage's self-bane is more survivalistic than it is pro-town. If he was town he would accept his fate and try to put the bane on someone where it might actually negatively affect that person. The self-bane looks to be entirely for the theatrics of it.

It literally accomplishes nothing on a VT. Sure you could make the argument that it is arguably less efficient for us to try and bane a goon who only has a nightkill, but we don't even know if Espeonage is a goon so why take that chance?

"Accept his fate"? Even considering that he was the last-minute wagon at the end of Yesterday, I don't think that Espeonage's imminent demise is a done deal, and I think the chaos of that run up to deadline makes it pretty clear that we could easily go in a lot of different directions. Whether good play or not, I see a lot of VTs going "well, I'm just a VT, it's not so bad if I get lynched" and this feels like a less damaging version of that. As things stand, if we want to avoid giving away too much information by debating whether or not we think people have scum power roles, Espeonage is the safest Bane as a claimed VT with more suspicion than many. I can see him taking this attitude as town in that situation, for sure.

No one had an issue with his claim or suspects he might be a scum nefariously doing other things with his role. I think this bane should be reserved for people that we think have powers in addition to the nightkill.

My problem with the concept us specifically trying to Bane powered scum is that it potentially draws out even more power-role claims, which risks hurting us a lot. I'm not sure that there's an elegant way to do it, even though I definitely agree with you on the principle of the thing.

[ChannelDelibird]

Btw, Oversoul, haven't heard from CES yet but Patrick doesn't understand why you've reached out to us with a question that's relatively easy to figure out no matter who you are. But anyway, here's what the two of us have worked out:

As things stand, on the information available to us, scum could kill a maximum of twice per Major Night and we can lynch twice per Major Day. With four scum alive, we would be in LyLo by Major Day Four if we lynch town at every opportunity and scum kill as many people as possible (and none of the dead are Alquin).

If Alquin were to be lynched Today or killed Tonight, we could lose as early as Major Night 3 if scum get everyone's signs right.

[ChannelDelibird]

TSO wagon is a good thing to be looking at, for sure. I'll take a look at it myself soon.

CDB

, is that how you are supposed to play as town? You just lynch people because it is convenient?

I feel bad about flat-out forgetting to wait for a claim, but I'm not sorry about finally securing a flip. After that many pages, the thread needed one badly. At the very least,

I

needed one badly. I was starting to lose my mind at that point. I'm a strong believer in the theory that excessively long Days are bad for town, something which I think bore out in the way that everything went Yesterday.

Caveats: I wouldn't have hammered when I did if it was on one of my absolute strongest townreads (at that point, it might have been only Titus and possibly the singer slot depending on when that was relative to the evolution of my read there, I forget) and if it hadn't been driven, from what I'd very quickly skimmed, by confirmed town.

[ChannelDelibird]

As I said at the time, I thought it was fine. People forget things.

[ChannelDelibird]

@CDB...did you ask hito what a track would return as a result to any actions that didn't go through because of sign shenanigans? No result? Or no response?

If you mean 'what would happen if my target submitted an incorrect sign?' then no, I actually haven't. I'd sort of assumed that a failure to match sign means you technically don't use an action, but you bringing it up makes me realise that I don't have a particular reason for that to be true instead of any other possible interpretation. I will ask hito about it.

Confirmed: I get the result even if my target incorrectly matched sign.

[ChannelDelibird]

Ooooooh. That probably means good things for Aronis. I don't really know how stacked a scum team of four would be since my sense of balance in mafia is WAY OFF, but since there seems to be a decent amount of soft-claiming/PR potential, I'd say it's not unlikely that each scum would have some sort of ability, even if it's lite.

My team and I are talking about how likely it is that I might have been blocked. We certainly haven't decided that it's

likely

, because several things have to happen like there actually being a scum roleblocker and scum either getting my sign on Minor Night 1 or guessing really well last Night (though none of those things are individually particularly implausible), but it's certainly possible. But I'm certainly inclined to leave Aronis alone Today.

PEDIT: Titus, "scum would kill GiF because they knew he was unlynchable because I'd die to save GiF" isn't a reason for scum to kill GiF if you're town. It's a reason to leave him alive and then push him at Day so that you actually do die to save him. The fact that you're suggesting that GiF died specifically because of his relationship to you doesn't sound like a reason for people other than you to have killed him. This is why I'm trying to ask things like if anyone else would have picked up on his crumb, etc etc, because the fact that he's dead is pretty much the only thing at the moment that makes me feel like you could be scum.

[ChannelDelibird]

It is a reason to kill GiF CDB. Burning mislynches is NOT something scum like to do early. Plus, if they try and fail, they have two unkillable townies, which isn't good. I'll admit, maybe I could have played it better as I'm not subtle when I'm blocking off mislynches but I did and scum killed an unlynchable townie.

Yes, but you seem to be the only one with anywhere near the total 100% confidence that GiF was completely utterly obvtown (given that people had some different reads, also several thought you were scum) so the question isn't so much whether or not GiF would ever get lynched as much as it is whether scum would come to the conclusion that he would never get lynched and thus had to die. The fact that you appear to the be only one so totally convinced that he would never be lynched makes you look more like somebody who might have argued in a scum PT to kill GiF.

Is there anyone else who might have picked up on GiF's crumb? I still think it's possible that scum (possibly scum who Detected GiF on Minor Night 1) might have picked up on him having a power role - I don't think the kill points undisputably to Titus as scum, but it does put it on the table despite the fact that I otherwise had a very strong townread on Titus and don't want to go back on that if there's not a really good reason - but I was definitely surprised by his death so I'd like to have an idea of why it happened.

[ChannelDelibird]

Bane: Espeonage

I've definitely come to the conclusion that these Minor Days are a real impediment to progress. I don't want them to take any longer than they absolutely have to so that we can enjoy some actual momentum. Votes for things that aren't lynches are much, much less fruitful for analysis and I really want to get to that part again. Espeonage is the simplest way to do that without risking outing more power roles, and has enough of a chance to be scum that it'll do for me.

[ChannelDelibird]

Like, this

really

shouldn't take long on account of wanting to wring out some more content because we have 173 pages of content and only two flips to show for it. Let's get to lynchin'.

[ChannelDelibird]

I think he could plausibly be what he says he is; I still need to reread him a bit for a clearer view in the same way as I said about him Yesterday. But I've been thinking about it and I'm not sure the risk of outting power roles when, as you say, we should be trying to put a tertiary scumread into the crosshairs for this, is worth moving the Bane away from someone who won't be hurt if they're town and could be hurt if they're scum, which remains possible.

And mastin is someone for whom I could see myself voting to lynch so I dunno if I want to Bane her anyway, as far as the other current contenders go.

[ChannelDelibird]

Compromise with me then? How about we agree to settle the first lynch of the day during this current phase so we don't waste the bane on someone we are going to lynch.

I like this in theory as a thing to occupy the time more usefully, but I'd really really like to see where votes are going while I decide who I want to lynch. Which is why I hate these Minor Days. I feel like any conclusion to which we came could be changed very quickly depending on how the Major Day starts. I don't feel like we can realistically settle on the first lynch before the event.

If we were allowed to vote right now, I'd be voting UT, of that I'm sure. I haven't decided whether or not I think he's scum yet, but I think he could be, I like that Gestalt came down scum on him at the end, and I'd like to see what would happen if a wagon happened there. That would help me make up my mind.

Also I will repeat. Unclaimed power roles shouldn't be a concern, they SHOULD NOT CLAIM IF BANED.

That's fair, actually, I hadn't thought about that. It would suck, but yeah. Better to suck it up.

[ChannelDelibird]

Unbane
Bane: mastin

[ChannelDelibird]

OK, looks like TTH is town then.

No duh. I just had to rant and scream at you all day to get people to listen to it.

You had sod-all to do with it, thanks.

3) why are so few people talking about how infuriatingly antitown mastin was at the end of Yesterday?

Because people know my stances about lynches by now.

I don't give a damn about no-lynches D1, or any day particularly. I'd rather them than on town. But if possible, I prefer on scum. And I deemed DV a viable scumwagon. There's a reason I'm not baning DV.

Well everyone else does, and this is a team game, so how about you stop acting like you're God's gift and compromise for everyone's sake. Christ, you're infuriating.

Unbane
Bane: Espeonage

[ChannelDelibird]

If all CDB has to do is match a sign to get his ability to go off, there's zero reason for his ability not to go off tonight.

CDB detect minor night one. Gets wrong sign.
CDB attempt major night one. Wrong sign.
CDB then should know Aronis's sign.

If CDB fails to check Aronis, then either CDB or Aronis is likely scum with a remote possibility of a roleblocker.

What are you talking about? I got Aronis's sign on Minor Night 1.